Galway In Days Gone By

1914

Bulldog claim fails

At the Quarter Sessions before His Honor Judge Doyle, K.C., James McPhilbin, Bowling Green, Galway through his father Michael McPhilbin, sued Mr. Martin Newell, Market-street, for £50 damages for injuries alleged to have been received through defendant’s bulldog biting him.

James McPhilbin deposed that on the 11th August last he, with other boys, was playing at the Shambles barracks, when the ball went over the wall and into the defendant’s yard. Witness went in for the ball, and when he was coming over the wall, and in the act of standing on a window sill, the bulldog jumped up and caught him by the heel of the boot first.

Witness was then knocked, and the dog caught him in the calf of the leg. The dog did not let him go for about ten minutes, at the end of which time a boy in the employment of the defendant released him. Witness was nearly a month in the infirmary.

Mr Newell said that on several occasions he caught the plaintiff and his brother-in-law in the yard, and on one occasion he caught plaintiff in his hen-house.

On another occasion a stone came through the sky-light, and he found plaintiff and other boys concealed. About 20 panes of glass had been broken in his windows. He kept fowl and the dog in the barrack yard and barred up the back door of it, so as to prevent trespass.

His Honor said, in his opinion, the action had failed. Mr. Newell was entitled to keep fowl in the yard, and also the dog, which his Honor believed was a quiet one, otherwise Mr. Newell would have taken steps to keep it confined. He was satisfied that the boy was a trespasser on the occasion, and he dismissed the action.

1939

Havoc and terror

Residents of Clifden, Connemara, were startled from their slumbers at 7.30 on Monday morning when a thunderstorm of an intensity never before experienced broke over the town. Blinding flashes of lightning were almost simultaneous with deafening peals of thunder. Children screamed hysterically, and a number of women fainted. The storm lasted for over twenty minutes.

A flash of lightning struck the spire of the Clifden Protestant Church, ripped part of the masonry, burned up eaves and water drains, and completely destroyed the lightning conductor.

Immediately afterwards, another flash struck the house of Thomas MacWilliams, about fifty yards from the church, smashing all the indows and wrecking the bathroom. Mr. MacWilliams, who was eating his breakfast at the time, was flung across the diningroom by the explosion.

Apart from shock, he was unhurt. Other members of the family were in a house nearby and a woman was cooking her husband’s breakfast when a flash came down the chimney, and she was knocked unconscious.

The Railway Hotel, Clifden, was also struck, but only slight damage was done. The fuse-box in the Clifden Post Office was blown from its sockets and telephone communications in West Connemara was dislocated.

The electric lighting system in the town was put out of action and all wireless sets connected with it were damaged.

Port of Galway

The citizens of Galway will learn with quiet satisfaction and gratitude the report of the acting resident engineer which was made to the meeting of the Harbour Board on Tuesday last. Mr. McCullough stated that the entire work would be completed about the midsummer of next year.

Already the entrance channel has been in a great measure finished and the rock outside the entrance to the dock has been cleared. Soon the dock gates, all the material for which has already been delivered, will be erected and the dock itself will be completed.

Thus we see the approaching completion of an effort for which Galway has striven for almost two generations – an effort designed to compete out outlet to the sea and this to give to the port of Galway the place which the geographical position of the Capital of Connacht deserves.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.