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Violent death in James Joyce's Ulysses

The major ones:

- Invincibles in Phoenix Park [info] (political)
- king Hamlet et al (literary)
- Childs; Henry Flower; Bloom of Wexford (local history)
- Rudolph; Mrs Sinico (suicide)
- May Goulding Dedalus; priest and king (symbolic)
- Mrs Maybrick; Jack the Ripper (tabloid)
- Jesus (archetypal)
- alcohol, tobacco (lifestyle)
- birth control (religious)
- hunters, butchers (ethical)
- wars; hangman (statist)

1.88 "The aunt thinks you killed your mother... Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily."

1.122 "He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers."

2.16 "above a corpsestrewn plain"

2.48 "Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death"

3.180 "an alibi if they arrested you for murder"

3.188 "Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back."

frustration-fantasy

3.200 "The aunt thinks you killed your mother."

SD recalls BM

3.247 "for her love he prowled with colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls of Clerkenwell and, crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward in the fog."

Kevin Egan aka Joseph Casey

4.401 "photo business"

Ellmann [e375] speculates Joyce got this idea from a 1910 murder case at a photo shop in Wexford, where a Jew named Bloom killed a female co-worker, and wrote "LIOVE" in blood on the wall. He was institutionalised but later released. Ellmann cites Hyman's "Jews of Ireland" as his source.

Costello claims that the Joyces (père et fils) in 1900 stayed with a Mullingar photographer named Shaw who employed a girl from Bray [pc167, citing Leo Daly's "JJ and the Mullingar Connection"]

5.62 "Henry Flower"

Chronology from Costello's bio of JJ:

23Aug 1900: body of Brigid Gannon, housemaid, found in Dodder river (near Dignam's house) by policemen including Henry Flower, who had been with her the night of her death, and his friend Sergeant Hanily
11Sept: Flower arrested
14Sept: Hanily commits suicide
16Oct: Flower acquitted, flees to Australia (?)
Dublin nursery rhyme: "He took her to the Dodder/ to teach her how to swim/ He stuffed her nose with cotton wool/ and then he threw her in."
1940s: deathbed confession of the murder by another maidservant/friend (unknown to Joyce, of course)

Chronology from Jackson and McGinley's annotated Dubliners:

Aug 1900: half-clothed body of BG found by PC Henry Flower (94E) and two other DMPs, along with shredded remnants of a flower on the bank (later found to have been worn by her)

Margaret Clowry testified that on the day of her death she and Henry Flower had accompanied Gannon to her workplace at 124 Baggot where she collected an item of property at Flower's request

Flower denied on the stand that he knew her

J&M see these details as a major inspiration for 'Two Gallants' [etext]

Within the world of Ulysses, this could not have taken place or Bloom's pseudonym would draw very-much-unwanted attention.

5.262 "Or a poison bouquet to strike him down."

language of flowers

5.378 "invincibles... plotting that murder all the time"

6.274 "Drown Barabbas"

6.335 "But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes.his own life"

6.392 "Tomorrow is killing day"

cattledrive

6.469 "That is where Childs was murdered... Murdered his brother. Or so they said... Murderer's ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered, tenantless, unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully condemned. Murder. The murderer's image in the eye of the murdered. They love reading about it. Man's head found in a garden. Her clothing consisted of. How she met her death. Recent outrage. The weapon used. Murderer is still at large. Clues. A shoelace. The body to be exhumed. Murder will out."

2 Sept 1899 76yo Thomas Childs murdered in locked house
21? Oct 1899 brother Samuel Childs acquitted from lack of evidence

6.529 "His father poisoned himself"

6.741 "Keyes's"

Joyce attended Childs' trial, where Alexander Keyes was on the jury

6.772 "those jews they said killed the christian boy."

6.997 "Poor papa too. The love that kills."

suicide

7.212 "And then the angel of death kills the butcher and he kills the ox and the dog kills the cat."

Seder chant

7.565 "We are liege subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered at Trafalgar and of the empire of the spirit, not an imperium, that went under with the Athenian fleets at Aegospotami. Yes, yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled by an oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of Greece. Loyal to a lost cause. He strode away from them towards the window. -- They went forth to battle, Mr O'Madden Burke said greyly, but they always fell. -- Boohoo! Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick received in the latter half of the matine. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!"

7.601 "Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland between you? You look as though you had done the deed. General Bobrikoff."

assassinated that very morning

7.632 "time of the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park"

7.661 "C is where murder took place."

7.749 "It was in that case of fratricide, the Childs murder case."

Bushe's eloquence

8.11 "God wants blood victim... druids' altars"

8.341 "rode out with the Ward Union staghounds at the enlargement yesterday at Rathoath. Uneatable fox. Pothunters too. Fear injects juices make it tender enough for them."

8.436 "We'll hang Joe Chamberlain on a sourapple tree"

8.458 "Back out you get the knife. Hidden hand. Stay in. The firing squad."

8.702 "Eat or be eaten. Kill! Kill!"

8.722 "Pain to the animal too. Pluck and draw fowl. Wretched brutes there at the cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe to split their skulls open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Staggering bob. Bubble and squeak. Butchers' buckets wobbly lights. Give us that brisket off the hook. Plup. Rawhead and bloody bones. Flayed glasseyed sheep hung from their haunches, sheepsnouts bloodypapered snivelling nosejam on sawdust. Top and lashers going out."

8.744 "Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of honour. Ought to be tough from exercise."

8.754 "Slaughter of innocents."

8.870 "Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery."

8.1146 "All those women and children excursion beanfeast burned and drowned in New York. Holocaust."

9.129 "Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder. -- A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, Stephen said. Not for nothing was he a butcher's son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in his palms. Nine lives are taken off for his father's one. Our Father who art in purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don't hesitate to shoot. The bloodboltered shambles in act five is a forecast of the concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne... Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none/ But we had spared"

9.179 "I am the murdered father:"

9.238 "the archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock"

Socrates

9.364 "I mean, I don't care a button, don't you know, who is killed or who is guilty "

Best

9.466 "The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in the porch of a sleeping ear... The poisoning and the beast with two backs that urged it"

9.569 "The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He heard you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He's out in pampooties to murder you... Murder you! he laughed."

9.679 "Susan's daughter, Elizabeth, to use granddaddy's words, wed her second, having killed her first"

Shakespeare family

9.1022 "Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like Jose he kills the real Carmen."

Shakespeare

9.1035 "though murdered and betrayed"

king Hamlet

10.157 "Then came the call to arms and she was maid, wife and widow in one day."

10.444 "I forgot to tell him that one about the earl of Kildare after he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one? I'm bloody sorry I did it, says he, but I declare to God I thought the archbishop was inside."

10.764 "Down there Emmet was hanged, drawn and quartered. Greasy black rope. Dogs licking the blood off the street when the lord lieutenant's wife drove by in her noddy."

11.1064 "At the siege of Ross his father, at Gorey all his brothers fell."

11.1131 "At Geneva barrack that young man died."

12.422 "private Arthur Chace for fowl murder of Jessie Tilsit... Billington executed the awful murderer Toad Smith"

hangman's letter

12.460 "when they hanged Joe Brady, the invincible"

12.615 "decapitated in rapid succession a flock of sheep"

12.671 "he who had blown a considerable number of sepoys from the cannonmouth without flinching"

12.1325 "they firing at a sambo strung up on a tree with his tongue out and a bonfire under him"

12.1345 "he flogs the bloody backside off of the poor lad till he yells meila murder."

navy

12.1581 "old Methusalem Bloom, the robbing bagman, that poisoned himself with the prussic acid"

12.1640 "His name was Virag, the father's name that poisoned himself."

12.1847 "Where is he till I murder him? ...Did I kill him, says he, or what?"

Citizen and LB

13.1192 "Frightening them with masks too. Throwing them up in the air to catch them. I'll murder you. Is it only half fun? Or children playing battle. Whole earnest. How can people aim guns at each other. Sometimes they go off."

13.1233 "Poor man O'Connor wife and five children poisoned by mussels here. The sewage."

13.1255 "Must come back. Murderers do."

LB leaving message for Gerty

14.242 "Lilith, patron of abortions"

14.363 "French letters"

14.467 "by virtue of this same shield which was named Killchild."

14.776 "capotes"

condoms

14.785 "umbrella"

diaphragm (birth control)

14.958 "the fratricidal case known as the Childs Murder"

14.1070 "Yes, it is true. I am the murderer of Samuel Childs."

Haines as dopefiend

14.1422 "Herod's slaughter of the innocents were the truer name."

14.1442 "Any brollies or gumboots in the family?"

14.1552 "Slung her hook"

probably NOT suicide, just departure

15.235 "First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of the world."

crossroads, symbol of Hermes

15.275 "They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben."

probably by negligence, not intent

15.558 "tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on you and you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a pity to kill it, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of a fullstop."

Josie's hat

15.760 "Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember the Childs fratricide case. We medical men. By striking him dead with a hatchet."

15.1104 "Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his life. The cat-o' nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him."

15.1153 "Wanted: Jack the Ripper."

15.1171 "and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead"

Bloom

15.1359 "the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory,   will understanding, all. That is to say he brought the poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide."

LB of Raleigh and tobacco

15.1395 "shooting peasants and phartridges"

15.1525 "On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their warcry Bonafide Sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man."

15.1555 "BLOOM Shoot him!"

Macintosh

15.1557 "Bloom with his sceptre strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths of many powerful enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of standing committees, are reported."

15.1695 "Free fox in a free henroost."

15.1740 "He employs a mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature. THE VEILED SIBYL (Stabs herself.) My hero god! (She dies.) (Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gas ovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different storeys.) "

15.1755 "THE MOB Lynch him! Roast him!"

15.1930 "Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom."

15.1965 "I am ruined. A few pastilles of aconite."

15.2580 "and was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress"

15.2620 "HENRY (caressing on his breast a severed female head...)"

15.2676 "He murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake"

Simon's song

15.3207 "my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever the buggers' names were, suffocated in the one cesspool."

15.3460 "She draws a poniard and, clad in the sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his loins."

15.3611 "Burying his grandmother. Probably he killed her."

SD babbling to LB

15.3957 "Ward Union huntsmen and huntswomen live with them, hot for a kill. "

15.4178 "Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody... They say I killed you, mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny."

15.4437 "But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king."

15.4470 "You die for your country."

15.4525 "a dove With teeth as sharp as razors To slit the throats Of the English dogs That hanged our Irish leaders"

15.4540 "Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the cellar, the unfortunate female's throat being cut from ear to ear. Phial containing arsenic retrieved from the body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the gallows. (He jerks the rope. The assistants leap at the victim's legs and drag him downward, grunting. The croppy boy's tongue protrudes violently.) "

15.4625 "I'll do him in... I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard..."

15.4661 "Heavy Gatling guns boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs. Artillery. Hoarse commands. Bells clang. Backers shout. Drunkards bawl. Whores screech. Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour. Shrieks of dying. Pikes clash on cuirasses... Tom Rochford, winner, in athlete's singlet and breeches, arrives at the head of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into the void. He is followed by a race of runners and leapers. In wild attitudes they spring from the brink. Their bodies plunge."

15.4700 "fight duels with cavalry sabres"

15.4730 "Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit."

15.4740 "Remove him, acushla. At 8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free. (She prays.) O good God, take him! "

16.404 "Buffalo Bill shoots to kill,/ Never missed nor he never will"

Murphy

16.576 "I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his back. Knife like that."

16.591 "That was why they thought the park murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account of them using knives."

16.801 "Sulphate of copper poison SO4 or something in some dried peas he remembered reading of in a cheap eatinghouse somewhere"

16.837 "namely, that he killed him himself"

LB of Murphy

16.1331 "And the identical same with murderers. You had to come back."

Parnell context

16.1813 "an old German song of Johannes Jeep about the clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men"

17.844 "He weighed the possible evidences for and against ritual murder:"

17.947 "the late Mrs Emily Sinico, accidentally killed at Sydney Parade railway station"

suicide

17.1252 "Percy Apjohn (killed in action, Modder River)"

17.1892 "the face in death of a septuagenarian, suicide by poison."

17.2190 "manslaughter, wilful and premeditated murder"

worse than Molly's adultery

18.224 "imagine having to get into bed with a thing like that that might murder you any moment"

Breen

18.235 "that Mrs Maybrick that poisoned her husband"

[fanpage w/pix] ditto

18.396 "dragging on for years killing any finelooking men there were with their fever if he was even decently shot it wouldnt have been so bad"

18.823 "perhaps hes dead or killed or a captain or admiral"

Mulvey

18.867 "Gardner going to south Africa where those Boers killed him with their war and fever"

18.993 "that picture of that hardened criminal he was called in Lloyds Weekly news 20 years in jail then he comes out and murders an old woman for her money imagine his poor wife or mother or whoever she is such a face youd run miles away... a big brute like that that would attack a poor old woman to murder her in her bed"

Lloyd's Weekly

18.1061 "his father must have been a bit queer to go and poison himself after her"

18.1243 "they ought to get slow poison the half of them"

Molly of men in general

18.1271 "they call that friendship killing and then burying one another"

drinking buddies

18.1419 "or a murderer anybody"

Molly's B&D fantasy

18.1436 "you wouldnt see women going and killing one another and slaughtering"

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