Kathleen's family background

Martin Kilbane (a postman, died 6 April 1924, aged 63) had five children by his first wife. They were Mary, Brigid, Kathy, Anne and Julia. By his second wife, Brigid, generally known as Biddy (née Boyle, died 10 October 1948, aged 77), he had seven children: Patrick, Johnnie, Nellie, Margaret (who died young), Rosie, James and a second Margaret.

Patrick, the eldest child, was born in Cloughmore, Achill Island, Co. Mayo, on 12 March 1901. In due course he went to work in Scotland as a builder's labourer, and there met Mary Campbell, from Dooniver, Achill.

Mary was born 3 July 1905 to John Campbell, a farmhand, and Annie (née Campbell). She had a brother, Paddy, and a sister, Catherine. Mary was regarded as the most beautiful girl on Achill. While in Scotland she entered several beauty contests, one of them when she was expecting her son, Martin. But from an early age she was prone to ill-health.

Against the wishes of her family, who thought their daughter could do better for herself, Mary married Patrick Kilbane in St John’s Catholic Church, Perth, on 15 Nov 1926. After their marriage they lived in 1 High St, Perth.

When Mary was expecting her first child, Brigid Ann, she returned to her family home in Dooniver, where the child was born on 1 January 1927. After the birth Mary returned to Scotland, where another daughter, Mary Rose, was born 4 September 1928. Mary Rose just lived to the age of four, when she died of TB. She was a beautiful child and won several prizes for her looks.

It was said that her death deeply affected Patrick, and was very likely the cause of his excessive desire for drink, though some suggest that alcohol was causing a problem even before that event.

On 14 December 1931 Martin was born, like Mary Rose, in the Royal Infirmary in Perth. After his birth Mary again returned to Dooniver. But a serious quarrel with her father over her plan to return to Scotland led her to move to Cloughmore where she lived with Patrick's mother, Biddy. She remained on Achill until 1933. When she decided to return to Scotland Biddy begged her not to do so, for the sake of her already fragile health. Whenever she was in Scotland her health was poor, but in Achill it improved. But she could not be persuaded to stay.

This time Brigid Ann remained on the island, with her grandmother. When Mary was leaving, 6-year-old Brigid Ann said to her, “I'll never see you again.” The unusual remark remained in her memory throughout her life, and would also be remembered by a neighbour.

Back in Scotland, Mary's last child, Kathleen, the central figure of this story, was born in the Royal Infirmary, Perth, on 8 September 1933. By this time Mary's health had deteriorated, and she spent about 3 years in a TB sanatorium some miles outside Perth. Patrick would take the bus out to visit her each week. It was during this time that Kathleen was born. Because of Mary's illness, a woman was employed to mind Martin and baby Kathleen. Mary died 10 ]une 1936.

Martin and Kathleen were sent to live with aunt Nellie in Dundee for a number of months, but she had 5 children of her own. Their father then put the children in Smylum convent, in Lanarkshire, outside Glasgow. For the first three years he paid for them there. Then payment ceased.

He himself moved south into England, eventually losing contact with the family. Later they learnt he had been in Hull, and then moved to Croydon, London, where he lived the rest of his life in boarding houses.

In 1941, Martin, aged 10, returned to Cloughmore, to live with his aunt ]ulia. He had been happy in the orphanage and didn't want to leave. Known in Achill as Scottie, because of his accent, he was very fond of his mother's people, and visited them each Sunday, in spite of Julia’s wishes. He left Achill when he was 17, and went to live in Croydon.

At one stage aunt Brigid wanted to take Kathleen out of the orphanage, but her father wouldn't allow it. It seems it was just contrariness on his part. Beginning about 1941, when she was 14, Brigid Ann spent from ]uly to November each year working near Edinburgh, picking potatoes, etc. She visited Kathleen a number of times in the orphanage, sometimes with a friend or two.

In 1945 she took Kathleen to live with her in Edinburgh for some months. While she was working in the fields Kathleen remained in the house with the foreman’s wife, also from Achill.

That December Kathleen went home with Brigid Ann and lived with her elderly granny Kilbane. Granny couldn't speak any English, but Kathleen learnt to speak with her in Irish.

It was the school teacher, Master Quinn, who first noticed Kathleen was unwell and told Brigid Ann. She took Kathleen to the local doctor, Dr Donnelly, who sent her to Castlebar hospital for an x-ray. The young hospital doctor told her, without any preliminaries, that Kathleen had 13 months to live. For many years after that, Brigid Ann hated passing the hospital in Castlebar.

It was aunt Julia who told granny the x-ray results after Brigid Ann had returned to Scotland. People's dread of TB at that time can be understood when we remember that an entire family could be wiped out by the disease.

On 12 July 1946, an ambulance arrived and carried Kathleen the sixty or so winding and bumpy miles to the sanatorium, which she was never to leave again. During her time there some nuns from the orphanage in Scotland came to visit her. Twice Brigid Ann was called home because Kathleen was on the verge of death. When she did die it was aunt Julia, who had the post office a few yards up the road, who received the telegram from the sanatorium.

Kathleen died on 7th October 1947. She was buried in a white coffin, made by her uncle Johnnie. The day of her funeral the rain poured down. On 10 October 1948, just a year after the death of Kathleen, granny Kilbane died, “of a broken heart", said Brigid Ann.

About 1948, at a dance in Edinburgh, Brigid Ann met a man from Achill who asked her which of the Kilbanes she was. When she told him, he replied, "I was drinking with your father in Croydon last week.” She got her father's address from him and wrote to him.

Almost immediately he came to Scotland to visit her and resumed contact with his family. He had not known that Kathleen had died. At the end of the season Brigid Ann decided not to return to Achill, but went to Croydon to be near her father. She worked as a ward orderly in Caine Hill mental hospital for 6 years. In Croydon, she met her future husband, Kevin. Her father gave her the deposit for their house. The couple returned to Ireland in 1959.

Patrick. Kilbane died in Croydon 20 July 1982 and was cremated. By a strange coincidence, both he and Bro Conway were born in the same year (March 1901) and died in the same year (1982).