The local obituaries for 1843 give an overview of life in Limerick city by telling of deaths from accidents and fevers that plagued the homes of the wealthy, as well as the poor. Ailments like measles, scarlet fever, consumption (tuberculosis) and cholera were all common.
In June 1843, Peter Doyle was born in the parish of St John’s in Limerick city. He was one of the middle children of a typically large Irish Roman Catholic family. Although his father was a blacksmith by trade, the family still saw the ravages of the Great Famine (1845-1852).
Doyle’s next older and younger siblings are both presumed to have died during this period as no record of them exists beyond the famine years.
It’s easy to imagine those harsh years etched on the young boy’s mind as he left his homeland for the United States in 1852. The journey across the Atlantic was harsh, as the William Patten – the ship the eight-year-old travelled on with his mother and brothers – was struck by successive storms.
It was a common custom for many Irish migrants to the United States to relocate to an area already occupied by family members who had gone ahead and paved the way in to the new world. Doyle’s maternal uncle, Michael Nash, lived in Washington D.C., only a few miles from Alexandria, Virginia, where Doyle’s father’s skills as a blacksmith were put to use.
As a native of Virginia, it was not surprising that the then 17-year-old, blue-eyed, fair-haired Doyle enlisted with the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. After 18 months of service, Doyle was injured and successfully petitioned for his discharge from the army.
Despite this, he was arrested for desertion four months later. He was ordered to return to his company but instead attempted to travel north as a refugee from the Confederate States. He was arrested by the Union Army and taken to Washington D.C.
His family petitioned for his release, which was secured after he swore an oath not to assist the Confederate Army. Despite this he accepted an invitation in 1890 to join the United Confederate Veterans.
Following his release from the prison camp, Doyle found himself wandering between employments; working in a smith or as a conductor on a horse drawn bus. It was while working this second job that Doyle first met the renowned American poet Walt Whitman. The two became lifelong friends and suspected lovers.
The 1870 census for Washington D.C. showed Doyle as a “Conductor City R.R.”, living with his mother and two younger siblings. Doyle lived openly within his family. His niece would later describe him as “a homosexual”. Whitman’s mother too wrote approvingly of the pair’s companionship.
He continued a relationship with Walt Whitman in person until 1873 when Whitman suffered a stroke which led him to relocate to New Jersey. The pair continued to write to each other until Whitman’s death.
Whitman stipulated that Doyle be given his silver watch as a remembrance. In 1897, Calamus. A series of letters written during the years 1868-1880 by Walt Whitman to a young friend (Peter Doyle) was published by Laurens Maynard. This publication alienated Doyle from his family and friends.
Considering the ‘immoral’ nature of his relationship with Whitman at the time, Doyle deserves praise for allowing the letters to be published.
Whitman would use the events of a pivotal night in Doyle’s life as the backdrop to his most famous poem O Captain! My Captain!.
On April 14, 1865, Doyle booked tickets to a performance of My American Cousin in the Ford Theater. He had heard that President Abraham Lincoln and his wife would also be in attendance, which solidified his resolve to see the show.
The play, which Doyle described as ‘nothing extraordinary’, was interrupted with the arrival of the President as the orchestra played Hail to the Chief.
Doyle had a clear view of the President’s box, where Mary Lincoln would bring the President’s attention to aspects of the onstage action. The presidential box was guarded by policeman John Frederick Parker who, at intermission, left his post with Lincoln’s valet and coachman to visit a nearby tavern.
It was the same tavern where John Wilkes Booth was waiting for the opportune moment to enter the theatre. This came, as we all know, while Parker was away from his post.
Booth gained entrance to the hallway that led to the boxes. Here he barricaded the door while awaiting his time to shoot. Booth knew the play well and waited until the audience would erupt into laughter before making his move.
Meanwhile, Doyle was in the audience, enjoying the show. The first alert he had of any disturbance was the muffled sound of a gunshot. This drew his attention to the President’s box, where Mary Lincoln let out a scream: “The President is shot!”.
Next Doyle witnessed Booth leap from the box onto the stage. Other witnesses recalled Booth yelling “freedom” before taking the leap, a drop of twelve feet. Doyle noticed Booth landing awkwardly on his ankle after his spur became entangled in the flag decorating the box.
Pandemonium ensued as the audience and actors bid a hasty exit into the rainy night. Doyle soon found himself standing almost alone in the theatre after witnessing Major Joseph B. Stewart climbing over the orchestra pit and footlight to chase Booth across the stage. A soldier entered, yelling at him to leave, as they were going to burn down the building. Doyle did as he was told.
Although President Lincoln was shot in the head, he survived until the following morning. He became the first U.S. president to be assassinated. The future president Ulysses S. Grant was also due to be in attendance that night but he and his wife had declined Lincoln’s invitation.
Doyle would later recall watching President Grant visiting with the widow of Dr William Magruder from his street car as he passed the White House.
In 1872, after a series of infractions, Doyle left his job as a street car conductor and moved to the much more dangerous role of brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad. His days of spying on the activities around the White House were over but his interaction with future heads of state were not.
Doyle left Washington D.C. for Philadelphia permanently in the early 1880s. While there he joined a society, the Benevolent Protectorate Order of the Elks, whose members also included future president Theodore Roosevelt.
Limerick-born Peter Doyle died on April 19, 1907, in St Joseph’s Hospital, Philadelphia. He witnessed history and was a muse for one of the best-loved U.S. poets of all time, but his own name is all too rarely mentioned in his home city.
For further details on the life of Peter Doyle’s, check out:
Whitman, W., Calamus. A series of letters written during the years 1868-1880 by Walt Whitman to a young friend, 1897.
Murray, M. G., “Pete the Great”: A Biography of Peter Doyle”, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 12 (1994), p.1-51.
