Who Do You Think You Are - Boy George 25th Jul

[kiterunner]

At 9 p.m. on BBC1, and repeated on Thursday at 11:45 p.m.

[JBee]

Watched it but not impressed unless you had IRA connection.

Didn't find out what happened to his grandmother's siblings or anything much about his family at all.

[Olde Crone]

I confess I have never had much interest in the Irish Troubles. I found this mildly interesting and the human side of it was sad.

I was surprised at the Irish researcher's interpretation of the phrase "the Cruelty Men". She seemed to think it described their actions, but as a child I knew "the Cruelty Men" to mean the men who investigated cruelty to children! After all, their full title was the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children".

OC

[kiterunner]

Episode summary:

Boy George (George O'Dowd) grew up in South London with his four brothers and one sister. His mother Dinah was born in Dublin and his father Jeremiah grew up in England but had Irish roots. Dinah had recently started looking into her family history. She knew that her mother ("Nanny Glynn") was found wandering alone as a child and put into a children's home, but her mother never talked about her childhood. The family knew that Dinah's cousin was hanged with Kevin Barry but wanted to know more about this.

George went to South East London to see Dinah, who showed him some old family photos and a document saying that Brigid Margaret Kinehan ("Nanny Glynn") born on the 9th Jan 1913, resident at 39 Upper Gloucester Street, Dublin, had been found on the 15th Dec 1919 wandering in North Cumberland Street with no means of subsistence and was ordered to be sent to the Golden Bridge Convent in Dublin, certified as an industrial school.

George went to Dublin and met an historian at North Cumberland Street, where he found that Gloucester Street was just round the corner, so that Brigid would have been taken from just outside her home. The historian said that it was quite common at the time for the NSPCC to do this, and that their inspectors were called "the cruelty men" locally.

George went to the Tenement Museum at 14 Henrietta Street in Dublin to see how bad living conditions were like for poor families at the time. He was shown Brigid's birth certificate, which confirmed her date of birth and gave her parents' names as John Kinehan (a labourer) and his wife Kate (Katherine). George was shown an entry in the Indoor Relief Register of the North Dublin Union stating that John Kinehan, age 36, was admitted on the 22nd Nov 1915 for hospital treatment, being discharged on the 13th Dec 1915. George was then shown death certificates for Katherine / Kate, who died in Jan 1922 age 45 of pneumonia, and John, who died 2 Feb 1926 of oesophagal cancer age 41 (this does not fit with him being 36 in 1915.)

George went to the site of the Golden Bridge Industrial School, which no longer stands. He met an historian who showed him the chapel there, and Brigid's school records which had many good reports in the conduct / character column,and showed that she was discharged on the 8th Jan 1929, sent to be a housemaid at a private hospital. A marriage certificate showed that she married Francis (Frank) Glynn, a butcher, the son of Richard Glynn, labourer, on the 3rd Nov 1932.

George went to see his aunt Phyllis in Dublin, who showed him a photo of her grandparents, Richard and Mary Jane Glynn and one of their sons, Richard Glynn jr. She said that Richard sr fought for the British Army in WW1, and that Mary Jane was previously married to Richard's brother, who died in the war. Mary Jane had a daughter from this first marriage, Annie Glynn, who married Thomas Bryan, a Republican who was sent to Mountjoy Prison and executed in 1921 by the British Army and was buried next to Kevin Barry. George was shown Annie and Thomas's marriage certificate from 1920, which stated that Thomas lived at 14 Henrietta Street, so George went back to the Tenement Museum there to see where the Bryan family lived.

The Mountjoy Prison records showed that Thomas Bryan was previously imprisoned there in 1917, age 19, an electrician, arrested for being a member of the Irish Volunteers / IRA. On the 21st Jan 1921 he was found with weapons in Drumcondra ready to attack a police lorry, and was sent to Kilmainham Jail. George went to Kilmainham Jail, which is now a museum, and met an historian who showed him the part of the jail where Thomas would have been held before being transferred to Mountjoy Prison, where Thomas received a death sentence for high treason.

George was shown a letter which Thomas wrote to Richard Glynn on the 25th Feb 1921, which said that he hadn't yet told Annie about the death sentence. He was also shown a poem which Thomas wrote, which mentioned Annie and "the little child", perhaps meaning that Annie was pregnant. Thomas Bryan was hanged on the 14th Mar 1921 at 8 a.m., along with Frank Flood. George went to Mountjoy Prison to see the "hanging house" where they were hanged. They were buried in unmarked graves in the prison garden, but in 2001 the bodies were exhumed and reburied with state honours in Glasnevin Cemetery. George went there to visit Thomas's grave. He was shown the burial record of Thomas and Annie's son Thomas Bryan jr who died of convulsions on the 10th Mar 1921 age 1 day. He was also shown the death record of Annie Christine Bryan who died on the 27th Aug 1930 of phthisis (TB) and he visited her grave.

[kiterunner]

I was surprised at the Irish researcher's interpretation of the phrase "the Cruelty Men". She seemed to think it described their actions, but as a child I knew "the Cruelty Men" to mean the men who investigated cruelty to children! After all, their full title was the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children".


I was going to say the same thing, OC. And we really don't know what Brigid's home life was like before she was put into the industrial school, so we don't know whether it was better or worse. I would have liked them to say whether they found any of her siblings listed in the industrial school records too.

George seemed certain that the mention of "the little child" in Thomas Bryan's poem meant that Annie was pregnant when he wrote it, but it looked as though the next line said the little child would lead them into Heaven, so could it be that he wrote it after hearing that the baby was dead? Or was it referring to something else entirely?

I need to check whether Mary Jane was Francis's mother, as Phyllis seemed to say she was - if her first husband died in WW1 and she then married Richard and had Francis, how old was Francis when he got married in 1932? Was Annie Francis's half-sister, or cousin and step-sister?

[kiterunner]

This is Francis and Bridget's marriage cert:
https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_returns/marriages_1933/08974/5248183.pdf

Both are minors.

And this is Francis's birth registration:
https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/birth_returns/births_1914/01404/1577196.pdf
Born on the 22 Jun 1914. Richard was his father and Mary Jane (formerly Nolan) was his mother, but her first husband can't have died in WW1!

[kiterunner]

Richard Glynn married Mary Jane Glynn, widow, nee Nolan, on the 18th Aug 1907:
https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_returns/marriages_1907/10099/5674127.pdf

[Guinevere]

I'm fond of Boy George but couldn't get interested in this. I dozed off.

[Tilly Mint]

I enjoyed it, would have liked more meat on the bones but the programme is only an hour long. A lot of sadness there at the time.....

[Nell]

I think this summed up family history - start off not knowing much, with a family story which has some truth in it. Yes, life in the industrial schools was probably grim, but maybe your life chances were better than staying in a slum with high mortality rates.

We don't know that Bridget's parents cared about her. Maybe they didn't. Maybe she was playing in the streets, but she seems to have been unsupervised and could have been prey to all manner of abuse. We don't know.

You get the facts - certificates and documents. It's how you interpret them that makes it interesting. After all - IRA are they freedom fighters or terrorists? Martyrs or criminals? It all depends on your viewpoint.

[HarrysMum]

I wonder if Frank Flood mentioned in the show is any relative of a John Flood who was sent to Australia from Mountjoy Prison for being leader of the Fenion movement.
He’s buried not far from where I live. Huge monument and over 3,000 people attended his funeral in 1909.