HOSPITAL SATURDAY. COLLECTION IN CORK.

The annual Hospital Saturday collection was made Cork Saturday last, and the charitable ladies, who translate their sympathy for the poor and the afflicted into earnest, practical work, were about in the streets and wore exercising all their persuasive powers touch the hearts and reach the pockets of pedestrians. In the main thoroughfares of the city collectors were numerous and active, and along the quays, too; and particularly Sullivan’s Quay and George’s Quay, passers-by were promptly button-holed and were invariably induced to “deliver up.” The immediate suburbs of the city did not appear be well attended to; but then the energy displayed by the collectors who were scattered through the principal streets and along the main thoroughfares compensated for any lack in the relation indicated. A complaint was made in previous years that some of the young ladies who carried tambourines were somewhat slow in approaching people who wore their working clothes. Whether facts could be called in to justify this complaint, raises a question it would unprofitable to discuss here. It will be relevant, however, to mention that connection with Saturday’s collection no such complaint could possibly made. All sorts and conditions of men and women, no matter what their garb, were approached by the collectors, who displayed a degree of zeal and energy which was worthy of the best traditions of organised charity in Cork.

The sum collected, as may be gathered from the official report which appears below, amounted to £271 16s 2d. or £33 more than was real mod last year. This is, indeed, very creditable to all concerned. The promoters of the collection this year found their efforts hampered by a lack of lady collectors, and things would bad, indeed, were it not for the action of the hospital nurses of Cork, who came to the rescue in splendid fashion, and who, notwithstanding that they had been work their various wards the previous night, went about in the streets cheerfully, and helped to swell the receipts for the city hospitals. The Ladies who engaged in collecting work Saturday are certainly deserving of the highest, praise.[3]

Splendid work, ladies and nurses!

Thanks to a recent contribution by a Dinner Puzzle reader we have a little more information on Kathleen.  Ruairi Looney has written from Cork that his wife’s family lived in the Co. Cork home of Kathleen and her parents, (which explains why the daughter of a Dublin policeman might be fund raising in Cork) and sent in a passage (quoted below) that illuminates her younger brother Charles’ views on the actions of the suffragettes:  

“During the hunger strike, the following letter appeared in the Irish Independent (30/9/1912):

Sir—In a letter to the ‘Irish Independent’ of Thursday last, Caroline Smithwick says that the object of Mrs. Leigh in refusing her food, whilst in Mountjoy Prison was “…to, obtain political treatment the same as that given to men here and in other civilised countries for crimes that are political.” By all means, give political treatment for political crimes, but is an attempt to burn a public building a political crime? It may have a political motive, but that does not affect the crime in any way.

If an ordinary man attempted such a deed as the burning of a public building, you, may be sure he would get more than five years penal servitude; and what is more, he would have to bear it, too. If a prisoner is released from prison because she refuses to eat, all the criminals in Ireland should immediately start a hunger strike, so; if Mrs. Leigh died from the effect of her self-imposed starvation, would she not be guilty of suicide? And at present is she not guilty of attempted suicide and liable to arrest for it? People are inclined to make a heroine of Mrs. Leigh, but if she is as brave as they say she is, why didn’t she lie on the bed she made?

Charles J. Lanktree, Beechmount, Glanmire, Co. Cork. ” [4]

Kathleen would have been celebrating her 45^th birthday on the eve of the dinner.

WHAT KATHLEEN DID NEXT

Kathleen Mary Borgia Lanktree, daughter of a senior policeman herself, married Marcus Holroyd Ratton, on 23^rd July 1938, in St. John’s Wood, a retired colonial policemen (from Ceylon) – perhaps she met through her brother Colonel Charles, CBE, of the Ceylon Civil Service. [5]

On census day 1939 she and her husband were at Children’s Farm, St Michael’s, Tenterden, Kent, which may have been a guest house. They were also resident at 7F Grove End House, London NW8 at the time. Kathleen died on 4^th October 1977 in Wallingford.[6]

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