A Grave Case

New Year’s day 1895 was to be Margaret Whelan’s last.  The 95 year old shopkeeper from Firhouse, had until recent months continued to live there and continued to run her small shop.  Overtaken by a tedious illness, she had lately been brought to the hospital of the South Dublin Union.  There she passed, in no small degree of discomfort, her final days.  On her expiration, the usual notifications were sent out- to her daughter Mrs. Nolan and to a nephew, both residing in Firhouse. 

Everyone agreed 95 years was a very great age, and who would wish for longer if it was to be spent in the Union?  On Thursday Mrs. Nolan went to the hospital and paid for a coffin and a hearse.  The following Saturday the funeral took place with a removal to the graveyard at Tallaght. The heavy and frosted ground had been hard dug on that January morning, with the breath of the gravediggers visibly rising from the opened plot.  A modest assemblage of elderly mourners stood around the grave as the De Profundis and the prayers for the dead were murmured in unison.  The ordinary ceremonies being over, her family, friends and finally the gravediggers dispersed having done all to ensure poor old Margaret Whelan had been given an appropriate and respectable send-off, commensurate with her longevity and the high esteem in which she had been held by all who knew her.

On the following Tuesday morning, Mrs. Nolan, attempting a return to some semblance of normality after her recent, if not unexpected, loss opened her post in Firhouse to receive the astonishing news from the South Dublin Union, that the remains of her dear old Ma were still in situ in the deadhouse of the hospital, and that "it appears an empty coffin had been conveyed to Tallaght in error the previous Saturday morning".  If it wasn’t too much trouble, would there be any chance of her now taking possession of her rapidly deteriorating Mater and doing the customary necessities?

In questioning the veracity of the communique, Mrs Nolan set off into town and repaired to the deadhouse, to get to the bottom of the series of unfortunate events.  In visiting the remains of her mother, this one last time, what she saw did indeed lend some weight to the contents of the letter signed, Yours Apologetically, a blushing official.

With some urgency and greater irritation a new funeral was arranged.  It is unusual to expect one daughter to arrange two funerals in the one week, for the one faithfully departed parent.  A hearse was again ordered to take the remains of Mrs Margaret Whelan, in a shell, to the graveyard at Tallaght, where further and hasty arrangements were put in place.  The grave of Mrs Whelan was reopened, with greater ease it should be said, than the previous Saturday, and the casket raised and opened. To everyone’s knowledge and no one’s surprise the coffin was found to be entirely devoid of life or death.  Sans hair, sans teeth, sans taste, sans everything, as Shakespeare might have put it. But just when you think things can’t take a turn for the worse, things sometimes take a turn for the worse.

The hearse driver and his assistant attempted to transfer the corpse from the shell to the coffin at the side of the grave and in the great outdoors, to the indelicate objections of the gathered mourners.   It is not unreasonable to assume that this gathering of mourners greatly outnumbered the previous, what with Mrs Whelan’s growing reputation in a small town.  It is after all a very rare privilege indeed to attend someone’s second burial.

The hearse driver, we shall call him Steptoe, after some cajoling, objections and several bottles of porter from O’ Neill’s public house on the corner, took the remains to a house at the church-gate, wherein Mrs. Whelan finally made a belated acquaintance with her own coffin. 

Shortly after, without prayers and with little ceremony the encased cadaver was slowly lowered into the frosty ground.  Steptoe & Son, promptly returned to their hearse and spared not a horse in their eagerness to depart, leaving the opened grave and a void to be filled by the remaining mourners.

And this is how Mrs. Margaret Whelan, 95, Shopkeeper, late of Firhouse, Co. Dublin, was finally laid to rest in Tallaght Graveyard. 

Albert Perris 

A ramble about Tallaght 

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