George Jennett was a resident of
Carriglea Park Industrial School
from 1907 until 1914
We first came across George performing on the stage of the Pavilion Theatre in Kingstown
(now Dun Laoghaire) in 1914
Youtube video - Master George Jennett plays as Wallace - The Knight of Ellerslie
David Quin has been working hard on the production of 7 animated collages, featuring stopmotion, CGI, documents and interviews.
Youtube video - Master George Jennett plays as Wallace - The Knight of Ellerslie
David Quin has been working hard on the production of 7 animated collages, featuring stopmotion, CGI, documents and interviews.
You can visit David’s blog here: http://quindpdp.blogspot.ie/
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| Irish Times Weekly Edition 29 January 1914 |
George was born in central Dublin in 1898; from the census of 1901 we know that his father was a butcher and his mother a weaver.
His grandfather had also been a butcher. So while they were far from well off, they probably did not experience the appalling levels of poverty which their neighbours had to endure.
Kate and Eliza had been admitted to Goldenbridge on 21 September 1907 by order of a Dublin Police Court under the Industrial School Act of 1868. The reason given was that they had been found 'wandering, no means of support'. Katie was ordered to remain until 1912 and Eliza (who was just 6 at the time) until 1917. The younger girls were admitted a few months later and for the same reason - remember little Mary would have been just a few months old. The sad key to all this was in the addresses recorded for their parents; Mary, their mother was living in Kevin St., but their father, John, was in the Royal Hospital for Incurables in Donnybrook - a ferocious name if ever there was one.
[Information courtesy: Mercy Congregational Archives]
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| Hospital for Incurables. Source: National Archives of Ireland |
George's father John Isaac Jennett died two years later of Dropsy - what we would now call Oedema - a very painful accumulation of fluid in the soft tissue.
Youtube video - The Death of John Isaac Jennett
David Quin has been working hard on the production of 7 animated collages, featuring stopmotion, CGI, documents and interviews.
You can visit David’s blog here: http://quindpdp.blogspot.ie/
John Isaac Jennett certainly could not have been working in 1907 and probably not for some time before that. For a family in early twentieth century Dublin this was a disaster - with an insufficient means of support the only alternative was the disease riddled workhouse.
Youtube video - The Jennett Family
David Quin has been working hard on the production of 7 animated collages, featuring stopmotion, CGI, documents and interviews.
You can visit David’s blog here: http://quindpdp.blogspot.ie/
Perhaps the most important actor in the Jennett family was their mother, born Mary Fox, she used an X instead of a signature when she registered Katie's birth in 1896.
But she was nothing if not resourceful - she managed to place all of her surviving children in Industrial Schools until she had the means to support them. The records show that she organised for Katie to be discharged in 1911 (just a few months after the census) to come to work with her and Katie's namesake aunt, Catherine, in 18 Anglesea St in Dublin city centre where they were tailoring. The report says that Katie was 'getting on well'. Eliza was also released two years early in 1915 presumably to join the women in their work.
After Carriglea
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| The two medals which George would have been awarded - as noted on the 'medal card' below. Left, the Victory Medal and right, the British War Medal. The actual medals above were awarded to my great-uncle, Peter Doyle, they now belong to my son, Peter Doyle - courtesy of his grandfather Peter. |
George, however, remained in
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| Parliamentary Papers of Ireland, 1915 Showing the number of boys from Reformatories and Industrial Schools who 'joined up'. |
Of the 2598 boys who had joined up in the first year of the war:
128 had been killed,
231 wounded
38 were prisoners of war,
1 had been 'mentioned in despatches' and
2 had been given commissions.
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| www.ssmaritime.com/Kaisar-I-Hind.htm |
In 1926 George sailed from Plymouth bound for Bombay (Mumbai), India on board the P&O ship Kaisar-I-Hind (Empress of India). His 'Profession, occupation or calling' is recorded as 'Musician' a skill he had learned in Carriglea. Interestingly he had been living at Loftus Rd. London W12, just around the corner from Ellerslie Rd.
The key to the next stage of George's life lies in his baptismal entry - a record we have already seen; in order to be married outside of his birth parish George would have had to obtain a 'letter of freedom' from the parish priest. The priest would record that the letter had been issued. (Because the mortality rate was so high some
The following information came from Jennette (Byrne) Gest of Queensland, Australia. Jennette is named after her great-grandmother who was George's aunt. It appears that George became a really well known musician in London in the 1930s and 40s. He performed with the famous Bert Ambrose Orchestra alongside Ted Heath and Sid Phillips. He played the Saxophone - both alto and tenor, the clarinet and even the flute.
At that time he went under the name Joe Jeannette.
[Joseph was his middle name - even though he used George Kevin when he got married]
Jennette included two photographs which you see below.
Jennette included two photographs which you see below.
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| Bert Ambrose Orchestra with Joe Jeannette third from right [Information courtesy of Jennette (Byrne) Gest] |
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| George again |
From the Electoral registers it would appear that George and Mabel lived in the Willesden area of North London until at least 1965. At some stage they moved to Felixstowe on the coast where Mabel died in 1984 aged 82 and George passed away two years later in 1986 aged 88. Not a bad age for someone who had such a tough start in life.
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