Dublin Dowlings

Robert and Maggie

"There was an amount of instability in my grandfather's background. His own father - the son of a senior civil servant at Dublin Castle - had fallen in love with the kitchen-maid, got a chamber pot thrown at his head when the betrothal was announced and soon after emigrated to America with his unacceptable bride and the statutory shilling. Three years and three children later the young couple returned to Dublin, my great-grandfather having found the American way of life insufficiently civilised. For the rest of his life he practised civilisation by drinking too much port and collecting coins while his wife - an energetic and courageous woman - ran an Academy for (very) Young Ladies. As she had been illiterate on her wedding day her husband perhaps deserves some credit for having taken the trouble to teach her how to read and write. Mercifully, Providence spared her any more children after the return to Dublin.

At the age of fourteen my grandfather had to find a job and with wild illogic his father objected to his working as a messenger-boy for a firm of silk importers. It was perfectly in order for a wife to work eighteen hours a day to support an idle husband, but for a son and heir to run errands - no!"

Dervla Murphy
Wheels Within Wheels

I don't know the truth of this version of our ancestors as it has filtered down on the other side of the family. I had never heard of it but, knowing my own immediate relatives, I doubt I would have if it were true. It should be noted that Robert's father worked in the Custom House and not Dublin Castle and that had Providence indeed spared Maggie I would not exist. Willie, their fourth child, was born in Dublin (though Maggie was already pregnant when they set out from New York). It is likely therefore that Dervla's account, though true in essence, has seen some embelishment in time and the telling.

More about Robert

More about Maggie