THE STORY OF OUR FAMILY
GENERATION FIVE
JAMES O’Donoghue AND ADA TAIT
The generations
In Ireland
One: Patrick? Donoghue (b.c.1745) & an unknown
wife – gggggrandparents
Two: James Donoghue (b.c.1775) & Julia Boyle (b.c.1775)
– ggggrandparents
From
Ireland to Poplar
Three: Thomas Donoghue (1806 - 63) & Ellen Connor
(1808 – 89) - gggrandparents
Four: Thomas O’Donoghue (1844 - 1920) & Mary
Sullivan (1845 - 80) - ggrandparents
Five: Mary O’Donoghue (27 July 1866 – 1 August
1866)
Catherine O’Donoghue (1867 – 1954)
Thomas William O’Donoghue (1869 -
71)
Margaret O’Donoghue (1872 – c.1942)
James
O’Donoghue (1874 - 1965) & Ada Agnes Tait (1879-1936) - grandparents
Mary Ann O’Donoghue (b.1877) and
George William Phillips (b.1879)
Gwendoline Anastasia Celina
O’Donoghue (b.1880)
Sadly I never met either of my
father’s parents. Ada died two years before
I was born. But James I could have known,
as he lived until 1965. But then that’s
the story of my father and his family. I
knew my maternal grandparents pretty well.
A while ago I went on a guided
walk around Old Poplar. Much of what we
saw I have visited on many occasions (on my bike!), but the most revealing
insight came from a conversation with two other walkers. All three of us had boilermaker ancestors who
were blacksmiths/farriers before they started working on the ships. James was a boilermaker as was his father,
and his grandfather was a farrier who almost certainly used those skills when
he came over from Ballyduff.
James O’Donoghue
He
was born on 15 November 1874 (the year when post boxes were changed from green
to red!) at 12 Cordelia Street, Poplar and baptised at St Mary & St
Joseph’s nearby in Canton Street. Perhaps
he didn’t like school as he is said to have thrown slates from the roof of the
Wade Street School at the school inspector.
He played kettle drums in a fife and drum band in Irish parades when
young. He also did the heel and toe tap
dance in the early days.
He was apprenticed to an
engineering company in Mellish Street, Millwall by the time he was 12. I suspect it may have been the Union Iron
Works (see diagram left) at No. 104 Westferry Road which was situated at the
end of Mellish Street. It was an
amalgamation of premises let in the early nineteenth century to an anchor-smith
and two boatbuilders. It was occupied by
the same family firm of engineers, Samuel Hodge & Sons, from the 1850s to
the mid-1920s. Hodge and Co of Millwall made steam
engines for marine use. The premises were rebuilt in
1866 and largely rebuilt again after the First World War.
This pre-First World War postcard shows on the
right Mellish Street and Tooke Street, with the old Tooke Arms; a pub of that
name is still there. The first opening on the left leads to the Pin and Cotter
pub Still there in the 40s); this turning was also a favourite spot for
gambling; also on the left, further up the road, the three brass balls over
Squires, the pawn shop. This was perhaps
James’s working area as a boy.
He went to sea to finish his
trade at around 14 and travelled as far as Australia on Peninsular & Orient
Steam Navigation Company ships. He lost
part of a middle finger on one of these trips.
The Peninsular Steam Navigation Company, in the 1880s, had entered into a
massive shipbuilding programme, which focused on speed, efficiency and greater
capacity for freight and passengers. In the course of the decade, 29 new ships
were launched beginning with Ravenna (see left), the first Company vessel to
be built of steel. In 1883 the Company
was joined on the route down under by a new competitor, the Orient Steam
Navigation Company, operating under a mail contract from the Australian
Government.
The largest and grandest of the
new steamers, the 6,000 ton, four-strong, Jubilee Class – Victoria (see right), Britannia,
Arcadia and Oceana - aptly marked the occasion of the
Company’s, and Queen Victoria’s, Golden Jubilee in 1887.
It seems that James’s time at sea
lasted around three years because he was back as a riveter’s boy by 1891 living
with his father. By 1901 he was a fully
trained boilermaker. Dockworkers after apprenticeship went to other dockyards
to get work. I don’t know exactly where
he worked when trained, but, in the 1920s, he joined a ship repair company (shipbuilding
was in decline on the Thames) called R & H Green & Silley Weir and
stayed with them for over thirty years. There was a yard at Blackwall, with a major graving dock (large
dock from which water can be pumped out; used for building ships or for
repairing a ship below its waterline), but the main site was at the Royal Albert Dry Docks. Apparently he was out of work quite often so
perhaps the business was rather seasonal.
The company still had 8000 employees in the 1960s.
During WW1, ship repair was an
exempt occupation and throughout both
world wars he must have been involved in that work. Green & Silley Weir, for example, constructed
and repaired munitions ships, minesweepers, hospital ships and destroyers. He carried on working until his 70s,
which means he went through WW2 when the docks were under constant blitz in
1941/2.
I
have been told that he was a very well-liked man. “Everyone knew Jimmy O'Donoghue, he had a very
good name in his trade.” He is said to
have been a nice gentle man with a good sense of humour and laughing eyes. He was about 5ft 8ins tall.
James
and A
da Agnes Tait
were married on 25 November 1899 at the parish church of St
Michaels and All Angels in South Bromley East (today Bromley-by-Bow) see below.
This was a Church of England wedding. Ada was twenty and the daughter of James Tait
and Charlotte Reed late Keeble (more in a later blog).
At
the time of their marriage they are both shown as living in 42 Railway Street,
which was where James’s father was living in 1891 and presumably still there in
1899. Ada was actually living at 18
Cotton Street and needed a Bromley address to be married, perhaps, at the
church of her choice.
After
marriage James and Ada had moved into 20 Cotton Street, just down the road from
her parents.
Between
1900 and 1920 they had eight children
1. James
Thomas (1900 - 83) – Terry, Jim, Zylpha & Bonita’s grandfather
2. John
Sydney (1901- c.1950)
3. Ada
Margaret (1904 – 83) – Maureen’s mother
4. George
Albert (1907 – 88) – Davina and my father
5. Alfred
Edward (1910 – 18)
6. Mary
Eileen (1913 – c.16)
7. Leonard
Joseph (1918 – 2003) – John’s father
8. Bernard
Noel (1920 – 2011) – Terry & Sylvie’s father
By
1910 they were living in 21 Cotton Street and by 1913 they were in No.60. The history of the street is described at
Appendix One.
James kept
chickens, 18 to 20 of all breeds, and rabbits.
He had a dog called Bimbo.
While
his sister, Catherine, was a very devout Catholic, Bernie did not remember
James going to church. It seems that the
family was religious into their teens and then they lapsed. I know that my father did.
James
lived in 60 Cotton Street until 1950. In
1951 he moved in with Len & Agnes in 19 Mellish Street, the same street in
which he did his apprenticeship, and lived with them until he died in 1965 at
64 Gale Street, Leyton. This picture
shows him in the garden there.
60 Cotton Street
Bernie did these drawings for me
This is a picture of Cotton Street in 1919.
I have tried to see the number on the door shown. It begins with either a one or two so would
have been very close to where James and Ada first lived at No.21. I wonder if any of ours are amongst those
kids?
Ada Agnes Tait
Ada
was born in 1879 (the year that pillar boxes changed from hexagonal to
cylindrical and electrical street lighting was introduced!) at 12 Sturry Street,
Poplar. This was a turning on the north
side of the East India Dock Road and a short walk from New Street where the
O’Donoghues were living.
Her
parents were James Tait (b.1840 in Arbroath) and Charlotte Keeble (b.1839 in Baylham,
Suffolk). I will do a separate blog on
both of their families in due course.
I
have been told that my father adored his mother. Bernie
and Lennie were my source of knowledge about her. She was “a real darling - she had more love
in one finger than most people had in their whole body. We were never hungry or poorly dressed - we
were very lucky.”
She
made the children's suits and must have been a very good needlewoman. This picture is of my father, George, and his brother
Alfred who was sadly killed in a road accident.
Those are very smart suits.
Ada died, at age 57, of a
heart attack when getting out of bed with no one else in the house. She had had rheumatic fever years
before. But really she just died of hard
work. She had held the family together
and after her death it broke up.
Nell
O’Donoghue, eldest son James’s wife, said to me that she was “a real lady”.
A
nice note to end on…
Sources & acknowledgements
Royal Museum Greenwich prints
https://islandhistory.wordpress.com/2017/12/09/the-oldest-photos-of-the-isle-of-dogs-a-selection/
APPENDIX ONE
Cotton Street – a
history
‘In 1810 Richard Walker, a
surveyor, suggested that regulations should be included in sales agreements
(from the East India Company) 'which would tend to support the respectability
of the neighbourhood and the uniformity of Building … [and] insure a confidence
in those who intend to purchase that at least their neighbourhood would not be
a nuisance to them'. The court of directors adopted the proposal and in the
following year the conditions, which applied only to Cotton and Woolmore
Streets, were set out. They were that the houses should be of a standard not
less than that of a fourth rate, or of at least £180 value, that they should be
set back 4ft or more from the pavement, fronted with malm bricks, with a
parapet wall in front, be of three or more storeys and have at least two
windows on the first floor front.’
Building appears to have taken
place in the 1810-20s. This map
shows the street layout in 1867. The
black line shows where the East India Company land/properties were.
The street was named after Joseph Cotton. He was deputy master of Trinity House from
1803, a director of the East India Company 1795-1823 and chairman of the newly formed
East India Company.
