He died at 112... was Billy the oldest Corkonian to ever live?
The village between Macroom and Ballyvourney has an unusual claim to fame - one of its sons reputedly lived to the remarkable age of 112, and thus is the oldest person ever to have lived in Ireland.
Billy Duggan was born way back in 1803 and lived through some truly turbulent times before passing away in February, 1915, according to the that week, which published a photo of Billy and stated his great age.
Billy is an ancestor of Cork folklore expert Shane Lehane, who says: “He was my grandfather’s maternal grandfather. He experienced the era of Napoleon and the monster meetings of Daniel O’Connell. He survived the Great Famine and was active in the Land Leagues.”
Shane, a lecturer and course director in Cultural and Heritage Studies at Cork College of FET, who also teaches folklore at UCC, brought up his connection to venerable Billy in an article in this newspaper this week about his latest book, Old Ways To New Days.
However, take a look at the record books for Ireland’s longest-lived people and Billy’s name is not there. Presumably, this is because there is no verifiable proof of his long life - but the mountain of documentary evidence seems compelling.
Shane explains: “Billy is down in the 1901 Census as being 99 - and still working as an agricultural labourer! In the 1911 Census, he is down as 110 and his occupation is OAP.”
The pension had been introduced in Ireland in 1909 and the qualification test was whether a person could recall the great hurricane, ‘The Night of the Big Wind’, that devastated Ireland on January 6, 1839.
Shane adds: “A newspaper article at the time stated he was buried in a coffin with his name and the age of 112 on the breastplate. Also, for many years there was a saying in Kilnamrtyra that began, ‘If you live as long as Billy Duggan...’.”
Given the newspaper reports, the Censuses, the coffin breastplate, and local lore, I put it to Shane that this is sufficient proof that Billy was indeed 112 - and thus the oldest person ever to have lived in this country.
“I do believe that,” says Shane.
That would put him ahead of the official oldest person ever to live and die in Ireland, Katherine Plunket, of Ballymascanlan, Co. Louth, who was 111 years, 327 days old when she passed away in 1932.
Pah, a mere strapling.
However, Irish-born Kathleen Snavely was 113 years, 140 days old when she died in the U.S in 2015, if you want to go outside the island.
Imagine for a moment that Billy really lived every one of those 112 years - how unfair it is to deny him his place in the record books.
And what a life he had.
In 1803, he would have been alive when Robert Emmet was executed for leading a failed rebellion, while that was the year Arthur Guinness, founder of the brewery, died. It’s amazing to think the Cork man was still alive when World War I broke out.
What is truly extraordinary about Billy’s great age is that he is male.
The supercentenarians’ club - for those who make it to 110 and beyond - tends to be almost exclusively a female preserve.
Experts say this is down to women having an easier life.... ah, just joking. It’s actually attributed to various factors, such as women tending to have healthier diets and lifestyles and paying better attention to their health, as well as having more genes to protect them from disease, and being shorter and thus having fewer cells that can mutate into illness.
Phew, after reading all that, I feel lucky I made it this far, fellas. (Incidentally, I am exactly half the age Billy reputedly made it to, which rather makes a mockery of my classification as ‘middle-aged’).
Shane loves history and heritage, but admits that when he first heard family stories about old Billy Duggan as a teenager when aunts and uncles gathered together, “I sketched them down but took no notice”.
In later life, he grew intrigued about his ancestor and went on a ‘recce’ to Kilnamartyra.
“The people in the post office there said there used be a photo of Billy Duggan and told me to get in touch with a local historian, who gave me a photo of him from the newspaper.
“He bears a family resemblance - he has big ears and seems small,” laughs Shane. He then looked up Griffith’s Valuation of land in the 1850s and traced the house in Kilnamartyra where Billy once lived.
“The landowner, Matt O’Connor, walked the fields with me that Billy had once walked,” says Shane. “I saw the surviving gable end of the house where he once lived.”
When he became a widower, Billy lived with his daughter, Margaret, and her husband, a blacksmith. He was said to be in good health almost to the end of his days, and “an excellent raconteur” - the Census states he only talked Irish.
Shane believes he has also traced Billy’s father, William, who died in 1815, aged 45, to a local graveyard.
It’s possible that Billy’s record will be beaten in the coming years. The current oldest person in Ireland is thought to be Eileen Hynes, of Offaly, who is 108 years and 300 days old.
Here in Cork, Nun Sr Colette Hickey celebrated her 107th birthday on January 31 this year, in Edel House, of the Good Shepherd Sisters Cork. She is described as ‘a visionary’ who planted the seed over 50 years ago for what developed into Good Shepherd Cork.
Meanwhile, Tessie Kelleher, of Conna, celebrated her 107th birthday in August this year.
Like I said, fellas, this is a club us men are dying to get into.
Ethel, who lives in Hampshire, England, was born a Collins, and had her 13th birthday the day after namesake Michael was killed in Béal na Bláth.
She is the last known surviving subject of King Edward VII in the UK - that guy was Queen Elizabeth II’s great-grandfather!
As for the verifiably oldest person who ever lived, that title goes to Frenchwoman Jeanne Louise Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years, 164 days.
Aside from there being something in the water in Kilnamartyra, there may also be something special in Shane Lehane’s genes.
He says: “My mother’s grandfather, Patrick Ryan, of Ballybeg, Co Limerick, also lived to a great age of 103; born in 1835, he died in 1938.
“My mother, Eleanor, remembered sitting on his lap and he recounting in detail his first-hand memories of the Great Famine.”
Shane adds: “The past is never dead but it is enlivened and reimagined, and its elements made relevant again at each retelling.”
, by Shane Lehane, is published by Hachette.
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