ABSTRACT
On September 15, 1854, a train was derailed as it approached the station outside of Trillick, a village in North-Western Ireland. One of the world’s first “train wreckings”, it received widespread attention across Britain and Ireland. Most commentators assumed that this was a sectarian crime; an attempt by Catholic railway workers to assassinate the Third Earl of Enniskillen, head of the anti-Catholic Loyal Orange Order. As a result, Trillick presented Irish Catholics and Liberals with a dilemma. Confronted with emotional anti-Catholic atrocity narratives, they attempted to change the conversation, focusing attention on the Orange extremists leading the charge for ‘justice’. This approach seemingly was vindicated in June 1855, when officials released seven men accused of derailing the train, a decision that generated outrage in ultra-Protestant circles. The chapter examines Trillick and its public aftermaths, showing how a variety of civic, political, and religious leaders used anti-Orange sentiment to mobilize public opinion. Although this strategy was effective in the short term, it strengthened reductionist sectarian portraits of Ulster life that became increasingly dominant in Victorian Britain and Ireland. The ‘Trillick Railway Outrage’ thus provides an illustration of how the politics of atrocity strengthened Catholic–Protestant division in post-famine Ulster.
