Jeanie Johnston, Irish Emigration Museum, 14 Henrietta St

The first two activities of my day today shared a common theme, Irish emigration. The Jeanie Johnston is a replica of a ship of the same name that, among other primary purposes, transported people from Ireland to North America during the famine. It’s anchored in the River Liffey immediately across the street from my hotel. I visited that first.

The Irish Emigration Museum is located immediately beside my hotel. I visited that next.

Unrelated to Irish emigration, I also paid a visit to 14 Henrietta Street and did some walking around.

Jeanie Johnston

The Jeanie Johnston
The Jeanie Johnston

The replica of the Jeanie Johnston (the original sank on a cargo run after its days as an emigrant ship) offers 50-minute guided tours of the ship, with live commentary about the ship and its time as an emigrant ship. Being right across from my hotel, I took the first tour of the day, at 10:00 a.m., without overly challenging my aversion to moving quickly in the morning. (See the introduction to yesterday’s post for more information about that aversion.)

Here’s everything I remember from the guide’s commentary. (However, keep in mind my usual caveat about my poor memory.)

The ships that transported emigrants from Ireland to North America during Ireland’s Great Potato Famine weren’t built as passenger ships. They were cargo transport ships crudely converted for transporting passengers on their Ireland to North America voyages and then converted back to cargo ships for trips in the other direction.

Diseases, including cholera and typhus, wracked those ships while carrying emigrants. On most of the ships, the death rates among passengers on the six-week voyages ranged from 20 to 70 percent, with an average of about 30 percent.

The reasons for the high death rates were manifold. For one, most of the ships locked passengers below deck for the entire journey. Because of all of the disease, captains worried that passengers mingling with the crew would spread disease to the crew, dooming the voyage. Many captains allowed passengers up on deck only to carry up dead bodies and throw them overboard.

Being confined to a very crowded enclosed space meant that if disease was present, it spread rapidly.

Not getting any exercise for six weeks other than carrying dead bodies didn’t help either.

In addition, because the ships were cargo, not passenger ships, they didn’t have toilets below deck. Buckets served that purpose. The buckets stayed below deck and slopped around in the rolling seas. That resulted in a lot of cholera, along with what likely became an almost unbearable stench.

And, beyond the buckets, sanitation in general was lacking.

Finally, impersonal corporations owned most of the ships. Their primary motivation for transporting emigrants was profit. Consequently, they skimped on rations for the passengers, leaving them with little nourishment and strength to fight off disease.

Because of the high death rates on most of these ships, people commonly referred to them as “coffin ships.” And that’s the usual epithet for them today when discussing their history.

The Jeanie Johnston Difference

The Jeanie Johnston was different. A businessman, whose name I forget, owned it. But in addition to being a businessman, he was also a humanitarian. He hired as captain a relative he could trust to also treat people humanely.

In addition, he hired someone to fill a position that many of the ships didn’t include on their voyages, a doctor. The owner hired the best doctor he could find. But because the doctor would earn much less than he could have made at a hospital, he took the job because he, too, was a humanitarian.

The guide mentioned the names of the captain and doctor, but I forgot those too. You can likely find them on the internet if you’re interested. A little research won’t kill you. At least, it probably won’t. You never know.

Bunks on the Jeanie Johnston
Bunks on the Jeanie Johnston

You can likely also find the names on the internet even if you’re not interested, but you’d have less incentive to do so. But never mind that.

Germ theory wasn’t conceived yet, but the doctor had experience on another ship that suffered considerable disease. He learned a lot from that experience about how diseases spread.

Instead of locking passengers below deck, the doctor not only allowed, but required that they come up regularly for fresh air and exercise. He also required that, every time they came up top, passengers took up and emptied the toilet buckets. As part of the cleaning regimen, they regularly carried up bedding, including mattresses, and shook them out to get rid of the insects that caused typhus. And rations still weren’t great, but they were better than on the other ships.

The doctor’s caution began even before the voyage got underway. He examined all passengers before boarding. If they showed signs of disease, their fare was refunded and they were denied passage on that sailing.

As a result of these measures, the Jeanie Johnston held the distinction of being the only one of the emigrant ships during the famine that didn’t have a single death on any of its sixteen emigration voyages.

Oh, about those passenger inspections I mentioned above, no captain on the emigrant ships would knowingly take a heavily pregnant woman on one of the crossings. The conditions on board wouldn’t allow for a delivery that would be safe for either the mother or baby. And even if the mother and baby survived the labour, the conditions would have made it difficult to keep the newborn alive during the voyage.

Before one of the Jeanie Johnston’s voyages, a woman who was already obviously very far along in her pregnancy presented herself for boarding. When the doctor examined her, he found that she wasn’t just pregnant, she was in labour.

The doctor took her on board where he had his medical supplies. He delivered a healthy baby boy. The doctor then asked the captain and owner to make an exception and let the mother and baby make the voyage. They agreed.

On the way, the crew supplemented the mother’s rations with some of their own, which were richer in protein, so the mother would be better able to produce milk to feed her baby. Both mother and child survived the voyage and went on to live healthy lives in the United States. Lest there be any doubt, good people do exist. Or at least a few existed back then.

The mother was so appreciative that she named the baby after the doctor. And the captain. And the owner. Oh, and the crew. The poor kid had 17 or 19 (I forget which) names.

When the Jeanie Johnston first opened as a museum they didn’t know about all of those names. Their research turned up only three. But some time later, a relative of the boy (I might be misremembering, but I think she was a great-granddaughter) took a tour of the ship and told them about all of his names. She also gave them some pictures of him later in life. The pictures are on display on the ship today.

The Canadian Connection

Whenever the Canadian news media reports on any global news, if the story includes a Canadian element, no matter how minor the angle and how tenuous the connection to Canada might be, they feel the need to report on it. Typically they blow it massively out of proportion relative to the broader context.

Seriously. If a major disaster occurs somewhere else in the world, killing and injuring hundreds of people, and just one of the injured lived in Canada for a brief period of their life, Canadian media will include at least a couple of paragraphs, and often more, on that in every report about the event.

I exaggerate only slightly.

It seems I lack an immunity to that disease. I can’t help mentioning the Canadian connection to the Jeanie Johnson. In my defence, it is neither minor nor tenuous.

The original Jeanie Johnston was built in Quebec City by a Scottish immigrant to Canada. During the years when it wasn’t used as an emigrant ship, it primarily transported lumber from Quebec to England (Ireland was part of England at the time) and other goods back to North America. During the Great Famine in Ireland, it still transported lumber from Quebec to England, but it carried emigrants in the other direction.

EPIC, The Irish Emigration Museum

EPIC, Irish Emigration Museum
EPIC, Irish Emigration Museum

The “EPIC” in the title of this section isn’t a hyperbolic comment by me regarding the quality of the museum. I’m not saying, for example, “Yeah, man, it’s epic!” Instead, “EPIC” is part of the official name of the museum.

I’m not sure, but I think it’s the name of the building that houses The Irish Immigration Museum. The building was the first fireproof warehouse in what used to be major dock lands in Dublin.

Today, the ground floor of the building has some shops (including, but not exclusively, the museum’s gift shop) and cafés, along with a lot of tables and chairs.

The museum is in the basement and occupies 20 rooms. Each room has stone-block walls and an arched brick ceiling.

The exhibits in the rooms mostly take the form of videos and interactive video displays, as well as some static text panels. They tell the story of people who emigrated from Ireland. Some of those stories speak in generic terms of the reasons people left, where they went, what they did, and how they influenced the world. Others tell specific stories of real individuals.

Those personal stories included famous people, such as Presidents of the United States and other foreign senior politicians, as well as ordinary folk. In most cases, and all of the U.S. presidents, the leaders in other countries are second-, third- or more-generation immigrants to their countries. Most of the common folk, on the other hand, were direct immigrants from Ireland.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember as many of the details from this museum as I do from the Jeanie Johnston. At least three reasons explain that. First, unlike the information at the Irish Emigration Museum, the commentary at the Jennie Johnson was given in-person by a guide. Second, the commentary on the Jeanie Johnston followed a single thread. The displays at the Irish Immigration Museum, in contrast, had a common theme—emigration from Ireland—but the information was much more disjointed within that theme. And, third, I keyed some notes into my phone almost immediately upon leaving the Jeanie Johnston. I didn’t do that after leaving the Irish Immigration Museum.

It’s not that I don’t remember any information from the Irish Immigration Museum. Beyond the general gist of the displays, which I do recall, I also remember three specific things. I know why I remember two. But why I remember the third is a mystery to me.

First, the one of which I don’t know why it stuck in my mind. It’s this: In the 1700s, several Irish wine merchants emigrated to France. By 1770, all of the major wine merchants in Bordeaux were Irish. That’s why some French wines and liqueurs even today bear Irish names. For example, “Hennessy,” as in Hennessy Cognac, is an Irish name.

As to the two items for which the reason for my remembering them is clear to me, I alluded to that reason in the section above on the Jeanie Johnston. You’ll spot it when it comes around.

The first of them is a factoid. It’s this: In the 1800s, 60 percent of Canada’s immigrants came from Ireland. (Or, because Canadian confederation occurred in 1867, I assume that includes the British colony that became Canada.) I already knew that a lot of immigrants back then were Irish, but I wouldn’t have guessed that the proportion was that high.

A video of an emigrant from Ireland to Toronto telling her story.
A video of an emigrant from Ireland to Toronto telling her story.

The other thing I remember wasn’t a factoid, but one of the emigration stories. It was told by a woman who lived and got married in Belfast during The Troubles. (I’m not qualified to talk about the relationship between Ireland and Northern Ireland. And I worry that I’d ignite another civil war if I tried. So let’s move along quickly.)

With The Troubles raging, many people were killed around the couple. They decided that the only way their marriage, and even their lives, could survive was to emigrate.

Their welcome to their new country involved the front tires of their plane blowing out on landing at Toronto Pearson Airport. Despite the fear that the experience instilled, they still live in Toronto, my hometown. Throughout most of her video clip, she spoke in front of a Toronto skyline backdrop. There’s no escape for me.

14 Henrietta Street

Henrietta Street
Henrietta Street

Henrietta Street was the first street of Georgian homes in Dublin. Today, number 14, serves as a museum. To visit it, you must take a tour that lasts about an hour and a quarter. As you can guess, I did.

The tour guide imparted her wealth of relevant information as she took visitors through the house. In a few rooms (four if I remember correctly), she also played short videos, mostly projected on walls. However, the video is projected on a bed with a white mattress in one room.

Surprisingly, I didn’t forget everything I heard.

A builder named Luke Gardner built Numbers 13 through 15 Marietta Street in the late 1740s. The Right Honorable Richard, Lord Viscount Molesworth and his second wife Mary Jenney Usher became its first occupants. (Okay, I didn’t remember the names. I had to resort to the museum’s website for those.)

During those days, the rich and powerful lived on Henrietta Street and the surrounding neighbourhood during the winters. The street emptied during the summers when the occupants decamped to their summer homes.

14 Henrietta Street
14 Henrietta Street

That changed with the passing of the Union Act between Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. That resulted in the dissolution of the Irish parliament in Dublin. With the dissolution of parliament, the reason for many of the rich and famous to be in Dublin vanished. So they left.

New owners divided the Georgian homes into tenement apartments for the middle class, and then the poor, of Dublin’s rapidly expanding population. Large families often lived in single rooms in the houses. At one point, 100 people lived in 14 Henrietta’s 17 apartments.

Most of the landlords didn’t take care of their buildings. The buildings became rat-infested, disease-ridden, and decrepit. Some collapsed, killing a few people.

An antique bed at 14 Henrietta Street
An antique bed at 14 Henrietta Street

We’re talking history here, but not ancient history. Fourteen Henrietta remained a tenement until the late 1970s. Other tenements in the neighbourhood remained until the 1980s.

Today, most of the rooms in the museum don’t have any furniture, although the carved mouldings at the top of the walls remain. One room has an antique bed (the one with the video projected on the mattress).

The guide spoke of the owner of that bed. I don’t remember most of the details, other than that he was an obstetrician and delivered many of the babies in the tenements during his years there.

In the museum, the bed has a single mattress on it. However, the backboard has an undecorated lower section that indicates that the mattresses would have been much higher back in the day. The guide explained that, back then, the bed had three mattresses on it. The lower one was stuffed with straw, the middle one with horsehair, and the top one with feathers.

Piled on top of each other, the mattresses were so high that the guide likes to imagine people taking a running leap to get up on it. But, she explained, most people didn’t sleep lying down on the mattress. They slept sitting up, often on pillows on the floor. They likely had beds just so they could brag about having beds.

A dining table at 14 Henrietta Street
A dining table at 14 Henrietta Street

Apparently, people then believed that sleeping sitting up was better for their health. (Tuberculosis was a big killer in the neighbourhood at the time.) The guide also said that there are some unconfirmed stories that people didn’t like sleeping lying down because it seemed too much like the position in a coffin.

Another room at the end of the tour contains a lot of antique furniture and furnishings. Some were from 14 Henrietta Street, others were from elsewhere in the neighbourhood. Some of the former were from a woman who used to live in 14 Henrietta. She visited the museum and donated some of her stuff to it. According to the guide, that woman died three years ago.

Speaking of the guide, she spoke very passionately about 14 Henrietta Street, the neighbourhood, the people there, and, particularly, the great tribulations of the tenements. Her mother lived in one, so it was personal for her.

Wandering Around

I experienced some rain today, but the wind was slight so my umbrella provided adequate shelter.

Most of the major attractions of Dublin are on the south side of the River Liffey. But I spent all of today on the north side, where my hotel is.

It’s a more than 20-minute walk from the Irish Emigration Museum to 14 Henrietta Street. On the way back to my hotel, I intentionally looked at Google Maps only for a general sense of direction, not for a specific route so I could do a little more exploring.

Much of the various neighbourhoods that I saw on my walks today are quite workaday, but there are a few lively pedestrianized shopping streets that are very enjoyable. One of those streets has a Marks & Spencer store that must be more profitable than the one on Grafton Street that I saw the other day. This one could afford a sign that spells “Marks & Spencer” out in full (in addition to “M&S”), rather than just “M&S.”

Unlike the one on Grafton Street, this one didn’t advertise a rooftop patio café on the top or any other floor. (If you didn’t read the post that mentioned the other M&S, you won’t get that.)

Don’t ask me why, but I didn’t think to take any photographs on my walks today. It’s probably because one of my hands held an umbrella. The upshot is, that this post is light on images. Sorry about that.

So concludes another enjoyable day in Dublin. I still have another couple of days to come before I move on.


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