Finally Meeting Princess Maud – the story of Seamus Dunleavy

I recently acquired a copy of Finally Meeting Princess Maud by Seamus Dunleavy and Shirley Thompson. The book was first published in 2006 by the Warwickshire-based publisher of local history publications, Brewin Books. It is the co-written autobiography of Mayo born wrestler and business man Seamus Dunleavy. Having enjoyed some of Shirley’s other books about well-known local personalities, such as her trilogy written with Pat Roach, I had the pleasure of meeting her earlier this year to help with research into her latest work to be published later in 2017 and I came away from our meeting with a copy of Finally Meeting Princess Maud.

Written in a personable style, the book recalls Seamus Dunleavy’s memories in a conversational manner, for the reader it is like being in the room with Seamus as he takes a trip down Memory Lane with commentary from Shirley putting each chapter into context.

The book begins with his childhood on Barrack Street in the County Mayo village-town of Charlestown. Born in 1934, Seamus grew up in impoverished conditions with his mother struggling to feed and clothe the family whilst his father was working away in England as a carpenter. It is a familiar story no doubt for working-class Irish Catholics of Seamus’s generation, though worth hearing for the younger generations who have no conception of just what life was like for families living in real conditions of poverty.

Yet Seamus makes no appeal for sympathy or sentimentality and his recall is matter-of-fact, dignified, often humorous, warm and always entertaining. If indulgences and luxuries were few and far between for the Dunleavy family of Barrack Street, Seamus found his treasure in relationships with family and friends - the book is packed with anecdotes of the people he has known and from the start one finds oneself thinking “this is a nice fellah”.

Some autobiographies tend to skip through childhood very briefly but for Seamus his memories are detailed and of great interest and value. This includes the story of his youth in Charlestown and migration to England in 1952 on board the famous Princess Maud of Wales to Liverpool docks. The modest B & I Line freight ship Princess Maud may not have reached a place in popular consciousness as prominent as the Empire Windrush which brought Jamaican migrants to England around the same time, but according to Seamus it has a legendary reputation amongst Irish migrants of the early 1950s:

“I had heard about Princess Maud, all of my life, from the immigrants around Charlestown – the rough conditions, seasickness, fights, dancing on deck, hopelessness – most leaving with nothing but the fare – to the farmlands of Lincolnshire.”

Seamus’s recollections of living and working in Liverpool also have great historic value for us today in contributing to the story of the Irish diaspora. He tells of the life of labourers on the docks and work in factories, the basic housing, the trams and double-decker buses, cinemas, Merseyside landmarks, popular music and the football rivalry between Liverpool and Everton. It was in Liverpool that Seamus joined a club called Duffy’s Boxing Club in Litherland and on deciding that his physique was better suited to wrestling, he subsequently joined the Amateur Wrestling club at the Pegasus Club. Seamus tells of the delight of his parents when he sent them a copy of the Bootle Times with the story of his selection for the All England Championships.

In the late 1950s Seamus moved to Birmingham and worked at Hams Hall near Coleshill before finding digs on Wenman Street, Balsall Heath and later moving to Birchfield Road in Perry Barr. His life became a mixture of hard work and craic whilst pursuing his love of wrestling up and down the country. In 1958 he became a professional wrestler, combined with working on the door at the Shamrock.      

Seamus’s life in Birmingham through the 1960s and subsequent decades is a fascinating read. The book tells how he coached fellow Brummie Pat Roach and other local wrestlers, how he became a landlord offering bedsits which were a cut above the rest (sinks in the rooms) and how he ran several nightclubs in the city including the Talk of the Town, the Speak Easy, Daddy Longlegs, the Cascades and Peter Rabbit. Seamus also recalls to Shirley the traumatic night in 1968 that an unknown assailant in a donkey-jacket shot him as he arrived home in his car.

In spite of this event and other scrapes with trouble, Seamus Dunleavy had a long and successful career, most famously as a wrestler and then as a business man. He married Mary Griffin who he first met at a Saint Patrick’s Night Dance in Hurst Street. They were engaged in July 1961 and married at English Martyrs Church on 16 April 1963 with a reception at the Mermaid Hotel on Stratford Road. The couple had three children, Shamus, Russell and Tracey.

Finally Meeting Princess Maud is a great read and well worth seeking out a copy. As well as telling a fascinating story of a journey from hardship to success, it is packed with cultural and geographical references from both Ireland and the West Midlands which will have strong resonance to the local Irish community. Many will recognise local landmarks and personalities now gone and most will also be familiar with the journey of the Irish immigrant to England in the 1950s which Seamus Dunleavy’s life-story exemplifies in its own unique way.

Published by Brewin Books Ltd (www.brewinbooks.com)

ISBN 1 85858 284 9

From Kilkenny to Calcutta – how an Irish orphan became an indomitable matriarch

Lilian Dillon

Every Irish family has been touched by the great diaspora, losing loved-ones forever to the grey funnel line across the rolling sea. Their stories are recalled in song and poetry around the world. But some stories are less well-known and the tale of Lilian Dillon, a small girl from Kilkenny who found herself orphaned in Calcutta, is one.   

I was recently doing family history research for my sister-in-law Rachel Palmer from Devon. Rachel’s family are from the southern counties of England, her ancestors’ origins ranging from Suffolk in the east to Devon in the west, taking in London, Brighton and various other towns and villages along the way. Rachel’s ancestors include some fascinating characters including two ancestors with knighthoods, a Victorian chemist who invented homeopathic remedies still on sale today and a journalist who conspired with Harry Houdini to uncover fake mediums in Edwardian London.

Not far into my research I came across two Scottish lines of Rachel’s tree but was not expecting to discover Irish genealogy until Rachel’s Uncle Jan whispered to me that I should look a little further …to India.

Rachel’s maternal line includes a branch of families living in India, many working in the country’s gargantuan railway network from the mid-1800s, who saw out the final years of rule of the East India Company through the subsequent eight decades of rule by the British Crown, (the Raj). Just like in Ireland, the history of British rule in India is contentious, though what interests me is the impact of history on the microcosmic lives of individuals.

One such individual was an Irish girl named Elizabeth (aka Lilian) Dillon, who we discovered to have been Rachel’s 3 x great grandmother. Her story is remarkable, born in Kilkenny in 1849, as the great hunger ravaged the country and its destitute population flocked to the ports for steerage on America-bound ships, Lilian’s father Matthew took the option of a career in the British army and joined an Irish regiment where he became a captain.  

From the Flight of the Wild Geese in 1691 when Irish Jacobite forces left to serve in continental armies, Irish soldiers gained a formidable reputation around the world. Ironically though not surprisingly, Irish regiments were highly valued by the British army, fighting in battles from Bunker Hill in the American Revolutionary War to the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean.

As Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson, a Longford born unionist said “…Jack Frost is the best recruiting sergeant we have” and the East India Company having previously taken advantage of this principle in the early 19^th century, had actively targeted Ireland to recruit men like Matthew Dillon with the promise of food, clothes and a roof over their heads. Irish officers and soldiers, it is said, made a disproportionate contribution to the 'steel frame' around which the Raj was built. There were nearly as many Irish men in the Bengal Regiment as there were English, Welsh or Scots. In the 1850s enlistment to the army was for a minimum of 21 years, so when soldiers were sent to India they often took their wives and children with them.

The Indian Mutiny, also called the 1^st War of Indian Independence began in May 1857 when Indian troops known as sepoys rose up against the rule of the British East India Company. The mutiny quickly escalated into a civilian rebellion across the central northern regions of India. Accounts of the atrocities on both sides of the fighting make shocking reading. Much was made of the brutality of the rebels not just towards besieged British soldiers but civilians too, especially women and children, though this must be balanced against the violent retribution of the British army.

It was in this rising that 8 year old Elizabeth Dillon saw her parents murdered and also lost her brother Wentworth. Perhaps, like Rudyard Kipling’s hero Kim (an orphaned Irish military child in India named Kimball O’Hara), little Elizabeth might have taken to the roads as a vagabond, but we know that she was ultimately taken in by a Catholic orphanage run by nuns in Calcutta where conditions though “harsh” were better than starvation.

When Elizabeth was 19, the nuns had her married to an Italian opium and indigo planter named Dominic Rossetto. The couple had two children, Frederick Rossetto (Rachel’s 2 x great grandfather) and his sister Mary Angela. When Dominic died she married one Frederick Coaker but left him because of his bad treatment of her son Frederick. Her third marriage to William Robinson was happier and she had three more children.

From the unimaginable trauma of seeing her parents murdered and losing her brother, brought up as an orphan amidst the poverty of 19^th century Calcutta, becoming a widow, then escaping an abusive second marriage, Lilian Dillon survived to become a respected lady of Indian-European society. Her descendants recalled her as a quiet, serious, but indomitable woman, a devoted matriarch to her family. Just like Kipling’s fictional Kim, neither wholly British nor Indian, Lilian endured the struggles of this vast land of contrasts and tensions to assert her own identity and independence.  

Lilian lived her final years in the comfort of a Calcutta nursing home and died in 1921.  

JFK – his Irish roots

In the year that the new President of the United States, Donald Trump, takes office in the White House, we take a stroll down memory lane to remember a previous president, celebrated for his Irish heritage but whose tenure was tragically cut short when he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. That President was of course, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

My thanks go to Alan and Jayne Kavanagh of Droitwich for putting me on the trail of the Kennedy family’s roots in Ireland. During a recent conversation I enquired of Alan’s own Irish roots and he told me that his father Kevin, like so many others of his generation had come to England in the 1950s. He had married Muriel and they settled down and brought up four sons, Alan, John, Gary and Jason in Kingstanding, Birmingham.

Kevin Kavanagh originally came from Waterford so we talked about Alan’s own memories and knowledge of his dad’s family in Ireland, the Kavanaghs of Waterford and it was during this conversation that Alan told me “someone in the family said we were related to John F Kennedy”. I sensed that Alan may have thought no more of this than it being a family myth, though as we discussed the geographical proximity of Waterford city to the famed Kennedy cottage just over the border in Wexford, the possibility of a connection seemed worthy of serious consideration.

Since watching the recent episode of Who Do You Think You Are? in which Danny Dyer traced his family tree back to Edward III, I would not dismiss any such claim lightly, especially in Ireland which has such a strong oral history tradition and a much lower population than the UK, so the probability of connections with famous people is higher.

Shortly after my conversation with Alan and Jayne, I briefly met Alan’s dad Kevin Kavanagh who is now 80 years old and still cutting the fine figure of a strapping Waterford man. He still lives in Birmingham with his lovely wife Norma. I talked to them about Waterford and Kevin’s memories of his childhood. He told me that he and his brothers were such a handful that every summer their parents packed each of them off to stay with relatives in different parts of Ireland, just to keep them apart and minimise the trouble they got up to.

In the 1950s Kevin came to England on his way to New Zealand where he intended to make a new life. He was only intending to get a visa and jump on a flight or a boat but ended up staying longer than intended, finding work in the UK and marrying his first wife Muriel. Subsequently Kevin never made it to New Zealand and has lived in Birmingham ever since. We also talked about the connections of the Kavanagh family of Waterford to the Wexford ancestors of John F Kennedy, Kevin does not know the exact line but has a nephew who has researched it. Himself and Norma have visited the Kennedy Homestead museum at Dunganstown.

Kevin also told me about his grandparents, John and Anastasia who ran a bar and grocery shop on Merchants Quay in Waterford. The couple are found with their large family in the 1911 census of Ireland – John gives his place of birth as Kilkenny and Statia (Anastasia) said she was born in Wexford (both county borders are very close to Waterford). We might begin to speculate that it was Anastasia’s family who were related to the Kennedy family – though there is still research to be done to confirm the connection.

John Fitzgerald (Jack) Kennedy, commonly known by his initials JFK was the 35^th U.S. President from January 1961 until his death almost two years later. During that time Kennedy became one of the most popular U.S. presidents in American history and his death shocked the whole world and made such an impact on the global consciousness that people still ask to this day “where were you when you heard that Kennedy had been shot?”

But the grief and shock waves of JFK’s assassination were felt particularly powerfully in Ireland, not just because of the Irish heritage of the Kennedy family or because he was the first and only Roman Catholic president but because his four day visit to Ireland in June 1963 with its speeches, crowds and celebratory passion was still fresh in everyone’s minds. In June 1963, Kennedy had been like the prodigal son returning home from the diaspora, the Irish people had welcomed him and fallen in love with both him and his beautiful wife Jackie. Just six months later, his bright candle had been cruelly snuffed out.  

 

 

When Kennedy visited Wexford in 1963 he made clear the pride he had of his Irish roots. At his ancestral home in Dunganstown he was greeted by a huge crowd waving both Irish and American flags and was serenaded by a choir singing “The Boys of Wexford.” Whilst at Dunganstown, Kennedy met members of his extended Irish family at the Kennedy homestead and famously took tea outside the family cottage.

Kennedy’s great-grandfather, Patrick Kennedy was born at Dunganstown in 1823 and migrated to the U.S., arriving in Boston in 1848. The Kennedy family quickly made their mark on business and politics in America and through their marriages with other influential American-Irish families such as the Hickey and Fitzgerald families became one of the most powerful and well-known dynasties in the States. 

In future editions of The Harp I hope to return to the story of Kennedy’s roots in Ireland and confirm the connection of local Birmingham family the Kavanaghs. Do you have connections or memories of President Kennedy in Ireland? Please get in touch and tell us your story.

Dorothy’s family connection to Wexford history

History is never far below the surface in Ireland and ordinary conversations will often reveal extraordinary connections with notable people and important events of the past. This is what happened when Wexford resident Dorothy Kenny (nee. Walsh) told me recently about her ancestor Father John Murphy.

Dorothy and husband Seamus are Wexford born and bred; they have raised their five children, Aoife, Doireann, Sinead, Conor and Sarah-Jo at Monamolin near Gorey. Both played for Wexford based GAA teams, Dorothy told me:

“Both of us played for Buffers Alley. Seamus played both hurling and football for 'The Alley' and was Chairman for 10 years steering the club through a major building development project. I played camogie for Senior Wexford and won an All-Ireland in 1975.”

Like many from the ‘model county’, both Seamus and Dorothy have family connections going back to the 1798 rebellion. Whilst this event took place over 200 years ago, it had a profound effect on an otherwise peaceable and very rural county and every Wexford family was affected, often in very traumatic and brutal ways. It is therefore not surprising that there is still a strong tradition of oral history dating back to 1798 in the county.

Dorothy told me that her family were descended from the sister of Fr John Murphy who played a leadership role in the 1798 rebellion. We therefore attempted a search to discover the connections between Dorothy’s family and John Murphy. This is a slightly unusual way of doing family history research, as one normally starts at the current generation and slowly works backwards, discovering ancestors along the way. However, in this situation we started at two different points in time and set out to fill in the gaps in between.

John Murphy was a Roman Catholic priest born at Tincurry, Wexford in 1753. He was executed by British soldiers at Tullow, County Carlow on 2 July 1798. John was a tenant farmer’s son from a big family, his brother Patrick was also killed in the 1798 Rebellion at Vinegar Hill. He also had a sister, Katherine, who married John Patrick Walsh. The parents of John Murphy were Thomas Murphy and Johanna Whitty.

John Murphy was educated in a hedge school by a local parish priest and grew up speaking Irish and English. He was described as a splendid horseman, excelling in athletics and handball. Following his ordination, Fr John Murphy went away to study at a Dominican college in southern Spain in the 1770s. Returning home five years later, Fr Murphy was made curate in Kilcormuck, better known as Boolavogue, where he had a thatched chapel.

Fr Murphy was initially against rebellion and actively encouraged his parishioners to give up their arms and sign an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. However, on 26 May 1798 he gathered with a group of local men to decide how to defend themselves against the brutality of yeomanry patrols. That night Murphy’s group encountered the burning down of a local family’s cabin and a confrontation took place which ended with the killing of two of the yeomen. That night the Wexford Rebellion started with Fr John Murphy leading it alongside other local United Irishmen leaders.

Through the next month, Fr John Murphy led a growing army of poor Wexford tenant farmers against the might of the English army. Initially armed only with pikes and pitchforks, Murphy’s ragged army of rebels defeated well-armed militia and yeoman with cavalry at Oulart Hill, Enniscorthy, Wexford town and Gorey. From a few hundred men with pikes, the rebel army grew quickly to a force of 10,000. But with reinforcements from England, including German mercenaries, the rebels were badly defeated at Arklow and at Vinegar Hill outside Enniscorthy. English retaliation was brutal, wounded rebels were shot or worse and more than 30,000 Wexford people were killed in the five week uprising. Father Murphy and a man named James Gallagher were captured in the Blackstairs Mountains and taken to Tullow where they were summarily tried, found guilty of being rebels and sentenced to death. Both were hanged in the market square in Tullow. The yeomen cut off Fr Murphy’s head, put it on display on a spike and burned his body in a barrel of pitch. Fr John Murphy is remembered in the Irish ballad Boolavogue.

Our search to discover Dorothy’s line of ancestry back to Fr John Murphy began by identifying her father Edmond Walsh’s family in the 1911 census living at house 12, Effenorge, Tinnacross, Wexford. The family included Edmond’s parents Aidan and Mary Walsh (Dorothy’s grandparents). The family were also recorded at Effernoge in the 1901 census. It is well known that Irish census records become more difficult to find for the 19^th century, but increasingly we find church baptismal records for that period are available to view online. Using these records we could identify the baptism of Dorothy’s grandfather Aidan at Ferns in 1853 and the baptisms of his siblings. The beauty of a baptismal record is that it also names the parents, therefore taking us back another generation.

Another useful source of records is the Griffith’s Valuation of the 1850s which tells us that a farmer named William Walsh was occupying 70 acres of land at Effernoge at that time. Finally the Tithe Applotment books of 1824 show two separate tithe payers named William Walsh residing at Effernoge. It would be fair to speculate that they may be a father and son. The Tithe Applotment books move us much closer to the generation of Fr John Murphy and the 1798 rebellion. William Walsh senior of the Applotment books could feasibly be the same generation as Father Murphy or, more likely, his mother may have been Katherine, the sister of John Murphy who married John Patrick Walsh. Incidentally, Effernoge is close to both Boolavogue and Tincurry and there was also a farmer named Michael Murphy recorded at Effernoge in the Tithe books of 1824. Whilst we need more information to confirm these connections, I can’t help feeling that we are there or thereabouts in plotting the line between Dorothy and her 2 x great grandmother Katherine Walsh (nee. Murphy).

Thank you Dorothy Kenny for sharing this interesting family connection to the momentous events of 1798. If any of our readers have further information to offer, we would be very interested to hear from you.

Carrie’s rural memories have a certain Irish lilt



Robbie McMahon



 

The great thing about people’s memories of the past is how they often open the doors to further research. This is what happened when I received an email from Carrie Browne-Carey whose memories of a rural childhood in the townland of Lurgan in County Offaly recalled a celebrated Irish ‘lilter’ named Robbie McMahon.

Carrie began by recalling her childhood in the 1950s in the hilly townland of Lurgan which lies near the border of Offaly and Westmeath, close to Clara and Moate:

“In a small townland like Lurgan, everyone knew each other very well and we visited one another’s houses regularly. I spent a lot of my life in the house of the Conways and also with the Stone family. When my brother and I were small children our Dad went to work in Dublin and our Mother would sometimes go and stay with him. During this time we stayed with the Stone family.”

“I was very young but I do remember enjoying my stay and loving a dog they had called Lucy. Mrs Stone baked her own bread as did her daughters, but there was one cake that I can almost taste yet. They called it a sweet cake but it was just like a white soda cake with sugar in it and it was gorgeous.”

“Another thing I enjoyed was, they nearly always had a pet pig and I always made sure to be there in the evening while it was small to feed it with a bottle and then sit with it on my lap for ages.”

Carrie also remembered that very often local people would have musicians and singers performing in their own homes, especially if there was a special occasion.   

“Mrs Stone had three daughters and two of them, Kitty and Liz went to work in Dublin. It seemed a long way away at that time.  Liz only got home every summer for two weeks holidays and I looked forward to that time so much.  Liz was such a lovely girl. I then remember Kitty got married to Eddie in Dublin and when they came back from their honeymoon, there was a big dance as I remember in their barn in Lurgan.  It was such an exciting thing for me as a small child. There was music, dancing, singing and I remember doing Irish dancing, though it was simple as I was very young.  Everyone went across the yard to the house for the tea.”

“As I got older I remember a musical family by the name of O'Reilly came to our house and also to the Stone residence and there would be a sing-song and dancing instantly. I remember on one occasion Liz was home on holiday and friends of hers called, I happened by chance to call in. I was very glad I did as one of the men was called Bobby McMahon from Spancil Hill in County Clare. Bobby was a man we heard singing very often on radio and of course his special song was Spancil Hill. He was also a great lilter. He would lilt Irish dance tunes and make it sound like a musical instrument, one tune that is still in my head is the Mason's Apron, he did a great job on that one. Anyway on that evening of course we got him to lilt and that started the dancing. We were doing a half set and I was dancing with him. Now I was only about 9 or 10 years of age so when it came to the basket swing, my feet were lifted off the ground and I kicked the lid off a skillet pot and it broke in two halves! I nearly died but Mrs Stone said “go on dancing, never mind it”. She had bad arthritis so she loved people to go in and party!”

Carrie’s wonderful recollection of live music in the farmhouses of rural Ireland are both reminiscent and captivating. Whilst many of us today are familiar with the musicians who entertain us in bars and clubs, the idea that this tradition was preceded by musicians performing in the humble parlors and barns of people’s rural homes is evocative of days-gone-by. Carrie has also educated me for one on the Irish tradition of lilting through her real-life memory of one of its greatest exponents, Bobby (aka Robbie) McMahon.

I have often heard the expression ‘the lilt of the Irish’ which refers to the characteristic rising and falling of the voice when speaking, the pleasant and gentle accent of many parts of Ireland. It is also used to describe the good humor of Irish people, or a certain cheery outlook I am certain we are all familiar with. But I had never heard of the traditional singing form of lilting, apparently most common in the Gaelic speaking areas of both Ireland and Scotland.

Lilting is music made by the human voice which creates the rhythm and tone of musical instruments with much diddling and jigging - if lyrics exist they are often nonsensical. Lilting may have originated in tough times when musical instruments were not available – though many dispute this theory because it did not develop in other peasant cultures under similar constraints. Whatever its origins, the energetic and compelling rhythms of lilting, accompanied by hand clapping, foot stomping and drumming of the table made it ideal for Irish dancing.

Robbie (or Bobbie) McMahon was born in County Clare on 11 December 1926 and became well known as an entertainer on Irish radio. McMahon composed his own songs as well as singing traditional favorites. As Carrie pointed out, he is best known for his rendition of the beautiful ballad Spancil Hill which earned him the title of King of Spancil Hill. Robbie first sung the ballad at age 16 in the cottage of Moira Keane and in the presence of the nephew of the song’s author Michael Considine.

Robbie McMahon lived all of his life at Spancil Hill where he continued to farm and also continued to entertain in pubs, bars and, yes, rural cottages right up until his sad death in 2012. A film was made about his life called Last night As I Lay Dreaming.

Thank you to Carrie Browne-Carey for her enlightening email and for sharing her memories. 

Sorcha Nic Diarmada and the role of women in 1916

Sorcha Nic Diarmada

Something which has always interested me about Irish history is the prominent role of women in areas including literature and the arts, religious life, science, political leadership and, specifically, the early 20th century struggle for Irish independence.

Such is the influence of women in Irish history that the country itself has from ancient times been personified as female with names such as Erin, Roisin Dubh and Kathleen Ni Houlihan. Poets from Yeats to Heaney have developed the idea so successfully that it seems more powerful than being merely a traditional metaphorical representation and speaks of deeply rooted cultural and spiritual values.

Countess Markievicz was undoubtedly the most celebrated female leader of the 1916 Rising, described as a charismatic revolutionary, a politician, suffragette and socialist. Markievicz was one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position, as Minister for Labour in the Irish Republic from 1919-1922.

But we should not overlook the fact that Markievicz was the best known of many thousands of Irish (and Anglo-Irish) women who were active in the 1916 Rising and the subsequent War of Independence. I was reminded of this fact recently by a correspondent on Ancestry, a gentleman named Mike McDermott whose family settled in Yorkshire in the 1860s because Mike’s great grandfather, also Michael McDermott, had to leave Ireland under suspicion for his “Fenian activities”.

Mike’s grandfather Patrick McDermott married his grandmother Annie McCluskey in Dublin in 1907. The connection with my own ancestors was through the McCluskey family, Annie’s father Nicholas McCluskey was a close friend and political ally of my great-great grandfather John McDonnell, a blind basket maker and founding member of the League of the Blind (a trade union of blind people). McDonnell and McCluskey were both elected Poor Law Guardians in the North Dublin Union and used their position to campaign for better conditions for poor and disabled people in Dublin. Fresh information from Mike indicates that Nicholas and John were more than just lifelong friends and co-conspirators, but relatives - as there were a number of cousins named McDonnell on the wedding photograph of his grandparents, Patrick and Annie.

But how does this connect to the role of women in the 1916 Rising? The McDermott family originated from Leitrim and Mike’s family share ancestors with Sean MacDiarmada (McDermott), a signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic read by Patrick Pearse outside the General Post Office in Dublin. But a much closer link to this momentous period of Irish history was through a sister of Mike’s grandfather, Sarah McDermott (Sorcha Nic Diarmada), a teacher born at Normanton in West Yorkshire in 1878.

Sarah was one of the ten children of Michael and Mary McDermott from Glenkeel in Leitrim. Her father had settled in the north of England shortly after the unsuccessful Fenian Rising of 1867. Neighbouring Lancashire had become a hotbed of Fenian activity in the 1860s with the infamous prison van attack in Manchester in 1867, which was followed by a prison bombing in London. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) was formed in1858 and it was reported that within a few years every city in England had IRB units. Sarah and her siblings may therefore have grown up in an area of Fenian support but also within the wider trade union culture of the industrial north of England.

After training as a teacher in Leeds, Sarah went to live and work in London where she became active in the Irish community and in the movement for Ireland’s independence. Many years later, in 1954, she provided a witness statement to the Bureau of Military History about her involvement in the Cumman na mBan, the Irish republican women’s paramilitary organisation formed in 1914 and led by Countess Markievicz.

The archive of the Bureau of Military History (http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/) is a rich online source of personal testimonies from people who were directly involved in the history of the fight for Irish independence from 1913 to 1921. The great thing about this archive is that it is not just about ‘the usual culprits’, but includes detailed memories from ordinary citizens – the lesser known foot soldiers and activists.

Sarah McDermott’s testimony follows her involvement in cultural activities, such as organising concerts and cèilidh dances as Social Secretary of the Gaelic League in London to purchasing and smuggling arms to Ireland in preparation for the 1916 Rising. She also describes the activities of groups like the Irish Ladies’ Distress Committee who were widely involved in sewing and collecting garments for people in Ireland affected by the War of Independence.

What these memories highlight is the huge involvement in Irish independence of people in England and in particular of women. Sarah was eventually arrested in London by British detectives working in collaboration with the Government of the Irish Free State on doubtful charges of conspiracy. She was transported to Mountjoy Prison in Dublin in a group of 10 female and 90 male prisoners arrested in England, most of whom were later released. During her confinement Sarah was ill-treated and assaulted by prison staff and soldiers and after her release in 1923 she was indemnified by the British Government to the figure of £600, the highest amount paid to a woman in this group of prisoners.

I wish to thank Mike McDermott for telling us about his ancestor Sarah McDermott, the radical teacher from West Yorkshire.

The importance of being Ernest

Article for September 2016

Fellow genealogy enthusiasts amongst our readership will no doubt be aware of the pitfalls of online research, especially using the popular commercial websites such as Ancestry, Find My Past or The Genealogist where members post up their family trees and then cross-reference them with others, sometimes adding whole generations of newly discovered ancestors from someone else’s tree to their own at two clicks of the keyboard. The risk of this otherwise fantastic facility is when an inaccurate connection or piece of information is replicated by many other amateur researchers and we accept something as a given-truth simply on the basis of the volume of other people publishing a particular fact. Some of those so-called facts will also come from other sources, such as Wikipedia or seemingly authoritative websites.    

I’m pleased to say I served my apprenticeship in the years before the explosion of online data, when research required endless viewing of scratchy old microfilm reels on the 6^th floor of the old Birmingham Central Library. The records were more scarce, even random and took a sharper focus to transcribe, but it did therefore make you more discerning as to what you accepted as relevant fact. It can be both frustrating and demoralising to discover you have been following the wrong branch of your family tree, but one has to be always open to the possibility of red herrings and wishful thinking. The prospect of having to delete three or four generations and dozens of earnestly adopted ancestors can be initially devastating when you suddenly discover you’ve been barking up someone else’s tree, though genealogy, like history generally, is an objective science and our responsibility is to seek the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth (the embellishment can come later).            

Back in the November 2015 edition of The Harp I wrote about an Aston Villa player named Ernie “Mush” Callaghan who won a bravery medal in WW2 for rescuing trapped workers from a Birmingham factory which had been bombed in a German air raid. I also wrote in my article that Ernie held the record of being Villa’s oldest player until his record was taken by Brad Friedel in 2011 and I attempted some research into his Irish heritage.  

I wish to thank John Vaughan for responding to my article, pointing out that I had quoted the wrong year of birth for Ernie which had therefore led me to researching the wrong age, marriage and general ancestry of the Villa hero. In my defense (no pun intended as Ernie was a defender), I had obtained his birth year of 1907 from other sources including Aston Villa themselves who based their (now superseded) player record on 1907 instead of his actual birth date of 1910.

John explained that there were two men named Ernest Callaghan born in the Newtown area in the early 1900s, one being Ernest Henry Callaghan (1907-1972) who married Edith Partridge in 1937. The other was Ernie Callaghan (1910-1972) who married Winifred Alice Thorne in 1934. The two men were second cousins, the older Ernest became a transport engineer, found living at 27 Church Vale in the 1939 Register, whilst the slightly younger Ernest (or Ernie) was the Aston Villa defender nicknamed Mush.

I am relieved to say that the main points of our story are still factual, Ernie Mush Callaghan was the man awarded the British Empire medal for his rescue efforts as a volunteer police officer in WW2 and he also became the groundsman at Villa Park on his retirement as a football player …and lived in a cottage in the ground!

John told me: “I've written to the club, as they have used Ernest Henry's dates. This may make the oldest player record incorrect, although Brad Friedel now holds that! Ernie’s brother Henry Victor played at least one game for Villa reserves and another brother Arthur used to help with the Holte End scoreboard. Ernie's father was Thomas Callaghan a canal boatman who was in Upper Sutton Street as was Ernie in 1939.”

“Thomas' father was also Thomas and his father was James who was both Ernie's and Ernest Henry's great grandfather. Coincidently my 2x great uncle was Thomas Callaghan (Ernie's first cousin x1 removed) and he was also a professional footballer who after a season at Manchester City moved to Scotland and enjoyed some success with Partick Thistle and St Mirren. He was killed near Ypres in 1917.”      

As for the Irish heritage of both Ernest Henry and Ernie Mush Callaghan, John filled in the family tree for us:

“James Callaghan the tailor who was born about 1806 in Navan and married at St Bartholomew's, Edgbaston in 1835 started quite a dynasty. Another great grandson of his, William George Callaghan, was a boy sailor who died on HMS Indefatigable at the Battle of Jutland.”

I wish to thank John Vaughan for his help in sorting out the story for us and for flagging-up the difference between Ernest and Ernie. If you have a story concerning the Callaghan dynasty or any other great Irish families of the West Midlands, do get in touch and we will make every earnest effort to publish your tale.