“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

Mahatma Gandhi

A Waterford female bar worker lost her life after a sorry incident arising from an altercation in a city centre pub in late 1895.

An inquest into the fatality heard that Kate (Catherine) Connors, with a female companion, also “of the unfortunate class”, requested two glasses of beer in Ms. Maria O’Donnell’s premises in Arundel Square on a Saturday afternoon. They were refused point blank by the licensee, “knowing them to be of ill repute”, and they kicked up a row, becoming violent.

Nancy Lannen, 50, who was a servant on the premises, intervened and threatened to call the police, intimating that she was going to the door to beckon them. It was then that Connors met her in the middle of the shop floor and darted the corner of the umbrella she was carrying into Nancy’s eye, before scarpering as the injured party cried out in immediate pain.

The accused was arrested the next day at her aunt’s house at Jenkins’ Lane. She denied the charge but was brought before the City Police Court and held in custody.

Meanwhile, Ms. Lannon, who had been kept on the premises to rest for nearly two days afterwards, with Ms. O’Donnell poulticing her eye with bread and water, had suddenly deteriorated and complained of being in agony before falling unconscious.

Having been moved to the union workhouse hospital on the recommendation of a doctor, who had found her right eye all swollen and greatly distended, she died soon after; though there was a reluctance by the guardians to send the hospital van, and thus a delay in her being admitted and treated.

The inquest was told that a post-mortem found a laceration entering through the bony parts of the orbit into the brain. The doctor who did the examination testified that the prod wouldn’t have had to be that forceful as the bone at that spot was not very thick. He agreed the nature of the injury would cause the deceased to lose consciousness after a day or two.

Medical evidence was given that the wound would have caused inflammation of the brain. The jury found that Anne Lannen’s death was due to the prod of an umbrella inflicted by Connors, who was returned for trial to the Winter Assizes. There’s no record of the outcome to hand.