END OF THE LINE

0 Comments | Sunday Mirror, Jun 20, 2004 | by ANDREW BUSHE

A MASS grave of Irish navies - who lost their lives in a tragedy covered up by rail bosses - is being probed in America.

The 57 workers were wiped out in a cholera epidemic 170 years ago while building a new railway. They were buried in an unmarked plot .

The scandal was covered up by the rail company at the time but now two local history professors have uncovered secret documents about the mass deaths and believe foul play was involved.

A local paper reported in August 1832 that just nine died from an outbreak of cholera.

Four months later it lowered the toll to eight and discounted earlier reports it might have been higher.

But now secret railway company records kept by the grandfather of Professor William Watson of Immaculata University reveal the true scale of the disaster in an area known as Duffy's Cut outside the town of Malvern, Pennsylvania.

The file was created by Martin Clement, eighth president of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), which took over the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad.

Clement learned of it years later and concealed the official papers that partially describe the company's dark secret.

Joseph Tripician was Clement's personal assistant and when the PRR collapsed he kept the file.

Tripician was Prof Watson's grandfather. He and his brother found the file while sorting family papers two years ago and they were intrigued and haunted by the discovery.

It appears the immigrant navvies fled a small scale famine in Ireland at the time only to end up in a mass grave within weeks of landing in America.

Prof Watson said: "The Philadelphia and Columbia Rail road did its best to erase all record of the men. Memory of the event was shrouded in secrecy, and their families in Ireland were never informed of their fate.

"Duffy's Cut is a unique historical site in that the entire Irish immigrant work gang perished from an epidemic disease that should have, under even the most horrendous conditions in 1832, claimed at most 50 to 60 per cent of its victims.

"The fact that all the men died suggests that there might have been some foul play.

"We have indications in contemporary local documents of a fairly widespread ethnic and religious prejudice directed against the men, and it was not just fear of infection that led people to deny care to the Irish rail workers."

Also fascinated by the story is Professor John Ahtes who specialises in Irish history at the university.

"Duffy's Cut is the dark side of the Irish immigrant experience in the early 19th century in America - rising ethnic and religious prejudice and the association of the Irish with bringing the global pandemic of Asiatic cholera to North America.

"These men counted for little or nothing and were dumped in a ditch and forgotten as though they were work animals. It's a grim story, but representative, and has struck a chord here with the Irish- American community."

In a first step in the recognition of the men, a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission commemorative plaque to the 57, was unveiled in a ceremony last Friday.

The Irish national anthem was played and a bagpiper rendered a lament during the ceremony which was attended by state senators and officials.

The next step for the two professors is a dig for the remains on the site of the grave. The local coroner considers the site a potential crime scene and will undertake forensic analysis on any remains.

Prof Watson said that after the archaeological work "to exhume the men from their ignominious grave" it is planned to re-inter them in consecrated ground.

Prof Ahtes believes the mystery of Duffy's Cut is of interest to Irish people on several levels.

He said: "First, it is all too typical - there are dozens if not hundreds of such sites across the landscape of industrial America, most of which are unknown. It was Irish immigrant labourers who in this period tended to fill the mass graves.

"It is an early site but anticipates much of what would follow for the famine generation. There was a potato crop failure in two provinces in 1832 which may have contributed to our fellows' decision to emigrate."

The historians believe the labourers were probably young, unmarried, Catholic men from rural areas of Ireland.

They may only have spoken Irish and were probably unaccustomed to a money economy. No records exist of the men's names.

To try to find out more, the historians have the passenger records of ships that arrived in Philadelphiafrom Ireland from June, 1832.

Prof Watson said: "There are only about five ships that match our time frame, with a total of about 200 men of the right age. We will see who is still alive in the 1840 census."