Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 1 August 2019

Tales from 1919: Death of a Library Philanthropist

   On 11 August 1919, almost one hundred years ago, a good friend of Cork’s library service passed away in Lennox, Massachusetts, USA.  Mr Andrew Carnegie, funder of many Irish libraries and Cork City Library passed away after a brief illness – after contracting bronchial pneumonia. Mr Carnegie was born at Dunfermline in Scotland on 25 November 1835 and emigrated to the United States in 1848. He settled in Pittsburgh and was for thirteen years in the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. He worked for some time as an iron moulder, rising stop by step until he controlled great steel rolling mills in that city.

   Andrew acquired immense wealth and then came to the conclusion that wealth was simply held in trust for the benefit of the community. He conceived the idea that the best way to benefit the community was by educating them, and as all could not attend high schools or universities, he endowed libraries, believing in the concept that the best university was a good library.

   Not only did he give funding towards to the foundation of libraries, he gave immense sums for education in Scotland and America and built and endowed the Peace Palace at The Hague. He also founded the Carnegie Hero Fund for the recognition of bravery in saving life. When he retired from active participation in business, Andrew Carnegie wrote several volumes, including An American Four-in-Hand in Britain (1883), Round the World (1884), Triumphant Democracy (1885), The Gospel of Wealth (1901), The Empire of Business (1902), Life of James Watt (1905), and Problems of Today (1908).

   The announcement of Mr Carnegie’s death on 11 August 1919 was received with feelings of deep regret in Cork City and several parts of Munster. Throughout, the south of Ireland many people were in receipt of the awards made by the Carnegie Hero Fund. Numerous acts of bravery have been recognised by this Fund and gifts in recognition made.

   Andrew Carnegie invested though in 660 public libraries across Britain and Ireland alone at the turn of the twentieth century. On 21 October 1903 the foundation stone of the Cork Carnegie Library was laid by Andrew Carnegie and afterwards on the same day he received the Freedom of the City. Andrew’s action in providing the citizens of Cork with a sum of £11,000 for the erection of the library at Anglesea Street, and a sum of £1,000 towards the furnishing of the building was greatly appreciated. The new library was to replace a public library (est. 1892) within the School of Art on Nelson’s Place. The new Carnegie Library was located on Anglesea Street next to Cork City Hall and had a lifespan for only 15 years, until 1920.

   A description in the Cork Examiner in 1905 describes that the style was Elizabethan with an elegant front with a beautiful entrance, balcony, and tower as added attractive features. At the main entrance from Anglesea street was a vestibule, which opened into a large open hall, the floor of which was laid as a terrazzo executed by Italian workmen. Beyond this and in line with the entrance was “the lending department, furnished in the most up-to-date manner”.

   The central portion of the building was lit mainly from the roof light. To the left, of the lending Library was the newsroom. Lined along the sides with neatly designed newspaper stands, the floor space being occupied by tables for the renders. The corresponding area to the left of the lending department was devoted to the reference library. A space in the southern side was partitioned off into a storeroom or workplace for the library attendant. Flanking the entrance on the ground floor were the librarian’s offices on the left, and the ladies’ rending room on the right, and over these respectively were the Librarian’s apartments and the juvenile reading room.

    The Library was lit by gas and specially designed pendants and brackets were fitted up in the reading rooms for the comfort of patrons. The heating and ventilation were on the Plenum system – the heating chamber being at the northern side of the library adjacent to the Municipal Buildings. The heated air was controlled by means of a fan driven by an electric motor and was taken by underground ducts to the various rooms. Practically the entire sum of £11,000, which Mr Carnegie provided for the establishment of the Library was been absorbed into the work.

   On 12 December 1920 the Carnegie Free Library on Anglesea Street in Cork was destroyed by a fire — lit by Black and Tans, members of the British Crown Forces — as well the adjoining City Hall, and large sections of the city centre especially St Patrick’s Street. The burning of the Library left the city without a public library service until 1924, when premises were provided on a temporary basis for a library in Tuckey Street. That service was transferred in 1930 to new premises behind a new Hiberno-Romanesque facade at nos. 57-8 Grand Parade.

   The redevelopment of the library service in the 1920s was due largely to the herculean efforts of the then librarian, James Wilkinson.  Post the 1920 burning, James Wilkinson issued an appeal for book donations which yielded an extraordinarily generous response from the national and international community.  The accession ledgers in which acquisitions to stock were recorded continue to be housed by the Central Library’s Local Studies Department and make for fascinating insight into the history of reading in Cork City.

Captions:

1008a. Andrew Carnegie, 1913 (source: Cork City Library)

1008b. Carnegie Library, Anglesea Street, Cork, c.1900 (source: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 25 July 2019

Mother Jones Festival and Summer School 2019

      The eighth Spirit of Mother Jones festival and Summer School will take place in and around the Shandon Historic Quarter from Wednesday 31 July until Saturday 3 August 2019.  The festival celebrates the life and achievements of Cork woman, Mary Harris. She was born in the Shandon area in 1837 and went on to become Mother Jones, known as the “most dangerous woman in America” due to her activism on behalf of the miners, and exploited workers.

    Over 30 events will be held, and will include dozens of participants from the US, UK and from all over Ireland. Events include the summer school itself as well as a host of singers, poets, films, book launches, music and the traditional toast at the Mother Jones plaque to conclude the festival. One of the principal highlights will be the very first performance and recreation on the streets of Shandon of the historic March of the Mill Children led by Mother Jones in July 1903.  In cooperation with Cork Community Art Link and the Blarney Street Foróige group, the Festival committee have organised a pageant to celebrate this huge event in US history, which highlighted the exploitation of young children who were forced to work in the mines, mills and factories of America at the beginning of the twentieth century.

     Of local Cork interest is the talk on John Swiney, the United Irishman whose woollen shop on Shandon Street was the headquarters of the United Irishmen in Cork in the 1790s. This year coincides with the 175^th anniversary of the year of his death. Historian Dr Kieran Groeger will provide an account of this amazing character, lost in Irish history.

    John Swiney was born in Cork on 7 August 1773 and as a young man along with the Sheares Brothers and many others he became interested in the radical ideas and writings such as The Declaration of the Rights of Man emanating from the French Revolution. He joined the increasingly active United Irishmen in Cork. A woollen draper by trade, his shop was located near the junction of Shandon Street and Blarney Street. This shop became a centre of operations, an unofficial headquarters for the United Irishmen in Cork City and witnessed many coming and goings of activists in the mid-1790s. Citizens of Cork witnessed much civil unrest in this period with transportation for life being the regular punishment for persons administering the oath of the United Irishmen.

   Some 4000 men in Cork city had joined the United Irishmen at that time and John Swiney was one of the main leaders. Indeed, John Swiney had earlier joined Lord Donoughmore’s Loyal Cork Legion and militia to learn about military tactics.  He effectively operated as an intelligence officer for the United Irishmen, which was then seeking assistance from the French government for an invasion. On the ground he campaigned against tithes and linked up to the agrarian land disturbances especially in East Cork at this time. However, the Cork United Irishmen was riven with spies, his activities and his shop were watched by the authorities. He was arrested on 28 March 1798 while visiting Roger O’Connor in Cork Jail. On the same day, two soldiers from the Dublin County Militia were executed in the City. James Murphy and Patrick Halvey were charged with sedition, found guilty and shot at the camp field on the present day Mardyke. John Swiney had earlier distributed handbills among the militia asking them to refuse to execute their colleagues. John’s importance was such that he was immediately transported to Dublin on 29 March.

    John Swiney was eventually sent to the bleak Fort George outside Inverness in Scotland as well as twenty other leaders of the United Irishmen including Roger O’Connor (the father of Chartist leader, Feargus O’Connor) and Arthur O’Connor of West Cork, Thomas Russell (born in Dromahane, Co Cork) and Thomas Addis Emmet, whose father Dr Robert Emmet worked among the poor of Cork for many years.

     John Swiney’s shop on Shandon Street was purchased by Cornelius Swiney of Coolroe who continued to trade in woollen goods from the premises. After more than three years in prison John was released and banished from Ireland and sent to Hamburg in Germany. However, he had not given up on his dreams of a rebellion. A year later, John Swiney slipped quietly back to Cork following an invitation from Robert Emmet to lead Cork in the 1803 uprising. Amidst the disaster and retribution which followed the brief uprising in Dublin, the authorities arrested over 40 people in and around County Cork.  John Swiney found refuge in Cork City, probably with the help of Cooper Penrose at Woodhill (Sarah Curran and Lord Edward Fitzgerald both found refuge there) and fled again from Crosshaven in Cork Harbour to France where he delivered the news to Thomas Addis Emmet in Paris of his brother’s recent execution in Dublin. Along with many other Irish refugees after the failed rebellions, John joined the Irish Legion established by Napoleon in 1803 and was given the rank of captain.

 John Swiney died in October 1844 and is buried in the cemetery of St Martin-Des-Champs in Morlaix.

    The talk entitled “The Extraordinary Life of John Swiney, the United Irishman from Shandon” by Dr Kieran Groeger will take place at 2.30pm Thursday 2 August 2019 at the Cathedral Visitors Centre. See www.motherjonescork.com for more information on other events.

 Captions:

1007a. Portrait of Mary Harris/ Mother Jones (source: Robert Shetterly)

1007b. Mother Jones plaque at Shandon, unveiled in 2012 (source: www.motherjonescork.com)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 18 July 2019

Tales from 1919: The Work of the Waterworks

    In the western corner of the Old Cork Waterworks on Lee Road lies a weighing scales for deliveries of coal. Coal came up a back cobbled laneway into the complex. One hundred years ago in mid-July 1919 Cork Corporation’s Waterworks committee met with councillors. The Resident Engineer Mr Michael O’Riordan reported that the coal contractor had just delivered about 240 tons of Lancashire coal from the Collins Green pit. After using some of it, he stopped delivery, finding it very difficult to keep up the steam pressure needed to drive the engine room. In his view it was the worst coal ever supplied to the pumping station. The contract was for the best double-screened Welsh Tredegar steam goal, and the contractor informed him that he could not get it due to shortage.  Mr O’Riordan felt that the case should be brought before the Coal Controller, Dublin, to ask him to explain the railways in Cork were being supplied with Welsh steam coal, whilst the Waterworks, was not.

   Mr H G Burgess, Director of Cross-Channel Transportation and Coal Controller’s Department, wrote to the secretary of the Waterworks Committee noting that no restriction had been placed on the transportation to the Southern Coal Company of double screened Tredegar Monmouthshire steam coal. The company had in 1919 exported 2,345 tons more coal more than in the corresponding period of 1917. He deemed there was no excuse why the stocks of the Cork Waterworks had not been kept up. He claimed that the Southern Coal Company may have wrongly distributed their coal and there were unlimited supplies. Mr Burgess further relayed that he was to write to his Cork representative – Mr Buckley, 118 Patrick Street, Cork to go into the whole question with Mr Young, secretary of the Southern Area Coal Control Committee.

   Resident Engineer Michael Riordan began his career as a draftsman on Haulbowline Island under the British Regime. He won the post of Resident Engineer at the Cork Waterworks in an open job competition. During his period of work he was directly responsible for many important changes in the system being wrought by the City Engineer, Mr Henry Cutler and his successor Mr J F Delany. One of the changes was the installation of large turbines upon which the city was largely dependent for its excellent supply of water.

   Reports from the work of the Waterworks from 1900 to 1912 survive in Local Studies in Cork City Library and are supplemented by historical research by Dr Colin in his great book, The Industrial Archaeology of Cork City. In a report in spring 1902 the then City Engineer, Henry A Cutler, detailed to the waterworks committee of the existing state of the pumping machinery plant. He highlighted that the Cornish engine boilers were “unfit for further use” and were being “worked at risk”. Mr Cutler supplied tables showing the functioning of both the water and steam-powered plant. In 1902 Mr Cutler’s findings were agreed with by J H Ryan, president of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland, and Henry Davey, a mechanical engineer. Both were asked by the waterworks committee to investigate the condition of the pumping station. They noted that the steam plant was “of an obsolete and antiquated description, and from long wear and tear is in a very bad condition, requiring constant and careful attention to keep it in a working order”. In concluding their report, they further observed that the existing arrangements for supplying the city with water were “not only unsatisfactory, but critical”.

   In acting on Mr Cutler’s advice, the Waterworks committee by September of 1902 was already receiving tenders for the new pumping engines – Triple Expansion Vertical Engines. Robert Merrick, a Cork iron founder, made arrangements with Combe Barbour of Belfast to provide him with the necessary engines which he would install using local labour. Merrick had tendered for the manufacture of the engines and met the committee’s wish that a local manufacturer should receive this most important project. It was not until mid-1904 that the two large engines were under construction at Combe Barbour’s Belfast works. The engines were completed by 1905 but as late as April 1906 only one of the low-level engines had been installed, whilst that of the second was underway. By August 1906 all of the work had almost been completed. In February of 1907 that the old plant was finally shut down, and the new steam plant became fully operational.

   In 1919 the total population of the city supplied with water was 91,250. The area supplied was divided into four districts, three of which, North, Centre and South Districts derived their supply from a Low-Level Reservoir. The Fourth district, which was the high-level district was supplied from the High-Level Reservoir. Circa 4.3m gallons per day were extracted from a culvert connected to the river complete with a filtration system of sand and gravel. The demand for general domestic use in the city alone was in excess of three million gallons. Nonetheless, the filter tunnel was able to cater for the demand of the city up until 1928, by which time four rapid gravity and sand filters had been added to the system. By 1919, through leaks and wastage, the Waterworks department estimated that almost 50 per cent of the supply was wasted and Waterworks reports record continuous attempts to inform the population of the need to conserve water for the proper running of the city’s water supply.

 Kieran’s new book The Little Book of Cork Harbour (2019) is published by The History Press and is available in Waterstones, Vibes and Scribes and Easons.

Captions:

1006a. Plan of Cork Waterworks, c.1900 (source: Old Cork Waterworks)

1006b. Triple Expansion Vertical Engines at the Old Cork Waterworks, present day (picture: Kieran McCarthy)