Irish Aboard Titanic (33 page)

The letter from Miss Kate Murphy in reference to the disaster ran as follows:

‘It was a terrible disaster which happened the ship which was to bring us here. I suppose you have heard a good deal about it. It was a terrible place when the ship was going down to hear the cries of the poor passengers who were drowning.

‘We were in bed, and were the first to hear in our rooms, for the water came rushing into our room, so we got up and called the other girls. Everyone was up in a few minutes, and rushing on deck for the lifebelts.

‘You know we had no hopes of being saved, and the stewards were telling everyone to go back to bed, that there was nothing the matter. They didn't care, I suppose, for they knew that they would be saved themselves. The crew are saved but a few, and nearly all the passengers we knew were drowned, and poor John and Philip Kiernan are lost too.

‘It was they got the lifebelts for us, and there were five girls and seven boys that we knew in Queenstown who were with us, lost.

‘My name was on the papers for being lost and poor Patrick (her brother) was nearly dead with grief when we met him after coming off the
Carpathia
, which picked us up. After landing, we got money to buy clothes, &c., in place of what we lost, as we only had a light garment on.'

The writer of the letter is only seventeen and never travelled on sea before. Her sister, Maggie, was returning to the States after a holiday with her relatives. She did not write much about the disaster and most of what she wrote was similar to the other letter:

‘We were awake after two o'clock. I was first to waken after the accident, and I saw the water coming into our room. I woke Katie, and we then called the other girls. Having first put on some little clothes, we ran up on deck. We were told by an officer there that nothing was the matter, though.

‘Lots of people were there looking for lifebelts. Philip Keernan [
sic
], who is lost, put on my lifebelt. We were taken into one of the boats and were eight hours in it, famished, before a ship that was going to California picked us up.

‘We could see poor John Keernan and his brother Phil on deck when the ship was going down. That was the last I saw of them, and a boy named James Farrell, of Clonee, Killoe, who was lost too. It was terrible to hear the cries of the poor creatures when they were going down, and I can't just bear to write about it, so I will send you the papers with all about it. We were brought to St Vincent's Hospital and feel all right again.'

(
The Irish Post,
11 May 1912)

Family accounts tell that the girls' widowed and elderly mother, Maria, refused to entertain the idea of her two daughters emigrating and insisted that they both stay on the farm. She said she did not rear her children for them all to go to America and abandon their last parent. It is difficult not to have sympathy with Mrs Murphy's position – she had given birth to twelve children in all, five of whom died in infancy, and by 1912 she had but a quarter of her offspring at home. Her husband had died from a heart attack a year previously.

Margaret and Kate decided that they were going to go to America anyway, despite their mother's refusal, and began hiding trunks in the barn and taking items out to the trunks. Both ran away to the Kiernan home just before the departure for Queenstown.

Kate brought her violin aboard the
Titanic
and played sets with other musicians in the Third-Class party on the night of the collision. She left behind her instrument in the chaos of trying to get to the boat deck and remembered John Kiernan building a makeshift ladder out of deckchairs for the girls to clamber to the safety of the Second-Class deck.

Anne McCabe, daughter of Margaret Murphy, says she does not believe her mother was engaged to John Kiernan, despite mysterious mention of a $100 diamond ring in Margaret's claim for lost personal effects.

The Murphy girls were met on arrival in New York by brother Patrick and the three other sisters – Annie, Bridget and Rose.

Barely two weeks thereafter, Kate met the man who was to become her husband. Romance blossomed at the wedding of her sister Annie to Dennis Guilfoyle, when bridesmaid Kate became entranced with the groom's brother Michael and later married the 19-year-old postman at Corpus Christi Church in New York in 1913. Two sisters were now married to two brothers.

In that same year of 1913, fellow
Titanic
survivor Margaret Murphy met and married mortician and sometime ballroom promoter Matthew O'Reilly from Cavan. This couple returned home that year on honeymoon to see Margaret's mother, the bride deeply ashamed that she had never said goodbye properly. Kate, however, could not be prevailed upon to make a return visit, and in fact never did so, retaining ‘an extreme fear of water and flying'.

It is reported that Mrs Murphy was relieved to see at least one of her daughters, having originally believed that neither Margaret nor Kate had been saved, but rather drowned as punishment for defying their mother.

Both Catherine and Margaret had children, three each, and both families were brought up for a time in the same four-storey building in Manhattan.

R
eport of the American Red Cross (Titanic Disaster) 191
3:

No. 323. (Irish.) Two sisters, domestic servants, 21 and 16 years old. ($200)

The sisters were also each given $25 in cash from Fr Michael J. Henry of the Irish Immigrant Society. Perhaps believing that free money was easily obtained in the United States, both Margaret and Kate filed hugely exaggerated claims for compensation for property lost on the
Titanic
. The extended clan now insists the sisters were acting under instructions from an older brother. Together they sought more than $1,800 for their few belongings, as follows:

Schedule of Margaret Murphy:

1 cloak, $30; 3 suits, $80; 10 gowns, $150; 6 shirtwaists (2 lace), $35; 4 skirts, $25; 1 set of furs, $50; 6 hats, $60; ½ doz. pairs silk stockings, $6; 1 doz. cotton stockings, $6; undergarments, $50; 6 pairs shoes, $24; 2 albums, $12; 12 yds linen, $30; 5 Irish lace collars, $125; 6 prs gloves, $9; ½ doz. lace handkerchiefs, $3; 1 doz. linen handkerchiefs, $3; 1 silk umbrella (gold handle), $15; 1 parasol, $5; 1 diamond ring, $100; 1 locket and chain, $25; 1 bracelet, $10; 2 hand knit sweaters, $10; 1 raincoat, $7; 1 silver mesh bag, $10; 1 leather bag, $4; 1 silver toilet set, $10; 2 sets combs, $4; 2 trunks, 2 dress suit cases. Total: $901.

Schedule of Katherine Murphy:

One gold watch, $30; Two rings, $20; One gold bracelet, $5; Two gold breast pins, $8; One set of Rogers' silverware, $15; One assorted lot of linen, towels, table cloths, $25; Two long coats, $50; One set of mink furs, $50; Four embroidered dresses, $60; Two silk dresses, $40; Four tailor-made suits, $100; Two hats with plumes, $25; Three Irish linen dresses, $40; One gent's suit, $35; Twelve pairs of hand-made stockings, $12; One shawl, $2; One lot of underwear, $23; One half-dozen pairs of shoes, $20; One lot of family relics, $40; Cash, U.S. currency, $300. Total: $900.

Margaret Murphy O'Reilly died of a heart attack in Slate Hill, New York, on 29 September 1957. Aged 68, she had been a widow for nearly twenty years.

Katherine Murphy Guilfoyle died at Swan Lake, New York, her home of thirty-seven years, on 24 September 1968. She was aged 73, and had been a widow for six years.

1911 census – Murphy. Fostragh, County Longford.

Parents Michael (70), farmer, and Maria (66).

Married 40 years, with 12 children born, of whom seven were then living.

Children in house: John (38),
Maggie Jane (21), Kate (16)
.

Norah Murphy (34) Saved

Joint ticket number 36568. Paid £15 10s.

Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.

From: Sallins, County Kildare.

Destination: 231 East 50th Street, New York city.

Norah was travelling with Michael McEvoy, a 19-year-old workman with whom she had taken up following the ending of her own marriage, details of which remain obscure.

She was 34 years old, and had been working as a nanny in her home town of Sallins, County Kildare. In the 1911 census, she is found to be a domestic working in the household of John and Mary Healy and their family of six children in Sallins.

Norah and Michael were travelling on the same ticket, but were accommodated at opposite ends of the
Titanic
. Norah had signed aboard as a spinster, but local folklore in her home village suggests she had a chequered past.

In the chaos of the early morning of 15 April 1912, Norah was bundled into a lifeboat, possibly No. 16 on the port side, while Michael accepted the fate ordained for him as a man of low social standing.

Ms Murphy had initially stated a boarding house address as her intended destination, at 231 East 50th Street, but following her rescue by the
Carpathia
she indicated to customs and immigration officers that she now intended to seek refuge at the Irish Immigrant Girls Home at 7 State Street. It is known that she did go there and received a small amount of assistance from the religious administrators of the home. She was also given relief by the American Red Cross, in the amount of $100. Listed as case number 324, an Irish nursemaid, she said she was 32 years old.

Not a single detail is known of Norah Murphy's later life in the United States. One report was that she became a domestic for a
Titanic
survivor from First Class – a woman she met on the
Carpathia.

Thomas Myles (62) Lost

Ticket number 240276. Paid £9 13s 9d.

Boarded at Queenstown. Second Class.

From: Fermoy, County Cork.

Destination: Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Thomas Myles was an adventurer who had worked for the White Star Line – owners of the
Titanic
– for nearly half a century. But he had also been able to assemble an independent fortune, having arrived in America in 1875 at the age of 26 with just £1 in his pocket.

From a wealthy landed family who lived in Brook Lodge, Fermoy, he had nonetheless roved off to sea, joining the original White Star company. He sailed to India from Liverpool on a freighter skippered by his cousin, and visited Bombay and Calcutta. Later he sailed the length of the mighty Mississippi. He began acquiring land and eventually became a real estate tycoon, owning a string of properties. By the turn of the century, he lived in a splendid mansion named ‘Idlewild' in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He had reached his later years when a family death brought him back to Ireland to sell part of the family's holdings to provide for the future well-being of his severely mentally handicapped brother James, now the only family member in Ireland. In packing for the return journey, he made sure to bring with him fifty pounds of pure Irish creamery butter, together with ten pounds of tea, valued at $15. Clearly he was a man who liked his comforts from the old country. Myles was the only passenger booked aboard with an address at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and he is clearly the man described by his fellow Second-Class passenger, Lawrence Beesley, on the afternoon of Sunday 14 April:

Close beside me – so near that I cannot avoid hearing scraps of their conversation – are two American ladies, both dressed in white, young, probably friends only: one had been to India and is returning by way of England, the other is a school-teacher in America, a graceful girl with a distinguished air heightened by a pair of pince-nez.

Engaged in conversation with them is a gentleman whom I subsequently identified from a photograph as a well-known resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, genial, polished, and with a courtly air towards the two ladies, to whom he was known but a few hours; from time to time as they talk, a child acquaintance breaks in on their conversation and insists on their taking notice of a large doll clasped in her arms; I have seen none of this group since then.

(
The Loss of the SS Titanic,
Lawrence Beesley, 1912)

From the
Clonmel Chronicle
of 24 April 1912:

Among those who, it is feared, perished in the disaster was Mr T. F. Myles of Boston, who had just visited Fermoy, of which he is a native, and intended returning with his family next year.

He left a widow, Mary, and sons Leo and Frederick (who coincidentally lived beside John Kiernan, another Irish
Titanic
passenger, in Grove Street, Jersey city), along with daughters Gertrude, Agnes, Elizabeth and Eileen.

The family were visited three weeks after the tragedy by a passenger who told them he had seen Myles in a lifeboat – but the old man had stepped out again, saying ‘Women and children first'. He was also seen in a group kneeling on the deck of the
Titanic
, saying the Rosary.

Lawrence Beesley, who had falsely been reported lost, had met the family, and commiserated with them on the false reports that their Papa had been saved:

The name of an American gentleman – the same who sat near me in the library on Sunday afternoon and whom I identified later from a photograph – was consistently reported in the lists as saved and aboard the
Carpathia
: his son journeyed to New York to meet him, rejoicing at his deliverance, and never found him there. When I met his family some days later and was able to give them some details of his life aboard ship, it seemed almost cruel to tell them of the opposite experience that had befallen my friends at home.

Hannah Naughton (21) Lost

Ticket number 365237. Paid £7 15s.

Boarded at Queenstown. Second Class.

From: Kilcullen, Donoughmore, County Cork.

Destination: 433 West 33rd Street, New York city.

Hannah was going to America to take up a job as a schoolteacher in New York, but she became a victim of arithmetic and was just another of the steerage women to die. Nearly half of all adult females in Third Class lost their lives – 87 out of 178 – compared with just thirteen per cent of the women in Second Class and a minuscule three per cent of those in First.