Michael Moynihan: The irrepressible Corkman who roamed the world with robots

When I learned his name was Marsden Haddock I was hooked (sorry).

Kudos to Neil Cronin, author of Marsden Haddock and the Androides: Entertainment, Late Georgian Cork and The Wider World. He unearthed the tale while exercising his interest in local history: Cronin was working his way through eighteenth-century newspapers when he began to notice advertisements for Haddock’s ‘androides’ and decided to dig deeper.

Haddock was born around 1759 and began his working life with his father Edward, a furniture-maker based at Fenn’s Quay.

When we spoke, Neil stressed how important Cork was to Haddock all through his life — and how important Cork was in general at that time.

“It’s fair to describe Cork as a boom town for most of the eighteenth century. England and France were at war on and off for decades up to Waterloo, and Cork thrived on that war.

The locals must have loved hearing about the wars because the city boomed on the war trade, supplying the British forces, and the population exploded

“Agriculture was the big driver. There mightn’t be much to be said for Ireland’s natural resources, but the best resource then was the green grass and Cork exported huge amounts of butter and beef. A lot of people made a lot of money from that trade, and people with money to spend kept accountants and dentists and retailers going.”

Cork’s importance as a port put it on a circuit of sorts. Lines of communication might have been tenuous and travel challenging, but an Atlantic network still existed.

“There’s this notion of an Atlantic World, which takes in the slave colonies of the West Indies and what were then the American colonies, Britain, the other empires and kingdoms bordering the Atlantic — and Cork was an important part of that world, mainly due to its significance as a supplier in war.

“That wasn’t just a matter of exporting food for the British army, either. Convoys would gather in Cork harbour for expeditions, and it’s written that at times there might be three hundred ships under sail in the harbour, which must have been a magnificent sight. They’d all be congregated together, waiting for the winds to turn the right way for them.

“When that happened they must have been very impressive, hundreds of sailing ships passing beyond Roche’s Point and out into the Atlantic — it must have taken hours for them all to pass.

But they could have spent weeks waiting in the harbour for the winds to change, which again was a huge economic boom for the city and its hinterland, the sailors had to be fed and watered and the ships provisioned

“Cork was already well militarised with soldiers. Don’t forget that when the Duke of Wellington went to Spain and Portugal to fight the Peninsular War he left from Cork.”

This then was the bustling port town of the late eighteenth century, streets bursting with sailors, soldiers, merchants, and workers of all kinds. The Haddocks were on the fringes as artisans and craftsmen. 

Is it fair to say they had an eye out for the main chance?

“Entrepreneurial,” is Cronin’s term.

“One of Haddock’s relatives specialised in delicate carpentry work — stuff like venetian blinds — while Haddock himself was an umbrella-maker and good at what he did.

“That aptitude for delicate work helped him later with the figures he made, and the entrepreneurial spirit led him into other business interests in Britain and America, but the foundation of it all was Cork.

“For instance, he got involved in paper-making later, which was hardly surprising — at that time Cork was the biggest paper-maker in Britain and Ireland.

“He was also an organist, and organ-maker, which again required fine, delicate work with the small pipes in the instrument. All of those skills were based on what he learned in Cork.”

Eventually, he put those skills to work in his famous show. When Haddock got going he reversed the general trend: before him Cork would be visited by acts and entertainers, but they might get to Cork eight years after starting their tour in London. Haddock started off in Cork and went to London with his show.

What exactly was in this ‘androide’ show?

“He had two different types of pieces,” says Cronin. “He had automatons, little human figures which could be programmed to write a word, with their eyes following the word as it’s written — very impressive even now. He probably borrowed — or maybe stole — those.

“The second kind of piece he had was more puppet-like. The unique thing about his show was that the pieces interacted with the audience, they’d respond to questions, for instance, which was a great selling point. It made for a different show every night.

“With the latter pieces he must have worked some trick or used a colleague to move the pieces surreptitiously. The figures were small enough, which naturally limited the size of the crowds who could see them — they had to get pretty close to see what was happening.

“For all that, over time he must have made a lot of money.”

Haddock toured Ireland from Cork, went to London until around 1800 — he came back to Ireland for a brief visit in 1798 but didn’t fancy the air of rebellion — and then came home to Cork as the nineteenth century dawned.

With it came a downturn.

“Cork was different when he came back,” says Cronin. “The end of the French wars was in sight, and that was bad news for Cork.

Waterloo was a disaster for Cork, not just Napoleon. I’ve heard people say that Cork didn’t recover from Waterloo until Apple located here

“Haddock invested in a paper mill out beyond Glanmire but it failed. He made equipment for theatres. He was involved in mineral water ventures. He moved to working with organs again but those were being replaced by pianos, so he went back to touring again.”

For eight or nine years Haddock toured Britain again — and then hit for New York and Boston, though by then he was already in his sixties, a fair age to start again in another country. His last show was in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1829, but Cronin says it’s not clear when he passed away.

The book is published by Four Courts Press, and Neil Cronin was loud in his praise for Michael Potterton and Ray Gillespie of Maynooth University’s local studies section for their support. I congratulated him for saving Haddock from obscurity and he couldn’t hide his fondness for the man from Fenn’s Quay.

“You can glean a lot about him from his activities, even if we don’t know much about his personality. A lot of it is supposition.

“But it’s clear enough that he was irrepressible.”