The 80th anniversary of the Cavan Orphanage fire tragedy will be marked this Thursday. A special candlelit vigil will take place on the day at 6pm. A procession will take place on Cavan’s Main Street and a vigil will be held to mark all the lives that were lost in the Convent courtyard.
Sean Galligan spoke to Northern Sound about the significance of the occasion, and revealed that the event will begin by naming out the names of the 36 people who were lost in the fire.
He continued; "It was called the orphanage but in fact the official title was St Joseph's industrial school. Very few of the girls staying there were orphans, most of them were there because their mother had either passed away or was sick.
"Ireland was a very different place back then for some reason it wasn't acceptable in those times for men to bring their children up if the mother wasn't available.
"That night a fire started but we're not sure exactly what caused it. It probably started in the laundry underneath the floors of the dormitories. The girls on the lower dormitory were evacuated successfully but unfortunately the ones on the top two dormitories were trapped.
"There was an opportunity to get them out, there was about 20 minutes of a window but for some reason this didn't happen. By the time people tried to reach the girls the staircase was engulfed, some of them survived by jumping from windows and others were taken down via a ladder eventually but unfortunately 36 of them perished."
