After the death of yet another child, Frederick, the desperate father tried to strangle the mother, seized her by the throat, shouting, “Now by God is the time to finish it.” As bedlam broke out, with younger children in terror, James knocked his father to the floor and pinioned him there while his mother escaped to a neighbor’s house. A few days later a police sergeant called to give the father a severe talking-to and while the beatings may have stopped, the threats and the shouting went on. For John Joyce, finding no outlets for his wayward gifts, his frustration had to be vented on his family. Walking across Capel Street Bridge half drunk one night, escorted by the young James, he decided that the boy needed a formative experience and held him upside down in the Liffey for several minutes. Yet no wrong done by that father wrankled because they were both “sinners.”
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