The Irish Connection - continued

Obviously our Irish family survived the famine and remained in Ireland until the early 1900's when they emigrated to Yorkshire, England.  To Bradford in fact, a northern, dreary, woollen mill town.

Great granddad John was one of eleven children, born in 1907, and the family were financially extremely poor but doggedly hardworking and fiercely loyal to each other.

                                               Illustration of a large, impoverished family

             Downtrodden Bradford woolcombers going home from work in the early morning

Typical of this Irish family was a charm and sense of humour that people found hard to resist, but also a darker side of recklessness, friction and drunkenness.

John was a rare man who was devoted to family and would have parted with his last penny to anyone worse off than himself. He was intelligent and won a scholarship to a Grammar School - selected for potentially academic achievement - but there was of course no way that place could be accepted as his only option was to leave school and earn money at the earliest possible time.

He became a baker and that was his only chance in life as a man whose simple mission was to remain employed and able to provide for his family.

                                                                  John Mullaney

He had an uncanny appeal to children, just a natural understanding and way with them and because he used to cycle to work in the very early hours to bake for the day he returned home in the late afternoon. For some reason there would be a trail of children following him, laughing and chatting, always happy to see him. The Pied Piper of Bradford !