People on board

McLYNN, Elizabeth (Lizzie)

Elizabeth, known as Lizzie, was born on the 8th of June 1896 in Mail Coach Road, Sligo. She was the youngest of the ten children of Hugh McLynn and Susan Flanagan. According to the censuses Susan was born in Scotland as was their eldest daughter Susan, but they married in Sligo in 1879 and the rest of the family were born in Sligo. Hugh McLynn was a ‘Mason’, as was a Denis McLynn also from Sligo, both declaring Thomas McLynn, Tradesman / Builder, as father on their marriage certificates. Denis went on to become a very successful builder and contractor in Sligo and a Town Councillor, and Hugh may have worked for him.

Hugh and Susan and their family lived at several addresses in Sligo, settling in Pound Street about 1900. In the 1901 census all ten children were alive and living in a large second-class building of eight rooms, which was classed as a ‘Public House’, though there is no indication that any of the family was a publican. Hugh and his three eldest sons were all working as Masons. By 1911 four of the children had died, including three sons aged between seventeen and twenty-four, all from T.B. In that census Lizzie, then aged twelve and the youngest son Hugh, called Hubert, aged twenty were the only ones left at home with their parents.

On the 19th of October 1918 the Sligo Champion reported that Lizzie McLynn was travelling to London to “take up nursing duties” when she drowned following the sinking of RMS Leinster. She was, apparently, travelling with Nora Henry from Templeboy and though she was rescued from the sea, she only lived for an hour after being taken to hospital. Her body was returned to Sligo on the Sunday and buried that afternoon in Sligo cemetery, after a large funeral.