Charles Joseph Coughlan was born in 1828/32 in St Finbars Parish in Cork. The evidence suggests his father was John Joseph Coughlan born C 1800 who is listed in Griffiths Valuation with a small farm close to UCC on Magazine Road next to Hayfield Manor. The farm was on the land immediately to the East of Hayfield Manor and is now built up as small houses known as Horgans Buildings. This is mapped in Griffiths Valuation of 1845/7 see no. 10 in the map below. Their farm consisted of 2 acres of land and a House. John Coughlan is listed as being the “immediate lessor” which indicates he was not leasing the land from someone else. He owned it.
The Coughlans home would have been built of stone with a slate roof from the nearby quarry. Their house was just at the edge of the city and would have been surrounded by fields and the lough just a short walk away through two fields. The roads from the outskirts of the city would have had market gardens, nurseries and orchards to cater for the ever-increasing population in the walled city and suburbs.
Following the 1798 Rebellion and prior to 1815, the city was economically and physically growing, after 1815 an economic slump affected the city but the population continued to grow due to the influx of people from harder hit rural areas. Not all of the city’s industries were equally affected by the economic decline of the first half of the 1800s. Shipbuilding, brewing, distilling, tanning and the butter trade still flourished. To give you an idea of what was happening in the area of Bandon Road at the time … UCC was built around 1845-1850, just one field away from the Coughlans. Just a 5 min walk down Bandon Road would have brought them to the start of the houses and cottages that were at the edge of the city.
As far as I can deduce John Joseph Coughlan had five children Charles, John, Margaret, Mary and Dan.
They would have had no running water, no sewage systems and the population in Cork when they had their young family had grown to 80,000 (to put into perspective the population of Cork today is 210k with running water and sewage). The majority of the people in Cork were poor and lived almost exclusively on potatoes. In the years prior to the famine in the 1840s the population of Cork had grown incredibly quickly. There were Cholera and Typhoid epidemics regularly and for example in 1832 it was estimated Cork city housed up to 60,000 paupers living ‘in a state of misery, suffering and destitution’.
When the famine had hit, the winter and spring of 1846-47 witnessed the utmost distress in Cork. This was a period of extreme and debilitating food shortages, spiralling food prices, theft of food and food riots, and a grossly inadequate public works relief programme.
The resident population of Cork City surged with an influx of starving people from the county and further afield who swarmed into the city in search of assistance, “walking masses of filth, vermin and sickness”, as the Cork Constitution described them on April 24, 1847.
Charles Joseph Coughlan would have been about 15 years old at this time.
The government’s response to the failure of the staple food of the poor was grossly inadequate.
In the late 1840s and early 1850s, the people were confronted with a catastrophe of unprecedented dimensions and with morbidity and mortality on a scale never before experienced.
The poorest and most vulnerable were stripped of entitlement and choice. For the more advantaged, there was the option of flight, and some two million people emigrated from Ireland in the decade 1845-1855.
Death and emigration reduced the population of Co Cork from 854,118 to 649,903, or by almost 24%, between the census of 1841 and that of 1851, although the city’s population at the end of the famine increased from 80,720 to 85,745 as a result of the influx of rural migrants.
The demographic impact was the most dramatic and enduring of the Famine’s seismic shocks, but there were others — political, social and economic — that were to rumble for the remainder of the 19th century and into the next.
In June 1855, with the famine behind the Coughlan family, by the time he was 23 years old, Charles Joseph had met and married Honora Barrett (only 19 at the time).
Over the next ten years they moved 500m from the farm next to Hayfield Manor to Bandon Road where they owned and lived in 156 Bandon Road.
Although the family appear to have been well off compared to most, this did not spare them tragedy. Their first ten years seem to have been happy raising their new family. They had four children, Hannah 1856, Mary 1858, William 1860, John Joseph in 1862.
1863 Is the first time we see Charles listed in the Cork City Business directories as a Spirit Dealer. Their premises is listed as 156 Bandon Road. This would have been a pub and also the family home.
Tragically, in 1866, at just 29 years of age when the children were 10, 8, 6 and 4 their mother contracted Typhoid Fever.
They did not know it at the time but Typhus was transmitted by lice which were inescapable in those days. The fever was particularly virulent and all classes were effected. Honora would have suffered a high fever, mental confusion, body aches and a characteristic rash which covers the body and limbs. Death usually occurred from heart failure after around 2 weeks. Honora suffered for 12 days and was only 29 years old when she passed away with her husband by her side on the 4th March 1866.
Her husband Charles was now left with businesses to run and 4 young children with no mother to care for them.
Mary Anne Dawson was married to Charles 5 months later on August 9th 1866. It is possible she may have been a second cousin as her mother and Charles’ possible mother have the same surname (Saunders)
We can only imagine how he was in desperate need of a wife to look after his children and either he thought of her or she was suggested to him. Whatever way their relationship transpired, he appears to have been very fond of her as she is kindly mentioned as his “dear wife” in his will.
Charles and his new wide Mary Anne went on to have a baby Daniel the following year, December 1867. Sadly yet more tragedy befell and he died a few months later in the first quarter of 1868. They did not go on to have any further children.
Charles and Mary Ann and the four children (of Honora) moved from 156 to 150 and 149 on Bandon Road at some time between 1867 and 1872 where they lived until 1883. At this stage the children were Hannah 20, Mary 18, William 16 and John Joseph 14.
Charles was an asthmatic and died in 1883 at the age of 51 from Asthma and Bronchitis. He died in his home at 149 Bandon Road and a Kate Flynn was present at his death. She signed her name as an X as she could not write.
It is interesting to note a few historical things at this point. Where I have mentioned above that the Coughlans owned or lived in various places or premises, they did not actually own them. The Catholic Irish were not allowed to own property in their own right at that time but between 1870 and 1909 this would gradually change. Up to this point the properties they occupied would have been leased from protestant landowners. They could sublet as they did in the case of 146 and 147 Bandon Road listed above.
I have previously added the transcription of Charles’ will to this site. It is available by clicking here.
In summary of his will, he chose his sister Margaret O’Leary (neé Coughlan) and John Hurley, Master Tailor, South Main Street as the executors of his will. They were to look after everything in trust until his children William and John reached the age of 21.
He left the following
no. 146 (let as tenements) to his son William
no. 147 to his second wife Mary Coughlan neé Dawson
no. 148 premises and shed initialy to his sister and then to John when he reached 21
no. 149 the Pub also to his son John
When Charles Joseph Coughlan died at age 51 his children were Hannah 27, Mary 25, William 23 and John Joseph 20. They had lost both parents and although they had a stepmother it seems their Aunt Margaret was a large part of their lives also.
It is at this point we focus on his youngest child, his son John Joseph Coughlan born 1862, who lost his birth mother at age 4 and inherited a pub which he received on his 21st Birthday on May 31 1883 just a few short months after his father passed away .
If you would like to learn more about the famine, I highly recommend the following book Atlas of the Great Irish Famine. Every home should have one!