NAMED AFTER MARY ELMES – CORK’S NEW PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE
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Marie Elisabeth Jean Elmes (5 May 1908 – 9 March 2002) was an Irish aid worker credited with saving the lives of at least 200 Jewish children at various times during the Holocaust, by hiding them in the boot of her car.
In 2015, she became the first and only Irish person honoured as Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel, in recognition of her work in the Spanish Civil War and World War II.
Elmes was born on 5 May 1908 in Cork, Ireland to chemist Edward Elmes and Elizabeth (née Waters). Edward Elmes was originally from Waterford, and moved to Cork after qualifying as a pharmacist, to run a pharmacy on Winthrop Street, while Waters grew up in Cork. She had one brother, John, who later took over the family business.
Elmes attended Rochelle School in Cork and then in 1928 enrolled at Trinity College Dublin where she was elected a Scholar, and gained a first in Modern Literature (French and Spanish). In 1935, as a result of her academic achievements, Elmes was awarded a scholarship in International Studies to study at London School of Economics. She received a certificate in International Studies as well as a further scholarship to continue her education in Geneva, Switzerland.
In February 1937, after the completion of her studies, Elmes joined the University of London Ambulance Unit and was sent to a children’s hospital in Almeria in then war-torn Spain.
In 1942, the Vichy authorities made it clear that Jewish children were not legally allowed to be exempt from being sent to the concentration camps, as they had been. Elmes, with help from some colleagues, rescued dozens of children, taking them to safe houses or helping them flee the country altogether. Well aware that she was putting herself at risk, Elmes hid many children in the boot of her car and drove them to safe destinations. She aided many others by securing documents, which allowed for them to escape through the undercover network in Vichy France. She was not a Quaker herself, despite sometimes being described as the “head of the Quaker delegation at Perpignan,” but worked actively with local Quaker organisations.
In January (or February) 1943, Elmes was arrested on suspicion of aiding the escape of Jews and was imprisoned in Toulouse, later being moved to the notorious Fresnes Prison run by the Gestapo near Paris, where she spent six months.
Elmes married and had two children, and lived on after the war in Pyrénées-Orientales (Northern Catalonia) where she had been active, first in Perpignan and then in Canet-en-Roussillon and Sainte-Marie-la-Mer. She died in a nursing home there.
After the war Elmes was awarded the Legion of Honour (French:Légion d’honneur), the highest civilian award in France at the time, which she refused to accept on the grounds of unwanted attention for what she did. On 23 January 2013, 11 years after her death, having been nominated by one of the children she rescued, she was posthumously recognised by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, her children and grandchildren receiving the award on her behalf, and on 30 September 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Trish Murphy Award at the Network Ireland Business Woman of the Year awards in Cork, which was accepted by her nephew, Mark Elmes, on behalf of her family. On 25 February 2019 it was announced by Cork City Council that a new pedestrian bridge linking Patrick’s Quay to Merchant’s Quay would be named after Mary Elmes. It was opened to the public on 9 July 2019.
The Mary Elmes Prize in Holocaust Studies distributed by the Holocaust Educational Trust Ireland is named after Elmes.
This was a disappointing session because I was unable to keep my lens dry making it almost impossible to focus correctly.
Medieval Cork City was separated in two by channels of the River Lee, with the northern part of the main street being the North Main Street and the southern island containing the South Main Street, both of which were connected by a bridge built in 1190. It is not believed that North Main Street was extensively inhabited until the 13th century, following the walling of the northern island in sandstone, after which it became the main street of medieval Cork. At this time, the population of the walled city consisted primarily of Anglo-Norman merchant families. Property on North Main Street was divided into strips running perpendicular to the street, known as burgage plots.
A number of archaeological excavations of the area have revealed the remains of houses which were Anglo-Norman in style, made mainly of timber and wattle. The building of houses from timber posed a fire risk, and declined after May 1622, when a lightning strike on North Main Street resulted in a loss of 1500 houses in the city.
Other 20th century excavations focused on Skiddy’s Castle, a 15th century tower house which became a gunpowder magazine for a period, prior to its demolition in the late 18th century.
At the top of the North Main street in medieval Cork was the North Gate Bridge and adjacent North Gate Castle, which later saw use as a jail. The street was also the principal street of the parish of St. Peter’s, the parish church now in use as the Cork Vision Centre.[2] In the 1820s, St Patrick’s Street began to overtake North Main Street as the primary business street of the city.
Slum clearances were conducted around North Main Street in the 1850s and late 1870s, the former “cosmetic rather than socially ameliorative,” the latter as part of a rehousing initiative.
A number of businesses on North Main Street were destroyed by fire during the Burning of Cork in December 1920.
The burning of Cork by British forces took place on the night of 11–12 December 1920, during the Irish War of Independence. It followed an Irish Republican Army (IRA) ambush of a British Auxiliary patrol in the city, which wounded twelve Auxiliaries, one fatally. In retaliation, the Auxiliaries, Black and Tans and British soldiers burned homes near the ambush site, before looting and burning numerous buildings in the centre of Cork, Ireland’s third-biggest city. Many civilians reported being beaten, shot at, and robbed by British forces. Firefighters testified that British forces hindered their attempts to tackle the blazes by intimidation, cutting their hoses and shooting at them. Two unarmed IRA volunteers were also shot dead at their home in the north of the city.
More than 40 business premises, 300 residential properties, the City Hall and Carnegie Library were destroyed by fires, many of which were started by incendiary bombs. The economic damage was estimated at over £3 million (equivalent to €155 million in 2019), while 2,000 were left jobless and many more became homeless.
British forces carried out many similar reprisals on Irish civilians during the war, notably the Sack of Balbriggan three months before, but the burning of Cork was one of the most substantial. The British government at first denied that its forces had started the fires, and only agreed to hold a military inquiry. This concluded that a company of Auxiliaries were responsible, but the government refused to publish the report at the time.
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