Diocesan News
Register of the Cathedral of St. Fin Barre's, Cork 1753 - 1804
Register of the Cathedral of St. Fin Barre’s, Cork 1753 – 1804 Edited by Alicia St. Leger. Representative Church Body Library, 2008 (ISBN 978-0-9548746-2-9) 436 pp
The deliberate burning of the Public Record Office in the Four Courts in 1922 must rank as one of the greatest acts of philistinism in Irish history. An attempt was later made to excuse the act on the grounds that in burning the records the IRA were trying to extirpate all trace of British “slavery” in Ireland. In fact the great bulk of the records had to do with the lives of ordinary Irish people. From 1876 the law required that parish registers of births, marriages and deaths be deposited in the Public Record Office, and whilst there were some exemptions many of the Church of Ireland’s historical records were there in 1922. Among those destroyed were registers of the Cathedral of St. Fin Barre, Cork, and in particular three volumes covering births, marriages and deaths in the period from 1753 to 1804. But thanks to Dr. Richard Caulfield (1823 – 1887) all was not lost. In the late 1870’s he had meticulously transcribed the contents of the three volumes and this transcription has survived and is the subject of the twelfth and latest volume in the Representative Church Body Library’s parish register series. Launched appropriately in St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral on Mothering Sunday 22nd March by Paul Colton, Bishop of Cork, the book is edited by a Corkonian, Dr. Alicia St. Leger, who in turn has carefully transcribed Dr. Caulfield’s handwritten material into a modern media suitable for publication. By any standard Dr. Caulfield was an extraordinary man, transcribing, editing and publishing a huge range of material. The history and antiquities of St. Fin Barre’s were of particular interest to him and in 1871 he published the Annals of St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral and in 1881 the Handbook of the cathedral church of St. Fin Barre, Cork. He was secretary to the committee that oversaw the building of the new cathedral to William Burges’s sublime design, as well as being a regular worshipper in St. Fin Barre’s and a member of the select vestry. He was particularly fascinated by the archaeological discoveries that were revealed when the old cathedral was taken down and the foundations for the new were being dug in 1865. In her excellent introduction Dr. St. Leger prompts areas of interest and research. The baptisms for example contain many entries for foundlings. As the identity of these abandoned infants could not be ascertained they were given names taken simply from where they were found, with prosaic entries such as Bob Street, Mary Wall, George Field and Timothy Gate. Even the weather seemed to have influenced the name givers as in January 1784 there is a baptismal entry for Bridget Snow and a week later one for Henry Thaw. Occupations are given for many of the entries and these provide a fascinating study for sociologists, and there is an excellent index to help the researcher. Trades range from a strangely named aledraper to woolcombers, and there are many entries for soldiers and mariners reflecting that the Cathedral adjoined a military base and that Cork was an important port in the eighteenth century. Prompted by popular television programmes such as the BBC’s Who do you think you are? (and copied by RTE) along with widening access to information on the internet ,there is huge interest today in tracking one’s ancestors, as well as in researching local and social history. The availability of the material provided by the RCB’s growing library of published parish registers is a treasure trove indeed for all researchers, amateur as well as professional.
Rev. Peter T Hanna
Innishannon, County Cork