Connemara auction generates ‘Titanic’ spending spree

When White Star Line chairman J Bruce Ismay retreated to south Connemara after surviving the Titanic , the last sound he would have wished for was that of thousands of footsteps through his hall.

Yet such was the level of curiosity about his former home in Costelloe, Co Galway, that an unprecedented number of visitors attended viewings and a contents auction there over the weekend.

Auctioneer Dr Niall Dolan had barely taken to the podium after midday yesterday when the 900th applicant had secured a bidding card.

Yet most of the contents on offer yesterday were not owned by Ismay at all, but by the most recent owners, Agnes and Jack Toohey.

Sportswoman
Dublin-born Agnes Toohey was a dress designer and sportswoman, who fenced for Ireland and designed official Olympic uniforms for Irish teams.

She married Jack Toohey, a textiles and garment manufacturer, racing driver and descendant of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants from Limerick. They acquired Costelloe Lodge in the early 1980s.

Art, furniture, garden sculpture and clothing, including several fur coats, were among over 470 lots listed in the catalogue, while there were dozens of late additions, several of which had an Ismay connection.

A four-piece split cane fly rod, bearing Ismay’s surname, fetched €750. The rod had been given by an angling ghillie to the late Bill Houlihan when he was working on the State’s rural electrification scheme.

His son, Tommy, a seasoned marathon runner from Galway, inherited the rod, and also built a model of the Titanic , both of which he submitted for auction.

Coincidentally, his wife's great-grand-aunt, Margaret Mannion, had sailed on the Titanic and had survived.

Early auction fever in the marquee generated some heated bidding, with a pair of wheelbarrows fetching €230 and an aluminium ladder valued at between €30 and €40 making almost twice that price.

“There’s money in this country yet,” said one local Galway man, who left without buying.

Ismay was known as a good employer in the Costelloe area after he moved there, but he also bore the nickname “Brú síos mé” or “Push me down”, as into the lifeboat.

He was vilified in the years after the Titanic sinking, though officially exonerated. The rumour was that he had dressed as a woman before leaving the sinking ship.

Costelloe Lodge was burnt by republicans in 1925 and rebuilt in 1925. Ismay’s widow continued to live there for a time after her husband’s death in 1937, and there were several further occupants before it was bought by the Tooheys – and is now for sale again.