Bringing the bodies home: JJ Murphy and the ‘Pickled Earl’

The monument to Lady Eva Constance Aline Bourke (1858-1940), Countess of Dunraven, in Saint Nicholas’ Church, Adare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

I was in Saint Nicholas’ Church, Adare, Co Limerick, last week to preach at the Harvest Thanksgiving Service.

Throughout this beautiful church, there are many monuments to the Wyndham-Quin family of Adare Manor, Earls of Dunraven. One monument recalls, Lady Eva Constance Aline Bourke (1858-1940), who became the Countess of Dunraven when she married Windham Wyndam-Quin (1857-1952), the 5th Earl of Dunraven.

Lady Eva was born in the Chief Secretary’s Lodge in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, now the residence of the US ambassador. She was the elder daughter of Richard Southwell Bourke (1822-72), the 6th Earl of Mayo, a former Governor-General of Mayo, who became known as the ‘Pickled Earl’ due to the circumstances surrounding his state funeral.

A similar funeral story involves Jeremiah James Murphy (1795-1851), who died in Pisa. He was part of a prosperous and adventurous merchant family in Cork involved in the Murphy distillery in Cork. His family members included John Murphy (1772-1847), Bishop of Cork, the Biblical scholar, the late Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (1935-2013), whose obituary I wrote for The Irish Times, and the late Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor (1932-2017), former Archbishop of Westminster.

The death of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor last month [1 September 2017] reminded once again of the story of JJ Murphy’s funeral.

I told the story of both Victorian funerals last year in ‘Bringing the bodies home: JJ Murphy and the ‘Pickled Earl’,’ which was published as Chapter 40 in Death and the Irish: a miscellany, edited by Salvador Ryan (Dublin: Wordwell, 2016), pp 151-154.

Palmerstown House, the former home of the earl of Mayo. Photo: Patrick Comerford, 2016

Bringing the bodies home:
JJ Murphy and the ‘Pickled Earl’

Patrick Comerford

Air travel has reduced the stress when grieving Irish families have to arrange to bring home the bodies of loved ones who have died on foreign shores but want to be buried in their native soil.

It was not so easy in Victorian days, though, and families either had to accept someone was going to be buried overseas and or had to find innovative, sometimes even irreverent, ways to bring home the bodies for burial.

Jeremiah James Murphy (1795-1851), of Lota Park, Co Cork, came from a prosperous and adventurous merchant family in Cork who lived in Ringmahon House. His father, James Murphy, with two of his brothers, established the Murphy distillery in Cork, while his uncle, John Murphy (1772-1847), was Bishop of Cork.

Jeremiah’s nearest brother, John James Murphy (1796-1883), led an extraordinary life. As a teenager, John sailed the South China Seas and supposedly fought at the Battle of Trafalgar. In his 20s he went to Canada and become a frontiersman for the Hudson Bay Trading Company. While he was in Canada, John was elected chief of a tribe and became known as ‘The Black Eagle of the North’. He returned to Liverpool in the 1820s to go into the family business, went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Rome in the late 1830s, then studied for the priesthood, and eventually became Archdeacon of Cork. When he died, he was buried in the Murphy family plot in Carrigrohane.

That spirit of adventure rubbed off on John’s elder brother, Jeremiah, who was in his 50s when he went on the grand tour of Italy. During that tour, he died in Pisa on 29 November 1851. But getting his body home to Ireland proved difficult for his family because the sailors at Naples feared taking the coffin would on board would bring them bad luck at sea. The Murphy family proved resourceful, however, and outwitted the Italian sailors by putting Jeremiah’s body in an upright piano which they then shipped back to Ireland. He was buried almost two months later, on 18 January 1852 in Carrigrohane, Co Cork – still in the upright piano. His widow Catherine (Bullen) lived on until 1872, and his sons set up James J. Murphy’s Brewery in Cork in 1854. The descendants of this branch of the Murphy family include Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and the Biblical scholar, the late Jerome Murphy-O’Connor.

Richard Southwell Bourke (1822-72), of Palmerstown House, Co Kildare, was the sixth earl of Mayo. He was murdered in India in 1872 and is buried in Johnstown Churchyard, near Naas, Co Kildare. He is known as the ‘Pickled Earl’, since his body was preserved in a vat of rum on the long journey back to Ireland following his assassination.

Bourke was born in Dublin in 1822 and educated at Eton and Trinity College Dublin. He was descended from the de Burgo family; his great-grandfather, Joseph Deane Bourke, the third earl of Mayo, was the Church of Ireland bishop of Ferns and Leighlin (1772-82) and archbishop of Tuam (1782-94); and his grandfather, Richard Bourke, was bishop of Waterford and Lismore (1813-32).

A Celtic cross marks the earl of Mayo’s grave in Johnstown, Naas, Co Kildare. Photo: Patrick Comerford, 2016

From 1849, Richard Bourke was known as Lord Naas, a courtesy title in his family. In County Kildare his tenants saw him as a good landlord, and during the famine he attended public meetings and supported the Dublin Central Relief Committee. After travelling in Russia, he entered politics and was elected Conservative MP for Kildare in 1847, and later sat as MP for Coleraine, Co. Derry.

He was three times chief secretary of Ireland (1852, 1858-9 and 1866-8), and in 1867 he succeeded his father as the sixth Earl of Mayo. Two years later, he became the Viceroy and Governor-General of India in 1869. Before leaving for India he gave instructions that should anything happen to him his body was to be brought back for burial in Johnstown.

In India, he was known for his reforming legislation. He consolidated the borders of India, reorganised finances so that a budgetary deficit was turned into a surplus, planned widespread irrigation, built roads and railways, undertook India’s first census, and founded Mayo College, since known as ‘India’s Eton’.

In 1869 he negotiated a close alliance with the Emir of Afghanistan, Shir Ali Khan, to offset Russia’s influence in the region. But while he was visiting a convict settlement at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, he was attacked by an Afghan convict, Sher Ali Afridi, who murdered him with a knife on 8 February 1872. His dying words were words of forgiveness.

Lord Mayo’s partially-embalmed body was shipped home to Ireland, but in order to delay decomposition, his body was placed in a rum-filled cask … and so he became known as ‘the Pickled Earl’. To add spice to the story, when the cask was opened the body was there but there was no rum. Had it leaked out? Had it evaporated? Had it been drained off by the crew?

After a state funeral in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, Lord Mayo was buried on 26 April 1872 in Johnstown churchyard. He is commemorated by the large Celtic cross in Johnstown and the ‘Mayo Window’ at the east end of the North Aisle in St Patrick’s Cathedral. There is a statue to him too in the Cumbria fishing town of Cockermouth, where he was MP before he went to India.

His son, Dermot Bourke (1851-1927), seventh Earl of Mayo, became a member of the Senate of the Irish Free State. While he was a senator, Palmerstown House was burned by the IRA in 1923.

Apart from Mayo College, there are Mayo Halls in Allahabad and Bangalore, and a Mayo Hospital and a Mayo School of Arts in Lahore.

● Bringing the bodies home: JJ Murphy and the ‘Pickled Earl’ was first published as Chapter 40 in Death and the Irish: a miscellany (ed Salvador Ryan), Dublin: Wordwell, 2016, pp 151-154.

Talking about the ‘Pickled Earl’ and bringing the bodies home on ‘The History Show’

Palmerstown House, near Johnstown, the family home of the Earls of Mayo outside Naas, Co Kildare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

I have contributed two essays to a new book on death and the Irish, which has been edited by my friend and colleague, Salvador Ryan, Professor of Church History in Maynooth. Death and the Irish: a miscellany is published by Wordwell, and is being launched next week [10 November 2016] in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. I was interviewed by Louise Dervin in Christ Church Cathedral and Saint Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, yesterday about these chapters for The History Show, presented by Myles Dungan and which goes out on RTÉ Radio 1 at 6.05 p.m. this evening [30 October 2016].

In one chapter, ‘Bringing the bodies home,’ I tell the story of the difficulties faced by the families of Jeremiah James Murphy and the 6th Earl of Mayo when it came to bringing their bodies home after their tragic deaths abroad in the 1850s and the 1870s.

Air travel has reduced the stress when grieving Irish families have to arrange to bring home the bodies of loved ones, but it was not so easy in Victorian days. Families either had to accept someone was going to be buried overseas and or had to find innovative, sometimes even irreverent, ways to bring home the bodies for burial.

Jeremiah James Murphy (1795-1851), of Lota Park, outside Cork, was in his 50s when he went on the grand tour of Italy. He died in Pisa on 29 November 1851, but getting his body home to Ireland proved difficult for his family. The sailors at Naples feared taking the coffin on board would bring them bad luck at sea. The Murphy family, however, out-witted the sailors by putting his body in an upright piano which they then shipped back to Ireland. He was buried almost two months later on 18 January 1852 in Carrigrohane, Co Cork ... still in the upright piano.

Richard Southwell Bourke (1822-1872), of Palmerstown House, Co Kildare, was the 6th Earl of Mayo. He was murdered in India in 1872 and is buried in Johnstown Churchyard, near Naas, Co Kildare. He is known as the ‘Pickled Earl’ since his body was preserved in a vat of rum on the long journey back to Ireland following his assassination.

When he became the Viceroy and Governor-General of India in 1869, .he gave instructions that should anything happen to him his body was to be brought back for burial in Johnstown. He was visiting a convict settlement in the Andaman Islands when he was attacked by an Afghan convict, Sher Ali Afridi, who murdered him on 8 February 1872. His partially-embalmed body was shipped home to Ireland, but in order to delay decomposition, his body was placed in a rum-filled cask ... and so he became known as the ‘Pickled Earl.’

To add spice to the story, when the cask was opened the body was there but there was no rum. Had it leaked out? Had it evaporated? Had it been drained off by the crew?

The memorial window in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, commemorating Richard Burke, 6th Earl of Mayo, and his murder in India (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

In my second contribution to the book, I tell the story of ‘Abide with Me,’ one of the most popular funeral hymns in the English-speaking world. It is said to have been a favourite of a wide range of people, from George V to Gandhi, it was played by the band on the deck as the Titanic was sinking, and Nurse Edith Cavell repeated its words as she faced her firing squad. Since 1927, this hymn has been sung at every FA Cup Final in Wembley.

This perennially popular funeral hymn was written as he was dying by a priest of the Church of Ireland, the Revd Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847). Although born in Scotland, Lyte was brought to Ireland, and was educated in Portora and Trinity College Dublin.

After his ordination, Lyte’s first appointment was as curate of Saint Munn’s Church, Taghmon, Co Wexford. He described his 18 months in Taghmon as a ‘dreary curacy.’ Taghmon was too remote from town life, and he bemoaned the loss of ‘the comfort, the society and the carelessness’ of constant intrusions, the long dinner parties, and the time he had to give to neighbours and parishioners.

But the spiritual outlook and religious values of the unhappy curate were changed as he watched the death of a neighbouring rector, the Revd Abraham Swanne, and took over his duties in the parish of Killurin, on the banks of the Slaney, between Wexford and Enniscorthy.

Lyte’s health never recovered fully after his experiences in Taghmon and Killurin. In September 1847, he preached his farewell sermon, on the subject of the Eucharist, returned to his vicarage and that evening wrote ‘Abide with Me.’ The hymn is marked in part by Lyte’s experience of comforting the dying Abraham Swanne, who kept repeating the words ‘Lord, abide with me.’

Lyte died in Nice on 20 November 1847 and was buried in the English Cemetery there. He is commemorated by plaques in Saint Munn’s Church in Taghmon, Co Wexford, but ‘Abide with Me’ is his greatest memorial.

The History Show seeks to bring the past to life and to explain ourselves to ourselves, searching out fresh angles on familiar topics, with informative, reflective, stimulating and entertaining radio. It is broadcast on Sundays from 6.05 p.m. on RTÉ Radio 1.

Henry Francis Lyte’s first appointment was as curate of Saint Munn’s Church, Taghmon, Co Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

A mediaeval churchyard and the grave of a murdered viceroy

Lord Mayo’s grave and the old churchyard in Johnstown, Co Kildare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

In recent months, I have been working on two chapters to a book on death in Ireland. The book is being edited by my friend and colleague, Professor Salvador Ryan of Maynooth, and I am writing about stories of death in the Irish way associated with the hymn writer Henry Francis Lyte and with the 6th Earl of Mayo.

This afternoon, two of us went to the village of Johnstown, north of Naas, Co Kildare, to photograph Lord Mayo’s grave and the old churchyard where he is buried.

Johnstown is just 2 km north of Naas, off the N7 at junction 8, and about 25 km from Dublin City Centre. It is close to racecourses like Naas, Punchestown and the Curragh ad so the surrounding countryside is the heart of the bloodstock industry, with many well-known Kildare stud farms.

The Main Street was once part of the main road between Dublin and Cork and Limerick. The main road eventually by-passed Johnstown in 1964 When the Naas Dual Carriageway was finished in 1964, Johnstown was bypassed, and Johnstown became a sleepy village.

But in recent decades Johnstown has been encircled by housing estates, so that it has become a commuter town too.

There is evidence of human activity in the area from early times, and the “holed” stone in a field at the southern end of the village is said to be astronomically aligned to the mid-summer solstice.

But this afternoon I was in search of the ruins of the mediaeval church. From the Middle Ages, this was a priory of the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John of Jerusalem, or the Knights of Rhodes, who give their name to the village, which was known in Irish as Fraoch Oileán.

The knights’ regional headquarters or commandery was at nearby Kilteel, and they also had an abbey in Naas.

Nearby Palmerstown takes its name from pilgrims who visited the Holy Land and brought sprigs of palm as a token of their pilgrimage or, perhaps, after a family named Palmer.

Palmerstown was one of the properties held by the Knights Hospitallers in Ireland and confirmed by Pope Innocent III in 1212.

Thomas Hibernicus of Palmerstown was living in the Monastery of Aquila in Italy in 1270. His major work was a collection of flores or “flowers) of wisdom” from nearly all the then European Doctors of Philosophy or Theology. His book became a reference work and was reprinted many times in the following centuries.

The octagonal base of a mediaeval baptismal font within the walls of the ruined church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The Flatsbury or de Flatebry family owned Palmerstown as early as 1286, although the knights held on to the church at Johnstown. The old church has a number of mediaeval fragments, including a ruined piscina, the octagonal base of a mediaeval baptismal font, and a flat stone slab with carved with coats of arms representing the Wogan and Flatsbury families. This has been taken to be the grave slab of James Flatsbury who married Eleanor Wogan in 1436.

The grave slab of James Flatsbury and Eleanor Wogan, who were married in 1436 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

In 1503, Philip Flatsbury, a scholar and scribe, compiled The Red Book of Kildare for Garret ‘Og’ Fitzgerald, 9th Earl of Kildare. This book, which lists documents relating to the Fitzgerald estates, went missing after the Rebellion of ‘Silken Thomas,’ 10th Earl of Kildare, but is now in Trinity College Dublin.

The church has been in ruins since the 16th century, but continued to be a burial place for the Bourke family, Earls of Mayo. There are Bourke graves throughout the churchyard but it is best-known for the grave of the 6th Earl of Mayo, the viceroy who was killed in India in 1872.

In the 1641 Rebellion, James Flatesbury took the side of the Confederates, and his estates including Johnstown and Palmerstown, were confiscated. They were later granted to Theobald Bourke, third son of John Bourke, a Captain of Horse under the Duke of Ormond in the Confederate Wars. He had settled in Kill but moved to Palmerstown around 1688. He was the Sovereign (Mayor) of Naas in 1700, 1711 and 1724.

His nephew, John Bourke, acquired the titles of Lord Naas (1776), Viscount Mayo (1781) and Earl of Mayo (June 1785). Joseph Bourke, Archbishop of Tuam, succeeded as the third Earl of Mayo before he died in 1807.

The estate cottages in Johnstown built in the ‘Gothic Revival’ style in the 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The charm of the village is enhanced by the estate cottages built in the ‘Gothic Revival’ style in the 19th century, and they are mentioned by William Makepeace Thackeray in his Irish Sketchbook in 1842.

The most famous member of the family was Richard Southwell Bourke (1822-1872), 6th Earl of Mayo. He was born in Dublin on 21 February 1822 and was known in earlier life as Lord Naas, and was the Chief Secretary of Ireland on three occasions between 1852 and 1866.

In 1868, the Disraeli government appointed him Governor-General and Viceroy of India, but he was assassinated there in February 1872. Before leaving for India he had chosen a place for his grave in Johnstown, and he is buried within the walls of the ruined church, under a Celtic cross.

The Celtic Cross and grave of Lord Mayo within the ruined mediaeval church in Johnstown (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

After his death, the government decided that a new Palmerstown House should be erected at public expense in his honour. The next owner of Palmerstown was Dermot Robert Wyndham Bourke, who was 21 when his father was assassinated and who succeeded him as 7th Earl of Mayo. In 1891, he was instrumental in convening a meeting in Palmerstown that led to setting up the Kildare Archaeological Society.

The seventh Earl of Mayo was appointed to the new Senate by the first Irish Free State Government in 1922. His house was burned down during the Civil War in January 1923. Lord Mayo received compensation and the house was re-built, and he lived in one of the gate lodges on the estate until the house was rebuilt. He moved to England soon after and died in a nursing home in London in December 1927.

Palmerstown House and stud were sold to WJ Kelly, a gentleman’s outfitter in Clanbrassil Street, Dublin, who was known to his friends as ‘Trousers’ Kelly. He established Palmerstown as one of the leading studs in Ireland.

Opposite the old churchyard, the Johnstown Inn was once a busy coaching stop. The first inn was built on this site in the 1640s, during the Confederate wars. It became known as the Mayo Arms and the Cork mail coach was stopped there and burned at the start of the 1798 Rising. In the 19th century, it was the meeting place of the Kildare Hunt. More recently, it was known as the Osta John Devoy.

From Johnstiown, we drove out into the countryside, through the stud farms and the open fields, past the racecourses at Punchestown and Naas, before eventually arriving in Newbridge, where we stopped for double espressos in the café at Newbridge Silverware.

Bourke family graves in the churchyard in Johnstown (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)