Sandy Hobbs | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 22, 2000

David, McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton. Lost Lives: The stories of the men and women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles. Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1999, 1630 p. Index.

This is a most unusual book. The authors set out to give an account of every person who has died as a result of the “troubles” in Northern Ireland since the 1960s. The entries are chronological, starting with a first death in June, 1966 and ending with case number 3637 in July 1999. Regrettably this means the work is not definitive, since the deaths continue. The authors seek to set out the facts in calm and measured terms. The book contains statistically analysis classifying both the dead and those responsible for the deaths by religion and other categories. Yet, one can well believe that the authors “shed tears while researching and writing” the book (p. 13) and I cannot imagine any reader failing to be moved by some of the stories which are told in these pages.

This book could be read as a sociological, historical or political document and reviewed accordingly. However, for readers of Ambrose Merton, I wish to draw attention to the fact it contains a great deal of material bearing on the popular culture of Northern Ireland. The deeply felt traditional beliefs which are part of the conflicts in Northern Ireland are in certain respects obvious. They had to be taken into account by David McKittrick and his fellow authors when preparing the book:

“We produced a style guide which, with its regulations and examples, grew into a 12,000-word document. We tried to avoid contentious or disputed words, seeking always usages which would give offence to no one. In this context Northern Ireland’s second largest city defeated us, and we sought refuge in a mixture of an uneasy compromise and random use. In introducing victims we use the word L/Derry; after that, we simply use Londonderry and Derry interchangeably” (p. 19).

The problem they faced was that “Londonderry” is the name favoured by members of the Protestant, Loyalist community and “Derry” is preferred by the Catholic, Republican community. The point may seem trivial to outsiders but not to many of the inhabitants of Northern Ireland. A cultural dispute of this sort lies on a continuum which includes a belief, testified to by many of the cases in the book, that merely to be a member of one or other of these communities would make a person a legitimate target for an assassin.

Many of the entries take for granted an awareness of the assumption made by paramilitary groups that they had a right to enforce “law and order” in their communities. Some deaths appear to have been “punishments” for activities such as drug-dealing or informing. The small photographic sections includes a number of commemorative murals, this form of outdoor art being a prominent feature of the Northern Ireland troubles. There is also a striking photograph of a wake for a man killed while attending a funeral. {Murders committed while the victim is mourning or worshiping have a particular cultural resonance.) His coffin is open and a young child is being shown the corpse.

One of the first victims described in the book (Case No, 3, pp. 28-29) was Matilda Gould, a 77 year old widow, who was a Protestant. It appears that members of the Protestant para-military group, the Ulster Volunteer Forces, intended to set fire to a Catholic owned bar. However, they accidentally fire-bombed the home of Mrs Gould, who happened to live next door. A statement attributed to a man convicted of the murder of a Catholic barman is worth close examination. He was reported as having later pointed to the bar next to Mrs Gould’s home and saying:

“That’s a job I done, but I done a funny wonder. I threw a petrol bomb through the wrong window and an old lady got burned. That’s the window, I put it through there.”

Here we have him acknowledging responsibility for a death. It seems probable that he knew that she was a member of his own religious community. Yet his language habits are so taken for granted that he can use the rhyming slang “funny wonder”, meaning blunder, to refer to his own actions.