Margaret Murphy

Photo: Margaret Palombo nee Clark born London W1, 1892 - Likely named after her Irish Grandmother Margaret Clark nee Murphy who was 12 years when her family left Ballingarry, County Limerick(c.1847) for London, England. I found the Murphy family on ancestry.com; Census 1851 St. Marylebone. There was a lot of Irish diaspora living there. Not all went to America or Australia. Perhaps they went there because they knew people and they could find work and it would be easier to go back home when things had got better?

What a cultural shock going from rural County Limerick to Charles Dickens London!

In 1851 Census Margaret Murphy (20)is a laundress at the Grey Coat School (Protestant). I imagine that is where she met my 3rd Great Grandfather Henry Edward Clark, a coal and grocery dealer of Carnaby Street.

By 8th May 1857 she had married him at St. Marylebone Christ Church (CofE). In those days mixed marriages of Catholic and Protestant were frowned upon. Perhaps they negotiated to have their children baptised Catholics? 

Her sister Ellen Murphy was married with Banns at the same time. They must have been close as the 1861 census shows her visiting her sister at the Grocer shop in Carnaby Street and being born in Ballingarry, Limerick, Ireland 1837. Their siblings were James Murphy born in 1828, Hannah 1829, Bridget 1830, Margaret 1831, Ellen 1837, John 1843. If they left their home around 1847 all the children could have some memory of their childhood and stories and songs.

HELP required : The kid's parents Matthew and Bridget Murphy tell the English census they both originate from Ballingarry, Limerick, but I haven't found any birth record, apart from a marriage of their names at Ballyadams, County Laois on 4th Feb. 1820. They could have been travelling as labourers during this time. Ballingarry might not have been an ancestral place?

Margaret Murphy's mother is Bridget Murphy, maiden name is Connor.