Sir, – Regarding the photograph ("Rare 1880s photo captures Achill women breaking stones", July 4th) it is almost certain the elderly man sitting with his horse and cart in front of the three RIC men is Tony Patten of Dooagh, (1824-1919).
He is traditionally known as being the first man on the island to own a horse and cart.
As a young man, he rescued a woman called Brigid from the Protestant settlement with his horse “caparisoned in straddle and cleaves”. There is a portrait of Patten in Paul Henry’s autobiography and an oil painting of him, again by Henry, in the Ulster Museum.
The painter Alexander Williams, who owned the “rare photograph”, mentions Patten in his writings, as selling him “lovely fresh mackerel at 3 for 3d or 16 for a shilling”.
Patten's obituary, in the Irish Independent of January 1920, states that he "more than once brought a load of furniture [from Achill] to the coastguards in Dingle on his horse and cart"!
Tony Patten was my wife’s great-grand-uncle.
– Yours, etc,
JIM O’CALLAGHAN
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.