Obituary: Katie Hamilton, Ardraghy
The social history of our communities and our own personal family histories have become increasingly important to us in recent years. Television programmes, online resources and the growth of local history groups guide us and encourage us to seek out the past.
This month my grandmother died at the age of 101 years. She was witness to many social changes – umpteen taoisigh, prime ministers, priests, popes and monarchs; the discovery of penicillin; the invention of the television, the computer and microwave oven; and two world wars to name but a few. Looking back on her life, however, it seems that she lived amidst this social revolution yet kept her sights set firmly on the one thing that mattered to her throughout: her family.
Born on 29th December 1908 in Ardraghy, Co. Donegal, Ireland, wee Katie Hamilton’s welcome to the world was heart wrenching. Her mother, Mary-Anne (nee McLoone), died in childbirth and only a few weeks later Katie and her two year old sister, Brigid, were taken into the care of the Sisters of Nazareth in Derry.
It would have been more typical for children in their position to have been placed in the local workhouse but her family were committed to their Catholic faith and chose to make the sacrifice of sending their children over fifty miles away so that they might be cared for by the nuns. There she grew up, according to the census of 1911, surrounded by other ‘inmates’, children like herself, the elderly in need, and society’s vulnerable. She learned to be a housemaid and on the occasions that dignitaries visited she would be called upon to entertain with her Irish dancing skills.
Unlike her parents she could not speak or write Irish, but only a few weeks ago was able to remember the tune and some of the words of the prayers she had learned in Irish as a small child. She left the nuns with a lifelong religious devotion, which was to be a loyal friend to her in times of sadness. Katie’s first job paid only room and board. Her second was more generous rewarding her with a pair of shoes after six months. Katie spent that night trying on the shoes as it was the first time she had been the first owner of a pair of shoes in her life.
Although separated from her family Katie did not lose touch with her father, James, who made the trip to visit her and Brigid regularly. In the years that followed James remarried and when Katie was sixteen she left Ireland for London so that she could work to help support his new daughters, Mary and Nellie. She never saw or heard of Brigid again. Miss Kathleen Hamilton took up a position in the household of the Fullers, of Fuller, Smith & Turner brewery in Chiswick, London. Over the next decade she married James Triplett, became a mother to her two daughters, Margaret and Kathleen, and spent some time in Yorkshire with James’s family. By the end of the war she had lost James and returned to London and was supported by the Sisters of Nazareth in Hammersmith in bringing up her children. She enjoyed her daughters greatly, always aware that despite their closeness in age, they were far apart in character, Margaret more carefree and fragile and Kathleen more independent and strong.
When asked recently about her experience during the war, Kathleen replied, ‘you just got on with it, made the best of it!’ Her feelings towards war and conflict had been formed many years earlier. As a child growing up at the height of tensions in Ireland, the brutality of war touched her personally. One afternoon while playing with another child, she was startled by the sound of a missile crashing through the window of their room. She looked around to find her playmate dead. Even then Kathleen recognised that no cause was worth such brutality and she prayed for peace in the world every day since.
Eton College
By the 1950s the family had drifted towards Windsor and even her younger sister Mary had been able to join them thanks to Kathleen finding her a job. Kathleen worked at both Caleys, a prestigious department store in fabrics and soft furnishings, and at Eton College as a housekeeper. With both daughters now married she soon found herself an active grandmother to ten children. Despite her own strict upbringing she knew how to have fun with them. She taught them how to play cards, allowed them to hide out at her house when they were bunking off school and took them on day trips on which she was always the first to start the singing and usually the last to stop. As time went on she watched them build families of their own and supported them with her prayers and no-nonsense advice when it was needed. She relished her role as great grandmother and in the last couple of years became a great-great-grandmother twice.
As the years crept by she became more restricted to home but maintained her feisty independence and determination, always frustrated that she couldn’t physically do more. The deterioration of her eyesight was a brutal blow to her as she had been an avid reader all her life, but she stoically filled that time listening to her Irish dancing music or saying her prayers. She enjoyed the company of her television and was, on occasion, known to be abrupt with visitors who dared to call while Countdown was on. She was aware of the big news items in the world but not particularly interested in them and rarely made critical comments about the people making the news (although she did often remark that there was really no need for Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link, to be quite so rude!) Her joy lay in the visits and phone calls from her family and she looked forward to each with great anticipation. She even learned how to use a mobile phone in her one hundredth year so that she could keep in touch with those she loved.
Happy
Deteriorating health after her one hundredth birthday convinced Kathleen that she should no longer live alone and she moved into residential care. She was extremely happy there and for the first time in years had company when she wanted it. She continued to enjoy the support of her Catholic priest and community and this was always a great source of strength to her. She often expressed concern that her life was so long because she was living the life that her own mother had lost in childbirth; she wondered if she’d done enough to make her proud. Nonetheless she found her frailty a major source of irritation and frequently wished that her body still matched her mind which was that of the sixteen year old girl from Donegal who came to Chiswick. In spite of her difficulty she never lost her sense of humour or her willingness to have fun and recently commented that ‘being 101 is very hard but if I could just make it to 102, I think I’ll be fine!’ Incredibly, despite living in England for over 85 years her Donegal accent remained as strong as it had ever been.
Kathleen passed away on 1st September having received the best care possible. She spent the morning quietly with her daughters, Margaret and Kathleen, her grand-daughter Lauren and her great-great grand-daughter Soraya before slipping away. She is survived by a large family made up of the Reader’s from Eton Wick and the Cann’s from Burnham. She will be sadly missed but left behind many wonderful memories and an example of kindness, generosity and spiritual strength. She never questioned the hand that life had dealt her but we have often wondered what became of the rest of her relations. Was there a reason the McLoone family didn’t take the girls or keep in touch with them? Are there McLoone’s or Hamilton’s left in Donegal who would want to know about her? If anyone would like to know more about this wonderful woman, we would be delighted to tell you some of her story for she was a great blessing to all of us.
For contact information e-mail: michael.daly@donegaldemocrat.com
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Tuesday 22 May 2012
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