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Details
Name: Patrick Welsh
aka: Pat Welsh
Died: 12 Aug 1899
The Tailor who suited the Celts
In 1867 Pat Welsh was a young Fenian activist looking to escape capture from the British by escaping through Dublin docks. At the Pigeon House Fort on the Liffey he was discovered by a Sergeant Maley, an Irishman in the British Army. Welsh promised the soldier that if he was allowed to escape to Scotland he would give up his revolutionary activities – and was set free.
In Glasgow he quickly got to work and established himself as a master tailor with premises in Buchanan Street who also became a leading light in St. Mary’s parish. He didn’t forget Sergeant Maley’s kindness and in 1870, when Willie and Tom’s father was retiring from the army, he accepted Welsh’s invitation to move to Glasgow. Initially the Maley family lived off the Gallowgate in St. Mary’s parish.
17 years on it was ‘Tailor’ Welsh who led Brother Walfrid and John Glass to the Maley family home in Argyll Place, Cathcart in December 1887 with a proposition to the eldest son Tom, an established player with Hibernian, to join in the new Celtic venture. On their way out Brother Walfrid, perhaps through some divine intervention, said to Willie Maley: “Why don’t you come with him?” and a true personal Celtic connection was formed which endured for over half-a-century.
Welsh died in 1899
Obituary
Pat Welsh’s Obituary appeared in the Glasgow Observer on August 12 1899
Announcement made the previous Sunday at St Mary’s that he’d died.
“The funeral, which was a public one, took place on Sunday to Dalbeth. The cortege was a very large one, all the societies of the parish accompanying the remains to the cemetery.”
The death notice appeared in the Observer also: “dearly beloved husband of Ellen Lyddy who died at 76 Abercromby Street.”
Also in same paper: “Patrick Conway, beloved son of the late John Conway, aged 28 years.”
