Big man Tait part 2

Tait's contract was to provide shirts for the British Army during the Crimean War.He supplied shirts to the ~C' Troop of the 8th Royal Irish Hussars. These shirts, and the Hussars themselves were unfortunately cut to ribbons the following year in the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, when they were led to their certain Death by a man from Castleconnell, Viscount Fitzgibbon . The shirts were completely ruined by that particular escapade.

Tait didn't do to badly out of the Crimean war, he went from just shirts to supplying full uniforms, made a wad load of cash and got himself a gaff in the poshest part of Limerick ('South hill'). As is befitting man in possession of a fortune, Peter took a wife, 'Rose Abraham' whose family lived in Fort Prospect in Janesboro. They got married in Bedford Row in the church that later became a cinema that's now an unoccupied boutiquey shop unit, but you can see the church facade inside the glass.
Outside their new gaff (now Southhill House) from ribbons of silk he hung the basket, that he used sell shirts out of, as a memento poverti, and thought about how to stay rich.

With the Crimean War over, Tait needed some new contracts and he got them by supplying the Canadian army and the Confederates in the American Civil War. To make sure his uniforms got there (and that the cotton that the South paid him with got back ) he commissioned three ships:'The Kelpie', 'The Evelyn' and 'The Elvie' to run the blockades in a Rhett Butler stylee.

Bit of a risk to be sending three steamships all the way from Limerick into the middle of a war on the other side of the Atlantic; Rose must have been concerned but frankly, Rose, Tait didn't give a damn for running the blockade is exactly what the Taitmeister decided he'd do.

When those ships came back full of cotton, Limerick went wild. Everybody agreed that Tait was some man for one man and there was nothing for it but to make him the Mayor of the place.

CONTINUED