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| Peter Burrowe's portrait on his grave in Kensal Green |
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| Even his tombstone gets his age at death wrong - widely reported as being 90 when he died, he was in fact a mere 88 |
DEATH OF PETER
BURROWES, ESQ. We have to announce the death of this venerable and
distinguished patriot, which took place on Monday last, in Henrietta-street,
Cavendish-square, London. Mr. Burrowes had lived much beyond the ordinary
period of a long life, having reached his ninetieth year; and we, who had the
pride and gratification of knowing him well, can say that not only did his
faculties survive to the last, but that his feelings, towards his country and
his friends, remained as warm as in the days of his vigorous manhood. It was
but natural that such a man should be beloved—for the whole tenor of his life,
in public and in private, was calculated to engage affection and admiration.
Dublin Monitor -
Saturday 13 November 1841
Peter
Burrowes, the Irish patriot and lawyer, was born in Portarlington in 1754 and
studied at Trinity College. He campaigned on behalf of Catholic emancipation
and against the Union, was a fried of Wolf Tone and was the defence barrister
for Robert Emmet who was executed in 1803 for high treason after leading an
abortive rebellion against the British crown. He became a Londoner late in
life, only moving to Cavendish Square in his 80’s for health reasons, mainly to
consult an oculist. In his youth he was exceptionally vigorous; a story is told
of his walking from Dublin to Portarlington, a distance of 40 miles, in one day
and then of his dancing all night at a ball. He had a reputation for being absent
minded, though this story, printed 6 years after his death in the Devizes and
Wiltshire Gazette (30 December 1847), implies that he was quite capable of
taking advantage of this reputation when it suited him:
With a profound
intellect, he was simplicity itself. He walked the earth neither seeing nor
hearing anything around him. As he rolled his portly figure through the
streets, his hands in his breeches pockets, and his eyes glaring on his oldest
friend as if he had never seen him, it was plain to all men that Peter was in
the moon. This absence was invincible, and sometimes produced the most
ludicrous effects. One day, being counsel for a defendant in a case of crim.
con.,(=criminal
conversation – adultery) and intending to
cast ridicule or something worse on his opponent, he thus broke forth with his
most unmusical voice and gasping enunciation: But, gentlemen, did you observe
the glowing description our young friend gave of the lady? With what gusto he
dwelt upon each charm! May Heaven forgive me, but strange thoughts forced
themselves uppermost! The couplet of the poet flashed on me as he proceeded “He
best can paint a star, Who first has dipped his pencil in... ." He came to
a dead stop—a roar from the bar broke upon the silence, when Peter, looking as
if just awake, brayed out to his junior, “In the name of Providence, what are
they all laughing at?" The old stop- the vacant stare—the earnest
interrogatory —produced an effect which sets description at defiance.
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| That doesn't look like 10 paces to me; more like point blank. |
In
his early career he took part in a famous duel and had his life saved by the
small change received from buying spiced nuts. The duel took place in 1794. Burrowes
was one of a number of barristers acting for insolvent tenants of the Earl of Kilkenny
who was, according to his own barrister Sir Jonah Barrington, ‘dreadfully tormented’
by the crowd of litigants and lawyers. The hot tempered Earl was driven to fury
by his continual defeat in court, generally on technical grounds, and decided
to seek an alternative means of redress “namely to fight it out muzzle to
muzzle with the attorney and all the counsel on the other side.” The Earl challenged
his chief persecutor, an attorney called Mr Ball, to a duel. Much to his
chagrin though the Earl came off worst, failing to hit the attorney whilst taking
two musket balls himself, the first, as related by the loyal Sir Jonah, “in his
Lordship's right arm which probably saved the solicitor as his Lordship was a
most accurate marksman”, and the second in the side. The Earl’s son, Somerset
Butler, took over his incapacitated father’s plan and promptly issued a challenge
to Peter Burrowes, the next most senior lawyer acting for his father’s tenants.
Sir Jonah continues the story:
The invitation
not being refused the combat took place one cold frosty morning near Kilkenny.
Somerset knew his business well but Peter had had no practice whatever in that
line of litigation. Few persons feel too warm on such occasions and Peter
formed no exception to the general rule. An old woman who sold spiced
gingerbread nuts in the street he passed through accosted him, extolling her
nuts to the very skies as being well spiced and fit to expel the wind and to
warm any gentleman's stomach as well as a dram Peter bought a pennyworth on the
advice of his second Dick Waddy, an attorney, and duly receiving the change of
a sixpenny piece put the coppers and nuts into his waistcoat pocket and marched off to the scene of action.
Preliminaries
being soon arranged, the pistols given, ten steps measured, the flints hammered
and the feather springs set, Somerset a fine dashing young fellow full of
spirit, activity and animation gave elderly Peter who was no posture master but
little time to take his fighting position:- in fact he had scarcely raised his
pistol to a wabbling level, before Somerset's ball came crack dash against
Peter's body! The halfpence rattled in his pocket: Peter dropped flat; Somerset
fled; Dick Waddy roared “murder” and called out to Surgeon Pack. Peter's
clothes were ripped up and Pack, secundum artem, examined the wound, a black
hole designated the spot where the lead had penetrated Peter's abdomen. The
doctor shook his head and pronounced but one short word “mortal!” - it was,
however, more expressive than a long speech. Peter groaned and tried to
recollect some prayer if possible or a scrap of his catechism; his friend Waddy
began to think about the coroner; his brother barristers sighed heavily, and
Peter was supposed to be fast departing this world (but, as they all
endeavoured to persuade him, for a better); when Surgeon Pack, after another
exclamation taking leave of Peter and leaning his hand on the grass to assist
him in rising, felt something hard took it up and looked at it curiously; the
spectators closed in the circle, to see Peter die; the patient turned his
expiring eyes towards Surgeon Pack, as much as to ask is there no hope, when lo!
the doctor held up to the astonished assembly the identical bullet, which
having rattled amongst he heads and harps, and gingerbread nuts, in Peter's
waistcoat pocket, had flattened its own body on the surface of a preserving
copper, and left His Majesty's bust distinctly imprinted and accurately
designated in black and blue shading on his subject's carcase. Peter's heart
beat high, he stopped his prayers and finding that his Gracious Sovereign, and
the gingerbread nuts, had saved his life, lost as little time as possible in
rising from the sod on which he had lain extended; a bandage was applied round
his body, and in a short time Peter was able (though of course he had no reason
to be over willing) to begin the combat anew.
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| Peter in mid life success, a judge in the Insolvent Debtor's Court |
Matters
did not end there. The Earl of Kilkenny, having recovered from his two bullet
wounds, took up the challenge against the next of the lawyers in the lists
against him, this time getting the better of his adversary. The duels could
have continued indefinitely but when the Earl told another of his sons. Captain
Pierce Butler, to issue a challenge to the next lawyer, one Dicky Guinness, Dicky
sensibly took the matter to court and to avoid incarceration the Kilkenny’s reluctantly
had to desist from trying to kill the entire staff of the Dublin circuit. The
duel wasn’t Peter’s last close call with a bullet. The Dundee Courier in May
1913 (news takes a long time to reach that far north), ran the story under the
headline ‘Bullet As Lozenge’:
Peter Burrowes,
the well-known member of the Irish Bar, was on one occasion counsel for the
prosecution at an important trial for murder. Burrowes had a severe cold, and
opened his speech with box of lozenges in one hand and in the other, the small
pistol bullet by which the man had met his death. Between the pauses of his
address he kept supplying himself with a lozenge. But at last, in the very
middle of a highfalutin' period, stopped. His legal chest heaved, his eyes
seemed starting from his head and in a voice tremulous with fright he exclaimed
“Oh!!I!! Gentlemen, gentlemen! I've swallowed the bullet!”
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