The Flower of the Dublin Fusiliers

R.Dub.Fusilier

Private Charles Frederick Ball, D Coy 7th Bn Royal Dublin Fusiliers worked as an Assistant Gardener at the Botanical Gardens in Glasnevin Dublin he landed at Suvla Bay on 9-8-1915 and was killed in action on 13-9-1915.

Esallonia C F Ball is named in his honour.

http://www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/606805/BALL,%20CHARLES%20FREDERICK

Snickers Man

Census data shows him as living in Marguerite Road Glasnevin in 1911. Which would figure as it is very close to his place of work at the Botanic Gardens.

He was English born, his parents are listed as living in Loughborough and the Census data implies that he moved to Ireland in adulthood, presumably to put his gardening expertise to good use.

johnny_doyle

a little bit about his career at this page

http://www.kewguild.org.uk/media/pdfs/v3s23p265-43.pdf


He appears to have been born in Loughborough in late 1879 to Alfred Bramley Ball (a pharmaceutical chemist) and Mary Bowerly Ball (a British subject born in Ohio, USA).

He appears in 2 family trees on Ancestry.

Also a brief mention here

http://www.tcd.ie/visitors/Fusiliers/DUBFUS/DUBFUS/TCD/HTML/tcd_2a.htm

Possibly a mason
http://www.irish-freemasons.org/Pages_GL/Archive_GuestBook/Volume_14.html

No date, but his appointment is announced here

http://www.kewguild.org.uk/media/pdfs/v2s15p347-11.pdf

Another Botanic Garden casualty is the aptly named Stephen George Rose

http://www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/1648058/ROSE,%20STEPHEN%20GEORGE

The ship he was on was torpedoed.

johnny_doyle

a bit of info about the sinking of the ship that Stephen Rose was on board

http://www.firstworldwar.com/diaries/torpedoed.htm

Both Ball and Rose are linked to the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction (DATI). I'm interested in them in a round about way because of the role of Horace Plunkett one time head of DATI, the Helga being a DATI vessel, the DATI link with Professor David Houston and in turn his links to St Enda's and Thomas MacDonagh. I believe that Houston joined the VTC after the sinking of the Lusitania. Don't know if he was with them when they were ambushed at Mount St during the Easter Rising. Francis Browning was killed during that engagement and he was one of the main recruiters for Charles Ball's unit, D Company, 7th RDF.

Though Houston and MacDonagh were on opposite sides, MacDonagh entrusted his writing to Houston.

http://www.turlach.net/macdonagh/tmacd/TMACDfinallet.htm

Houston worked with Sir Frederick Moore (the head at Glasnevin and boss of both Ball and Rose) and both were involved in a variety of gardening/agriculture projects for women. One of the first women students of Moore's was Mary Helen Graves, half sister of the war poet Robert Graves.

http://www.botanicgardens.ie/glasra/ns4_4.pdf

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/30101535?uid=3738032&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=47698947207717


Sir Frederick Moore was later involved in the work of the "Irish National War Memorial Committee" and the Memorial Gardens.

http://www.phoenixpark.ie/media/Irish%20War%20Memorial%20Gardens.pdf

Qualitymark

More than his writing:

My money affairs are in a bad way. I am insured for £200 in the New York Life Co. but have borrowed £ 101, I think. I am insured for £100 in the Alliance Co., but have a bank debt for £80. That brings less than £120 from these sources, if they produce anything. In addition I have insured my two children for £100 each in Mutual Co. of Australasia, payment of premiums to cease at my death the money to be paid to the children at the age of twenty one. I ask my brother Joseph MacDonagh and my good and constant friend David Houston to help my poor wife in these matters.

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/IrelandGenWeb/2002-10/1034880920

They were very good friends and colleagues: Houston was teaching in the Royal College of Science (now Government Buildings - perhaps politics is more important to 21st-century Ireland than science) and MacDonagh in UCD in Earlsfort Terrace, where his lectures were packed by students including those not taking his courses.

MacDonagh had sublet the gate lodge of the house Houston rented, Grange House at Haroldsgrange in Rathfarnham, when he was teaching in St Enda's school, and he liked to cycle up to Glencree on the weekends to the teahouse run by the Misses Tweedy there.

In one of the censuses there's an Edith Alderton visiting Houston's house, by the way; I think this may be the name of one of the women listed on the back of a photo of Thomas MacDonagh and his two children and two women, "Mrs Alderton and Mrs Maguire".