Archive News
July 28, 2011
Date Published: {J}
1911
Cattle larceny
District Inspector Egan charged Thomas Gillane and Patrick Cooney with the larceny of sheep, cattle, horses, etc, the property of John Gillane at Gort Petty Sessions.
D.I. Egan read John Gillane’s previous deposition in which he stated that owing to the treatment of his father by his brother, his father left their house four months previous to his death and lived with a man named John Kelly. His father then refused to give either the land, house or stock to Thomas Kelly, who was the eldest son, and instead willed £100. Thomas, not being satisfied with this, took the stock and sold them.
Mr. L.E. O’Dea, for the defendant, said that the brothers had now come to a settlement, and that the stock taken by Thos was now his, John Gillane taking £500 instead.
Mr. Glynn said he had the will proved now and neither of the brothers knew what was in the will at the time of the larceny of the stock, so that the stock belonged solely to the executors, and that it was he that was the cause of getting Thomas Gillane arrested when he heard of the larceny. Now as the agreement was signed, he hoped their worships would dismiss the case. The case was then dismissed.
Insane man
At Galway Assizes, a Tuam man was charged with wounding his wife by cutting her throat with a razor. Mr Fetherstonhaugh K.C., for the Crown, said the jury would have no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the prisoner did the deed, but they would also find he was insane at the time. He suffered from a form of madness called melancholia, and was subject to all sorts of delusions. The jury found accordingly. And the prisoner was returned to Ballinasloe Asylum.
1936
Connemara poison
Unhappily, we are faced this year with a grave menace of a kind not previously experienced – at least on a large scale. A body styling itself ‘The Connemara Vermin Destruction Association’ formed in October, 1931, has, in the interests of game preservation, launched a campaign by the wholesale use of poisons, trappings and offers of money rewards, against all hawks and other birds that are accused of being destructive of game.
In its first yearly report, the association states that it has paid for the recovered corpses of 152 hawks, 217 crows, 328 magpies, 264 foxes and 120 badgers, and adds that a much larger number of these animals must have fallen victims to the poison.
Republican convention
Delegates from all parts of County Galway attended a Republican County Convention in the Town Hall, Galway on Tuesday.
Representatives of Sinn Fein and Cumann na Poblachta were present. The convention opened about 3 o’clock and continued until about 6 o’clock. After a luncheon interval the delegates reassembled at 7.30 and sat until about 10 o’clock, at which time a statement was issued to the Press.
In order to ensure complete agreement between Republican organisations, it was decided to put forward a panel of names selected by the local committee of Sinn Fein and Cumann na Poblachta to the joint committee in Dublin for selection and ratification.
Resolutions were passed unanimously condemning the drive against Republicans and the ill-treatment of prisoners in Arbour Hill.
Carnival Week
Over 1,600 visitors arrived in Galway on Sunday. Three hundred American tourists disembarked at the port from the Cunard-White Star liner, Seythia, and from the Hamburg Amerika-North German Lloyd liner, Berlin. A special excursion organised by the Third Order of St. Francis in Drogheda, brought 560 visitors to the city; 205 travelled from Broadstone (Dublin); 186 from Tullamore; 140 from Limerick and 179 from Claremorris. Thirty-six people left Galway by special train for Westport to climb Croagh Patrick.
The bookings for the week at city hotels are said to be well up to standard. Special regulations governing traffic have been drafted and a large force of Garda have been transferred to the city for the race days to assist in regulating the traffic.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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