A Galway Thaumaturgist

James Finaghty, or O'Finaghty, a native of County Galway, was servant to a Father Moore, a Jesuit, who was known for his powers as an exorcist. Father Peter Walsh, O.S.F., author of the History of the Remonstrance and Irish Colours Folded, describes Finaghty as:

"illiterate and undiscerning; one who never had studied not only anything to be considered in either natural or rational philosophy, but not one word in divinity which might enable him to discern or try his own spirit."

He is first heard of publicly during the time of the Federation of Kilkenny as an astrologer. He forecast the rehabilitation of the Catholic Church in Ireland and the defeat of Cromwell and the Puritans. There is no record of how or when he received Holy Orders but his portents and miraculous interpositions so impressed Sir Richard Bellings, secretary to the Confederated Irish, and Geoffrey Browne, ancestor to Lord Oranmore and member of the Confederation of Kilkenny, that they believed that God's providence was signally manifested in the person of Father Finaghty. Leaving Galway he travelled throughout Munster and Leinster, "followed by thousands of the population, some of whom believed themselves to have been cured of various diseases by his 'rubbings and touchings'." Bellings asserted that he cured him of the gout, although the attack returned less violently. Browne declared that:

"In Cromwell's time, when O'Finaghty began to be first cryed up, he had himself been present when, in a wood in Connaught, whither a multitude came to the Father, he had cured a cripple, who for many years before had been always a cripple and as such living with the Augustinians of Galway."

Finaghty's fame spread to London. He was invited to try his miraculous powers at the Court of King Charles II. Commissioned to restore the sight to a Portuguese lady in waiting to the Queen, he failed, and soon after returned to Ireland. In spite of his failure he was treated handsomely - "he was honourably conveyed in a coach of six horses through Oxford to Chester and thence to Holyhead, whence he sailed and landed at Ring's end, in the year 1665."

Rev. C. P. Meehan in reference to the thaumaturgist, states:

"that it should be borne in mind that O' Finaghty had been ordained priest previous to his visiting England; and if we reflect on the circumstances of the period at which he was admitted to holy orders, we need not be surprised that a bishop could be found to ordain him, or one like him; for the bishops at that period had no alternative, and were forced by necessity to confer orders on many persons who, however distinguished for morality, did not possess as much knowledge, as would now entitle them to a middle place in a grammar school."

"Father Caron," he adds, "a celebrated Franciscan, then living in London says: 'That O' Finaghty was (even through fear conceived by the Protestant Clergy of England, he would, by his miracles, convert their flocks to the Roman Church), dismissed from London and subsequently patronised by Lord Dillon and Gerrot Moor, Esq.'"

Thousands visited Finaghty on his arrival in Dublin. These credulous people believed that he had wonder-working powers. They looked on him as a saint, that he could heal the blind, the lame, and the dead. His devotees were not limited to the illiterate and poor classes. He numbered Lord Fingall,Sir Richard Bellings and Geoffrey Browne among his notaries. Lord Fingall's belief in him was shattered when:

"a Lancashire woman came with the Thaumaturgist to Ireland, and he gave out that she was a demoniac, and proposed to disposes her in the house of the Earl of Fingall. Amongst the company assembled to witness the performance was the celebrated Father Peter Talbot - Archbishop of Dublin, 1669-1680 - who insisted that the dispossession should take place signovisibili, but O' Finaghty, after all his adjurations, failed to make the devil give any sensible proof of his exit, whereon many began to doubt the veracity of the Father."

Father Peter Walsh met Finaghty for the first time on his return from England at the "Chapel of Father Ailmer, a secular priest, who officiated at Saint Owen's arch." Walsh, an ally of Ormond in the political complications of the time - especially in the matter of the Remonstrance - promised to obtain Lord Ormond's permission for a public trial of his miraculous powers. Warning him "to consider seriously and frequently of the scorn and laughter to which he would expose himself and others of his religion if, upon such a license granted and such a public trial made, he chanced to fail," the permission of Lord Ormond was obtained. It is recorded that before the demonstration Ormond observed to Bellings:

"Look you to it, that instead of converting Protestants to your own religion, by bringing that miraculous man of yours hither and exposing him to more prying, more narrow searching than any he hath met with amongst men that are themselves willing to be deceived, you find not quite contrary effects, and make him an object of scorn for montebankery, and yourselves for laughter."

Finaghty lived with Peter Walsh in Dublin, where a few days before the trial he was visited by Sir William Petit and Sir Robert Southwell. Petit having told Finaghty that he suffered from defective vision and that if he succeeded in curing him he would conform to Catholicism. The miracle man then put on a stole, read several prayers out of a book called Flagellum Daemonum, and rubbed the eye lids of Sir William. The experiment failed and Finaghty fearing to risk his reputation further pleaded that his state of health required a speedy return to his native Galway air and on the morning of the day of the trial before Ormond, took horse for Loughrea leaving behind him the reputation of a clumsy impostor.

Before taking up residence with Walsh the impostor' house in Dublin was besieged by cripples, idiots, hypochondriacs and all types of diseased persons. Young girls, "troubled with fairies, boys with closed eye lids " and others suffering from "supernatural illnesses " crowded about him, and by adjurations, breathings and rubbings, he expelled the devils that existed only in his imagination. Some fancied they were cured, others that they were partially cured but Finaghty accumulated horses, watches, gold, silver, pieces of linen and woollen cloth - a rich harvest indeed.

The healer received little encouragement from the clergy, secular or regular. Father Dempsey declared in the Franciscan Convent of Clare, "that the said O' Finaghty's pretence of exorcising and dispossessing devils, was to his knowledge, a lying cheat." Against the advise of the Jesuits, however, Archdeacon Lynch allowed himself to be imposed on, and it was not until John de Burgo, Archbishop of Tuam interfered that an end was put to the career of the charlatan, and he sank into obscurity.

In Portumna a number of people allowed themselves to be shut up in a tower by Finaghty where they were mad through the treatment they received at his hands.

It is to be noted that a competitor of Finaghty's in the field of miracle-healing was Valentine Greatrakes, the "Touch Doctor." At thirty-four he began to develop these powers of curing scrofula and other diseases for which he was afterwards famous. Some of his notable cures were certified by the Royal Society.

"All he did was only to stroke the patients with his hands, by which all old pains, gout, rheumatism, and convulsions, were removed from part to part to the extremities of the body, after which they entirely ceased, which caused him to be called the stroker - of which he had the testimonials of the most curious men in the nation, both physicians and divines."

Like Finaghty his powers fell into disrepute and he into oblivion.

References
Notes and Queries
Dublin Review, 1836-7
Lynch — Vita Kirovani
Ware, Sir James — Works
Dublin Penny Journal, 1832-36.