School: Birr (Mercy Convent)
- Location:
- Birr or Parsonstown, Co. Offaly
- Teacher: Sr. Flannan
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0821, Page 186
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Birr (Mercy Convent)
- XML Page 186
- XML “Local Happenings”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- Local Happenings.In the year 1881 Birr was visited by a great plaque. It was known as the cholera.Two brothers named Smith came to reside in High St, Birr. They started a drapery business. A woman named Mrs. Bergin from Killyon about 4 miles from Birr purchased blankets in their shop and brought them to her home. Immediately the epidemic began to spread in the district beginning in her home, then in Birr. The two brothers themselves were the first to die, they only lived two or three days in the town. (It was said that the germ of the disease was in the blankets and other stuffs which they brought to this shop). Some say that these two brothers were buried in "Bully's Acre" (See "Old Graveyards") before they were dead at all.The epidemic spread rapidly and people died in great numbers, and as in the days of the Famine, a big hole was dug in this old cemetery and the(continues on next page)
- Informant
- Mrs Dooley
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 80
- Address
- Crinkill, Co. Offaly
