Galway In Time Gone By – A browse through the archives of the Connacht Tribune.

1913

Gruesome inquest

Coroner Cottingham, of Oughterard, held an inquest at Killian’s public-house, New Docks, Galway, on the dead body of an infant, found under gruesome circumstances in the mill race at the Galway Woollen Mills on Friday evening.

Thomas Casey, labourer, Bohermore, examined by Acting-Sergt. O’Sullivan, who conducted the case for the police, stated that he was in the employment of the City of Galway Woollen Manufacturing Co.

On Friday evening, the 20th inst., he was cleaning the grating, or the sluice, at the factory, in front of the turbines. He took up a bag that was tied. He thought there might be young dogs or something in it.

He took up another bag, which was empty. He threw both, with other rubbish, out on the street. He knew nothing further about the matter. He understood that the bag was there all day up to 8 o’clock in the evening.

Ellen Dolan, Newtownsmith, related that about 7.30pm on a Friday evening she heard children shouting; she went out, and saw the bag on the ground, with a little foot protruding. There was a crowd of girls around, and she told them to go for the police. They ran away.

Coroner: The bag was lying on the street?

Witness: It was, sir.

Dr. Thomas J. McDonogh deposed that the body was in a very advanced state of decomposition. The infant was a female.

Coroner: So far as a test is concerned, is it possible to say whether the child was dead or alive when put into the water?

Witness: It is really very hard to make a test. I am unable to say whether it was dead or alive when thrown into the water.

Witness added that the child was almost three weeks in the water.

1938

Happy boys

The popular idea about boys’ industrial schools in Ireland is that they are sort of juvenile jails or penitentiaries. This idea is, of course, an altogether erroneous one to which Letterfrack industrial school “gives the lie”. Here we have at the moment, 130 happy boys undergoing a thorough course of training in various arts and trades and living under conditions to be envied by students of many of our secondary schools.

Although one means of entrance to the schools carried with it the stigma of defendant in the district courts, most of the boys are voluntary boarders whose parents are unable to support them and to whom the school will give a new start in life. A pleasing feature of the school is the absence of uniform dress.

Hold-up arrest

A middle-aged man from Ballyforan, who was arrested by a party of guards from Ballinasloe following the alleged home-up of a postman on the public road last weekend, was taken before a Peace Commissioner’s Court in Ahascragh and remanded to the next court.

The arrest is a sequel to the alleged hold-up by an armed man of Patrick Morrissey, a postman, between Ahascragh and Ballyforan last Friday morning. Morrissey alleged that the man came out of the wood near the village of Ballyforan, held him up on the roadside and took the bag, containing £30 old age pension money, which he was taking to Ballyforan post office.

Cleaning up Ballinasloe

Ballinasloe’s market place is to have a thorough ‘clean up’ and the public are asked to co-operate with the Urban Council in ending the unsightly condition of the streets and market place in Saturday mornings.

“Bonhams, calves and an indescribable mess of paper, filth and litter are left on the streets up to a late hour – 10.30pm sometimes, and it is impossible to have it cleaned up in time for Sunday morning,” said the Town Clerk.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.