Anne Jane Carlisle: A life of loss, temperance and hope

The celebrated Presbyterian Temperance campaigner, Anne Jane Carlisle, turned many a person in Ireland away from the drink. A strong woman, she began each day with a freezing cold bath keeping hale and hearty into her old age. Among her supporters was the Temperance Society leader Fr Theobald Mathew, with whom she overcame religious differences, to support each other in saving souls from the excesses of drinking. In Bailieborough, a plaque was erected in her honour a few years ago.

Born Anne Jane Hamil in 1775, at Roosky, near Newbliss, Co Monaghan, she was the daughter of David Hamill and Martha Hamill, Roosky House. Her father, a descendant of Huguenot heritage and a linen merchant by trade, had properties earning extra income for the family. Both her father and a brother John were United Irishmen, and a story is told of the militia surrounding the Hamills’ homestead. The women in the house kept the soldiers entertained, allowing John, whom they came for, to escape across a bog. The militia soon realised the ruse and pursued the object of their chase but John, knowing the bog easily, flitted across it, while the soldiers found themselves up to ‘their lugs’.

Aged 25 years in 1800, Anne Jane married the Rev Francis Carlisle who oversaw Corraneary and Second Bailieborough Presbyterian churches. Francis Carlisle, also of Monaghan stock, came from Ternaneil townland in the north of the county. Francis had overseen both congregations since 1794 but, possessing no manse, prior to the layout and design of Bailieborough town in 1814 (by the Landlord William Young), had lived in a house at ‘Bell’s Brae’ out the Virginia road. The minister’s income was meagre, earning him £50 per annum with an additional £20 from each of his congregations to feed his horse. Anne Jane, being an industrious woman, opened a shop in Bailieborough. The products she sold are lost to the annals of history as the Historian Tom Barron explained: ‘Some say it was a drapery shop and others say it was a china shop.’ Regardless, the extra income afforded the Carlisles a more comfortable lifestyle.

Tragically, the Rev Francis became sick in January 1811 and, on February 1, died aged 39 years of age, leaving his wife and a young family with their seventh child born not long after his death.

More tragedy followed for Anne Jane when her baby died ‘in infancy’, then a second of the children, Martha (8) died in 1812 followed by the death of her eldest, Mary (11) in 1814. A woman of deep faith, Anne Jane was not angry with God but rather gave thanks for being able to have shared in their lives. A letter survives, in which she wrote of Mary, ‘I consider it a peculiar favour conferred on me by God that he permitted me to be the parent of such a child.’

But even more sadness followed. About the mid-1820s, Anne Jane and her remaining children moved to Dublin, surviving on the incomes from the various properties that her husband had left her.

On a lovely July day, Anne Jane visited the waterfall at Powerscourt, with her son Francis Jnr (18). In his curiosity, he wanted a closer look at the top of the waterfall.

Tom Barron noted what happened next to Francis: ‘He was surveying the scene from the top of the cliff, when his foot slipped on the wet surface of the rock and he plunged to his death.’

From then, Anne Jane became deeply involved in Temperance work. With her fellow workers, she founded a Temperance Society in 1830, whose headquarters were stationed on Poolbeg Street, Dublin. It occurred to her that many people in the prisons were there because of issues to do with drink. Anne Jane did much to speak directly to the people behind bars and to encourage them to take the Teetotal Pledge. She became a member of the Female Gaol Committee, visiting prisons and, on an earlier occasion, assisted Elizabeth Fry the English prison reformer on a tour of Dublin’s gaols.

Anne Jane’s sister Catherine was married to William Jamison, the son of the Ulster Bank manager at Cootehill. On visiting relatives in Cootehill in 1834, Anne Jane setup a Temperance Society. We could speculate, that it was her Temperance Society, which may have helped ‘prepare the way’ for her friend Fr Mathew’s visit to Cootehill a few years later.

Mrs Carlisle travelled to Scotland and England, spreading the Temperance message. It was while visiting a Sunday School in Leeds that she instigated the formation of a Temperance movement for the youth, which at the suggestion of the Rev Thunicliff became known as the Band of Hope.

In an informative account by Tom Barron, published some years ago in the Bailieborough Annual, he noted ‘though long dead, Theobald Mathew and Anne Jane Carlisle deserve to be remembered as those who, in their own ways, did much for Ireland’.

In 2015, a Blue Plaque was erected by the Ulster History Circle at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Bailieborough, in recognition of the work and connection Anne Jane had to the area. For more information see, Leslie McKeague’s Anne Jane Carlile, 1775-1864, Temperance Pioneer.

BLOWING THE CAVAN BUGLE

TheTimesreported on February 26, 1821, an action taken over a patent for a bugle. The plaintiff, Mr Halliday, being the assignee of a musical instrument he called ‘the Kent bugle’, had claimed it was an improvement on the common bugle, having added keys after the ‘manner of the flute and clarinet’.

The complaint arose over modifications to the bugle, now carrying six keys instead of five, an infringement upon the rights of the original inventor.

Mr Collins claimed that the original patent was ‘obtained by Mr Halliday’, of the Cavan Militia, who invented the Kent bugle, and that the defendant, had attempted to alter the instrument, showing that since keys had been applied to an instrument called ‘the serpent’, had attacked the initial specification

The specification was found to be insufficient and, with reluctance, the lord chief justice threw the case out.