William McCusker : Short Biography

William McCusker was born on May 16, 1860 in Loughall, Co. Armagh, Ireland. He was the sixth of nine children born to Joseph McCusker and Jane Hayes. Joseph, according to his granddaugher, Annie McCusker, was thought to have been a farmer “of means,” however analysis of Griffiths of 1855, he may well have been only a farm laborer. His holding indicated only a small plot of less than one-quarter acre with a house and a garden.

William married Mary Collins on December 14, 1886 at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Belfast. In their marriage record he is described as a “farmer” from Loughall. Mary resided at 152 Leeson Street in Belfast. William, like generations of people before him, had left the agricultural lands of Ulster and beyond, and had come to Belfast in search of industrial work and to the type of insecurity which was so typical of unskilled working class life across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

In the Census of both 1901 and 1911 he described himself as a “Laborer.” In both of those years he gave the family’s address as 52 Lettuce Hill, in Belfast. It was also the family address at the time of his daughter, Annie’s, birth in 1892. By 1914, the time of Annie’s marriage, the family address was given as 24 Osman Street, and by 1921, the time of daughter Teresa’s marriage, the family resided at 42 Alexander Street.

Annie described her father as “a happy man who loved to fiddle,” though the life of an unskilled laborer was precarious, and families often relied upon the ability of wives and children to earn money. Most people in Belfast earned enough to keep themselves in lodging, but destitution was also a constant presence in the city. In the narrow streets of working-class areas, particularly around the shipyards, packed red-bricked houses were filled with large families. Along these streets, working class culture often revolved around a love of sport and music and drink.

Long before his arrival, Belfast was already embarking on the process of industrialization which so altered its nature. Linen mills and shipbuilding were its most significant economic activities. Technology, notably in mechanized spinning wheels, saw Belfast become the leading center of linen production in the world. As a “laborer” it is not able to discern if William worked in the linen or shipbuilding industries.

His children, however did have jobs at the linen mills. But linen workers suffered very high death rates. Perhaps the greatest single killer in this era was tuberculosis. In Belfast the illness was common among linen workers where the hot, humid conditions in the mills created ideal conditions for the spread of infection. In 1914 it was found that the rates of pneumonia , respiratory disease and pulmonary tuberculosis were far higher amongst Belfast mill workers than the rest of the city’s population. Presumably his daughter, Annie, would have begun work at around 16 years of age, and probably left employment at the time of her marriage in 1914 at the age of 22 or so. Thankfully, she escaped any respiratory illness, however it did strike tragedy into her family. His son, Joe, married Lucy O’Connor, also a mill worker, in 1910. They had a son, William James at the end of that year, but the little boy would die eight months later of tuberculosis on August 24, 1911. Lucy would perish of the same disease on June 4, 1912 as well as Joe on December 5^, 1912. Tragedy visited the family again when his younger daughter, Lily, a “stitcher,” would perish at the age of 23 due to tuberculosis. The linen mills certainly took their toll on the Mc Cusker family.

William’s was a Catholic family, and in Belfast at the time, there was great division between the Catholics and the Protestants. Even before the change driven by nineteenth century industrialization, tensions existed between Presbyterians and Church of Ireland members. The influx of tens of thousands of Catholics brought another new dynamic to Belfast. Recurring riots led newcomers to Belfast to seek safety in numbers. Catholics dominated the south-western part of the city with Protestants dominating much of the rest. This residential segregation reinforced divides which did not ease with the passage of time. Divisions in places of employment – Catholics were grossly under-represented in skilled industrial work, for instance – and the development of separate streams of education confirmed the partitioned nature of the city.

It is not known when William died, but he was still alive in December of 1921 when his youngest daughter, Teresa was married. His wife, Mary was still alive in December of 1924 when their daughter, Annie, left for the United States.