People on board

MURPHY, Amy Isabel

Amy Isabel Murphy was born in Clonmel, Co Tipperary on the 8th of June 1867 to Benjamin Murphy and Eliza Jane Fennell. Though Eliza was born in Melbourne, Australia both the Fennells and Murphys were established Quaker families in Tipperary at the time. Benjamin Murphy was a Brewer who established the Clonmel Brewery. The family lived in Prior Park in Clonmel, a house that had previously been a Quaker Girls Boarding School. Amy was the eldest of six children, one of whom died in infancy.

In 1880 Benjamin died in the Bloomfield Retreat in Donnybrook, Dublin, a Quaker asylum, and he was buried in the Society of Friends cemetery in Clonmel. Amy’s brothers Thomas and John took over the business, the Clonmel Brewery. In the 1901 census Thomas and Amy were the only family members present in Prior Park and Amy, aged thirty-four, gave no occupation. She cannot be found in the 1911 census but in 1918 she had a London address, Queen’s Gate, so she may have already been there in 1911. Both Amy and her married sister Adelaide were living in England by 1918 and that may be the reason Eliza and Amy were on board RMS Leinster on the 10th of October. At a probate hearing in November Chief Stewardess Mary Coffey testified that two berths had been booked in the name of Mrs Murphy, and that on the morning of the 10th “an elderly woman and a middle-aged woman came on board. Both lay down in their berths shortly afterwards”. Neither Amy nor her mother were seen again and their bodies were never recovered.

Their names are recorded on the Murphy gravestone in the Society of Friends cemetery in Clonmel.