Search Results for 'Loughrea Workhouse'

With smallpox sufferers in make-shift refuges such as out-buildings, rooms in the Loughrea barracks, and in sheds outside Dr Leonard’s home, all hopes are placed on the ready-made iron hospital ordered from Messrs Braby and Co. London. The hospital was to accommodate 12 patients, but already within five weeks of the first case being reported in Athenry, there were 20 cases of smallpox, three of whom had died.

On March 2 1875, the medical officer of the Athenry Dispensary District, Dr WJ Leonard, wrote an urgent letter to the Local Government Board (LGB) in Dublin, regretting to report a ‘very bad case of smallpox’ which had come into his district the previous day. He briefly described how it was discovered:

In 1831 Patrick Broderick, from Loughrea, was charged with insurrectionary crimes at the Galway Assizes, and cruelly sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a criminal colony ‘beyond the seas’ in New South Wales, Australia. He was barred from ever returning to his native land. His wife Mary, son John and daughters Ann and Catherine, were left destitute on the infamous Clanricarde estate, one with more than 2,000 tenants.