People on board

MACMANUS. James Henry

James Hanbury Macmanus was born in 1866 in Templemichael, Co. Longford. He was a son of John Henry and Caroline (née Hanbury) Macmanus. John Henry Macmanus was an Apothecary on Main Street, Longford and continued to work there until his death in 1906. His wife, Caroline had died in 1898.

James’ older brother, John Henry, born c.1860, followed in his father’s footsteps and worked as an Apothecary in Athlone, where he died in 1909. An elder sister of James Hanbury, Caroline, married a Medical Doctor in Booterstown, Co Dublin in 1887, later settling in Swansea.

James Hanbury emigrated to North America and in 1890 he married Susan Eleanor Souter, born in Co. Kildare, in New York. The couple returned to Ireland shortly after they were married and lived in Tritonville Road, Sandymount where their first child, a daughter, was born in April 1891. In 1901 the family were living on Saint Brigid’s Road, Drumcondra with 3 daughters, Erica, Lily, and Edith, (a son, John, aged 4, had died in 1897). By the time of the 1911 Census a son, Arthur, and a daughter, Kathleen had been born and the family had moved to Ranelagh Road.

Unlike his elder brother, John Henry, James appears not to have completed his medical studies and in 1899 he had started work as a Chemist’s assistant with Hamilton Long on O’Connell Street, Dublin He continued to work at these premises for 17 years until, in April 1916, the premises were destroyed during the Easter Rising in Dublin. Records of a compensation claim by James Macmanus for loss of personal property including a number of tools which would indicate that he may have been involved in the manufacturing of pharmaceutical products on site in O’Connell Street. The Company apparently had other connections in Walsall, near Birmingham, and it is likely that is why James Macmanus was on the RMS Leinster on that fateful day.

James was lost in the sinking and his body was not recovered. Within 3 years all four of his daughters had married, moving to England and 3 later moving to Canada. James’ widow, Susan, remained in Dublin, dying in 1942.

(With thanks to Rod Macmanus for access to his extensive family history research)