Stories from 1918: The Cork Sailors’ Widows and Orphans Fund
Across the newspapers of Spring and Autumn 1918, references are regularly made of subscriptions being made to the Cork Sailors’ Widows and Orphans Fund. It was established to consider the impact on families who lost their breadwinners on torpedoed vessels and to relieve a large number of cases of distress among deserving widows and orphans.
A sub-committee of key merchants in the city was set up on 5 April 1918 and by late September it had held ten meetings. The committee was championed by Bishop Daniel Cohalan of Cork, Bishop Charles Cork of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, Lord Mayor T C Butterfield, A R MacMullen, President of the Cork Incorporated Chamber of Commerce and Shipping, Ebenezer Pike, Chairman of the City of Cork Steam Packet Company, Sir Stanley Harrington, Samuel H Newson and T Lillis, General Manager of Munster and Leinster Bank.
The Committee logged all meetings and published in the Cork Examiner all donations. Some were individual donations, which were banked until required for the payment of relief. Promises of annual subscriptions of any sum, small or large over five or ten years were also welcome. Larger sums of money came from bodies such as the Cork Cattle Trade Association. This association aimed to acknowledge the contribution of seamen in the cattle export trade.
Citizens in the city and county organised entertainments and collections, which also helped materially strengthen the Fund. A benefit concert was hosted by Lord Mayor Butterfield in Cork Opera House. On 25 March 1918, the programme had contributions by several very-popular artistes Miss Rita Wallace sang selections from Madame Butterfly and Maritana. The accompaniment was by Miss M Barker of the Cork School of Music. The Opera House Orchestra was augmented for the occasion. It performed the overture Poet and Peasant and long selections from Cavalleria Rusticana and other pieces.
A summary report was given at a meeting of the General Committee of the Fund held on 25 September 1918 at the Munster and Leinster Bank, with the local Canon O’Leary, PP in the chair. Up to September 1918 the sub committee dealt only with cases arising out of the loss of the six Cork steamers, Bandon, Ardmore, Lismore, Kenmare, Innisfallen and Inniscarra (see last week’s column). A debate was ongoing whether to include a number of cases of widows of Cork men who were lost on other non-Cork related boats. About 20 cases were known to the sub-committee.
Ninety-six lives were lost on the six Cork steamers and applications for relief from the fund were received for 95 households. Of these 17 were dealt with by grants of fixed loans, 67 others received monthly allowances, and of the remaining seven cases there were still under consideration and four for different reasons were not considered suitable for assistance. In dealing with all the cases the General Committee worked closely with the parish priests of the city in the Middle Parish, North Parish, South Parish,Blackrock and with clergymen in county districts. The services of the Cork Savings Bank gave useful advice and practical help in the distribution of the fund.
The scope and usefulness of the work done by the Fund was wide ranging. Many heartbreaking cases were brought to the General Committee. In one case a widow had ten children and was expecting another. There were numerous cases of six and seven children in a household. Three expectant mothers were given special grants. A grant was given to a family to bury their mother, who only survived her husband a few weeks. Her children were being helped by a weekly allowance from the Fund. The aging father of a deceased seaman lived on a small island off the west coast of Ireland. His only income after his son’s death was by picking and selling periwinkles and Carrigeon moss. In another case a grant was made for sanatorium treatment for a son who was recommended as suitable by his doctor. The committee also considered an application from a widow for the amount of fees required to qualify herself as a maternity nurse.
On 11 August 1918 the Committee sustained a great loss by the death of Mr Francis Lyons, of 4 Ashton Place, Blackrock Road. He was one of the committee’s core members and was Joint Honorary Secretary and Treasurer. Besides being one of the founders of the Fund, Mr Lyons took a keen and an interest in its management and promotion and gave up a great deal of time to the General Committee meetings.
On 25 September 1918, the financial position of the Cork Sailors’ Widows and Orphans Fund included total receipts, £7,282 4s 10d, which includes the large subscription of £705 1s 1d received recently from the Cork Cattle Trade Association, and £40 received from the Canteen Committee of the Incorporated Church of Ireland. The sum of £1,651 6s had been allocated in final grants and weekly allowances.
The Committee was paying weekly allowances amounting to £39 19s per week, at which rate the balance they felt would last less than three, years. It was hoped that during that time additional contributions would be received which, would enable them to continue longer its important work.
Captions:
947a. Steam Packet Office at Penrose Quay Cork, c.1900 (source: Cork City Museum)
947b. King George Statue atop Steam Packet Office on Penrose Quay, present day (picture: Kieran McCarthy)
Kieran’s June Historical Walking Tours:
Saturday 9 June 2018, Cork City & its Bridges (new tour), learn about the early history of the city’s most historic bridges; meet at the National Monument, Grand Parade, 2.30pm (free, duration: two hours, finishes in City Centre) in association with Meitheal Mara’s Cork Harbour Festival.
Saturday 23 June 2018, The Cork City Workhouse; learn about the workhouse created for 2,000 impoverished people in 1841; meet at the gates of St Finbarr’s Hospital, Douglas Road, 12noon (free, duration: two hours, on site tour), in association with the Friends of St Finbarr’s Hospital Garden Fete.
Saturday 30 June 2018, The Lough & its Curiosities; explore the local history from the Legend of the Lough to suburban development; meet at green area at northern end of The Lough, entrance of Lough Road to The Lough; 12noon (free, duration: two hours, on site tour)
Saturday 9 June 2018, Cork City & its Bridges, historical walking tour (new) with Kieran, learn about the early history of the city’s most historic bridges, learn about their construction and their relationship with the river and surrounding areas; meet at the National Monument, Grand Parade, 2.30pm (free, duration: two hours, finishes in City Centre) in association with Meitheal Mara’s Cork Harbour Festival.
Saturday 23 June 2018, The Cork City Workhouse; historical walking tour with Kieran, learn about the workhouse created for 2,000 impoverished people in 1841; meet at the gates of St Finbarr’s Hospital, Douglas Road, 12noon (free, duration: two hours, on site tour), in association with the Friends of St Finbarr’s Hospital Garden Fete.
Saturday 30 June 2018, The Lough & its Curiosities; historical walking tour with Kieran, explore the local history from the Legend of the Lough to suburban development; meet at green area at northern end of The Lough, entrance of Lough Road to The Lough; 12noon (free, duration: two hours, on site tour)
Sunday 6 May 2018 with Cllr Kieran McCarthy, The City Workhouse; learn about the workhouse created for 2,000 impoverished people in 1841; meet at the gates of St Finbarr’s Hospital, Douglas Road, 2.30pm (free, duration: two hours, on site tour), in association with the National Famine Commemoration, 2018, Cork.
Saturday 21 April, Stories from Blackrock, tour of Blackrock Village, from Blackrock Castle to Nineteenth Century Houses and Fishing; meet at Blackrock Castle, 12noon (free, 2 hours, finishes near railway line walk, Blackrock Road)
Saturday 28 April, The Victorian Quarter; tour of the area around St Patrick’s Hill – Wellington Road and MacCurtain Street; meet on the Green at Audley Place, top of St Patrick’s Hill, 12noon (free, duration: two hours, finishes by St Patrick’s Church, Lower Road)
Sunday 6 May 2018, The City Workhouse; learn about the workhouse created for 2,000 impoverished people in 1841; meet at the gates of St Finbarr’s Hospital, Douglas Road, 2.30pm (free, duration: two hours, on site tour), in association with the National Famine Commemoration, 2018, Cork.
Great afternoon for a bank holiday walk on Cork’s Marina and around the Atlantic Pond 🙂
Cork’s Marina, originally called the Navigation Wall, was completed in 1761. In 1820, Cork Harbour Commissioners formed and purchased a locally built dredger. The dredger deposited the silt from the river into wooden barges, which were then towed ashore. The silt was re-deposited behind the Navigation Wall. During the Great Famine, deepening of the river created jobs for 1,000 men who worked on creating the Navigation Wall’s road – The Marina. The environs is also home to three rowing clubs – the Lee Rowing Club founded in 1850, which is the second oldest club in the country; Shandon Boat Club, founded in 1875, and Cork Boat Club founded in 1899 by members of Dolphin Swimming Club – all of which ply the waters of the river regularly and who have annual regattas.
Missed one of Kieran McCarthy’s 50 columns of Our City, Our Town in the weekly Cork Independent in 2017 – all exploring the topical issues and challenges within Cork in 1917 – check them all out and more images at http://corkheritage.ie/?page_id=4649
Evening Echo is sited on old gasometer land gifted by Cork Gas Company to Cork City Council in the late 1980s, and subsequently dedicated as Shalom Park in 1989. The park sits in the centre of an old Cork neighbourhood known locally as ‘Jewtown.’ This neighbourhood is also home to the National Sculpture Factory. Not a specific commission, nor working to a curatorial brief, Evening Echo is a project generated as an artist’s response to the particularities of a place and has quietly gathered support from Cork Hebrew Congregation, Cork City Council, Bord Gáis and a local Cork newspaper, the Evening Echo.
References to the slow subsidence of the Jewish community in Cork have been present for years, but there is now a palpable sense of disappearance. Within the Cork Hebrew Congregation there are practical preparations underway for this, as yet unknown, future moment of cessation. Evening Echo moves through a series of thoughts and questions about what it might mean to be at this kind of cusp, both for the Jewish community and for other communities in Cork.
Evening Echo is manifested in a sequence of custom-built lamps, remote timing systems operated from Paris, a highly controlled sense of duration, a list of future dates, an annual announcement in Cork’s Evening Echo newspaper and a promissory agreement. Fleetingly activated on an annual cycle, and intended to exist in perpetuity, the project maintains a delicate position between optimism for its future existence and the possibility of its own discontinuance.
Maddie Leach’s work is largely project-based, site responsive and conceptually driven and addresses new thinking on art, sociality and place-based practices. She seeks viable ways of making artworks in order to interpret and respond to unique place-determined content and she is recognised for innovatively investigating ideas of audience spectatorship, expectation and participation in relation to art works. Leach’s projects include commissions for Iteration: Again (Tasmania, 2011), Close Encounters (Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, 2010), One Day Sculpture (2008), the New Zealand publication Speculation for the Venice Biennale 2007 and Trans Versa (The South Project, Chile, 2006).
Pictures of some of the 50-60 year old Lime trees that fell on Centre Park Road, Cork during Storm Ophelia. Over 500 trees were felled by the storm on Monday 16 October 2017.
