They Eloped from Ireland.
Girl Tells of Heroism Displayed by the Man she had Selected for her Mate.
In the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary No. 7 State Street, yesterday afternoon where several young women survivors of the Titanic were being entertained with music and refreshment in an effort to lighten their hearts and divert their minds from recollections of their dreadful experiences when the big ship went down, there was told by Margaret Murphy, nineteen years old, a bright and prepossessing girl, the story of love, courage, and safe-sacrifice that ranks with the foremost deeds of heroism of the many recorded in the wreck.
Deeply religious, and firm in her belief that her sorrow is a visitation earned because she ran away with her sweetheart from their home in Fostra, County Longford, the young woman grieves for the loss of one who gallantly died after fighting desperately to carry her to a boat through the struggling passengers in the steerage. After leading her safely to the boat deck, the young man, John Kiernan, unstrapped the life belt he wore and tied it on the girl.
He reached the deck in time to catch a boat that just was being sent away. There was room for one more and into it he forced her despite her protests. There was little time in which to say good-by but in the fleeting moments the youth caught the girl in his arms, pressed his lips to hers, and half flung her into the boat as it swung outward from the davits.
The hum of nervous voices, the rumbling of the boat falls in the blocks as the boat was lowered away, drowned the parting message of the youth as he leaned over the rail, his form silhouetted in the starlight night, gazing at the upturned face of the girl he loved, as the distance between them gradually increased. In the confusion none but the girl in the boat heard the young man shout: ‘Don't worry, I'll be saved.’
But he died with those who unselfishly thought of the safety of others.
The boy and girl were playmates in childhood in their native town. The girl in her humble state was above the youth socially for he was employed in her father's grocery store. They loved each other and agreed to elope to America. They little dreamed of the tragic fate awaiting one of them. When the ship was stabbed fatally by the hidden spur of the iceberg they were with hundreds of others in the steerage on the fifth deck of the liner. Those who were able grabbed life belts. The young man got one, his sweetheart did not. Lest they should be separated in the crowd, Kiernan held the girl and fought his way with her to the boat deck.
‘One of us must go,’ he told her quietly, ‘you haven't a life belt, I have.’
Quickly he took the life preserver from his body and wrapped it around his sweetheart. She resisted and hampered his work, clinging to him and saying she would not go without him. By force he put her in the boat.
Miss Murphy told dramatically how after the boat left the ship and began to leak she and other young women, among them the Misses Agnes and Alice McCoy, set fire to their hats to warm their feet.
The boat was half filled with water when they were picked up. The warmth of their blazing headgear probably saved them from being frostbitten, she said.
Father Michael J. Henry, in charge of the mission distributed among the thirty young women $25 each that had been collected from Irish societies by Michael McDermott.
[The assertions made in this article were later the subject of a lawsuit brought by Margaret Murphy for libel against the New York Press]
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