Galway In Days Gone By

1920

Banks’ billet-doux

Those who patronise the Irish banks by keeping their overdrafts with them – and, we fear, although we must tell it not in Gath, they are in the majority, which is the main thing nowadays – have received a polite billet-doux from the managers during the last few days intimating that a small fee of half-a-guinea will be charged half-yearly “for keeping the account.”

Galway City Technical Instruction Committee and a number of other public authorities and private think otherwise. At the monthly meeting of the Technical Committee on Tuesday night, it was unanimously decided that the charge would not be paid.

It was pointed out in the discussion that the banks only gave legitimate increases to their staff after considerable pressure. When such increases were given, they are a charge against the profits, and this attempt to pass them on in this way to the customers should be resisted to the utmost.

Upon a rough calculation the Galway banks collectively would reap £2,000 a year from the new impost. – the meeting had been adjourned from the preceding week owing to the temporary illness of Mr. P. J. Webb, principal and secretary.

Right Rev. Monsignor Considine, Adm., V.G., presided and the following were present: Rev. Henry Foley, S.J., Rector; Messrs. Pk. Colohan and Ml. Walsh.

Smallpox warning

Last week we warned parents to ensure that all unvaccinated children in their care are vaccinated without a moment’s unnecessary delay.

This week we repeat that warning with greater emphasis, for the all-sufficient reason that danger of the dreaded disease of small-pox in England were reported to the medical officers at Galway.

These cases are at present under observation. Fortunately no symptom of infection has been discovered; but it is well to remember, and remembering to act upon the knowledge, that people who have been in contact with small pox and do not actually contract the disease themselves have, as in the case of typhoid, been known to carry the infection to others.

It is the oldest of philosophies that “prevention is better than cure”; and whilst we do not wish to spread panic, we earnestly desire that parents and public boards should awake to the necessity of taking the simplest and most successful of precautionary measures that has ever been adopted against any epidemic.

In all civilised countries vaccination is insisted upon by law. The measure of its success is the measure of immunity the people have for a generation enjoyed from a disease that pits the flesh with unsightly marks, whose aftermath consists in a weakened system and life-long maladies, which in its extreme or haemorrhage form brings swift and certain death.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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