A GRUESOME murder committed in Darlington nearly 150 years ago is to feature in a television programme which investigates historic crimes.

Sunderland PhD student Patrick Low, who researches 18 and 19th-century executions, will appear on the latest episode of BBC One’s Murder, Mystery and My Family tomorrow (Thursday, April 4) at 9.15 am.

The episode features the execution of Michael Gilligan, hanged alongside William McHugh and Elizabeth Pearson at Durham Prison in 1875. Mr Low meets the family, talks about the execution and gives details about the prisoners' final moments.

Mr Low is a Culture Beacon-funded PhD student at the University of Sunderland, his thesis is entitled: 'Capital Punishment in the North East of England 1800-1878 and Post-Mortem Punishment 1752-1878’.

In the programme leading barristers Jeremy Dein and Sasha Wass re-examine the violent attack on Irish Catholic John Kilcran by a rival gang in a case of revenge, murder and secret societies.

The father-of-four was brutally attacked in a Darlington street by a gang of men, on Easter Sunday 1875. An unknown weapon struck his head, Kilcran was carried home and eventually died from his injuries – but not before he could name the culprit who he believed launched the fatal blow, fellow Irish immigrant Michael Gilligan.

Despite vehemently professing his innocence, Gilligan was executed in Durham jail, leaving behind wife Elizabeth and two young children. Now, four generations on, Geoff Gilligan and his cousin Debbie are on a quest to clear the family name, considering whether there could have been a case of mistaken identity and the wrong man hanged..

Mr Low, from Newcastle, said: “The production team got in touch as I had been writing a lot about my research on my blog and was aware of the case.

“They wanted to specifically show someone related to the person executed and what happened with the crime eventually, so I was covering the execution itself and trying to fill them in on how that happened and what an execution was like at that time.

“My research ends in 1878, and Michael Gilligan was one of the last cases I was covering, and was held privately, as the Capital Punishment Amendment Act of 1868 moved executions to behind the prison wall. I met Michael’s family, which was a unique experience as you rarely get to meet people directly related to the subject you are researching.”

The Kilcran murder, which the Memories section of The Northern Echo first told of in 2006, was part of a long-running dispute among the Irish community of ironworkers on Albert Hill in Darlington.

This year, Memories has been telling of the first outbreak of trouble which happened 150 years ago when puddler Philip Trainer was shot at point blank range in a melee outside a pub in Nestfield Street. Five weeks later, “Gentleman” John McConville was hanged for murder, becoming the first man in County Durham to be executed for a firearms offence.

A shadowy figure in that murder was Owen O’Hanlon, who was said to have bought the bullet which was found lodged in Trainer’s eye.

On Saturday in The Northern Echo, Memories will tell how O’Hanlon came to a violent end on the Hill – was he so badly injured in a bare knuckle prize fight by a fellow Irishman, as the police alleged, or did he die as result of being smashed on the head by Sgt Richard Cuthbert’s truncheon, as Irish witnesses said?