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That one of Galway city's foremost tourist attractions is doubly-false makes it a fitting monument to the man who erected it. "On this spot", says the stone inscription on the so-called "Lynch Window" on Market Street in the city centre, "the chief magistrate of this city James Lynch Fitzstephen elected mayor 1493 AD condemned and executed his own guilty son Walter."
The inscription describes the monument as an "ancient memorial to the stern and unbending justice" of Mayor Lynch and it says that the structure was "restored to this ancient site" in 1854 "with the approval of the Town Commissioners by their chairman Rev Peter Daly P.P. and vicar of St Nicholas".
James Lynch Fitzstephen was elected mayor of Galway in 1493, but no credible evidence, or contemporary record, has ever emerged of the alleged execution, or of a Lynch mayoral residence on Market Street. Peter Daly was a Galway town commissioner and a prominent Catholic priest, but he was not vicar of St Nicholas – the title no longer existed – nor was he deemed to be deserving of reverence by all citizens of Galway, where he immersed himself, perennially and controversially, in public affairs for nearly 50 years in the mid-19th century.
Daly was caricatured in a Punch magazine cartoon in 1861 attempting to bribe the prime minister, Lord Palmerston, compounding the notoriety he had already attracted in London and Rome, as well as in Galway. His first Galway bishop, Laurence O'Donnell, complained to Rome that Daly was "totally deficient" in the two ingredients essential for good character – "truth and honesty". He described Daly's character as "contumacious" (wilfully disobedient). His successor, John MacEvilly, said that he only became bishop of Galway after the man appointed by the Holy See had declined to take up the office "through fear of Peter Daly". McEvilly also complained to the Vatican that Daly had treated the Sisters of Mercy in Galway "most barbarously" and that he had registered "a large amount of ecclesiastical property" in his own name. In another letter to Rome, McEvilly said: "He is the greatest tyrant in regard to the poor connected with him, either as parish priest or landlord".
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Daly sued the Galway Vindicator more than once and he sought to have reporters from it and other local newspapers barred from meetings of the public bodies he sat on
Ordained in Maynooth in 1815, Daly soon renovated Galway's ancient Church of St Nicholas, erected a priests' residence and built churches and schools in Bearna, Bushy Park, Moycullen and Rahoon. He also brought the Mercy nuns and the Magdalen Institute to Galway, fed thousands of people at soup kitchens during the Famine and helped ensure that the new railway line terminated in Galway city centre, not at outlying Renmore, in 1856.
But he regularly defied his superiors, notably by accumulating considerable personal wealth and property, most of which he bequeathed to his relatives. The Galway Vindicator newspaper reported that Daly was “reputed to be one of the wealthiest ecclesiastics in the Catholic church” and it described him in 1865 as “the richest ecclesiastic in Ireland”. Daly sued the Galway Vindicator more than once and he sought to have reporters from it and other local newspapers barred from meetings of the public bodies he sat on. He bought the Galway Mercury, installed his brother as proprietor and changed its name to the Galway Press.
Daly travelled frequently to London and Rome and he invested heavily in the Galway Line, which was established to operate transatlantic passenger services. He evicted 11 families from his property in Salthill (spending an entire church holy day of obligation in court to do so). He failed to share church funds fairly with curates and had a tenant jailed for non-payment of rent. He owned several private properties in Galway, but his horse and trap were seized on Shop Street for non-payment of income tax. He purchased a passenger steamer for service on Lough Corrib and had it renamed "Fr Daly". A street in Woodquay was named after him.
Aside from his self-penned "Lynch Window" inscription , Daly is commemorated in Galway on a plaque on the railings of the Mercy Convent and in a head-and-shoulders bust beside the altar in Bushy Park church.
Historian James Mitchell published a comprehensive biography of Daly in the Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society in 1984, having previously debunked the "Lynch window" history in the same journal. During Galway's quincentennial celebrations that year, another historian, Prof TP O'Neill, described Fr Daly's edifice, a tourist attraction for 130 years, as a "monument to this non-event".