Prison and court records can tell us many things about our ancestors who had a brush with the law. The 19th century was a very different era with extremely harsh sentences such as death and banishment to Australia handed down for trivial crimes. The name below comes from an 1833 report on those tried in Kilkenny, Mayo and Laois in the year of 1832.[1]
No. 29 Michael Buggy – Crime: Assaulting habitation and attempting to compel to quit farm.
He is listed under the heading of “return of persons found guilty at Lent and Spring Assizes 1832 in county Kilkenny.”
You can read here about further Buggy crimes and imprisonments in Ireland.
[1] House of Commons. 1833. Return of the number of persons tried and found guilty, tried and acquitted, within the last twelve months, in the counties of Kilkenny, Mayo and Queen’s; distinguishing the nature of each offense. Place of publication unknown. p.2; Enhanced British Parliamentary Papers on Ireland, part of Documenting Ireland: People, Parliament and Migration http://eppi.dippam.ac.uk/documents/10703/eppi_pages/239089 : accessed 4 November 2011
Buggy Name History 
Hi, I have been trying to find online references to the Spring Assizes in Kilkenny in 1832, but the link at the end of your document doesn’t work. I have an ancestor John Hudson who was convicted of murder at these Assizes and have been trying to find details of the crime. He was transported to Australia on the ‘Eliza’. On another matter I went to school – back in 1952-56 with a girl called Essie Buggy, in Wollongong. MMParkes