The Irwin’s of Cootehill: Finding work in Liverpool and Germany

Jonathan Smyth's latest Times Past column is the first of a series of three on the Irwins from Cootehill...

Not unless you are living on Mars, I am sure that you have heard by now that Cootehill is celebrating its 300th birthday this year. But sadly, not every family can come home to mark the occasion, and we think of all the families who emigrated further afield in search of better prospects. Lots of Cootehill residents who emigrated in the 19th Century did very well for themselves and gave themselves a successful future.

Cootehill

The Irwins of Cootehill were one of numerous families who left Ireland in the mid-19th Century, and then in the Autumn of 2024 I had the good fortune to meet an Irwin descendent called William Halsall from Liverpool in the company of his wife who were on a visit to the ancestral county. William’s brother Peter Halsall, I heard had compiled a family history which included a fascinating collection of letters from Germany written by a great grandfather, Patrick Irwin, who first worked in Birkenhead before moving to the continent. Now, before beginning the Irwin’s tale, I must say a sincere thank you to Peter and William Halsall and having lived in Liverpool myself, I can testify to it being a very friendly place with huge and happy Irish connections.

Ireland, having come through the Great Hunger in the 19th Century, found itself ravaged by poverty and death and the draw of emigration accelerated and encouraged both the brave and the desperate to seek respite in foreign lands. Jobs were not easy to find, and work was scarce in Cootehill at that time. The Halsall’s great great grandfather, Philip Irwin and his family did not leave for Liverpool until after 1864. This column mainly focuses on Philip’s son Patrick Irwin.

Philip Irwin and Bridget Brogan

From Cootehill, Philip Irwin was born in 1838, and sometime around the late 1850s he married Bridget Brogan (possibly from Mayo). They lived in Cootehill and had four children, Patrick (born in 1864), Frank, Mary, and Susan. The Halsalls noted that Philip and three of his children moved to Liverpool, while Patrick remained in Cootehill. Strangely, no further reference is made about Bridget Irwin. Patrick was about 17 years old when he travelled to Liverpool in 1880. There, he obtained lodgings with the Segrave family and found himself work in the ‘City Tannery’, Blackrock Street, Liverpool. Leather production became his career.

In that same year, 1880, Patrick’s father sailed to New York, bringing with him the other three children, Frank, Mary, and Susan; but as Peter Halsall points out, ‘little in the way of precise detail is known about this group’.

He does explain that a tragedy appears to have occurred with the death of young Frank who, according to family lore, drowned in the Hudson River. Philip worked on the railroads where an accident befell him one day that necessitated the amputation of his arm. His daughter Susan married Julius Link, owner of the Hillside Inn and they lived in Yonkers, New York. In 1913, Philip returned to Liverpool and lived with his son Patrick who by then was married to Mary Segrave and had eight children. The company of his son, the daughter-in-law and the grandchildren may have influenced Philip’s decision to remain in England. Philip Irwin died in 1919 aged 71 years old.

Germany

Patrick Irwin and Mary Segrave (a Dublin lady) were married at Rock Ferry, Birkenhead. His wife was a daughter of Thomas and Catherine Segrave, the family with whom he lodged. The names of Patrick and Mary’s children were Anne born in September 1890, Patrick jnr. born 1892, Catherine born 1893, James (Jimmy) born 1895, Joseph born 1898, Christopher 1900, Ellen born 1903 and Philip born 1906. James became grandfather to William and Peter Halsall.

Peter enthused, ‘Patrick Irwin (1864-1947) was my great-grandfather who was born in Cootehill, Co Cavan and was married to Mary Segrave’. He continued: ‘In the Autumn of 1906 the couple were living at 113 Rodney Street, Birkenhead where Patrick worked at the Chicago Rawhide Company as a tannery worker, before he was despatched to Ricklingen, Hannover, Germany, to assist in setting up a new tannery to provide leather for the German Industrialist Arnold Frommeyer whose factories produced leather drive belts for industry, rubber goods, engine transmissions and the like’.

However, Patrick’s wife and children remained in England, and he stayed in contact by writing letters to them. Incredibly, his letters survived while his wife’s replies do not appear to have been kept. Peter Halsall says of Mary’s lost writings: ‘it is an entertainment to surmise what they may have contained’ from reading ‘ Patrick’s regular, and often comic attempts to mollify Mary with assurances that he was not really enjoying himself quite as much as his own letters might imply.’ The first of the surviving letters from the collection is dated 9 October 1906. The address he provides is Chicago Rawhide Company Limited, Ricklingen, Hanover, Germany.

The letter is addressed to his ‘Dear Wife and children and he tells of an encounter with a German who lived for a long time in England, ‘many years ago.’ He spoke of taking trips into the countryside, walking through fields, woods, and villages where the people ‘are all happy and comfortable … whole families go into the saloons, some will drink beers, some have coffee, others milk etc … but the feeding, it beats all ever I seen.’

Continuing, he explains, that the cuisine is ‘not plain food, but fancy dishes’ and ‘no matter what else is on the table, the sausage is there … I’ve turned against him (sausages), nor can I eat the black bread, there is plenty of white bread, but not so much eaten as the other.’

Irwin enjoyed the company of the Germans because they were not stand-offish and exclaims that ‘the man worth thousands’ will go ‘into the saloon’ and sit ‘beside the man not worth 20 marks a week.

Patrick’s wife, back in Birkenhead with the children must have felt she was missing out when he tells her all about Sunday dining on seven course meals and consuming ten beers with snaps and gin and whiskey. But being a good Irishman, the one thing to gain his approval was the potato salad and being an economical Cavan man, he enthuses about how ‘the lot cost one mark each.’