Pew Sheet – 16th August 2020

The Rector writes ‘ Today at the 10am Service  we have our first Baptism since March 22nd . Welcome Baby Grace!

(I have printed a whole separate Pew sheet for St John’s 10am Service and the 9am & 11am St Mary’s Service as the liturgy is quite different in the two churches  today)

We are having Holy Communion for the first time at the 9am and the 11am Services and based on my experience over the last 4 weeks at the Midweek Communion, it will all be grand. It will just take a little bit longer than we are used to and the main thing you have to remember to stay in your pew and I will come to you rather than you making your way up to the Altar.’

CORRECTION TO PEWSHEET : Baby Grace was a little under the weather on Sunday so she will be baptised at a later date.. we will be looking forward to it!.

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Random Notes CCCLIII

In the 19th century, court cases involving charges of bigamy were sometimes reported in newspapers such as the Cork Examiner and Cork Constitution.

One such case, with a Carrigaline connection, appeared in The Cork Examiner on April 21st, 1851.

“Jeremiah Lynch was brought before the Magistrates this morning by Head Constable Porter, on a charge of polygamy. It was stated that in 1845 the prisoner was married to a young woman named Mary Casey, by Rev. Mr McGrath, the Parish Priest of Kills, near Waterford, and on the 25th October 1849, he was married at Douglas by Rev. Mr O’Sullivan, the Parish Priest there, to a woman named Mary Shanahan, living at Carrigaline. Both wives appeared in court, one accompanied by a child of the prisoner’s”

(The reporter seems to have wondered why the women had been attracted to Lynch, as he continued the report in the following words)

“They were both good-looking young women, in contrast to the prisoner, who was of diminutive stature and unprepossessing countenance.   It was stated that the prisoner was also married on a subsequent occasion, to a third woman, whose name was unknown, and who did not appear in court.

Mr Fitzgerald defended Lynch, who was remanded until tomorrow, when Rev. Mr O’Sullivan’s evidence will be given”     (This account comes from the ’Tales of Victorian Cork’.   Details of the sentence handed down to Jeremiah Lynch, and what became of the ’wives’ were not included in it.)

MMPC