THE FIRST time Eileen Teresa Corr appeared in a census was April 2nd, 1911, aged one. Tomorrow night she will be on a census form once more, this time aged 101.
Hers is one of more than two million census forms that have been delivered to households around the country. It is a process that has been in operation, in various ways, since 1821, when the first census of population was carried out in Ireland.
Eileen, the fourth of nine children, was born on October 16th, 1909, in Holles Street Hospital in Dublin. She was the second daughter of Dr James Joseph Corr from Coalisland, Co Tyrone, and Bridget (née Kennedy) from Co Tipperary.
Her parents first met when Bridget, a book-keeper in the Moira Hotel, called into the College of Surgeons after being stung by a bee in St Stephen’s Green. There, James Corr, a young medical student treated her. They were married on June 18th, 1903, in SS Michael and John’s Church, Dublin.
By the time of the 1911 census of Ireland, the married couple, then aged 27 and 36 respectively, were living in Coalisland, Tullyniskane, Co Tyrone, with their one-year-old daughter Eileen and her elder sister, two-year-old Alice.
They then moved to Uddingston, south Lanarkshire, Scotland, where Dr Corr worked as a general practitioner. Dr Corr died in 1920, when Eileen was aged 11. The rest of the family – Eileen’s mother and her five sisters – returned to live in Dublin, first in Harrington Street and then in Clontarf. Eileen attended the Holy Faith Convent, both in Clontarf and Glasnevin. At 16 she won first prize in Ireland for English composition.
On finishing school, she studied at the National College of Art and did a secretarial course before joining the ESB’s publicity department.
She contributed articles to various magazines on art, cookery and the latest electrical household equipment.
In 1934, after completing a course at the Institute of Good Housekeeping in London, Eileen married an engineer with the ESB by the name of Laurence J Veale.
Fittingly for two ESB employees, their honeymoon was spent in Paris attending an exhibition on engineering and machinery.
On their return, the couple lived in Churchtown in Dublin, which at the time was considered “out the country”.
Widowed aged 42 when Laurence died suddenly on June 4th, 1951, Eileen was left with four children aged between nine and 15. All her children later graduated from University College Dublin.
An avid reader of literature and history, Eileen often read up to a dozen books in a week. From the late 1940s, she drove and was often spotted in various locations around the country investigating ancient monuments and places of historic or literary interest with a child or two in tow.
Having lived through more than 100 years of Irish history, Eileen often recounts her memories of significant historical events from the country’s past.
She remembers hanging out of a lamp post on O’Connell Street to watch the funeral of Michael Collins, witnessing atrocities during the time of the Civil War and meeting Jack Butler Yeats and his sisters Lily and Lolly.
She was also a close friend of James Joyce’s sister, May Joyce Monaghan. Eileen is included among the early Dublin Joyceans. She now lives in Churchtown with her daughter Gay and dog Har.
When asked to what she attributes her long life, she quipped: “I havent started to live at all yet.”