People on board

O’TOOLE, Patrick

Patrick Joseph O’Toole was born on the 7th of May 1896 in Glasthule to James O’Toole and Catherine Dent. Patrick was the second of their three children, and on the birth certificates of all three children, and on James’s marriage certificate, the name was given as ‘Toole’. James was a Blacksmith and they lived at 25 Glasthule Road. Catherine Dent’s father was a Fisherman and Pilot in Ringsend.

In June 1916 Patrick’s younger brother James, aged eighteen, died of T.B. He had recently married and his son, also James, was born in January of that year, but also died in July. The O’Toole family was living in No. 1 Summerhill Avenue, Kingstown at that stage. Patrick was a member of Glasthule Mitchells G.A.A. Club, as was Bernard Murphy. Both were employed by the City of Dublin Steam Packet Co. and were working as Firemen on RMS Leinster on the 10th of October 1918.

Neither survived the sinking of the ship but Patrick O’Toole’s body was recovered. A death certificate was issued on the fifteenth, with his sister Mary as the Informant, and a death notice appeared in the Freeman’s Journal that day. He was mourned by his parents and sister, and “a large circle of friends”. He was buried in Deansgrange cemetery where James O’Toole erected a headstone to remember his two sons and his grandson. James died in Summerhill Avenue in 1923.