Deaths Foretold
Kirkintilloch Bothy Fire Disaster
Excerpt from full-page article, Mayo News, September 24th 1997, written on occasion of 60th anniversary of the bothy fire at Kirkintilloch, Glasgow, September 16th 1937, in which ten seasonal workers from Achill lost their lives.
Courtesy Mayo NewsKirkintilloch Bothy Fire Disaster
Courtesy Mayo News
Courtesy Mayo News
Kirkintilloch Bothy Fire Disaster
Excerpt from full-page article, Mayo News, September 24th 1997, written on occasion of 60th anniversary of the bothy fire at Kirkintilloch, Glasgow, September 16th 1937, in which ten seasonal workers from Achill lost their lives.
Courtesy Mayo NewsIn the 17th century a man called Brian Rua Ó Ceabháin from Inver in Erris, foretold of the coming of the railway to Achill, describing carriages on iron wheels with smoke and fire. He prophesied that the first and the last trains to the island would carry home the dead. Sadly, his prohecy turned out to be true.
In 1894, a group of over 30 harvesters from Achill drowned in Clew Bay. Their hooker had capsized while carrying a full load of passengers to the steamship in Westport that would bring them to Scotland. A special train was brought into operation to transport the bodies of the victims home, for burial in Achill's Kildavnet Cemetery, even though the Achill railway extension was still under construction at the time of the accident
Forty-three years later, in September 1937, another special train was put on to return the bodies of ten young boys to their native Achill. They had been working as harvesters in Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow, and had been burnt to death when their bothy or cabin, into which they had been locked for the night, had caught fire.