The Comerford-Kneen family and a genealogical search that begins in Alexandria

The Obelisk in Alexandria in the early 20th century … the Comerford-Kneen family lived in Alexandria for four or five generations (William Henry Goodyear, Brooklyn Museum Archives)

Patrick Comerford

I recently came across the story of a branch of the Comerford family that passed on the Comerford name to a family that lived in Alexandria in Egypt for four or five generation in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

It is a story that begins with a marriage in Limassol in Cyprus in 1882, and that brings the Comerford name to Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt, Limassol in Cyprus, Kavala and Thessaloniki in northern Greece, Nairobi in Kenya and to Mexico City and Australia. There are hints of minor aristocracy in Croatia and Slovenia, of descent from families in Romania and Lebanon, and of Egyptian, Syrian, Maltese and Jewish heritage. But it also involves places from the Isle of Man to Liverpool and through many parts of England.

It is a family whose story has inspired the Australian writer Krissy Kneen in her semi-biographical stories of Slovene women who became the nannies of choice for the wealthy Italians of pre-war Alexandria in The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen: Travels with My Grandmother’s Ashes, a new book published earlier this year (May 2021).

I am still researching this story of the Comerford and Comerford-Kneen family, and I remain uncertain of many of the genealogical details. But it begins with Helen Pauline Comerford who is in Limassol when she marries John Bernard Kneen from Liverpool who is living in Liverpool in 1882, and I thought it was worth sharing some of my research at this stage.

John Bernard Kneen (1841-1894) was born in Liverpool on 9 December 1841, the son of William Kneen (1813-1891), originally from the Isle of Man, and his wife, Jane Rowan (1821-1885). Kneen was married twice. He married his first wife, Sarah Ann Blunn, in Sheffield in 1864. They soon moved to Alexandria, Egypt, where they were living by 1867. He worked in Alexandria as a ‘foreign correspondent.’

Sarah and John Kneen were the parents of four children:

1, John William Kneen (1867-1870), born in Alexandria 1867, died in Liverpool 31 May 1870.
2, Amy (1868-1895), born in Alexandria ca 1868, died 1895.
3, Edith (1873- ), born in Alexandria ca 1873.
4, Edward Justin Kneen (1878-1933), born in Alexandria ca 1878.

Sarah Kneen died in Alexandria on 16 November 1881.

John Kneen married his second wife, Helen Pauline Comerford, in Limassol, Cyprus on 14 April 1882. She was born in Alexandria in 1861 and they were the parents of six children, four sons and two daughters:

1, John Albert Comerford-Kneen (1881-1931), of whom next.
2, Paul Bernard Comerford-Kneen (1884-1930), of whom after his eldest brother.
3, Hilda Helen Kneen (1881-1931). She was born in Alexandria 11 January 1888, and was married twice: firstly in Alexandria in 1908 William F Draycott, and they were the parents of a son, William DJBA Draycott (1921- ), born in Alexandria 1921, later married twice in England; Hilda married secondly in Alexandria in 1933 Percy George Crosbye Farrell (1896-1990), and they later lived in Chersey, Surrey.
4, Henry (Harry) Philip Kneen (1889-1963), of whom after his elder brothers.
5, Victor Comerford-Kneen (1892-1953), of whom after his elder brothers.
6, Gladys Mary Comerford-Kneen (1893-1973). She was born in Alexandria 1 June 1893, was married, and died in Leicester in March 1973.

John Bernard Kneen died in Alexandria on 10 January 1894. The eldest son of Helen (Comerford) and John Bernard Kneen was:

John Albert Comerford-Kneen (1881-1931). He was born in Alexandria 16 November 1881. He married Georgiana Naoum-Cassir (1895-1960) in Alexandria in 1913. He died in Alexandria in 1931; she died in Sussex on 3 March 1960. They were the parents of three sons:

1, Charles Albert Comerford Kneen. He was born in Aleaxandria and lived in Egypt (1939), Blacktown, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (1963-post 1980). He married Dragitca (Dragica) Marušič, born in Miren, near Nova Gorica or Gorizia in Slovenia, 13 December 1916, daughter of Perina and Carlotta (née Mozetic) Marusic. He worked at the British Embassy in Cairo. They fled Alexandria in the aftermath of the 1956 Suez Crisis with other expatriates, and lived in England before moving to Australia. In Australia, Dragitca was known as Lotty Kneen, and died in 2014. They were the parents of two daughters: Sheila; and Wendy, who is the mother of the Australian writer Krissy Kneen.
2, Wilfred J (Bunny) Comerford-Kneen (1920-2010). He was born in Alexandria on 5 March 1920, and died in Worthing on 19 October 2010. He was married twice: first in Cairo in 1946; secondly in Fulham in 1958 to June Rosemary Smythe (1934-2011). There are surviving children.
3, John Anthony (Jackie) Comerford-Kneen (1928-1982). He was born in Alexandria on 8 May 1928, and died in Crawley, Sussex, in June 1982. In March 1961, he married in Horsham, Sussex, Ansley M (Mollie) Summerfield (1933-2005).

The second son of Helen (Comerford) and John Bernard Kneen was:

Paul Bernard Comerford-Kneen (1884-1930). He was born in Alexandria in 1884. He worked as a quarantine officer with the Egyptian government. He married in Alexandria in 1908 Edith Ellen Mabel Elsie Draycott (1889-1966). She was born in Cyprus on 14 November 1889, and died in Ormskirk, Lancashire, on 20 March 1966; he died in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, in March 1930. They were the parents of two children, a daughter and a son:

1, Helen Alice Pauline Comerford-Kneen (1910-1976), of whom next.
2, John Bernard Paul Kneen (1912-1937), born Alexandria, born 3 September 1912, died in Alexandria 28 October 1937.

The Comerford name was continued among the children of the only daughter and only surviving child of Edith and Paul Comerford-Kneen:

Helen Alice Pauline Comerford-Kneen (1910-1976). She was born in Alexandria on 12 June 1914, and died in Norwich in December 1976. She was married twice. She married first in Alexandria on 12 January 1935 Paul P de Relya (1912-1981), also known as Paul Ivo Ritter von Relya Ohmucevic (or Reglia von Ohmucevic). He was born in Kavala, east of Thessaloniki in northern Greece, on 2 October 1912, into a family of Croatian ancestry, and died in Hounslow in December 1981. They later moved to Liverpool and were the parents of six children, three daughters and three sons:

1, Patricia Paul Alice Ivana von Relya Ohmucevic (or Reglia von Ohmucevic) (1935-1937), born Alexandria 28 November 1935, died 25 September 1937.
2, Pavo (Paul) Patrick Denis Cyril Reglia von Ohmucevic (or de Relya) (1938-1970), travel consultant, born Alexandria 21 July 1938, died in a car accident in Mexico 7 March 1970.
3, Dalice (Dalys) Paule Roxellane Marguerite Patricia John Ma de Relya, born Liverpool 13 March 1948, married in Liverpool December 1973.
4, Mark Godfrey Patrick de Comerford von Kesmark (1949-2019), born 17 March 1949, lived in Norfolk from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, and from 2017; died in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, 7 February 2019.
5, Michael Anthony Ernest Sebastian Paul Dereyla d’Ohmucevic, born Liverpool 10 July 1973.
6, Ann.

Helen Alice Pauline Comerford-Kneen married secondly Ernest Wilson (1924-1999), a former flying officer in the Royal Air Force. She died in Norwich in December 1976.

The third son and fourth child of Helen (Comerford) and John Bernard Kneen was:

Henry (Harry) Philip Kneen (1889-1963) was born Alexandria 1889. He married in Alexandria in 1913 Elvira Katherine Varzon (1893-1996). She was born 14 September 1893, and died in Milton Keynes in October 1966; he died in Leicester 24 July 1963. They were the parents of one son:

1, Herbert George Kneen (1917-2011), born Alexandria 19 December 1917, married in Alexandria 1948 Blanche Simone Daoud (1925-2006). She died in 2006; he lived in Milton Keynes and died in Nuneaton 17 December 2011. They were the parents of one child.

The fourth and youngest son and fifth child of Helen (Comerford) and John Bernard Kneen was:

Victor Comerford-Kneen (1892-1953). He was born in Alexandria in 1892, and was married twice. He married firstly in Alexandria on 8 November 1913 Victoria Mallia and they were the parents of:

1, Gerald Denys Kneen (1932-1995). He was born in Alexandria 15 November 1932, and died in Thanet, Kent in June 1995.

Victor Comerford-Kneen married a second time before he died in Nairobi, Kenya, on 20 June 1953.



Last updated: 4 June 2022; 20 April 2023.

Tales of the Viennese Jews: 16, three Holocaust survivors who lived in Northern Ireland

Children of the Kindertransport … Frank Meisler’s bronze sculpture at Liverpool Street Station in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The Tales from the Vienna Woods is a waltz by the composer Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), written just over a century and a half ago, in 1868. Although Strauss was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church, he was born into a prominent Jewish family. Because the Nazis had a particular penchant for Strauss’s music, they tried to conceal and even deny the Jewish identity of the Strauss family.

However, the stories of Vienna’s Jews cannot be hidden, and many of those stories from Vienna are told in the exhibits in the Jewish Museum in its two locations, at the Palais Eskeles on Dorotheergasse and in the Misrachi-Haus in Judenplatz.

Rather than describe both museums in detail in one or two blog postings, I decided after my recent visit to Vienna to post occasional blog postings that re-tell some of these stories, celebrating a culture and a community whose stories should never be forgotten.

In the past week, I have been reminded of the stories of three Holocaust survivors who were born in Vienna and who moved to live in Northern Ireland after World War II: Inge Radford, who lived in Belfast and later in Millisle, Co Down, and Edith (Medel) Sekules and her husband Kurt Sekules, who lived for over half a century in Kilkeel, Co Down.

Inge Radford (1932-2016) was born in Vienna, one of 10 children, and six members of her family died in the Holocaust.

Inge escaped to England on the Kindertransports in July 1939. But in 1942 her widowed mother and five brothers, Sigmund, Kurt, Walter, Herbert and Fritz, were deported from Vienna to Minsk in the former Soviet Union, now the capital of Belarus. They were initially incarcerated in the Minsk ghetto and then transferred to the labour camp in the village of Maly Trostinec, where they were murdered.

Maly Trostinec had no permanent gas chambers but there the Nazis used mobile gas vans. In May 1943, 500 people were murdered every day in the gas vans that went daily to and from Minsk and Maly Trostinec.

However, five members of her family escaped the Holocaust. A local voluntary committee in Sevenoaks, Kent, raised money to bring Inge and five other children out of Europe and guaranteed the £50 a child expected by the British government.

At 16, Inge’s eldest sister, Elli, went to live with relatives in the US. Her 13- and 14-year-old brothers, Ernst and Erich, went to live on farms in Denmark, while her nine-year-old sister Rose, and Inge, then seven, went to England, separately and unknown to each other, under the auspices of the Jewish Children’s Refugee Organisation.

Inge later said the fact that these five siblings grew into relatively unscarred and useful citizens was due to the many people who tried ‘to minimise the trauma of family separation and loss for us and for hundreds of other refugee children.’

‘Homes and hearts were opened to us’ she said. Many children stayed with their ‘adopting’ families through school, university, marriage and parenthood. ‘For me,’ she said later ‘these new, kind and loving relationships blurred the picture of a small, smiling woman surrounded by several boys all waving as the train pulled out of Vienna station.’

Inge’s sister Rose lived happily with a Yorkshire Baptist family until she joined their older sister in the US. Inge went first to the Isle of Man and then lived half her life in England and the second half in Northern Ireland. She was reunited many years later with her two sisters who went to the US and her two brothers in Israel.

She was a social worker, a probation officer, and worked in the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. Her husband, Professor Colin Buchanan Radford, was a French academic and dean of the Faculty of Arts at Queen’s University Belfast. He was made OBE in 1994 for services to the arts.

They lived in south Belfast and later in Millisle on the Ards peninsula in Co Down. Inge died in March 2016.

Their daughter, Dr Katy Radford, is project manager at the Institute for Conflict Research and works with other organisations including the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Commission for Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition. She was made an MBE in 2011 for her contribution to community relations in Northern Ireland.



Edith Sekules (1916-2008) and her husband Kurt Sekules (1907-2001) were both born in Vienna: Kurt was born in 1907, the son of Ludwig Lajos Sekules and Else (Hitschmann); Edith was born Edith Mathilde Medel on 8 June 1916 into a middle-class Jewish family, the daughter of Eugen Mendel and Marianne (Bielitz).

Edith grew up in a sophisticated, secular family, enjoying a vibrant Jewish culture. Her love of classical music and literature was nourished in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s, when she frequented the city’s opera and musical recitals. But problems in her father’s motor business forced Edith to abandon her studies and enter the catering industry to help her family.

Meanwhile, she had met Kurt Sekules, a radio engineer, and they married in 1936. Two years later, the Nazis marched into Vienna and annexed Austria. Edith soon lost her job at the prestigious Hotel Bristol and Kurt was also dismissed.

In the midst of this crisis, their first child Ruth was born in May 1938. The young Sekules family, like many of Vienna’s Jews, resolved to leave Austria as soon as they could.

Edith’s younger sister Lottchen, known as Lotte, left for London having found a job in domestic service. Their mother followed Lotte to England, where she too found work as a domestic and cook.

Kurt applied for a job in Estonia, and he, Edith and their baby daughter boarded a plane for Tallinn on 28 September 1938, the same day that Chamberlain left England to meet Hitler in Munich. Her father and grandmother, however, were forced to remain in Vienna, in the ever-worsening conditions for Jews. They both died the following year.

Edith and Kurt applied to emigrate to Australia and in 1939 their applications were approved in 1939. However, because they were German nationals when war broke out, their permits were cancelled. In June 1940, Estonia became part of the USSR and, when Hitler attacked Russia, the Sekules family became enemy aliens.

They were arrested by the secret police and taken in cattle trucks to Harku, a detention camp near Tallinn, along with many Jewish refugees who were arrested because of their German passports.

They were shunted eastward from camp to camp ahead of the advancing Nazi army, each time in crowded cattle trucks. Rations were basic, space was minimal and the work that allowed prisoners to earn extra food was arduous. Many prisoners did not survive the harsh, Siberian winters.

The family spent some years in Soviet detention camps, including Oranki in Gorki in modern-day Russia, Aktyubinsk in modern-day Kazakhstan, and Kok Uzek at Karaganda in Kazakhstan.

During the winter of 1944, Edith suffered a miscarriage and underwent an operation without any anaesthetic. After the operation, she was allowed a 15-minute rest and ordered to walk the half-hour journey back to the camp alone.

But when World War II ended, the prisoners were not released. Returning Russian soldiers were given priority on the railway lines, and Edith and Kurt did not begin their long journey back to Vienna until January 1947. By then they had three young children, Ruth, Walter and Leah.

Economic conditions in post-war Austria were hard, and there was still a pervasive anti-semitic climate. The Sekules family decided to move to Northern Ireland, where Kurt’s parents had escaped before the war. They travelled via London, where Edith was reunited with Lotte and her mother.

Until a letter from the Kok Uzek camp arrived in London after the war, Edith’s mother had assumed that Edith and Kurt had died in the Holocaust. She had had trees planted in their memory in Israel that Edith visited some years later.

Kurt’s parents and his brother Robert also left Austria before war broke out. They settled in Derry after getting visas under a British government scheme to set up factories in Northern Ireland, and founded an artificial flowers business. The fate of Kurt’s sister Stella and her children remains unknown.

With the help of a family friend, Bernhard Altmann, Edith and Kurt set up the Kilkeel Knitting Mills, a successful knitwear business in Kilkeel, Co Down. Their fourth child, Esther, was born in 1954.

Edith spoke of her experiences at Women’s Institutes and in schools, and spoke at the first two years of Holocaust Memorial Day in Northern Ireland. According to her obituary in the Jewish Chronicle, she attributed her survival to her determination to save her family.

The couple visited Vienna in 2000 when Kurt was 92 and Edith was 83. It was their first visit to Vienna in over 50 years. They went into the same cafes where they used to go when they were a young couple, and took the same walks they had enjoyed in the 1930s along the banks of the Danube.

Edith Sekules published a memoir, Surviving the Nazis, Exile and Siberia (London: Valentine Mitchell), in 2000. Kurt died at 93 in Kilkeel in 2001; Edith died at 91 on 20 February 2008. They were survived by their son, three daughters, 10 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Walter Sekules told the Sunday Independent last year how he is worried by the rise of the Far Right in Europe and the growing expressions of hatred of foreigners and immigrants. Asked if he could ever forgive those people who adopted the evil policies that led to the Holocaust and those who would still spread hatred today, he responded: ‘I’m sorry that they haven’t learned better.’

Other postings in this series:

1, the chief rabbi and a French artist’s ‘pogrom’

2, a ‘positively rabbinic’ portrait of an Anglican dean

3, portraits of two imperial court financiers

4, portrait of Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis

5, Lily Renée, from Holocaust Survivor to Escape Artist

6, Sir Moses Montefiore and a decorative Torah Mantle

7, Theodor Herzl and the cycle of contradictions

8, Simon Wiesenthal and the café in Mauthausen

9, Leonard Cohen and ‘The Spice-Box of Earth’

10, Ludwig Wittgenstein and his Jewish grandparents

11, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his Jewish librettist

12, Salomon Mayer von Rothschild and the railways in Vienna

13, Gustav Mahler and the ‘thrice homeless’ Jew

14, Beethoven at 250 and his Jewish connections in Vienna

15, Martin Buber and the idea of the ‘I-Thou’ relationship

16, Three Holocaust survivors who lived in Northern Ireland.

17, Schubert’s setting of Psalm 92 for the synagogue.

18, Bert Linder and his campaign against the Swiss banks.

19, Adele Bloch-Bauer and Gustav Klimt’s ‘Lady in Gold’.

20, Max Perutz, Nobel laureate and ‘the godfather of molecular biology’.

When the Isle of Man once had ‘the fullest Jewish life in the world’

The New Synagogue, Berlin … Rabbi Werner van der Zyl, former rabbi at the New Synagogue, was detained in the Isle of Man (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I have been writing in recent days about a teenage holiday on the Isle of Man in 1965, about the connections between the Diocese of Sodor and Man and Irish-born saints or Irish-born and Irish-educated bishops, and about Bishops of Sodor and Man who had connections with Lichfield and Tamworth.

But thinking back on that holiday over the past two days, I recalled hearing stories of internment camps on the island where large numbers of Jews were held during World War I and World War II, and stories even of synagogues inside those camps.

Indeed, the Isle of Man has a small Jewish community, once known as the Isle of Man Hebrew Congregation and now known as Manx Hebrew Congregation. Although there is no synagogue or rabbi, there is a Jewish cemetery at Douglas, the island’s capital and largest town. The history of the Jews on the Isle of Man goes back to at least the early 19th century.

From about 1908, the Jewish Chronicle published regular advertising for Berlin House, an ‘Orthodox Jewish Boarding House,’ at 16 Demesne Road, off Bucks Road, Douglas, It was run by ‘Mrs Rabow & Daughters,’ and offered a ‘liberal table, late dinners, excellent cuisine,’ and ‘terms moderate.’

By 1911, Berlin House was at Palace View Terrace and was run by the Misses Rabow. It was described as a ‘fully-licensed Orthodox Hotel,’ with ‘29 light airy bedrooms,’ a spacious dining-room and comfortable drawing-room, offering ‘table d’hôte.’

By 1914, a Mrs Goldberg was running Vienna House at Fairfield Terrace, Bucks Road, with 20 large bedrooms, and a kosher restaurant with’ excellent cuisine. By then the Rabow sisters’ Berlin House at 3 Palace View Terrace, Central Promenade, was a ‘fully licensed Orthodox hotel,’ with 36 rooms.’ But World War I broke out that summer, and Berlin House became simply ‘Rabows,’ while Mrs Goldberg’s Vienna House became the Continental Hotel.

During World War I, many German and Austro-Hungarian Jews were interned on the Isle of Man under the Aliens Restriction Act as possible ‘Enemy Aliens.’ Across Britain, over 32,000 civilian men were interned for some or all of the war.

After World War, the Jewish Chronicle reported in 1920, that ‘services for the High Festivals were held on the Isle of Man for the first time. They were held at the Continental by the courtesy of Mr and Mrs Goldberg.’

Two years later, the Continental House was being run by Mrs Goldberg at Palace View Terrace, probably having incorporated the Rabow family establishment. It was described as the ‘Oldest established Kasher House in the Island. Charmingly situated, facing sea and Palace, and on Central Promenade.’

The Isle of Man Hebrew Congregation, advertised in 1927 for a single man as shochet, teacher, and to act as reader or chazan (cantor). The post was filled by Mr L Kelman, of Manchester, and services were to be held at the Goldbergs’ Continental Hotel every Friday evening and Saturday morning during the holiday season. ‘All visitors are welcome.’

When the 1928 holiday season began, a Mrs Lyons had opened a third ‘strictly kosher’ guesthouse, the Astoria, at 4 Fort William, Douglas, ‘facing sea and adjoining golf links. Two minutes from boat,’ it boasted, and it even had ‘electric light.’

The Continental and the Astoria continued to advertise in the Jewish Chronicle until a notice on 3 July 1931 said, ‘Mrs Goldberg having disposed of her business in the Isle of Man has opened a private hotel at 108 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin.’ I wondered whether she was related to the Goldberg families in Limerick and Cork, and whether this explained her move to Ireland.

Two years later, the Astoria was also advertised for sale in 1933 by R Lyons who was retiring, and was described as the only Jewish boarding house on the island.

During World War II, between 1,500 and 3,000 German-Jewish civilians were held as internees in camps on the island as ‘enemy aliens.’ Initially, Nazis and Jews from Germany shared internment facilities.

The Jewish Chronicle reported in November 1940: ‘Today the island has what must be the fullest Jewish life in the world. In ordinary camps on a weekday there are more worshippers than in the Great Synagogue, London, on a Sabbath.’

Lectures were delivered on a variety of Jewish topics, and the Jewish community on the island had two kosher boarding houses. By 1941, there were 200 Jewish physicians from London in the Central Camp in Douglas alone. The camps included the Hutchinson Internment Camp in Douglas, known as the ‘artists’ camp’ with its own ‘university’ and newspaper, the Mooragh Internment Camp in Ramsey, whose detainees included Rabbi Werner van der Zyl (1902-1984), former rabbi at the New Synagogue, Berlin (1935-1939) and later founder of Leo Baeck College.

Many detainees in Douglas attended the Central Promenade Camp Synagogue, whose services in English took place in the ballroom of the Lido Dance Hall. Another synagogue was set up in a hut at the Onchan Camp. Women and children internees were mostly housed in the Port Erin and Port St Mary areas, and there was a mixed camp for married couples in Rushen.

One of the most remarkable war-time services took place in the cinema in Port Erin on Rosh Hashanah. Over were 200 people attended, but there was no minyan – almost all the worshippers were women internees who had been separated from their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons.

Eventually, the Jewish prisoners were released and some men given the option of joining the British armed forces, but thousands more were sent to camps in Canada and Australia. There was an unusually high proportion of Jewish and anti-Nazi internees in Hutchinson Camp, which closed in March 1944.

Post-war Jewish residents included Judge Neville Laski (1890-1961), a Judge of Appeal of the Isle of Man (1953-1956) and Recorder of Liverpool (1956-1963), and Samuel James, a London financier, who lived on the island for 20 years until he died in 1956. The Jewish Chronicle reported in 1957 that eight or 10 Jewish families were living on the Isle of Man.

A leading member of the community today, Leonard Singer (77), Deputy Speaker of the House of Keys in the Tynwald since 2012. A retired pharmacist, he was born in Manchester and lived in Portugal and Tenerife before moving to the Isle of Man in 1989.

The Jewish Chronicle reported in 2016 there are about 200 Jews on the island, but most are not religious and are intermarried. This small community has no synagogue or a rabbi, nor is there a place to buy kosher food. The community has organised a Holocaust Memorial Day service since 2001, conducted in English, Hebrew and Manx.

The houses around Hutchinson Square in Douglas were crowded with Jewish internees during World War II (Photograph: Wikipedia, Jamesfranklingresham CC BY-SA)

Four bishops who link the Isle of Man with Lichfield and Tamworth

The stall of the Prebendary of Longdon in Lichfield Cathedral … Samuel Rutter was Prebendary of Longdon when he was nominated Bishop of Sodor and Man (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was musing yesterday morning about a holiday on the Isle of Man in 1965, and later in the day about the connections between the Diocese of Sodor and Man and Irish-born saints or Irish-born and Irish-educated bishops.

The Isle of Man, with 15 parishes and 40 churches, is the only component of the Diocese of Sodor and Man, and while the Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom, the diocese is part of the Church of England. But the diocese has a number of links too with both Lichfield and Tamworth through bishops of the past.

Samuel Rutter, the restoration Bishop of Sodor and Man, was Prebendary of Longdon in Lichfield Cathedral when he was nominated Bishop of Sodor and Man in 1660.

Rutter was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford (MA). He was nominated as Archdeacon of Man in 1640. At the time, the Stanley family were feudal lords of the Isle of Man, and during the English Civil War, he was a chaplain to the Royalist James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby, and was at the first siege of Lathom House.

By the end of the Civil War, Rutter was the Prebendary of Longdon in Lichfield Cathedral in 1660. But, through the influence of the widowed Countess of Derby, he was nominated as Bishop of Sodor and Man on 5 October 1661, and he was consecrated on 24 March 1661, the last day of the Restoration year.

It was said he was ‘grave and devout, temperate and dignified, and unfortunately was worn out, though not an old man, when he became a bishop.’ He was so ‘worn out’ that he died in the Isle of Man on 30 May 1662.

Rutter was buried in the chancel of Saint German’s Cathedral in Peel Castle, where his grave was marked with a Latin inscription he wrote himself:

In this house which I have borrowed from my brothers the worms
in the hope of the resurrection to life
lie I SAM by divine grace Bishop of this Island.
Stay reader, behold and laugh at the Bishop’s palace.

The chapel in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge … James Bowstead was a fellow when he became Bishop of Sodor and Man in 1838 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

James Bowstead (1801-1843), who was a 19th century Bishop of Sodor and Man (1838-1840), later became Bishop of Lichfield (1840-1843). Bowstead was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (BA 1824, BD and DD 1834), and became a Fellow of Corpus Christi (1824-1838) and a tutor at the college (1832-1838).

The story goes that while he was on a break reading in the north of Scotland he fell in love with a minister’s daughter. But he delayed proposing to her until his return the following year. It was too late, for when he returned, she had married. He was so disappointed he never married.

Bowstead was still in academic life when he was nominated Bishop of Sodor and Man by Queen Victoria on 13 July 1838. He was consecrated by Archbishop William Howley of Canterbury on 22 July 1838. Just 18 months later, he became Bishop of Lichfield on 23 January 1840.

He was a Liberal in his politics, signing a petition for abolition of religious tests for admission to universities, but very Protestant in his religious views and strongly opposed the Tractarians. When Bowstead was leaving the Isle of Man, a deputation of three Methodist ministers and three circuit stewards presented him with an address thanking him for his kindly attitude towards the Methodists.

He was a keen horseman and intended to ride from Liverpool to Lichfield. On the way, his horse – possibly suffering from the sea crossing – stumbled and he was thrown, though at the time with no apparent ill effects. Shortly afterwards, it became clear his spine had been injured, and for virtually all his time at Lichfield he was unable to carry out his duties.

Bowstead suffered a long, painful illness, and he was only 42 and still Bishop of Lichfield when he died in Clifton, Bristol, on 11 October 1843.

Walter Augustus Shirley (1797-1847) … an archdeacon in the Diocese of Lichfield before becoming Bishop of Sodor and Man

Walter Augustus Shirley (1797-1847), who was the Bishop of Sodor and Man in 1846-1847, was born in Westport, Co Mayo. His paternal grandfather was the controversial Walter Shirley (1726-1786), Rector of Loughrea, Co Galway. But Shirley was often absent from his parish in Co Galway, mainly due to his activities as a revivalist preacher, and he was censured by the Bishop of Clonfert and reprimanded by the Archbishop of Dublin.

He, in turn, was the grandson of Robert Shirley (1650-1717), 1st Earl Ferrers, who had also inherited a portion of a large Irish estate of over 26,000 acres in Co Monaghan.

Lord Ferrers was suggested as a parliamentary candidate for Lichfield in 1677. But he preferred a seat in the House of Lords instead, and by sleight of hand and an obscure exercise in genealogy the barony of Ferrers of Chartley was called out of abeyance in his favour.

His family tree is complicated, the inheritance of Tamworth Castle from the Ferrers family and the use of the Ferrers name in the titles is obscure, and the inheritance of family estates and titles is difficult to follow at times. The family tree is complicated, compounded by the claim that this Lord Ferrers was the father of 27 legitimate children and 51 illegitimate children.

The Revd Walter Shirley was a first cousin of Robert Shirley (1692-1714), Lord Tamworth, who had inherited Tamworth Castle from his mother in 1697. But with Lord Tamworth’s death, Tamworth Castle and the family titles were separated and were inherited by different lines of decent.

Because of these complications in the family tree, the Revd Walter Shirley was a nephew of both the 2nd Earl Ferrers, who was known briefly as Lord Tamworth, and the insane 3rd Earl Ferrers, and a younger brother of the fourth, fifth and sixth earls.

Walter Ferrers was educated at University College, Oxford (BA 1746). In early adult life, he was converted to evangelical principles, perhaps by Henry Venn (1725-1797) of the Clapham Sect. He was ordained deacon by Frederick Cornwallis, Bishop of Lichfield, in 1757, and briefly served as a curate in Ashbourne, Derbyshire. He was strongly linked with the Calvinists within Methodism, although he remained an Anglican.

The Shirley family was rocked by one of the great society scandals of the day in 1760, when his eldest brother, Laurence Shirley (1720-1760), the fourth Earl Ferrers, was hanged at Tyburn for murdering his steward. Ferrers was tried by his peers in Westminster Hall, and despite his plea of insanity he was convicted of murder. He was the last peer of the realm to be hanged as a common criminal. As a concession to his rank, the rope used for his hanging was made of silk. His body was then taken to Surgeon’s Hall for public exhibition and dissection.

Bishop Shirley’s father, also the Revd Walter Shirley, fled Ireland in 1798, but found security when he re-established a link with his first cousin, Robert Shirley (1756-1827), 7th Earl Ferrers and formerly known as Lord Tamworth from 1778 to 1787.

In 1815, through this patronage, Walter Shirley was appointed Rector of Shirley (1815-1827), a Derbyshire parish in the Diocese of Lichfield that was in the gift of the family. Later, Walter was the Rector of Woodford, Northamptonshire, and he succeeded his own son as Rector of Brailsford, Derbyshire (1847-1859).

His only son, Walter Augustus Shirley (1797-1847), was born in Westport, Co Mayo, on 30 May 1797. His father’s cousin, Lord Ferrers, supported younger Walter going to school in Winchester. He went on New College Oxford and was ordained in 1820. He acted as Anglican chaplain in Rome in the winter of 1826-1827, was appointed assistant lecturer (curate) at Ashbourne in 1827. That autumn, when he married Maria Waddington in Paris, his father resigned the living of Shirley in his favour, and he moved there in January 1828.

Shirley alienated many of his evangelical friends with his outspoken support for Catholic Emancipation in 1829. In later years, he lost more friends by refusing to support violent measures against the Tractarians.

After nine years, he moved to the parish of Whiston, near Rotherham, but he continued to hold it with Shirley for another two years later, when he was appointed to the incumbency of Brailsford, a parish beside Shirley.

He was appointed Archdeacon of Derby by the Bishop of Lichfield on 21 December 1840 and also became a prebendary of Lichfield Cathedral. He was a Vice-President of the Lichfield Architectural Society, which promoted the insights of the Gothic Revival in church architecture along the lines introduced by AWN Pugin and the Cambridge Camden Society, with close Tractarian affiliations.

In November 1846, he was appointed Bishop of Sodor and Man, an a few weeks later, on 17 December 1846, he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity (DD) from Oxford. However, because of a serious illness he was not consecrated bishop until 10 January 1847.

He had been elected the Bampton Lecturer for that year, but lived only long enough to deliver two of the lectures in Oxford before he died at Bishop’s Court on the Isle of Man on 21 April 1847, just three months after his consecration.

His grandson, Walter Shirley (1864-1937), eventually succeeded as the 11th Earl Ferrers in 1912 on the death of his fourth cousin, Sewallis Edward Shirley (1847-1912), 10th Earl Ferrers. The tenth earl, like many of his predecessors, was also known as Viscount Tamworth before inheriting the family titles and estates.

Tamworth Castle once belonged to the Ferrers family … but its inheritance was separate from the Ferrers and Tamworth titles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A fourth Bishop of Sodor and Man with connections with the Diocese of Lichfield was Vernon Sampson Nicholls (1917-1996), who was bishop in 1974-1983.

He was born in Truro, educated at Durham University, and trained for ordination at Clifton Theological College. He was a curate in Bedminster Down, Bristol, and at Liskeard, Cornwall, an army chaplain and Vicar of Meopham in Kent before coming to the Diocese of Lichfield.

He was the Vicar and Rural Dean of Walsall (1956-1967), chaplain of Walsall General Hospital, and Prebendary of Curborough (1964-1967) in Lichfield Cathedral, before becoming Archdeacon of Birmingham (1967-1974).

He became Bishop of Sodor and Man in 1974. He may be remembered by many people on the island as the bishop who sold Bishopscourt, the episcopal palace, but in 1974 the cost of repairing the roof alone was £60,000. But his crowning glory as bishop was the creation of a cathedral from the parish church of Kirk German, close to the ruins of the former cathedral on Saint Patrick’s Isle. It was consecrated on All Saints’ Day, 1 November 1980. He retired as bishop in 1983.

The stall of the Prebendary of Curborough in Lichfield Cathedral … Bishop Vernon Nicholls was the Prebendary of Curborough in 1964-1967 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Updated: 09.07.2020, to take account of Bishop Vernon Nicholls, and to change the number in the headline.

The saints and bishops who link the Isle of Man with the Church in Ireland

Inside Peel Cathedral … the cathedral of the Isle of Man and of the smallest diocese in the Church of England (Photograph: Peel Cathedral / raycollister.com)

Patrick Comerford

I was musing this morning about a holiday on the Isle of Man in 1965, when I was in my early teens, how it offered me first experiences of staying in an hotel and of ‘island hopping.’

I still remember reading about the history of the island and visiting many of its sites, including Saint German’s Cathedral in Peel.

The Isle of Man, with 15 parishes and 40 churches, is the only component of the Diocese of Sodor and Man, and while the Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom, the diocese is part of the Church of England. The Bishop of Sodor and Man sits in the Tynwald, the Manx legislative assembly, but cannot sit as a bishop of the Church of England in the House of Lords.

The island is equidistant from England, Ireland and Scotland, so, at times, after the Isle of Man was separated from the Diocese of Trondheim in Norway, it was not clear in church history whether the island was part of the Church in Scotland, in England or in Ireland.

The name ‘Sodor’ in the title of the diocese refers not to an imaginary island in the Thomas the Tank Engine tales, but to the southern part of the Hebrides of Scotland, which have not been part of the diocese since the 13th or 14th century.

Tradition says the diocese was founded by Saint German – not to be confused with Saint Germanus of Auxerre – a Celtic missionary who lived from ca 410 to 474, and a contemporary of Saint Patrick. Saint German’s Day is celebrated on 13 July. Later Irish saints on the island’s list of bishops include Saint Maughold (feast day 31 July), the fourth bishop, a disciple of Saint Patrick, and the seventh century missionary Saint Conan. Some traditions on the island say the parish of Braddan was named after Saint Brendan the Navigator.

In the confused histories of the diocese, there is evidence that at one point during Viking rule in the late 11th century, the Isle of Man and Viking Dublin were part of the same diocese.

John Dongan or Donegan was the last bishop of the united diocese of Sodor, which split into the Scottish and Irish or Manx parts during the Western Schism. Pope Urban V appointed him Archdeacon of Down in 1368, and he worked as the papal tax collector and nuncio in Ireland. As a reward, he was appointed Bishop of Mann and the Isles (Sodor) in 1374, and was consecrated by Cardinal Simon Langham, former Archbishop of Canterbury. However, Dongan was kidnapped on his way back from Avignon, imprisoned in Boulogne-sur-Mer, and was ransomed for 500 marks.

He did not get back to the Isle of Man until 25 January 1377, when he celebrated his first Mass in Saint German’s Cathedral, Peel.

Allegations surfaced in 1380 that Dongan was illegally holding on to the revenues he had been collecting officially in Ireland for Pope Urban. However, the allegations may have been made because Dongan supported the English-backed Pope Urban against the Scottish-backed anti-pope Clement VII.

Clement VII deposed Dongan as bishop in 1387, replacing him with Archbishop Michael of Cashel, a Franciscan friar. Although Dongan remained the de facto bishop in the Isle of Man, this marked the final rift between the Hebrides and the Isle of Man within the diocese. The Scottish-controlled islands were lost to the new bishop, and Dongan was left with a tiny diocese that was too small and too poor for a full-time bishop.

By the early 1390s, was in England, acting as an assistant bishop to the Bishop of Salisbury and performing ordinations on behalf of the Bishop of London, until 1391, when he was appointed Bishop of Derry. He became Bishop of Down in 1394, and in that role negotiated on behalf of the English crown with the Gaelic leaders of Ireland and Scotland. In 1405, he was appointed ‘Keeper of the Liberty of Ulster.’ He resigned as Bishop of Down in 1413 and died soon after.

Later in the 15th century, Richard Payl, a Dominican friar who had been appointed Bishop of Dromore by Pope Gregory XII in 1407, was appointed Bishop of Mann and the Isles by Antipope John XXIII in 1410, and remained bishop in the Isle of Man until ca 1433.

Although the Isle of Man was never legally part of England, the diocese became part of the Province of Canterbury until it was transferred to the Province of York in 1542.

Even then, the appointment of bishops produced some anomalies before and after the Reformation. At least two bishops were also Abbots of Chester, then in the Diocese of Lichfield. After the Caroline Restoration, Isaac Barrow was allowed to hold the overlapping appointments of Bishop of Sodor and Man (1663-1671), Governor of the Isle of Man (1664-1671) and Bishop of St Asaph (1669-1680) in Wales.

However, the diocese continued to receiver a number of bishops with strong Irish connections.

Thomas Wilson (1663-1755), who was Bishop of Sodor and Man for almost 60 years (1697-1755), first studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin from 1682, where his friends and contemporaries included Jonathan Swift, future Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, and his tutor was John Barton, afterwards Dean of Ardagh. He graduated BA in 1686, and was ordained deacon that year, before attaining the canonical age, by William Moreton, Bishop of Kildare, in Saint Brigid’s Cathedral, Kildare.

When he arrived as bishop, he found most of the churches on the Isle of Man were in ruins. He rebuilt many churches, built new churches and libraries, advocated agrarian reforms to the benefit of tenants, promoted the Manx language, and was an early supporter of the Anglican mission agency, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG, now USPG).

He corresponded with Cardinal Fleury, Archbishop of Aix in France, and they joked that ‘they were the two oldest bishops’ and ‘the poorest in Europe.’ When he died in at the age of 91, he was still an active bishop.

Claudius Crigan, who bishop in 1784-1813, was born in Omagh, Co Tyrone, around 1739, the son of a tailor, and studied classics and theology at TCD.

William Ward, who was born in Saintfield, near Belfast, in 1762, was Bishop of Sodor and Man in 1828 to 1838. As bishop, he vigorously opposed a proposal in 1836 to amalgamate the diocese with the Diocese of Carlisle. The proposal failed, and Ward remained bishop until he died in 1838.

Walter Augustus Shirley (1797-1847),who was the Bishop of Sodor and Man in 1846-1847, was born in Westport, Co Mayo. His paternal grandfather was the controversial Walter Shirley, who was censured by the Bishop of Clonfert, reprimanded by the Archbishop of Dublin, and who is buried in Saint Mary’s Church, Dublin. His maternal grandfather, Sir Edward Newenham, was MP for Enniscorthy, Co Wexford (1769-1776), and for Co Dublin (1776-1797).

Shirley was a cousin of Edward Newenham Hoare (1802-1877), who was Dean of Achonry and then of Christ Church Cathedral, Waterford. Shirley was an advocate of Catholic Emancipation, a friend of the Tractarians, and Archdeacon of Derby in the Diocese of Lichfield before he was appointed Bishop of Sodor and Man. His episcopal consecration was delayed because of his ill-health, and he died within three months of his consecration.

A second proposal to amalgamate Sodor and Man with an English diocese was made in 1875, this time with a new Diocese of Liverpool, which was still at the planning stage. The proposal failed, and Rowley Hill (1836-1887) became Bishop of Sodor and Man (1877-1887).

Hill was born in Derry, a son of Sir George Hill. When he was appointed to the Isle of Man, he was the youngest bishop in Anglican Communion. He too was in favour of amalgamating his island diocese with the new Diocese of Liverpool, as this would allow better stipends. Most of his clergy agreed with him but lay opposition was against him and the new diocese was formed in 1880 without the Isle of Man.

Two further bishops – John Wareing Bardsley (1887-1891) and Charles Leonard Thornton-Duesbury (1925-1928) – were also educated at TCD. More recently, Bishop Robert Paterson (2008-2016) was involved in a review of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute in 2015-2016, while I was a member of the academic staff.

There is an amusing Irish connection with the Diocese of Sodor and Man. In their operetta Patience (1881), Gilbert and Sullivan mention the Bishop of Sodor and Man in the song ‘If you Want a Receipt for that Popular Mystery’ sung by Colonel Calverley.

In a reference is Bishop Rowley Hill, the song lists the elements of a Heavy Dragoon, including ‘Style of the Bishop of Sodor and Man’:

If you want a receipt for that popular mystery,
Known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon,
Take all the remarkable people in history,
Rattle them off to a popular tune.

The pluck of Lord Nelson on board of the Victory –
Genius of Bismarck devising a plan –
The humour of Fielding (which sounds contradictory) –
Coolness of Paget about to trepan –
The science of Jullien, the eminent musico –
Wit of Macaulay, who wrote of Queen Anne –
The pathos of Paddy, as rendered by Boucicault –
Style of the Bishop of Sodor and Man –
The dash of a D’Orsay, divested of quackery –
Narrative powers of Dickens and Thackeray –
Victor Emmanuel – peak-haunting Peveril –
Thomas Aquinas, and Doctor Sacheverell –
Tupper and Tennyson –Daniel Defoe –
Anthony Trollope and Mister Guizot!

The poet John Betjeman later described the Bishop of Sodor and Man as ‘that luckless Bishop whose cathedral is a beautiful ruin of green slate and red sandstone on an islet overlooking Peel.’

Today, the chapter of Saint German’s Cathedral, Peel, includes the Dean, the Archdeacon, and four canons with the designations of Saint Patrick, Saint Maughold, Saint Columba and Saint German – an acknowledgement of the centuries-old link between the Diocese of Sodor and Man and the saints and churches of Ireland and Scotland.

Inside Peel Cathedral (Photograph: Peel Cathedral / Claire Fox Schreuder)

A teenage introduction in the Isle of Man to hotel holidays and ‘island hopping’

Onchan Head in the 1960s … my first experience of staying in an hotel and ‘island hopping’ (Photograph: Wikipedia / Dr Neil Clifton)

Patrick Comerford

I am still wondering whether I am going to get to Greece later this year. Any possible government announcement about an ‘air bridge’ has been postponed once again.


Ryanair keeps advertising that it is flying to Thessaloniki. Although I booked this journey late last year, all does not seem secure. Even if an ‘air bridge’ is agreed between Ireland and Greece, am I going to feel reassured enough to go ahead with a planned holiday in Halkidiki in late August and early September?

I mused, until a few days ago, that the ‘R’ factor in Greece is lower than it is in Ireland, and that perhaps I would feel as safe there – if not safer – than in Ireland.

But the arrival of people like Stanley Johnson, and his casual, Trump-like – well, Johnson-like – response to questions, makes me wonder what if … what if, later this summer, the beaches of Greece become like the beaches at Bournemouth and Southend?

Of course, the expectation of the journey has its own pleasure that does not actually depend on arriving at the destination. As the Greek poet CP Cavafy says in his poem Ithaka:

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

But, as I thought about these prospects in recent days, I realised that it was 55 years ago – probably this month, although I am unsure – that I first ever went ‘island hopping’ or stayed in an hotel.

It was 1965, July or August, and I was a 13-year-old who had just realised the fun and joy of being a teenager by the sea.

My father normally took a house in the summer months on the east coast, within commuting distance of Dublin and close to a golf course, so that he could commute to work in the day, and spend the evening playing golf, leaving us to our own devices and creative imaginations throughout those long, balmy days. I still remember episodes in Bettystown, Kilcoole and Termonfeckin that I am sure my parents were never aware of.

But, for some reason, there was a change of locations 55 years ago, and we all caught the ferry to the Isle of Man and spent that family holiday in an hotel in Onchan, overlooking Douglas Bay.

I cannot remember the name of the hotel, but I can remember it was at the end of a terrace of Victorian buildings, above the rocks of Onchan, and I can remember some of the hotel’s guests or residents. There was a veteran from the Battle of El-Alamein, fought in 1942 who entertained me with stories of Monty’s Eighth Army and how they defeated Rommel’s Desert Rats. It was only 23 years earlier, so he may have been only in his early 40s, perhaps even in his late 30s. But, as my father played golf and my mother played bridge, he brought many of my comic-book stories to life.

There was a couple who were convinced that two jobs were safe in life: the binman’s and the milkman’s. Who could invent a machine that would walk up the garden path, take the empties and replace them, or bring the bin down to the waiting cart. I can’t imagine they were recommending a career path for a young teenager; nor could they predict the future … although I only know that with the benefit of hindsight.

Keith was a boy of my age from Haywards Heath. I think his father was a vicar or a lay reader, and he took me to Saint Catherine’s, the Anglican parish church, with its beautiful rood screen and Celtic crosses – this is where Captain William Bligh married Elizabeth Betham.

Keith and I kept in touch with each other for a long time … well, at least until the following Christmas.

I took a delight that only teenage boys appreciate in the local names, such as Windy Corner, Molly Quirk’s Glen, and The Butt, I visited the TT course and saw some of the practice runs, I almost frightened myself when, after pretending I was older, I tried mini-kart at the Onchan Pleasure Park, where I also went boating, I searched for tail-less Manx cats and tried to send others in search of three-legged Manx residents.

I made my own way by bus to other towns on the island, including Castletown, Peel, Port Erin, Laxey and Ramsey, and Tynwald, and spent hours on the promenade and the beach at Douglas. On a more serious note, I was introduced to the horrors of the Holocaust at Madame Tussaud’s in Douglas.

Mutiny on the Bounty had been a hit film three years earlier (1962) and Lord of the Flies (1963) was still showing that summer.

It was the year of the Selma and Montgomery marches, the year TS Eliot died, the year Liverpool beat Leeds 1-0 in the FA cup final. The Rolling Stones could get no Satisfaction, Bob Dylan went electric and had a hit with ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ Elvis Presley was crying in the chapel, the Beatles played at Shea Stadium, Petula Clarke was downtown, the Beach Boys wanted help from Rhonda, Kathy Kirby and Butch Moore sang in Eurovision in Naples, and the Seekers knew they would never find another you.

Ted Heath became the Tory leader, George Papandreou was sacked in move that would later turn into the colonels’ coup, Sean Lemass had led on, draft cards were being burnt across America, Vatican 2 was coming to an end, WB Yeats was reburied, and Kenneth Tynan, briefly director of Garrick Theatre in Lichfield, used the ‘F’ word on British television.

Lady Penelope and Thunderbirds were about to go, and I was still reading the Eagle, Look and Learn and Lion. But I was maturing in a way I did not yet understand. If my accent was a little too English for a teenager in Ireland, I was sent to Ballinskelligs in the Kerry Gaeltacht the following year. That was the ‘Summer of Love’ and there I would read Anne Frank’s Diaries and Catcher in the Rye, have my first smoke, and face the challenge to go ‘skinny dipping.’ From there I was sent on to boarding school in Gormanston.

My world was changing, and the Isle of Man – with its hotel whose name I have forgotten, and the temptations of ‘island hopping’ – was playing a part in those changes.

A horse-drawn tram on the seafront in Douglas (Photograph: Tripadvisor)

‘Who knows Dora, knows what love means’

Franz Kafka Street in the heart of the Old Town in Prague (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

In my sermons in Askeaton and Rathkeale on Christmas Day [25 December 2019], I retold the story about Franz Kafka’s letters to the little girl who had lost her doll in a park in Berlin.

The story, Kafka and the Travelling Doll, was written by the Catalan children’s writer, Jordi Sierra i Fabra, and draws on a real-life event in Kafka’s life. It is based on the memoirs of Dora Diamant, who lived with Kafka in Berlin. Kafka died in her arms in Vienna in 1924 and was buried in Prague, where he had been born in 1883.

Dora Diamant (1898-1952) is best remembered as the lover of the writer Franz Kafka and the woman who kept some of his last writings until they were confiscated by the Gestapo in 1933. She kept his papers against the wishes of Kafka, who had asked shortly before his death that they be destroyed.

The story of Dora Diamant and her tragic life is as intriguing and captivating as any story that Kafka has written (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The story of Dora Diamant and her tragic life is as intriguing and captivating as any story that Kafka could have written.

She was born Dwojra Diament in Pabianice, Poland, on 4 March 1898. Her father, Herschel Dymant, was a successful small businessman and a devout follower of the Ger Hasidic dynasty from Góra Kalwaria, once the largest and most influential Hasidic group in Poland.

When Dora’s mother died in 1912, her father moved with the family to Będzin, near the German border.

At the end of World War I, after helping to raise her 10 siblings, Dora refused to marry and was sent to Kraków to study to be a kindergarten teacher. But she ran away to Berlin, where she worked in the Jewish community as a teacher and as a seamstress in an orphanage. There she changed the spelling of her name to Diamant.

Dora Diamant … when she met Franz Kafka, it was love at first sight

She was working as a kitchen volunteer in a children’s summer camp run by the Berlin Jewish Peoples’ Homes at the seaside resort of Graal-Müritz on the Baltic Sea in July 1923. There she met Franz Kafka, who years before had commended this work to his first fiancée Felice Bauer.

Dora told him Kafka was 19, but she was 25; he was 40 and suffering from tuberculosis. It was love at first sight, and they spent every day of the next three weeks together, making plans to live together in Berlin.

He had just resigned from his post at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute in Prague, his writing career was shaky and his health was precarious. After returning briefly to Prague that September, Kafka moved to Berlin, where he and Dora shared three different flats, living through alarming inflation and material hardship.

Their means were minimal: they had no money for newspapers, at the worst of times they used kerosene lamps for lighting as they could not afford electricity, and the food they ate was often sent by his family in Prague. They used candle stubs to heat their meal on New Year’s Eve, 1924. But still they had dreams: they thought of emigrating to Palestine, and opening a restaurant in Tel Aviv; she was to be the cook and he the waiter.

They continued to live together until tuberculosis of the larynx meant he had to receive hospital care. Dora stayed with him, and she moved in with him at the sanatorium in Kierling near Klosterneuburg, outside Vienna.

At the point of death, Kafka asked Dora’s father for permission to marry her. However, on the advice of the local rabbi, her father refused. Dora remained with Kafka to the end, making sure he had everything he needed. Franz died in Dora’s arms on 3 June 1924.

In a letter to Kafka’s parents, describing their son’s last hours, Dr Robert Klopstock wrote, ‘Who knows Dora, only he can know what love means.’

The funeral at the Jewish cemetery in Prague was Diamant’s first meeting with Kafka’s parents. When the coffin was lowered into the grave, Dora let out an unearthly wail. She lay lifeless on the ground; Kafka’s father turned his back on her, disdainfully. No one dared to move and help her up.

The Jewish cemetery in Prague (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

After Kafka’s death, Dora was blamed for burning Kafka’s papers under his gaze and at his request during his last months of life. But she also kept some of his journals and 36 of his letters to her.

Despite Max Brod’s request that she turn over to him all the Kafka papers she held, Dora kept the letters Franz had written to her.

Max Brod too and many others who held letters and writings by Kafka also chose not to comply with his dying wishes that all his writings should be destroyed. Dora also secretly held on to many of Kafka’s notebooks, keeping them until they were stolen from her apartment, along with her other papers, in a Gestapo raid in 1933.

Max Brod and German Kafka scholar Klaus Wagenbach searched widely for these papers in the 1950s, and since the 1990s they have been sought by the Kafka Project at San Diego State University in California.

Franz Kafka on the cover of a book in an exhibition in the Spanish Synagogue in Prague (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

After Kafka’s death, Dora studied theatre at the Dumont Drama Academy in Düsseldorf in the late 1920s and then worked as a professional actress. She joined the Communist Party of Germany in the 1930s as an agitprop actress. She married the Jewish writer Ludwig ‘Lutz’ Lask (1903-1973), editor of Die Rote Fahne, the Communist party newspaper. She gave birth to a daughter on 1 March 1934, and named her Franziska Marianne after Franz Kafka, who remained the love of her life.

Dora escaped Germany with her daughter in 1936, joining her husband in Soviet Russia. But Lutz Lask was arrested and sent to the Far East during Stalin’s purges in 1937. Dora then left the Soviet Union, travelling across Europe to safety in England just a week before the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939.

However, Dora and her daughter were first jailed in Holloway and then interned as enemy aliens at the Women’s Detention Camp in Port Erin on the Isle of Man. When she was released in 1941, she returned to London and helped to found the Friends of Yiddish, working to keep the Yiddish language and culture alive. She realised a dream she once shared with Kafka when she visited Israel in 1950. In Tel Aviv, she visited her brother David and sister Sarah, the only survivors of the 11 Dymant siblings. The others, like Kafka’s three sisters, were murdered during the Holocaust.

Dora lived in impoverished circumstances in Whitechapel in the East End of London, devoting herself to the dissemination and preservation of Hasidic culture and the Yiddish language. She organised discussions, theatrical performances and recitals, in which she acted, recited and sang. Sadly, she never spoke about Kafka except on one occasion, nor did she publish anything about him, although she left numerous notes behind.

Dora died at Plaistow Hospital in east London on 15 August 1952. She was 53 and she was buried in an unmarked grave in the United Synagogue Cemetery on Marlowe Road in East Ham.

Her daughter Marianne was later diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Police, alerted by concerned neighbours, broke into her Muswell Hill bedsit in 1982 and found her dead. She had starved herself to death. She was 48.

Dora had been shunned by Kafka’s family and was all but forgotten until her living relatives from Israel and Germany – including her only living nephew Zvi Diamant, who was born in 1947 in the release camp at Dachau – gathered at her grave in East Ham for a stone-setting 20 years ago in August 1999.

Her headstone reads ‘Who knows Dora, knows what love means.’

May her memory be a blessing.

‘Who knows Dora, knows what love means’ … Dora Diamant was forgotten until 20 years ago (Photograph: Geoffrey Gillon / Find a Grave, 2009)