Archive News
March 24, 2011
Date Published: {J}
1911
Missing juror
At the Spring Assizes, a young man was indicted for wounding another on December 23. The alleged injured party’s evidence was that he had a dispute with the prisoner, and threw a tumbler at him in a public-house in Portumna. Subsequently, outside the door, the accused struck him with something hard on the head. Witness lost his senses and when he recovered them he was at home in his own house. He bled a lot.
In cross-examination, witness denied that he spent this day in public-houses, or that he had to be put out of a public-house for misconducting himself.
At this stage, a curious incident occurred. Shortly after another jury had passed at the rere of the sitting jury, Mr. Cloherty (Clerk of the Crown) called the defence solicitor’s attention to the fact that there was a missing juror, who, it was understood, had gone to the lavatory.
After waiting for a reasonable period of time, his Lordship sent a constable for the missing juror, but on reappearing, he said there was no juror to be found anywhere. The surmise was that he slipped out with the jury which had been discharged a few minutes previously.
The case for the moment accordingly collapsed. The Court adjourned, and, on resuming after lunch, a new jury was sworn.
Poteen raid
District Inspector Woods of Oughterard, with Sergeant Gilleece and a part of constables from Carraroe, paid an unexpected and unwelcome visit to Maumeen, Gorumna Island, in the very early hours of Tuesday morning. They walked gently into two still houses where the machinery in each case was at full work.
Any wet soul would consider it a pity to see the precious liquid after having been duly measured, consigned to mother earth. The men in charge of the operation were away just at the time, but two young fellows who had called to wet their whistles were arrested, but after a few hours detention, were released on bail.
1936
Sewerage plans
Galway Urban Council at a special committee meeting on Monday decided to advertise for a consulting engineer to prepare plans and estimate for a comprehensive sewerage scheme for the city.
New houses
Ballinasloe Urban Council sent a query to the Minister for Local Government and Public Health requesting to be told whether they were in order or entitled to carry out suggestions made by Mr. Wren, and inspector from the Department, who visited Ballinasloe a week ago regarding housing. In view of a sealed order regarding housing, demolition, etc., the Council felt that the Minister’s instructions in writing were necessary.
Mr. Dunne, town surveyor, said the sixty new houses were now ready for letting to tenants. These houses were inspected and were found to be in excellent condition. They were, notwithstanding some comments made, in excellent repair, and five per cent of the contractor’s money was being held for six months, during which time the contractor was bound to make good any defects.
Tuam strike problems
The strike which took place at the Tuam sewerage contract on Monday has not been settled and there are no signs so far of the parties coming together. The position is a complete deadlock. Before the sewerage work was begun by the contractors on Friday last, several efforts had been made to settle the dispute between unemployed members of the local branch, I.T. and G.W.F. and contractors.
The members of the Union refused to work for the wages offered by the contractors, namely 9.5d. an hour. The contractors, however, offered an increase, bringing the wage to £2 1s. 8d. a week, but the unemployed members of the Union, in a show of hands at a special meeting, refused to accept this offer. Their original demand was for £2 10s. a week.
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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