Clodagh Finn: The Irish mummy who went to Egypt in 1846 – with three children in tow
Lady Harriet Kavanagh, one of the first Irish women to travel to Egypt on her own, managed to bring a disabled teenager and his older siblings on the arduous and dangerous journey in 1846. Picture reproduced by the kind permission of the Kavanagh family.
All the talk of repatriating an Egyptian mummy from University College Cork reminded me of the remarkable travels of an Irish mummy who set out for Egypt in 1846 with three of her children in tow, including her youngest son Arthur who was born without limbs.
That sentence in itself throws up a series of wide-eyed questions, not least how did the mother in question, Lady Harriet Kavanagh, of Galway and Carlow, become one of the first Irish women to travel to Egypt on her own? And how did she manage to bring a disabled teenager, and his older siblings, Thomas and Harriet, on such an arduous and dangerous journey?
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