The strange story of Sarah Kelly Ireland Irish history Roscommon Westmeath

Vera Hughes.
1988 first edition. 165 pages in cloth covered boards with dust jacket.
Illustrated and with 2 folded genealogical charts.
152 X 222 MM.
Privately published by the author.

Born Sarah Birch in 1801 at Broadstairs, Kent, she was abducted and seduced, as a teenager, by a wealthy profligate from Ireland, named Meredith, and taken to Dublin, where she was abandoned, together with her infant son.

After years of street-wise destitution, Sarah met and married Edmund Kelly, a wealthy attorney and land-agent, thirty-five years her senior, from Kiltoom, Co. Roscommon. On his death in 1845 she inherited his vast wealth, but had to endure years of litigation in Irish courts, before his will was proved in her favour.

A harsh and cruel, if able landlord, she carried out several evictions of her tenants, and was murdered at Ballinderry, Moate, Co. Westmeath in April 1856.

In this factual and fascinating account of her life, the story does not end with Sarah Kelly’s death, and the varying fortunes of the relatives from Kent, who inherited her houses and estates in Ireland, have been followed right up to the present day.

Some edge wear and marks to dust jacket which has a light mark to top edge. Some wear to spine ends. Otherwise a good, clean copy.
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03 lb