Cavan orphans remembered 75 years on

Seamus Enright

“‘Up, up, up, get up!’,” I remember the drill sergeant shouting at us to get out of our bunks and get ready. We were sleeping, so didn’t know what had happened, but from the window we could then see what was the colour of flames in the distance over at the town. By the time we got down there, it was almost already out,” remembers Patrick Doyle, then only a teenager, stationed at Cavan Barracks.
He was recalling the panic as men were called to action to deal with the fire that had broke out at St Joseph’s Orphanage & Industrial School in the early hours of February 23, 1943.
He will be among those paying their respects at the memorial site this coming Friday, February 23, to mark the 75th anniversary of the tragedy. A Mass of the Angels, meanwhile, will once again take place at St Clare’s Chapel at 7.30am.
“Every February, as it comes round, I think of those young girls and what they must’ve gone through,” says Mr Doyle, who was among those who contributed to RTÉ’s Scannal programme, which detailed the tragedy.
Believed to have been sparked by an electrical fault in the basement of the laundry rooms, the fire quickly raged into an inferno and spread throughout the facility run by the enclosed order of Poor Clare nuns. Within just 40 minutes of the flames taking hold, the roof had caved in and just the shell of the building was left. 
Reports from the time suggest that horrified townspeople who rallied to the girls’ aid, at first, could not gain access to the convent and, when they were admitted, it was almost too late too reach those trapped in the upper floor levels.
In total 36 people perished in the blaze, including 35 young girls and 80-year-old orphanage cook, Mary Smith. The youngest who died was Elizabeth Heaphy, from Swords, Co Dublin, aged just four years, while the eldest was 18-year-old Mary Cassidy from Drumcassidy, Co Cavan.
Girls were sent to the orphanage from as far afield as Dublin, Wicklow, Belfast and Fermanagh, and from all parts of the county of Cavan. Of the 35 girls to die in the fire, 13 were named Mary and there were nine sets of siblings among them.
Despite the tragic loss of life, some 50 others were saved that night by the quick actions of local electricity worker Mattie Hand and businessman Louis Blessing among others. The Anglo-Celt newspaper from that time also recalls the efforts of one Sister M Felix, who returned a second time to ensure the rescue of others from the burning dormitories.

A member of the 11th Cycle Squadron, the now 94-year-old Mr Doyle recalls with remarkable clarity arriving and surveying the devastation left in the wake of the fire. “There was a man standing there with a bottle of whiskey and he handed it to me for a sip. I told him I didn’t drink but what he said was ‘don’t matter about not drinking, take some of that’. It definitely helped I think,” Mr Doyle told The Anglo-Celt.
The defence force members were handed the horrific task of sifting through the wreckage for bodies.
“I remember lifting something, it was round like a small football. It took me a while to figure out what it was but then I realised it was a head. A bare head alone. They must’ve been expecting this because they’d put out quilts in the big square yard. Our job was to pick up anything we could find and you were just coming across bones and putting them to one side. It was terrible job on the day.”
So badly destroyed were the remains recovered, they were buried in eight coffins in an unmarked grave until later been re-interred at Cullies Cemetery.

Those agonising and chilling scenes have stayed with Mr Doyle until today. “What a terrible way to go to be burned to death like that. It must’ve been terrifying for the little ones, for those who died and for those who survived as well,” Mr Doyle tells the Celt.
Like the subsequent and much-maligned public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the fire and subsequent loss of life, Mr Doyle remains critical of the local fire services, who he believes were ill-prepared to deal with the blaze. The machine for delivering water was a cart and a hose pipe, which, according to the inquiry, may have been faulty. Neither was there a formal, organised structure of fire officers.
The inquiry also found that the cause of the fire was a “defective flue, which could not have been discovered or anticipated by reasonable care”. 
A report arising concluded that the loss of life was caused by: ‘…Fright or panic resulting in faulty directions being given; want of training in fire-fighting, including rapid evacuation of personnel and movement in smoke-laden atmosphere; lack of proper leadership and control of operations; want of knowledge of the lay-out of the premises on the part of persons from outside; and absence of light at a critical period.’
Mr Doyle feels it’s important that the memory of the girls who died, in what remains one of the worst tragedies in State history, be remembered. “I’m probably one of only a few people alive who was there on that day who is still alive to remember what happened there. It’s desperately sad and will always be for me.”

 

Remembering those who perished

Mary Hughes (15) Killeshandra 
Ellen McHugh (15) Blacklion 
Kathleen (12) & Frances Kiely (9) Virginia 
Mary (15) & Margaret Lynch (10) Cavan 
Josephine (15) & Mona Cassidy (11) Belfast 
Kathleen Reilly (14) Butlersbridge 
Mary (12) & Josephine Carroll (10) Castlerahan 
Mary (16) & Susan McKiernan (14) Dromard, Belturbet
Rose Wright (11) Ballyjamesduff
Twins Mary (12) & Nora Barrett (12) Dublin 
Mary Kelly (10) Ballinagh 
Mary Brady (7) Ballinagh 
Dorothy Daly (7) Cootehill
Mary Ivers (12) Kilcoole, Wicklow 
Philomena Regan (9) Dublin 
Harriet (11) & Ellen Payne (8) Dublin 
Teresa White (6) Dublin 
Mary Roche (6) Dublin 
Ellen Morgan (10) Virginia 
Elizabeth Heaphy (4) Swords 
Mary O’Hara (7) Kilnaleck 
Bernadette Serridge (5) Dublin 
Katherine (9) & Margaret Chambers (7) Keady, Co Armagh
Mary Lowry (17) Drumcrow, Ballinagh
Bridget (17) & Mary Galligan (18) Drumbrath, Kilnaleck
Mary Smith (80) employed as cook