Archive News
Fearless Maggie on her quest for justice
Date Published: 19-Jul-2012
Maggie Woods is the face of the Irish Thalidomide Association and the youngest victim of the drug given to pregnant mothers during the late 1950s and early 60s to treat morning sickness.
Just last week she celebrated her 50th birthday with a wide circle of family and friends because she believes that despite her disability, life is to be embraced and enjoyed to the full.
Maggie lives in Cregmore, Claregalway, and works in Tuam but she is well known in the city because it was where she lived first when she arrived here from Dublin, who within a few years was married and the mother of two boys.
In all there are 32 Thalidomide victims in the country seeking compensation from the State on the grounds that the drug should have been taken off the market earlier than it was, as its licence had run out and it was found to cause severe foetal damage. Those children affected were born without limbs, with limbs foreshortened, with impairments of hearing and vision, as well as injury to internal organs.
Maggie’s mother took the drug, Softenon, which contained Thalidomide, while pregnant with her daughter. It should have been off the market a few months previously – and if it had been Maggie’s life would have been very different.
Maggie, now separated and the manager of the Irish Wheelchair Resource Centre in Tuam, is the new chairperson of the ITA and determined to raise awareness for their campaign and to drive their bid for compensation.
“It’s hard to believe that this drug is still on the market is a number of countries, such as Brazil, where it is used for cancer treatment and is believed to keep leprosy at bay. There the women would prefer to have disabled babies than leprosy.
“Our Association is campaigning for the drug to be banned internationally and at the moment we have launched a new campaign to get a better pay out from the State.
“We rejected an offer from the previous Health Minister Mary Harney, on the advice of the current Government and now we can barely get to meet the new Minister!” she says cynically.
Of the Association’s members only three, including Maggie, are willing to give public interviews or be at the coalface of the public campaign.
“Not everyone wants to bring attention to themselves but I don’t mind in the least. I have never tried to hide my own disability and I am very determined when it comes to fighting an injustice and I believe we have been victims of an injustice.”
Maggie was only seven when her parents in Donegal sent her to an orthopaedic hospital in Westmeath.
“It was an institution run by nuns. I wasn’t considered eligible for mainstream education at my local national school because of my height so I was sent away and only came home three times a year until I was 19.
“I am the second oldest of four and my youngest sister didn’t realise I was part of the family. She used to ask me when was I going home,” says the softly spoken Maggie. This is the only time in the interview where she reveals any sadness or bitterness about what happened to her.
For more, read this week’s Galway City 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
images/files/images/x3_Courthouse.jpg
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
