Episode 5- The Mullingar Station Murder- 1869

In the early hours of a spring morning in 1869, Mullingar Station was almost silent. Almost.
Because somewhere between the shadows of the platform and the dim glow of the signal lamps, a man lay dying.
His name was Thomas Anketell— on duty the night he was struck down. The violence was swift, the motive unclear, and the killer vanished into the darkness before anyone could raise an alarm.
What followed was a tangle of suspicion, fear, and one of the most unsettling investigations in the history of the Midland Great Western Railway.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Murder Under Gaslight. Your guide to Victorian Era Island's most gruesome crimes. Your host is Don Mortel.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Mullingar Station, March 1869. A strip new station master walks home under the gas lamps. A shot rings out from the shrubbery, and the Great Western Line is plunged into panic and conspiracy. On the night of the 2nd of March 1869, the station yard at Mullingar should have been quiet. The last of the passengers had gone, the lamps along the Midland Great Western Line burned low, and a newly appointed stationmaster stepped out of his office and into the darkness. His name was Thomas Enkertill, a man in his thirties, brought down from Ulster to impose discipline on a troubled station where he left the drunkenness had become a public embarrassment to the railway company. He never made it safely home. A single shot fired from the shrubbery near the back door of his house beside the gallway line tore into his body and left him bleeding on the gravel. Within hours, Mullingar would wait to the news that its station master had been gunned down, and that the killer had vanished into the night. This is Murder Under Gaslight. I'm Don Mortell. Tonight we travel back to a town on edge, a railway under attack and a murder that stirred talk of secret societies, inside jobs, and the long shadow of ribbonism. By the late 1860s, Mullingar was no sleepy backwater. The arrival of the Midland Great Western Railway line had turned the Westmeath town into a busy junction, with lines heading towards Galway and Sligo, and traffic flowing east to Dublin. The line to Longford had been opened in 1855, and Mullingar station became a symbol of progress. Iron rails cutting across the bogs, telegraph wires humming with news, and station lamps giving off that pale, oily glow of gas and paraffin in the dark. But beneath the polished brass and painted timetables, there were problems. Contemporary accounts speak of theft and lack of discipline among staff, and incidents of drunkenness and pilfering that embarrassed the directors of the Midland Great Western Railway. This was a company keen to protect both its profits and its reputation. Into this atmosphere stepped a new station master, Thomas Anchartil. He had been appointed to Mullingar roughly a year before his death, seen as a strong disciplinarian, a man willing to sack staff for drunkenness, dishonesty, or theft. His approach was not subtle, and it did not make him popular. You can picture him in his office, ledger open, pen scratching, a man balancing company rule books against the rough and tumble realities of a provincial Irish station. Every dismissal, every reprimand, carved another notch into the list of people with a grudge against him. The date most often given in local histories is the night of the second of march eighteen sixty nine. It was still cold, with the kind of damp Midlands air that creeps on the doorways and settles in the bones. Thomas had finished his day's work at the station. From there it was only a short walk to his house by the Galway line. A practical arrangement for a man who lived by the timetable and might be called out at any hour. But that convenience also made him predictable. As he crossed the yard and approached the back door of his house, someone was waiting in the bushes. The attacker knew where he lived, and more importantly, knew when he would be coming off duty. A gunshot cracked across the yard. The bullet struck Anchotol and dropped him to the ground, gravely wounding, but still alive. Neighbors and railway staff ran to the scene, drawn by the sound. Lamps were brought, hands pressed to the wound, voices rose in alarm as a grim realization spread. The station master of Mullingar had been shot down at his own door. Within hours the Midland Great Western Railway had done something extraordinary. They organized a special train to bring top medical specialists from Dublin to Mullingar, a desperate attempt to save their man. For a Victorian railway company to move this quickly tells us how important he was, not just as a human being, but as a symbol of order on their line. Despite the skill of those doctors, there was nothing they could do. After lingering for a short time, Angertel died from his wounds, leaving behind a young widow and three children. A fund was soon set up to support them, an acknowledgement the duties of the company had cost him his life. As news of the shooting spread, Mullingar began to buzz with rumour. People talked in the street, in churchyards, and perhaps most freely in the town's pubs. One house on Dominic Street in particular was said to be a haunt of railwaymen. Witnesses later told police that there had been a meeting there. A gathering in a public house where the attack on the station master was discussed, perhaps even planned. Detectives soon suspected that this was not the work of a random stranger or passing bandit. The assassin seemed to know exactly where Ancatell lived, and the routine he kept. This strongly suggested an inside job carried out by someone familiar with the layout of the station and the movements of his staff. The motive, according to both local recollection and later scholarly work, was likely rooted in resentment. Ancatell's sacking of staff for drunkenness and theft had created enemies. Some of those he disciplined had lost not just wages, but local standing, and in a tight community, that could cut deep. Police investigations pointed towards the railway workforce. Two railway employees were arrested and charged with the murder, their names recorded in official files and referenced later by historians examining agrarian violence and labour tensions in the county. But if the case looked strong in the street, it proved fragile in court. The charges were eventually dropped for lack of evidence before the case could go to full trial. Eyewitness accounts were shaky, hearsay dominated, and no one had seen the man in the bushes pull the trigger. The Westmeath Guardian reported on the outrage, describing the shooting of Mr. Thomas Ankertell, station master in Malingar outside his residence, capturing both the shock at the attack and the frustration as the investigation stumbled. The result? No conviction, no official culprit, and a community left to fill the gaps with speculation. Some blamed an embittered former employee. Others believed there was something darker coiled behind the hedges of Mullingar Station. If this was simply a workplace grudge turned lethal, the story might have ended there. That Ireland in the late 1860s was a place where every local crime had the potential to be seen as part of something bigger. In Westmeath and Meath, a pattern of violence had begun to alarm both local gentry and the government in London. Landlords were attacked, rents disputed, and anonymous threats circulated, some of it tied, fairly or not, to the shadowy agrarian society known as the Ribbon Men. Contemporary reports and later research link the Ancatel case into this wider anxiety. In Parliament, his killing was singled out in debates on the ribbon conspiracy in Westmeath, named alongside other murders as evidence of a broader reign of terror in the Midlands. One MP cited the murder of Mr. Ancatel, the station master at Malingar, as part of a series of outrages that justified extraordinary measures. By 1870, the government established a select committee to investigate agrarian crime in the region. Testimony given to this committee referred to Anquatol's murder as one of the key cases described as an assassination that shot not just the town, but the entire railway network. There is a twist here. Unlike many so-called ribbon crimes, this killing did not appear to be about rent, eviction, or land. Historians like AC Murray have noted that Anchatil's murder stands apart from classic agrarian violence, its roots lying instead in industrial discipline and workplace resentment. Yet rumors persist that ribbonmen or men inspired by them might have been involved, perhaps working within the ranks of the railway staff. The derailment of a train at nearby Ballinet in December 1868, where fifteen passengers were injured, was also blamed on ribbon activity. Place those two incidents side by side, a sabotage train and a murdered station master, and you can feel the fear that gripped railway officials. Faced with this climate, the authorities went as far as suspending habeas corpus in the region, allowing for detention without trial in an effort to restore order. Ancatel in death became more than a man. He was a symbol used to justify emergency law. What happened after the inquest, after the parliamentary debates, after the detectives packed away their notebooks? The Midland Great Western Railway organized another special train. This time to carry Ancatel's body north to Portadown, his native place, where senior company officials joined the funeral procession. Back in Malingar, his widow and three children were supported by a subscription fund, a Victorian version of crowdfunding, born from pity and guilt. But the central question, who pulled the trigger, remained stubbornly unanswered. No one was ever convicted. The names of suspects faded from public memory, lingering only in archival files and the footnotes of academic articles on nineteenth century Irish violence. Over time the story slipped from the headlines into local folklore. Some modern accounts speak of a ghost along the old Galway line at Clonmore, possibly that of the murdered stationmaster, and of a presence near the footbridge at the station, sometimes called station or scoutell bridge. People say that on certain nights you can feel a chill or see a figure near the rails, a reminder of the man who never made it safely home. Today, if you stand on that bridge and look down at the tracks, it's hard to imagine the scene in eighteen sixty nine. The panic, the hastily summoned doctors, the special trains cutting through the darkness. The town has grown, the technology changed, but the questions hang there still, like fog over the canal. What makes the murder of Thomas Agatle particularly fascinating is the deep religious tension it exposed within the local community. In the aftermath of his death, a cold and hostile atmosphere developed between the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in the town, stemming from an alleged remark made by a Catholic priest during Mass, shortly before the murder took place. It had also come to light that Ankertill himself had confided in the Reverend Reichel of the local Protestant rectory at All Saints, expressing genuine fear for his life. He had recently dismissed a railway worker, a matter that had reportedly been raised from the pulpit at a Catholic mass. And the atmosphere surrounding him at work tells its own story. The Roman Catholic staff at Mullingar Railway Station had taken to referring to Anchatil by a telling nickname, the Orangeman. The reverberations of this murder extended far beyond the town itself, along with other agrarian incidents of that era. It contributed directly to a significant piece of legislation. The Protection of Life and Property in Ireland Act of 1871, more commonly known as the Westmeath Act. So what can we say with any confidence? We know that a relatively new station master, appointed to restore order at Mullingar, was shot outside his house on a March night in 1869. We know he had made enemies among the railway staff, and that investigators quickly suspected an inside job. We know that two employees were charged, but that the case collapsed for lack of solid proof. We know too that his murder rippled far beyond the station yard, feeding into fears of ribbonism, influencing parliamentary debate, and helping to justify emergency powers in the Irish Midlands. What we do not know is whether this was the work of a secret society, a private conspiracy of sacked men or a lone gunman, driven by a personal grievance. The bushes at the back door of the stationmaster's house kept their secret, and the gaslight was too weak to show us a face. In the end, the Anchartel case is a reminder the Victorian Island story that is not just written in grand rebellions and famous trials, but in small sharp tragedies on cold March nights. A man walking home from work, a shot from the dark, and a town left to wonder why. You've been listening to Murder Under Gaslight with me, Don Mortell. If you pass through Mullingar station, spare a thought for the station master who never finished his shift. And remember, under the soft glow of the lamps, the shadows are always deeper than they look.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Murder under gaslight is a Westmeath Pocket Cinema production. Historical advisor is Jason McKevitt. Murder under Gaslight is presented by Don Mortel.