Don't you just love it when people get ultra-parochial in their responses to the Census question about place of birth?
Margaret Sullivan with her 'Tower Hill' and the Tomkins's with their "Maiden Lane", for example, were very helpful.
And now we have a blind hawker named Thomas Foggarty revealing in 1891 that he had been born in 'East Smithfield'. He could have said 'Wapping' (I think) or even just 'London', but no, he names the very street in which he was born. And that street was just a short walk away from the Roman Catholic chapel in Virginia Street where, in June, 1854, a child named Thomas Fogarty was Christened. His parents were recorded as William and Ellen (nee Driscoll).
Then in 1861 we find a dock labourer named William Fogarty and his wife, Ellen, living with their 7-year-old son in Royal Mint Street, still within the same Irish enclave at the western End of the Ratcliffe Highway where certain familiar Sullivan, Barnett and McCarthy families at one time or another lived.
I'm hoping that one of our more technically gifted colleagues will post a map showing how close E. Smithfield, Virginia Street, Royal Mint Street, Blue Anchor Yard and NE Passage were.
Margaret Sullivan with her 'Tower Hill' and the Tomkins's with their "Maiden Lane", for example, were very helpful.
And now we have a blind hawker named Thomas Foggarty revealing in 1891 that he had been born in 'East Smithfield'. He could have said 'Wapping' (I think) or even just 'London', but no, he names the very street in which he was born. And that street was just a short walk away from the Roman Catholic chapel in Virginia Street where, in June, 1854, a child named Thomas Fogarty was Christened. His parents were recorded as William and Ellen (nee Driscoll).
Then in 1861 we find a dock labourer named William Fogarty and his wife, Ellen, living with their 7-year-old son in Royal Mint Street, still within the same Irish enclave at the western End of the Ratcliffe Highway where certain familiar Sullivan, Barnett and McCarthy families at one time or another lived.
I'm hoping that one of our more technically gifted colleagues will post a map showing how close E. Smithfield, Virginia Street, Royal Mint Street, Blue Anchor Yard and NE Passage were.
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