A grave error? - Charles Byrne (1878-1879)

Charles Byrne was the fourth son of Francis Byrne and Margaret McGrane, and a younger brother to Mam’s grandfather, James Byrne. He was born at 12 Upper Mayor Street, in Dublin, on 6 March 1878, and was baptized in St Laurence O’Toole’s church that same day. He was probably named after Francis’ brother Charles.

Margaret did not get around to registering her son's birth until the end of June. Presumably to avoid a late registration penalty, she then claimed Charles wasn't born until 4 April 1878, by which time the family had moved to 18 Upper Jane Place. Still, her delay provides an accurate timeline for when the Byrnes first lived in Jane Place, a neighborhood that became their home for nearly a hundred years.

Soon after his first birthday, little Charles died of scarlatina, otherwise known as scarlet fever.  His no doubt heart-broken mother carried his remains to Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery, where he was buried on 13 April 1879. He was interred in the section of the graveyard known as St Patrick’s.

When Charles’s father died many years later, in December 1912, he was buried with another baby named Charles Byrne. Their grave was in the St Bridget’s section of the cemetery. This little Charles died in 1891, coincidentally when he was also a year old. Initially I thought our family was somehow related to the second baby too, or that there was a mix-up of some sort with the graves.

This Charles was the son of George and Harriet Byrne. George worked as a policeman, living on the south side of the river Liffey. Our Francis was a labourer, working in the Dublin dockyards, and living north of the river. Their lives were quite different and no connection between them could be found. 

Now, Glasnevin Trust have confirmed my great-great-grandmother only purchased the grave in 1912, two days after her husband’s death and twenty-one years after the funeral of the second Charles. There is no longer any reason to suspect a connection with George and Harriet. The cemetery was known to sell on graves, if they had not been purchased outright, after a specified time had passed.

Glasnevin Trust also confirmed our baby Charles was buried in an Old Angels’ plot. Such plots were communal graves, shared by many other babies. Being what was considered a ‘poor ground plot’, it would never have been available for Margaret to purchase. But, I wonder did she know this in 1912? Did she think her husband was laid to rest with their baby son? Or, was it merely a coincidence a so-named child shared his grave? 

Sources: Church and civil records on Irishgenealogy.ie; Burial register for Glasnevin Cemetery (pay-as-you-go); Image from Pixabay.

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Black Raven Genealogy

‘A Good Death’

In September 1881, Miles McGrane died of tuberculosis. Margaret, his wife of thirty years, had celebrated her fiftieth birthday eight months before. She was left alone to finish rearing their children, the youngest of whom was ten years old. Death was not a stranger in the McGrane household, however. Only five of their twelve known children had lived to see their tenth birthdays.

The situation Margaret found herself in was far from uncommon in Ireland then. She was born Margaret Doyle in Dublin city in January 1831. In the years before her marriage, famine had claimed the lives of over one million people. Death, on this scale, was a shock to the Irish nation. But, in more normal times, early death was so prevalent it was an accepted part of everyday life. 

The path to Margaret (Doyle) McGrane

Sometimes, I wonder how people coped with seeing their relatives die so young and in such numbers. And, I’ve come to the conclusion, their belief in God allayed the fear of death, far more then than it does today. 

No doubt grief took its toll, but the focus was more on achieving a ‘good death’. Margaret’s husband died a ‘good death’. Having been sick for two months, as a Catholic, he would have received ‘the last rites’. This sacrament helps ensure the terminally ill are emotionally and spiritually prepared to die. Little else mattered, either to those facing death or to those who mourned their passing. And, as it still does today, belief in the afterlife provided a great comfort to those left behind.

When Miles died, Margaret became the head of the household. The responsibility for managing the family’s finances passed to her. And, even though she had never learnt to read and write, she proved herself a capable provider. Most likely, she had little choice.

Margaret set up a greengrocer's shop at her home in Lower Oriel Street. The venture was presumably a success as her eldest daughter followed in her footsteps.

My third great-grandmother even operated as a local estate agent of some kind. It’s hard to know now what this entailed exactly. But, the advertisements she placed in the newspapers of the day are a testament to her enterprise.

Freeman’s Journal, 4 August 1888, p. 1

Freeman's Journal, 31 January 1900, p. 1

In the eyes of Margaret’s surviving children, their mother was a rock of strength. She was usually present to help with the birth of her grandchildren. Then, if they died as infants, as many did, it was often Margaret who carried their remains to the cemetery.

Margaret resided in Lower Oriel Street for the rest of her days. She continued to share a home with her youngest daughter Alice. Alice married James Vickers and together they had three children, Alice, Patrick, and Myles. 

At the age of seventy-two years, Margaret developed asthmatic bronchitis. She suffered from the disease for five months, before it finally claimed her life. On 9 August 1903, she died at her home, surrounded by her family. Her funeral took place in Glasnevin Cemetery. There, she shares a grave with her husband, their infant children and a grandchild.

Without a doubt, Margaret also died ‘a good death’.

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© Black Raven Genealogy

Three little vignettes: ghosts, apparitions and porter

When I wrote the blogpost ‘Uncle Michael married Aunt Kate', my uncle Colm said it solved one the great mysteries of his life. That mystery was - ‘who the hell was the Uncle Mike?’ Colm had always believed Uncle Mike was a Byrne, but he could never quite place him. My blogpost confirmed Mike was actually Michael McGrane, Colm's maternal great-granduncle.

Last year, shortly before he passed away, Colm shared with me three intriguing stories concerning the long-gone Uncle Mike. Here they are in my uncle's own words:

Three Little Vignettes [by Colm Wynne]
The first made a great impression on me. The Wynne family moved to 3 Lower Jane Place from Leinster Avenue around 1950, shortly after Anne's [my aunt's] birth. Auntie Kay [my grandaunt, Kathleen Byrne] had been living there on her own, following her parent’s deaths. We opened (or re-opened) a small corner shop there called Kathleen's. It was very much later, when I was an adult, I realized that following my father’s first heart attack around 1947, his business failed as he was unable to pursue it, and we needed the income from the shop to survive.

Aged around six, I used to sleep on a chaise longue in the kitchen/ dining room. That's a fancy description of a small general use room with an iron range, a gas cooker and a very mean table, some equally mean chairs and a bench. There was also an old fashioned dresser and a wardrobe! in the room.

One night I awoke to find an old man, in a jacket and cap, hunched up on a chair in front of the range, warming himself. I knew he should not be there so I picked up a toy to throw at him. For some reason, I could not move my limbs freely. The attempt to throw was like moving my arm through treacle. When I finally released the toy, instead of flying through the air and clouting the intruder, it just dropped harmlessly beside the bed.

I knew this shouldn't have happened and got frightened at this point so I started screaming. Mammy and Daddy came from their bed in the next room and turned on the light. My visitor vanished. They did not see him. They tried to persuade me I was seeing things and it was all in my imagination. I insisted I was not, so they changed tack and tried to persuade me I was just awaking from a bad dream. I know to this day, I was not.

The upshot was I was taken into their bed for a few nights and then transferred to the front bedroom with my sisters, where I slept for several years. The following evening the adults were gathered around the fire in what nowadays would be called the lounge. I don't remember what it was called then, probably the parlor. It was a big room with a section curtained off shielding a double bed where my parents slept. It had previously been where my grandparents slept. I had already been put to bed there. Although I wasn't supposed to be, I was wide awake and listening.

I heard them discussing the events of the night before with Auntie Kay. It transpired that from my description the apparition was clearly the deceased Uncle Mike, and that I was not the first to have seen him. I can't remember now who else had the dubious pleasure.

Number Two: A very short one, this. Apparently when living in number 31 Lower Jane Place, the Uncle Mike worked on the docks. When he came home each evening he never had to knock or use a key. The door was always opened for him by some previously deceased family member. I don't think I ever heard who it was. I certainly don't remember if I did.

Number Three: Also short. The Uncle Mike was very fond of his porter. His bosom drinking buddy and working companion became very well known in later life and indeed his afterlife as Blessed Matt Talbot. When Matt forswore the drink, he tried very hard, and I understand unsuccessfully, to persuade Uncle Mike to do likewise. Despite his best efforts, the Uncle Mike remained a toper. Matt gave Uncle Mike his prayer book in the hope that it would help. I don't know if he ever read it, but it was still around when I was a small boy. I have no idea what happened to it afterwards.

Michael McGrane died of heart failure on 23 December 1929, at 3 Lower Jane Place, the house he shared with my great-grandparents. He had suffered from bronchitis for seven days before his passing. On Christmas Eve that year, my great-grandfather and Michael's nephew, James Byrne, registered his death.

© 2015 Black Raven Genealogy

Jane Place Lower ~ no longer extant

Jane Place is gone now! If you have any memories of it, I’d love to hear them.

Granny’s relatives were amongst the first residents of Jane Place and lived there for over one hundred years. Her Aunt Kate was born there in 1864.

Jane Place Upper and Jane Place Lower were two parallel streets running off Oriel Street, in Seville Place, Dublin, just behind Connolly Station. It seems the area was originally built in the 1850s.[1] It was knocked down in recent years, as part of the city rejuvenation and the development of Dublin’s Financial Services District, probably in the latter half of the 1970s.

You can see the location of the two streets on this ordnance survey map, in the upper right-hand quarter.

Jane Place Upper and Jane Place Lower, Oriel Street, Dublin.

There were thirty-one terraced, single-storey cottages in Jane Place Lower and twenty-six in Jane Place Upper. I read somewhere once that the street numbers ran 1, 2, 3… consecutively along one side of the street and then continued back down the other side, so that number 1 was across the road from number 31, etc.

Can anyone place ‘3 Jane Place Lower’ on the map?

I do have some very vague memories of the little cottages, as a family friend once brought me to visit relatives there. However, Jane Place was in the inner-city and coming rural county Dublin, it was all very alien to my seven-year-old eyes. I certainly didn’t have any sense of coming home. I half remember a plot of ground, all boarded up - ‘That was your shop’, my friend said, pointing to the derelict site. ‘Your Granny’s shop’, she added. I also remember the living room in my relative’s cottage was very tiny. It truly must have been small.

Can anyone place Granny’s shop on this map? Was it attached to ‘3 Jane Place Lower’

Did you know? - not only did Granny’s parents run a grocery shop in Jane Place, but her paternal grandmother had one too and her great-grandmother – though theirs may have been on the corner in Lower Oriel Street.

Sources
[1] The first baptism listed on www.irishgenealogy.ie showing this address is dated August 1858.
[2] 1901 Census of Ireland, North Dock, Dublin.

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© 2014 Black Raven Genealogy