Notes

HB05/13/008.

HB05/13/008.

A Mary Woodside is listed as a “straw and bonnet maker” in Slater’s 1856 Directory.

SMcM research based on Griffith’s Valuation registers.

SMcM research based on Griffith’s Valuation registers.

Census – building no.81

Margaret Woodside, 46, head of family, Presbyterian, draper and milliner, not married

SMcM research based on Griffith’s Valuation registers.

Census – building no.85

Margaret Woodside, 71, head of family, Presbyterian, seamstress, single

SMcM research based on Griffith’s Valuation registers.

SMcM research based on Griffith’s Valuation registers.

Multiple newspapers give accounts of a fire in February 1941 during which one person died.

Belfast News Letter 26/02/1941 – Aged Woman Dead: Evacuees Rescued

Northern Whig 28/02/1941 – Ballycastle Fire: An 85-Year-Old Victim

Mid-Ulster Mail 01/03/1941 – Ballycastle Fire Tragedy

Ballymena Weekly Telegraph 08/03/1941 – Ballycastle Fire. Inquest on old-age pensioner

Belfast News Letter 26/02/1941

AGED WOMAN DEAD: EVACUEES RESCUED

An 80 year-old woman, Mrs Maybin, lost her life as a result of a fire in Ballycastle on Monday night. Eleven children, ten of them evacuees from Belfast, were rescued.

The outbreak occurs about 10 p.m. at the rear of a boarding house and shop in Castle Street.

Three civilians, Hohn Patton, Daniel Ross and James Craig (sen.), entered the burning house and carried out several of the children, who were wrapped in blankets.

A soldier afterwards scrambled up the front wall, smashed a window, and brought out two children, who were taken down a ladder to safety.

Fireman John O’Tumelty was overcome by fumes, but after treatment at the fire station returned to help his colleagues extinguish the outbreak.

Several efforts were made before Sergeant D. Smith, R.U.C., and a soldier at great personal risk, succeeded in removing Mrs Maybin, who had been asleep. Artificial respiration was applied, but she died early yesterday morning in Dalriada Hospital.

HB05/13/008.

HB05/13/008.

Fiona Spence (08/12/23).

According to Fiona Spence (08/12/23), her mother Florie bought no.68 when the Duncans emigrated to Australia. The shop was then rented out and used as a pet shop and clothes shop before becoming storage for Jim Spence’s furniture business.

Fiona notes that at one point in the past the shop had been renovated as a nice house with a stepped, stained-glass ceiling that looked Victorian or Art Deco. The Dooey family lived in the flat upstairs.

HB05/13/008.

The building was used by Florie’s husband, Jim Spence, as a store for the furniture shop next door.