Galway In Days Gone By

1915

Women and the War

On Friday night, at Cinema Theatre, Galway, a very interesting lecture was delivered by Mrs. Swanrick, M.A., Manchester on “Women and the War” under the auspices of the Galway branch of the Women’s Franchise League (non-militant, non-party).

Mrs. Swanrick, said whatever the war had done, it had made it impossible for anyone to adopt the attitude heretofore adopted by some – that woman was some sort of an inferior animal, only remotely related to man.

She thought the strain of the war had come to every woman, very often parting from her dearest, and suffering agony at the death of the man she held most dear; men could not say it was their war, and that woman was only a kind of subsidiary person (applause).

After all, women stood and fell by the man; if the men were prosperous or in trouble, the women were happy to share either with them. She had often been told, “You women have got up to get the vote from themselves”, but how could they get it without the help of the men?

What they had to do was to try and convince the men that it would be good for both if the women got the vote, and if they succeeded in convincing them of that, the men would give them the vote with both hands.

The strain of war would perhaps make them realise for the first time how immensely the sexes were bound together in suffering as well as in prosperity.

When the war would be over, a great many of the women would be solitary in the world, and would have to take on the work that men used to do, and they had to try and use their brains to the very best advantage, and train and fit themselves as well as they could.

She had no doubt when the war would be over, men would give them all the rights they ought to have, including the vote for Member of Parliament (applause).

1940

A spade’s lifespan

The Unemployed Allotments Branch of the Department wrote to the Ballinasloe Urban Council stating that there had not been sufficient evidence submitted by the Council to satisfy the Minister that all reasonable care had been taken to ascertain that spades and shovels missing were lost, mislaid or worn by reasonable wear and tear.

The Minister, therefore, was not allowing recoupment costs, and the price of the missing articles would be deduced from the amount due to the Council.

The Town Clerk said the tools missing had been four or five years in use by the plotholders, and anyone who used a spade or shovel for five years on a plot was reasonably entitled to a new one.

Some of these people might have gone away to England and might not have given up the tools, or they might have sold them to help to make up their fares.

Others had gone into the army or the new Constructions Corps, but he did not know if they brought the tools with them.

Vice-chairman, Mr. Joseph Murray, said the ordinary farmer was not able to keep the same spade or shovel for five years. It was appreciated, he added, that a man who tilled his plot for five years with the one spade or shovel was reasonably entitled to a new one, but as the Minister would not recoup them for the loss of the few unaccounted for, the Council would have to foot the bill.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.