Archive News
December 2, 2010
Date Published: {J}
1910
Rowdy gentleman
Two fines of 10s 6d each, with costs, were imposed on Christy Kelly, a Gort butcher, at Gort Petty Sessions for charges of drunkenness on the 6th July and 2nd September, and a fine of 21s and costs for a charge of drunkenness and disorderly conduction on the previous night.
Constable McGlynn related finding the defendant drunk and Sergeant Reilly said the defendant promised to take the pledge before.
Chairman: He did not keep It?
Sergt. Reilly: No sir. The sergeant added that the defendant was a low class butcher.
Defendant (indignantly): I was the most respectable butcher in this town at one time. He added that he had served half the town of Gort with meat some time ago. He denied that he did not live with his wife, and said she was a wardsmaid in Tuam hospital.
Defendant elected to be sworn, and then admitted that he was drunk on the 6th of July, but denied that he was under the influence on the previous night. He kept the pledge until then, and, he added: “I only took two drinks which I got leave to take.”
Sergeant Reilly stated that about 20 minutes past nine, the defendant was drunk and disorderly in George’s Street. He was disorderly by shouting at a publican down the street. They could hear him a long way off. They had to arrest him and he was in custody since.
Defendant explained that he had been in the asylum with a bad head and himself and Pat Shaughnesy (the publican) were only jesting. They were asking him to sing a song in the barrack and he sang a couple of songs for them. That was all the shouting he did.
Defendant asked for time to pay the fine, saying that his employer would pay it. He would, he said, never take a pledge again after that, but subsequently, he said he would take the pledge if their worships gave him time to pay (laughter).
1935
Financial position
Galway County Council are in a much stronger financial position than they were in November last year. The rates are coming in much better and during the past week, the Council’s financial position was further strengthened by about £18,000 received from the Department of Local Government as an instalment of the county’s share of the Agricultural Grant. The Council still have, however, a debit bank balance.
Sudden death
Widespread regret will be occasioned by the news of the sudden death of Miss Lily Flynn, manageress of the Leenane Hotel, which occurred during last week. Deceased was about to go to Galway to visit in Seamount Nursing Home, Miss McKeown, proprietress of the hotel, who sustained a broken leg when a servant fell through a skylight on top of her during the previous week.
Miss Flynn, who, it is stated, had hurried upstairs to her room from a waiting car to fetch something she had forgotten, was found later, having apparently succumbed to heart failure.
Air base hopes
A special meeting of the Air Port Development Committee was held in Clifden on Wednesday evening. It was decided at the meeting to acquire the services of engineers to ascertain the exact extent of the work necessary to make Aillebrack conform fully to the most modern requirements.
It was stated at the meeting that as a result of representations made to him, Mr. G. Bartley, T.D., was strongly urging Aillebrack’s claims as the future terminal of the Transatlantic service. Fresh efforts are being made to renew the interests of the Irish Transatlantic Air Corporation.
Mr. J.A. Mollison, the well-known airman, intends to establish a transatlantic freight service from Galway to Newfoundland next April, says the United Press New York correspondent.
He has arrived in New York to purchase three single-engined American ‘planes which, he announced, he and his wife would use to establish an experimental service. He proposes to carry “speciality” freight such as news films, gowns, and similar articles.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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