Hanging between the Past and Present, an Irish Journey

US Census files for my maternal grandparents recorded their arrival dates as 1890 for James Joseph O’Neill and 1891 for Ismy Letitia Kelly. However, combing passenger lists for steamers leaving Liverpool for New York in those years led me nowhere. I looked for many iterations of their names, also scrolling through the arrival records for Castle Garden and Ellis Island. I came up with nothing. But they must be in there somewhere because, by 1893, they were naturalized citizens who married in Manhattan.

There are many, many places to find the past online these days. I needn’t name them. But while using the old standbys, I bumped into the very one I’d tried to avoid - AI. 

All along I’ve been cursing the artificially intelligent for butting into my sentences while I’m writing: “No, I don’t want any *&^%$#@ help. Leave me alone.”

                        Ismy, c.1902, NYC, pastel by Judi Mintzer from family photo

I was focusing on a casual exploration of Ismy. I entered a few known facts into the search bar, and Surprise! AI answered in the voice of a polite, research librarian: “Would you like to know what life was like in Kensington, England the year your relative was born?”

And it went on from there. “Ask me anything” the Robot said. 

Whoa. That’s a lot, I thought. But, ask I did. 

“How did a poor 16-year-old girl travel from Kensington, England to New York City in 1890?”

The Robot told me that Ismy, who worked as a servant, probably took a train from South Kensington to Liverpool. Since the Kellys were “workhouse poor”, Ismy’s steerage passage, about $25, on the Cunard or White Star Line was most likely purchased by a US relative. My guess is that her father had aunts who had emigrated (Sarah and Mary?). Perhaps they sponsored Ismy’s immigration.

The crossing took from seven to ten days. Ismy spent endless hours on the lowest decks. Steerage passengers slept in tiered bunks. Families were positioned between the quarters of single men and women to protect women from male advances. Ismy’s fare included meals of bread, gruel, and soup. The air was stagnant. Seasickness was torturous. Conditions to care for bodily waste were horrid, and privacy screening was extremely limited.

By 1890, according to my Robot, transatlantic shipping laws required all lines to provide plumbed restroom facilities for all on board. In the daytime, steerage passengers used long troughs that employed a constant flush mechanism. Seawater pumped through tubs beneath wooden seats rushed human waste into the ocean. However, during rough seas, the system pushed sewage onto the decks and into the lower quarters of the ship.

Also, steerage facilities were locked at night. Stewards placed huge tubs at the end of each aisle of tiered bunks. These were for communal, nighttime use and were subject to the same overflows as the troughs.

The consequences led to chaos, disease, and many deaths. One’s death in steerage meant immediate burial at sea. Death by suspected disease (regardless of ticket class) meant all belongings and bedding accompanied the body.

What Ismy witnessed had to have stayed with her because, through it all, she was alone. Not that she’d led a warm and fuzzy family life to begin with. She had been in and out of workhouses since the age of five. God knows how long she had been working in domestic service while living in Lewisham Union, but even a day was too long. Somehow, Ismy found her way out of there. I’d like to think her father helped her, but I suspect she helped herself.

Coming to America wasn’t a dream. It was an escape.

When Ismy arrived in New York’s harbor, she faced more indignities. A ferry took steerage passengers to Castle Garden (Battery Park today; Ellis Island did not open until 1892). She was immediately checked for signs of contagious diseases and then subjected to rigorous questioning about literacy, sponsorship, US relatives, and work prospects. Imagine how daunting this was to a teenage girl from a troubled upbringing who faced an unknown future.

Though I have no proof, I believe a Kelly relative met Ismy and offered her transitional respite. Since my grandmother could read and write, as well as converse in Irish and English, she was a fine candidate for domestic service.

Speculation prevails as I imagine her meeting the man with whom she would parent 11 living children. So, let’s look at James Joseph O’Neill as an official US citizen and a real Irish New Yorker. 

More from the past coming soon.

######## Fiction: Don’t Ya Know https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dont-ya-know-suzanne-mclain-rosenwasser/1122048551 Memoirs: Manhasset Stories I & II https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/manhasset-stories-suzanne-mclain-rosenwasser/1112360942 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/manhasset-stories-more-baby-boomer-memories-suzanne-mclain-rosenwasser/1113982658

“What’s Past is Prologue” - The Tempest, Wm. Shakespeare

Tracking the past of my maternal grandfather’s O’Neill family in Bearna, Ireland was easier than doing so for my grandmother’s, the Kellys of Mayo County.

                               Frances O’Neill with her young nephew, circa 1922, NYC

In the account that precedes this one, I mention a letter about my maternal grandparents from their daughter, Frances O’Neill. Two sentences concerning my grandmother, Ismy Letitia Kelly, born November 25, 1875 always stayed with me:

     

       “Mom was just five years old when her mother died. 

       Her dad put her and [Elizabeth Frances, an infant] 

       into a home and paid for them. This was most 

       unsatisfactory and he had them released. “

This struck at some residual pain within me. At the time, I didn’t know much about children in London workhouses in 1879, but what I did know from reading Charles Dickens wasn’t good. Today, electronic files point clearly to the details of a hard life for the Kelly family, going back to Mayo County Ireland in 1828 when and where Ismy’s grandfather, Hugh Kelly, was born. 

Little is known of Hugh’s life except that, at the age of 15 while living in Leitrim, Ireland, he fathered a son in 1843 with a woman who was 29. Her name was Mary and their child, my great-grandfather, was Patrick Kelly.

It is fair to assume Hugh Kelly was from a family of flax farmers in an area where nearly all tenants were. As a cottage industry,  flax had been grown from seed, spun into yarn, and woven into linen fabric since West Ireland’s history began. Patrick’s mother, (Hugh’s wife, I assume), would have been a weaver whose products were sold commercially. The 19th century population dressed in homespun fabrics, and though the fashion didn’t change in the years after Hugh Kelly reached adulthood, the cottage industry that supported the farmers did.

Disaster loomed for Hugh Kelly’s family and others like them who also depended on the potato crops for sustenance. Most likely, Hugh joined the thousands of Irish from the West who made their way to Dublin to cross the Irish Sea as “Spaleens,” temporary workers in the mines and factories of Liverpool and beyond. Laborers bought fourth-class tickets on steamers for seasonal work in large cities. They lived in ramshackle housing and worked for paltry wages they brought back to their starving families in Ireland, only to repeat the journey when the work picked up again.  If this is the cycle of poverty in which Hugh Kelly found himself, it’s no surprise that he died at the age of 32 in 1860.

The 1861 UK Census recorded Patrick Kelly, 17, living with his widow mother, Mary, 48, in Holborn, England, a densely populated area of Irish, Jewish, and poor English who lived in squalid conditions. Covent Garden, grand homes, and music halls were just an Omnibus ride away. And though Patrick couldn’t afford those, the many pubs of Holborn welcomed him.

It’s virtually impossible to identify Patrick in UK’s 1871 census because there are seven pages of Patrick Kellys, many of whom are single and living in the London area. However, clear records reemerge in 1873, and Patrick’s circumstances had improved immeasurably. His Westminster marriage certificate to Fanny Smith (b. 1846, Islington, England) listed his occupation as “Police Constable.”

Serving the Metropolitan Police in 1873 meant wearing a uniform top hat, frock coat, and badge while carrying a truncheon and a wooden rattle, according to the UK National Archives. Constables, nicknamed Bobbies or Peelers, patrolled assigned neighborhoods at the required 2.5 mile per hour pace for up to 12 hours a day. They were overseen by Scotland Yard and few abuses were tolerated, including fraternizing with the public, drunkenness, and corruption. Unlike single police officers, who were provided with room and board in their districts, married constables received an inadequate stipend to pay for their housing. All residences were required to be in the same area in which a constable patrolled.  In 1873, Patrick was assigned to Kensington where housing costs were significant.

My grandmother, Ismy Letitia Kelly, was born to Fanny and Patrick in 1874. Two years later, Elizabeth Frances arrived. Then, tragically in 1879, Fanny Smith Kelly died.

Soon, even more catastrophes befell them.

Respectable, approved lodgings were a requirement for constables. As a widower with two young children, Patrick had few choices. A Metropolitan Police Constable could not care for two children while working 12 hour shifts. The chilling words of Aunt Fran’s letter about putting the children in an institution were actually much starker. On September 7, 1879, Patrick Kelly and family were admitted to the Lewisham Union Workhouse. Records reveal Patrick was an inmate “breaking stones,” the servitude imposed on the destitute in return for room and board. Entering a workhouse as an inmate, destroyed a man’s reputation and that alone would have led to Patrick’s dismissal from the force, even though other circumstances may have contributed to his departure, including the fact that he was an Irishman, and less likely to have support.(workhouse.uk.org/lewisham).

 

At the gates of Lewisham, Ismy and Elizabeth were separated from their father immediately and housed in quarters where he rarely had the time or the permission to visit. Patrick paid for their daily rations and general care with forced labor. Workhouses in the Victorian years offered the destitute only a place to survive. Upon acceptance, inmates were searched for alcohol, bathed, given a clean nightshirt, and fed watery porridge or gruel. Able-bodied male residents were required to smash large stones into small gravel for road construction. This was Patrick’s fate. Breaking rocks was punishing work. With no protective gear, shards of rock flew like shrapnel into the eyes, extremities, and heads of the men. Lacking gloves, their hands were ripped open from the force of the hammers against igneous rocks; inmates were assigned a quota of rocks to break each day from a quarter to a half a ton.(surreycc.gov.uk)

                                                                             Breaking Stones at the workhouse

Patrick appeared to find his way out of the workhouse with a second marriage. In 1880 a certificate was issued to Patrick and Mary Ann Marfell, who married at the Church of St. John the Evangelist. Patrick was 37 and Mary Ann was a decade younger. It’s an interesting document. Patrick’s father, Hugh, was recorded as a coachman. Mary Ann’s father was a farmer and Patrick was a police constable which must refer to his former position. He, Mary Ann, and Patrick’s children  lived at 58 Vincent Street in Kensington. Apparently that was Mary Ann’s residence at the time of their marriage.

A year later the 1881 Census recorded that a third child entered the family, Ismy and Elizabeth’s half sibling, Thomas. Now the Kellys lived in St. Margaret where common tenement housing crowded the poor into dismal quarters.

In this census, Patrick’s occupation was “coal miner.” Understanding that there were no underground mines near London, this was a common term for those who worked on the Thames as “heavers” or “whippers”. These workers unloaded coal from the barges that brought it from mines up north. The laborers shoveled up to 225 pounds of coal into sacks which they heaved onto their backs and bore down shaky, river ladders to the docks. Their lungs were poisoned by escaping coal dust while their backs were torn with spinal injuries and ruptured muscles. At some point, Patrick left for another job involving freight portage, but, perhaps, it was a bit less strenuous. In the 1891 census, his occupation is “railway porter” that required him to haul packages and trunks from place to place. 

But the facts of 1891 point to a crisis in the family. The Kellys lived in South St. Barnabas Parish at 2 Catherine Terrace. Patrick, 49, was a railway porter still married to Mary Ann, 39; Ismy, 17, was a servant and Thomas, 10, a scholar. Patrick and Fanny Smith’s daughter, Elizabeth, was not included in the family unit.

Shockingly, in 1891, Ismy’s sister, Elizabeth Frances Kelly, was a resident in St. Catherine’s Orphanage in Marylebone. She was 15 and had resided there for a few years. It is incomprehensible as to why this was so.

Aunt Fran is my primary source at this point in the history. She wrote that Patrick’s second marriage was a “bad decision” and “he left this woman.” If that is the case, the separation occurred after the 1891 census in February. A certificate and an inquest for the death of a Mary Ann Kelly on March 18, 1891 is attributed to the Kelly ancestry tree, and though I can’t find any other death reports, I’m not sure this is Mary Ann Marfell Kelly.

Nonetheless, the purge of Patrick’s family in 1891 continued when he sent his eldest daughter to America. Ismy was sponsored by relatives of Patruck’s: Sarah and Mary Kelly who already lived in New York.

To add further pain to Patrick’s situation, if Mary Ann died that year, the Francis Thomas Kelly in St. Pancras workhouse in Camden may well be their 10 year old son whose life becomes very difficult to track in the ensuing years.

Patrick’s daughter Elizabeth married Francis Draper in 1899 in Marylebone. She listed Patrick’s occupation as “Police Constable,” the occupation of which he was most proud.

As for Patrick, in the UK census of 1901 he was a single boarder at a home in Lancashire where he worked as a Bailiff for the Farm Bureau.

A certificate of death was issued in 1904 in Chorely, Lancashire. Patrick’s place of burial is unknown.

Ismy arrived in America and settled with the Kellys in Manhattan. She became a US citizen in 1893 and somehow, she met James Joseph O’Neill.

I’ll go back to that time, another time.

#####

Fiction: Don’t Ya Know

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dont-ya-know-suzanne-mclain-rosenwasser/1122048551

Memoirs: Manhasset Stories I & II

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/manhasset-stories-suzanne-mclain-rosenwasser/1112360942

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/manhasset-stories-more-baby-boomer-memories-suzanne-mclain-rosenwasser/1113982658