Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 24 May 2012
Technical Memories (Part 17)
A Turn of a Key
“Mr. A. F. Sharman Crawford said that as Vice-Chairman of the Technical Instruction Committee of the Borough of Cork, he had on their behalf to thank the Lord Mayor [James Simcox] for his attendance and to welcome him at the end of what he hoped would be his first year in office. He would ask him to declare the building open, but first of all he would call on Mr. Arthur Hill, architect, to present this lordship with the key. Mr. Arthur Hill, architect, said it gave him great pleasure indeed to present the Lord Mayor with the key and he was quite safe in saying that he would not use it to lock the institute against any student who wanted to get inside” (Cork Examiner, 17 January 1912).
Recently, the key that was presented to the Lord Mayor of Cork James Simcox in 1912 was re-presented on loan to the Crawford College of Art by his grandson Canon James Simcox. Speaking at the event, the present registrar of Cork Institute of Technology Barry O’Connor noted quite aptly that “it was a tapestry of education that started with the turn of this key. It opened enquiring minds to technical education, which hasn’t stopped since”.
In my interview with Canon James, he outlined that his great grandfather worked for the Dean of Cloyne but decided to marry a Roman Catholic girl- Elizabeth Lucky. Hence he was banished from Rectory and found work as a farm labourer in the Uniake estate near Killeagh. Born in 1858, James Simcox (1958-1920) was the canon’s grandfather. James left home and found work as a grocer’s assistant in Midleton. Moving with some savings to Cork City, he lived on North Main Street, working again in a grocer’s shop. There he met Helena O’Sullivan. She was the eldest of a large family who were living above a draper’s shop on the street as well. Marrying, James and Helena had 5 children, Lily, May, Evelyn, Richard and Jack. In 1896, Helena died and James remarried Kathleen Sutton, the daughter of Nathaniel Sutton, Harbour Master of Cork. The Suttons lived in Empress Villas on Summerhill North. James and Kathleen had a further family of five children. The eldest Eileen died in infancy, the second died of diphtheria at the age of 13. Then there was Frank (the canon’s father), then Redmond and Katherine. In 1900, the family moved from Adelaide Terrace, Summerhill to Bloomfield House on Rochestown Road.
In 1901, James Simcox was elected to the corporation representing the north central ward and became an Alderman in 1905. One of the many highlights in his year of office was the opening of the Crawford Technical College. In his concluding remarks at the opening of the Institute in 1912, he foresaw the significance in Cork’s educational future:
“I wish it great success and great prosperity and I hope in the years that are before us that the people of Cork will be grateful to the Committee and those who worked to procure these magnificent Schools to-day. I would like to say a word of the members of the Department who are here to-day, but I don’t like to praise men before their faces. I think at the same time they have acted very handsomely, and we thank them for it but that is no reason why we should not apply for more”.
Three months after the opening, in April 1912, James Simcox attended a convention of the All-for-Ireland League (AFIL) which attempted to generate a new national movement to achieve agreement between the different parties concerned on the historically difficult aim of Home Rule for the whole of Ireland. Cork in the first decade of the twentieth century was the source of considerable tension between nationalist factions. There was an enduring split in Cork between the William O’Brien-led ‘All for Ireland League’, which had been established in 1909 and the Irish Parliamentary Party, led by John Redmond. The source of the split was differing attitudes to the 1903 Land Act and equally to the process of cooperation between unionists and nationalists, promoted by O’Brien as ‘conference, conciliation and consent’.
After attending a convention in Dublin representing the city Lord Mayor James Simcox was criticised. Some of his councillor colleagues felt that he should not be associated with any particular political factions or movements as long as he held office. Subsequently James resigned as Lord Mayor but retained his aldermanship position in a subsequent election in the City’s Council chamber.
James’ sons Frank and Redmond Simcox, like their father, went on to become directors of the Simcox business on Paul Street. Redmond overlooked the bakery and confectionary section and Frank the tea blending section. In time a series of shops were opened across the city. There was great rivalry with the O’Shea family, another baking business. This was not resolved until Frank married the youngest member of Sir Henry O’Shea’s family, Dolly. Sir Henry O’Shea succeeded James Simcox as Lord Mayor in 1912.
Dolly and Frank had two children, James (the Canon) and Ann. James studied for the priesthood in All Hallows College in Dublin, was ordained and moved to the Archdiocese of Glasgow in June 1953.
To be continued…
Caption:
642a. Jenny O’Flynn, first cousin of the Canon, Canon James Simcox with the Crawford Technical Institute key and Ann Sexton, the Canon’s sister (picture: Kieran McCarthy)