the sinking of the steamer Queen Victoria February 1853

The Leinster Express of the 12th February 1853 carried the following report ‘Mrs. Walsh, Athy drowned on the sinking of the steamer Queen Victoria in Dublin Bay on a trip from Liverpool to Dublin.’ Mrs. Walsh, whom I have been unable to identify, was survived by her husband when the ship sank. The Queen Victoria was a wooden hull ship powered by two steam engines which was built in Glasgow for the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company just fifteen years earlier. It left Liverpool on the night of 14th February with approximately 100 passengers and as it approached the Irish coast it was met by a heavy snowstorm which reduced visibility. The ship struck Howth Head at about 2.00 a.m. on the 15th February and the Captain, who was a sailor of much experience, not realising the extent of the damage felt that the ship could safely reach the Harbour. The damage to the ship was more extensive than he thought and it quickly began to take in water. The Freeman’s Journal reported ‘The Cabin passengers were in bed and had been wakened by the shock rushed half-dressed upon the deck found the ship fast going down.’ The Queen Victoria sank within fifteen minutes and about one hundred yards south of the Baily Lighthouse. Approximately eighty-three passengers and crew including the ship’s captain went down with the ship. The survivors managed to reach shore in a lifeboat which rescued seventeen passengers while more survivors, including Mrs. Walsh’s husband, were picked up by the crew of the Roscommon which went to the aid of the stricken ship. In my search for the full name and address of the unfortunate Mrs. Walsh, I enlisted the help of Clem Roche who identified three Mrs. Murphys in Athy in the years immediately following the Great Famine. Sarah Murphy, Charlotte Murphy and Anne Murphy were all married in St. Michael’s Church Athy and strangely their husbands all bore the same name Michael Walsh. The search for the victim of the Baily lighthouse tragedy continues. On the day the Queen Victoria sank, the new Jail on the Carlow Road in Athy housed forty-eight prisoners. Drunkenness, particularly among females, was the principal reason for incarceration while a later prison report claimed ‘loose women from the Curragh swelled the prison numbers.’ In the years immediately following the Great Famine, Athy began to adopt the commercial sophistication of an inland market town. Side by side with the unemployed poor of the town was a thriving commercial community while nearby were to be found some of the wealthiest farmers in Leinster. Seven years earlier a directory listed no less than eight blacksmiths with forges in the town and ten boot and shoemakers. Other craftsmen in Athy included a tin plate worker in Duke Street, the same street which was home to James Doyle, a tanner. Eight tailors had businesses in the town’s principal streets, Duke Street and Leinster Street with two tailors operating from Preston’s Gate. That street now known as Offaly Street was also home to a saddler’s shop and it was there that Margaret Langton carried on business as a Dressmaker. Even at a time when book publishing was in its infancy, Athy boasted a book seller in John Lahee of Duke Street while Pawn Brokers, Peter Prendergast and John Rooney both of Duke Street catered for the needs of the town’s poor. Amongst Lahee’s customers must surely have been members of the Mechanics Institute formed the same year as Mrs. Walsh’s death in Dublin Bay. The Mechanics Institute evolved from the earlier established Athy Literary and Scientific Institute which was founded in 1849. It had a reading room in the Town Hall where the English and Irish papers were available to members. 1853 for Athy was a year marked by the tragic drowning of the as yet unidentified local woman. It was also the year the town and its hinterland began to reap the benefits which were expected to accrue to a developing market town. Banking facilities in Athy, which were provided by a branch of the Tipperary Bank since the 1840s, were extended with the opening of a branch of the National Bank in or about 1850. The Hibernian Bank opened its Athy branch in March 1856 following the closure of the Tipperary Bank. The following year the foundation stone of Athy’s Gasworks was laid while the corn exchange in the Market Square opened for business on the 6th October 1857. The settlers town of Athy was emerging in 1853 with confidence from the aftermath of the Great Famine but for one household in Athy the loss of life on the Queen Victoria presage difficult times ahead not just for one family but for an entire community living in the shadows of Whites Castle on the River Barrow.

Dan Carbery's pocket watch

This week’s Eye is given over to a pocket watch story of the Carbery family written by Dan Carbery, formerly of St. John’s, Athy. I am a pocket watch. I was manufactured circa 1820/’21 and am typical of watches of the day measuring about 50 mm in diameter, weighing 160 grams and enclosed in a protective metal outer case. To ensure that I continue operating my spring mechanism needs to be charged every day which is done by winding my main spring with a key through the window in my back. The time is set by using the same key on the front centre post of the watch. As a result I am known as a key wind and key set watch. Compared to watches of today it is like contrasting a model T Ford to a modern-day Ferrari sports car. I am still working and telling the time in 2022, over two hundred years after I started providing time to my owner, or owners to be exact. I have had five generations of keepers and helped regulate the lives of most, all bearing the same name, Daniel Carbery. My first owner’s name and date of acquisition is inscribed on the back of the watch. In 1821 I was purchased by or presented to Daniel Carbery who was born in 1784. We will call him Dan(1) to differentiate between him and the other Carbery men with the name Daniel through the generations. He was 37 at the time and had come as a child with his widowed mother and brother John from Edenderry, Co. Offaly to live with his uncle and wife, the Murphys, near Athy. I was possibly purchased from and made by either Thomas Plewman of Athy, or W.P. St. John of Duke St., Athy. The brothers lived and worked a small rented farm near Brackna Woods close to the Bleeding Horse pub on the Athy/Stradbally road with their uncle, and were also carpenters. On the death of his uncle Dan and his family moved to Mullenroe, Ballintubbert, Co. Laois and rented a 12 acre farm homestead and outbuildings for £13-13-0 per annum. Dan married Sarah (nee Lawlor) and they had 12 children. He farmed the land and worked as a carpenter until his death in 1860. On the death of Dan(1) in 1860 the farm and half his carpentry tools were left to his son John, the remaining tools and me, the watch, going to his younger son Dan(2). Upon marrying a local teacher Kate Dunne, we lived in Kellyville, Co. Laois initially. They had eight children, five boys (including Dan(3)) and three girls and after a number of years moved 6 miles to Luggacurran, renting a house with 3 acres from Lord Lansdowne for 4 pounds sterling a year. They opened a shop in the house and worked ‘the farm’. In addition Dan(2) did a lot of building/carpentry work for the Lansdowne estate. In the mid/late 1870s Dan(2) was asked by Lord Lansdowne to build a house for a friend of his in Rosdohan, Sneem, Co. Kerry. A new type of concrete made from Portland cement was recently invented and the father of all modern concrete was specified for the construction of the house. Before engaging in this new work Dan(2) and I went to London to become acquainted with this wondrous new material. On completion of the house, which took about two years, the family and I returned to Luggacurran. On their return to Luggacurran the family prospered. It was during this time that the Land League, under Michael Davitt, became very effective and Daniel was an active member of the Land League. In 1885/’86 Lord Lansdowne’s tenants in Luggacurran stopped paying rent. Lansdowne tolerated the withholding of rent until 1887 and then decided to evict his nonpaying tenants starting with Denis Kilbride and William Dunne, major land holders. And so the infamous Luggacurran evictions began. They occurred on a regular basis over the next two years but the eviction of Daniel and 30 of his neighbours did not take place until 2nd June 1889. With the help of carpenters Pat Knowles and Bill Breen, Dan Carbery built 21 temporary timber huts in the field beside the Luggacurran Church. The settlement became known as ‘Campaign Square’. Dan, Kate and family lived in one of the huts for a short period before packing up all their belongings in horse and carts and walking 6/7 miles into Athy to start a new life. When the family moved to Athy Dan set up as a full-time builder. The first house we moved into was in Stanhope Street opposite St. Michael’s Church and then No. 1 Emily Square. In 1896 a detached two storey house, St. John’s, came on the market together with its adjoining yard and mill house. Dan wanted the house and Matt Minch the mill and yard. Matt by agreement made the only bid of 100 pounds, so Dan split the costs and got St. Johns House for 50 pounds. Dan set about putting on a second floor to cater for his eight children. Years later it was recognised by one of the family that the additional story was an exact replica of the top story of the house he had built in the 1870s in Sneem, Co. Kerry for the friend of Lord Lansdowne. Dan(2) died in 1896 and his son, my new owner Dan(3), completed the renovations of the house. Dan(3) married Pauline Woods from Newbridge and they reared eight children in St. Johns, the eldest also called Dan(4). The building business prospered under Dan(3) and branches were established in Carlow and Kildare, run by his brothers Peter and Dennis. After a successful life in the building industry in Athy Dan(3) died in 1949, being predeceased by Pauline in 1938. After the death of Dan(3) I was retired. Dan(4), eldest son of Dan(3), lived in Carlow and ran the building business with his brother Joe who lived in Athy. He preferred a wrist watch so after a number of years I was taken over by my current minder and fifth generation Carbery with the name Daniel.

Irish miscarriages of Justice

Just before Christmas President Michael D. Higgins signed a posthumous presidential pardon for John Twiss who was executed in Cork prison on 9th February 1895. This was the fifth presidential pardon granted since the country was declared a Republic in 1937. Twiss was a member of the Moonlighters whose physical force activities were directed against 19th century Irish landlordism. James Donovan, an ‘Emergency’ man who was caretaking a farm from which tenants had been evicted, was attacked and killed on the night of 21st April 1894 at Glenlara in the Pass of Kerry. The local R.I.C. investigated the crime and soon arrested Eugene O’Keeffe and John Twiss who was known to be associated with the Moonlighters and who had served terms in jail for his moonlighting activities. They were tried separately and the first trial saw O’Keeffe walking free following a not guilty verdict. John Twiss was of Palatine stock, a descendent of the refugees from the Palatinate of the Rhine who had settled in Ireland and particularly in west Limerick in the 18th century. His trial took place in Cork starting on 7th January 1895 before the Chief Baron Christopher Palles, described as one of the most popular judges in Ireland. By all accounts the Judge’s summing up for the jury was fair and balanced but he was not to know that the R.I.C. had improperly secured a witness since O’Keeffe’s trial who claimed to have identified Twiss near the scene on the night of the murder. The witness later claimed he was drunk when he signed his statement, but it was his statement allegedly created by the R.I.C. which resulted in a guilty verdict for John Twiss. The trial was an example of a great wrong caused by either inept, dishonest or corrupt policing practices. Harry Gleeson was a 38 year old Tipperary farmer who was hanged in 1941 for the murder of an unmarried mother of seven, Mary McCarthy. Mary, who like her mother turned to prostitution to escape abject poverty, was believed to have children by seven different men, the last having been born 6 months before she was murdered. On the morning of 22nd of November 1940 Harry Gleeson discovered Mary McCarthy’s body lying in a field at New Inn, Co. Tipperary. He immediately reported same to the local Garda Station but soon found himself the centre of a subsequent police investigation. He was eventually tried before Mr. Justice Martin Maguire of whom Gleeson’s Counsel Sean McBride wrote, ‘from the word go the trial Judge had taken the bit between his teeth and decided that the accused was guilty and should be convicted. He was prejudiced against my client.’ Another element of the trial which led to the wrongful conviction and the execution of Harry Gleeson was Garda fabrication of evidence prejudicial to Gleeson. The Gardai encouraged witnesses to make false statements and beat one witness, Tommy Reid, who had provided an alibi for Gleeson in order to get him to change his statement. Superintendent Mahony who was in charge of the murder investigation wrote to the Department of Justice following Gleeson’s conviction while the Minister for Justice was considering a reprieve stating ‘Gleeson is the type of man capable of committing the crime, there can be no doubt. He is possibly something of a sadist.’ This was not a view shared by Gleeson’s counsel, Sean McBride, or by the Mountjoy jail chaplain Fr. John Kelly who was with Gleeson in the days and hours before his execution. The chaplain’s note of his meeting with the prisoner painted an entirely different picture of Harry Gleeson which current Department of Justice officials acknowledge ‘portrayed Mr. Gleeson in a different light to the Garda Superintendent’s assessment.’ Harry Gleeson, an innocent man, was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint on 23rd April 1941 in Mountjoy jail. His conviction and death were a sorry indictment of faulty justice and policing systems as they existed over 80 years ago. Gleeson was granted a posthumous presidential pardon in December 2015. Nearer to our time another miscarriage of justice saw the conviction and jailing of Nicky Kelly for what was claimed to be his involvement in the Sallins train robbery in March 1976. Kelly was one of 26 members of the Irish Republican Socialists party arrested in connection with the robbery. Following his arrest Kelly was held in Garda custody for 60 hours during which time he suffered serious personal injury. Towards the end Kelly who up to then had denied any involvement in the robbery signed a false confession in order to prevent further beatings. Patrick McEntee S.C. at Kelly’s trial voiced his concern: ‘is the situation that in Ireland in 1978 we have to solemnly sit around and wait for a dead body in a police station before a reasonable doubt is raised? Robert Barr S.C. for the prosecution countered by claiming that ‘there must have been a most incredible conspiracy among the Garda Siochana to lie and prejudice themselves as well as to behave so disgracefully as is alleged against them. That is so enormous as to be patently absurd.’ The Special Criminal Court in recording its verdict apparently agreed with prosecuting counsel. Their guilty verdict was eventually overturned when Nicky Kelly received a presidential pardon in 1992. His highly publicised case was another example of unacceptable policing practices which were a hallmark of a minority of police officers in this State. Eight years after Kelly’s arrest the Kerry babies case unveiled yet another extraordinary example of Garda incompetence and allegations of false confessions and intimidation. As we approach the centenary of the foundation of the Garda Siochana we must record not only the excellent service of the many Gardai of the past and present, but also guard against a recurrence of those cases which brought shame on the Guardians of the Peace.

Shackleton's cabin

At midnight tonight a simple ceremony will take place at Letterfrack, Co. Galway. The purpose of the ceremony is to mark, to the hour, the centenary of the death of Ireland’s greatest ever Explorer. And unusually, while this iconic individual did not meet his death in Ireland, the place of their death has been in Ireland since 2015. I write, of course, of Ernest Shackleton, a native of Kilkea and Athy, County Kildare who in the early hours of the morning of the 5th January 1922 died on his ship, the Quest in South Georgia on the far side of the world. As many of my readers will know, the Shackleton Museum on Athy acquired the deck cabin from the Quest in 2016, the cabin in which Shackleton drew his last few breaths. This acquisition by the Shackleton Museum in Athy was the impetus for the planned re-development of the former Heritage Centre and transformation into the Shackleton Museum which we hope to see open in 2023. The cabin itself has been carefully conserved by the specialists at Conservation Letterfrack to return the cabin to how it looked the night Shackleton died. We are fortunate to have a good visual record of the cabin, as it was on Shackleton’s last voyage and also a good detailed description by one of the crew of Quest, a young boy scout called James Marr. Among his daily duties was to scrub out Shackleton’s cabin and he left an evocative description of it, “Don’t, please, carry away from these pages an impression of a sumptuous state room. This sea-bedroom was little better than a glorified packing case; it measured 7 feet by 6, and when you are in it you felt half afraid to draw full breath in case you carried something away or bust the bulkheads apart. The door of this cabin opened on the afterside; and on the port side was the bunk stretching the entire length of the room, with drawers beneath and a single porthole above. A small washstand stood against the forward bulkhead; shelves well filled with books on the starboard side, and a small collapsible chair completed the more elaborate furnishings. In addition, was a small, white enamelled cabinet with an oval mirror in the door, and an emergency oil lamp for use when the electricity supply gave out”. On the day before Shackleton died, he wrote poetically in his diary on his last night on earth. “In the darkening twilight, I saw a lone star hover, gemlike above the bay”. In the early hours of the 5th January he suffered a massive heart attack and died shortly afterwards. The Shackleton-Rowett Expedition, as it was known, would plough on for a few months after Shackleton’s death but ultimately the loss of the leader took much of the direction and impetus out of the voyage for the surviving crew members. One of the members of the crew, Leonard Hussey, accompanied Shackleton’s body back from South Georgia to South America where he was greeted by huge crowds in Uruguay where his body lay in state for a short period of time. His wife Emily, conscious that his heart had always been in the Polar regions directed that he should be buried in South Georgia facing towards the South Pole and he currently lies in a simple grave in the Whalers Cemetery in Grytviken in South Georgia. For many years, his grave was not marked but the ship Discovery on which he had served on his first polar expedition in 1901 to 1904 brought to the Falklands, in 1928, a headstone for erection over his grave. After being engraved there it was brought to South Georgia. Amongst the ships Officers present at this ceremony to mark the installation of the headstone was Francis K. Pease who was born on the Curragh, Co. Kildare and would later write of his impressions of the ceremony in his book ‘To the Ends of the Earth’. The small private ceremony taking place in Letterfrack just after midnight tonight will mark the centenary of Shackleton’s passing with the series of readings from Shackleton’s own publication such as the ‘Heart of the Antarctic’ and ‘South’ with a smattering of the poetry which he so loved. That gemlike star that Shackleton referred to in his last writings is the star Sirius and if you should find yourself awake just after midnight on the 5th January, perhaps you might step outside and cast your eyes skywards and see can you view the same star that the polar explorer and Irishman Ernest Shackleton saw on his last night on earth. I want to thank those generous people who left donations into my office for the Lions Club ‘Cash For Food Appeal’. Happy New Year to you all