Death on Ireland's Eye: The Victorian Murder Trial that Scandalised a Nation

One morning in September 1852, a handsome couple stepped onto a hired boat bound for Ireland’s Eye, an uninhabited island and popular tourist spot off Howth Harbour. William Kirwan was an artist of considerable means and his wife, Maria, was a keen swimmer.

After sunset, when the boatmen returned to collect their customers, Maria was missing. A search was mounted, and she was found dead in a lonely, rocky inlet.

An inquest ruled the death a drowning, and Maria Kirwan was laid to rest. But only weeks later a startling secret sparked an investigation, Maria’s exhumation and William’s arrest for her murder.

The story caused a sensation: a secret life and a sharply divisive trial that aroused the full force of Victorian moral outrage. A veil of mystery has hung over Maria’s death for almost 170 years.

Now, this modern analysis casts greater doubt over the Crown’s version of events than ever before, shedding new light on the question of whether William Burke Kirwan really was guilty of murder.