Will deceased Galway native make final journey home from London?

A seventy six year old Galway man who died in London last week will be buried in a common grave unless his family are located in the next few weeks.

Though Patrick Joseph Duggan didn’t die alone, he died without his family - and now a charitable organisation who help the Irish homeless in London have issued an appeal for a family member to come forward so he might be buried in his native county.

Patrick Joseph Duggan was born in Galway in February 1935 and emigrated to London in 1973 when he was 38. Nobody knew exactly where he came from - but Caher, outside Loughrea, had been mentioned by him a few times.

Patrick was known by those who knew him in London as “the gentle giant” and he was very well liked by his care staff in a nursing home in Stockwell in South London.

This newspaper was contacted by Stafford Cunningham, an outreach worker with the Irish Chaplaincy Centre in Camden Square, which is involved in three projects, all involving the homeless Irish.

He got to know Patrick about five years ago when he came across him in a day care centre and helped place him in sheltered accommodation, but in recent years he had moved to a nursing home after he was diagnosed with cancer, autism and learning disabilities.

The cancer had been in remission and thankfully Patrick only suffered two days of illness before he passed away in hospital on Tuesday, January 4.

For full details see this week's Connacht Tribune.