76 (245.231) Listen to the births and deaths

Cast 76. Page 245, line 231.

Listen to the births and deaths in the Irish all for Ireland Independent, and I’ll thank you and the marriages.

　And he starts reading them out:

　—Gordon, Barnfield crescent, Exeter; Redmayne of Iffley, Saint Anne’s on Sea: the wife of William T Redmayne of a son. How’s that, eh? Wright and Flint, Vincent and Gillett to Rotha Marion daughter of Rosa and the late George Alfred Gillett, 179 Clapham road, Stockwell, Playwood and Ridsdale at Saint Jude’s, Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest, dean of Worcester. Eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall lane, London: Carr, Stoke Newington, of gastritis and heart disease: Cockburn, at the Moat house, Chepstow...

“Listen up to the births and deaths in the Irish All-for-Ireland Independent—and, if you please, the marriages too.”

Saint Anne’s on Sea pier

"St Annes Pier 3" by Bay Photographic is marked with CC BY-NC 2.0.

This is from Episode 12. In Barney Kiernan’s pub, the nationalist known as “the Citizen” is drinking and talking with Joe Hynes and the others.

The Citizen is reading aloud from the births, marriages, and deaths column of the Irish Daily Independent for June 16, 1904.

As I mentioned in Cast 65, when it was revealed that Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the Irish Home Rule movement, had carried on a long affair with Katharine O’Shea, the wife of a fellow MP, the Irish Parliamentary Party split apart. The Irish Daily Independent was founded in 1891 to support the Parnellite cause. In 1905 it was reorganized as the Irish Independent, which continues to be published to this day.

The Citizen is lamenting the fact that, although this is supposedly a newspaper for Irish independence, the births and marriages column is filled with nothing but English people.

What is surprising is that the Citizen is reading out the births and marriages notices at all, because they appear right at the beginning of the front page. The entire front page is made up of advertisements.

Newspapers of that time were not only vehicles for news and opinion, but also served as a means of communication and contact among readers.

Mikio Kawamura, We are London Sherlockian (Chikuma Bunko, 1994)

Incidentally, Bloom himself places an advertisement in the Irish Times seeking a typist, through which he communicates with Martha, his secret correspondent. He imagines that newspaper advertisements might even be used by criminals to send coded messages.

He passed the Irish Times. There might be other answers lying there. Like to answer them all. Good system for criminals. Code. … O, leave them there to simmer. Enough bother wading through fortyfour of them. Wanted, smart lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work. 

（U131.323）

I searched a database for the Irish Daily Independent of June 16, 1904. Reading from the newspaper image (attached below), the notices appear to be as follows:

Births

① Gordon (Barnfield Crescent, Exeter): a son born.

Exeter is a city in Devon, in southwest England.

② William T. Redmayne (Iffley, Saint Anne’s on Sea): a son born.

Saint Anne’s on the Sea is a seaside resort in Lancashire, England, south of Blackpool, near the mouth of the River Ribble.

Marriages

③ Wright and Flint.

④ Vincent and Gillett.

The marriage of Vincent to Rotha Marion Gillett, daughter of Rosa and the late George Alfred Gillett, of 179 Clapham Road, Stockwell, London.

⑤ Playwood and Ridsdale.

At Saint Jude’s, Kensington, London, by the Very Reverend Dr Forrest, Dean of Worcester.

Deaths

⑥ Mr Bristow (Whitehall Lane, London)

⑦ Mr Carr (Stoke Newington, London)

Cause of death: gastritis and heart disease.

⑧ Mr Cockburn (The Moat House, Chepstow)

Chepstow is a town in Monmouthshire, in southern Wales.

 

According to Gifford’s note, the Citizen skips over the Irish names and reads out only the English ones. Looking at the newspaper itself, the addresses make it clear that nearly all the people listed are residents of England.　Aside from the O’Neil in the marriage notices, I cannot really see surnames like Bennett, Carr, or Coghill—those supposedly skipped by the Citizen—as particularly Irish.

The Bennett and Carr that appear at the head of the births column happen to be surnames Joyce gives to rather dishonourable characters elsewhere in the novel, though perhaps that is only coincidence. (See Cast 39.)

There are also a couple of discrepancies. In the newspaper itself, ⑤ appears as Haywood, not Playwood, and ⑦ appears as Cann, not Carr. Did Joyce misread the print, miswrite it, or was it simply a typographical error?

In the novel’s parallel with the Odyssey, the Citizen corresponds to the Cyclops, and Episode 12 takes “bad eyesight” and “mis-seeing” as one of its themes. So perhaps Joyce’s mistakes are deliberate.

For the method behind this blog, see ⇒ Here