A final farewell to my aunt – An Irishman’s Diary on the tragic death of James Connolly’s daughter Mona

As a grandson of James Connolly, I was very interested to read an article in History Ireland 12 years ago – by Lorcan Collins, Shane Mac Thomáis and Conor Kostick – about the tragic death at the age of 13 of his daughter and my aunt, Mona Connolly.

In autumn 1903, James Connolly, then the father of six children, emigrated to New York. If he had hoped for work as a printer for the US Socialist Labor Party, he was disappointed, and only after moving inland to his cousin’s home in Troy did he find work as an insurance collector. It took some time for him to save up enough money to rent a house and send back shipping tickets to his family, but in summer 1904 they were ready to join him.

On the last day before departure Mona, the eldest daughter, and her sister Ina, were sent to a house of a friend, “Aunt” Alice, on the other side of Dublin, because the cramped Connolly home in the Liberties was overcrowded with friends and well-wishers.

Mona did not like the idea of deserting her mother on her last day in Dublin and said so, but as an obedient daughter she did as she was told. When she discovered that the washing in the friend’s house had not been done, she decided to do it. The largest saucepan available was filled with articles of clothing and hot water and put on the floor. She then removed the ring cover on top of the range and stooped down to lift the saucepan, which she held with her apron. Unfortunately the apron became caught under the saucepan and caught fire. Mona was quickly engulfed in flames. She tried to douse the fire under a water tap in the small back garden but as she bent down she only exposed her breast and neck more to the flames.

Her screams drew the attention of a neighbour who tried to put out the fire as best he could and then took Mona to hospital. Meanwhile “Aunt” Alice and her husband had arrived home. How would she tell Mona’s mother, Lillie Connolly, waiting at home with her other children to leave for New York, about this catastrophe? Taking little Ina in their arms, they crossed town again to break the terrible news to Mrs Connolly and then brought her to the hospital to see her firstborn child, in Ina’s subsequent words, “lying unconscious, all wrapped in bandages, with her dreams she never lived to see come true, in a sleep she would never come out of”.

Glasnevin Cemetery records confirm that Mona Connolly died of burns in Drumcondra Hospital on Thursday, August 4th, 1904. She was buried two days later. Her mother’s address is given as 54 Pimlico. The bitter poverty that the family lived in at that time is revealed by the fact that Mona was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave, plot number JL 174. The Connolly family took the ship to America the following week.

While I and my family knew about this tragic story, we were not aware until this article a hundred years later that she was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in an unmarked grave.

I set off for Glasnevin to see for myself, and sure enough the office staff confirmed that Mona was buried in grave No JL 174 in St Patrick’s Section. What a dismal and upsetting scene confronted me when I found the burial place – a patch of rough, unattended ground, unmarked by any vestige or indication that a young woman who was my aunt lay there, forgotten and unacknowledged by the family for over a century. I was overcome by feelings of dismay and guilt.

As I thanked the staff for their helpful service and turned to leave, a thought struck me: “Who owns the grave?” The reply surprised and disturbed me: “We, the Prospect Cemetery, Glasnevin, own that grave site . . . and, by the way, it has been up for sale for some time.”

That sent shivers down my spine: that it might become the property of complete strangers, and no memorial stone or inscription would ever mark the place where Mona lay. As far as I was concerned, it was a Connolly grave, and in due course must be marked accordingly by an appropriate headstone and inscription. I promptly purchased the grave.

For family reasons, a start was not made on the memorial to Mona until early 2013. On September 21st of that year, 22 members of the Connolly family gathered at the grave, where a headstone and a grave cover had been erected. From the beginning of the project, I was haunted by the thought that Mona might have been buried hurriedly, without the customary valediction of family and friends, and without the presence of a priest giving the final rites of her Church. I resolved to redeem that awful neglect by having my friend Msgr Tom Stack present to perform the burial rites of the Catholic Church and to sanctify Mona’s memorial headstone and grave with a blessing of holy water. This final farewell left our gathering with the happy thought and hope that Mona at last truly rests in peace.

James Connolly, born in 1923, is the oldest surviving grandchild of the 1916 leader James Connolly. He joined the Defence Forces in 1943 and served with distinction until his retirement as Brigadier General of the Air Corps in 1984.