Great Dungarvan Characters

Miss Mary Anne Anthony

I was fascinated to find a reference to another great Dungarvan character in a book by the famous politician Timothy Michael Healy. I have seen many amusing references to Miss Anthony in the Waterford papers but this excerpt captures the spirit of the woman. The Carson referred to is Lord Carson of Duncairn, the famous Unionist leader and barrister.

Letters and Leaders of my Day by T.M Healy (chap 17 Legal Memories 1884-5)

The trial which brought Carson to the front was that of a Miss Anthony, known afterwards as the "Lady Litigant." She lived in Tallow, Co. Waterford, and, travelling in a train without a ticket, was ejected at Dungarvan by a railway porter. She received injuries, and Carson fought her battle so stoutly that heavy damages were awarded. The Railway Company appealed, and a litigation long drawn out began, but the lady won.

Miss Anthony then started sham suits and conducted them herself. She pledged a ring with a trader in Tallow to procure bacon. To get the ring back she threatened an action for illegally taking pledges, and retrieved her property.

Flushed with success, she proceeded against her parish priest for slander in that he prevented her becoming a "choir nun." The priest, she alleged, passed her over at the altar rails when she presented herself for Holy Communion. She sued for the alleged ill-fame implied in the refusal. The priest naturally compromised. Next she attacked a rate collector for "excess" in his collection. This action she lost, and to save her goods from seizure, she persuaded the Christian Brothers in Tallow to take her sheep into their field.

She also borrowed money from them on the security of the sheep. To evade paying the Brothers she sued them for the recovery of the animals, and terrorized them from going into court.

She next served a writ for slander on a Dublin solicitor, who threw it into the waste-paper basket, having never heard of Miss Anthony.

She got judgment, "in default of appearance," for £1,000. The solicitor moved to set this aside, and though his motion succeeded, she was allowed costs.

In many feigned actions for years Miss Anthony figured. She travelled free on the railways, as the companies deemed it cheaper to allow this than to defend her suits.

I saw her about 1886 in the Court of Appeal in front of a row of law books. Lord Justice FitzGibbon asked would she not allow her counsel to argue the case? "Oh, no," she replied, "I only employed Mr. Blank to bring down the books from the library!"

When her victims were exhausted and the Courts grew tired of her, she went mad and became an inmate of the Cork Lunatic Asylum. There she hanged herself. No newspaper dared mention the suicide lest she might have circulated an unfounded rumour in order to take proceedings for libel!

This is, therefore, the first obituary notice Miss Anthony has received after thirty years!

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