|
Bridget Mulvihill (1886-1959), also known as Bertha E. Mulvihill or Bertha Mulvihill Noon, was an Irish survivor of the . The Sligo Champion has described her as "one of the most colourful of the Irish survivors of the shipwreck". Mulvihill was born in Coosan, County Westmeath in 1886 to Martin and Eliza Mulvihill. She had eleven siblings. One of her sisters was IRA Intelligence Officer Maud Mitchell. In 1910, Mulvihill was residing in Central Park West, New York City. She returned to Ireland in 1911 aboard the Lusitania to attend her sister Kate's wedding. She sought to surprise her fiance and secretly bought a third class ticket to sail from Queenstown to New York on the Titanic. Mulvihill was nearly thrown from her berth upon the ship's collision with the iceberg. On her way to the Lifeboat No.15, Mulvihill broke her ribs. She lost many of her belongings, including a picture of Robert Emmet, which she had received at the play of the same name by Fianna Eireann. She was transfixed by a small iceberg which repeatedly clipped the side of the lifeboat. She wrote a letter about the disaster aboard the Carpathia, which she sent to her sister, Maud. Mulvihill complained about the White Star Line in correspondence to her family in Ireland and she herself never sailed back to Ireland again after the disaster. In April 1956 Mulvihill was featured in the Providence Journal on the occasion of the publication of A Night to Remember. She was extensively quoted regarding her memories of the Titanic. Mulvihill was 24 years old at the time of the voyage and had travelled with Margaret Daly and Eugene Daly (unrelated). She married Henry Noon in Providence on 12 August 1912. Mulvihill Noon died of cancer in Providence in October 1959. She is buried in St Francis Cemetery, Pawtucket, Rhode Island. In 2013, a hat which was given to her upon arriving in New York was displayed at an exhibition at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra, County Down.
|
|
|