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Family Fortunes: Hearse wars in Limerick with grandad and his brother Jack

One of the consequences of the brothers’ enmity was ‘the cut-off’

‘It was not unusual for a slow and sombre funeral cortege to find its pace suddenly pick up to the point of a trot, in order to be the first hearse on to Mulgrave Street’

Alan Bray
Thu May 7 2015 - 12:00

In 1913, my grandad Patrick (Pa) and his brother Jack were horse wranglers for the Artillery Regiment at the Military Barracks in Limerick. They were also early members of the Irish Volunteers.

They fell out in 1914 when Jack, with 75 per cent of the Irish Volunteers, responded to John Redmond’s call to enlist in the British army. (Redmond’s rallying cry was: “The freedom of Ireland will be won on the fields of France.”)

Pa stayed behind with the smaller number that believed otherwise, and planned for revolution. Sin scéal eile.

In 1919, Jack came back much as he went out, a private, but with two wounds and the after-effects of gassing. He lost half a finger; as a boy, I always found it amusing how he used the stump to damp down the tobacco in his pipe.

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After the wars, they both got jobs as hearse drivers for different undertakers. Pa drove for Thompsons and Jack for Griffins. One of the consequences of the brothers’ continuing enmity was “the cut-off”.

Thompsons’ funerals (Pa) would leave for Mount St Lawrence Cemetery from St Joseph’s Church. Griffins’ funerals (Jack) would leave from St John’s Cathedral. Their routes would intersect at the junction of Gerald Griffin Street and William Street to head out Mulgrave Street on the “long last mile” to the cemetery.

Normally there was no problem, but on occasion the brothers had similarly timed funerals. Then the right of way became a very serious issue.

Young boys, on the promise of a couple of pennies’ reward for fast information, were sent running to predetermined street corners. Two separate sets of spies were employed, one by each of the brothers. The spies were to advise, by means of simple semaphore, the relative positions of the hearses. Depending on intelligence received, it was not unusual for a slow and sombre funeral cortege to find its pace suddenly pick up to the point of a trot, in order to be the first hearse on to Mulgrave Street.

This left a fuming brother with a stalled funeral in his wake, and many confused, breathless mourners unsure of quite what had happened.

Pa died in June 1967. Jack followed two months later. They were not reconciled.

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