Ned Hardy

The O’Halloran sisters, armed with poles and boiling water, fended off the officers evicting their family during the Irish Land War, 1889

The Second Irish Land Act of 1881 had attempted to give tenants more security by paving the way for rent reductions, guarantees of the same rent for periods of 15 years, and, in some cases, eventual proprietorship.

O’Callaghan had been charging the O’Halloran family £31, which the court ordered be reduced to £22-10 shillings, a sum the family maintained was unfair, since in their grandfather’s time the rent had been as low as £13-10 shillings.

They became one of the families to participate in the Bodyke rent boycotts, and in June 1887 they prepared to resist eviction from the land their family had lived on and tended for generations.