Galway in Days Gone By
Galway In Days Gone By
1918
A tragic lesson
At Tuam Petty Sessions on Monday, Mrs. Mullens, Tierboy-road, Tuam, was prosecuted in connection with the death of her six months’ old baby, which was recently burned. Mr. Comerford, D.I., did not press the charge on the ground that the unfortunate mother had already suffered sufficiently; and Thomas Kilcommins, who made a heroic attempt to rescue the baby by covering his head with a bag and creeping through the smoke to the burning cot in the kitchen, was complimented by the Resident Magistrate.
The saddest feature of tragedies such as these is that the lesson they afford to mothers is learnt in sorrow all too frequently. Fireguards should be made absolutely compulsory, not merely in law, but in fact.
In this respect, the law is more frequently honoured in the breach than in the observance, and in the result the children of the poor who live in crowded spaces are perpetually subjected to the dangers of fire.
No winter passes without the lives of innocent little ones being sacrificed to this neglect of a very elementary precaution. Now that special efforts are being put forward to preserve the health of the rising generation, and to stop the appalling infant mortality, this aspect of the question should receive special attention, and it should be an instruction to all who have the care of children to take every reasonable precaution against subjecting them unnecessarily to the dangers from fire.
Shipbuilding prospects
At the meeting of the Harbour Board on Tuesday, a letter was read from the Secretary to the Admiralty, in reply to the Board’s resolution calling attention to the facilities obtaining at Galway for the establishment of a shipbuilding yard, stating that the suggestions made by the Board had been noted, but there was at present no intention of extending the programme already approved for the establishment of national shipyards.
1943
Galway to be “bombed”
On Sunday next the warning siren will sound once again in Galway City and suburbs calling into action the members of the Civil Defence organisations – Local Security Force, Red Cross, Knights of Malta Ambulance, Fire-fighting service, Rescue Squads, Decontamination Squads and the Emergency Messenger Corps.
It will be the first mobilisation since the city has been divided into seven areas, each of which has its own assembly post under its own first aid station.
Under this arrangement, the members of the Local Security Force, instead of assembling at the L.S.F. Hall in Father Griffin Road or at the Eglinton Street Garda Station as heretofore, will muster at specified points in their respective districts.
The new arrangement should prove much more effective than the old. It has only one drawback – each of the seven areas requires at least fifty men to cope successfully with any war emergency in that district, and the entire strength of the Galway L.S.F. is barely a third of the requisite 350.
The extra men are urgently needed. So far from danger being past the peril to this country was never more imminent. Recent speeches of the Taoiseach and other prominent Irishmen of all parties should have made that quite clear even to our most determined optimists. The war is very far from being over, and we are a long way from being out of the wood. Apart from the young men in the L.D.F. there are hundreds who should be in the L.S.F. They must join before it is too late.
Sunday’s exercises will be based on the supposition that an air raid has taken place and that the city has been heavily bombed. In theory, buildings will have been demolished, fires started, and many persons killed, injured and trapped in ruins. Gas, water and electricity supplies will have been damaged. The telephone service will have been seriously interfered with. Roads will have been rendered impassable.
The Civil Defence forces will have to deal with all these matters as if they were “the real thing”, and the manner in which every section does its work will be watched carefully by the Umpires, who will include many army officers.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
1923
Gloom after war
The special correspondent of the “Independent”, who has been writing of the aftermath of civil war in the West, notes that a feeling of apathy, due to the uncertainty of events, exists amongst the sorely-tried people of Connemara; that politics are referred to only with disgust and that not more than fifty per cent. of the people would vote at a general election; that poverty and unemployment are rife, and there is a growing tendency towards emigration; and that there are bitter complaints of the huge impost of rates and taxes.
It is only too true that there is enough of material for the pessimist to brood over, and that a feeling of gloom permeates country towns. But it is a poor tribute to patriotism that has survived such horrors to encourage this gloom.
It is the duty of all of us to get this pessimism out of the national body and to rid ourselves of the notion that we have not enough Christianity and moral sense left to restore our people to cheerful and ordered progress and industry.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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1923
Peace negotiations
As we go to press, An Dáil is discussing the Peace negotiations between the Government and Mr. de Valera. It was announced on Wednesday for the first time that such negotiations were begun following Mr. de Valera’s “cease fire” proclamation of April 27, and that by the 30th of the month Senators Andrew Jameson and James Douglas were asked by him to discuss proposals.
They said it was for the Government to discuss; they could only confer. Into the ensuring conferences the Government declined to enter personally, but on May 3 the senators placed before Mr. de Valera the Cabinet’s terms, which were that future issues should be decided by the majority vote of the elected representatives of the people, and that as a corollary and a preliminary to the release of prisoners, all lethal weapons should be in the custody and control of the Executive Government.
Mr. de Valera relied to this on May 7 with a document in which he agreed to majority rule and control of arms, but added that arms should be stored in a suitable building in each province under armed Republican guard until after the elections in September, that the oath should not be made a test in the councils of the nation, and that all political prisoners should be released immediately on the signing of this agreement.
“You have brought back to us,” wrote President Cosgrave, “not an acceptance of our conditions, but a long and wordy document inviting debate where none is possible”.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
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Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
1923
State of the parties
Speculation as to parties after the next Irish elections is exceedingly interesting, especially in view of the enlarged franchise.
In Dublin, the view appears to be held by a number of people that Labour will make a great bid for power.
Dublin, however, has a curiously insular habit of thought where matters that concern all Ireland and in which Ireland has a say are concerned. We hope this insularity will rapidly disappear under the new conditions.
The country as a whole is backing the Farmers’ Party, and has not the smallest doubt that it will be the strongest combination in the next Dáil, and that it will oust the purely political parties, the one because it has resorted to force, the other because it has been compelled to use force to supress force, and the Labour Party because Ireland feels that at the back of its policy lurks the danger of Communism.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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