by Senan Molony
From: Drumiskabole, County Sligo.
Destination: West Newton, Massachusetts.
Henry Hart had already made it big in the United States. He had a comfortable job as coachman for shipping and sugar magnate E. F. Atkins of Concord Avenue, in Belmont, Massachusetts. Henry’s wife was Bridget (Delia) McGillycuddy, another servant at the Atkins estate in Massachusetts, who was originally from Killorglin, County Kerry. The two employees were married in America on 30 July 1911, in a ceremony at the town clerk’s office. When Bridget fell pregnant, the couple decided to travel home to Ireland for the birth.
Henry was originally from Drumiskabole, Sligo, but the expectant couple moved in with Bridget’s parents, Dennis and Bridget (née Fahy), on their arrival back in Ireland in spring 1912. It appears that Henry was subsequently summoned back to America before the birth could take place. After he was drowned on the return journey, Bridget gave birth to a son whom she named Henry after the father he would never know. They lived in Killorglin, where Henry Jnr is now buried.
According to the report of the American Senate into the disaster, Henry was travelling to join one John Hart, likely a brother, with an address at PO Box 307, Marion, Massachusetts. He had been originally booked on the Celtic, which arrived on 20 April 1912, with his name scored out in the passenger manifest. In this listing, he gives next of kin as his sister Marie in West Newton, Massachusetts.
On board the Titanic Henry appears to have joined up with a group including Margaret Devaney, Mary Burns and Kitty Hargadon. Devaney told the Irish News that the women and ‘a boy we knew’ made up four passengers from the same area of Knocknarae, County Sligo.’
The Belmont Tribune of Massachusetts declared on 4 May 1912:
It is reported on good authority that Mr Henry Hart, formerly employed by Mr E. F. Atkins of this town, was one of the unfortunates who went down in the ill-fated Titanic. Mr Hart was married while residing in Belmont and went to Ireland with his young bride.
He was returning to this country alone, according to the report, and was unlucky enough to take passage on the Titanic’s first trip.
Could there have been a serious marital disagreement that resulted in Henry leaving before his child was born? It seems unlikely given the devotion which saw Henry Jnr named after his father. Henry Snr was born in 1883 to Michael Hart and his wife Mary (née Cunningham) of Sligo.
Nora Healy (34) Saved
Ticket number 370375. Paid £7 15s.
Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
From: Greethill, Athenry, County Galway.
Destination: 284 St Nicholas Avenue, New York city.
Nora Healy went insane from her experiences on the Titanic. Although saved, a slow descent into madness began to claim her life and within a short time she could not even recognise her own father. Her rational, sentient existence was over long before her death on 11 March 1919, less than seven years after the sinking.
It seems Nora was saved on lifeboat No. 16, the last means of escape on the port side for the steerage passengers struggling to board the craft. In fact there were two boats yet to leave, unseen in the darkness at the far end of the forward deck. Boat No. 16 appears to have been a site of trouble, yet escaped any real focus at both the American and British inquiries. Some of its occupants were severely traumatised, including Nora Healy and Annie Kate Kelly.
Nora had been on her way to an aunt, Mrs W. Robinson, but there is no evidence she ever got there. Taken off the Carpathia in a state of deep shock, she was in no position to meet her aunt or her waiting cousin Anne Kearney from 4324 Broadway. Immigration officials, attempting to somehow conform to normal procedures, recorded her as a 24-year-old maid, although she was in fact ten years older. Mysteriously, her landing details were later expunged from the records, indicating that she might not have had any official status during her stay in America.
There is evidence that she was treated for some time before being transferred back to Ireland. Taken back to her home place, her unbalanced senses became gripped with some kind of recognition, until she ran to the arms of a well-wisher neighbour, pronouncing him to be her father.
Nora, whom neighbour and fellow Titanic passenger Andy Keane had always regarded as ‘slightly touched’, even before she boarded the White Star leviathan, showed no signs of familiarity with her old homestead, nor any spark of empathy with her family. The shattered Healys initially hoped that all she needed was love and time for healing, but instead she grew more withdrawn and darkly suspicious that tricks were being played upon her. The family finally bowed to the inevitable and she was admitted to St Brigid’s psychiatric hospital in Ballinasloe on 9 July 1914.
She ended up a forgotten victim of the Titanic, one of the ‘living dead’, with something in her brain having broken forever on that icy night in April. On her death in 1919 her remains were taken from the echoing wards of Ballinasloe to lie in Wilmount Cemetery in Athenry with other members of the family.
Nora was born Honor Healy on 6 February 1883. Her parents were Thomas and Mary. In the 1901 census, the family is shown as follows:
Thomas (60), farmer. Mary (52), wife.
Children Margaret (29), Mary (27), John (25), Honor (23), Catherine (18), Patrick (16), Ellen (14).
Nora Hegarty (20) Lost
Ticket number 365226. Paid £6 15s.
Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
From: Killavallig, Whitechurch, County Cork.
Destination: 41 Washington Street, Charlestown, Massachusetts.
Nora and her cousin Jeremiah Burke were both due to stay at the rooming house of a Mrs Burns in Charlestown. But although they were travelling to a new life together, they were shortly due to separate as Nora had decided to join an order of nuns in Boston. In fact it may have been her religious devotion that inadvertently led to her death. Many Third-Class passengers understandably sought the succour of prayer and the protection of priests during the terrible moments as the Titanic descended into a Dante’s Hell.
Nora and Jeremiah travelled to Queenstown together and died together in the bone-piercing cold of the North Atlantic. Neither body was ever found. The couple had both been due to sail to America on the 7 April crossing of the Cymric.
Nora was the third eldest of seven children. Her parents, Laurence and Mary, were not well off, and when her father was granted administration of his late daughter’s estate on 18 September 1912, the remaining effects of poor Nora were worth just £10.
More Cork victims
The sympathy of the people of Cork will go out in full measure to the parents of Miss Nora Hegarty of Killavallig, Whitechurch, and Mr Jeremiah Burke, of Upper Glanmire, both of whom were only 19 years of age and who lost their lives in the Titanic disaster.
(The Cork Examiner, 27 April 1912: for the full story see Jeremiah Burke)
1901 census – Hegarty, Killaverrig.
Parents: Laurence (50) and Mary (41).
Children: Kate (13), Willie (11), Norah (19), Mary (8), Hannah (6), Maggie (5), Timothy (2).
Delia Henry (21) Lost
Ticket number 382649. Paid £7 15s.
Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
From: Togher, Clonown, Athlone, County Westmeath.
Destination: Boston.
Drowning ran in the Henry family. Delia’s father, Patrick, died in the same manner as his daughter, three years before the Titanic sailed. He lost his life in the River Shannon a little distance from the family home in Togher, Athlone, in circumstances that are now unclear. The loss of a husband and daughter in such a short time for Margaret Henry can only have been devastating.
Delia, baptised Bridget, was one of eight children. She appears to have been aged around 21, but was entered as age 23 on the Titanic manifest, having joined a large group from the Athlone area who were travelling out together. But she appears to have had severe misgivings about the trip, according to a letter sent to her aunt, Ms M. S. Curley, in Boston:
Friday 5th. Clonoun, Athlone, Ireland.
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My Dear Aunt,
Just a line to let you know that I am to leave Athlone, Wednesday 10th April. Will be sailing 11 April. I hope to God that we will get there all right. The ship is supposed to go in four and a half days. I hope you do have this small note, hoping to meet soon with God’s help.
It was a great disappointment over that Miss Mee, as she could not get to come, but there is some people going from Athlone. We must put our trust in God, he is the best.
Dear Aunt, I know sister Lizzie will feel bad to know that I did not pick up with anyone from home, for the way it is at home with the people is all to Boston they do go to. But I hope to God I do get there all right.
Well Dear Aunt, this is the name of the boat, Titanic, I am going on. I hope you do meet. I will wear a black coat and skirt and black hat with black and white ribbon on it.
I close with best love to you all from your fond niece,
Delia Henry.
Delia never wore her distinctive arrival bonnet with the black and white ribbon. Maggie Daly, one of her Athlone companions, later wrote in a letter home: ‘That little girl from Summerhill (Delia Henry) and that Connaughton boy (Athlone), and I think Mrs Rice and her five boys perished.’
Delia appears to have been small in stature, for the same phrase of ‘the little Summerhill girl’ is also used in describing her in another letter home by an Athlone survivor, Bertha Mulvihill. Bertha wrote to her sister Maud from the Carpathia: ‘The little Summerhill girl is gone down, unless she is picked up by some ship that we don’t know of.’ Delia appears to have been something of a mascot among the Athlone contingent.
Irish passengers, Athlone, Tuesday
The loss of the Titanic has created consternation in this district. Inquiries at the booking office supply the information that there were more local bookings for the Titanic than on any other occasion this season. These were all steerage passengers, from Mayo and Roscommon. From Athlone town there were eleven passengers.
(The Cork Examiner, 17 April 1912)
Delia’s letter to her aunt was brought back to Ireland in 1912 by her sister Lizzie who had been staying in Boston when it arrived. Lizzie also returned with a suggestion that Delia had been seen on deck saying the Rosary at the time of the sinking.
1901 census – Cloonown, just inside County Roscommon.
Patrick (40), farmer. Margaret (38), housekeeper.
Eliza (15), Edward (14), Mary (12), Bridget (Delia, 10), Margaret (9), Thomas (8), Nannie (5), Patrick (2).
‘John Horgan’ Lost
Ticket number 370377. Paid £7 15s.
Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
From: Cork/Limerick?
Destination: New York.
The ‘Quiet Man’ could be applied to John Horgan, whose name appears on the embarkation records for the Titanic, but whose disappearance led to not a single newspaper reference, nor any legal action against the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, nor any charitable disbursement, nor even a death notice nor a legal move for administration of his estate.
John Horgan certainly existed – but whether he embarked on the Titanic, or was replaced by someone using his ticket, is another matter. It will remain a mystery while Horgan’s own origins remain unclear.
What is known is that John Horgan was listed to sail on the Cymric, from Queenstown, on Easter Sunday, 7 April 1912. He did not board that vessel – instead all of those booked aboard were transferred to the Titanic when the Cymric did not sail.
A man called ‘John Horgan’ did board the Titanic on Thursday 11 April 1912. Later, in listing the Irish victims, the Irish World in New York referred to Horgan as being from County Limerick. It is also true that he came to the Titanic at Queenstown in the company of six other passengers from County Limerick. They were among the last to board, and it is known that the connecting train from Cork to Queenstown was late arriving at Deepwater Quay on that day. But it is also possible that John Horgan might have sold his ticket and this would explain the lack of newspaper references to anyone mourning his passing.
It is known that William O’Doherty, a Cork publican, bought the ticket assigned to a James Moran, and died in the disaster in the latter’s name. O’Doherty was friends with another tavern worker, 19-year-old Timothy O’Brien, whom the Cork newspapers also insisted had gone down on the Titanic. But Timothy O’Brien does not appear on the list of passengers. Is it possible that he followed his friend O’Doherty’s example and bought his ticket from John Horgan? The Cork Examiner of 17 April 1912, in a section headed ‘Believed Passengers’, referred to ‘William Doherty [sic], 12 Old Market Place, employed by Messrs W. F. O’Callaghan, Daunt’s Square, and Timothy O’Brien, billiard marker at the Oyster Tavern’. The rival Cork Constitution newspaper made the same pairing in the same day’s edition.
The Mansion House relief fund does not list John Horgan among its Irish cases in a March 1913 report, but mentions a claimant mother of the surname Landers. It may be that Horgan sold to O’Brien, who in turn sold to Landers, but the case is mysterious. Daniel Landers of Castletown Conyers, County Limerick, is a likely candidate – most of his siblings had preceded him to New York.
Annie Jermyn (26) Saved
Ticket number 14313. Paid £7 15s.
Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
From: Dereenaclough, Ballydehob, County Cork.
Destination: East Lynn, Massachusetts.
Assisted into collapsible D, the last boat to be launched from the davits at around 2 a.m. on the morning of 15 April 1912, Annie Jermyn must have been terrified by the swamping sea now visibly dragging the Titanic nose-first to her watery consummation.
Amidst the green glow of the water swallowing rank on rank of portholes, the fury of men’s desperate last actions and the tumult of grief and panic, Annie Jermyn may not even have known that her saviour was Bridget Driscoll, who eased her into the boat to safety. Bridget and Annie had travelled together from Ballydehob, County Cork, to the Devil’s Hole off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, but instead of cementing their comradeship, the Titanic drove them apart.
Bridget Driscoll never saw Annie Jermyn again after the numbed and bedraggled survivors landed at New York three days later like so much storm-tossed flotsam. Both were treated by the American Red Cross, but Annie’s movements later faded into obscurity – cloaked by her abrupt decision to disappear from her family in the United States with a man they regarded as an unsavoury character.
The entire family emigrated to the United States in the immediate aftermath of Annie’s brush with death. Thomas Jermyn, her brother, died in Massachusetts in October 1965. Annie had been travelling to stay with her married sister, Mary Grace Draper, who was aged 29 and already living in Lynn, Massachusetts, where a local newspaper reported:
Survivor of Titanic in Lynn Home
Miss Annie Jermyn, sister of Mrs May Draper, of 21 Webster Street, and who is a survivor of the ill-fated steamer Titanic, arrived in this city Monday evening in company with Richard W. Draper, her brother-in-law … Mrs Draper had given up all hope of ever seeing her sister again. News came Saturday that she had been saved and was in St Vincent’s Hospital, New York city.
Sunday, Mr Draper left for New York, met Miss Jermyn at the hospital and assisted her to this city, where she is to make her home with her sister, at 21 Webster Street. This was the first time that they had met each other in many years, and the meeting was a happy one. Miss Jermyn was in a very nervous condition.
Only immediate relatives of the young woman were allowed to see her. She immediately took to her bed and will probably be confined there for a week or so.
Mrs Draper says that her sister made but little talk of the disaster, evidently wanting to forget the terrible scenes of the night of horror when she made her hasty escape from the vessel. Miss Jermyn is unable to account for the exact cause of the injuries she received to her stomach, but believes that they must have been caused while getting into the lifeboat. She comes from County Cork, Ireland.
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Audrey Carlton Sampson tells the subsequent story of this survivor. Audrey says her mother, Susan Sophia, known as Sophie, worried for years about what ever became of her sister Annie – whom the family always called ‘Nancy’. Sophie told her daughter that ‘Nancy’ had lived with her own parents, Henry and Susan Jermyn, for a short time after they came to settle in the US, immediately after the disaster. But Annie – or ‘Nancy’ – became involved with ‘a character the family didn’t like’ and suddenly vanished with him, losing all contact with the family.
The estrangement was a lasting one, and it is not known if Nancy later married her unsuitable suitor. Henry and Susan settled in Peabody, Massachusetts and lived in a big house on Carlton Street. Henry died there in 1930. Four years later, his widow, Susan Connell Jermyn, went for a one-day visit to the home of her son Harry in Lynn, Massachusetts, only to fall ill and die suddenly.
It was at this time that another of the sisters, Elizabeth Jermyn Hurd (also called Bessie or Betty), decided to try to find ‘Nancy’. She went to great effort and was successful in locating Nancy, who at that time, 1934, was living in New Jersey. But Nancy, perhaps still smarting from the sting of parental disapproval, refused to return for her mother’s funeral and was never again seen by the family. Alienated in turn, some members of the Jermyn family told their children that their Aunt Nancy had been drowned on the Titanic. It was easier than telling them the painful truth.
Annie Jermyn had been born on 13 July 1885 into what appears to have been a prosperous Church of Ireland family – one that brought forth ten children over twenty years. Aged 26 when the Titanic sailed, she was in the company of Bridget Driscoll and Westmeath woman Mary Kelly, the trio buying sequential tickets at the Ballydehob shipping agency in West Cork.
1901 census – Jermyn. Dereenaclough, Ballydehob, County Cork.
Parents: Henry (45), Susan (44).
Children: Mary Grace (19), Richard (17), Annie Jane (15), James (14), Henry (11), John Willie (8), Lizzie (6), Thomas Michael (3), Susan Sophia (1).
Henry Forbes Julian (50) Lost