I focused on unravelling for Michaela of the crystal bowls some of her family tree. She had given me all the details she knew of, her people being entirely Irish, for which this was rather a challenge for me. Michaela's parents, who were both Irish, had met in London, her father Michael O'Driscoll being a doctor and her mother Ethna Sweeney a pharmacist. Michaela herself was raised in London. It was Ethna's side of the family she was more curious to know about. They came from 'The Abbey', near to Ballyshannon in County Donegal. Ethna's father, David Sweeney, was a farmer who drove a horse and trap, and her mother, Bridget, had tuberculosis of the spine since her early 30's, for which she was bedridden. Somewhere in that ancestry were the English 'Blacks'. Tuberculosis of the spine would normally have spread there from the lungs and was called Potts Disease. This was a rare form, but certain notables were known to have had it, such as Saint Gemma of Luca, the poet Alexander Pope, and Louis XVI's (and Marie Antoinette's) son, Louis Joseph, the dauphin of France. It was his wet nurse, Genevieve Poitrine who was accused of hiving him tuberculosis. He had to wear metal corsets to support his deteriorating spine and died aged seven. I found Michaela's parents engagement and marriage announcements in the Irish newspapers, and the death of Ethna's brother from pleurisy at the age of 21. The 1911 census showed David Sweeney to be a farmer of Abbeylands, there was a dog license he applied for, for a male black collie in 1900, and his marriage in 1916, by which I found out that Bridget's maiden name was Mullen. In both the 1901 and 1911 census's, Bridget was living with nuns, serving them in their domestic needs. In 1911 it was specified that these nuns were the Sisters of Mercy. These nuns would educate and take in poor girls, look after the sick, and in the same manner as the Magdalene laundries would take in pregnant unmarried girls. In 1901, when Bridget was waiting on the nuns, aged 18, her younger brother, Michael Mullen, aged 16, was working for the same nuns as their messenger and gardener. It is for young Michaels return to the family home, by 1911, that I found their widowed mother, Bridget Mullen of Rockhill, and in then sourcing her 1901 details learnt that her husband was John Mullen, by which I then found their marriage in 1877, she being Bridget Walsh. This aligned with an old widow living with the family in 1901, Catherine Walsh, who as I had guessed correctly was her mother. The Catholic marriage details were a good find, both bride and groom being of Rockhill, John Mullin's parents being Michael Mullins and Ellen McKay, and Bridget's parents being James Walsh and Catherine Kennaugh. Well, all had seemed challenging upon setting out on this quest, and yet here I was passing on lots of information to Michaela, so that she likened this experience to being on Who Do You Think You Are, especially when I came up with a newspaper report about her grandad David Sweeney winning second prize in the local best cows competition, in the category of cows which have already been pregnant. The Walsh family of Rockhill looked to have been a rough fighting sort; a big feud developing in 1856 with the local Likely family, the Likely lads having threatened the Walsh' at their home, challenging them to a fight, two of the Walsh women being assaulted, one of them, Una Walsh being struck by an iron bar by Francis Likely. Ann Walsh, the other assaulted lady, took up stones and threatened to knock out Margaret Likely's brains with them. I carried on with Michaela's research the next day, thinking I was at a loss to find more, but then more I indeed found. There were only two Irish census's, so that avenue was not so promising. But one found instead Roman Catholic records, court details and dog license records, and this and that here and there. Yes, her people got into trouble, there being many records of drunkenness and fighting. This seemed to be often the way with the Irish, not just with travellers, but in general. As Michaela said her brother suspected there was alcoholism in the family. So the Walsh's were fighters, and as I saw it, it was so with the Sweeney's too. There was a long list of their battles with their neighbours at 'The Abbey' and with the locals in the town of Ballyshannon. I found the English 'Blacks', maybe not so English, as just over the border into Northern Ireland and being of protestant derivation, David Sweeney's parents being Frances Black and Patrick Sweeney. Patrick Sweeney was surely a drinker and a fighter. These were the kind of fights that would be surrounded by riotous crowds. David's parents, James and Bridget Sweeney, were likewise of that nature. Whole families would be warring, the women included. They were farmers, for long at the Abbey. Old Bridget had cows; as I saw, in 1847, her neighbour, Bernard Grimes, was making issue about her cows repeatedly trespassing on his crop of plants. On yet another day I looked at Michaela's genealogy, and noted that the original James Sweeney had married two Bridget's, and he had needed special dispensation for the second being related to the first. The Grimes's, who had fought with the Sweeney's, Michaela had met their current descendants still at the Abbey and said they appeared to be an inbred lot, as maybe anyway were her own Sweeney's, so she remarked.
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I began looking into Vijay Krishna's genealogy. Francos had recommended me to him this, and actually it turned out Vijay's brother had researched much himself, but yes, more could be done, like bringing these names and dates to life with old newspaper stories. Vijay's brother had also tested his dna and what a grand mix was there, mostly Irish, English, and especially the midlands, Scottish and Swedish, and then, because Vijay's absentee granddad, Tim Forde, was a black man from Barbados, there comes up African amounts of Benin and Togo, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Ghana, as also there being Welsh, German and even 1% Indian. It's that small Indian part that Vijay tunes into so much with his passion for Vaishavism and kirtan. It was on Vijay's mothers side, Karen being her name and she having died a couple of years back, that I began looking at her Dahl ancestors, a lineage originating from Sweden, back to a Moses, alias Maurice Dahl, who came to England with his Irish wife. Very soon I was uncovering skeletons in the family closets. Karens grandfather, Andrew Victor Dahl, was in the newspapers a few times, once for receiving a stolen motorbike, for which he got ten months in prison, and earlier than that there was a story about him having left his family house after his fathers death due to his mother having got herself married to another man. Some great rift was there, maybe between him and the new man of the house, and one time calling round, and being refused entry, he broke into the house and stole away with some clothes and cutlery. For this the family got the police after him, in consequence of which he tried to commit suicide, twice, once while in the police station, trying to cut his own throat, and the other time in the cell, attempting to hang himself. As Vijay said, on hearing this from me, he was sure not even his mother knew such stories. Andrew Victors Dahls father, William Dahl, was traumatised already in his own life, due to his mother having died when he was tiny. His mother, Mary Dahl, was addicted to drink and one night on coming home drunk she fell down some steps, thereby severely injuring her head. She was removed to the workhouse and there died. Researching more of Vijay's family history I saw that one of his relatives was a harmonium maker, 18 year old Joseph Wilson, in Birmingham back in 1881, which was naturally interesting considering that Vijay was such an adept of the harmonium now, the drum, harmonium and his singing voice being what his musical career was all about.
I met Darren, who was my daughter Eleanors boyfriend. He had some tattoos, both gentle and strong, from Basildon in Essex. As I would see, on beginning to suss out his genealogy, as of course I would, with him phoning his parents for information, he was descended from lorry drivers and even they were from the same areas of London as our own ancestors, that is Greenwich (well, Lewisham really) and Lambeth. There were many Londoners in general in his genealogy. One, edward Ryde of Isleworth, was even an undertaker. One ancestress, Esther York, looked of interest for having had two children out of wedlock. Still single at the age of 30, her youngest child, by then five, at last was baptised. I wonder, did her then husband, Edward Ryde, even know about her children, who certainly weren't living with them upon the beginning of their married life together. These were the days of 'skeletons in the cupboards', when it was shameful of one didn't tow the line with what was considered 'normality'. And there were Stafford ancestors not sending their children to school (which as I have seen was actually pretty normal) and one Stafford lad getting smallpox for which he was shut up in the pest house, as were other smallpox sufferers. There were a couple of drunkard ancestors in Warminster who were much in the papers for their shennagins. One of these fellows even died from fighting with his nephew after a drunken altercation in the pub. The landlord had told them to take their quarrel outside, whereon they had fallen into a quarry and the nehew, Uriah, had savagely stamped on his uncles chest. He was acquitted of murder, though, because the specifically fatal injuries could rather have come from falling into the quarry. Another Warminster ancestor, along with his pals, was into dog drawn carts (which was illegal and for which they all got in trouble). He cared not for societies rules and was in and out of gaol. He was a chimney sweep and even got int trouble for using one of his sons (who was underage) to climb the chimneys (which had also been made illegal). They were a fighting hard-drinking bunch. More scandal I found in Darrens family, there being an ancestor who was a philanderer and an adulterer, Charles William Allett, who had children by many women. One of his ladies was Darrens ancestress, Elizabeth Ann Smith who had four sons with him, all out of wedlock. It was of quite some interest to unravel his story.
I am perusing more the story of my ancestor Bartholomew Sugrue, a life that never stops fascinating me, regardless that it was so tragic. I am so near to completing a great write-up on him, and yet there is always more here and there to discover. When all is full and done then I can begin the book writing. But the Sugrue genealogical presentation naturally takes for ever, so it seems, as such things do. In gathering together workhouse records, I found one I'd not accessed before. This shows how important it is that we go back again and again, looking for any relevant records, and revising and updating accordingly. My Sugrue's had much association with the slum boarding houses of Deptford during their time of destitution. I had seen reference to them as being at 'Pesters', a boarding house run by William Pester, and now by this new record I saw that earlier on they were at 'Freaks', a lodging house run by Charles Freak, all being on Mill Lane. In between these two addresses they were at the Mitre, not the pub of Greenwich I realise, but another Mill Lane boarding house which doubled up as a place selling beer. The total poverty and destitute situation is what led Bartholomew Sugrue to spend most of the rest of his life, from the age of 57 upwards, in workhouses. He and his wife Catherine no longer rented their own home, but were in effect homeless, moving from one boarding house to another. Only the poorest of the poor would ever frequent such places. Despite working so much on expanding Bartholomew Sugrue's write-up, when I print it out, it still seems so lacking. More is needed. I see on Bartholomew's marriage certificates, and who he took in as as lodger, who were his friends, fellow Irish labourers, as is often the way with ex-pats, mixing with their own kind and not integrating with the traditional people. Those surnames of his friends, Reardon and McCarthy, there was much trouble in the community incited by men of such names. Maybe they were brothers of the friends, or cousins. Maybe they were Bartholomew's cousins, all related. These men were often in the papers for their drunken antics, when fights would break out and mobs of hundreds would surround them. This was the company Bartholomew kept, of the wild untamed Irish. He may not even always have been one to drink, but the people around him did that. And, even, with all the deaths from cholera abounding, alcohol was believed to offer protection against this, for which Bartholomew may have encouraged his wife, Catherine, to drink too. There are maybe three other sons they had, who had died when little, which needs checking out: Bartholomew junior and his twin Daniel, and maybe a Michael, being a twin of Edmund. When I feel the grief of losing my sister and how deep that is, then how must it have been for the ancestors who tended to lose at least one child. As such, grief is a normal human experience. For all such troubles, with the ancestors being so poor and but subsistence living, they had not the time nor space to contemplate and self heal from such pain and grief. Their quick solutions were, one, the church, and two, alcohol. Rents needed paying and hungry mouths feeding, for which one had to work, work, work. Parish relief could sometimes be called upon, maybe a medicine for ones ailments or shoes for children's bare feet. I find myself understanding more Bartholomew's years in the Poplar workhouse, as times were changing. When it is illegal to beg for ones needs, and naturally stealing is not an option, and yet there is no work available, one has to turn to parish aid. There were indeed times of sickness and lack of work when the Sugrue's resorted to asking for help, and not least when son Edmund was dying from pleuritis, in which instance the workhouse officials took a full day to get to the lad, despite it being an emergency, as I have now seen. And Edmund was in the care of the workhouse for the last four days of his life and still died. I wonder if there was that old equivalent to our concern that if you send vulnerable souls into a hospital or old peoples home they'll likely not come out again. Bartholomew was certainly quick to get his other children out of the workhouse, despite the struggles facing him as a lone father, as if they were safer with him than under such a regime. Well, fast forward, and the time had come when Bartholomew was so in need of parish relief, but no longer was there any out-help on offer, for there had arisen the Poplar experiment. Any money to help out the family now had to be earned at Poplar workhouse in a prison like situation, with hard labour, and a fare of only bread and water. However strong a constitution Bartholomew may have had, years of this wore him down, and close association with the sickest of society contaminated his health with tuberculosis. The Poplar experiment was a terrible one, a destroyer of families, a punishment for being poor. The new way was a response to greater and greater numbers of people needing assistance, for which those in need were not now individuals, but one mass of unruly poor. To weed out those taking advantage of potential freebies, the real destitute had to pay the consequences. I sense the unheard frustrations of my ancestors, due to their being misunderstood, accused and judged. Beneath all struggle and external perception, there was the heart of a family, who loved and cared about one another, their genuine humanity, their joy and playfulness, their innocence. I guess that's what I'd like to portray in a book, though I don't know if I am able. Maybe I should first try writing short stories or children's books, to kind of warm up to the big task. A compendium of ancestral tales could inspire children to find an interest in genealogy. AuthorAuthor Susie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I got back into some serious genealogy, not for the Jehovah's Witnesses, but for myself. One thing I sometimes do is to go back and look at my research and see if there is anything more I have missed there. So I go back to my impoverished Greenwich ancestors and indeed I discover more. The Kentish Mercury newspaper is a great revelation here, as I at last suss that's where many Greenwich stories, scandals and crimes are posted. The traumatic life of my Sugrue's gets embellished all the more, via a report I'd not seen before, of the inquest upon little Edmund Sugrue's death. In this I find out at last that his father Bartholomew's line of work was assistant to a bricklayer, and even who he worked for, a Mr Pound. Because Edmund was so small Bartholomew pretended at the inquest that his son was much younger, but on producing vaccination certificates it was realised he'd been lying. He admitted that he was one to drink and that since his wife was imprisoned this had escalated. And I found out more, from five years later, when the Sugrue family were living in a cottage by the Ship and Billet pub. The cottages there, six in total, were dilapidated, burnt out and vandalised, and were considered dangerous structures, and the people living in them were considered squatters for they paid no rent. Bartholomew Sugrue was specifically referred to as a 'squatter'. These squatters, which included a lone old Irish family, were all ordered to do up their cottages, described as having black walls, broken stairways and smashed in closets, or to vacate their homes, and naturally they were too poor to pay for such things, but still they dug their heels in and refused to be moved. As for Bartholomew's son, Thomas, my ancestor, I have seen that two of his own sons married two sisters, who were daughters of Robert Choat, a night-shift gas worker, who died in his 40's when returning home in a train from the Epsom races, having had a quarrel in his carriage with a well known boxer, Pedlar Palmer, being knocked unconscious by two punches to the side of the face. He died at Purley station, having been removed from the train onto its platform. So, there was a newspaper article all about that. And there were a couple of articles about my ancestor, John William Harrison's boat being stolen, taken for a ride by drunks who afterwards smashed it up. Also I saw that towards the end of his life Bartholomew Sugrue fell over a low fence along the Thames river and very nearly died from the fall. So plenty of family embellishment was there. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() I researched more for my project, writing out a piece on my Irish ancestors and the problem of drinking. It's very interesting really. Even in the google entry on the potato famine, which is quite extensive, no mention is made of the drinking habit and what this may have contributed to the plight of the peasants. Nor ever was there any discussion of terrorism prior to the famine. Evicted families were en masse given free travel to the America's, which is how more immigrants ended up there than anywhere else. A quarter of Liverpool was very quickly Irish. The amount that came, like my ancestors, to Greenwich in London, was quite small in relation to other areas. I have Irish on both my mothers and fathers sides, my fathers red hair being a combination of Irish and Forest of Dean. As for great granny Mary Ann Seagrove, her features with high cheekbones I can see was quite a feature of her ancestral Kerry people. Personally, I never inherited an inclination to addiction, thankfully, though have done my share at a few times in my life of binge drinking. It's not the life I want though. The Irish expats I know, their problem with alcohol comes from so deep a place, hence they are very much victims to their own biology. My Sugrue's were maybe quite similar to them. When I look back to early Irish history I see they originally drank home brewed beers, made from barley and called 'courmi'. The wealthier Irish imported wines from Poitou. Then there was pleasurable mead, made from honey. The first recorded encounter with the hard stuff, whiskey, in the Irish Annals, was only as far back as the 15th century, when the chief MacRannal died from drinking too much of it. Maybe, then, it was simply the introduction of whiskey that was their downfall. The fire water. It is said of distilled alcohol that the 11th century created it, the 17th century consolidated it, and the 18th century popularised it. By the 1690's there was a 'gin epidemic' in England and parliament took steps to lessen its consumption, being all too concerned with the negative consequences of its use. Reading about the history of humanity and alcohol, at first alcohol was positively viewed as an elixir of the gods, and only later with awareness of the more negative aspects was it seen as a dangerous poison. The key has always been to relate to alcohol with respect and moderation. As it is addictive, I guess this is not going to really be successful too often. Hence why Islam bans alcohol altogether, and yet contrarily says wine is what awaits those that make it to heaven. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() I brushed up on my Irish-Greenwich matriarchal project file, happily absorbed in what I do, writing, researching, making collage, cutting and gluing; 'my school work' as I call it. A Passion for Genealogy - The Research of Susie Harrison. The london-Irish Ancestry part of my grandmother Isabelle Bane's family tree. I made a Kerry Irish collage and looked more at the story of the famine that my ancestors just had to escape. Accounts I find do have a certain watered down perspective of oppressor versus oppressed, but I feel there are two more considerations, one being that historic times always had a certain ruthlessness and in-humanitarian influence, non-acceptable today and so all the more shocking to us; but also, there were vicious circles here at play, clouding the part of any supposed innocents, with the existence of heavy drinking and all its family, social and financial consequences. No more brutal on Roman Catholics were the overlords in Ireland, than had been so in Britain, where the old religion was purged completely. Naturally, stern divisions had come into being. But, also, the personal self-destruction of alcohol afforded little hope for the greater community to ever gain respect and credibility, whatever the root differences. It's easier to just blame and be angry and continue drinking. Local Roman Catholic landlords, not even Protestant, were as bad as any absentee Protestant aristocrat, the latter being out of touch with the real world on an earthy level, and so were maybe worse and more culpable. I did find a more honest account by an actual Irishman on the alcoholic problem the Irish have such a propensity for. I looked to find out more about this. I was curious. The history I'd so far found said that the Irish, before the potato famine, simply drank water, and elsewhere it was stated they had a soured yoghurty drink. There was no mention of alcohol. So I had put this in my file, thinking the drink problem the Irish were famed for thus arose in consequence of the horrors of the potato famine. And it takes an Irishman to be honest about it all and say such alcoholism and its destructive effects had long gone on. Potatoes were not only the sustenance of the peasants, but also their peril, as from it they distilled hard alcohol. This drink was home distilled 'poiton'. If one removes the t, and replaces but one letter, one gets 'poison'. Gallons of such Irish whiskey were made, every second cottage or so manufacturing it. They drank to their detriment. When one is poor, it does always amaze me, that important finance or nourishment gets put into alcohol, for which there is a neglect of children and or wives, although women drank hard too. With large families, plenty of unemployed single men were up to no good, the 'bachelor group' as they were called, defining their manhood with hard drinking and fighting. Communities even expected this of them and supported them in it. Evicted tenants formed early guerrilla groups, such as the White Boys, carrying out terrorist activities in the nights, fuelled by their plentiful consumption of poiton and aggressive bravado, targeting landlords and any others suspected to collude with the British colonials. And, yes, they were born into abominable conditions, as peasants were pretty much in any part of the world. They were exploited as tenants, or cottiers, at any moment to suffer eviction. Sufferings make a path to drink, so that even by this the imagery is fulfilled of a people who are vulgar and uncivilised. They chose panacea in something that would not give them that, which would make all even more dreadful. With the catastrophic appearance of the potato blight starvation and disease now preyed upon them. There had already been such precarious balance in their ways of life. The lumper potatoes yielded high, but didn't mature until the autumn. Though stored potatoes kept families going right up till the end of spring, the crop then became inedible, and so began what was known as the 'summer hunger'. Those who had a little wherewithal would buy from dealers oats and barley to see them through to potato harvesting time. Those from poorer families sought different solutions, their menfolk seeking temporary work in the fields of England, while their women and children stayed behind begging along the roadsides. I can't know precisely what my own Sugrue's and Sheehan's experienced in all these regards, but I see in their new life in Greenwich they were far from finding a utopia, bringing along their own habit to drink and to inadequately function as families. The British both let them down, by bad policy in Ireland, and welcomed them, both friend and foe. Not in any of the newspaper articles of their dramas was it ever mentioned that they were Irish immigrants. They could have assimilated better if not for chronic drunkenness. For this, Irish families had a long hard journey ahead of them. It is almost as if there has been a biological propensity to drink, regardless of circumstance. All the Irish expats I have met in France are atrocious alcoholics. Alcohol is no way but the sole path of the Irish, but as a report has shown, 54% of Irish admit to harmful or risky drinking, compared to a European average of 28%. The Irish blood is in many of us, which I know from all the genealogy I've done for friends. I have long been teetotal. I have always wondered at the Irish and their heavy drinking. It's so stereotypical that we are not really supposed to by fairness ever mention it. But maybe this story requires some honesty. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. The British newspaper archives have opened up a whole new world. I keep on seeking articles relating to any of my family, and its not so easy, but I did find a story, this time on my Maxted line. It regarded the death of my ancestor George Maxted of Kent, whose native villages of Pluckley and Hothfield I have been to see (I have to see Westwell too). It was in Hothfield that George died, apparently falling from a haystack, which he was thatching, landing onto a big stick which pierced through his leg and into his bowels. I kept on looking through newspaper articles. Both my Irish Bartholomew Sugrue and his wife Catherine were partial to the bottle, I now read. Oh dear, this gets worse. I mean, here I am seeing drunkard Irish expats in my village, mirroring my own ancestors. It's a shock indeed. And yet another of their children had been caught stealing, James Sugrue, during the case of which it was mentioned that another of his brothers was already in prison. It's impossible to gloss any of this over, I have very dysfunctional family roots, part of a vast melange, from royal privilege to utter desolation. I had a browse for my friends genealogies too. For Akila I found family divorces, for Trebha, his grandfather being caught with stolen fish, Jeremy's drunkards, and Liz's posh side. To find all was so compelling. This is time consuming too, as genealogy is anyway. I sought more old family newspaper articles. So long one looks, coming up with nothing, and then a gem flashes up. I found the death inquest for one of my ancestresses, Maria Ann Harrison of Greenwich, already a widow, who had dropped dead after complaining of a bilious attack. Every organ in her body was said to be diseased. This, it was claimed, was in consequence of her intemperance. Oh dear, another one. A heart attack caused her death, such was the verdict. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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