Family History from Mary

I have often visited your olddeptfordhistory website and found it both extremely interesting  -  and useful, as I am finally writing up the history of my mother’s family - the rest of the family saying that they find it fascinating but not willing to put the work in  …..

May I ask you some questions?  The family  -  Spillane / Mahoney / Roche ( sometimes Roach ) / Rahilly and Sheehan  -  all came from southwest Ireland, Cork and Kerry, just after the Famine, and settled in the streets mainly in St. Paul, but sometimes in St. Nicholas, and worked as Deal Porters, general labourers in the dockyards, as skin dressers and slaughtermen ( with pigs, I think as they call themselves sausage skin dressers ) and brass finishers.  The female members were laundresses and tin workers.  Would you have any idea where the pork abattoirs and sausage factories were?  My grandfather invented a process for treating sausage skins and patented it, which came in useful when he retired!  Where were the brass foundry and tin works?  I presume the deal porters would have been in the Surrey Commercial  Docks or Greenland Docks at this time - 1880s and 90s?

The streets that they lived in were;  Butcher’s  Row, New St., Czar St., Rope Walk, Prince St., Bailey Rents, Ffinch St., Fairey’s Buildings, Blackhorse Square, Greenfield Place, Grove St., Junction Rd., Gosterwood St., Hood St., New King St., Brunswick Square, Watergate St., and Trim St. 

I have tracked down all of the above except Bailey Rents and Fairey’s Buildings which I think may now be too hard to trace given the general destruction and demolition of Deptford.  The little that the Luftewaffe spared, the LCC finished off!  Mind you a lot probably needed it.

Many thanks for any information that you can offer,
Mary Simpson