On Saturday, 23 March 1916, an Irish Traveller woman named Barbara Berry was fatally stabbed in the heart on Main Street in Wexford Town. A mother of six children, she died the following Monday from shock and haemorrhaging.
Witnesses said that Berry, who was from Stonebridge Lane, had argued with Anastatia Whitmore, a widow from Barrack Street. The argument began on Bride Street before continuing onto Main Street.
The argument turned violent. One onlooker said she saw Whitmore smash a mug over Berry’s head. Another witness told the inquest at Wexford Workhouse that Whitmore ran into a butcher’s shop and snatched a knife from one of the counters.
When Whitmore emerged from the butcher’s shop holding a knife, a woman named Margaret Connors shouted a warning to Berry: “Mind the knife!” Before anyone could intervene, she caught up with Berry and stabbed her twice in the left breast.
Berry fell to the ground. Whitmore dropped the knife and fled from the scene. Sergeant Collopy arrested her on the outskirts of a crowd.
Dr O’Connor placed Berry in his motor car and rushed her to the workhouse infirmary, where she succumbed to her wounds two days later.
While in custody, Whitmore admitted that an argument had broken out over meat and that she had stabbed Berry with a knife. She alleged that Berry had “tormented her,” and that she did not know what had happened. In her defence, Whitmore also claimed that she believed she was fighting in World War One: “I thought I was among the soldiers, and that all the Germans were down on me.”
Although Whitmore was originally charged with murder, the court later accepted her guilty plea to manslaughter and sentenced her to 18 months in prison.