While based in a fictional shebeen (unlicensed pub) in the Geesala area of County Mayo,[14][15][16] some of the characters and events in the play are partially based on a true story which was reputedly recounted to Synge by an old man from the Aran Islands.[17] According to Synge, the character of Christy Mahon, the "savage hero" of the play,[17] was at least partially based on a convicted criminal who assaulted a woman on Achill Island in the late 19th century.[18]
This man, James Lynchehaun (c.1864-1937) from Tonregee townland on the Corraun peninsula,[18] brutally assaulted his English employer, Mrs Agnes MacDonnell, at her home on Achill Island on 6 October 1894.[17] He reportedly "burned [her] from ankle to knee, fractured her skull with a stone, knocked out one eye, bit her nose off and kicked thorns from a whin bush deep into her vagina" after burning down her home, Valley House, on an 800 hectare property. He was arrested, convicted, sentenced to lifetime penal servitude, escaped, sheltered by locals from the police for a while, recaptured (after a £300 bounty for his recapture was placed), imprisoned for seven years before escaping again, making his way to the United States. He became something of a folk-hero in the US, falsely claiming his actions had been political and carried out on behalf of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, until Irish nationalist Michael Davitt publicly referred to him as a "murderer" and refused to shake his hand, as did Douglas Hyde. (Davitt may have been under the mistaken impression that Mrs MacDonnell had died. She survived, albeit disfigured and forced to wear a veil when out in public, dying in 1923 after rebuilding Valley House.)[19]
Efforts by the British authorities to have Lynchehaun extradited were rebuffed by American politicians and courts including the United States Supreme Court. President Teddy Roosevelt was then recruited [by Lynchehaun's supporters] to prevent his deportation. In a landmark court case in Indianapolis, where Lynchehaun had settled, Charles Washington Moores Jr. (1862 - 1923),[20] US Commissioner, "ruled that Lynchehaun's crime in Achill was a political one and the prisoner could, therefore, not be extradited. 'Let the prisoner be discharged', he ordered". Vice-president Charles W. Fairbanks visited Lynchehaun to tell him the news. Lynchehaun later visited Ireland twice, being deported the second time. He ultimately left his family in Indianapolis to wind up living in Glasgow. He died in Girvan, Scotland in 1937.[21]
