Galway In Days Gone By

1919

State of the asylum

At the monthly meeting of the Ballinasloe Asylum Committee of Management held on Monday the Most Rev. Dr. O’Doherty, Bishop of Clonfert, presided. Other members present were: Rev. Fr. Brennan, Messrs. J. Millar, T. J. O’Brien, T. Martin, A. Derivan, T. P. Killeen, J. McKeige.

The Resident Medical Superintendent reported that the health of the institution was fairly satisfactory; there was one case of enteric fever.

The staff in the institution was to some extent discontented with his interpretation of the fifty-six hour week. It was for the committee to define exactly the terms. He took it to mean as the necessity of duty permits.

One patient was given permission to attend the Horse Show and he failed to return; it was technically an escape.

There were 1,417 patients in the asylum. As compared with 1,422 in 1918 and 1,399 in 1917.

Cool heads required

Proclamations, hunger strikes, daily suppressions, courtsmartial. Thus is Ireland governed. The people have need to keep cool and think with clarity.

The operation of Carsonism in Kildare-street Club, in the star chambers of Dublin Castle, in the secret rooms of the Cabinet, overthrew Constitutionalism, and rushed the country into the Rebellion of 1916.

On Wednesday, Sir Edward Carson’s chief Galloper, now exalted to the woolsack, came to Ireland “upon an official visit,” but none the less as a member of the Cabinet Committee that is setting about the congenial task of dishonouring the King’s Signature upon the Statute Book, and ensuring that the Peace Treaty shall not apply to Ireland.

Forty Irishmen are hunger-striking in Mountjoy because the undertaking given by Mr. Duke that political prisoners should be treated in a class by themselves, not as criminals, has been shamelessly betrayed.

Six of them have already been removed to hospital, and nine have been released under the Cat-and-Mouse Act.

The official Sinn Féin Press has been most thoroughly supressed. At a time when it is urgently necessary that men who hold by Sinn Féin should have the benefit of restraining leadership, this influence for restraint has been ruthlessly removed.

Can we wonder if in such an atmosphere malicious injuries pile up until the unfortunate ratepayers wince under a burden over which they can have no control and which is the natural outcome of five years of deliberate misgovernment and exasperation?

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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