Archive News
Memories of seeing ‘High Society’ Ð but in reverse
Date Published: {J}
From reading Hugh Leonard’s marvellous book Home Before Night it becomes obvious that a whole generation in the days before the advent of television, based a substantial part of what might be termed their ‘social lives’ around going to the pictures.
Leonard recalls that on at least one afternoon in the week, he and his mother would head off to the local cinema.
As youngsters, we tended to go in large groups on a Friday night and again to the matinee on a Sunday afternoon, though we may have been unusual for a smallish town like Tuam that we had the choice of two cinemas, The Mall and The Odeon.
In those days money was not plentiful. Many families depended on having ‘a book’ in the local shop where they could buy items liked bread, cheese, sugar, tea, butter during the week ‘on tick’ and the entire amount was reckoned-up on a Friday evening with the shopkeeper.
In latter days of youth, I frequently got this job on reckoning-up evening when my father had been paid his few pounds on a Friday for the working week. Not a penny went astray, I can assure you, and my father went through the columns in ‘the book’ with all the acuity of the IMF.
The money for ‘the pictures’ came from what little was left over after a family of five kids was fed – perhaps my dad could not resist the pressure of other kids calling ‘are ye going?’ and those beseeching looks from his own.
And we had one stop he did not know of. There was a tiny shop on the way where you could buy cigarettes at an exorbitant price of 2d (that’s old pence) each! It was an extraordinary establishment.
In the window were melting bars such as Gifties, Cough No More, Black Jacks, Peggy’s Legs . . . and dozens of dead bluebottles and wasps lying on their backs. They had given up the ghost having sated themselves on sugar and simply lay down and died after the gorge.
It’s hardly any wonder then that when I turn on Turner Classic Movies and see John Wayne, Sterling Hayden, Richard Widmark, Alan Ladd, Jane Russell, or tune-in at Easter to major epics like The Robe, Quo Vadis, Spartacus, that the days of ‘the pictures’ come flooding back.
I also have an unusual link to the movies . . . over the Easter they showed that great old musical High Society on Turner Classic Movies and can I say that I saw it for the first time in The Children’s Home in Tuam on one of the rare special social occasions when they showed a film for the women who were resident of The Home.
Many of the women were unmarried mothers, others I think simply ‘put away’ by families in times when anyone ‘a bit wild’ was dangerously non-conformist.
My connection to The Children’s Home had begun in the 1940s when my mother died a month after I was born. A month old premature baby would have been an impossible burden for my father, with four other young children.
My father worked as the head maintenance man in The Home, it was a hundred yards from my ‘real’ home, and must have seemed like the most natural thing in the world to place me there. I spent a number of years in The Home in the extraordinary care of a woman called Mary.
For more read this week’s Galway City 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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