People on board

GOULD, Ellen (Essie)

Ellen Gould, known as Essie, was born on 3rd April 1899 in Limerick City to John Gould and Mary Kate Whelan. They had married in August 1896 in Tralee, when he was twenty-four and she twenty, as recorded on the marriage certificate. They both gave an address of Ballymullen Barracks in the town where John was a ‘Sergeant in the Army’, the Royal Munster Fusiliers.

When their first child, Eliza, was born in April 1897 they were living in Nicholas Street in Limerick and John gave his occupation as ‘Labourer’. In the censuses Eliza was recorded as Mary E and Mary, and as May in the reports of the sinking of the RMS Leinster in 1918. When Ellen was born the family lived at Change Lane. William was born in March 1901 but lived only two days. Alice was born in June 1903, followed by Catherine in 1905 and the family were then at No 9 King’s Island, where they would stay until at least 1913. Patrick Joseph was born in 1906, Michael John in 1910, Angela in 1913 and Olive in 1917. Catherine and Patrick also died while very young, of convulsions and laryngitis respectively.

In the 1901 census Mary Kate was living with the two oldest girls in one room, but her husband John was not listed. In 1911 the King’s Island house gave them two rooms for the family of six, and John gave his occupation as ‘Commercial Porter’. The newspaper reports of the sinking of the ship in October 1918 said that Catherine was taking the six children, May, Essie, Alice, Michael, Angela and Olive, aged from twenty one down to twelve months, to England where their father was working. The Limerick Chronicle went further, saying that John Gould “had been at munition work in England for some considerable time past” and that the family had been living in Creagh Lane, Mary Street.

Essie was the only member of the family to survive the sinking and she returned to Limerick by train the following day, where she was met by a number of her friends. The body of Mary Kate was recovered but not those of the other five children. John Gould returned to Limerick and was present when Mary Kate was interred in Mount St. Lawrence cemetery in Limerick in an unmarked grave.

For some time, John and Essie lived in Staines, outside London, with his sister Birdie McQueen. John remarried, his new wife’s name is unknown, and they had a daughter, Agnes. Ellen Esther Gould married Reginald Smith in 1926 and they had a daughter, Olive. Unfortunately, and probably as a result of her traumatic experience in 1918, Ellen became an alcoholic and the marriage fell apart. She may have remarried but further details of her life have not been found.