A Dubliner and a Loyalist, Miss Charlotte Hinds, 66, was an uncompromising landowner. She had seen her fathers business ruined by unpaid rents and took a tough line with her tenant farmers, directing her operations from her estates near Ballyconnell, County Cavan. But the Republicans were moving into her lands, stealthily and clandestinely. They didnt like Loyalist landowners who took a tough line with tenant farmers.
One day in October 1855, as her carriage emerged from a dense wood, a gang of men fell upon it. They pulled her from the vehicle, beat her, and then shot her in the head. She died four days later.
Thomas Dunne, one of the better-off farmers on her estates, was thought to be the man behind the plot to kill her, a plot that was two months in the making. His chief confederate was identified as James Murphy, and in April 1856 the two men were brought before a special court. Murphy was convicted of having been the actual killer, and Dunne was convicted of having hired him.
They were hanged together on Friday, May 16th, 1856, outside Cavan Prison. The other men in the wood were never brought to justice. The executions were marred by sectarianism two local regiments and one of Hussars, plus nearly 200 police, had to keep the two sides apart.