People on board

MURPHY, Patrick Peter

Patrick Peter Murphy was born about 1862 in Dublin City, according to the census records. These records are among the only reliable ones relating to him found to date. From them it can be stated that he lived at Number 1 Crawford Road in Glasnevin with his wife Mary Esther and his mother. He and his wife had been born in Dublin City while his mother was born in County Wicklow. He was seventeen years older than his wife. From his mother’s death certificate in 1918 it is known that his father had been a Sergeant in the Dublin Metropolitan Police. In the 1911 census Mary Esther stated that the couple had been married ten years, with one child born, though no longer living. From this a possible marriage has been identified, between a Patrick Murphy and a Mary Murphy in July 1900 in St Agatha’s Church in Ballybough, North Dublin, but as neither used the ‘Peter’ or the ‘Esther’ it cannot be confirmed. On this possible marriage certificate Mary Murphy’s father was, or had been, an ‘Officer in the G.P.O.’ which makes this a likely match. Patrick Peter Murphy gave his occupation in the 1901 census as ‘Clerk’, and in 1911 as ‘Sorting Clerk and Telegraphist, G.P.O. Dublin’.  It is known that when he died during the sinking of RMS Leinster on 10th October 1918, he had been serving with the Post Office for forty years, the longest serving member of the team to lose his life.                                                                                                                                   
By 1918 the family were living at 1 Iona Road, Glasnevin, where his mother had died on 27 June 1918. His body was not recovered; a death notice was placed in the Freeman’s Journal and the Irish Independent on 22 October recording that he was “Lost on the Leinster, sunk October 10”. His name is recorded on the memorials in the G.P.O. in Dublin and in the Post Office in Dun Laoghaire.