Paddy Neary: Ballyconra House & Mabel Cahill
Ballyconra House & Mabel Cahill
Paddy Neary
A detached seven bay two story with dormer attic dated 1724.A substantial house representing an element of the early 18th Century. Possibly having associations with the nearby Ballyconra mills. Connections with the Butler family ,Viscounts Mountgarret of Ballyragget (1495) and the Cahill family. Now in use as offices.
Mabel Esmonde Cahill: She was born 2nd April 1863, the twelfth of thirteen children of Michael Cahill, gentleman, landowner, and barrister at law of Ballyconra House, and his first wife Margaret Mangan of Ballymore Co.Westmeath (1823-1875) Mabel and her siblings were drawn into lawn tennis parties and tournaments. The craze for lawn tennis having swept through Ireland from the late 1870s.In 1884 she is recorded in her first tournament at Kilkenny Lawn Tennis Club, Archersfield which she won playing off a handicap. During 1884-1886 she participated regularly in tennis tournaments across Ireland, including Dublin’s Fitzwilliam Square tournament in 1886, where she lost in the first round. For the rest of that season she focused mainly on handicap events, winning this event at the Landsdowne Tournament in Dublin. Playing off scratch she also claimed the handicap event at the Kilkenny Club in Archersfield. She does not seem to have participated in Tournaments in Ireland during 1887-1889.
Emigrating to New York in 1889, she lived in Manhattan, and began playing tennis on the new courts built there. Her brother Louis who was also living in New York became a regular tennis partner. Entering the Annual Invitation Ladies Tournament at the Staten Cricket Club in Autumn 1889, she won the ladies singles event, and the mixed doubles events. While she was outmatched in first class open events in Ireland, she found the standard of tennis lower in America. Her tennis improved after she came to America, she credited this to regularly practising against men.
In 1890 she travelled to Philadelphia for the United States Championship, being the only non- American of the eight women to compete. The format of the tournament saw the defending champion automatically progress to the final, where she would play the winner of the knockout competition played between all other entrants. Cahill reached the final of the knockout competition but a foot cramp forced her out of her match against the eventual champion Ellen Roosevelt, a first cousin of the future U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. Believing herself wronged by the officials who refused her time to recover, the fiery Cahill bore a grudge against Roosevelt over this incident.
She returned to the U.S. Championship in 1891 to defeat both Ellen and her sister Grace Roosevelt claiming the singles honours. She then added the women’s doubles defeating the Roosevelt sisters, along with the mixed doubles event. In the 1892 U.S. Championship she claimed the ladies singles, doubles, and mixed doubles becoming the first person to record a treble at a major tournament. She had to fight hard in the singles final against Bessie Moore who had looked the likely winner going into the final set. Tired after staying outside during the interval while Cahill cooled indoors for longer than was stipulated.
Women were than obliged to play tennis in suffocating attire comprising heeled boots, long sleeves, headgear, a necktie or scarf, and an ankle length dress over a petticoat and corset, all supported by a girdle.
Mabel Cahill was now a sporting star and an article appeared in the American press, describing her as “a petite, attractive brunette with short black hair and the brightest of grey eyes, full of life and spirits”. Newspapers refer to her “manliness” describe her preparation as more like that of a professional than of an amateur. She competed in various tournaments during 1890 -1893 never losing a completed singles match in the U.S.A. She was not a popular champion and had to withstand the hostility of both spectators and match opponents. It is unclear whether this was because of her playing style or of her foreign birth. Her final appearance in first class lawn tennis came in July 1893 at the New York Championships. Tennis was an amateur sport, and it is likely that the income she inherited from her father’s estate had run out.
From the early 1890s she tried to become a professional writer.Publishing a novel in 1891 entitled Her Playthings was not a success. Neither were her shorter works ,Carved in Marble (1892) and Purple sparkling. She dabbled in Journalism and published articles on tennis. By1896 she was described as a professional rider participating in equestrian events. She also hunted with the Ocean County Hunt and Country in New Jersey.
Moving to London, she stayed briefly in a workhouse in April 1897, probably upon her arrival. She struggled to earn enough money writing articles writing articles for magazines, and performing on stage in music halls where she sang and acted in variety shows. Still in London in January 1900, she had moved to Ormskirk, Lancashire by 1905 drawn by the going in the seaside music halls of nearby Blackpool and Southport.
Stricken with tuberculosis, Mabel Cahill died in the Union Workhouse , Ormskirk on 2nd February 1905, her death went unnoticed. Three days later she was laid to rest in a paupers grave in the graveyard of the church of Saints Peter and Paul.
When in 1936, the Irish Lawn Tennis Association placed an advertisement in the national press requesting that she, or a representative, claim a gold medallion struck in her honour, it took three months before a family member to come forward. The medal was never struck.
She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1976.Despite her standard –setting record her life story until recently shrouded in mystery.
Sources:
Old Kilkenny Review 1956/57, Tom Lyng.
Mabel E.Cahill, Herstory Irelands Epic Women. Epic Museum.
Mabel E.Cahill, Dictionary of Irish Biography. Contributed by Paul Rouse.
Ballyconra House, National Inventory of Architect