<![CDATA[ANGELINE KING

<![CDATA[ANGELINE KING - History]]>Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:33:03 +0100Weebly<![CDATA[Peadar O'Rafferty and Irish Folk Dancing]]>Mon, 01 Dec 2025 12:17:25 GMThttps://www.angelineking.com/history/peadar-orafferty-and-irish-folk-dancing

Peadar O’Rafferty (1889-1974) made a significant contribution to the arts, culture and positive community relations in Belfast and Northern Ireland, but there is no blue plaque in his name, no mural of him on any wall, no etching of him on a city hall window. Neither the Gaelic/Irish tradition or the Ulster-Scots/British tradition claim him. His legacy lies in the space in between.

When writing my book, Irish Dancing: The Festival Story, I spent a disproportionate amount of time researching Peadar O’Rafferty, initially through the newspaper archives, and then by asking everyone I spoke to, ‘did you ever meet him?’ By all accounts, he was a quiet man and a gentleman. Seven years after publication, I have finally had the chance to speak to a living relative. I now have a picture of a grandfather coming to the door of his home, singing a ditty and dancing for the children who greeted him with English accents. Peadar has become both song and dance, the arc of him an island and an archipelago.

The following words set the tone for nearly a century of artistry in Irish folk dancing. Written by Peadar in 1934, they still resonate within the festival community of Irish dancing today.

‘All the movements should be performed gracefully, but without that straining after effect which is invariably disastrous. The carriage should be natural and easy, the body being held lightly, the head erect, but not stiffly so, the arms, when not employed, held easily by the sides.’

In 1912, Peadar O’Rafferty’s pupils from the Belfast Irish Dancing Academy performed an event organised by Gaelic Revival group Craobh Ruadh (Red Branch). The journalist wrote that Peadar was ‘one of the most graceful and accomplished Irish dancers in Ulster.’ The writer, who praised his up-to-date teaching style, explained, ‘Mr O’Rafferty takes a personal interest in every one of his young pupils, and the academy is doing much to further the cause of this branch of Irish-Ireland work.’

An early photograph of Peadar has him in a couples hold with dancer Marie MacStocker. The Misses McStocker, Peadar and dancer Sean Best often performed the four-hand-reel together at the early feiseanna. His lessons also comprised music and dances of the Scottish tradition:known for teaching ‘The Lancers’ and ‘The Caledonians’, his preferred set dance, ‘Maggie Pickins’, is also thought to have been an old Scottish step dance.

I had once read that Peadar O’Rafferty’s family hailed from Donegal, but having spent a long time rooting around in birth and census records, I could only find one match — in Portadown in County Armagh. An article sent to me by a relative of his wife confirmed that he had moved to Belfast from Portadown at three months old. It’s not clear who taught him to dance, but he began teaching in 1906 and won the Ulster Championship for Irish dancing in 1911. His first exhibition team comprised himself, Alex Heggarty, Sean McKeown and Peter Ward. They practised by lamplight just off Fountain Street.

As a young adult, Peadar O’Raffery lived at 46 Kashmire Road in the Falls Road area with his mother, Mary Ann, and his sisters, Cecilia (26) and Rose (24). (Cecilia Rafferty was still at the address in 1951). At the time of the 1911 census, he was working in a tobacco factory, but he later worked as a commercial traveller. His last job was as a clerk for the coal board. In fact, he worked there right up until he was 83, despite partial blindness. His Irish dancing exploits, including 25 years teaching in the Malone Training School, a reformatory and training school for Protestant boys; ten years at Stranmillis College; and other organisations like the Girl Guides, Boy Scouts and Irish Folk Dancing associations, were critical to the spread of Irish dancing in unionist areas.

Peadar was at a juncture of Irish and British national spirit that was of its time. On 22 April 1915, he danced at a fundraiser for the Belfast Regiment of the Irish National Volunteers, nationalists who supported the British War effort. Such allegiance was a factor, perhaps, in his setting up classes in British Legion halls. He remained in Belfast throughout the war, where he kept on teaching, taking Eileen Flynn to All-Ireland Junior Championship victory at Dundalk in August 1915. On the first day of the Battle of Somme in July 1916, he performed at a variety concert in Belfast; on the date marking the end of the Easter Rising in Dublin, he ran his fifth annual variety concert with Winifred Lavery, his future wife; and in July 1918, his dancers performed at the Aeridheacht in Castlewellen, an event with a more nationalist bent. Peadar had found a way to retain his nationalist spirit within the context of British rule, and this is best illustrated by a February 1916 event to raise money for the volunteers at which a call was made for nationalists to become stronger by fighting for ‘liberty’ in France against a ‘common enemy.’ In 1919, he married Winifred Lavery, an accomplished musician, who played in the first silent movies of Portadown and Belfast in the 1910s and 1920s. (They ran an Irish dancing school together in the war period). They initially moved into Winifred's parents' house, Erin Cottage, in Andersonstown.

After partition, the backdrop to Peadar’s endeavours became more British in tone. In 1926, Dolly Millar invited him to train Girl Guides in Ballymena. The ‘Misses Millar Academy’ had been teaching Irish dances in Ballymena from Academy Street (now Thomas Street) since the early 1900s. (They were Presbyterian). The Misses Millar followed in the wake of the Misses Haines’ Academy and represented a bridge between the fancy dancing of the late 1800s and early 1900s and Irish folk dancing. Irish dancing became the chosen physical exercise for the Girl Guides, replacing performance skipping. Peadar O’Rafferty’s pupils would continue the tradition of teaching Girl Guides, not least Patricia Mulholland, who took her Girl Guides team to the Festival of Britain in 1951.

At the very end of this video is a very short clip of Girl Guides dancing in Belfast in 1929 - these dancers are likely to have been trained by Peadar O'Rafferty.

Among Peadar O’Rafferty’s pupils in the late 1920s were the Mulholland children, notably Stella and Patricia, who took over his dance classes in Larne; the Convery children, including Veronica and Monica, who would go on to lead their own dancing lineage (primarily in the feis tradition, but also crossing over into the festival tradition through Betty Greer in Ballyclare and Ballynafeigh School’s Gertie Mulligan); and Agnes McConnell, who represented his Ballymena Girl Guides Team at the Royal Hippodrome Theatre in Belfast in 1928 (when she was in her late twenties). In 1968, Peadar also cited All-Ireland champion, Betty Lewis, and dance teacher, Marjorie Andrews, as being among his first pupils. Both dancers went on to dance in the Mulholland School in the early 1930s.

Mulholland dancers, Irish Folk Dancing Festival, Larne, 1935

Marjorie Andrews, 1930s

That Peadar O’Rafferty taught in Dungannon, Lisburn, Portadown, Belfast, Larne and Ballymena must have been entirely dependent on good public train links, for he never owned a car. He took dancing far beyond competitions, putting on frequent shows in the Ulster Hall, and becoming involved in BBC Radio with the Irish Rhythms Orchestra. One family legend is that he taught Hollywood actor Errol Flynn to Irish dance. (Errol Flynn’s father, Theodore Thomson Flynn, took up the chair of zoology at Queen's University Belfast until his retirement in 1948, so it’s feasible that the two men met). A 1934 event at the Ulster Hall saw Peadar’s children Gerald, Peggy and Eamon O’Rafferty, taking to the stage with their mother and father. I could only find one record of such a family affair, but it is likely they worked together on other occasions. Gerald co-wrote an Irish dancing book with Peadar, which was published 1953, when Peadar was around 64 years of age. Gerald was also an adjudicator at festivals before moving to London, where he pursued a career as a languages lecturer, leaving Irish dancing behind.

The fact that Peadar O’Rafferty reached thousands of Protestant Irish dancers, bringing them onto the same stage as Catholic dancers, and ultimately instigating the musical festival tradition in the late 1920s, is also worthy of note. He travelled around the country researching old dances, some of which remain only in his books. ‘Soldier’s Joy’, for example, was recorded by Peadar O’Rafferty in Ballinderry around 1932 at the home of Joseph Stewart. ‘Soldier’s Joy’, in this instance, was danced by adults, but it is often the first team dance that young children of the festival tradition of Irish dancing learn. It is marked by entertaining ‘winding’ and ‘fists’ hand gestures, otherwise called ‘rolly-polly’ and ‘knock, knock, knock.’ ‘Soldier’s Joy’ is also a dance that renders the demarcation between ‘Irish’ and ‘Ulster Scots’ faint, contributing to my own belief that Irish Folk Dancing was the main tradition of folk dancing in the twentieth-century among those of Ulster Scots extraction, particularly in counties Antrim and Down. That it blossomed in communities where Scots migrants arrived two or three centuries before, is telling. Joseph Stewart was 72 when he hosted the gathering on Crew Farm, where ‘Soldier’s Joy’ was recorded. There were many Protestants involved in both the Lambeg and Belfast Irish Folk Dancing Societies taking part that night, and I doubt that any of them attempted to demarcate country dances from the 1800s into identity silos. Irish was a collective term for all of Ireland’s traditions.

At the same farm, Peadar O’Rafferty collected ‘Hooks and Eyes’, also known as ‘Padeen O’Rafferty’, which is set to ‘Humors of Donnybook.’ It’s not included in the portfolio of dances Ár Rince Foirne (Our Team Dances), published by the Gaelic League’s Commission on Irish Dancing (CLRG) in 1939.* He also collected ‘Biddy the basket-woman,’ a square dance set to the Norah Creina Jig, a neglected dance which is due a revival. There are beautiful names in his books for figures that have been lost through time: the flirtation, for instance, in ‘Lannigan’s Ball’ is the name for the man travelling around the circle, ‘visiting’ and swinging each woman in turn. Book 1 also contains ‘The Seige of Carric’ ‘The Fairy Reel’, ‘Lannigan’s Ball’, ‘Rinnce Mor’, ‘The Bridge of Athlone’, ‘The Waves of Tory’, ‘The Walls of Limerick’ and ‘The Seige of Ennis’. Peadar published these dances nine years before the Commission, so it is likely that teachers trained in Belfast, Larne and Ballymena up until 1939, used his book. His second book, published in 1950, progressed to more challenging dances: ‘The Little Stack of Barley’, ‘Petticoat Swish’, ‘The Humours of Bandon’, ‘Six Hand Reel’, ‘The Harvest-Time Jig’, ‘The Glencar Reel, ‘The Sweets of May’, ‘O’Rafferty’s Eight Hand Jig’, ‘The High Caul Cap’ and ‘O’Rafferty’s Sixteen Hand Reel.’ ‘The Sweets of May’ was collected from Ada Harrison and James McParland in County Armagh.

A dance that is synonymous with the festival tradition is the slip jig. In 1968, Peadar reminisced that he was the first in the north to teach the solo slip jig, and that he did so from 1914. (The ‘Scottish Lilt’ is a similar dance). If the slip jig was historically unique to men, then Peadar must have introduced it to women in Belfast at an early date, as his all-ireland junior champion Evelyn Flynn danced the slip jig at one of his displays on 29th April 1916. It is probable that Patricia Mulholland learned the slip jig from Peadar O'Rafferty and then changed the tempo to the slow slip jig that became mark of the festival tradition.

Peadar cited a poem by his contemporary Owen Toale in his 1934 publication The Irish Folk Dance book. The poem demonstrates how language has absorbed the influences of migration, and this is true also of Irish folk dancing, in which Scottish and Irish traditions meet and link arms.

An we didn’t need much coaxin
When our merry party danced,
At first scrape o Joe’s ould fiddle
We were in the reel at wanst.
And sure twas fine to watch us,
Just how we heel’d and toed,
When the moon in all her glory
Lit the Ballyscullion Road!

Peadar O’Rafferty died on 9 March 1974. His funeral was at his parish church, St. John the Evangelist, and he was buried at Milltown Cemetery.

*(CLRG’s chosen team dances, some of which were covered in O’Rafferty’s book were ‘The Walls of Limerick’, ‘The Siege of Ennis’, ‘The Bridge of Athlone’, ‘The Fairy Reel’, ‘The Haymakers' Jig’, ‘The Humours of Bandon’, ‘The Harvest Time Jig’, ‘The High Caul Cap’ and ‘The Eight-Hand Reel’. The 1943 edition comprised ‘The Waves of Tory’, ‘The Rakes of Mallow’, ‘The Gates of Derry’, ‘The Sweets of May’, ‘The Bonfire Dance’, ‘The Antrim Reel’, ‘The Glencar Reel’, ‘The Three Tunes’, ‘The Siege of Carrick’, ‘Lannigan's Ball’ and ‘Saint Patrick's Day.’)

You can read more about both Peadar O'Rafferty and the festival tradition of Irish dancing in my book Irish Dancing: The Festival Story. NB The first half of the book does cover the history of the feis in Ulster, but I continually collect stories of interest, so please send anything along that you notice is missing from the book.

Angeline King is a novelist and researcher from County Antrim.

]]><![CDATA[Ella Gingles]]>Tue, 15 Oct 2024 13:59:50 GMThttps://www.angelineking.com/history/ella-ginglesElla Gingles, the 20-year-old woman from County Antrim who took on the underworld of Chicago in 1909.

Introduction

“I am telling this story in the hope of saving other girls, who like myself may be in danger from the beastly ‘slavers’ and a life of shame.”

These are the words of Ella Gingles, the twenty-year-old woman who took on the underworld of Chicago in 1909, exposed vice and government corruption, united the Orange and Green societies of Chicago and gave feminists the case they needed to demand new legislation to protect girls from sex trafficking — all of this 3,634 miles from home.

I am not the first to tell Ella’s story. An account by journalist Hal McLeod Lytle, who followed the case, has been widely distributed in America and is available on resources which are free to access online. While Lytle was on Ella’s side and sometimes approached the story with sensitivity, he opted for the journalistic style of his time and sensationalised parts of his narrative so that it was difficult to see who Ella was. I aim to reconstruct Ella into the flawed and courageous person that she was.

The reasons for writing this blog are:

Ella Gingles wrote her own story. I don’t know where the original document is, if it still exists, but her words are included in Lytle’s book. She states her reason for writing her own story as follows: “I am telling this story in the hope of saving other girls…”
Ella Gingles’ story is universal. Women throughout history have been subjected to violence. Sex trafficking is as pertinent today as it was in 1909.
This story is golden in that it fills a gap in women’s history. It is also compelling in the way that traditional Irish divisions were bridged in order to protect workers and women.

Who was Ella Gingles?

Ella Gingles was born on 6 November 1888 in Hightown, a townland in Kilwaughter, just outside Larne. Her parents were Thomas Gingles and Mary Jane Drummond. She came from a large farming family of thirteen children and crossed the Atlantic Ocean in November 1907, at the age of 19. She worked for some months as a housemaid in Canada before moving on to Chicago, where she hoped to secure a job as a lacemaker. She travelled via Michigan, apparently visiting a sister — most likely Elizabeth (b. 1885) — and, on 15 November 1908, arrived in Chicago, a metropolitan boomtown battling high crime, high immigration and low investment in policing.

Men in the top echelons of government ensured through their actions or passivity that sexual exploitation was integral to the capitalist foundations of the city of Chicago. The Chicago Vice Commission report in 1910 estimated that there were 1,020 brothels and at least 5,000 full-time prostitutes among a population of approximately 2 million, while a conservative estimate of trade was $16 million per year. A subsequent report in 1910 pointed to weaknesses in the commission, suggesting there were at least 20,000 prostitutes.

The Vice Commission found that women's earnings averaged $6 a week, 40 percent less than was necessary for independent living. The average prostitute earned approximately $25 per week. The Wellington Hotel at the centre of Ella Gingles’ story was located close to the Levee, a red light district and centre of criminal activity. In 1909, only months after Ella’s attack, there was another scandal concerning a doctor who was found dead in the hotel where Ella claimed to have been abused. The Levee was broken up following a campaign from the Chicago Vice Commission (CVC) and the The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which had a department dedicated to rescuing women from sexual exploitation.

By reading on, you can come to your own view, but a basic understanding of the circumstantial evidence suggests that Ella Gingles could well have become a victim of interstate sex-trafficking. Ella accused Agnes Barrett of trying and failing to trap her into prostitution. Agnes Barrett, who ran a lace store in the Wellington Hotel, accused Ella Gingles of the theft of two items of handmade lace, which Ella said were her own. This charge, it was thought by feminists, unions and Irish societies, was part of the trap.

A modern analysis of Ella’s predicament might point to her being ‘groomed’ by a criminal gang, the objective being to cause such shame and fear that Ella would have to submit and commit herself to a life of crime. The one crime Ella did commit was to travel to America on another girl’s ticket. Regardless of what happened, it is clear that Ella suffered much misfortune. The timing of her misfortune, however, was critical: she arrived in Chicago when the suffrage and temperance movements were strong and the various societies of Irish community confident. These groups were ready to take on Chicago’s vice. All they needed was a high profile case and strong publicity. Ella Gingles became the symbol of their campaign.

The next part of this blog is lengthy - around 10,000 words. If you're curiosity has been piqued, keep reading...

Photograph: Chicago Examiner, Sat July 3, 1909
Source: http://digital.chipublib.org/digital/collection/examiner/id/6759/rec/13

Ella’s story, including her own words, is recorded in the Gutenburg files: The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tragedies of the White Slave, by H. M. Lytle. I acknowledge the terms of the Project Gutenberg License in copying parts of it here. I have also drawn information from newspapers and various other sources.

Prelude from Larne & Kilwaughter Presbyterian Church

Hal. McLeod Lytle begins his story with a letter from Ella’s minister. I too will begin here. Ella belonged to the unitarian Presbyterian church, a branch of Christianity that rejects the doctrine of the trinity. This is an old church, established by a congregation of Galloway Presbyterians in the 1600s, though the church split over the unitarian debate in 1715. Today’s building, dating to 1828, is as Ella would have known it. The following is an excerpt from a letter from Ella’s minister, written on 29 June 1909, in the middle of Ella’s trial for petty theft.

29th June, 1909.

Dear Sir:--

Last evening two American ladies, Miss Hopkins, of Chicago, and Mrs. Murphy, of Minneapolis, called upon me with reference to the poor young girl, Ella Gingles, whom, like a chivalrous-hearted Irishman, you have done and are doing so much to protect and defend. I know her well, her father is a member of the Congregation of which I am minister, as were his ancestors before him. He is a large farmer, well off, as Irish farmers go here in the North of Ireland, and his wife, Ella's mother, is an exceedingly nice, gentle-hearted woman. They have had a large family—thirteen, if my memory serves me—and as their minister I christened them all and have seen them grow up from infancy. Ella was frequently under my roof, as she was on friendly terms with two young ladies—my adopted daughters—who reside with me. I always found her a bright, cheerful, well-principled girl, clever in many ways with her needle, etc., and especially in the art of crocheting and manufacturing lace. In the latter branches I know that she won prizes at our local annual industrial exhibitions in the town of Larne. But the family being large and their not being particularly prosperous here in Ireland, she and other young members of the family, like many other young people of energy and enterprise, have sought a land of better promise across the Atlantic with sad results to her unfortunately. As I have said, she is the child of respectable and well-off parents…

Sincerely yours,

J. Kennedy,

Minister of the Old Presbyterian Congregation
of Larne & Kilwaughter.

(Postmarked): 'Larne, Ireland, June 30, 1909.'

At trial, Ella explained that she had seven sisters and several brothers — we can assume six boys, including any infants who died. Ella was one of at least five of the Gingles children to emigrate from Ireland.

Ella Gingles' Own Words

Ella Gingles wrote her own story. The style is literary. Here are two such examples:

“It is a long and hard way when one must set forth to expose one's own butchery, shame and misfortune, but I feel that in telling this story the very fact that I have been a victim will carry with it weight.”

“It is a far cry from the green hills of Larne, from the wet meadows, glistening with the rains, from the song of the nightingale in the gathering dusk, the sweetness, the beauty of that green island which I call my home and which will henceforth be my only home, to the mire and filth of a criminal court in the city of Chicago, to the unspeakable horrors through which I have been dragged, and to the desperation to which I was driven.”

We know that Ella was literate and in possession of a Charles Dickens book, so there is no real reason to believe she didn’t write this account herself. However, without the original document, it’s impossible to know how much input Lytle had. Lines, such as, “I myself am as clean and pure as on the day when I left that little Irish homestead 18 miles from Belfast and came to America,” do seem American in style. I will return to Ella’s position upon leaving Ireland later. She goes on:

“One who is murdered is not a murderer, nor is one who is outraged a person of bad character…Yes, I will forget everything that has happened and become again the girl who left Ireland such a short time ago to become a victim of fiends.”

Ella was accused of being hysterical at the time of her attack. She was then accused of being too calm in court:

“They say that I have been cool, calm and collected on the witness stand during my trial. I have been cool, calm and collected because I was telling the truth, but the reaction from those awful hours in court have been so terrible that I shudder even yet to think of them.”

Ella was influenced by the women’s movements of the day. The term ‘white slavery’ was adopted for sex trafficking and forced prostitution:

“I am telling this story in the hope of saving other girls, who like myself may be in danger from the beastly 'slavers' and a life of shame. If I can but save a few girls from this horrible fate, if I can only help, in some modest way, to protect womanhood from the horrors of White Slavery I shall feel happy for laying bare my soul and giving to the world the true story of the attempt to make a white slave out of me.”

“I am told by men who know about these awful things that my case is only one of many. What happened to me may be an isolated instance and I am told that it is representative of the workings of the panders for the ‘upper ring,’ or the dealing in girls’ bodies by rich men, rather than the selling of girls to cheap resorts through a quicker route.”

“I was born in Larne, Ireland. My parents are respectable middle class people and property owners. Our family is a large one, there being thirteen children. We are protestants, as are most of the people of that particular district of Ireland, our church being the Presbyterian. We have always been members of that church, as the letter from our pastor shows.”

“Larne, the city where I was reared, is a little town about 18 miles from Belfast. One of the principal industries of the town is the making of hand-made Irish laces. I was brought up to the lace-making trade. I won several prizes against the best lace-makers in the Belfast region. I have invented one particular lace pattern of my own, an improved ‘grape-vine pattern.’ With this I won the lace-making prize in Larne on the occasion.”

“In Ireland there are continual tales of America, how easy it is to make money over there. I had never been farther away from Larne than Belfast in all my life. Many Irish girls had come to America, worked for a time and returned home with money, placing herself in a position to help out her parents in their old age. These stories attracted me…The name America soon came to mean to me a golden land in the West, as it has meant to many another simple Irish girl. The spell came upon me so strongly that I could think of nothing else. I could see nothing but a golden land, and a fortune that I could make there with my laces, for I had heard that fabulous prices were paid for Irish laces in America. I begged my people to let me go to America. After much pleading they gave their consent.”

I return to Ella’s motives for leaving Ireland later. As stated previously, Ella travelled to America on another girl’s ticket, and we will learn that she kept using the surname Raymond when in Canada.

“I was about to purchase my ticket in Belfast when word reached me that Belle Raymond, a girl I knew in Belfast and who had already purchased her ticket but had been taken ill, would be unable to make the trip. I thought I might get this ticket a little cheaper. I did save quite a little by purchasing her ticket, but I was obliged, on account of the registration of her name, to come under her name. My enemies have made much of the fact that I had gone under Belle Raymond's name. I am sorry now that I did it after all that has come out in connection with my terrible experiences…To travel on another person's pass is undoubtedly wrong, but it is not a heinous crime…So I went to Montreal on the ticket of Belle Raymond.”

“On ship-board I made several acquaintances among the other Irish girls on board, and they told me that the best way to get a start on this side of the water was to get a position as maid to some great lady and then interest her in lace-making. Then, they said, I could soon build up a good trade for my laces among the people who had plenty of money to pay for them…”

“I did not land directly in Montreal. The last stage of the journey I performed by train from Quebec, where I left the steamer. I spent half a day in Quebec viewing the sights of the city in company with several other girls. I then took the train for Montreal where I went directly to the Young Women's Guild home, where I knew I would be safe. The Guild secured me a position with the Thornton family in Belleville, Ontario.”

“I was overjoyed when I found that I was going into a great rich family, for they told me that Mrs. Thornton's father was worth many, many millions of dollars, and that he controlled the roller mill business in Canada. This meant that if I secured Mrs. Thornton as a patroness for my laces I could get all the rich ladies to buy.”

“Disappointment awaited me and my dreams were shattered. I worked nine months as a housemaid. Mrs. Thornton was not approachable by servants, although she was uniformly kind and considerate.”

Details emerge in court about Ella’s time with the Thorntons, but they are not provided in Lytle's account. I return to this in a review of the press.

“Disheartened, I finally left the services of the family. I was given a letter certifying to my good character when I quit.”

“I went to Toronto where I worked for about three weeks. At the end of this time I had almost given up hope of doing anything with my lace-making. I was heartsick and almost ready to go home. I had saved up a little money, however, enough to take me to Chicago or some big city in the United States, and still have $40 or $50 left with which to support myself until I could get work of some kind. I was on the point of going back home to Ireland at first, but the thought that I would get there just about penniless, and without having done well on this side, and the thought of what the neighbors would say and how the other girls would laugh at me, finally decided me to come to Chicago and make one last trial at what the Americans call ‘making good’ before I gave up all hope. This fatal decision was my ruin. Had I been able to see ahead just a little, to have looked into that awful hell-pit of a Wellington hotel—but there. God ruled otherwise and perhaps chose me out as an example and warning.”

The Attacks According to Ella’s Narrative

“I was practically penniless when I arrived in Chicago. I knew no one. The magnitude of the city was fearful to me. For hours I wandered about knowing not where to go. Exhausted and frightened, I at last sought shelter in a railway station. The matron there was kind and talked encouragingly to me. She soon knew my story.”

Ella does not mention at this point that she visited a sister in Illinois before proceeding to Chicago. It is possible that Hal McLeod Lytle edited her story.

“She took me to the Young Women's Christian Association and obtained a room for me. In a few days the officers of the association obtained a position for me as a maid at the Wellington hotel. For five weeks I was happy.”

This five-week period relates to the weeks before Christmas in 1908.

The Wellington Hotel was situated at the northeast corner of S. Wabash avenue and E. Jackson street. The hotel was demolished in 1915.

“In the Wellington hotel was the lace store of Agnes Barrett. Fine Irish laces were on exhibition. The wealthy women of the city patronized the place and almost fabulous prices were paid for the tiny bits of laces on exhibition.”

“Miss Barrett seemed to take a great liking for me. She was so kind and considerate. She petted and fondled me. Mrs. Cecilia Kenyon and Miss Donohue were also in the store. All of the women lived in the Wellington hotel. Miss Donohue was secretary of the hotel company. They all seemed to be very prominent. At least fine dressed men often came into the store to visit them. They went out to dinners with them and to the theatres.”

“To me Miss Barrett and Mrs. Kenyon, who was her intimate friend, were angels.”

“Often Miss Barrett took trips away from the city. She said at those times that she was going to French Lick Springs, Ind., where she had another lace store. When she returned she would show me rolls of bills which she said were the profits from the store.”

It transpires in the court case narrative that Miss Barrett ran a manicure business in French Lick Springs, Indiana, about 280 miles from Chicago. The hotel resort, which was owned by a prominent democrat in 1909, is still there today; though the original building has been replaced.

“She told me that if I were only ‘wise’ like she, I could have fine clothes and not have to work much. She said that lots of nice men with plenty of money were looking for nice girls like me, to make wives of them.”

“Her feeling towards me seemed to change almost in a day.”

“I became afraid of her. After these outbreaks I only went to the store when I was compelled to do so. When I did go she would be extravagant in her praises of me.”

“That awful night, January 4, 1909, will haunt me to my grave. It was as if the deepest pit of the very deepest hell had suddenly been transferred to earth and found lodgement in Chicago.”

“It is left for you who read this whether my attempt to save others from my dreadful fate is justifiable.”

Source: Chicago Examiner, Thursday February 18, 1909
Link:http://digital.chipublib.org/digital/collection/examiner/id/1088/rec/1?fbclid=IwAR30ZCc1Campgx07x1eklJB2Ls8WPoypUw_7Ajp7mZufDpk_6OBx2xA6MKI

Lytle’s account is not chronological, so I will add some information revealed later: prior to going to the hotel, Miss Barrett and Miss Kenyon had visited Ella’s home, ransacked her belongings, stolen from her and then accused her of stealing their lace. The setting then moves to the Wellington Hotel...

“After the orgies which had taken place while I was lying helpless and frightened so that I could scarcely move, I was told that I must be Miss Barrett’s slave for six months. The price for my slavery was to be $25 cash down, and $5.00 a day for the term of slavery. I fought and screamed again at this and said if they did not let me have my clothes and get out of there I would get a detective and see what could be done. They both then told me that I could not get a detective at that hour of the night.”

“I was turned out of that hotel near midnight in the rain without a cent of money in my pockets, bleeding from the outrages from which I had suffered and forced to run all the way to my home in the rain.”

During a second attack on 16 February 2009, Ella is taken to the bathroom of the hotel, where she is drugged, cut by her assailants and tied to the bath. She terms the male assailant ‘the man torturer’ and clarifies that this was not the man in a velvet mask who tortured her on the first night in January. Miss Barrett cuts Ella and threatens her “savagely.” While being tortured, Ella hears the name Tom Taggart. This is the name of the owner of the hotel in French Lick Springs, the spa and gambling resort where Miss Barrett had a manicure business. Tom Taggart (1856-1929) was a Monaghan-born immigrant, former mayor and politician with a high-profile at a national level. If Ella was making this part of her narrative up, she was playing with fire.

“It was while I was being tortured that the name of a man named Taggart was first heard by me. Miss Barrett said, ‘If Tom Taggart could only see her now.’ This I swore to on the witness stand in my trial for stealing lace which I made myself and I am ready to swear to it again. Then there was something said about the ‘Springs,’ and Miss Barrett said, ‘You know I promised to get them girls like this one.’ I was frightened to death by this time and did not know what to expect.’”

This is one of several reasons why the Ella Gingles case was so high-profile. Nothing came of Tom Taggart’s association with it. The case against Ella for theft was tried in June 2009 and we learn that Tom Taggart appeared in court voluntarily to clear his name and emphasise that he did not know Ella Gingles. He was treated with none of the aggression Ella experienced on the stand, and his fortunes do not seem to have waned any afterwards.

The First Attack According to Ella’s Affidavit

The affidavits are the statements given to the police. They are difficult to follow, so I have shortened them and changed the narrative to the first person.

The following affidavit relates to the first attack. It was recorded in January 1909. Ella claimed that the second attack was a result of her giving this statement to the police. Ella Gingles and Hal McCleod Lytle often refer to Agnes Barrett as Madame Barrett, applying the professional label as prostitution boss, one which Agnes Barrett denied. (The spelling for her name changes throughout).

“At about seven o'clock on the evening of January 4th, 1909, I returned from a trip down-town to my room at 474 La Salle Avenue, Chicago, and there found Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, and Mrs. Kenyon waiting.” (Photographs of Agnes Barrett and Mrs Kenyon below).

“They came up to my room and Madame Barette asked me to give her a collar that I had been enlarging for her. I told her I had not yet finished it. I went to the bureau and took out the collar and gave it to her. She said she wanted the rest of the lace. I told her she had not given me any more lace to do.”

“They took a yard of crepe lace that was an original design and with which I had won a prize in Belfast, a plate mat that was an original design, and with which I had won a prize in Larne, Ireland, and a necklace with an amethyst drop of a few stones that my mother bought for me in London and gave to me the Christmas before I left home, at which time she bought another with blue stones and gave it to my sister. They also took all the money I had, consisting of a Canadian dollar, four American paper dollars and a dollar in change. They took my watch, my bank book showing a deposit of forty dollars in Canada, a sofa top and cushion and many other things.”

“Madame Barette then asked me to let her look at my trunk. I went to Mrs. Linderman, the landlady, and got a candle and took the two women down in the basement and opened the trunk. Mrs. Kenyon held the candle and Madame Barette went through my trunk and took a pair of long, white stockings, a pair of white gloves and some chiffon, and then Mrs. Kenyon dropped grease from the candle all over anything of any value. The two women tramped the rest of the clothes into the floor, ruining them.”

“Madame Barette put my belongings into a pillow-slip, she said to me, ‘Sure this is all mine.’”

“After remaining in the room for two hours or more, joking and laughing and fooling away time, some time after nine o'clock I was ordered to take up the bag that they had filled with my own goods and carry them down to the Wellington Hotel. I did so on the promise that when they got to the Wellington Hotel, the stuff would be given back. We reached the Wellington Hotel and went into the room of Agnes Barrett some time in the neighborhood of half-past nine o'clock, or maybe somewhat later, having gone down in the street car. Mrs. Kenyon locked the door. The two women then whispered together in a low tone and Agnes Barrett asked me to take off my clothes. I refused.”

Agnes Barrett, Copyright, Chicago History Museum

“Agnes Barrett said, ‘You might have something that belongs to me.’ She and Mrs. Kenyon then took off my clothes, stripping me with the exception of my shoes. A pin in my back hurt me and I screamed, whereupon Agnes Barrett seized me by the throat and told her me she would choke me to death.”

“Agnes Barrett said to me, ‘I know a nice gentleman that wants to get you to live with him.’ I replied that I did not want to get married. The two women laughed and said, ‘Nobody is asking you to get married; you would only have to live with someone a little while and you would get plenty of money for it.’”

“Agnes Barrett then told Mrs. Kenyon to hold me, and Mrs. Kenyon grabbed me from behind, putting her arms through my arms from behind.”

“Miss Barrett and Mrs. Kenyon were unclothed, a short time later when a man came to the room. When he knocked, the two women put on night gowns and left me entirely uncovered. Miss Barrett asked him what kept him and he replied he could not get there any sooner. His face was covered with a black mask. He attacked me and was assisted in this by Mrs. Kenyon. After some time the telephone rang. It was for the man and he called up and said, ‘Is that you, Charley?’ And ‘Yes, it is all right, Charlie, she is here.’ He put on his clothes and left, but that Agnes Barrett and Mrs. Kenyon remained in the room. The man said before leaving that he would bring the money tomorrow night. I asked Agnes Barrett for my clothes, and these were given to me after a time. Miss Barrett told me to come down the next night at five o'clock and offered me a silk dress if I would do as she bid. She then took the silk dress out of the wardrobe and showed it to me. I refused it. She told me to come tomorrow in order to go down to French Lick Springs, where I was to stay about a week. She said that I was not to dress in the morning, but to put on a kimono and to dress in the evening. She said I was to remain in my room in the afternoon. Mrs. Kenyon then asked Agnes Barrett, what about the ‘last one?’ She replied, ‘Well, they have tired of her; they had her long enough.’ She then told me that I was to do whatever she would want me to for six months and that I was to come down there the next day to sign a paper. Agnes Barrett promised to give her back all the things she took from me if I would come down there the next day at five o'clock. When Agnes Barrett, gave me my clothes, I said that if she did not give me the rest of my things I would go to a detective. Agnes Barrett made me sign two papers; the contents of neither was read to me, nor was I allowed to see them, and the condition of signing the papers was to get my clothes.”

“I asked Agnes Barrett for a nickel to ride home. She kept all of my money, and said the walk would do me good. I ran home most of the way.”

“The next day I did not return to the hotel. I went to Captain O’Brien and told him that the enormity of the situation was such that I could not tell all of it. I did not reach Captain O'Brien's office until nearly five o'clock in the evening because I was ill from the outrages and indignities and sights of the night before.”

At this point Lytle moves straight onto the second attack. In between, as explained above, Ella went to Captain O’Brien, who was initially friendly towards Ella, and even took her home to his wife. However, Agnes Barrett pressed charges against Ella for theft. Ella was arrested and then released pending a trial. Agnes Barrett reneged on the charges, but by this point Ellla’s lawyer, Patrick O’Donnell was involved, and took an interest in Ella’s case. It is not clear to me why the state decided to pursue Ella’s conviction, but the second attack happened while Ella was awaiting trial. She had no earnings and had limited access to food during this time.

The Second Attack According to Ella’s Affidavit

This is my own summary of Ella’s affidavit.

At around 6.30pm on 16 February 1909, Ella went to Room 545 of the Wellington Hotel to collect money she was owed for lacemaking from Miss Arnold. Upon arrival, she discovered that the room had been taken over by Agnes Barrett. A man informed Ella that Miss Arnold was in the bathroom. Ella entered the hotel room. The man pushed her into the bathroom and placed a wet handkerchief into her mouth, which contained a sweet, burning liquid. Ella was moved to a different room by her assailant and woke up lying on a bed undressed, with the exception of her stockings. The man informed Ella that she was to be killed by Miss Barrett for telling something she did not wish Ella to tell. When the man left the room, Ella wrote a note to Mr O’Donnell, her lawyer, fixed two stamps on it and threw it over the transom to the next door. She was covered in a robe when the man returned. He demanded to know what she was doing and attacked her. She screamed. He hit her over the right eye, offered her ten dollars and tried to tear the spread she was wearing off. Ella screamed again, and he bound her mouth with a gag.

Late in the night the man presented some paper and told Ella to sign it or he would kill her. The man attacked her a second time and pulled the gag off her mouth. She screamed for help again. He bound her mouth again. She sat like this until about two in the morning. Agnes Barrett arrived and drank wine with the man, who offered Agnes Barrett fifty dollars. She said it wasn’t enough, but she took it. The man left.

Agnes Barrett took Ella into the bathroom, where a man in a black mask forced her to drink a substance. Agnes Barrett referred to the man as a doctor. She went to get knock out drops and made Ella drink more of the wine and eat the “candy.”

The following words, written by Lytle, are in parentheses, “Here the affidavit recites the revolting details, unprintable in nature, which occurred in the bathroom on the fifth floor of the Wellington hotel.”

Ella’s statement goes on to provide details of Madame Barrett cutting Ella on the arms and wrists several times and of more abuse by a man. She is left drugged on the floor of the room.

Ella’s Arrest

Ella Gingles’ narrative now takes us back to Captain O’Brien’s office, four days after the first attack, when she decides to tell the chief detective about items being stolen from her. Captain O’Brien’s actions are confusing for Ella. He takes her to his family home for supper, lodges her, and the next day, orders the women at the Wellington hotel to bring back the things which they had stolen from Ella. Agnes Barrett instead makes a charge of theft against Ella, resulting in Ella’s arrest for larceny over four pieces of lace valued at $50. (The lace is elsewhere 2 pieces and deemed to be worth $100). Ella spends the night in a cell at Harrison Street Police Station. The next morning Captain O'Brien asks Attorney Patrick H. O'Donnell to take up her case. Bail is provided by someone called Samuel Feldmann. Ella is released pending a hearing.

“Mr. O'Donnell kindly took me to his home, and his wife there cried over and mothered me and was as good to me as my own mother could have been. Up to this time I had given no hint of the horrors of January 4…Then the people of Chicago began to come to my aid because I was poor and friendless. The Irish Fellowship Club employed Attorney John Patrick O'Shaughnessey to take up my case and investigate it.”

“Subsequently I was compelled to make lace in the presence of a number of ladies who were interested in my case, just to show them that I was not a fraud…After Mr. O'Donnell had satisfied himself that I was all right, and that there was no fraud in any of my stories, he, too, was very kind and allowed me to come down to his office to visit with Miss Mary Joyce, his stenographer, who used to chat with me while I made lace with which to pay at least a part of my obligations to the O'Donnells.”

One of Ella’s customers and friends was Miss Sarah M. Hopkins of the Catholic Women's League of Chicago.

The situation eventually takes its toll on Ella as the hearing is delayed.

“Some days I cried and cried because the case was not over and I was not free…My nerves were breaking gradually under the terrible strain.”

Patrick O’Donnell: Copyright, The Chicago History Museum. https://explore.chicagocollections.org/image/chicagohistory/71/cj87w53/

The Hearing

“No more remarkable case was ever tried in the criminal court of Cook count,” Lytle remarks as his narrative turns to the hearing and trial.

It has been a challenge to summarise the entire case. There is much conflicting information in the detail: Ella is at once brunette and blond; dates are mixed up; and the contrast between Ella’s plain words and the journalist’s theatrical words are interesting to observe. The disjointed approach perhaps results from Lytle assembling a series of journalistic articles he had written for The Chicago Tribune.

Lytle plays close attention to how Ella behaves in court. She is described as “the softest-spoken witness the criminal court had seen in many a day.”

“Ella Gingles was ingenuous to a fault. She answered questions put to her in cross-examination without an instant's hesitation, and with the utmost candor.”

As for her appearance:

“Miss Gingles was gowned in the most simple style. Her fresh, unpainted face and her wide-staring, innocent eyes were of the sort seldom involved in a case of this kind.”

However, his theatrics and observations detract from hard facts. In his efforts to read her body language, he descends into irritating descriptions:

“Miss Gingles not only blushed, but she wiggled. With a glove twisted in her hand, she had hesitated so long over the answer to a question involving a disagreeable answer that the most dramatic of all situations had been produced. The court would wait, the audience would hang breathless, the attorneys, standing up, would lean forward, while the witness tried to find words in which to formulate a reply. Then in three words the story would be told. The jury would lean back and gasp…”

Lytle describes the jury as representative of high and low estate — of course, they were all men, a fact which must have coloured so many cases like Ella’s one way or another.

A sensationalist line sums up the trial:

“It was a dramatic trial, filled throughout with thrills and shudders.”

Agnes Barrett’s side of the story was that Ellla had signed a confession admitting she was a department store thief. It might be expected that a hotel would involve the police in criminal matters rather than extract confessions in this way, but there is no questioning of the practice in court, so I assume this was something that happened frequently. Agnes Barrett accused Ella of stealing lace and using it in a new dress. She suggested that Ella’s injuries were self-inflicted and that Ella tied herself to the bath.

I could not find mention of Agnes Barrett after 1909, but I’m sure someone with access to Chicago records would have more luck. She may have married and changed name or moved from Chicago. A 1908 record of the death of Bridget Barrett (née Lavin), who had a daughter Agnes and siblings Edward, Annie, Thomas, Mary and John Joseph, was all I could find. This may not be the relevant Agnes.

Lytle’s drama continues:

“During the long hearing Madame Barrett sat alone. She seemed to have been shunned. At no time did she lose her self-control.”

“It was the gaze and composure of a woman of the world—a woman who has passed through horrors before and who has become immune.”

If Lytle intended Ella to be depicted as pure and innocent, he seems to keep his options open in the following description, in which Ella has the power to bewitch:

“She wore a white linen suit, with a long coat. The collar and cuffs were trimmed with blue ribbon. A tan straw hat, tam o'shanter style, was patched by brown ribbons and roses. Her brown hair, in curly puffs and waves, fell below her ears and tumbled bewitchingly over her eyes.”

At the hearing, Ella already appears to have the support of Chicago’s women’s groups; otherwise, Lytle has conflated the two events:

“As the little lace-maker's name was called and she rose to walk past the jury to the witness stand fifty women seated in the back part of the courtroom rose and began to clap their hands. Some threw their handkerchiefs into the air. The girl seemed much affected by the demonstration. Judge Brentano seemed taken aback for a moment by this unusual outburst. In vain the bailiff pounded with his gavel for order. Finally the court was compelled to rise and sternly rebuke the courtroom in no uncertain terms. Miss Gingles began her story in a low tone. It was the voice of a schoolgirl telling of something she had undergone, but could not comprehend. The persons in the courtroom hung on every word. You could have heard a pin fall.”

“It was a duel of lace-making knowledge between Miss Gingles and Agnes Barrett, but Mr. Short failed to secure any important admissions.”

“A queer incident occurred after the adjournment. Ella Gingles, who was formerly kept prisoner in the county jail, and who was released on bail, ran from the witness stand into the arms of several women who are befriending her. Agnes Barrett, white and desperate at the charges made against her, ran back from the advancing throng of women.”

“Among the women who were with the lace-maker were Mrs. T. G. Kent, president of the Daughters of the Confederacy; Mrs. Van Dusen Cooke of the Socialist Women of the United States; Mrs. M. C. Brem of the Social Economics Club; Mrs. Lyman Cooley of the Evanston W. C. T. U.; Mrs. Mollie Benecke, Irish Choral Society; Dr. M. V. Maxson; Mrs. Margaret Inglehart; Mrs. Frances Hagen, and Mrs. Frances Howe, Children's Day Association.”

The Trial of Ella Gingles

Lytle goes through all the various people who were called to the stand in June 2009. The information is too abundant to include here, but it is an interesting read if the chronology can be established. I will provide a few examples.

Mrs. Linderman, Ella’s landlady, was one of the people called to the hotel on 17 February, the morning after the bathroom episode. She found Miss Gingles delirious, in bed and under the care of a physician. She said that Ella lay on the bed and screamed at the top of her voice:

“She kept repeating, 'Oh, Miss Barrett! Don't let that devil-man in here again! Don't let him kill me, Miss Barrett! Save me, Miss Barrett.’'’

Mrs Linderman and her daughter were both questioned, Mrs Linderman admitting to providing Ella with food when Ella was hungry and without money in January and February 1909.

Lytle goes through the witness cross-examinations, commenting that Tom Taggart, the Indiana politician who owned the French Lick Springs Hotel, was not cross-examined like the other witnesses, but was treated with deference. As a voluntary witness, he was there to protect his name. He said he knew nothing about ‘White Slavery’ and there were no bad characters in his hotel and casino.

The only things I could find about his hotel were references to violence over race in the area and short selling in the hotel’s bottled spring water business. Either the hotel had a clean name, or Taggart was astute in his approach to prostitution. Later, the hotel would be frequented by leading gangsters.

Dr Watson, the doctor who attended Ella after the second attack also appeared in court. Here some excerpts of Attorney Short questioning the physician:

‘I examined to see if she had been attacked, and found there were no such indications. I cut her loose and found she wasn't in a bad way. Her pulse was good and she did not need medicine.’

‘How about her wounds?’

‘They were scratches, and not cuts.’

‘What position was Miss Gingles in when you found her in the bathroom?’ resumed Mr. Short, again taking the witness.

‘She was lying on her right side and her body stretched from one end of the bathtub. Her feet were tied to the iron pipe under the stationary bowl. Her hands were tied to the iron foot at the end of the tub.’

‘Did you know Miss Gingles before?’

‘No. I never saw her before.’

‘Was there anything much the matter with her aside from being hysterical? Did you see the scratches on her arms and body?’

‘Yes. Those scratches were very superficial. They did not more than penetrate the first skin.’

‘Did you see a liquid in the bathroom?’

‘Yes. I thought it was wine. Also there was a little bottle of laudanum.’

‘Now, if this girl had taken laudanum, what would have been the condition of the pupils of her eyes?’

'They would have been very much contracted.'

Ella’s eyes, according to the doctor, were dilated.

Patrick O’Donnell, Ella’s attorney, then questions the doctor, challenging his statements, with more court theatrics. Dr. Watson finds it difficult to answer the questions and can’t remember the information he is being asked to supply.

The next person to be questioned is Professor Henry J. Cox of the United States Weather Bureau. He is called to establish the weather at eleven on 4 January 1909, the night of Ella’s first attack. The state was trying to prove that there was no trace of rain in order to discredit Ella’s report of rain. Evidence of light rain is supplied by other witnesses. It is worth pausing to remember that this is a case for petty theft of two items of linen.

Lytle concludes of the long case:

“When the case closed and the arguments were through the courtroom was filled with wild, expectant people. It was a scene never equaled in Cook county. Even the scenes of confusion in the trial of Dora McDonald for the slaying of Webster Guerin were eclipsed.”

“When the court read from the slip of paper, ‘We, the jury, find Ella Gingles not guilty,’ bedlam broke loose. Men and women, many of them richly dressed, rioted madly. Several of the clubwomen and members of the Irish Fellowship Society ran to the girl's side and hugged and kissed her.”

“After leaving the courtroom the girl was taken in a cab to the home of a wealthy clubwoman on the south side. That evening hundreds of supporters called to greet her and tell her of their joy at her acquittal. Several of them joined together and presented her with a small diamond brooch.”

In fact, Ella and Agnes Barrett, who was not technically on trial, were both deemed ‘not guilty.’ In other words, the jury sided with Agnes Barrett, deeming Ella’s account of her attacks to be fictitious.

The Return Home

Lytle includes a newspaper report from August 3, 1909. The following is a copy of the report:

"FRIENDS BID FAREWELL TO MISS ELLA GINGLES"

"Impressive Reception for Acquitted Lace-maker Is Given by Illinois Orangemen, Who
Present Bible and Purse."

"‘We believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; in Jesus Christ, His Son, our only Mediator; in the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, and in the Bible, His revealed will.’"

"Quoting these words from the declaration in the constitution of the Orangemen, adopted more than two hundred years ago, Robert F. Brown, Illinois state grand treasurer of the order, presented a leather-bound copy of the Bible to Ella Gingles. The Bible was the gift of the Ladies' Loyal Orange Order of Chicago, and the presentation was the climax of an impressive farewell reception given by the Illinois organization of the Orangemen order at Hopkins' Hall, Sixty-third street and Stewart avenue, to the young Irish lace-maker, who is to leave Chicago next Sunday evening to return to the home of her parents in Ireland."

"On the fly-leaf of the book presented to the young girl, who had passed through one of the most grilling experiences ever witnessed in this country, was inscribed the following:

‘Presented to Miss Ella Gingles by the ‘Chosen Few,’ Ladies’ Loyal Orange Order, Chicago, August 2, 1909. May the Lord watch between me and thee, while we are absent one from the other.—Mrs. Jane M. Herbison, Mrs. Rebecca McKeag, Mrs. Sarah Doonan.’"

"More than five hundred persons, friends of Miss Gingles, had crowded into the hall, filling every available space. She sat throughout the ceremonies, during which there were a number of addresses, with Mrs. Mary Brem of the Catholic Woman's League, and at whose home at 5488 Ellis avenue she has been living since her acquittal."

"William Russell, state grand master of the order, presided. Addresses were made by Samuel J. McCarroll, past grand master; H. H. Van Meter of the Chicago Law and Order League, and Rev. E. Keene Ryan of the Garfield Boulevard Presbyterian Church."

"Mr. McCarroll declared it was a blot upon the citizenship of Chicago that conditions were such that a young girl found it necessary to return to her home in Europe in order to be entirely safe."

"Miss Gingles also was presented with $100, which was a part of a fund raised by clubwomen in Chicago and by Rev. Mr. Ryan at a service at his church on July 11. Out of the remainder of the fund the expenses of the trip of Miss Gingles and Miss Grace Van Duzen Cooke, who is to accompany her, are to be paid."

"Miss Gingles will leave Sunday evening for New York, where she will be entertained by a committee of Orangemen Tuesday and another committee of the order will receive the girl and her escort upon their arrival in Liverpool. Her home is in Larne, Antrim County, Ireland."

Ella In The Newspapers

Much of the information so far is derived from Hal McLeod Lytle’s account, but the story can be assessed from a different angle through newspapers. The following article in the Chicago Examiner on 12 January 1909 was written after Ella’s first attack. If we recall Ella’s account, she had gone to Captain O’Brien to report her grievance, but had somehow been arrested for theft. We see that Ella’s attorney, Patrick O’Donnell, is well connected in Irish Chicago, being a member of the Irish Fellowship Society, and we learn that the Irish Fellowship is defending Ella. The Orange and Green lodges of Chicago join the women’s movement in her defence.

Ella’s story ran right across the USA. A report in Tacoma Washington on 12 July 1907, during the trial, leads on a threat to the life of Attorney Short, who was working for the state. The sensationalist headline is designed to cast doubt over Ella’s story. ‘Under the Pain of Death, Prosecutor of Pretty Lacemaker is Warned to Drop the Trial.’ The threat was a handwritten note. The story further casts doubt over Ella’s story by reporting that the matron of the La Salle Street Railway Station said that Ella had not been assaulted on 4 January. It ends with a story about the minister of a Presbyterian Church in Chicago inviting Ella up to the pulpit.

Canadian View on Ella

The most revelatory information on Ella Gingles comes from Canada. This information, not contained in Hal Lytle’s account, must surely have discredited Ella Gingles’ testimony, leading to the conclusion that she had made the story about Agnes Barrett up.

On 17 July 1909, The Ottowa Free Press provided accounts from three Canadian witnesses: Dr W.J. Gibson, superintendent of Belleville Hospital; David T. Thornton, Ella’s employer; and William E. McCormick, a photographer.

Patrick O’Donnell visited Canada and spoke to the various people involved, proposing to them that Ella had been trapped into ‘white slavery’. The outcome was not perhaps what O’Donnell hoped for, particularly as a local Belleville girl had apparently tied herself to a bureau in the same period. The insinuation was that Ella had mimicked her. A less surprising detail is that Ella used the name Ella Raymond in Canada, as per the surname on her ticket.

An unanticipated revelation, though it should not be a surprising one, given her age and circumstances, is that Ella was pregnant upon arrival in Canada. If the witnesses were telling the truth and the newspaper report was accurate, she gave birth to stillborn baby in her employer’s house in January 1908, a full year before the first attack in Chicago. She would have been 19 years-old at the time.

If Ella arrived in Canada in November 1907 and she was six or seven months pregnant when she lost her baby, she would have been travelling across the Atlantic at four or five months pregnant. There is no reason to doubt the testimony of both the employer and doctor, but Ella did not mention any of this in her own narrative. The information may have been edited from Lytle’s book, but it is more than likely, given the period, that the story was excluded on purpose. Pregnancy could have been the reason Ella took flight from home. The stillbirth can only have been a traumatic experience — her age, the psychological impact of loss, the physical trauma and the distance from home all contributing to unimaginable fear.

The Canadian family was sympathetic enough to keep Ella in employment after this point, but the employe was not impressed by Ella on the grounds that he had seen her staying out late and kissing a man. She had also had her picture taken while wearing his wife’s gown. Ella would not have been the first or last maid to try on a mistress’s dress: if anything this gives us a more rounded view of Ella than the theatrics of Lytle’s account, which, for all his support of Ella, go too far to depict her as pure, then bewitching. Her employer’s account brings Ella alive as a normal young adult, dating and dressing up, having her photograph taken, telling white lies to her employer, showing off. Perhaps sending a photograph home in this outfit was a way of reassuring home that all was well. When Ella went to the photographer, Mr McCormick, to have her photograph taken in her mistress’ belongings, she gave her name as Miss Wilson. As a maid in a subordinate position doing something she was not permitted to do, this should not be too shocking. Her employer, David Thornton, also levelled an accusation of theft of lace from his wife. Ella informed the Canadian family that the reason for her departure was that she had a sister in Chicago who was dying. This may also have been a lie.

Ella's account of what happened to her is detailed and convincing, and fits the context of Chicago’s underworld. However, if Ella was a petty thief on a maid’s salary, who gave birth to a stillborn child and subsequently concocted two fake attacks in order to escape an accusation of theft in Chicago, she had the fortune of being caught up in several major political movements. Christians and feminists fighting Chicago’s vice saw Ella’s story as a gift in their crusade against the exploitation of young women. While Ella was helped, it seems clear from the media circus that she was also used to further the causes of her new Chicago friends.

The Canadian testimonies, if they were designed to blacken her reputation, do nothing in a modern context but illicit sympathies towards a young, vulnerable pregnant woman, who was far away from home in late 1907-early 1908. The idea of lawyers travelling 637 miles to Belleville, Canada, and witnesses travelling to Chicago and all the train tickets and hotel expenses entailed, for a girl who was on trial for the theft of two items of lace, demonstrates the true purpose of Ella Gingles’ case: Ella was no longer an impoverished maid accused of theft but rather a political symbol of everything that needed fixed or left alone in America according to a particular viewpoint.

Ella may have been a flawed, brilliant, brave and articulate young woman, who told the odd lie and got herself into trouble, but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the state was on the side of vice. I believe Ella was mistreated in Chicago. I also think it’s probable that she was attacked.

Here is the photograph of Ella in her employer’s clothing — an instagrammable moment in 1908.

Feminists Back Ella

Next we have an article in a Feminist paper, The Progressive Woman, For the Woman Who Work, Vol. IV, November, 1910, No. XXXXII.

This article opens with the statement:

“Here is an account of a tragedy which offers the widest field of speculation to the psychologist, the sociologist, the criminologist and the philosopher.”

The account is anti-capitalist in sentiment and can be strongly feminist in tone, albeit with some of the same reductions of Ella made by Lytle. The term White Slavery should have been problematic, but it was the term used to bring attention to the plight of immigrant women.

There is also some focus in the article on Ella’s knowledge of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Ella was, in fact, a unitarian, so I’m not sure what this reference implied. It seems her Presbyterian and Orange associations were exploited over her Catholic friendships to appeal to a white, Protestant power base. Likewise, despite Ella’s clear ability to attract a cross-section of Ireland’s leading patriots in Chicago, she is part of the “Ulsterman race.”

We learn in this article that during the trial of June 2009, Ella was received in a moving ceremony at the Presbyterian church, during which funds were raised for her. In addition to her plight, it seems certain that Ella had some sort of quality of presence that brought her attention. This may have been down to the frank, yet naive way that she answered questions.

The article exposes the chain of corruption in Chicago’s underworld, linking women like Mrs Barrett to the police and the newspapers. We learn that the newspaper editors were also muzzled, leading to “one of the most atrocious journalistic crimes in the history of the world” — an overstatement and an indication of the passions the writer Eva Osler Nicholls.

Significantly, we learn more about Agnes Barrett in this account. It is suggested that she arrived in New York with 35 trunks that were not opened by customs, and this purported fact is attributed to her political links. The writer asks why Barrett didn’t simply drop the case, which was damaging to Barrett’s reputation: the answer, Nicholls suggests, lies in the fact that Ella was worth more to Barrett with this level of fame.

The saddest part of the story is that Cecilia Kenyon was found dead while Ella was in prison. In a report of 30 June 1909 in the Chicago Examiner, it was revealed that Ceclia, originally on the side of the state, was going to speak in Ella’s defence, and that she died in the company of a man of wealth and social position. Her husband did not push for an investigation, and so her sudden death was never investigated. Lieutenant James McCann, the officer in charge of her investigation, was on the Coroner’s jury, which returned the verdict of heart failure.

Eva Osler Nicholls proposes that between $38,000 and $100,000 was spent by the state on Ella’s conviction. Ella was accused of stealing lace, but her responses on trial meant that, “the limelight suddenly flashed upon the horrors of the underworld in an American metropolis.” Ella was keen to return to court to clear her name, but the Orange Order took care of her and advised her it was time to go home.

Nicholls makes the case in this article that White Slavery was not only protected by the police, but shielded by the press and may even have been linked to the courts.

I would suggest, given this account, that Ella did well to take on the system and walk away with her life. The sudden death of Cecilia Kenyon could be seen as a warning.

The Chicago Sunday Examiner ran a story on 18 July 1909 that a fund of $1,500 had been raised to take Ella’s case to the Supreme Court. Rev. R. Keene Ryan had formed the Gingles defence committee and was its chairman. Two days later, on 20 July 1909, the Chicago Examiner published this picture of Ella with her supporters:

Ella’s case along with the activities of the women’s groups supporting Ella and other young women contributed to the White Slave Traffic Act, which passed Congress in 1910. The act forbade transporting a woman across state lines for ‘immoral purposes’, but it eventually came to be abused and was used to punish interracial relationships.

The Conspiracy Theory

News of Ella’s case began in February 1909 and continued beyond her trial in June-July 1909. The Morning Oregonian ran a detailed report on 18 February, 1909, after the second attack and Ella’s arrest. The Wellington Hotel is described in it as ‘a standard downtown hostelry’ and the report immediately weighs up whether this was a plot against Ella or an attempt at suicide.

The Chicago Examiner ran a report on the same day proposing the whole thing was a set up. By this point Captain O’Brien believed Ella had arranged for someone to tie her up. As she had previously worked as a housekeeper of the hotel, her knowledge of the hotel was cited as the reason she was able to pull it off. O’Brien pointed out that the door was locked from the inside, so there was no way for the assailant to escape. Ella covered this in her testimony by saying the assailant had climbed through the transom (small window above the door). However, the transom was also barred from the inside. Details not covered in Lytle’s book are described, like the bathtub and sink being half filled with bloody water. The word ‘hysteria’ was employed in this article.

It becomes apparent from the Oregan article that Ella was unconscious for some time, both before and after the second attack, and when she was taken to the Frances Willard Hospital. She told Chief Detective O'Brien that she was first set upon near her home, 474 La Salle Avenue, by a man and woman. One of them struck her and the other threw pepper in her eyes. She was then hustled into a waiting cab. She didn’t regain consciousness until 9.00pm in the room, when she wrote a note calling for help to her friend, Miss Mary Joyce, who was a stenographer in the office of attorney Patrick O’Connell. Mary Joyce received the note at 9.00am the next morning.

The report tells us that Ella Gingles was not registered at the hotel. No bellboy could be found who picked up a letter and mailed it, and an apparent inconsistency was the postmark on the letter, which had been stamped at the post office at 9.00pm. The hotel manager said it would have had to be mailed no later than 7.30pm, an hour and a half before Ella regained consciousness. However, the hotel manager was perhaps not a reliable witness if illegal activities were taking place in her hotel. The dust around the transom window was also undisturbed.

Captain O’Brien’s statement to the Chicago Examiner on the Ella Gingles case was misogynistic:

‘When a young woman is impressionistic and something of an actress — as in the present case — it is easy to stage a melodrama in which the role of the persecuted heroine might be impersonated.’

As previously cited in the trial account, the hotel doctor examining Ella was also sceptical. He said the bottle of laudanum had a different label to begin with and did not smell of laudanum. He said her wounds were superficial. Doctors were called into assess Ella’s mental health and suggested she was hallucinating. The number of people involved in the case is astounding.

The Chicago Examiner weighed up the situation as follows:

The Oregan article demonstrates that Ella was not taken seriously, and her words were ascribed to a nervous condition caused by her troubles with Agnes Barrett. Mr O’Donnell told the newspaper that Ella’s male assaillant was well known in several states. Elsewhere there were reports that the men involved in the prostitution ring were politicians. As seen already, Thomas Taggart ended up on the witness stand in order to clear his name. As a republican attorney, Patrick O’Donnell may have seen the advantage of defaming Thomas Taggart, chairman of the national Democratic Committee. While Patrick O’Donnell believed Ella, the police demanded to know — if she was capable of writing a letter, why did she not alarm people and use the telephone. Ella provides an explanation for this in her own testimony: the assaillant might have been nearby and heard her.

Ella returns to Larne

Ella returned to Larne on the Campania in September 2009, almost two years after she had left home. She was accompanied by Mrs G Van Dusen Cooke, who stayed with Ella’s family in Kilwaughter. Even in her cabin on the ship when docked in New York, she was surrounded by press.

Ella married William Drummond on 12 January 1910, three months after returning from America. William Drummond, a Presbyterian from Larne Main Street and the son of a solicitor’s clerk, was around the same age as Ella. Mrs G Van Dusen Cooke of Chicago announced Ella’s marriage to the Chicago Press, 11 months after Ella’s second attack:

“Mrs G. Van Dusen Cooke takes pleasure in announcing her protege, Ella Gingles, was married to William Drummond, both of Larne, Ireland, on January 12, 1910, at her home in Kilwaughter, Larne.”

The above photograph appeared in the Chicago Press with the names Ethel Gingles, Horace Gingles, William Drummond, Ella Gingles, Hattie Gingles and Charles Gingles. It is made explicit in the article that she “did not marry money.” Ella wrote to the minister who had called her up to the pulpit, the Rev. Ryan Keene, that she married a law clerk. They had a wedding of 50 guests. The article said they lived in a small cottage in the village of Larne. Ella’s first child was born the following year, in 1911.

When Ella Gingles’ mother, Mary J. Gingles died in 1949, she was described in the local newspaper as the ‘grand old dame of Kilwaughter’. She was survived by seven daughters and two sons. One daughter was in Illinois, presumably Elizabeth. Ella’s mother, who had lived in New Zealand since 1933, was also buried in Chicago, alongside a son who had died in Chicago in 1925. Ella’s mother is interred with this son in Glenview cemetery.

Ella died in 1954 in Smiley Hospital, Larne, a few years after her husband. She led a life beyond the newspapers, and apart from one remark in 1935 regarding winning an award for floristry and another regarding her florist business in Ballysnod, she appears to have remained out of the limelight. She is buried in Larne cemetery.

A Note on Family History: I have not included anything about the history of the Gingles family in this blog. This has been more expertly done by Linda Hooke in Familia: Ulster Genealogical Review, Number 38, 2022. My aim was simply to tell a story about a remarkable woman who once lived near my own maternal family in Ballysnod.

Angeline King is the author of The Secret Diary of Stephanie Agnew, a contemporary novel set in Ballygally in the summer of 1995. Click here to read The Secret Diary of Stephanie Agnew.

The Secret Diary of Stephanie Agnew

]]><![CDATA[The Mystery of Jean Park]]>Tue, 24 Mar 2020 16:00:19 GMThttps://www.angelineking.com/history/the-mystery-of-jean-park

Jean Park, copyright National Museums Northern Ireland

“Perhaps the saddest incident comes from Ballygalley. An old woman, named Jane Parke, well-known to most of the residents of the neighbourhood, resided in a roughly-built cabin under the sea wall, a short distance on this side of the Halfway House. She lived principally by charity and recently was in receipt of Poor-Law Relief. Repeated warnings had been given her of the danger she incurred by continuing to reside in her tumble-down shanty in rough weather, but she was deaf to all advice, and now had met her death as the result of her obstinacy, her dwelling being completely wrecked and she either drowned by the heavy seas or was killed by the walls falling in on her.”
Larne Times, 29 December 1894

The following blog post was written in March 2020 after a walk around Ballygally trying to locate the position of Jean Park's home. Since writing it, a team of Jean Park enthusiasts have been in touch with more information, and this has become a truly enticing tale. I have highlighted anything new with an asterisk. Many thanks for your help.*

I’m holding up the photograph of you, Jean Park — a face born of boulder, rock and shingle — but you did not emerge from these rocks; they say you emerged from the sea, a small baby found in a boat in her dead mother’s arms. Your face is contorted and twisted with age, older than your 71 years, but you had no time to prepare for any photographer. Did you know what you were doing when you agreed to squat down and look at the camera? Was the photograph taken the same year you died? A farewell. Something to make your legend real.

I want to find a way to know where you resided. Was it on this spot, by Ballygally Head? I see the photographer, Robert John Welch, climbing down from the road past the seaweed drying out along the wall. I see him tip his hat and approach you. Today, you’re his golden find. He would record your name as Janet, but we know you as Jean, the common Ulster pronunciation of the name Jane.

I hold up my mobile phone and see the rocks and the grassy bank and picture the telegraph pole in the photograph that was damaged the night that you were washed away. Above it are the mountains that stretch out along Path Head — misty in your photograph; exactly proportional to what I see through my iPhone’s eye. My brother sees Ballygally Castle behind you. (He sees castles where I see walls). The bank is ever-changing, as we witnessed with the carving of a large swathe of coast at Ballygally in a recent storm. Rocks come and go, but this seems like a good hiding place, an opportunistic spot; you would have been the first person to be seen as the tourists rounded the bend at Ballygally Head.

This bay is the cold, dark edge of Ballygally. Did you pick it because you knew that no one would bother you here, that no authority would climb down and question you? It’s a cove below the head of a sleeping giant, whose face is handsome on approach from Larne or looking down from Sallagh, but here, up close, he’s stark and cold and covered in lichen.

The labourers building the road must have felt his danger and left the road hair-pin narrow to end their travail. The head had a confused appearance, the Ordnance Survey recorded in 1835, “scene of some violent subterraneous commotion.” A poet, William Clarke Robinson, said it was "like lion crouched with threatening mien." How your fate and that of the poet would become entwined!

This is the closest I’ve ever been to Carn Castle in Ballygally, the name given to the cluster of stones remaining from days of the Agnew/Ó Gnímh Gaelic chieftains and bards. Those stones, exposed to the elements for centuries on top of a towering basalt rock, have survived — a stronger pile than your little hovel.

The Antrim Coast Road

You would have been a child when William Bald and his men built the Antrim Coast Road. You would have been nine years old when it began to take shape, a teenager when it came through Ballygally. They call it the Causeway Coastal Road these days, the sole purpose being to reach the Giant’s Causeway — no journey for journey’s sake. In your time, thousands of tourists on jaunting cars made more regular stops. Your trade depended upon it.

Ballygally Bay

Marina Jane, William Clarke Robinson

In his poem, 'Marina Jane' [*provided in full at the end of this blog], the poet said that a phantom ship slipped through the water on the night that you died. William Clarke Robinson would have been visiting his homeland when he penned his collection, his address Sea View Hotel in Glenarm at the time his book was published, in 1907 — around twelve years after you died. An international language scholar enraptured by your legend, Robinson scribed 29 verses of your story. He knew you, perhaps, though it is not clear if he was living in Ireland when you were residing at the shore.

Whilst you live on as one of our leading legends, the man who wrote you into the annals of folklore has largely been forgotten. Fellow poet, Benmore, gave reflections of Dr. William Clarke Robinson’s life in the Larne Times on the occasion of his death in 1932, and he began by setting the scene of his social circles. Robinson moved with the celebrities of his time such as Francis Joseph Bigger, Ethna Cabery, Alice Milligan, Arthur Griffith, Eoin McNeilll and Douglas Hyde. Born in Deer Park, Glenarm, he was educated in Cairncastle by school master Patrick Magill before moving onto the Academical Institution Belfast, where he excelled at languages. He subsequently attended the University of Bonn in Germany and went on to live in Florence in Italy, winning academic fame in America, England, Germany and France. He penned many factual books on literary and linguistic themes, was a lecturer in Durham in England and a Professor of English Literature & History at Kenyon College in Ohio. He was active in Larne Literary & Debating Society in 1918 when he was resident of Carnlough; presumably he had moved home by then. He was also an orator of renown on the poetry of Robert Burns.

Birth of Marina Jane

The poet said you were found in a boat with your dead mother, who had just given birth to you, and this has become ingrained in our knowledge of you.

Regardless of whether there is any morsel of truth in the tale, I wonder was your mother, too, born of boulder, rock and shingle? You survived. She made sure of that.

That was 1823, the Irish Rebellion in living memory for the people of Ballygally in the parish of Cairncastle in the barony of Upper Glenarm. The village was not a village, but a townland of farms then, dominated by descendants of Scottish planters, mainly Presbyterians from Scotland. The parish covered a wide area from the shore to the hills, with 2,600 inhabitants — farmers prone to whiskey and dancing. “The general style of the houses in this parish is much superior to that of the neighbouring parishes,” Ordnance Survey writer James Boyle wrote in the 1830s.

Ballygally Head as viewed from Ballygally Beach.

You were said to have a foreign look about you. In 1823, slavery was abolished in Chile, British convicts were transported to Australia, Portuguese rule ended in Brazil, France invaded Spain and a slave rebellion took place in British Guiana. Your mother could have come to occupy a little rowing boat cast down from a great ship from a distant shore, or you could have floated down from some nearby Scottish Isle, the Isle of Man — Rathlin even. The truth is that we don’t know. We think you look foreign, but it’s hard to tell when the ravages of time and wind are marked on your face. You could have been born anywhere.

A Coastguard's Daughter

The poet’s story has been adopted as the truth about you, Jean, and although it was written by a great scholar, I wonder how much of it is poetry and how much is fact. He said you were adopted by a coastguard, and this is plausible; Ballygally Castle served as a coastguard station and smugglers were still active when you were a child. At least four people were coastguards in the village in 1851, 28 years after your arrival, the year that the poet was born, and I have wondered, whilst searching for your maiden name if one of them was your adopted father. There were no Parks among those coastguard men.

The poet said that you “nothing lacked.” As I think about you positioned in front of your cottage, ragged and worn, I wonder if this was a constant throughout your life; even as you had nothing, you nothing lacked. It’s a serene sort of thought this Sunday as the life we all know is about to go out in a storm. He said you married a farmer and a sailor and he named that sailor Park.

*There is a good chance that Park was Jean's maiden name.

I want to dally a while and see your childhood more clearly. The coastguard, if he existed, could not have raised you alone. Presumably a woman was involved.

You would have been educated to elementary standard, no doubt, for the people of the parish of Cairncastle had a thirst for education; there were plenty of schools for every denomination. David Manson was born in the same parish one hundred years before you; he was a pioneering school master, whose story is as fascinating as your own. It comes with the territory in the parish of Cairncastle, what with a sailor being washed up in the Spanish Armada, supposedly giving seed to a beautiful tree that adorns St. Patrick’s Church yard up the hill. *[The tree referenced here blew over a few months after this was written.]

St. Patrick's Church of Ireland, Cairncastle, where Jean Park "Marina Jane" was buried - also where her daughter was married.

Ballytober
I searched through every Jane living in Ballygally in 1851 of twenty-eight years of age and could not find you. You could have been married by that time.

*Both Jean's inquest and death certificate marked her as widow. It is likely that she married after 1851 and that her married name was McGill/Magill.

I found one family of Parks in your area in 1851 in Ballytober, a townland situated in the countryside behind Drains, a bay named after the blackthorn and one that is a good brisk walk from here. In House 23 lived a farmer, Mr James Park, aged 38. His wife was called Margaret Park and was 26, around two years younger than you would have been at that time. There were two babies, Jane Park, aged two and a three-month old, Mary Eliza, as well as two servants. There had also been a Jane Park, mother of James Park, who died of natural causes in 1850 — at the end of the Great Famine. Another Jane Park, sister of James, died of consumption in 1842.

The Park family of Ballytober townland may or may not have been connected to you, but seeing the family’s names in print gave me an idea of what your life might have looked like before you fell on hard times, and although there is no suggestion of babies in the poem by William Clarke Robinson, I found myself wondering if you had maybe lost at least one child, as was common at that time. Could it have been for the love of your husband alone that you took yourself to this shore, as the poet believed, or was some deeper part of you set adrift?

*See below new details about Jane's children.

The Famine Years

The poem skips ahead from the merriment of an old country wedding with dancing, feasting and bonfires — nothing lacking yet again — to that fateful time when your husband went away, and what I’d ask you if you were sitting here beside me on this stony beach is — when did all this happen?

Ballygally was not wholly dependent on the potato crop in the 1840s. There was a variety of other staples, such as beans and barley, some meat and also the shellfish and seafood so close at hand. You lived through the Great Famine of 1845-1849 in your youth, and so it is often assumed that you lost your livelihood at that point. It is certain that Larne Workhouse burgeoned with hungry labourers from the countryside during the Great Famine, but it is also possible that you survived the catastrophe without losing your home, that the event of your husband’s absence came later — if at all.

*Jean started her family after the Great Famine. It is still unclear when Jean lost her husband, if she did, but the inquest into her death reveals that she had been living on the shore for 7 years.

Tourism

It is known that your trade was selling dulse to the tourists who came up the coast every day from Larne — a tourist resort in your day and for many decades after. Your trade is written on the photograph taken of you by Robert John Welch. It’s part of the legend that is easier to believe. News of your death was reported to the Lancashire tourists who came on package holidays each summer.

They knew you.

The dulse selling sets you apart as an entrepreneurial pauper cashing in on the tourist trade in much the same way that Henry McNeill cashed in on the Antrim Coast Road and the postal route to build up his package holiday empire.

*That Jean sold dulse is backed up by the inquest into her death. She sold dulse in the summer and relied on poor relief in the winter.

Larne, tourism hub - the old McNeill's Hotel

I Mystery of the Deep

The poet says that you had some sort of vision about your husband’s fate, a presentiment of his “mystery of the deep,” a bit like standing here now at the edge of something, knowing that events in the coming days will mark the end of one life and the birth of a new one. Nature will have time to heal as the cars and planes are halted, but we will know some kind of hardship to pay for what has passed.

Many people tried to help you when your sailor went away, according to the poet. They tried to keep your farm going, but you let it fall to “waste and weeds.” The newspaper recordings suggest that you were given chances on the eve of your death that you didn’t take. You dictated your own fate.

*Jean was offered at least one other opportunity to have a roof over her head, as described by her daughter at the inquest.

We know the rest of the poem to be true. You did build a hut here below the posting track, and although the shore changes dramatically every day, such loose stones remain within reach, as do the long, heavy whips of kelp stalk at my feet that are as tough as wood. The poet tells us you had a wee dog called Brinie and that Brinie and her pups went on to survive when you refused heed warnings about the storm and stayed down by the shore. Of course, there is no evidence that you had pups at all.

* That the poet knew about pups and not Jean's child/children perhaps suggests that he didn't meet her or know her and was reliant on his imagination. Also his assumption that her married name was Park is unlikely to be true.

A Hurricane to remember

I think of my great granny Isabella Gillen when I think of you. Isabella was from Ballysnod and raised her family there, up high, at a distance from the shore, but she lived out her days in a wee thatched house near the railway line on Bank Road between Larne and the Glynn. She too would have felt the full force of the hurricane on the night of 21 December 1894. Few thatched roofs survived after six to seven hours of wind blowing with the strength of a tornado. The storm reached its height between 2.30am 3.00am and Isabella Gillen must have cried with relief when it was all over, an event that continued to cast a shadow over Larne throughout Christmastide. In the centre of the town, slates and chimney pots came crashing down, fountains were blown over, trees born up on the Bank Road — even the ducks on Larne Lough struggled to make good their escape. Telegraphic communication was “demoralised.” On the eve of another storm, we can’t afford to be demoralised, but we know what lies ahead, our presentiment flashing up on the screen in Italy and Spain every minute of the day.

The poet wrote — inaccurately — that all trace of you was gone, but the Belfast News Letter reported on 25 December 1894: “On Saturday afternoon the dead body of the old woman was picked up near Ballygally and removed to the boathouse at the coastguard station, and an urgent request will probably be held today.” You made your way back to your adopted home, Jean, and then you were buried.

On Saturday 22 December the Blackburn Standard reported that the telegraph wires were destroyed, the poles of the electric light company were damaged, that ships were beached at Millbay, boats were wrecked, bathing boxes in Larne ripped up and the stage at the promenade damaged. Elm trees were plucked up by the roots, the Congregational Church stripped of its steeple and then there’s you, Jane Park of Ballygally, a pauper’s death reported in England.

Your death certificate cites you were a widow, aged 71, who died on 21 December 1894, a labourer drowned during the hurricane of that same day; the latter information provided by JJ. Adam.

Your story is the dream of writers and artists inspired not by great rulers and patriotic heroes, but by men and women born of boulder, rock and shingle, those who defy convention and live at the harsh, cold edge of something until it’s time for them to go back home.

*The missing piece

Jean Park, what makes you ever more mysterious is that you had a daughter.

At your inquest, Dr. John McKillen reported that an effort had been made to remove you from your hut. The Poor Law Guardians declared it unfit for habitation. He stated, "The Guardians so far as I am aware took no action." Perhaps they did take action and you took no heed of them. The doctor was satisfied that your death was down to drowning.

Your daughter was also called Jane (Jeanie). It is through Jeanie that we have some clues to your true story. Jeanie was born in 1859, when you were approximately 26. She was living on Mill Lane when you died and she confirmed that you gathered seaweed during the summer and then lived off poor relief in the winter. She said you "lived on charity," although whether this means that you lived in the poor house in winter is not clear.

You had grandchildren, including another little Jeanie, born in 1887, six years after your daughter was married — the same year that you went to live at the shore.

Your daughter said, "I tried often to get her to leave and live with me." So, why didn't you go? Did you value your independence? Or, did you decide that living in a hut in a wild paradise was preferable to living in a bustling town underneath the smoke of a mill? Your daughter said that three weeks prior to your death you were well. So, it seems she was on good enough terms to visit you, and if she told the truth, she also cared about you: "The hut was so near the sea that I was anxious for my mother to leave." Your daughter also seemed to know your habits: "She took off all her clothes when going to bed." You were found naked, although the clothes in the picture look like they are part of your skin.

William Wilkins of the Coastguard Station (now the Ballygally Castle Hotel) said that you lived near the Coastguard Station. This would place your hovel close to the boathouse, which still stands today. He says you were found dead by the boathouse and reported that there was nothing of the hut remaining. He knew you well and provided an insight into your personality. He said you were quiet. So, we know that you were quiet, stubborn, tough and entrepreneurial. No wonder women are intrigued by you.

Descendants

Well, Jean, your family live on today. Four of your Armstrong grandchildren were born while you were alive. There was William, Jeanie, Nancy/Agnes, Andrew and then after your death, John Gordon Holmes. The name Jeanie stands out to me because your daughter was proud enough of you to name her daughter after you.

Your daughter's name reveals a little more about you. Two official documents — the inquest and your death certificate — mention that you were married; it has been assumed by many, including the poet, that Park was your married name. However, when your daughter was married on 23rd November 1881 in the Cairncastle, Church of Ireland, to Andrew Armstrong, her maiden name was Magill. Jeanie was "full age" (21) on her wedding day. Her father, John Magill, a labourer, is named on the marriage certificate, which he signed. Your husband was John and he was still alive in 1881, long after the famine. There was a John Magill who died in 1882, aged 60. It is possible that this was your husband.

Your daughter, Jeanie Armstrong (née Magill), was a servant when she married Andrew Armstrong, who was a labourer, and it states on her wedding certificate that she was from Ballytober near Drains Bay. Could there have been a connection between your daughter and the Park family of Ballytober?Was she their servant? There is also something curious about your daughter and her relationship with the name Park. As I said, on her wedding certificate, her maiden name is Magill. However, on her son's birth certificate, her maiden name is Park. This son, Andrew James Armstrong, was born on 13 November 1893. The same document saw a correction appear on 19 August 1929, 36 years later. Your daughter, Jeanie, by then seventy, went along to the registrar's office and asked for the name Park to be corrected to Magill on the birth certificate. Could it be that Park was her middle name and that you, for whatever reason, were known exclusively by your maiden name?

When I saw a burial notice from St. Patrick's Church of Ireland in Cairncastle concerning a John Magill, a bachelor, who died in November 1894, only weeks before your death, I became curious. He was 48 years-old when he died of nephritus — an inflammation of kidneys. What caught my eye was that he lived in Ballytober, the small townland where your daughter, Jeanie, lived. This would mean he was born in 1846. I wonder was he a relation too. (Could he have been your son?)

There was also a James (77) and Jenny Park (60) living in Ballytober in 1851 at house 12 — another potential link. They would have been old enough to be your parents. Is it possible that you were, in fact, born locally?

My tale ends ends with another Jeanie Park, your great great grand-daughter. This Jeanie Park lives in America and is now called Jeanie Clarke.

(Coincidentally, I created a wild woman who lived on the shore in Dusty Bluebells and called her Mary Beth Clarke — to rhyme with Park, a little nod to Jean Park.)

Well, Jean, if you're still listening, and by now you must be both tired reading and smiling from the grave, Jeanie Clark (née Park) is the grand-daughter of Jeanie Armstrong, your grandchild, the one born the year that you moved to the shore. Jeanie Clark was told about you, that you had drowned in Ireland, and this information was passed down through five generations.

You'll be glad to know that your daughter, Jeanie, had many friends in Scotland. This information was provided by your great granddaughter, Margaret, the one responsible for bringing the Park name back to the family through marriage. (She was Graham to her maiden name and lived in America). She said Jeanie Armstrong used to sit and gossip and drink strong tea, served in earthenware bowls and that she and her family were of the Orange tradition, as would be expected of any Protestant moving to Scotland in the early 1900s.

Your daughter thought that mirrors were sinful and made you full of vanity. I wonder if she learned that from you, a woman who forfeited all vanity and material possessions to live a dangerous, cold and wild existence in the winter of her life.

Jean, you remain a mystery and I hope you can forgive me for stealing a little bit of your mystery for my novel, Dusty Bluebells.

The full poem, Marina Jane, can be found below in all its romantic glory along with family photographs.

Thank you to Andrew King, Jenny Brennan, Jeanie Clarke and all those who have helped put this story together.

Jeanie Armstrong (née Magill), daughter of Jean Park, the woman who lived on the shore

Sunday, 15 March, the last of normal Sundays

Dusty Bluebells
Historical novel. A musical hearty and spiritual family mystery set in an Irish seaside town. "Pithy with Ulster Scots, old rhymes, cures and sayings, there is a sense of magic to it all" (The Irish Times).
Click here to buy.

Snugville Street
Contemporary novel. "An enjoyable coming-of-age tale with a Belfast twist" (The Irish Times)
Click here to buy

A Belfast Tale
Contemporary novel. “Uniquely, authentically and enjoyably Belfast" (Tony Macaulay, author of Paperboy.)
Click here to buy.

Irish Dancing: The festival story
A history of dancing in Ulster with a focus on the festival tradition of Irish Dancing. Click here to buy.

Children of Latharna
Stories for big weans and wee weans. "Lyrical and nostalgic; wistful and humorous," Ian Andrew, author.
Click here to start reading for free

Marina Jane: A Tale of Ballygally Bay

W. Clarke Robinson

Along the sounding Ballygally Bay,
One summer morn there drifted in a boat,
With mother dead, and babe scarce aged a day
Beside her, but no other thing of note,

To tell from whence they came, or from what wreck;
"Marina Jane," this babe a coastguard named,
And bore it home, where it should nothing lack,
And where it grew a maiden fair and famed.

A lusty sailor, Parke, with farm of land,
With foreign ways, and gifts above his means,
Then woo'd and wed this changeling of the strand,
And blithe and gay were all the wedding scenes:

The church was filled with girls and farmers' sons,
And some took rights to kiss the fair new-bride--
With cheering, dancing, feasting, firing guns,
And burning bonfire barrels at eventide.

The sailor settled on his native lea,
With frequent voyages to pay his rent;
And thus for years he ploughed the land and sea,
In health and happiness and sweet content.

But once when absent on a voyage strange,
A shadowy dream on Jeanie seem' d to fall:
That ne'er again across the ocean's range
Would he return or answer to her call.

And woman's dreams about the things they love
Are often times divine presentiments;
They leap our logic, and all wireness move
Quick to the point and goal of their intents.

The wives of Ceasar, Pilate, William Tell,
Dreamed just like Jeanie of their husbands' fate;
And other wives have dreamed what ne'er befel
To any husbands, either soon or late!

His vessel, never reaching port, was lost,
And perished as “a mystery of the deep”;
Yet Jeanie's wistful eye still watched the coast,
And oft would see him landing in her sleep.

For still the inextinguishable hope
Of her dear sailor's final coming home,
Would buoy her up 'gainst all her fears to cope,
And lead her daily on the beach to roam.

The farm, uncared for, went to waste and weeds,
Though oft a friendly neighbour lent his plough.
Or some came late to reap, or sow her seeds,
Or went to market with her pigs or cow.

But landlords' bailiffs broke at length the latch,
And cast her from the cot and quenched her fire,
Nailed up the door and windows, and the thatch
Tore off, and left her in the road and mire.

Then to be free of landlords, on the beach
She built a hut below the posting track,
With such loose stones as lay within her reach,
And roof'd with driftwood, grass, and wither'd wrack.

And there, without a window or a door,
She squatted rentless by the windy sea,
And daily gathered limpets on the shore,
With one wise little dog for company.

Her doggie, Brinie, never left her side;
That wise philosopher, with soft black eyes,
Could read her mind and every change of tide,
And all the varying signs of seas and skies.

And this good Brinie brought new life and cheer
To her in that lone weather-beaten hut;
Hoped its four young puppies there to rear,
And pleased her with the capers which they cut.

The warm wee things lay curl'd upon the bed,
Their noses cold as any balls of snow--
Men's knees, dogs' noses, and girls' hands, 'tis said,
Are always cold, their warm hearts thus to show.

This sea-born Jeanie lived among the stones,
Like the sweet dulse or clinging limpet shell;
The summer waves, the wintry breakers' moans
Alike to her; she could not think nor tell.

That all these seeming-simple forces have
A power latent like a lion mild,
And may anon excite themselves and rave
And rend the thing they play'd with as a child.

There came a day suspicious-extra fine!
With a red sunset o'er the winter sea;
And black clouds gathering on the ocean line,
And beasts and birds all drifting to the lee.

And then the trumpets of the sea and sky
Proclaim aloud the lowering storm has come ;
The winds and waves in fierce contention vie,
And nature roars while man and beast are dumb.

The waves tumultuous leap upon the land--
Their white teeth reddened with the bleeding earth,
And stones and rocks, as by a demon's hand;
Are heav'd around poor Jeanie's hut and hearth.

A neighbour came to take her from the shed,
But left it fearful since she would not go:
“Her trusty sailor might that night come dead,
And she not there her helping hand to show!”

And her brave Brinie looked into her face,
Then looked again upon the rising sea,
And pulled her tattered dress towards the place
Of exit while she still could safely flee.

It could not take her; so it turned and took
One little puppy in its gentle grip,
And bore it inland to a sheltered nook
And then another on a "swimming trip,"

Till all the four wee sightless, whining things
Were safe and silent in their second home,
Meantime the surging water saps and flings
Poor Jeanie's dwelling level with the foam!

Some said a phantom ship that night went by,
Some thought they saw a boat along the shore,
Some heard a voice from out the billows cry,
And then all vanish'd with the ocean's roar!

Next morn they sought ner in the hovel poor
But sign of hut or hovel there was none!
Poor Brinie and her brood were all secure,
But every trace of Jeanie Parke was gone!

The hungry sea had claimed what first it gave;
She doubtless joined him after severance long;
And o'er them both, beyond the broken wave,
The sea wind sings its ever plaintive song.

Jeanie Graham (née Armstrong), whose granny lived in a hut in Ballyally Bay for 7 years until 1894

Shannon Clark, whose great, great, great Granny lived in a hut in Ballygally Bay for 7 years until 1894

Margaret Park (née Graham) whose great granny lived in a hut in Ballygally Bay for 7 years until 1894

]]><![CDATA[When everyone had an aunt or uncle with a fiddle or melodeon]]>Thu, 26 Sep 2019 17:08:26 GMThttps://www.angelineking.com/history/when-everyone-had-an-aunt-or-uncle-with-a-fiddle-or-melodeon

Dan Hewitt, husband of my dad's maternal aunt, Nan Hewitt (nee Ross)

Tommy Gault, grandfather of fiddler Pete Bouma

There was a time, not so long ago, when everyone had an aunt or uncle with a fiddle or melodeon. My great uncle Dan Hewitt was a well-known fiddler in the town of Larne and as a child, I delighted in the Aladdin's cave of melodeons, fiddles, saxophones and clarinets hidden underneath his sofa, not to mention the harmonica residing in his top pocket that appeared to have a way of conversing with children all by itself. When Dan played the fiddle on Radio Ulster in the 1980s, “us weans” took it as read that he must be the most famous man alive.

As I was writing ‘Irish Dancing: The Festival Story,’ I picked up bits and pieces about the history of music: the ancient harp and pipe traditions of Gaelic times; fiddle schools emerging all around Ulster during the 1830s and 1840s; the popularity of instruments as they became more affordable and the subsequent creation of bands comprising banjos, fiddles and melodeons - the “pop bands” of their time. The encroachment of jazz music and gramophone records lead to the belief that live music might die out all together, so in the 1920s Irish folk music, along with Irish folk dancing, was added to the syllabus of the musical festivals.

Braid Linen Mill Irish Dancing costume - Rose Murray on right

Irish folk dancing, as it was called within the festival community of Irish dancing, became the most popular attraction of the musical festivals and it was fairly easy to find musicians to play for the dancers.

Two prominent musicians of the early festivals in the late 1920s and 1930s were Ballymena men James and Robbie Carmichael, uncles of pianist Rose Murray, who like so many other folk musicians, were Protestant. They played for dancers like Patricia Mulholland (also a respected folk violinist), Sam McConnell, Sally McCarley, Sadie Bell, Betty Greer and Marjorie Andrews. They travelled far and wide, including a trip with the Braid Linen Mill Irish Dancing team to perform at the Festival of Britain in 1951.

When Irish dance festival pianist Rose Murray called me from Ballymena last week to tell me she had read the Irish dancing book and to express her pleasure at seeing the names of her uncles and sister, the late Lily Agnew, I was in the midst of witnessing an online debacle on Twitteropolis. A number of tweeters were confounded that Irish dancing should be found in a town like Larne at all. Not only is Larne an important centre of Irish dancing, but the town has a vibrant cross-community folk music scene and a rich shared history of what is now known as “trad music.”

I called up my dad to ask him what he remembered of folk music in his time. There was Tam McKeen, grandfather of my brother’s friend, who played accordion and spoons. There was the “big tall buddy from Bryan Street,” and then Abram, “the oul boy from up the coast.” There was Fred Brennan from Glenoe, who played the fiddle and marched in Willy Hannah’s famous flute band. There was Tam Cameron, a younger fiddler who mainly played country and who was married to my mum’s cousin. There were the fiddle sessions during Orange lodge installations and then again after the Twelfth parade when folk returned to the hall for a hooley; traditions that still thrive in some country lodges today. There was also that time during the Troubles when the Argyle Temperance Flute band from the Shankill came to play at the First Presbyterian Church and got out the bodhrán and tin whistles to wind up the concert in a foot-tapping session.

Memories came ten to the dozen as my dad threw out names of County Antrim bands, not least the Irish Rovers, who popularised Irish folk music in North America, and every time I’ve seen him since then, he says, “I forgot tae tell ye about thon other buddy so and so.” Some other names are the McCullochs of Ballymena, Billy Rea from Gleno, David George McCrory from Glenarm, Jim Murray from 86 Waterloo Road (four doors up from my uncle Dan), John McMullan, Nel Andrews, Jean Carmichael, Jim McKillopp, Sammy Whan, Willie John Davison, John McCourt and Tommy Gault. Indeed, Tommy Gault’s grandson, Pete Bouma, today plays a fiddle made by Thomas George Scriminger, who was Tommy's cousin.

Music is still important in the Larne area with the likes of Jim McAuley, Dick Murray, Alex Kerr and the talented Conway family keeping the home fires of folk music burning. Billy Andy’s near Glenoe is the place to be on a Saturday afternoon for some good old-fashioned trad music and Mattie Moore’s in Cairncastle is alive with fiddles on a Thursday night. The Aroma Coffee House, right at the heart of the town centre, also provides live music sessions from time to time, bringing folk music to the frappuccino generation.

The folk music that my uncle Dan and his friends played was made up of traditional Irish and Scottish tunes, and rarely would anyone have cared to point out the difference. They also played the popular music of the late 1800s and early 1900s: Percy French tunes and music hall classics that are now received as traditional in their own right. Dan would have performed a folk set on his fiddle at the Plaza dances and then the saxophone or clarinet during the jazz sets. Like the festival Irish dancing scene, there was one community and no political agenda, even during Northern Ireland’s most trying times.

It’s ever more important to tell tales of our shared culture and heritage, the things that bring us together instead of dividing us, and to address Twitteropolis misconceptions. Whilst I have recently finished writing a novel that is infused with all of this music, my own musical knowledge is too limited to write a social history on the subject. I would most definitely read it that book though, especially if it included a wee line about my uncle Dan. It would be a book similar to ‘Irish Dancing: ‘The Festival Story,’ one that describes the cross-community heroes and heroines of folk music and one that celebrates the time when everyone’s aunt or uncle had a fiddle or melodeon.

Larne Folklore Concert, Laharna Hotel, 1973, featuring Tam McKeen on accordion and John McCourt on fiddle. Image curtesy of Fiona Kelly, Memories of Larne.

Angeline King is the author of:

Irish Dancing: The festival story
A history of dancing in Ulster with a focus on the festival tradition of Irish Dancing. Click here to buy.

Snugville Street
Contemporary novel. "An enjoyable coming-of-age tale with a Belfast twist" (The Irish Times)
Click here to buy

A Belfast Tale
Contemporary novel. “Uniquely, authentically and enjoyably Belfast" (Tony Macaulay, author of Paperboy.)
Click here to buy.

Children of Latharna
Stories for big weans and wee weans. "Lyrical and nostalgic; wistful and humorous," Ian Andrew, author.
Click here to start reading for free

]]><![CDATA[Martha Taylor's Diary]]>Sat, 12 Jan 2019 15:44:09 GMThttps://www.angelineking.com/history/martha-taylors-diary

Martha Doey (nee Taylor) aged 15-16 (circa 1933).

Burning corks for eyeliner by the fire

Two years ago I began to do some historical research for a new novel, which to be called Waterloo Road. I was able to draw from my own experiences, having grown up with great aunts and uncles who lived on the Waterloo Road, but when Barbra Cooke got in touch to tell me about her granny Martha Doey’s diary, the novel came to life in my mind.

Barbra’s aunt Irene, Martha’s daughter, invited me to her home to learn more, and during that interview, I picked up the kind of detail that could not be found in a newspaper or a history book. I discovered a world in which women scrubbed their teeth with soot from the fire, painted their eyebrows with burnt cork and went hungry as rationing stretched from one world war to the next.

A picture emerged in my mind, a hazy outline of an industrial area that only half exists today, the old red brick walls of the linen mill still standing on the Lower Waterloo Road; the unbridled noise of looms, smoke belching from chimneys and the giant damn for steeping flax near present day Kent Avenue all gone.

The people who congregated at the factory corner outside Billy Boyd’s store were already known to me, as I’d spent so much of my childhood at that same corner buying sweets from Duddy’s or Sally’s shop, but I began to see my old aunts and uncles more clearly. I also started to understand the significance of the 12 foot high wall that separated the kitchen houses of the Waterloo Road from the big houses where the captains and doctors resided.

I discovered the world of Little Ballymena, a quarter of Larne that has since lost the moniker for which it was once known. My great grandparents were among first generation to fill the kitchen houses on the Waterloo Road, Herbert Avenue and Newington Avenue in the late 1800s. They were farming people with “Broad Scotch” accents, an eclectic mix of every Protestant denomination; religious affiliations that were often determined by whichever church was providing handouts to the poor and needy. Such folk, alongside their Catholic friends, were all united in a love of whiskey, dancing and music.

Martha Taylor’s diary is buoyant with the kind of language that comes from listening and yarning. The rhythm and phrasing her words echo conversations conducted over washing lines; tales whispered in queues when ships bearing bananas came into dock and stories formed in a world in which women talked for hours. I haven't attempted to reproduce any of Martha’s diary. The following words are merely notes with my own insights of a short but rich historical resource for the novel that came to be known as Dusty Bluebells.

A life of serfdom

Martha, who was born in 1917, begins the diary as a small child sitting on an army blanket in the back garden of number 15 Waterloo Road.

The walls are thick with snow and she is content watching the robins hop along them. She is writing in the year 2001, her mind flooded with early memories.

Martha’s peace on the army blanket is shattered when she hears soldiers marching.

“Tramp, tramp, tramp,” she writes.

She is a small child and she is afraid. A great military parade to welcome the soldiers home after Armistice is likely to have been the occasion.

Brown’s Factory area is beset with unemployment in the 1920s as the linen trade goes into decline. Men are to be found on street corners lamenting the lack of work and gravitating towards socialism. Women, who are never far from hard work, continue to scrub laundry for a pittance, tend to cut knees, cook and clean.

Martha in her late teens, circa 1935

Infant mortality rates are high: Martha’s siblings, Molly and Sammie, die within two days of each other, aged 2 and 1. The infants are remembered with much love and devotion throughout Martha’s childhood.

Food is scarce, particularly meat, but fresh produce is grown in the back gardens: spuds, cabbages, scallions, lettuces, turnips, carrots, peas, vegetable marrows and strawberries. A neighbour, Jamie Reid, who has a blackcurrant bush, does a bit of poaching on the sides.

Clothing is made by hand, Martha’s mother knitting jerseys and long, black stockings for the girls. Coal fuels the fires and oil lamps provide light. Martha cleans the globe and trims the the wick of the oil lamps. As yet, there is no street lighting on the Waterloo Road.

The most despised man in Larne works at the Labour Exchange and is in charge of doling out money to those who are unemployed. The vocabulary of socialism is prevalent in the diary: the workmen are merely serfs; the factory owners and the authorities at the Labour Exchange their masters. These workers do not know the hand of middle class Protestant privilege.

At the back of Martha’s kitchen house, the 12 ft wall encloses pigs and hens. Willie Kane occupies the end house, which has a larger yard with a hayshed and a byre for his heifers and cows. When Andy Gingles from Mill Street comes to put rings on Martha’s piglets to stop them from digging up the forecourt in the sty, the child is torn apart by the squeals of the piglets. She takes a run at Andy Gingles and kicks his shins, but this is only the beginning of Martha’s woes.

She mourns the pigs’ absence when they are finally taken away. The girl next door, Emma Craig, takes Martha to Store Lane to reunite her with her beloved pigs. Martha unearths mighty squeals of pain when sees them strung up on carcasses and she returns home, still traumatised, only to walk straight into a white enamel bucket in the scullery filled with the pigs’ insides. Deafening screams follow and her da agrees that no more animals are to be brought to the house.

Martha’s mother is a farmer’s daughter and an enterprising soul. The money from the sale of the piglets goes on school books, uniforms and footwear, but the promise about animals has been broken. Martha’s da comes home with a goat on a rope. It bleats all night, waking the neighbours, and has to be moved away from the backs of the Waterloo Road.

Martha Taylor, circa 1937

Music, long walks and whiskey

The Brown’s factory area is alive with music. I remember this from my own childhood in the 1980s. My uncle Dan Hewitt played all manner of instruments with his friends. Even then, it was rare to find a home on the Waterloo Road without a melodeon, fiddle, penny whistle or harmonica.

Favourite tunes for Martha in the 1920s are ‘My bonnie lies over the ocean’ and ‘Blaze Away.’ Her da plays the melodeon and Martha dances to exhaustion.

My own little girl, who was born in 2011, frequently asks me to sing ‘My “bunny” lies over the ocean’ before she goes to sleep. Such things are handed down.

On summer evenings, loanen and braes are packed with people walking. Martha’s da takes his children up Leggs Loanen [Recreation Road] to MacNeill’s Poultry farm to see the White Leghorns, to Gibson’s farm to see the lambs and to Rainy and Hall stud farm where a great big bull races up the field. They walk onto Kirkpatrick’s Farm, which overlooks the Black Arch, round the Branch Road passing the fox’s den, Pebble Lodge and Peoples farm at Waterloo.

The temperance movement is strong in the early 1900s and Reverend Boyd from St.Cedma’s, Church of Ireland, has a captive audience when he goes to the harbour to teach the evils of drink to squads from the boats, for it is well known that the workmen pile into the Olderfleet bar each evening to quench their thirst “on the slate.”

Martha’s da takes the pledge and promises to never drink again, but when the Reverend Boyd sees him and Andy Dobbin “as full as the Boyne,” he names and shames them in a sermon. This is the end of the road for Martha’s da and St. Cedma’s. When his children are born, he has them all christened in the First Larne Presbyterian church.

Martha’s da is an affable type, but the children know the routine when he drinks, and so they grab the spoon and knife drawer and rush to a neighbour’s house when he comes home as “full as the Baltic.” On one occasion, a chair is smashed through a ceiling and is left there dangling for the children to see. On another, Martha’s da entertains his children by juggling red, hot unders from the fire.

I see a fully formed three-dimensional character in Martha’s da: he is tender when sober, but senseless when drunk, and I begin to understand why so many Presbyterian families during my own childhood condemned drink: Whiskey had been Ulster’s greatest affliction; women and children its most vulnerable victims.

The Peelers scoop the drunks up off Main Street in the 1920s and they aren’t shy about about applying the boot before locking them up. Prison, known as the Black Hole or the Chooky House, is home from home for the men who battle with their temperance.

Martha Taylor, late 1930s

The prison ship

The November Hiring Fair is “black with people and animals.” Each November, folk gather around Crawford’s bar, near the town hall, where “lads and lassies for hire” make themselves known by placing a straw in their mouths. The farmer looks them over, asks a few questions and strikes a bargain, usually a shilling for six months, a deal sealed with spittle and a handshake. Some lads and lassies suffer bad masters and starve, but they are bonded to to them and there is no going back home.

Martha’s brother goes missing at the hiring fair as a child and returns home, feet bleeding and filthy, with half a crown. He’d stopped at the fair on the way home from the Bridge School and earned the money for walking a farmer’s heifers to Gleno, an arduous uphill trek for a child.

Billy is a stoker on the prison ship Argenta that lies in Larne Lough, and there is heartache in the mid-1920s when he goes missing at sea. Martha is at pains in her diary to explain that the men have no rights. The sailors, who carry their own food on board with them in a kit bag, are neither clothed nor fed by their employer, and the family is not compensated for the tragedy of losing Billy.

Martha Taylor, late 1930s

On the other side of the blanket

Being caught “on the other side of the blanket” is a terrible sin, a blight upon the family, so when Martha’s sister, Peggy, gets pregnant, there is a commotion at number fifteen. In a tender moment between father and daughter, Da demonstrates the makings of a great man. “While I have power in these two hands,” he says to Peggy, “you and the babe will never want.”

The Newington Rangers football club [near the present day Pigeon Club] is at the centre of the community. Peggy helps out in the kitchen and walks home alone in the black, past the McGarel cemetery, the odd glimmer from a gas lamp in a window on Herbert Avenue guiding her towards the Waterloo Road. She has a job in the Brown’s factory as a “Tier-on and Drawer-in.” She is good at her job, “nimble and quick,” but when she begins to experience gastric pain, da provides the 3/6 required to send her to the doctor.

Vivid colours, shapes and smells come to life for Martha as the past is reawakened in her diary: the inglenook fire, the clean bricks on the hob, the kettle on the boil, the hot drink made with powdered ginger for Peggy, the bricks wrapped in old blankets to warm her feet.

There is a “merciless scream,” and Martha is sent up the road to fetch the midwife, Mrs Clover, who lives in one of the parlour houses. Mrs Clover arrives at the door with a big rubber apron on. She has been busy feeding the pigs.

I think of my great granny Sarah Ross as I read the diary, as she too was a midwife on the Waterloo Road.

Peggy is in labour and Martha, who is sent out of the house to take Da’s tea to work, is as “happy as a lark.” Her ma has given her a penny for the bus. She gets on it at Andy Moore’s at the corner and enjoys the novelty as the bus glides to the harbour, a rare treat.

The maternity nurse, Nurse Diamond, is called upon. Peggy has mastitis and has to have both breasts lanced by a doctor. She is only sixteen.

She keeps her little boy and finds a job as a cleaner, working long hours and turning her parent’s house on the Waterloo Road into a comfortable home with her earnings. There is no spending the wages “on the slate” for Peggy. She later marries Neil Hyslop, who Martha describes as “a good man.”

Martha has suspicions about what happened to Peggy on Pauper’s Loanen beside McGarel cemetery, but such things are not spoken of.

Martha Taylor's Husband, William Doey, circa 1928

Lashings at the Parochial School

Martha attends Larne Parochial School, a school endowed by St.
Cedma’s Church of Ireland.

The children are marching around the room as a teacher thumps out notes on the piano. The teacher, whose cane is an extension of his arm, grabs a child by the ears and shakes his head from side to side. Tears stream down the child’s face as he is strung up like bunny and taunted by the teacher. The victim, Martha observes in 2001, stuttered for the rest of his years.

Music tuition revolves around the Larne Musical Festival, and the school is filled with cups and trophies on account of Miss Belfore’s efforts. Miss Kate Brown, meanwhile, is a pussy cat, a gentle and kind teacher who “dresses like a dream.” The children sing ‘Phil the Fluter’s Ball’ and ‘The Raggle Taggle Gypsy’ and they dress up and dramatise the songs for concerts.

In fifth standard, Martha has to tell Miss Britten that she cannot say the Church of Ireland creed. “I belong to the Reverend John Lyle,” she says. Sally Ross, sister of my granny Jemima, is a friend of Martha’s. She likewise cannot say the creed as she belongs to “the Covenanters at the Harbour.”

Martha is sent away at the age of eleven to clean for a relative. She is far from home for six whole weeks and shudders at the thoughts of using the dry toilets in Ballyclare. She skips school and falls behind in maths.

A question comes up in class when she returns.

A room measures so many feet high and so many feet wide. How many wallpaper rolls would it take to paper the room?

Martha tries to work it out, but she calculates one roll of wallpaper too many. The teacher goes for her. He tucks her arm under his elbow and he whips each of her hands six times. She sobs until she has no breath left. She plunges her lashed hands into cold water, but the blue welts are already rising and the blood is gushing from her. She faints and slips to the ground, but is told to sit up straight on the chair by a teacher whose face is “screwed up with venom.”

Martha’s sister, Peggy, arrives at the school the next day “dressed to kill,” her knee boots laced up below her navy blue nap coat, her collar out over the coat lapels, a red jockey cap on her head. “I’ve come about my sister Martha,” she states. “She is a very delicate child. You sent her home yesterday with a pair of hands you wouldn’t see on a navvy.” Peggy pokes the teacher on the chest. “If this ever happens again, it won’t be your hands I’ll be going for, it’ll be your face, and I’ll knock your nose right of it.”

‘The oul blirt’ I find myself saying, as I read Martha’s diary, almost in tears at Martha’s plight. Children are the real serfs of 1920s Ulster.

“So what if I never learned the sum!” Martha contemplates with wit in 2001, when she has more than 80 years of mathematical experience behind her. “At 1 shilling per roll of wallpaper,” she writes, “the extra roll would have come in handy for backing school books.”

The short diary ends and I’m lost. I want more, but I have what I need for my novel and I create two women with a childhood like Martha’s, one who stays on the Waterloo Road and one who moves to the other side of the wall.

About Martha Taylor (Information provided by Martha’s granddaughter, Barbra Cooke)

Martha Taylor was born on 5th August 1917 and was reared on the Upper Waterloo Road. Her mother was Margaret Owens, whose people had originally come from Wales in the late 1690s. Owenstown, a townland near Ballysnod and Gleno, is named after them, and the family has a copy of the extensive family tree demonstrating the links. Margaret Owens was a hard worker, who knitted, sewed and took in washing from neighbours to subsidise the family income. Her father was William Taylor from Rory's Glen in Kilwaughter, not far from Owenstown. He was an interesting character who wrote poetry and who travelled to Australia to look for his brother without telling his wife. He was practically destitute, but miraculously got his passage back home, with the help of a fellow Larne man.

Martha only had a primary school education and her first job was in the weft office at Brown's factory. She met and married William Robert Doey (born 25th September 1912), who lived on the Mill Brae in Larne. He was an electrician, who served his time with Willie Law. They had four children, Jean (Barbra’s mother), Irene, Bobby and Margaret. They were a close and happy couple, but Robert died very suddenly from a massive coronary on the 3rd September 1975 at the age of 62.

When her children were young, Martha worked for a short time at the Bleach Green's Sun Laundry on the Bank Road [Rea's of Larne is currently located there.] Later, when the children were grown, she worked in Standards Telephone and Cable company full-time. She never returned to work after her husband died; his death was a huge blow to her.

Martha loved reading and educating herself and was often found in Larne library. She was a member of the historical society and wrote a few articles for the Corran magazine. She was also a keen bowler at Larne Tennis and Bowling club. Poetry was her passion, whilst her local knowledge was such that people would often consult her for information. She often said that living on Kent Avenue was much more entertaining than Coronation Street. Protestants and Catholics lived and worked together there and helped each other through good times and bad.

Martha, the matriarch of the family, was much loved, and when she died on the 11th October 2005, it was a big loss to her family, old and young alike.

Dusty Bluebells
"Pithy with Ulster Scots, old rhymes, cures and sayings, there is a sense of magic to it all. A book to warm your heart on a cold winter’s night."
The Irish Times

Angeline King is the author of:

Irish Dancing: The festival story
A history of dancing in Ulster with a focus on the festival tradition of Irish Dancing.
Click here to buy.

Snugville Street
"An enjoyable coming-of-age tale with a Belfast twist" (The Irish Times)
Click here to buy

A Belfast Tale
“Uniquely, authentically and enjoyably Belfast" (Tony Macaulay, author of Paperboy.)
Click here to buy.

Children of Latharna
Lyrical and nostalgic; wistful and humorous, Ian Andrew, author.
Click here to start reading.

]]><![CDATA[Jean McCullagh at 104]]>Sun, 02 Dec 2018 12:05:57 GMThttps://www.angelineking.com/history/jean-mccullagh-at-104

Jane McCullagh (nee Lyttle), who is known as Jean. Jean is the daughter of Samuel Lyttle and Mary Lyttle (nee Gillen)

Baby Jane Lyttle in 1914

My Great Aunt Jean McCullagh (nee Lyttle) was 104 this week. Happy birthday Jean!

Jean is my granny Rossborough's sister. I interviewed her a couple of years ago when I was writing an historical novel and thought this would be a nice time to share what she told me. My mum is very fond of her aunt Jean. I always remember Jean sitting in the Murrayfield shopping centre when I was wee and my mum yarning to her for an eternity.

Jean said that when she goes for medical appointments, the nurses sometimes take pictures of her. They also invariably ask her what the secret is to a long life. She tells them that she was reared on goats milk and that she had bacon, eggs and soda fresh from the griddle every morning.

Jean's mother was Mary Lyttle (nee Gillen). She was from Ballysnod and lived there most of her days. Jean’s father was Samuel Lyttle, whose parents were from Maghera.

Mary’s father was Patrick Gillen, who, like many people in the late 1800s, left these shores for America. He was forty at the time, and it is believed that he may have died before actually boarding the ship. His wife, Isabella Gillen, my great great granny, was therefore alone for most of her adult life.

Jean loved visiting her Granny, Isabella. She too was from Ballysnod, but lived in a thatched cottage at Bank Quays near the Glynn. The house was on the opposite side to Howdens and located back from the road at the foot of a steep glen. Jean frequently ran down though the fields between Ballysnod and the Glynn with her siblings. They slept in an old settle bed filled with straw by the fire when they stayed over with their Granny Gillen. Jean recalls that her granny used to walk as far as Carrickfergus to sell eggs and to visit a relative.

Childhood play for my granny’s siblings involved hoops and skipping ropes. The children also had free reign of Arnold's farm. Jean’s mother, Mary, rarely ventured beyond the end of the lane, but the world came to Mary’s door with people selling a variety of goods, not least needles, pins and thread, essential items for a talented seamstress. The fishman also came once a week, whilst Jean remembers an auld boy called Tinman, who sold the family tin cups and a tin teapot.

Mary Lyttle had nine children. (Herbert died in infancy.) The four in this picture are: Thomas "Tam", b.1910; Samuel "Sandy" b.1913; Mary Ellen "Nell" b.1912; and Jane "Jean" b.1914. The children born after the war were Isabella Brown "Bell" b.1919; John b.19xx; Kathleen Elizabeth "Molly" b.19xx; Robert "Rab" or "Bob" b. 19xx. Rab now lives in Canada.

Samuel preparing to go off to war in 1914. Samuel served in both the first and the second World Wars.

The family had two goats, a cow, a horse and some chickens. Jean’s father, Samuel, was mad about horses. Then there was poor old Janet, a cross between a pony and a donkey!

Mary sewed on her Singer machine, a sewing machine similar to the one that now sits in my hallway and that belonged to my great granny Rossborough. (I’m afraid I didn’t inherit the sewing gene). Mary also knitted. Her daughters were also talented knitters, crocheters, embroiderers and stitchers.

There was no electricity and no plumbing in the family home, so the morning routine for the Lyttle children began with a sprint over frosted ground, barefoot, to get to the dry toilet. Jean says she sometimes had the misfortune to take ‘a dook in it’ My granny, Isabella, who was four and a half years younger than Jean, fell right in on one occasion!

The well at the end of the garden was often full of frog spawn in frog season, meaning much traipsing up and down fields with buckets to fetch water from the big well.

At Christmas, the custom was to hang up a white net stocking. Santa had a lighter load than today, depositing an orange, apple, yo-yo, pencil or pen in each stocking. One year, Jean got the ultimate in luxurious Christmas gifts - a tin of toothpaste!

Christmas dinner was a Christmas dumpling and a goose. Jean’s father was an enterprising soul, and one of his businesses was selling boxes of fowl at Christmas. He also sent Jean out around the doors selling herring from a spring cart. A shilling for a dozen was the price. In those days, few could afford red meat, and fish was the staple diet - perhaps another secret to long life! Jean was accompanied on the herring run by her friend Susan Johnson (nee Montgomery) who also lived until she was 100!

Jean was raised in a farmhouse beyond the top of the brae on the Ballysnod Road, not far from the Browndod Road. There was a kitchen and bedroom and the family had four beds, two on the ground floor and two in a mezzanine. The old settle bed eventually came up from Granny Gillen’s house for the boys to sleep in.

Milk was kept in the cool porch and Mary did all her cooking on an open fire, which had a hob on each side of it. The griddle was pulled down on a chain to bake fresh soda bread, wee slims and fadge every day.

By the time Jean had moved to Belfast as a young woman, Jean’s mother and father had relocated several fields away to the house in which Jean’s granny, Isabella Gillen, had once lived. The house is still owned by the Lyttle family but it is empty and dilapidated today.

Jean knew life before partition and attended the national school in Ballysnod with her Catholic friends, all of them barefoot. The school was situated on the corner of the Browndod Road and the Ballysnod Road. The school room was divided into two classes, junior and senior, and comprised a stove for teaching cookery. The children wore their own clothes and were put through their paces with drill every day. Slates and slate pencils were used for lessons.

Entertainment on special occasions was to be had at the Farmer’s Union ball or concerts in the school house. When she was a teenager, Jean would take a train trip to Belfast with her friends. It was a shilling for the ride and by the time they walked down York Street, they had to turn back to get the train home. Samuel did not allow his daughters to attend the dances, although he himself was said to be a great dancer.

Religion was never mentioned and Catholics and Protestants worked and socialized together on the farms in the area. The Lyttle children belonged to the Raloo Presbyterian church, and some of them attended Sunday school there. Mary, who was christened Catholic, rarely attended church. She was not one for leaving the house.

Jean is known to be great with numbers and was the first woman in her family to receive a scholarship to attend college in Belfast, where she studied short-hand, bookkeeping and typing. When she was struck down by a serious ailment in her leg, her father had to borrow a pony and trap to take her home to Larne. She never returned to college.

She married Cecil McCullagh at the age of 19 and her mother-in-law decided the newlyweds should both live in Belfast. The big smoke wasn’t to be in the end, for there was fresh soda bread to be had in Larne, which was sent down to Jean and Cecil along with fresh eggs from Balysnod every Saturday night.
Jean’s daughter Sheila, who was born in 1944, recalls that there was still no electricity at her granny Lyttle’s house when she was a child. She and my mum, who was born in 1948, remember clearly the big fireplace with the griddle and the chain, the scent of soda bread baking and the noise of the chickens in the yard.

Jean and Cecil had six children - Brian, Drew, Sheila, Loretta, Heather and Gerald. When her son Gerald was old enough to go to school, Jean took a job as a bookkeeper for Sid McIlroy in Larne and spent many’s an hour of her life helping her friends with their accounts. Jean was a talented Irish dance dress-maker. She made costumes for variety shows and Irish dancing festivals for Moira Metson. I didn't know this when I wrote the book on the history of Irish dancing. Jean is most well-known as a darts champion, playing well into her 90s.

I told Jean that I was partial to a glass of wine, and she warned me that I’d go blind! Alcohol is not part of the formula for a long life, so it seems, but I heard a rumour that Jean may have once sipped a snowball at a party!

Happy birthday Jean! Every time I see you I think of my granny, Bell, pictured below.

Isabella Brown Rossborough (nee Lyttle), my maternal granny and Jean's sister.

Jean makes a small appearance in my Irish Dancing book, although the reference is more to do with the strong interfaith relations in the Ballysnod area: Irish Dancing: The festival story
A history of dancing in Ulster with a focus on the festival tradition of Irish Dancing.

Angeline King is also the author of:
Snugville Street
"An enjoyable coming-of-age tale with a Belfast twist" (The Irish Times)
Click here to buy

A Belfast Tale
“Uniquely, authentically and enjoyably Belfast" (Tony Macaulay, author of Paperboy.)
Click here to buy.

Children of Latharna
Lyrical and nostalgic; wistful and humorous, Ian Andrew, author.
Click here to start reading.

]]><![CDATA[Dancing in Victorian Ulster]]>Thu, 21 Dec 2017 17:15:55 GMThttps://www.angelineking.com/history/dancing-in-victorian-ulster

How did did our ancestors, the young and old of nineteenth century Ulster, foot it to the dance floor? The answer, if you're partial to Victorian literature, can be found in a recently republished novel called Orange Lily.

May Crommelin’s novel, set in County Down in the 1870s, is well worth a read, but what caught my attention, as I made the last touches to my book on the history of Irish dancing, was the description of dancing, and in particular, the reference to Soldier's Joy, my 6 year-old daughter's favourite team dance.

No slithery-slathery walzes!

‘Soldier’s Joy' is a popular team (country) dance in the festival tradition of Irish dancing, and the dance is a charming spectacle to behold as the children knock, knock, knock, clap clap clap and rolly polly polly to the music.

However, in Orange Lily, the dance is a little more rustic. ‘Big Gilhourn,’ an affable farmer, who has taken a fancy to Orange Lily despite her unerring love for Tom, takes to the earthen floor of the barn like Michael Flatley, rejecting any notion of lilting to a modern dance:

“None of your new slithery-slathery walzes for me. What I like best is to see a man get up and take the middle of the floor - and foot it there for a good hour!’ ‘The Soldier’s Joy’ for me, if I may make so bold as to ask that request.”

Quadrille

The 'Soldier’s Joy' in this sense is a quadrille, a square dance and the mainstay of country dancing throughout the whole of Ireland for most of the 1800s. The quadrille was danced at speed and with great energy. Indeed, by the 1870s, there were complaints from the countryside that new dances like polkas and waltzes were too slow and repetitive for the Irish, lacking as they were in rich steps of yore.

Image from ITMA - New Year's Eve 1870

‘Stepping’

“Stepping” was a feature of the old social dances. Today, céilí dances of the feis tradition of Irish dancing and team (country) dances of the festival Irish dancing tradition, are mainly composed of side steps and the promenade step, but in the late 1700s and early 1800s, social dances were rich in complex steps inherited from French dance masters. It would have been common to see ‘heels and toes,’ ‘drumming’ and ‘cuts’ within the social dance. This, in turn, meant that many country dancers could perform solo performances, based on the few steps they had either picked up or learned in a formal setting. In the novel, Orange Lily, it is notable that “Big John executed a bit of a breakdown by himself with much applause.”

Steps v Grace

Stepping, however, had gone out of fashion by the 1870s, so much so that the grandfather and grandmother among those present at this "Orange ball" ( a barn dance) in Orange Lily were the envy of their “degenerate descendants” because they knew the best steps. By the time the white collared men of the Gaelic League had set upon the idea of reviving traditional dancing in the early 1900s, the fashion was for a more elongated step, and a great tug of war between steps and grace commenced that was to last well into the 1930s, when finally, grace triumphed in gold medals at musical festivals and feiseanna.

The reel in Orange Lily is described as “vigorous.” Big John takes the floor in his hobnail boots in the manner of a River Dance star, a reminder that the men of Ulster were once slightly more partial to dancing than they are today. Big John is described as follows: “Big John did his steps with a nimbleness wonderful in such a heavy-looking man, finishing up every now and then with a solid pounding that made delicate-nerved folk like his cousin Daniel think it a “puffect mercy that he was on an earth-floor, in which holes were cheaply mended.”

(A/The) Soldier's Joy

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Lambeg Irish folk dancing society, a group of middle class professionals influenced by the European folk dancing revival, travelled around Ulster alongside Peadar O’Rafferty, a Gaelic League feis champion dancer, collecting and recording traditional folk dances that were still alive in the countryside. ‘A Soldier’s Joy,’ was one of those dances and more than one hundred years after its introduction to Ireland, it was recorded in Mr Peadar O’Rafferty’s Irish Folk Dance book of 1934. That the dance can still be seen at Irish dancing festivals today is due to respect for tradition among the Irish dance teachers of today, the dedication of the festival Irish dance teachers of the twentieth century like Patricia Mulholland, Sadie Bell and Marjorie Gardiner, and to the folk dance revivalists of the 1920s.

Larne girls rolly pollying to A Soldier's Joy in June 2017 at the Lisa Demspey School of Dancing class festival.

Angeline King is the author of:

Irish Dancing: The festival story
A history of dancing in Ulster with a focus on the festival tradition of Irish Dancing.

Snugville Street
"An enjoyable coming-of-age tale with a Belfast twist" (The Irish Times)
Click here to start reading.

A Belfast Tale:
“Uniquely, authentically and enjoyably Belfast" (Tony Macaulay, author of Paperboy.)
Click here to start reading

Children of Latharna:
Lyrical and nostalgic; wistful and humorous, Ian Andrew, author
Click here to read for free

]]><![CDATA[The McConnells of Ballymena & Irish Dancing]]>Sun, 01 Oct 2017 14:55:45 GMThttps://www.angelineking.com/history/the-mcconnells-of-ballymena-irish-dancing

The Braid Water Recreation Club Irish Dancing Team, late 1940s (Source: Mid Antrim Museum and Arts Centre at the Braid.)

Agnes McConnell (Close), was born in 1901 at 1 Railway Street, Ballymena. It isn't clear who taught Agnes McConnell to dance in the Irish style promoted by the Gaelic League, but Ballymena was a hub of traditional dancing in Agnes’ formative years, and the Protestant Hall in the 1910s and 1920s regularly accommodated Irish night festivities.

Agnes ran what the family called the “original and only dancing club in Ulster” in Railway Street from at least the late 1920s, if not earlier. Most of the McConnell siblings were involved in dancing, including Sam (b.1911), Fred (b.1915) and Pearl (b.1920).

The children grew up in Harryville, a working class area of town that provided manpower for the local linen mill. Most of Agnes McConnell’s aunts and uncles worked at the mill — her mother, Margaret was a spinner and her father, David, a fitter.

The McConnell family, who belonged to the Church of Ireland, would not have been part of the Gaelic League’s new dawn of saffron and green. Those Protestants involved in the Gaelic League revival of the early 1900s tended to be from middle class or aristocratic stock. Harryville was a unionist, working class and Protestant heartland where the voices were ‘broad Scotch’ and a Twelfth of July arch was decked out in in red, white and blue.

The McConnells appear at the 1929 Ballymena festival as ‘The Shamrock team,’ featuring Miss Pearl McConnell, younger sister of Agnes. Their performance was noted by adjudicator, Mr Denis Cuffe, as the finest he’d seen in a life-time. In subsequent years, the McConnell dancers were entered into competitions under the name of ‘Miss McConnell’s school.’

Sally McCarley, who later taught her cousin, Sadie Bell (née Kernohan), was instructed by Agnes McConnell in the early 1930s. Sadie, who set up the Seven Towers School of Irish dancing in 1950, also

Jean Tennant (left). Agnes McConnell (Right) with McConnell Trophy, Ballymena (Source: http://www.mcconnelldancers.com)

performed with Patricia Mulholland, but she remained friends with the McConnells (and later travelled to Canada to help the McConnells teach the latest techniques in Irish dancing to their pupils).

The McConnell school of dancing catered for both Irish and ballroom in the 1940s with Sam McConnell at the helm of ballroom, and the school won many medals at dancing festivals during that time. In a 1946 advertisement, the school boasted 22 first prizes at the Ballymena and Portstewart festivals for Irish dancing. Future teachers, Lily Agnew and Jean Tennant (née Graham) were taught by Sam McConnell in the 1940s. Sam’s adopted sister, Nan McConnell, won the senior championships of the Irish folk dancing in Portstewart in 1946. She also performed with Lily Agnew in displays and concerts.

The factories continued to serve as a backdrop to the dancing scene when the Braid Water Recreation club opened in 1946. The team met at the Mill canteen and competed at the first Festival of Britain during the summer months of 1951. The Braid Water Irish dancing team competed across Northern Ireland and England under the tuition of Agnes.

The Winnipeg connection

Sam McConnell followed in his brother’s footsteps and emigrated to Canada in 1947. Travelling with him were his wife, Sarah, who he had met at a ballroom dancing competition, and his three children. His sister, Nan, also followed her siblings to Canada. Despite the relative peace of post-war Northern Ireland, many people travelled across the Atlantic to seek work as the linen trade went into decline, and whilst the USA had a strong Irish Catholic diaspora, Canada proved to be a natural home for emigrants from Ulster in the 1940s and 1950s.

Sam McConnell worked at Eaton’s department store in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but continued the family dance tradition in his spare time. He became involved in show business, choreographing CBC shows and local productions. He also founded the Folk Arts Council for Winnipeg, for which he and his wife both received citizenship.

Sam’s dancing genes were passed onto his daughter, Pearl McConnell, and granddaughter, Shayleen McConnell Finucan. Shayleen now runs the Winnipeg-based McConnell School of Dance, a member of the feis Irish dancing governing body, Cumann Rince Náisiúnta (CRN).

Sam’s brother, Fred, who stayed in Northern Ireland and moved to Larne, was also a successful Irish dancer in his youth and ran ballroom dance classes in Larne, Ballyclare, Ballymena and Antrim in the 1950s. Fred’s son also Irish danced and his great granddaughters continue to dance today.

The McConnell Irish dancing line may well be one of the longest in Northern Ireland and the McConnell family can be credited with spreading Irish dancing to working class children and adults in Ballymena, Ballycastle, Coleraine and beyond. Agnes McConnell was a pioneer of the festival tradition of Irish dancing and the fact that Irish folk dancing is so widespread in Protestant communities in County Antrim today, is a direct result of the work of the McConnell family.

Angeline King is the author of:

Irish Dancing: The festival story
A history of dancing in Ulster with a focus on the festival tradition of Irish Dancing.

Snugville Street
"An enjoyable coming-of-age tale with a Belfast twist" (The Irish Times)
Click here to start reading.

A Belfast Tale:
“Uniquely, authentically and enjoyably Belfast" (Tony Macaulay, author of Paperboy.)
Click here to start reading

Children of Latharna:
Lyrical and nostalgic; wistful and humorous, Ian Andrew, author.
Click here to read for free

Soldier's Joy was a well known tune and country dance at the time of the revival of Irish dancing. The McConnells handed this dance down to teachers like Sadie Bell and Jean Tennant.

]]><![CDATA[Arms in Irish Dancing]]>Sun, 30 Jul 2017 17:53:19 GMThttps://www.angelineking.com/history/arms-in-irish-dancingThe decommissioning of arms

Sean O’Togda complained in 1924 of the ignorance of youth as a result of the decline of the old dance masters. Mr O’Togda had a teacher of the traditional style who taught dancing to women in the following way:

“To add grace and variety to the dance, he showed them how to dance with arms akimbo and to place the hands gracefully on the hips…He also showed the girls how to hold their skirts lightly at the side with thumb and index finger of both hands, and slightly and gracefully keep them out from the sides.”

In a 1904 photograph of an Irish dancer, “Cassie” in Victorian attire at the Feis na Gleann, the dancer has both hands on her hips.

Miss Patricia Mulholland, a Belfast dance mistress, who began teaching in the 1930s, was also an exponent of the use of arms. “As far as I was concerned, arms poker-rigid beneath an expressionless face had little attraction. I wanted to inject more feeling, and, in the process, let Irish dancing come into contact with the widest possible audience.”

Arms were, however, discouraged by some dance teachers in the nineteenth century. Mr Trench, a dance master operating in the south of Ireland in the early 1800s instructed that arms should hang gracefully to the side. He actively discouraged the flinging of these limbs about, or flourishing them on the level with the head; an indication that the dancers either had a tendency to naturally liberate their limbs in ethereal motion, or that in some previous time, the arms had moved freely. Another reflection on pre-dance master times is this: “During the rapid exercise, Nancy occasionally clapped one hand on her well-developed hip.”

The white collar scholars of the Gaelic League and the country dancers went head to head in a great national and nationalistic debate about what exactly Irish dancing was, and the Gaelic League turned to the south-west for inspiration, applying the Munster style found in areas of counties Kerry, Cork and Limerick to step dancing in the rest of the country. Dances were to be controlled, hip slapping and flings thereby excluded.

Removing arms from Larne

One town that stands out in those early days of the folk dancing revival is the east Antrim port of Larne. As a leading tourist destination of its day and a mover and shaker in the world of dancing, Larne had Irish dancing added to the syllabus in 1927 in preparation for the 1928 musical festival. Peadar O’Rafferty was one of the founder members of the Larne Irish folk dancing association and he tutored an Irish dancing class at the Gardenmore Hall in preparation for the big event. Many of the dancers at Larne’s first festival had less than one year’s training before turning their feet to what had become known as “Irish dancing”, but dancing was prevalent in the town and in its surrounding villages, and it is likely that many would have benefited from either formal or informal training in some form of dancing prior to joining Mr O’Rafferty’s class.

As Irish dancing classes became popular, Mr O’Rafferty turned to one of his best Belfast pupils to help with the growing demand. Twenty-one year-old Stella Mulholland started to run classes on Thursday afternoons in Larne in 1931. Miss Mulholland, like Mr O’Rafferty, taught in the British Legion and charged 12s 6d. Stella was accompanied on violin by her younger sister, Patricia. In 1932, she and sixteen year-old Patricia, combined their Belfast and Larne pupils in a children’s display of dance and song in the Victoria Orange Hall, a foreshadowing of the theatrical repertoire that was to be a feature of Patricia Mulholland’s life.

The first festival in Larne was adjudicated by Mr Heggarty of Belfast, who was both surprised and entertained by what he found in Larne. He remarked that a third of the competitors failed to realise that Irish folk dancing was from the shoulders downwards, the Larne dancers having been accustomed to deploying arms. He refuted that it was injurious to keep the arms straight, a hint that some sort of debate about arms in motion had taken place, and he defended the straight-armed dances as a “splendid exercise for the young.”

As the festival progressed, the costumes soon came under some scrutiny. The girls were well turned out in the “dress of the Irish colleen,” but one of the boys from Glenarm had an accident with a kilt that had “slipped its moorings.” The Northern Whig summed up the events surrounding the first festival: “He was quickly surrounded, but adjustment being unable to be effected on the platform, the team trooped off in order that the fastenings of the refractory kilts could be completely overhauled.”

Grace versus Steps

Irish dancing was an instant success in Larne. On 23 March 1929, Mr Richard Gowan of Dublin favorably compared the dances in Larne with those in the south. However, the arms issue had yet to be completely put to bed. “Some people,” he observed, “thought it was not Irish folk dancing unless the hands were kept on the hips.” Mr Gowan advised that “more freedom of movement and better balance” would result if the hands were kept to the side.

Mr Gowan awarded first place in the solo under seventeen class to Monica Convery from Belfast and second place to Lily Lutton from Belfast. In the jig and reel senior calls, Neillie Fluke from Belfast took first place and Veronica Convery second. Veronica, however, won the under seventeen hornpipe and was praised for “excellent execution” and “excellent rhythm.” She was said to dance “most gracefully.” Lily Lutton, Mr Gowan explained, had sacrificed her grace and carriage in favour of complex steps.

The Gaelic League was determined to stamp out any unorthodox stepping in favour of grace and carriage, and their adherence to such principles gave Irish dancing a unique place in the international folk dancing world. Elsewhere a more rustic style survived.

Angeline King is the author of:

Irish Dancing: The festival story
A history of dancing in Ulster with a focus on the festival tradition of Irish Dancing.

Snugville Street
"An enjoyable coming-of-age tale with a Belfast twist" (The Irish Times)
Click here to start reading.

A Belfast Tale:
“Uniquely, authentically and enjoyably Belfast" (Tony Macaulay, author of Paperboy.)
Click here to start reading

Children of Latharna:
Lyrical and nostalgic; wistful and humorous, Ian Andrew, author.
Click here to read for free

]]><![CDATA[Catholics and Protestants holding hands]]>Thu, 04 May 2017 17:26:02 GMThttps://www.angelineking.com/history/catholics-and-protestants-holding-hands

A dress from Leslie Baird's costume exhibition

This week the sun was shining in Larne and the Orange Hall steps were ornate with dancers in emerald green, black, burgundy, royal blue, scarlet, navy blue and cerise. The festival was a positive experience made special by the charm of the dancers, the spirit of the musicians, the enthusiasm of the adjudicator, the generosity of visitors from across the province, the support from local people and the dedication of wee fairies who made it happen.

There was also a strong sense of history. The lady at the door danced competitively in the same hall as far back as the 1930s, the pianist had danced as a toddler in a variety concert in Ballymena during the second world war, and the wee fairies on the stage and in the kitchen included grandmothers, mothers and daughters who have been dancing their whole lives.

Few people realise is that Irish folk dancing, now primarily known as ‘festival dancing’ is a cross-community tradition. Even during the upheaval of ‘The Troubles,’ Catholics and Protestants continued to hold hands, literally and metaphorically, in towns like Belfast, Larne, Portadown, Ballymena, Ballymoney, Portstewart, Ballyclare and Bangor. Irish folk dancing, in fact, blossomed against the timbre of bullets and bombs.

Catholics and Protestants in the Irish folk dancing tradition have been dancing together for for ninety years, but further back in time, the harvest homes, lintings, punch dances and Mayday festivities also provided opportunities for Catholics and Protestants to come together. Traditional Ulster social dances like ‘A Soldier’s Joy,’ ‘The Sweets of May’ and ‘The Three Tunes’ were danced by Protestants and Catholics before the term “Irish dancing” was invented.

The video below is a QML production for the Northern Ireland Ireland Championships, which is available on Youtube. There are no videos of the Larne Festival, but hopefully this will give you a feel for the festival tradition or Irish dancing, otherwise known as Irish folk dancing.

Step (solo) dancing was also a popular pastime among Protestants and Catholics prior to the Gaelic Revival of the early 1900s. Just as Orangemen once provided party piece songs in the old style (known as Sean-nós in Gaelic) they also performed step (solo) dances throughout the 1800s and up until the first decades of the 1900s. The steps were the same as the steps approved by the Gaelic League and the tunes were the same same Scottish and Irish tunes that had been handed down in folklore. What was different was the style — a hand on the hip was common for both Catholic and Protestant dancers in Ulster. The Munster style was adopted by the Irish folk dancing teachers in terms of the solo dances in the late 1920s, but the team dances, two-hand, three-hand, four-hand and six-hand reels still have much of Victorian Ulster in them.

Women in the early days of the Irish folk dancing revival proved ever pragmatic in the face of politics and religion. One Protestant boy in the 1940s recalls his teacher sending him to a Catholic priest in Ballymena to learn a whole new version of Irish history so that he could gain entry to the feis by sitting the history exam.

Irish folk dancing is not carved up into Gaelic and Ulster-Scots parts. Nor is it carved up into Protestant and Catholic parts. Irish folk dancing was a movement set up in the 1920s in order to record and save old dances in Ulster, regardless of their provenance. Festival dance teachers today are the custodians of traditions that stretch back to the old dance masters of the late 1700s and early 1800s and that cross religious and political demarcations.

And here's a wee anecdote that sums up the Festival dancing tradition...

On Tuesday night at the Larne festival, accordion music could be heard faintly at the back of the hall. The sound was coming from upstairs, where a local accordion band was playing hymns in a practice session that culminated in the National Anthem. Downstairs, at the other end of the hall, a pretty girl from Belfast with rippling, dark hair, and a black dress accessorised with traditional Irish lace cuffs and collars, was gliding slowly to an old set dance invented by a dance master from County Kerry at the start of the 1800s, not realising that her feet were also pitter pattering in tune to “God Save the Queen.”

The Larne Irish Folk dancing festival is an example of how to be tolerant and courteous and enjoy the Irish cultural traditions that we all share, regardless of religion or political affiliation.

I have explored the phenomenon of Catholic-Protestant solidarity in Irish folk dancing in my current book and I’ll also be talking about it on Thursday 1st June at 7pm at the Larne Arts Centre.

Please join me on 1st June.

This is an opportunity for you to share your stories and to offer any memorabilia to the museum to display in a ninety year anniversary exhibition next year.

Angeline King is the author of:

Irish Dancing: The festival story
A history of dancing in Ulster with a focus on the festival tradition of Irish Dancing.

Snugville Street
"An enjoyable coming-of-age tale with a Belfast twist" (The Irish Times)
Click here to start reading.

A Belfast Tale:
“Uniquely, authentically and enjoyably Belfast" (Tony Macaulay, author of Paperboy.)
Click here to start reading

Children of Latharna:
Lyrical and nostalgic; wistful and humorous, Ian Andrew, author.
Click here to read for free

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