Monday, March 24, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Article: Letters from the New World
A sense of isolation was felt keenly by the Irish diaspora in the USA
in the late 1800s whose sole means of communication was the letter home. Dan
Buckley dips in to some of them
TO
preserve from desecration the remains of 6,000 immigrants who died of Ship
Fever,” reads the commemoration, chiselled out of bedrock to mark the place
where, in 1847, thousands of Irish immigrants drew their last breath while
fleeing the ravages of famine at home.
The
words are inscribed on The Black Rock, a large, granite boulder perched on a
hillock near Goose Village in Montreal, Canada. It was placed there in 1859 as
a salute to Irish immigrants whose remains were found during the construction
of the city’s Victoria Bridge. The immigrants, quarantined with typhus, known
as ship fever, had died in the fever sheds built there to prevent the spread of
disease.
Like
the hundreds of thousands who sought to escape hunger, they had pinned their
hopes on the ships, seeing in Canada, as in Australia, Britain and the US a
place of rebirth. For many, the new terra firma became a final resting place.
Now
a new wave of emigration is in full flight, as tens of thousands again choose a
ticket-of-leave as their only way out of penury and an uncertain future. Though
better fed, educated and blessed with instant communication, leaving for work
abroad is an emotional experience for those who go as well as those they leave
behind.
The
21st-century emigrant has much in common with those who fled Ireland in the
19th and early 20th century. Facebook is no substitute for flesh-and-blood
friends, while watching the All-Ireland or Heineken Cup matches on a TV in
Boston will evoke a wistful longing for home.
That
sense of isolation was felt by the Irish diaspora which had grown hugely in the
late 1800s and whose sole means of communication was the letter home.
Writing
from America in 1889 to her parents-in-law in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, Bridget
Chamberlain reflected on her and her husband’s longing for home.
“James
is often wishing to be back in Mitchelstown + I wish to be back in Limerick...
we are tired of Boston especially holidays it is so lonely.”
She
and her husband were well off compared to many Irish people who settled
overseas at the time, as Bridget explains.
“As
for happiness + comfort we could not wish for any more. James holds a good job
+ makes good pay + I work all the time at my own business so I think we have no
reason to complain.”
Included
in the letter was a postal order for £2. Being the dutiful daughter-in-law,
Bridget was anxious not to offend.
“Dear
Mrs Chamberlain enclosed you will find a post office order for £2 which you
will please accept + get yourself a Xmas present for it as I thought you could
suit yourself better than I could send. Please don’t feel angry with me for
sending it as I only want you to get a present to suit yourself.”
The
letter is among the Chamberlain collection of hundreds of letters and notes
sent home to Mitchelstown. They form part of research being undertaken by
historian Alan Noonan, who struck a rich vein of immigrant letters while
working on a dissertation on Irish miners in the US from 1845-1920.
Bridget’s
husband, James, was a prolific letter writer. In August 1891, he wrote: “Dear
Mother, I enclosed for you in this letter an order for the small sum of £1.0.0.
It is the best I could do at present perhaps after a little time I hope to be
able to send you Some more) these months ar our dull season & when trade
open again I will send you a little more Please God.
I
expect please God an increase in the family next month... which I hope will
turn out all right to such cases in America cost at least from £8 to £10.0.0
Wm. is getting Board wages At present & I leave him keep 12 shillings per
week for him self So as that he might send you some little or much next month
and have a little pocket money for him self.
“I
remain your ever fond son in Christ Our Lord J.C.”
In
another, James bemoans Irish employers’ greed.
“Better
than I can now the menast part of an Irish Boss is when a person have a holiday
out of the week or half day... if you work by the week each ½ hour you give the
sucker it means 25 or 30 cents to him nothing for you... that is the Irish
every time.
“I
felt sore when the Yankee Bosses I had went into other business. It is the Jews
& the cheap Irish that hold the trade now... they landed in the country
when any kind of thing could get work & they hold it through cheap labour
& gall.
“I
am sending some papers read of the strikes I remain your ever loving Son in
Christ our Lord With best love from wife & children Please God we all live
until Saint Ptk Day. Send Shamrocks in Envelope they hold fresher & greener
they go in to dust in a Box & it cost you more to sent them. Send me Cork
Examiner.”
A
particularly moving letter was sent by James Chamberlain to his parents, dated
September 20, 1881:
“My
Dear father and mother
“I
received your papers on the 19 and your letters on the 20 which I can’t express
in words how thankful I am to you for your generosity and goodness to me...
No-one can tell the love that I have for you, my dear father and mother,
brothers and sister, and I would never leave home were it not for you...
“I
remain Yours Ever Fond Son in Christ Our Lord J.C.”
Later
letters reveal that the family prospered in America. A letter dated January 2,
1889 reads:
“Dear
Mother & Brother in Christ our Lord,
“I
write this letter to you hoping with the Blessing of God we will Enjoy the new
year in the fear & love of God & thank God for his goodness to us all I
never had better health in my life than I have had since I came to america as
regards beings thin I got a little thin in July & August When Every person
get a little thin but if there be any good in fat the clothes that I Bought in
August the [they] are so small for me that I did not ware them since October
& I have now bought another suit. It is a dress suit £8.10.0 worth and I
have money enough if I wanted to go home and what would bring me to America
again, thank God..”
Although
historically significant, the letters are not kept in a museum. They were
gathered by generations of Chamberlains and shoved into a biscuit tin, then
placed in the attic of the Mitchelstown family home.
That’s
where Sean Chamberlain, 72, found them.
“I
was about nine or 10 back in the 1940s... I found a load of old letters stuck
in a Jacob’s biscuit tin. There were a few photos there as well.
“The
letters were vaguely exciting for me because they came from America. My father
knew nothing about relatives in America.
“Most
of the letters were from my two great-granduncles. There were three brothers in
all who went to America. Two of them got on well but one, John, who used to be
a monk in Listowel, was a right tearaway. He went to America and spent most of
the time there on the piss. He was finally deported from there in 1920.”
Although
Sean’s father ran a family bakery on Main Street in Mitchelstown, his son’s
passion was music and he too took the emigrant boat.
“When
I did my Leaving Cert in 1957 I went straight to England to make sure I would
never be a baker. We had a little showband and I played the accordion and
saxophone.”
However,
he was persuaded to return home and he and brother Paddy continue the bakery
business.
Twenty
years ago, a bus of US tourists passed the bakery when the name attracted their
attention.
“One
of them decided to take a chance on writing, because it was an unusual surname.
“One
woman, a Mrs Norton, made initial contact and my brother, Paddy, wrote back.
Mrs Norton has died since, but her brother, Robert, came to visit us and we
have been out him. Bob lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Paddy and I have been
out there a couple of times.”
ANOTHER
batch of letters unearthed by Alan Noonan includes the Hurley collection. This
involves the brothers Michael and Denis Hurley, from Clonakilty, Co Cork, who
emigrated to the US in the 1870s.
Michael
sailed to America around 1871 and settled in Carson City, Nevada, and then
moved around working for railroad companies. He first worked for Oregan Railway
and Navigation Co but lost his job for taking part in the Pullman Strike, a
national conflict between unions and railroads.
Denis
landed in Boston in 1873 and teamed up with his brother, working on the
railroads between San Francisco and Carson City. While Michael lost all his
savings on bad investments, Denis was luckier and ran for the Nevada
legislature in 1905. Although defeated in that contest, he was later made
chairman of the City Council and died in 1938, leaving $10,000.
Denis
had a quirky sense of humour, as a letter dated May 25, 1873 to his cousin
Denis Ryan in Clonakilty attests.
“This
climate is fatal to the longevity of shoes on account of its extreme drought.
Before a month’s wear, the soles and uppers of store boots apply for a divorce
— whether at the instance of the sole or the upper I cannot tell, and the
divorce is readily granted. Why not in a country in which the marriage tie
between man and woman is so easily severed? Why not the shoes in a like manner
when they become tired of so close a relationship between them, wish for a
separation, each desiring to go its own way...”
He
was also a fine observer of people in the melting pot of America.
“Men
from every nation under heaven may be found in Carson. The long-tailed,
sombre-looking Chinaman; the black-haired red skinned Indian, with chalk lines
drawn across their face on each side of the nose, with their women called
Mahalies, having their infants called Papooses wrapped on their backs. The
swarthy, copper-coloured Mexican; the slow thoughtful-looking German; the more
lively Frenchman, with Swedes, Swiss, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese etc..”
It
was a spirit of adventure and seeking their fortune that drove Michael and
Denis Hurley to emigrate, rather than penury. Their father was a landowner and
their parents well-off, so much so that the brothers, exhibiting shades of the future
Celtic Tiger, wrote home looking for a loan of £100 (then worth $500) to invest
in gold and silver mines in Nevada.
Like
many an emigrant since, the brothers had notions of making a quick buck to fund
their early retirement from the tedium of daily manual work. In May, 1877,
Denis wrote:
“Working
all a man’s life is played out. Big men have made work scarce and money tight
in order to be master of everything. We know half a dozen mines that are known
to have large ore-bodies whose stock is selling today for $10. That will
undoubtedly go up in the hundreds before next November.”
He
urged his father to send the money at once in case the opportunity passed them
by.
“If
you intend to send, lose not a day, no excuse is worth a cent. We are neither drinking
nor rawdying nor squandering but a rare chance has presented itself, and we
want to avail of it.”
Like
the so-called “Aer Lingus carpenters” over 100 hundred years later, they
dreamed of returning home.
“We
have several thousand dollars at stake, and with your loan we are almost
morally certain that next Fall would render us independent of works and
Christmas find us home together with a handsome fortune.”
There
is no account in later letters of whether that particular investment succeeded
or not, but the likelihood is that it didn’t as Denis and Michael Hurley never
saw their homeland again and ended their days 5,000 miles from home.
Dan Buckly
Article: Rejected !!!!
Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen, Jr., and Adam Clayton were
just teenagers when they formed U2 in 1976. (Though they were originally known
as The Larry Mullen Band, then Feedback, then The Hype.) By the fall of 1979,
they had released their first single in Dublin, though it was with no thanks to
London-based RSO Records, who had rejected the band’s submission in May of the
same year. The reason, as briefly explained in a letter to the man sometimes
known as Paul Hewson, was that it was “not suitable for us at present.” Within
a year, U2 had signed with Island Records and released their first
international single, “11 O’Clock Tick Tock.” Hmmm… wonder if they would be
suitable for RSO now?
Though author Stieg Larsson didn’t live long enough to
witness his own greatest success with the Millennium series, he did
know the sting of rejection, beginning with his application to journalism
school in Stockholm at the Joint Committee of Colleges of Journalism. In case
you don’t speak Swedish, “This is a letter saying ‘you are not good enough to
be a journalist’ to a man who went on to create a supremely creative, crusading
magazine which fought against the worsening tide of extreme right thinking and
activity in Sweden,” publisher
Christopher MacLehose told The Guardian in 2011, right before
the letter was auctioned off in London.
Sourced
Barry Clifford: Tales From New York continued - Mad Bob (part 2)
And so it was:
Bob was my new best friend on this constuction site. It was not love at first
sight, more a marriage of convenience. I, for the most part, would be on a hanging scaffold
somewhere about thirty floors from the bottom, give or take a floor or two,
repairing damaged brick and damp problems, and Bob was always above me on safer
ground on the roof terraces. I needed bricks and mortar passed down and Bob was
my conduit to giving them to me by putting them in a bucket hanging on a rope
and slowly lowering them to me to put onto the scaffold. Trust played a big part and there was not much around here, and I always asked Bob nicely for things, very nicely. Asking him the wrong way might just lead to my early demise with visions in my head of Bob cutting through the steel cables, that were the only things between life on this planet for me and whatever was beyond the clouds for my soul. You see there was a blank spot beyond Bob's eyes that not many breached and it was not advisable to try.
With the little trust there was about I got to know Bob a bit better and liked him. He was not a bully
and very apologetic if he thought he had pushed against you too hard physically
by way of an accident. He was a hero to all who knew him as far as I could see because
two months before I started with the company a terrible accident happened and
it was Bob that saved a man from certain death.
When you drop a
hanging scaffold from a tall building you need something to hang it to, like a
strong chimney on the roof terrace or a bulkhead of some sort. In the absence of
that, a series of concrete weights tie backs is put in place to offset the
weight of the scaffold, and the bricks to be put on it combined with the total
weight of the men who will work it. A mathematical formula was normally used for this but the foreman on this day was not good at maths. When the scaffold started to
decend from twenty eight floors up with three men on it, it creaked and groaned
under it's massive load and started to collapse as if in slow motion. One man lost his arm on the way down from a plank that had morphed into a missile hitting him hard and he lived for another hour; the second man was dead on arrival
when he hit the ground while the last man hanging was literally doing just
that, clinging onto a steel bar from the roof terrace as his life started to pass before him. Bob happened on the scene before it passed altogether, grabbing
Jamaican Geodfrey’s hand just before his grip loosened further under his own weight of two
hundred and forty portly pounds and some muscle. If it was anyone but Bob that
day that extended his hand, Geodfrey would not have made it or perhaps the man
that would have tried with him. Only a man of Bob’s strength could have done it
and Geodfrey would be one of Bobs greatest admirers thereafter and forever
more. One day, feeling comfortable, I asked Bob to tell
me a story abut his life in prison. The story he was to tell was so crazy and
funny it could only be true.
To be
continued.......
By Barry Clifford
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