The Life Story of an Old Rebel | Page 2

our race has
shown more determination and enthusiasm in the cause of Irish
nationality. As a rule the Irish of Great Britain have been well
organised, and, during the last sixty years and more, have been brought
into constant contact with a host of distinguished Irishmen--including
the leaders of the constitutional political organisations--from Daniel
O'Connell to John Redmond.
I have taken an active part in the various Irish movements of my time,
and it so happens that, while I know so little personally of Ireland itself,
there are few, if any, living Irishmen who have had such experience,
from actual personal contact with them, as I have had of our people in
every part of Great Britain. As will be seen, too, in the course of these
recollections, circumstances have brought me into intimate connection
with most of the Irish political leaders.
My father came to England in one of the sloops in which our people
used to "come over" in the old days. They sometimes took a week in
crossing. The steamers which superseded them, though an immense
improvement as regards speed, had often less accommodation for the
deck passengers than for the cattle they brought over.
Most of the Irish immigration to Liverpool came through the Clarence
Dock, where the steamers used to land our people from all parts. Since
the Railway Company diverted a good deal of the Irish traffic through
the Holyhead route, there are not so many of these steamers coming to
Liverpool as formerly.
The first object that used to meet the eyes of those who had just "come
over," as they looked across the Clarence Dock wall, was an effigy of
St. Patrick, with a shamrock in his hand, as if welcoming them from
"the old sod." This was placed high upon the wall of a public house

kept by a retired Irish pugilist, Jack Langan. In the thirties and forties
of the last century, up to 1846, when he died, leaving over £20,000 to
his children, Langan's house was a very popular resort of Irishmen,
more particularly as, besides being a decent, warm-hearted,
open-handed man, he was a strong supporter of creed and country.
I am old enough to remember hearing Mass in what was an interesting
relic in Liverpool of the Penal days. This was the old building known to
our people as "Lumber Street Chapel." Of course, the present Protestant
Church of St. Nicholas (known as "the old church") is a Catholic
foundation. Lumber Street chapel was not, however, the first of our
places of worship built during the Penal days, for the Jesuits had a
small chapel not far off, erected early in the eighteenth century, but
destroyed by a No-Popery mob in 1746. St. Mary's, Lumber Street, too,
was originally a Jesuit mission, but, in 1783, it was handed over to the
Benedictines, who have had charge of it ever since. Father John Price,
S.J., built a chapel in Sir Thomas's Buildings in 1788. I can recollect
this building since my earliest days, but Mass was never said in it
during my time.
Lancashire is the only part of England where there are any great
number of the native population who have always kept the faith. I once
spent a few weeks in one of these Catholic districts. My employer had
an alteration to make in the house of a gentleman at Lydiate, near
Ormskirk. I used to come home to Liverpool for the Sundays, but for
the rest of the week I had lodgings in the house of a Catholic family at
Lydiate.
There was an old ruin, which they called Lydiate Abbey, but I found it
was the chapel of St. Catherine, erected in the fifteenth century. The
priest of the mission had charge of the chapel which, though unroofed,
was the most perfect ecclesiastical ruin in Catholic hands in South
Lancashire. During the time I was at Lydiate there came a Holiday of
Obligation, when I heard Mass in the house of a Catholic farmer named
Rimmer. This was a fine old half-timbered building of Elizabethan
days, and here, all through the Penal times, Mass had been kept up, a
priest to say it being always in hiding somewhere in the district.

The priest in charge of Lydiate at the time I was there told me he was
collecting for a regular church or chapel, and hoped soon to make a
commencement of the building. Some years later he was able to do so.
Our church choir at Copperas Hill, Liverpool, was then considered one
of the best in the diocese. The choirmaster and organist, John
Richardson, was a distinguished composer of Catholic church music,
and held in such high esteem that, for any important celebration, he
could always secure the services of the chief members of