People on board

BRADLEY, Joseph Henry

Joseph Henry Bradley was born on the 27th of September 1865 to James Bradley and Elizabeth Stanley. James was a Bricklayer and they were living in 1 Albert Court, Grand Canal Dock, Dublin where a sister Anne was born in 1870. There may have been other, untraced, children. On the 4th of September 1893 Joseph Bradley married Margaret Alice Jenkins in St George’s Church of Ireland church in the north inner city. His address on the marriage certificate was Temple Street and Margaret’s was Seville Place. His occupation was ‘Clerk’ and, though not specified, it was in the G.P.O. where he had started work in 1885. Joseph and Margaret had four children by 1900, living at three different addresses, including Seville Place.

By the time of the 1901 census the family had moved to Clontarf, first to Conquer Hill Cottages and then to 3 Pretoria Villas, Strand Road where they stayed until the 1920s. Here, four more children were born before 1911, one dying at four months, and two more were born in 1913 and 1916.

Joseph Bradley was one of the older and most experienced postal sorters on duty on the 10th of October 1918 and would have been very familiar with the routine involved in getting the mail bags from the G.P.O. by train to Kingstown and then on to the mailboat.

Like each of its sister ships RMS Leinster had a special compartment below decks where the Post Office workers sorted the mail en route to Holyhead. It was that compartment that took the brunt of the first torpedo causing huge damage and immediate flooding. Only four of the twenty-two workers managed to escape from the compartment and of them, only one survived.

Joseph Henry Bradley did not survive, nor was his body recovered. His name is inscribed on the memorials in the G.P.O. and in the Post Office in Dun Laoghaire. He is also included on the War Memorial Cross, St. John the Baptist, Seafield Road, Clontarf, Dublin.