We know that John Keohane was working at Hood Farm in Tewksbury, but he did not stay there indefinitely. How long did he stay in Lowell? When did he go to Boston? When did Tom Keohane go to Boston? Why would they leave Lowell and go to Boston? Did Dennis Crowley go to Boston? What happened to him?
According to page 421 in the "History of Lowell and Its People" that I found on Google Book, "wages in Lowell were lower than in Boston, and the cost of living was almost as high as living in New York. Dissatisfaction regarding wages in Lowell, which came distinctly into public consciousness in the last years of the nineteenth century, was undoubtedly based on a real differential operating against high compensation and hence, often against efficacy in the oldest of our factory towns. The standing excuse for the existing wage scales was that living was cheaper in Lowell than in most American communities. This popular notion, unfortunately, has not been borne out by all the facts. An investigation of the ratio of cost of living to wages in 28 American cities was made in 1911 (the year before John Keohane arrived) by the British Board of Trade, and reviewed by the Boston Transcript. Taking New York as the index with a rating of 100 in each classification, it was found that for rents and food prices combined, Lowell had an index number of 90. Food prices in Lowell were actually above those in New York. In the important items of living expense, in other words, it costs at least nine-tenths as much to live in Lowell as in New York; and on the showing of typical occupations covered by the British inquiry, Lowell wages for skilled and unskilled laborers were only about three-fourths what they were in the metropolis. Salaries, too, it is a matter of common knowledge, have been low in Lowell in at least an equivalent proportion - an explanation of the loss of thousands of the brightest boys and girls trained in the public schools who of late years in increasing numbers have gone elsewhere in search of employment." So I guess this might be the reason the Keohane brothers left Lowell. Unfortunately, we don't know what ever happened to Denis Crowley.
Frances Keohane told me that her father Tom Keohane hated farm work when he lived in Ballythomas. Instead of working for local farmers, he would go into Kinsale and get work on the fishing boats. She said that when he arrived in Lowell on Hood Farm, he asked where was the water - meaning the sea. So I guess he did not plan to remain in Lowell. Did he and John Keohane leave Lowell together? Where did they go? We already had seen that Tom went to Cambridge by 1917 according to his WWI draft registration card - he is still single and is supporting his parents in Ireland.
John Keohane's WWI draft registration tells us that he was living in Belmont in 1917. He is 28 years old. His home address is Belmont/Kinsale, Ireland. His birthday is December 10, 1888. He is an alien. He was born in Kinsale, Ireland, Great Britain. He is a citizen of Great Britain. He is a farm laborer - there is a 30 after his occupation - I don't know what this means. He works at McLean Hospital in Belmont. He supports his dependent father and mother. He is single; he is a Caucasian. He has had no military service. He is not exempt from military service.
Page 2 reports that John Keohane was medium height, medium build with gray eyes and dark brown hair. He is not bald. He has no disability. Kate Field is the Registrar for Belmont's Precinct 2 on June 5, 1917.
The Asylum for the Insane opened in rural Charlestown (later part of Somerville) overlooking Boston harbor in October 1818. The Asylum was the psychiatric branch of Massachusetts General Hospital, but was built several years before MGH. This enlightened institution, The Asylum, followed the principles of moral treatment for mental illness in its choice of a country setting and in its care of patients. But according to Alex Beam in Gracefully Insane, its Yankee incorporators did not want to admit charity patients for free so they assessed fees on a sliding scale.
The hospital's name was changed to The McLean Asylum for the Insane after Boston merchant John McLean bequeathed $25,000 and left a legacy of $90,000 to the Asylum. In 1836 Horace Mann urged the state legislature to open state mental hospitals for the poor. So the poor went to the state mental hospitals and the wealthy went to McLean's. Because of encroaching development and loss of its tranquil setting in Charlestown, McLean's is later moved to pastoral Belmont in the 1890s. It is designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead who also designed the Emerald Necklace - a 7 mile series of parks linked by parklands and water ways that connects Boston Common to Franklin Park. The Asylum's name is later changed to McLean Hospital.
According to Alex Beam, "The amenities at the new Belmont location were extraordinary. There was a riding stable as well as a working farm, with separate beef and diary barns; two piggeries; extensive vegetable and flower gardens; a working apiary for honey; and apple and pear orchards. Fish and meat came from Boston's Quincy Market. Otherwise, patients mainly consumed what came from McLean itself: fresh water from a prodigious spring and donuts and rolls from a bakery that turned out one hundred loaves of bread a day. The food was by all accounts very good. "We catered to patients," a former steward recalled in the hospital's official history. "If the patient did not like the lamb we served for dinner and asked for lobster, we gave lobster. They could afford it. Appleton House (the men's ward) was the Ritz Carlton." So we can see why they needed farm laborers!
Until the mid 1950s staff work and live on the grounds. So when John Keohane registers for the WWI draft, he most likely is living on the grounds of McLean Hospital at 215 Mill Street in Belmont.
The 1910 US Census for McLean's, which was taken two years before John Keohane went to work there, lists over 500 people at McLean's - this includes patients, physicians, nurses, attendants, chamber maids, ward maids, seamstresses, laundresses, electrician, plumber's helpers, house cleaner, chef, cooks, bakers, dishwashers, meat cutters, dietician, waitresses, librarian, apothecary, bookkeeper, stenographer, painters, porters, stable laborers, coachmen, teamsters, farm laborers, chauffeurs, handicraft instructor, machinist, upholsterer, maids, superintendent of roads, superintendent of nurses, and telephone operators. The majority of employees, especially the nurses, were from Canada.
By 1920 many Irish are employed at McLean's. So from the 1910 census, we can deduce that John Keohane probably worked as a farm laborer or maybe even as a stable laborer, or a coachman, or even a teamster. I wonder what he learned working at Hood's Farm and at McLean? And I wonder when he arrived at and left McLean's?
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