Bridget Lynch was found lying unconscious and near death in an old shed in Mrs Tyrell’s house off Margaret Street, Brisbane on the 26th February 1884. She’d been living there for several weeks with John Agnew, a man who treated her poorly. Once upon a time she’d been a servant of Mrs Tyrell.
Bridget was a young Irishwoman who had been a domestic servant to good families until falling on hard times in the late 1870s. In those days, if you lost your position you also lost a room to live in, and if you had no home and couldn’t prove you had means of support, you were gaoled – sometimes for months.
Once released from gaol, you couldn’t work in a respectable home again. Rather than starve, you did what you had to, roomed where you could and drank as often and as much as you could afford, to try and feel human for a little while. Sometimes you stole.
This all happened to poor Bridget Lynch. Even down to stealing a jug from a hotel room in order to pay the landlady of a run-down boarding house for the rent you didn’t have. More time in gaol.
In fact, within 3 years of losing her job, Bridget was imprisoned twice for vagrancy and twice for stealing and in 1879 spent time in the Brisbane Hospital being treated for apoplexy as a result of drinking.
Bridget spent the last four years of her life going from squalid digs to the cells and back. She was one of a group of young Irishwomen on the streets of Frog’s Hollow, attracting the attention of the Police and the ire of the respectable. There was Annie Bolton, daughter of a prostitute, already on the game. Annie had her two girls taken off her and a third died within weeks of being born. Annie probably did the most drinking, but her constitution was strong. She could take it. There was Bridget Pearce, who was nearly killed by another of the Irish girls, the violent Norah O’Donnell. Then there was Mary Sullivan, Polly, Sarah Johnston. They were all called “women of ill-fame” in the papers. A tally of their convictions accompanied their names in reports.
Of all the notorious Frog’s Hollow women, Bridget Lynch – her miserable life and violent death – ended up being front page news all around the State.
On Friday 22nd February 1884, Bridget slept in Mrs Tyrell’s fowling-house, amongst the old bricks, broken glass and rubble stored there. This had been her temporary home for three weeks. Mrs Tyrell didn’t mind too much – Bridget was down on her luck. The reformers were chasing working girls out of the brothels in Frog’s Hollow.
The next day, Bridget told Mrs Tyrell and John Agnew she was going to see the doctor. If she didn’t go that very day, she’d get summonsed. That meant that she was under the terms of the Contagious Diseases Act 1868 and had to subject herself to regular medical examinations to determine whether her venereal disease was infectious or not. Only women had to undergo this, and if they failed in their duty to the Act, they would be brought up in Court and their condition made known to everyone in town through the Court reporters.
Bridget returned from her appointment about 5 pm, went into the fowling-house and closed the door. John Agnew joined her, and shortly afterwards, Mrs Tyrell heard Bridget’s screams. As Mrs Tyrell approached the shed, Bridget’s screams died down to a whimper, and she said, “I have been an old servant of yours, and this fellow is murdering me.” Mrs Tyrell had her husband fetch the Police, but Agnew escaped through a hole in the fence. The constables thoughtfully removed Bridget out into Margaret street, and left her there. She complained that Agnew had hit her in the breast.
Later Saturday evening, Agnew brought Bridget back to the Tyrell’s, claiming that he had found her in a fit in a neighbour’s yard. She was put in the fowling-house and observed to be unconscious and making strange snoring noises. By three in the morning, Mr and Mrs Tyrell were concerned enough to bring Bridget out of the fowling-house and onto their veranda, then into their parlour. She was still unconscious.
Later, Agnew and Mr Tyrell moved Bridget to the stables, where she could sleep in an area that was “quite grassy and soft”. By Monday, the Tyrells decided to have Bridget taken to the Brisbane Hospital, where she died that afternoon.
It is clear from the evidence of other witnesses that Bridget Lynch had been severely and regularly beaten in the weeks before her death, and was slowly dying from Saturday afternoon onwards.
On the 9th February, Mrs Heron-Smith had seen Bridget falling asleep in the bar of the Brannelly’s Hotel. Agnew came in and grabbed Bridget by the arms and knocked her against the wall. The same thing happened in front of the same witness in Grant’s Hotel on the 14th February, although this time Agnew struck Bridget’s face and breast as well. On the 19th, another witness saw Agnew strike Bridget several times on the head, prompting Bridget to say, “Leave me alone, you loafer, you will be the death of me yet.”
On the 20th, this time in Taylor’s Ulster Hotel, a drunken Agnew hit Bridget so hard on the face that she fell against the wall, unconscious. “Oh, Jack Agnew, you’ll kill me yet.” Bridget was reported as saying upon waking.
On the Friday before Bridget Lynch’s death, Bridget Pearce saw Agnew in Albert street, grab the victim by the neck and shake her violently. When Bridget Pearce gave him a piece of her mind about how he was treating her friend he said, “I will do it to you too, if you give me much cheek.”
When the post-mortem was conducted, Bridget was found to have bruising on many parts of her painfully thin body, and a cut on her head, not visible unless one parted her hair.
Prior to Agnew being charged with murder for his treatment of Bridget, the Queensland Figaro, having heard the tale of a woman lying down to die in a yard in Frog’s Hollow, went into print with an article called, “Starved to Death in Brisbane”. The article, claiming to have been written from accounts given by other prostitutes, has a starving Bridget deciding to lie down and die before being fatally weakened by a last attempt to rally and live.
From the accounts given by Bridget Lynch’s companions in vice and misfortune, I have no doubt, in my own mind, that she died of starvation. She was but an emaciated skeleton. Exposure and inanition told upon a frame ruined by a career of vice and hard drinking. She was clad in but one garment —a thin cotton dress, having not a particle of underclothing.
Queensland Figaro
To be fair to the Figaro, it was published two days prior to Agnew’s arrest and charge.
John Agnew was tried for manslaughter, rather than murder, in the Supreme Court at Brisbane. The jury found him guilty. Justice Lilley gave Mr Agnew some sentencing remarks to remember:
If ever a man received a “tongue-bashing,” John Agnew did, this morning, from Chief Justice Lilley. This “ruffian,” as Sir Charles styled him, was found guilty yesterday, of feloniously slaying Bridget Lynch. It had been disclosed by the medical testimony that the poor deceased was predisposed to apoplexy, but the jury accepted the view that her death was hastened by the continued course of ill-treatment to which she had been subjected by her paramour.
The wretched woman led a miserable life and was more frequently before the Police Court Bench than any of her class. Agnew, though professedly a wharf labourer, hung about her. In her way, she probably “loved” this man, and meekly submitted to his blows and kicks. At last death released her from her thraldom, and her associate was charged with doing her to death.
Sir Charles Lilley’s summing up was, in effect, a terrible indictment. In so many words he told the jury that if they believed Agnew had by one single second shortened the life of Bridget Lynch, he was guilty.
This morning he was brought up for sentence, and, in reply to the usual question, said “he threw himself on the mercy of the Court.” His Honour instantly replied, ” You had no mercy on the poor wretch whom you did to death.” Sir Charles declaring that in this case there were no circumstances under which the prisoner could claim the consideration of the Court, expressing his regret that he could not send him to be whipped. The application of the lash was the proper punishment for such ruffians as the prisoner, who lived off the forlorn women haunting our streets, but around whom the law would throw its protecting arms, against such as he. Agnew was then sentenced to penal servitude for seven years.
Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser (Qld.: 1861 – 1908), Saturday 29 March 1884, page 5
Bridget Lynch is buried in Brisbane’s Toowong Cemetery. Her grave is located at 2-14-29.
Sources:
- Queensland Figaro, Saturday 1 March 1884, page 2, Article.
- Northern Miner, Monday 3 March 1884, page 2, Article.
- The Week, Saturday 15 March 1884, page 9, Article.
- Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, Saturday 29 March 1884, page 5.
- The Week, Saturday 19 May 1883, page 11, Police Court.
- The Telegraph, Saturday 17 February 1883, page 4, Article.
- The Brisbane Courier, Monday 11 September 1882, page 4, Article.
- The Brisbane Courier, Thursday 03 March 1881, page 3, City Police.
- The Telegraph, Saturday 14 August 1880, page 3, Article.
- The Queenslander, Saturday 29 November 1879, page 680, Article.
- The Queenslander, Saturday 12 April 1879, page 453, Article.
- The Queenslander, Saturday 17 August 1878, page 615, Article.
- “Queensland’s Contagious Disease Act, 1868 – ‘The Act for the Encouragement of vice’ and some Nineteenth Century attempts to repeal it. Part II.”, Queensland Heritage, Volume 3, Issue 1, pp 21-29. Barclay, E. Brisbane.
- graves.Brisbane.Qld.gov.au.
- Picture: my-ear-trumpet.tum.
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