by Senan Molony
But of poor John Burke and Kate, his wife, and jolly Kate McGowan and all the other light-hearted lads and lasses that started that day from Castlebar, save Annie Kelly and Annie McGowan, there will never be any more of them in this world, and may God rest their souls.
(Chicago Record-Herald interview with Annie Kate Kelly. Reprinted in the Irish Independent, May 1912, ‘The Story of how fifteen Girls and Boys from the West of Ireland started for America on the Titanic, and how two of them arrived’.)
Annie was born on 14 January 1892 in Castlebar, and was 20 when the Titanic sailed, although she preferred to view herself as 17. Her parents were John Kelly and Ellen Flaherty, and despite her age appearing as 10 on the 1901 census, Annie told US immigration she was a 17-year-old ‘helper’. She had been on her way to join her cousins Anna and Mary Garvey, who lived in Chicago.
Annie Kelly and Annie McGowan were released from St Vincent’s Hospital in New York wearing the nightgowns in which they had escaped, donated shoes and coats. Dr Mary O’Brien, Porter of the Catholic Women’s League, met them at Chicago train station and later appealed to that city’s mayor to disburse some of the appeal funds to the pair.
The American Red Cross noted in relation to Annie Kelly:
No. 235. (Irish.) Girl, 17 years of age, lost clothing and $200 in cash and suffered permanent injury. Arrangements have been made for the suitable training of this girl, when health is sufficiently restored. ($400)
In 1922, having been unable to forget the anguished screams which accompanied the departure of the boats, before the screaming of the drowning had even begun, Annie Kelly took the veil and became a Dominican nun. Her nephew Paddy Flanagan said, ‘She had made a pact with the Man above.’ On her rare visits to Ireland, Paddy says, Annie always talked about the Titanic on the night before she had to cross the Atlantic again. She recounted how there had been dancing every night in Third Class, and she had gone to bed exhausted that Sunday night. She would have slept forever had her cabin not been roused by a steward.
Sister Patrick Joseph, Annie’s religious name, taught in St Phillip Neri Grammar School at 72nd and Clyde Streets in Chicago. In later life, she suffered from arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, and died from this disease on 28 December 1969, in Adrian, Michigan. She was 78 years of age.
James Kelly (45) Lost
Ticket number 330911. Paid £7 12s 4d, plus 4s extra.
Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
From: Leixlip, County Kildare.
Destination: New Haven, Connecticut.
Hardworking James Kelly had found it impossible to provide for his family by dint of the piecemeal agricultural labouring he could only occasionally come by in Ireland. In desperation, he and his wife, Kate, formed a plan – to evacuate the family to America. It would have to be done by degrees because of the family’s finances, but the beginnings had already been made. Their eldest daughter, Margaret, emigrated to the United States in early 1911. Now she was paying the fare for her father to join her. His sweat in turn would pay for succeeding members of the clan – or that was the intention.
It all came to nought when James Kelly’s body was taken from the unforgiving ocean by the MacKay-Bennett search vessel on 23 April. He was buried at sea in canvas sacking the following day.
Body No. 70. Male. Estimated age 34. Hair and moustache light.
Clothing – Dark suit, vest and trousers; white socks; black boots.
Effects – Beads, left on body; comb; knife.
No marks. Name – James Kelly.
Immediately after the sinking it had been reported:
New Haven girl’s father on the Titanic; may be among the lost
Relatives of this city of James Kelly today fear that Mr Kelly is among the passengers who were lost by the sinking of the Titanic Sunday night. The fears regarding Mr Kelly are founded on the fact that in the list of passengers reported saved Mr Kelly’s name does not appear. They are, however, hanging to a thread of hope that Mr Kelly has been saved.
James Kelly is a brother of John Kelly who is a machinist and works in the repair shops of the New Haven road in this city. A daughter … Margaret Kelly, employed at Strouse-Adler’s corset shop … The rest of her immediate family are in Leixlip, County Kildare, Ireland.
Miss Kelly came to this country ahead of them. She went to work in the corset shop and when she saved up enough money … she bought a steamship ticket and forwarded it home to her father. The ticket called for Mr Kelly taking passage on the Titanic on 11 April. That is why Miss Kelly thinks that her father was on the ill-fated ship when she struck the berg and went down. The man supposed to have been lost is 40 years of age … One ray of hope that Miss Kelly clings to is that the reports show that a greater number of people were saved from the steamship than was reported in the earlier news of the day.
The Kellys are certain that James Kelly took passage on the Titanic, for they received a letter from him saying that he received the tickets for his transportation and that he was coming over on the Titanic.
(New Haven Register, 16 April 1912)
The New York Herald reported on 24 April 1912:
New Haven Friends of James Kelly – Believe His Body is Found
New Haven, Connecticut, Tuesday – The James Keely, whose body was picked up at sea, and whose name appears in today’s list of the Titanic victims, probably was James Kelly, who was on his way here to join relatives. He was in the steerage.
The death plunged the family at home into financial crisis as well as the deepest grief. Now Mrs Kelly had no breadwinner to enable her to feed the children, whereas before the family had just been able to manage. The Kellys were thrown ‘onto the parish’, as the following newspaper excerpts show:
One of the applicants for relief at the Celbridge Guardians meeting yesterday was Mrs Kate Kelly of Leixlip, whose husband perished in the disaster. She has six young children. The application was referred to the treasurer of the relief committee.
(Irish Independent, 4 May 1912)
Husband Drowned in Titanic
Mr Ronaldson again drew attention to the case of Mrs Kelly, Leixlip, whose husband was drowned in the Titanic. She was badly in need of relief. She had three children under age, who were doing nothing, and pending the receipt of some money from the Distress Fund she should get relief …
Mrs Kelly came before the Board and said her husband was not working on the Titanic. Her sister [sic] was taking him out to America and he was a passenger on the boat.
It was decided to give Mrs Kelly the sum of 4s per week as relief.
(Kildare Observer, 18 May 1912)
The entire family later emigrated to America to join daughter Margaret and other relatives:
Report of the American Red Cross (Titanic Disaster) 1913:
No. 237. (Irish.) The husband, a steerage passenger, was drowned. He was coming to this country for the first time to join his eldest daughter Margaret, 20 years of age, who had been here two years working in a factory in a New England town. He planned to send for his wife and five younger children within a few months. The family had sold their possessions in Ireland, were in readiness to come to this country, and so decided to carry out the original plan. Margaret’s employer volunteered to be responsible to the immigration authorities that the family should not become public charges, and they were admitted upon their arrival in June. This Committee advanced $625 to pay for the passage and to meet the expenses of establishing the new home. The two girls next younger than Margaret, aged 16 and 18 years, are now employed in the factory with their sister. The other three children, 13, 12 and 8 years old, are in school … From other relief sources the family received $2,718.58. ($2,150)
Margaret wept when her mother and five siblings finally arrived at Union Station, New Haven. A huge crowd greeted the family, with banners saying ‘Welcome – Titanic Kellys’. They had become unwilling celebrities.
Eldest son, Tom, a sergeant with the Connaught Rangers in India at the time of his f
ather’s death, described his grief in a 1915 letter to his sister May. Aged 26, he reflected that he had been in the army and away from home for eight years:
Eight years ago, May, we were together – all of us happy, even tho’ the times were bad. Now there is a vacant chair & the one we all loved so well is gone. But that is God’s will; nevertheless the memory of our dearly beloved father is still fresh & we can’t help but dwell on the time that he used to sing for us. How I remember those days & all the stories he used to tell us & how he loved us all.
Tho I have refrained very much in my letters to Mother & Maggie from saying anything about our dear father, my grief was something beyond description. I was in India thousands of miles from my own people, but I had to bear up. But times I broke down & had to at last give away to my grief. You dear sisters are the first I have told this to, but I know I should have said something to Maggie. But poor Maggie. She was worse than I was & what could I say at the time to soften the grief that all of you must have been going through. No, I was too far away from you all to do any good, so I bore my grief alone …
I am always your
Loving Brother
Thos. Kelly
Further anguish visited the family, however, when Tom was killed a year later without ever coming back to them. He died of wounds suffered in battle on Sunday 23 January 1916 in Mesopotamia. A military memorial in Basra, Iraq, bears his name.
At home in Ireland, in the absence of the Kellys, a grant of administration was made for the estate of the late James Kelly on 14 December 1912. He left effects worth just £10. A legal instrument noted:
He owned no property at the time of his decease and the only claim which survives to his administrator, when appointed, is the claim against the owners of the Titanic for damages resulting from his death which must be prosecuted in the American courts.
He left surviving the undersigned, his widow, and the following children, whose names and ages are hereto appended:
Widow Kate Kelly, Age 44. Children Thomas Kelly, 22. William Kelly, 11. James Kelly, 8. Margaret Kelly, 20. Kate Kelly, 18. May Kelly, 16. Bridget Kelly, 14.
Mary Kelly (22) Saved
Ticket number 14312. Paid £7 15s.
Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
From: Castlepollard, County Westmeath.
Destination: 113 West 15th Street, New York city.
Orphans saved from the Titanic by Mary Kelly created one of the abiding sensations of the tragedy. They were the ‘Titanic Waifs’, two curly-haired French boys named Lolo and Momon, who found themselves alone and adrift in an open lifeboat with only a young Irish girl to comfort them with her crooning foreign tongue. The children were parentless only because their 32-year-old father, Michel Navratil, had stolen them from their mother Marcelle in a tug-of-love snatch from the south of France. Toddler Michel was aged three and his brother Edmond Roger only two. They were smuggled to Southampton where their father signed aboard under the name of Louis Hoffman.
When disaster struck, ‘Hoffman’ handed his two boys lovingly into the arms stretched out to receive them from collapsible D, the last boat lowered. It was near two o’clock now, and close to the end. Mary Kelly helped take them into the boat and then soothed them in their uncomprehending distress.
Mary Kelly was uniquely qualified to do so. A young girl who loved children, she was planning to have many of her own and was on her way to New York to marry the man of her dreams – boyfriend John Heslin from her home place who had travelled over to America some months earlier to prepare a place for them both.
Mary was a domestic and she hoped to get work in the big houses in New York, possibly as a nanny caring for the children of the gentry. With the French boys pressed tearfully to her skirts and bosom, she may have thought it was a little early to begin her calling, but that she needed the practice. When the children were landed safely aboard the Carpathia, a determined effort was made to discover who they were. But the shocked tots were incapable of telling. Eventually passengers who had known the father on board – he now floating dead in the Atlantic with a loaded revolver in his pocket – identified them by their false name, Hoffman.
Mary Kelly cared for her charges until they landed in New York, when the press had a field day. Eventually the tots were claimed as a near-trophy by First-Class passenger Margaret Hays, while feverish attempts were made to reunite them with their family. Eventually Marcelle Navratil came forward and the boys were on their way home.
Miss Kelly meanwhile had moved quietly on and into the arms of John Heslin, with a housewarming gift of $100 from the Red Cross. Not that it compensated for the loss of Mary’s wedding trousseau – the slew of beautiful presents from family and friends – which now lay at the bottom of the Atlantic. Mary and John went on to marry within a year and to have six children. Mary told them that she escaped from steerage because a crewmember showed her a way to the upper decks through an airshaft or ventilation chamber. She died in her home at Coney Island Avenue, Brooklyn, two days after Christmas 1950. She was 60 years of age.
1911 census – Kelly, Packenhamhall Street, Castlepollard.
Mary (48), mother, widow.
Children at home – John (16), Edward (14), Bridget (11) and Margaret (9).
John Kennedy (20) Saved
Ticket number 368783. Paid £7 15s.
Boarded at Queenstown. Third Class.
From: 1 Rosemary Place, Limerick city.
Destination: 29 Perry Street, New York city.
John Kennedy survived a brush with death on the Titanic, only for a shaving brush to bring him death six years later. He succumbed to deadly anthrax poisoning in 1918, having been drafted into the United States Army for the First World War. The highly communicable bacillus, which lives in the hair and hide of animals, was believed to have been picked up from his shaving brush while in basic training in Camp Hancock, Georgia. He had been in boot camp for only a few weeks when boils surrounded his mouth and face. Within days he was dead, expiring on 9 June 1918, one month and four days after his induction. The remains of machine-gunner Kennedy were placed in a sealed coffin and sent home to his brother in Brooklyn.
It was not what Kennedy had envisaged for himself on his twentieth birthday, 11 April 1912, when he boarded the Titanic at Queenstown. He had been a humble picture framer by occupation in Ireland, and hoped for new opportunities through emigration to the United States. His brother Michael had already transplanted himself there and had written glowingly of the chances for improvement to be found in the United States. So John bade farewell to his ageing parents, Thomas (64) and Mary (61), kissing his 21-year-old sister Ellen goodbye as he packed for the trip to Queenstown by rail. The train from Limerick, via Cork, brought him to the very water’s edge at Deepwater Quay, where tenders were waiting to take this latest herd of humanity to their emigrant vessel.
How John Kennedy escaped from the Titanic remains a mystery, although he somehow gained access to one of the early lifeboats – probably one of those on the starboard side (one of the odd-numbered boats) where men were allowed board when no further women came forward. We know he was a pipe smoker – perhaps the decision to go for that last puff on deck before bedtime helped save his life.
The American Red Cross relief report, case No. 239, notes his occupation as a picture framer. Uninjured, Kennedy was awarded only $50 compensation.
John Kennedy moved in with his brother Michael at 29 Perry Street in New York and lodged a claim for compensation with the US District Court. His losses included Irish whiskey and Limerick hams and bacon.
1 Blue coat – £5 10s; Freeze overcoat – £3 10s; half doz. suits underwear £2 2s; 1 blue serge suit – £3 10s; 1 suit clothes – £2 5s; 1 English cover watch & chain – £3 10s; half doz. pairs socks – 12s; 1 brooch – 10s; Miscellaneous: Shawls, clothing and underwear for three children – £3 10s; 1 pair shoes – 16s; 1 pair shoes – 10s; 1 set china and fancy ornaments – £1 16s; religious articles, prayer books, rosaries, etc. – 16s; 1 Meersch
aum pipe, 1 lb mixture – £1 2s; articles for presents: Irish whiskey, Limerick hams and bacon – 18s. Currency – £2 10s.
TOTAL £33 7s.
But Kennedy was even more enterprising – he also submitted an arbitrary £500 bill for unspecified personal injuries. His final compensation claim therefore came to over £533, at a time when the pound sterling was equivalent to five dollars. By such standards, Kennedy’s claim was the largest by far of any submitted by an Irish survivor, amounting to $2,665. When the final payout came, it was limited in liability and represented only three cents to the dollar.
It is doubtful he benefited, because May 1918 brought his call-up to serve his adopted country’s cause and proved fatal:
Hancock soldier succumbs to malignant case of anthrax
Private John Kennedy, of Machine Gun Company 21, Has Cheek Infected by Use of Shaving Brush and Hasty Death Results.
After an illness of four days, Private John Kennedy, age 25 years, of machine gun company no. 21, a draftee coming to Camp Hancock from his home, Brooklyn NY, 5 May, died Sunday afternoon at the Base Hospital from malignant anthrax.
The death of Kennedy from this cause is the first case of this nature to develop in any cantonment of the United States and the only case of a like nature ever known in this city or vicinity, according to physicians.
Anthrax is the most infectious disease known to medical science. From the standpoint of infection and immunity the disease is of particular interest. It is the first disease of which the bacterial etiology was proven, that is, the first case where disease by germ was proven beyond question.
It is particularly applied to cattle and sheep and prevails in certain European countries, especially Russia and Australia. That it is peculiar to animals was possibly the reason for its early discovery in Kennedy’s case, the lieutenant-physician pronouncing the case anthrax coming from northern New York, where the disease is not such a rarity, and where tanneries are many.