Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Tombstone Tuesday: Just beyond a 'Cathedral' of trees

In Maynooth, County Kildare, at the site of Maynooth Cathedral and Seminary School, there is a simple unadorned graveyard, in which priests and others who were once members of the seminary community are interred. It is in an area behind the school and the church, so if you do not know where to look for it, you will not find it. The tops of the trees have been grown so that they knit together in such a way that a sort of beautiful 'Cathedral' of trees is created. The entranceway is obscured, although it is marked by an icon of the crucified Christ, and the gate into the cemetery is just behind it.






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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Tombstone Tuesday: Leaving three young children to mourn her loss...



Often I am drawn to stones such as this one, not purely for the look of the stone, but for the message on it. Although the angel which stands atop this stone is spectacular, it is the reference to the three young children who were left to mourn the loss of their young mother which leaves the greatest mark.

Copyright©irisheyesjg2012.
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Thursday, May 3, 2012

Child of our heart's best love farewell...



The stone reads:

In Affectionate Remembrance
of
Mary Margaret
Beloved Daughter Of
Catherine Lynch
16 Annavilla North Circular Road
Died 17th June 1865
Aged 11 Years.

Child of our heart's best love farewell,
On earth adieu to thee,
Thy sweet young happy form and face,
Live but in memory.

Also
Mary Catherine, John & Francis
Who died young.

Erected by their fond mother.

Copyright©irisheyesjg2012.
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Saturday, April 14, 2012

Remembering Titanic: Those whose names were known

Although the bodies of the eight individuals interred beneath these stones in Fairview Lawn cemetery were not returned to their families for burial, the fact that they were identified meant they could be interred under stones which bear their names and other details. The numbers on the markers indicate the place they held in the procession of bodies pulled from the sea.









Copyright©irisheyesjg2008-2012.
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Thursday, April 12, 2012

Remembering Titanic victims: Irish aboard Titanic

Joseph Dawson - Titanic Crew: Coal Trimmer

After the release of James Cameron's film Titanic, the grave marker for Irish born J. Dawson was one of the most visited of the Titanic victims. For months it was covered with flowers, love poems, and keepsakes. Many people assumed that the fictional character Jack Dawson, as portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio, was based on the man interred in this grave.

The real J. Dawson was in fact far from a romantic figure. 'J' was not 'Jack', but Joseph Dawson. Joseph was born into the tenement life of inner city Dublin in 1888 to parents who were widowed from their first spouses, but not married to each other. The 1901 census shows his family living in two rooms of a tenement in Rutland street. Their mother died when Joseph was eighteen, and so he and his younger sister Maggie moved to England. After a brief stint in the Royal Army Medical Corp, in 1911 Dawson moved into the family home of John Priest, a White Star Line fireman. Dawson was tempted into life on the high seas by dreams of seeing the world. He signed on with the White Star Line, serving first on the Majestic, and then on the Titanic, where he worked as a coal trimmer, responsible for bringing wheel barrows filled with coal to the firemen at the furnaces.

The RMS Titanic fatality report produced at the time, and included below from the Nova Scotia Canada Archives, incorrectly identified Dawson's job as a fireman, and incorrectly estimated his age as 30. Joseph Dawson was 23 years old when he died.


Ernest Waldron King - Titanic Crew: Assistant Purser

Galway born Ernest Waldron King's employment aboard the ships of the White Star Line was the welcome answer to a year long stint of unemployment. His family, including his father, a Church of Ireland curate, were proud of him and encouraged him in his career on the sea. However, an incident early in King's career hinted that a life at sea might not be a charmed one. Although he came away from it unscathed, in 1911 Ernest King was working onboard the ship Olympic when she collided with the cruiser HMS Hawke. Her proximity to Southampton meant the ship did not sink, but was brought back into harbour. King left the Olympic and signed on to work on the Titanic.

Ernest King's body was not found until two weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, and it was found floating almost fifty miles away from where the ship sank. The body, counted as number 321 of those drawn from the sea, was sent to the morgue at Halifax, Nova Scotia, where it was identified as that of Ernest Waldron King. King was interred in Fairview Lawn cemetery, 9 May 1912.

The RMS Titanic fatality report produced at the time, and included below from the Nova Scotia Canada Archives, purports that the body is "probably purser's assistant".


Copyright©irisheyesjg2008-2012.
Click on photos to view larger version.

References:

Molony, Senan. The Irish Aboard Titanic, Dublin, 2012.
RMS Titanic Virtual Archives, Nova Scotia Canada Archives

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Wordless Wednesday, almost: Remembering Titanic: Little child lost*


*Update: In 2002, More than 90 years after the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic, the identity of one of the victims was finally discovered by means of DNA matching. The "unknown child" buried with other victims in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has been identified as Eino Viljami Panula, a member of a Finnish family who died in the disaster. He was 13 months old when the Titanic sank on April 15 1912. His mother Maria and four brothers also drowned.

Copyright©irisheyesjg2008-2012.
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Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Tombstone Tuesday: Arthur Gordon McCrae: The only Australian lost with Titanic


Copyright ©John Cowper Australia
Arthur Gordon McCrae's Celtic cross headstone stands out among the rows of simple markers of the Titanic lost. He was born in Adelaide Australia, the grandson of the illegitimate daughter of the 5th Duke of Gordon. The only Australian to die on Titanic, he was a graduate in Engineering from the University of Sydney. Following graduation he worked first at a goldmine in West Africa, and then at a Siberian copper mine. He took a second-class ticket on the Titanic with the purpose of travelling to Canada to meet friends. His recovered body was dressed in a blue suit, white canvas shoes and a flannel shirt. He was carrying a diamond and emerald ring, gold links, two watches, a key chain, keys, a pencil case, foreign currency and a letter case. He was 32 years old.

Biography from Encyclopedia Titanica: http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/

Copyright©irisheyesjg2008-2012.
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Monday, April 9, 2012

Remembering victims of Titanic: Interred without a name: the unidentified


It was unexpected, the feelings of sadness that arose in me upon viewing the graves of some of those lost in the sinking of the Titanic, and now interred at Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The ship went down 15 April 1912. As far as I know, none on board were ancestors of mine; however, perhaps I felt the way I did viewing these graves because so many of those lost were Irish. Maybe it was the simplicity of the markers, but more likely I was struck by the fact that so many bear no name. These simple granite markers testify only to the date of the event and to a number. The number on each stone signifies each one's place in the procession of bodies pulled from the sea.

1500 people went into the sea that night. Many were never recovered. Some were buried at sea; some were returned to their families in Europe. 150 Titanic victims were buried in Halifax from 3 May to 12 June, 1912. In Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery, 19 were interred. 10 are in Baron de Hirsch Jewish Cemetery, and 121 are in Fairview Lawn Cemetery. Of these, 44 remain unidentified. The following are photographs of some of those markers. For photographs of St. Colman's Cathedral in Cobh, County Cork, Titanic's last port of call visit my blog: 'On a flesh and bone foundation': An Irish History.






Each of these granite markers stands over the grave of someone lost with the Titanic. 44 bear no name.

*Click on photographs to view larger version.
All photographs Copyright©irisheyesjg2008-2012.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Mystery Monday: The Curious Case of the Family Wilde: all was not as it appears


In Mount Jerome Cemetery Dublin stands this monument to the family Wilde, whose best known offspring is Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, dramatist extraordinaire. Both the location of the tomb in Mount Jerome and the details on the epitaph to Sir William Wilde may leave one with the impression that the Wildes were a wildly successful family, to use a bad pun, except this was not entirely the case. The curious case of the Wilde Family is a good example of the fact that for some families, even after death, it is very important to keep up appearances.

Sir William Wilde was a highly respected physician, and as his stone attests "surgeon oculist to her majesty Queen Victoria"; however, his life was touched by scandal. In addition to having two illegitimate daughters outside of his marriage to Lady Wilde, Sir William was accused of seducing a colleague's young daughter. Lawsuits were launched on both sides of the matter, and his reputation was never quite the same afterward. After his death it was discovered that he was heavily in debt and virtually penniless. His panel on the stone reads:


Sir William Wilde
M.D. 
F.R.C.S. 
Surgeon Oculist to her Majesty 
Queen Victoria 
Chevalier of the Royal Swedish Order of 
The North Star 
The Founder of St Mark's Opthalmic Hospital  
and the Author of many works 
illustrative of the history and 
Antiquities of Ireland 
born at Castlerea, County Roscommon 
March 1815 
died 
at his residence Merrion Square, Dublin
April 1876

Apart from son Oscar, who became the toast of the London stage despite his own scandals, including a period of imprisonment, it appears that the rest of the family enjoyed little success. Although he was educated in Law at Trinity College, and was called to the Bar as a Barrister, Oscar's brother 'Willie' was never a practicing lawyer.  Instead he was a notorious drunkard and spendthrift. Both William and his mother Lady Wilde died penniless in Chelsea England.

At the end of his life Oscar Wilde was living in France, and is entombed beneath a fabulous Art Deco headstone at Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, (click on link for virtual tour). Isola, the daughter of the family, tragically died at the age of ten at the home of an aunt in County Longford, and she is interred in St. John's churchyard. The last line of text on Lady Wilde's panel on this stone is taken from the poem 'Requiescat' which Oscar Wilde wrote in memory of his beloved sister.  Isola is the 'she' to which the lines refer, not Lady Wilde.


Lady Wilde, the former Jane Francesca Elgee, whose achievements are described at length on the right side panel of this tomb, is not interred within; instead she is buried in an unmarked common grave in Kensel Green Cemetery in London, England. Unfortunately, at the time of Lady Wilde's death, there was neither money to pay for a headstone, nor for a private plot. Her panel on this stone reads:

In Memoriam
Jane Francesca Lady Wilde
Speranza** of the nation
writer translator poet and 
nationalist, author of works
on Irish folklore Early advocate of
Equality for women and founder of
a leading literary salon
Born Dublin 27 December 1821
Died London 3 February 1896

Wife of Sir William and mother of
William Charles Kingsbury Wilde
Barrister and Journalist
1852 - 1899
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde
Poet, Wit and Dramatist
1854 - 1900
Isola Francesca Emily Wilde
1857 - 1867
"Tread lightly she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The lilies grow".

**(Speranza, an Italian word meaning 'hope', was Lady Wilde's pen name)

Click on photographs to view larger version.

References:

Blain, Virginia., Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, authors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Woman Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present, Yale University Press, 1990.

Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde, Penguin Canada, 1988.

Moyle, Franny. Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde, John Murray, 2011.

Copyright©irisheyesjg2012.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Tombstone Tuesday: By her Beloved Husband...

The stone reads:

O Lord have mercy
on the soul of Mary
Browne Who Departed
This life July 15th 1881
AGED 23 YEARS
R I P

By her Beloved Husband
James Browne

May Jesus Mary and Joseph...

This stone in memory of Mary Browne stands in the cemetery of Murrisk Abbey in County Mayo.  Although the upper portion of the text looks as though it was carved by the mason, perhaps her husband, the last line on this stone, part of which is no longer visible, looks as though it was added as a personal message.  Presumably it says May Jesus, Mary, and Joseph have mercy on her soul, but it is lost to time.

Click on photograph to view larger version.
Copyright@irisheyesjg2012.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Tombstone Tuesday: Nicholas Donnelly, Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, 1837-1920




For biographical information about Nicholas Donnelly see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Donnelly

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All photographs Copyright©irisheyesjg2012.
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