Archive News
March 10, 2011
Date Published: {J}
1911
House destroyed
On Saturday evening a house belonging to Mr. Fred Barry, of Bridge St., Gort, situated on his farm at Newtown, was burned to the ground. It appears Mr. Barry was going down to his farm when he saw the house, which had been lately repaired, burning. He came back to Gort and was informed the police were promptly on the scene, but nothing could be done to save the house.
He has not been on good terms with his neighbours for some time past on account of his holding over the farm at Newtown, the walls of which have been repeatedly knocked.
Tramp’s child
At Portumna Petty Sessions, the Head Constable made an application to have a child committed to an Industrial School. He found the child with the mother who was drunk. The mother got a month and was still in jail and the child was sent to the work house. He was under seven years of age.
The mother was convicted at the Killimore Petty Sessions for larceny about two years ago and sentenced to a month in Galway jail. She lived the life of a tramp, going through the country with a man who denied that he was married to the woman or that he was the father of her child. They had lived together for seven years. This child was born in Mountjoy prison on 9th November, 1905. An order was made committing the child to a house of charity.
1936
Hospital infestation
“Ballinasloe Mental Hospital is infested with rats. There are thousands of them in the sewers and in refuse heaps all round the place, and they are crawling on the patients’ faces in their beds during the night. It is very serious, and we should take immediate steps to banish them from the place.”
The statement was made by Dr. A. English, assistant R.M.S. at the meeting of the Committee of Management, in her report.
Dr. English said the “Rattin” Co. had submitted a price – 26 guineas – to clear the place of the pests, and have guaranteed to keep the place clear. As the place is so badly infested, she asked the Committee to consider the offer. She added that the rats were doing a good deal of damage on the stores and other departments of the infestation and were wasting a lot of foodstuffs and materials.
“We are very badly overrun with them, and it is very desirable in the interests and health of the patients and the institution that they be banished,” she concluded.
Red-haired bagpiper
Red hair and a love for the bagpipes are stipulations by an Irish bachelor, who has asked the Premier of Nova Scotia to find him a Gaelic-speaking bride. The Irishman – with “substantial cash” – lives in New York, and does not want any dowry with his bride.
Near death
A child named Jospeh Ward, aged nine years, son of Patrick and Mrs. Ward, the Square, Ballygar, had an almost miraculous escape from death on Tuesday afternoon. It appears that some person removed the lid from the manhole at the Square and the child was playing and fell down the pump shaft, which is over 30 feet deep.
Town Hall
A public meeting has been called in Tuam for this (Friday) evening, 13th inst., to consider the advisability of forming a company with the object of erecting a hall for all social purposes in the town. As the Town Hall is not available for public meetings, functions, etc., it is found necessary to have a new hall built and the public are asked to support the project, which is confidently expected to provide a sound investment.
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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