ANZAC soldiers from Clare in World War 1: NAA site

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Paddy Casey
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Patrick Blake, possibly Dublin Metropolitan Police

Post by Paddy Casey » Fri Dec 30, 2011 11:35 am

pwaldron wrote:I suspect it's a Dublin Metropolitan Police uniform; he was born in 1883, so possibly a bit young for the Boer War. I've sent our police history expert Jim Herlihy a copy for his thoughts.
Hi Paddy,
Here is a clip from that photo you posted. I've Photoshop-ped it to bring out the detail on the cap badge. The Photoshop-ping has produced artefacts, as expected with an old photo of this type, but it shows significant detail in the image. Specifically, one can more easily see the harp in the middle and the outline of the crown on the top.
Patrick Blake cap badge.jpg
Patrick Blake cap badge.jpg (43.1 KiB) Viewed 13725 times
And the image of a DMP cap badge at http://www.irelandinformationguide.com/ ... HP_WEB.png looks very similar.

Paddy C.

pwaldron
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Re: ANZAC soldiers from Clare in World War 1: NAA site

Post by pwaldron » Fri Dec 30, 2011 5:09 pm

I got some new information about Patrick Blake yesterday. In order to verify it, I would like to find out the precise dates on which he travelled from Kilrush to Australia. I suspect he arrived in Australia not long before he enlisted on 15 Oct 1915. Can any Australian reader of this forum suggest where I should look for relevant passenger lists?

pwaldron
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Re: ANZAC soldiers from Clare in World War 1: NAA site

Post by pwaldron » Fri Dec 30, 2011 5:37 pm

Paddy C - It's amazing what you can do with Photoshop! Many thanks. Could Photoshop pick up any details of the two medals which are invisible to the combination of my poor eyesight, a magnifying glass and the original photograph?

katrina
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Re: ANZAC soldiers from Clare in World War 1: NAA site

Post by katrina » Sat Dec 31, 2011 12:22 am

Paddy, unfortunately the on-line index of passenger arrivals in Queensland State Archives only goes up to 1912.
http://www.archives.qld.gov.au/research ... ration.asp

I did a search on ancestry.com and came up with this likely match:
Patrick Blake
age 29
Birth year abt 1886
Place of Origin: County Clare Ireland
Ship name: Limerick
Port of Departure: London
Port of Arrival: Queensland
Arrival date: 31 March 1915
Original data: Queensland State Archives, Series ID 13086, Registers of Immigrant Ships' Arrivals, Rolls M471, M473, M1075, M1696–1710.

From the information listed at the AIF Project, (see earlier post) it would seem that he travelled alone, leaving wife & children in Kilrush.
Hope this is helpful!

pwaldron
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Patrick Blake - journey to Australia

Post by pwaldron » Sat Dec 31, 2011 1:57 am

Thanks a million, Katrina. That certainly looks like him.

It's a pity the record doesn't include the date of departure from London.

Does anyone know how long the London to Queensland ship journey would have taken in 1915?

I hoped I would find the Limerick at
http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/descr ... hipsL.html
but it's not listed.

\pw

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Patrick Blake - DMP medals

Post by pwaldron » Sat Dec 31, 2011 2:18 am

Information received from Jim Herlihy:

Patrick Blake's service number: DMP 10577.
Patrick Blake's brother-in-law: Patrick J. Breene, DMP 11236
Patrick Breene's sister's brother-in-law: Michael Houlihan, DMP 10297.

The Houlihans and Blakes were neighbours in Killard and the Breenes lived in the neighbouring townland of Glascloon.

The medals that the Constable in the picture is wearing are
(from left to right), the 1900, Queen Victoria Royal
Visit to Ireland Medal and the 1903, King Edward VII
Royal Visit to Ireland Medal. Both are in bronze with
shamrocked suspensions and both would have had the
rank and name and D.M.P. on the edges.

They were awarded to the RIC & DMP who were on duty
along the route of the Royal Visits. A 1911, King George V
Royal Visit to Ireland Medal was also issued in silver.
However it had no shamrocked suspension bar and the ribbon
was dark green in colour with a red stripe on both edges.

I attach the images of the two medals.

As Patrick Blake was still at home on the farm in Killard for the 1901 census, I don't understand how he would have qualified for the 1900 medal.

Now I'm starting to worry that the photograph may have been misidentified and may be of Mick Houlihan, who was in the DMP before 1901. I think I've found him in the 1901 census:
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/p ... d/1324769/
There are two Claremen enumerated under their initials M H in different barracks in Dublin, aged 23 and 25, but as Mick's father was a noted Irish scholar, I'm assuming Mick Houlihan is the Irish speaker aged 23, and that he may have forgotten that he turned 24 four days before the census!
Attachments
1903VisitMedalConstCJKelly.jpg
1903VisitMedalConstCJKelly.jpg (51.24 KiB) Viewed 13715 times
1900 QueenVictoriaVisitMedal.jpg
1900 QueenVictoriaVisitMedal.jpg (56.33 KiB) Viewed 13715 times

Paddy Casey
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Re: ANZAC soldiers from Clare in World War 1: NAA site

Post by Paddy Casey » Sat Dec 31, 2011 11:20 am

pwaldron wrote:Paddy C - It's amazing what you can do with Photoshop! Many thanks. Could Photoshop pick up any details of the two medals which are invisible to the combination of my poor eyesight, a magnifying glass and the original photograph?
I just tried with the two medals, Paddy, but their images are very bleached and highly pixelated (the latter because, clearly, you couldn't have posted a hi-res scan of the whole photo; it would have been at least 100mb in size and thus un-postable). If you could post (or send me) a high-resolution scan of just the medals that might eliminate the pixelation and I could have a shot at those.

Paddy C.

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Re: ANZAC soldiers from Clare in World War 1: NAA site

Post by pwaldron » Tue Jan 03, 2012 3:10 pm

Many thanks to Paddy Casey for his efforts to Photoshop the medals and to Chris Goopy for sending me offline lots of further suggestions for tracing Patrick Blake's emigration to Australia.

The ancestry.com data on the 1915 voyages of the Limerick is very confusing. There are 496 records with various combinations of Port of Arrival and Arrival Date, including:

Queensland 31 Mar
Brisbane 19 May
Brisbane 24 May
[blank] 24 May
Brisbane 29 May
Townsville 3 Dec
Maryborough 8 Dec

Putting the month abbreviation in the Keyword(s) field in the search form suggests that here are 206 names on the March list, 240 on the May lists and 52 on the December lists. But that adds up to 498, not 496!

Many passengers appear on both the March and May lists, and some appear twice on the May lists.

My hunch is that the ship left London on 31 Mar and arrived in Brisbane on 19 May, but that it took the immigration authorities 10 days to process all the new arrivals. Is seven weeks a reasonable voyage time for 1915?

This looks like our man's departure record

Name: Patrick Blake
Age: 29
Birth Year: abt 1886
Place of Origin: County Clare, Ireland
Ship Name: Limerick
Port of Departure: London, England
Port of Arrival: Queensland
Arrival [sic] Date: 31 Mar 1915

and this his arrival record:

Name: P Blake
Ship Name: Limerick
Port of Departure: London, England
Port of Arrival: Brisbane
Arrival Date: 29 May 1915

Adding to the confusion is the fact that Patrick Blake was a married man, travelling without his wife and children, but his fellow passengers included another Blake family, comprising mother and three children, travelling without the father!

Rachel MacPherson Ord (b. Sunderland, England, 1877 Q1, dau. of William Ord; d. Queensland 7 Jul 1954) m. (1898 Q2 Sunderland) Tom Nicholson Blake, a coal miner, and had Sarah (b. Abt Jul 1900), William (6 in 1911), Thomas (4 in 1911) and a child who died before 1911. Mother and three surviving children sailed on the Limerick in 1915 with the unrelated married Irishman Patrick Blake. They appear once in the March list and twice in the May lists.

In Electoral Rolls for Queensland > 1919 > Capricornia > Mount Morgan > B > 4, Rachel McPearson Blake is listed at James st., and Thomas Nicholson Blake, miner, at Rockhampton rd. By 1925, both were living at James st.

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Re: ANZAC soldiers from Clare in World War 1: NAA site

Post by pwaldron » Thu Nov 05, 2020 3:12 am

Nine years later, I've finally found some of Patrick Blake's descendants for whom I have put together more information on him on my Facebook profile.

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