Patrick J. Lindsay : Short Biography

Patrick James Lindsay was born in Cork on 17th March 1884. His mother Agnes Tackaberry was born in Listowel and his father was a mounted policeman.

He managed to get himself expelled from all the Protestant schools in the area for pranks such as putting the girls’ plait into inkwells or using drawing pins to attach the girls’ plaits to their chairs. He was sent to a Catholic school where he decided to behave as he got more holidays (for the Saint’s days) than in his previous schools. He was also a choir boy at Saint Finbarre’s Cathedral.

His father died when he was 13 so he had to leave school and join his brother William as an apprentice printer, Meanwhile, he continued studying and later went to Trinity College in Dublin to train as a doctor. One day he got fed up and sold his books to go to a party.

He then went to London and became a commercial artist specialising in Cartography. He joined the London Irish Rugby club playing half back in the “A” team. In the 1920s he was the Captain of the “B” team. When WW1 came, he wanted to enlist, but he was not allowed to as Cartography was a protected profession because they needed his specialist skills to draw battlefields etc. He enlisted twice and was brought back (one time after a month) and eventually was put into the Admiralty so they could control his whereabouts.

He married in 1919 and his daughter was born in 1920. He still had the wish for adventure and in 1925 he saw an advertisement for a job with a publisher in Dunedin in New Zealand for 2 years. He applied and did not hear anything for a long time. Then he received a letter telling him to be ready to sail in 10 days.

In 1927 he was offered a transfer for 2 years to Christchurch and then in 1929 he moved to Wellington. He stayed in Wellington as the depression had started and he did not know whether he would get a job in London at this time. He continued to play and coach Rugby. When he came to claim his pension he found that he was a year older than he thought and he received a very welcome backdated pension. He never went back and died in 1955. 

In 1973 his granddaughter immigrated to London and became an Irish citizen.