The Maamtrasna Murders: Language, Life, and Death in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

The Maamtrasna Murders of 1882—in which three men who spoke only Irish were wrongfully sentenced to death after a trial conducted fully in English—stand as one of the gravest miscarriages of justice in Irish history. In this book, Margaret Kelleher uses the Maamtransa case, notorious for its failure to interpretive and translation services to monoglot Irish speakers, as a starting point for an investigation into broader sociolinguistic issues. Uncovering archival materials not previously co...