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A bilingual event is being held in Newry this weekend in commemoration and celebration of the life of Walter Cahill, (1890-1903), a schoolboy who drowned in Newry Canal on 13 May 1903.
The event will be held Sunday 19 May at 3pm on the Carlingford Lough Greenway at the Albert Basin (opposite Dromalane). All welcome but children must be accompanied by an adult and all are asked to wear bright clothes.
A single wildflower wreath will be laid on the canal bank in the name of the extended Cahill famity (including Patterson, Ruddy families etc) but if attendees want they may bring safe wild flowers (bluebells, dandelions, daisies etc - No toxic or potentially harmful plants such as foxglove, hemlock) to cast on the surface of the water.
Walter Cahill was a 12 year old schoolboy, the youngest child of a family of 15 born to Caroline and Dan Cahill, who had travelled from Yorkshire to settle in Newry where Dan had taken a job as a "tenter" in a local linen mill. It was a highly skilled and well-paid job which involved stretching the reams of linen by means of hooks carefully posiitioned.
Dan, though English born was a fervent Irish nationalist who always hung a picture of Robert Emmet on a wall of their tiny terraced housed in Quay St. Caroline (née King) was an English woman who converted to Catholicism when she married Dan; she remained a loyal English subject who kept a portrait of Queen Victoria as a counterpoint to Dan's picture of Robert Emmet. They had 15 children several of whom died in infancy. Walter was the youngest.
Event organiser Brian Patterson recalls that his grandmother Kathleen Patterson née Cahill (1873-1962) related that the Cahills had a "double-burner" oil-lamp with two wicks, a rare luxury which cost a full guinea (21shillings, one pound and one shilling,) whereas the single burner lamps which were the norm in working class Newry homes cost ten shillings and sixpence (10/6d), or 52 and a half pence in today's money.
1902 was a dreadful year for the Cahills. Dan died "in the mouth of Christmas" after a painful gastronolic ailment possibly stomach cancer. He was in his sixties. Caroline was left a widow with two lads still in the house, Michael a working lad of 16 and Walter, the baby of the house, a schoolboy, just 12 and the apple of his mother's eye.
In those days school leaving age was 14 and for Walter who was not a particularly studious lad it could not come soon enough. On Friday the 8th of May 1903, for some offence or omission Walter was subjected to a savage and brutal beating by a lay teacher in the "Carstands" Christian Brothers school he attended.
Brian's Grandmother told him that he got 12 slaps with a leather strap on the back of each hand. She said his hands swelled to twice their normal size. In those days teachers were seldom challenged. Had Walter's father been alive he might have questioned his son's treatment. Caroline, recently widowed, simply was not fit to challenge the teacher.. Indeed she may have felt he had done something to deserve it.
Be that as it may Walter never stood in the school again. On Monday 11 May 1903 Walter was sent to school as usual. He did not arrive. Rather than turn right at the end of of the Quay to head to school, Walter turned left to head to the cantilever railway bridge on the Warrenpoint road which crossed the Clanrye river, carrying the train to Dublin Bridge station and thence to Edward St. Station, Banbridge, Portadown, Lisburn and Belfast.
Walter walked up the tracks to the station and thence to Albert basin. Soon he was on the "Middle Bank" in the May sunshine, free from the brutality and boredom of the dusty and claustrophobic classroom. Brian adds "I like to think Walter watched the seagulls swooping over the silver water, the swans cruising like galley ships, blue and orange dragonflies skimming the surface an occasional fish jumping to catch errant flies or midges. Butterflie and Bees feasting on whin blossoms, buttercups and piss-the-beds. Idyllic."
It was not to last though. By Wednesday Walter's untypical absence had been noticed. A pupil was sent with a note to the Cahill household informing Caroline of her son's non-attendance.
Horrified Caroline asked Walter's 16 year old brother, Michael where Walter might be. Michael knew Walter liked to wander by the canal. Though late for work, he was dispatched to find and retrieve the young truant.
