onto the O'Rorke's

Now over to my mother’s side, Mary O’Rorke is my mother’s name, she was born in Lady Lane, Waterford city in 1927, she was one of three sisters, the other two being Patricia (1926) and Brighid (Breeda, 1929). They were born to Michael O’rorke (1876-1929) and Bridget Cooke (1896-1948).                                                                                                          Firstly, I shall talk about my mother, sadly her mother passed away when she was two, and things went slightly downhill for her and her two sisters. According to what I have been told, their mother, Bridget, after the death of her husband, moved back up to her family home, Kilmacow, county Kilkenny, but she had hit upon hard times and was unable to support her three daughters. Apparently Michael had left money to the church, and the at this point the three girls were sent to live in convents in county West Cork, Mary and pat in Clonakilty and Breeda in Kinsale. They all grew up here and at around the end of the war, they all moved over to England, I can only really speak of my mother’s journey, I know that initially she moved to Wales, but eventually ended up in London. In the meantime, Bridget, her mother had moved to Bournemouth, with a friend called Winnie Maloney, also from Kilkenny. They worked within the hotel industry, and Bridget was working as the chef in the Eastcliffe hotel there. She also remarried to a man named Taylor, but little is known of the marriage, and if there were any offspring. Around the latter part of 1948 her husband died, and she became ill, she called upon her daughters, who were contacted via the convent in Clonakilty, and they spent sometime with her, before her departure, once again, like most family stories of the time and before, there is much speculation, which I am not going to elaborate in any way, as to not get into trouble with anyone. Bridget passed away the day prince Charles was born, and is now buried in Bournemouth. Mary and her two sisters worked mainly around nursing and domestic work, and all ended up in London in the 1950’s. Incidentally, Pat has been very helpful in what she has given me in the line of information about the O’Rorkes and Cookes.  Mary met my father, whom together they had four children in the same home, not long after they married, and had five more children together, and generally lived around the Battersea and Clapham areas of London, they even moved out to Australia for a couple of years, but  it didn’t work out, so they came back to Battersea, unfortunately this marriage ended up in divorce in the 70’s. Mary continued to live in the family home until the 90’s, but is now residing elsewhere in Battersea.

Pat O'Rorke

Going back into her ancestry, her father Michael was born in 1876 in Vicarstown, county Laois, he was one of at least six children, of Thomas O’Rorke and Mary Heraghty, Thomas was a policeman, so he got redeployed quite regularly, so all his children, at least the ones I know of are born all over the place. Mary, his mother, I am to believe that she was from the Vicarstown area.

Her mother, Bridget was born in Narrabane, Kilmacow, County Kilkenny. She was one of at least eleven children of John Cooke and Joanna Kelter, both from farming families.

I shall talk about the genealogy of these people in my next blog.