Emigration and James Birney

It’s an ironic twist of fate that men and women from Athy, the town settled by English settlers, have over the years turned in large numbers to English towns and cities to find employment.  The period following the Irish Civil War saw a significant number of local men leave Ireland for America and England, realising that they had little prospect of earning a living in Ireland under a Government which they had opposed with arms.  Many others not involved in the Civil War also departed these shores, their confidence in the emerging new State undermined by decades of conflict and in many cases by personal tragedy and loss.  Indeed the 1920s saw so many young men take the emigrant boat that the local Gaelic Football Club was virtually dormant.  It took trojan work by Tyrrellspass native Eamon Malone, a secondary school teacher and activist in the Irish War of Independence, who was based in the local Christian Brothers Secondary School, to revive the Club. 

Throughout the dark years of the economic war of the 1930s Athy was a black spot for employment.  The local brickyards, which apart from farm work had once been the main source of employment in the town, had closed.  Athy, however, benefitted from the opening of the Asbestos factory in Mullery’s field in 1936 and the town which up to then had to rely on local foundries and the maltings for employment now had the foundation for possible future industrial development.  It was the Asbestos factory and post World War II the Wallboard factory at Tomard which gave Athy, for a time, a thriving industrial sector which afforded many local men the opportunity of working in their home town.  However, with a population of 4,000 or so in the town there was never enough work opportunities even at the best of times, which left many Athy men and women with no alternative but to take the emigrant boat.

There have been many fine studies published over the years with regard to the Emigrant Irish in Britain.  In exposing the Irish ghettoisation of English cities in the 19^th century to the complicated relationship between the Irish and British of more recent years these studies make sad reading.  However, the more recent history of the Irish in Britain is one in which we can justifiably take pride.

On a recent visit to London I took the opportunity of meeting and interviewing an Athy man who left the town of his birth for England when he was just 13½ years of age.  James Birney is now 62 years of age and was brought up in Athy with seven siblings by his father Mick following the early death of his mother.  Jim, as he is called, has good memories of his family and of Athy.  Jim’s father, Mick Birney and his uncle Jim, were members of Athy Gaelic Football Championship winning teams in 1937 and 1942 and he is understandably proud of his family’s sporting success in their home county of Kildare.  Approximately one year after his mother died Jim went to Manchester to work for his uncle Peter Hickey.  He returned to Athy four years later and worked for almost 1½ years for the late Tommy Keegan at Keegans sawmills in Foxhill.  When Tommy sold the business Jim and his workmates Paddy Supple and Robert Reid had to find alternative employment.  Jim had no option but to return to England and this time it was to London he came, where as he says himself, ‘I was the first Birney to come to the English capital.’  His brother Mick and sister Rita are now also living in London.

Working as a barman Jim was made very aware of the anti-Irish feeling among the English and particularly so when on marrying his Portroe, Co. Tipperary wife Christina found rented accommodation so many times unavailable for ‘Irish or Blacks’.  Undeterred, Jim, who has a wonderful outlook on life went on to build for himself and his family a happy and fulfilling life in England.

As I spoke to Jim and his delightful wife Christina I wondered what the future would have held for him if he had not taken the momentous decision to leave Athy at such an early age.  I could not but feel that if Jim had stayed in Athy he would have counted himself lucky to have got work in a local factory.  He would have possibly missed out on the opportunity to better himself and give his three children the successful careers they now enjoy. 

Emigration inflicts a high toll on Irish towns and villages and deprives local communities of vital young lifeblood.  Yet undoubtedly many of those who left these shores benefitted hugely after emigrating and Jim Birney’s generation is but one of those who over the decades have shown the mettle and the initiative which is invariably crowned with success.

The past is truly a foreign country

I was reminded this week of a book I read many years ago, with the intriguing title Three Lives. It was the book’s title, rather than its contents, which came to mind as I reflected on the happenings of a week that saw three unconnected lives touching my consciousness in different ways. While the men involved never met or knew eachother, they had shared youthful experiences which were common to those born in Ireland in the late 30s or early 40s. These were difficult times, created in part by the economic war of the 1930s, but prolonged and exacerbated by the Second World War. Poverty was everywhere. Not the genteel poverty of today, but the raw uninhibited poverty of an age when children went hungry and families often had to rely on their own remedies to cope with illness because there wasn’t any money to pay a doctor.

As childhood gave way to adulthood, many young boys and girls had to forgo the chance of further education and take up menial dead-end jobs in order to help the family finances. Even for those fortunate enough not to have to do so, the prospect of a job after leaving school was never more than hopeful. These were my thoughts when last week three hitherto unconnected lives became linked, two in death and the third by association with a period in our country’s history where all three shared in the difficulties created by a lack of opportunity.

My brother-in-law, Thomas Spellman, just two months short of his 65th birthday, died alone in his apartment in Neasden in North London. A Connemara man who spent his teenage years shooting and fishing in the fields and lakes of Connemara, he became an expert falconer by dint of his association with the late Ronald Stevens of Fermoyle Lodge. He grew up in the Ireland of the 1940s and ’50s and, as might be expected, wanted to widen his horizons when he reached his majority. Emigration, especially to America, was the normal route taken by young Connemara folk, but Thomas Spellman followed his older brother to London. He settled in Neasden and it was there more than 40 years later that he passed away. He was part of several generations of Irish folk for whom the emigrant boat offered the only prospect of escape from the economically backward and church-dominated society that was post-war Ireland.

John B Keane in his book, Self Portrait, recounted his journey as an emigrant to England in the early 1950s and his account simply but vividly captures the scene at the mail-boat. “Dun Laoghaire for the first time was a heart-breaking experience - the goodbyes to husbands going back after Christmas, chubby-faced boys and girls leaving home for the first time, bewilderment written all over them, hard-faced old stagers who never let on but who felt it the worst of all because they knew only too well what lay before them.”

Thomas Spellman made his life in London, a city cosmopolitan in nature but for all that a lonely city at the edges where so many Irish men and women of my generation and older are still to be found. He died last week, a relatively young man, in the same city he had emigrated to in the early 1960s, far removed from the sights, sounds and smells of Connemara where he was born and had spent his youth.

Joining him in death that same week was another child of the hungry ’40s, Mickser Murray of Athy. Mickser never seized the opportunity to rise above the despair and despondency which once characterised life in Ireland. It is often claimed that our best young people took to the emigrant boats, making their mark in America or Great Britain, where the opportunity to do so did not arise in Ireland. Mickser, I believe, was born in the Barrack Yard, that early 18th century building complex, now no more, which once filled the Athy skyline with its near neighbour, Woodstock Castle. I knew Mickser quite well and felt keenly the many missed opportunities he felt unable to seize which might have allowed him to have a better life. He did not take the emigrant boat, lacking maybe the drive or the initiative, even perhaps the desperation that drove others to make a new life for themselves across the sea. Mickser met a sad death last week in Carlow, after spending some time homeless in our neighbouring town.

Like Thomas Spellman, he was born in an age when dreams of a Celtic Tiger were unknown. Theirs was a generation where privilege was measured in terms of ability to get employment in your own country and where the majority were in those terms underprivileged.

But an even greater loss of privilege was to befall so many of the young Irish men and women of that period. For many of them, indeed the majority of them, the right to an education was denied for one reason or another. I recall many school mates of mine who left school to take up messenger boy jobs, simply because their families needed the small wages which such work offered. Young boys just over 13 years of age decamped from school even before reaching the minimum school leaving age so that an extra few shillings could be added to the family coffers at the end of each week.

I was reminded of this last Tuesday when I enquired of a local who was sitting at Barrow Quay how he had done in his recent university examinations. Retired a few years ago, I knew he had undertaken what for him was a huge leap into the unknown by first sitting his Leaving Certificate examinations and then enrolling in a degree course in University College, Maynooth. He was of the same generation of Thomas Spellman and Mickser Murray, but in his case he was obliged to leave school at 13 years of age after his father died leaving a widow and three young children. As the eldest of the family, my friend had no option but to go out to work and forgo whatever ambitions he might have had for his future education. He was one of the more lucky ones. He did not have to emigrate and managed to have a job in his home town throughout his working life, retiring a few years ago at 65 years of age. Recovering the lost educational opportunities of over 50 years ago is a wonderful personal achievement for him and one that tells another side of the story of those Irish men and women of an earlier generation.

The emigrant, the unfortunate who spent his last years living rough and the scholar of advanced years shared early years in a country that was socially and economically deprived. Their lives never connected but their stories tell us all that was wrong in an independent state which for decades failed to provide the opportunities that we have now come to expect as our right. Thomas Spellman had to leave his beloved Connemara and spend his life working in London. Mickser Murray slipped through the education and welfare nets which might have given him a more meaningful life, while my retired friend is only now reliving the dreams that should have been his over 50 years ago.

The Ireland of today is surely unrecognisable from the country into which we were born.

To the four corners of the world

Last week I wrote about the flu epidemic of 1918 and by the strangest of coincidences I had the privilege of meeting this week John O’Mara who emigrated from Athy in 1942. The coincidence was not in meeting John but in talking to me how he casually mentioned that one of his uncles, Pat O’Mara, had died during the flu epidemic which claimed so many victims throughout Europe and America in the aftermath of the Great War. Pat Mara, as the cemetery records noted, died on 25 November 1918 aged 31 years. He had been employed as a drayman and lived with his family at Blackparks. One of his daughters, Peg, would later marry Tommy English, whose mother Mary had also succumbed to the dreaded influenza and passed away on 7 November 1918. Mary was just 36 years of age when she died, survived by her husband who had served during the First World War and who would later die in a road traffic accident on the Dublin Road. Another daughter, Rose, was to marry the legendary County Kildare footballer Cuddy Chanders and so united by marriage the Chanders and English families of today.

John O’Mara, who now leaves in Clearwater, Florida, shares a birthday with Billy Browne and myself, but his occurred just one year after the end of the Civil War. The eldest son of John O’Mara, who was known locally as “Jack”, and the former Ellen Maher, the O’Mara family lived at 12 Woodstock Street. It was from there that John and his brothers Edward, Patrick and Michael attended the Christian Brothers School and later still the local Technical School. He recalled his classmates as Kevin Maher, with whom he shared a school desk, Joe Moore, “the best writer in the class”, Billy Murphy, Michael Rainsford and Larry Johnson, the last two from Rathstewart. Teachers recalled after nearly 70 years include Brothers O’Donovan and Scully, together with Paddy Spillane from the Christian Brothers School and from the Technical School, Thomas Walsh. On leaving school, John worked in Jacksons of Leinster Street as an apprentice fitter/welder, serving his time to Paddy Fanning of St Joseph’s Terrace.

Emigration beckoned and at the height of World War II John took the emigrant boat for England, where for four years from 1942 he worked near Burton-on-Trent for the British War Department. In 1946, he started work as a welder with McAlpines and within two years married Gladys Willdig of Burton-on-Trent. Over the years, members of the O’Mara family left at different times their Woodstock Street home for places as far apart as England, Australia, America and Canada. Edward died in Australia about five years ago, his brother Patrick passed away 17 years ago in England, while their sister Maureen died in a road traffic accident in Florida in 1950. The only O’Mara family member to rest in the soil of his native place is Michael, who died in infancy.

John emigrated to Australia in 1952, where he was employed as a technical officer on what was the world’s largest hydro scheme operated by the Snowy Mountain Hydro Electric Authority. The remoteness of the Australian landscape was not to John’s liking and so in 1958 he emigrated to Canada. There he was employed on the building of the Toronto International Airport overseeing the fabrication and installation of the steel works before making what was to be his last cross-border move when he went to America in 1964. He spent the next 20 years with Hobart Bros Company, retiring in 1985 on reaching his 61st year. Both John and his wife Gladys retired to Florida, where they still live. Their son, John Thomas, is a Social Services Chief Executive Officer in Toronto, while their only daughter Maureen now recently retired is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Reserve Forces. John, who is still actively involved in church affairs in his Florida parish, attended St Leo’s University following his retirement, taking a Bachelor’s Degree in religious studies, majoring in history.

The emigration trail was not one confined to the young members of the O’Mara family as John’s parents, John and Ellen, followed their eldest son to Australia in 1952. His father died in Australia and is buried in North Sydney, while his mother Ellen died in Canada in 1983, where she went to live with her son John 15 years earlier. Ellen O’Mara is buried in Toronto.

John, who left Athy 65 years ago, when talking to me recalled vividly the events of his young days in Athy and had no difficulty in remembering the names of those he knew all those years ago. He served Mass in St Michael’s Parish Church and remembered Frank O’Brien as one of the “older Mass servers at the time”. Fr Maurice Browne, he recalls as a young curate long before he became the author of The Big Sycamore and In Monavella, two very pleasant memoirs which were very well received by Irish book read-ers in the 1960s.

John’s life-long association with the Catholic Church continues to this day and one of his proudest memories is of meeting a future Cardinal of the Church when Fr Michael Browne visited his brother, the local curate, Fr Maurice Browne in Athy. The young boy from Woodstock Street was delegated to serve the Dominican Priests Mass at one of the side altars and afterwards, when curiosity got the better of him he enquired as to what job the Dominican priest had in Rome. “I am the Pope’s theologian”, replied the clergyman, who would in later years become the head of the Dominican Order and a Cardinal of the Catholic Church.

The most extraordinary story told to me by John concerned the tragic death which befell David Bolger of Blackparks. Some years ago I extracted from a newspaper report details of how the unfortunate man met his death while attending a funeral which was making its way to St Michael’s Cemetery. My imperfect filing system does not allow me to immediately access the information I culled from that newspaper, but the details I recall recounted how he jumped over the cemetery wall just the far side of the Railway Bridge. Unfortunately, the wall hid a big drop to the ground on the far side where the entrance to a tunnel under the road had caused the embankment to be removed. The report in the newspaper gave no further background information, but this week John O’Mara filled in the missing details for me. John was a witness to David Bolger’s death that day, as with his friend Larry Johnson the two youngsters waited in St Michael’s Cemetery for the funeral to arrive. The funeral was that of Jack Bolger, the brother of the man who, probably wishing to get to the graveside ahead of the cortege to arrange something or other, cleared the wall and fell to his death.

Standing close by to where David Bolger fell to his death were the two youngsters Larry Johnson and John O’Mara. John recalled for me with clarity the events of that day over 70 years ago. The sadness of that occasion can only be imagined as one brother was buried, while another coffin was hurriedly procured to bring the remains of his brother back to the Bolger house to be waked.

The family of Jack and Ellen O’Mara, formerly of 12 Woodstock Street, are spread throughout the world. The story of this family reflects in so many ways the story of many other Athy families whose members were once familiar figures on the streets of Athy. Now they are to be found on continents as far away as America and Australia. John O’Mara lies buried in Sydney, his wife Ellen occupies a grave in Canada, while the graves of some of their children are to be found in Florida, England and Athy.

Meeting John O’Mara Junior at 83 years, now very much the senior member of the O’Mara family, I was enthralled to hear of the travels and successes which marked the family’s progress when first John and then the remaining members of the O’Mara family left Athy.

Truly it must be said that there are few corners of the world where enquiries would not throw up an Athy man or woman. The joy is in meeting the emigrants on their brief visits back to their hometown and it is my pleasure to talk this week to Athy man, John O’Mara, now an American citizen living in Florida.

Cobh - Emigration - Heritage Centre

I sat at my desk this evening to write of a recent trip to Cobh, gateway to the Americas. It was for me a journey of discovery revealing as it did the evocative nature of Irish history. But as I sat poised to commence the article my eye fastened on a small, somewhat battered green card lying on my desk. Eighty seven years ago that card was sold for the sum of two shillings guaranteeing its purchaser a reserved seat for the Grand Popular Concert in the Town Hall, Athy, on St. Patrick's Night 1910. The Concert was given by the members of the "Athy Pierot Troupe" including Miss Stanford Campbell and Mr. Sealy Jeffares. Songs, choruses, instrumental selections and national dances were on offer for those attending. I have no knowledge of Miss Campbell or Mr. Jeffares or indeed any other member of the "Athy Pierrot Troupe", all of whom have undoubtedly passed away, almost certainly forgotten and unremembered. As they performed on the Town Hall stage that night they were possibly the most talked about group of individuals in the town. Their time is now long passed and their lives have disappeared unmarked and without leaving a trace in our own time.

I had a similar sense of loss as I travelled last week on the road between Cork and Cobh. At times the road narrowed between old stone walls which could have been there for over 100 years and it was then that thoughts crowded in on my mind of emigrants who once made the same journey. I could imagine them travelling with heavy hearts but as the harbour of Cobh came into view their tired faltering steps quickened in anticipation of the adventures that lay ahead. I thought also of the 37 young orphan girls sent from Athy Workhouse to Australia between 1849 and 1850. They were part of the 4,000 or so exported from Ireland under the Orphan Emigration Scheme introduced by the English Government following the Great Famine in order to reduce the number of children in Irish Workhouses. Those young girls probably travelled the same road as I did but they were destined never again to return to their homeland.

I paid a visit to the Heritage Centre located in the old Railway building of the harbour town which told of the origins, history and legacy of Cobh under the general title of the Queenstown Story. I have previously written of Ellis Island, New York, where the Irish emigrants of a later generation were to disembark for health and other checks before being allowed on to the mainland. In the post Famine years most emigrants from Ireland travelled to Canada ending up in Gosse Island which served as a receiving station for those crossing the Atlantic. The Irish travelled to America and Canada from many Irish ports but Cobh is fixed in most of our minds as the departure point for the greater number emigrating from this island. We will never know how many Athy men and women looked upon the towering spires of St. Colman's Cathedral in Cobh as their ships sailed over seas. The personal stories of the thousands who have left this area over the last 150 years cannot now ever hope to be told. All that may now remain, perhaps laid aside and forgotten, are mementos of a time and of a place which can never be reclaimed. Letters, cards and personal effects of the emigrants are like the ticket for the St. Patrick's Night Concert in 1910, a nostalgic reminder of another forgotten age.

The Queenstown Story as related in the Heritage Centre failed to catch my imagination despite the enormous advantages which the wealth of Cobh's historical links should have gained for it. I did not come away with a sense of the awfulness which must have attended the coffin ships and the convict ships which sailed from Cobh. The story of Irish emigration is a sad but inspiring one which gives enormous opportunity in its telling for the rich tapestry of history to be unfolded in its most lucid colours. That opportunity was not seized in the Cobh Heritage Centre and while I came away satisfied enough with what I had read, heard and seen I still long for a more dramatic retelling of a story in which people from my area of Co. Kildare played a part.

The importance of a Heritage Centre in a designated Heritage Town can perhaps be over emphasised. For instance in Cobh there was obvious neglect visible in the grass infested roads and pathways and in the poor state of many shop fronts. Athy could well take to heart the lessons to be learned from this and ensure that its shop fronts, street furniture and road signage complement and support its heritage status. Our Heritage Centre will be ready towards to end of the Summer and it is perhaps now we should be reviewing the need to replace the ugly road signs around the town. Time also to get rid of the E.S.B. sub-stations erected in Barrow Quay and Woodstock Street in the 1930's and time indeed to take away the unsightly poles on our streets and put the overhead wires under ground.

The site of our new Heritage Centre, the ground floor of the Town Hall, this week began to take on an appearance it last had over 100 years ago. It was once an open area which provided shelter for the Town Market and as the walls later built to provide meeting rooms are pulled down we can more easily visualise the market as it was at the beginning of the last century. Here was the centre of commercial life in 18th and 19th century Athy and as we head into the second millennium we are reshaping the building yet again confirming its status as the cultural centre of our town.

Emigration from Athy

Emigration has always been the safety valve for our country. Without it we would inevitably have succumbed to the terrifying depths of deprivation all too common in Third World countries. One of the earliest records of emigration is that found in the "Journal of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland" for 1796 which was published as a special report of the Commons Committee set up in 1743 to investigate abuses of enforced transportation during the previous seven years. The 2,000 or so transportees listed in the Report were convicted felons or vagabonds sent over seas between 1735 and 1743. Amongst them was Graham Bradford, a Freeman of Athy of whom it was recorded in the Borough Council Minute Book of the 16th of October 1738 "was convicted in his Majesty's Court of Kings Bench of wilful and corrupt perjury and that he was pilloried and is now transported into some of his Majesty's plantations in America". It is interesting to note that the Minute Book was signed by nine members of the local Borough Council including Alexander Bradford, George Bradford and William Bradford.

The millions who left Ireland to journey by sailing ship to America during and after the Famine are listed in the seven volume "The Famine Emigrants - Lists of Irish Emigrants arriving at the Port of New York 1846 - 1851". Included amongst them were many hundreds who left Athy and South Kildare during that time. Unfortunately the lists do not give the County of origin so that we cannot identify the local people who left Ireland to start a new life in America. The voyage from Liverpool to New York usually took three to four weeks, longer in winter months. The majority of the sailing ships carried between 200 and 300 passengers while some of the larger vessels were capable of accommodating up to 500 people. Those fleeing from the Irish Famine and its aftermath had the dubious distinction of being the last group to cross the Atlantic under sail. The accommodation provided in steerage for the poor Irish emigrants was a breeding ground for cholera and dysentery. Ship Fever grew to alarming proportions during the Famine years and in Black '47 the Irish who died at Grosse Isle, an Emigration depot 30 miles below Quebec on the St. Lawrence River, numbered in excess of 5,000. Subsequent changes in shipping law required ventilation of steerage quarters and other improvements which greatly enhanced the prospects of Irish emigrants safely arriving in America.

In 1868 John J. Bealin, whose late father Mark Bealin had a bakery in the premises at the corner of Leinster Street now owned by Mrs. Lehane, left Athy for America with his older brothers William and Mark. Born on the 28th of December 1854 John J. had attended the local Christian Brothers School but when his father died and his mother remarried the three sons went across to Liverpool to join one of the new fangled steam ships then plying their trade between there and New York. The journey which in the earlier sailing ships took weeks could now be completed in less than 15 days. Bealin and other Irish emigrants alighted at America's first immigration depot Castle Clinton, three hundred feet off the southern tip of Manhattan.

Emigration to America continued to increase throughout the 19th century leading to demands to regulate entry into that country. Immigration laws were passed denying entry to Chinese nationals and "any convict, lunatic, idiot or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge". On the 1st of January 1892 Ellis Island was opened as an immigration depot and the first person through its doors was 15 year old Annie Moore of Co. Cork whose statue now graces the refurbished Ellis Island Immigration Museum which is a major tourist attraction for New York tourists.

Between 1891 and 1901 the town of Athy suffered a population decrease of 1,267, many of whom can be expected to have emigrated to America. Amongst those who left may have been Bridget Greene, a 26 year old spinster who sailed from Queenstown as a steerage passenger with two pieces of luggage on the White Star Line R.M.S. Teutonic arriving in New York on the 15th of April 1897. She is now immortalised in print as one of the 141 steerage passengers on that boat whose names are included on a display panel in the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York Harbour. Listed only as from Co. Kildare she was one of the thousands who daily went through the inspection process which one had to successfully undergo to gain entry to America.

On landing each immigrant had a number tag pinned to his or her clothing for identification purposes. Jostling three abreast they made their way up the steep flight of stairs to the great Registry Room. Public Health Doctors examined each person for any one of sixty diseases which would exclude a hapless emigrant from the mainland. The disease which resulted in most exclusions was trachoma, an infectious eye disease. Doctors used button hooks to lift up each persons eyelid for evidence of inflammation which would indicate the presence of trachoma. From there the frightened emigrant passed on to the next room where inspectors posed questions to ascertain each persons social, economic and moral fitness. It could take hours if not days to successfully circumvent the system of checks before one was permitted to take the ferry to Manhattan. If turned away for any reason the unfortunate person faced the sad, lonely boat journey back to Ireland.

Many of Athy's finest left the town for America in the early 1920's. The local G.A.A. Club suffered enormously at that time from the loss of young players who sought their future in the States. Sapper O'Neill and Michael Mahon, two County footballers were just two of the great footballers who left Athy for America in the 1920's. Mahon emigrated in October 1927 and on the night before the local G.A.A. Club, then called Young Emmets, held an "American Wake" for him in the Town Hall. Like so many others he was never to return to his home town.

The White Star Line which had boats travelling to New York and Boston from Liverpool, stopping at Cobh, operated through agents in Athy two of whom were T.J. Brennan of Duke Street and Edmund Mulhall of Barrow Bridge House. The price of a tourist cabin in 1928 for a single journey ranged from £22 to £25 depending on the time of year and the ship on which one travelled. This was a considerable sum at a time when a pint cost ten pennies, the equivalent of little more than 4p today.

One of the many interesting features of Ellis Island Immigration Museum is the American Immigrant Wall of Honour. Here are recorded some of the names of those 12 million immigrants from all lands who passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. Virtually ever nationality is represented on the Wall of Honour, the largest wall of names in the world which will remain for posterity in the shadow of the nearby Statue of Liberty. The names of all those who left Athy since the Great Famine of 150 years ago can never hope to be recorded. Some are remembered but for the most part they are forgotten, a lost diaspora which sought tolerance, opportunity and freedom in a foreign country.