Archive News
October 27, 2011
Date Published: {J}
1911
Denied drunkenness
Acting Sergeant Conroy summoned a man from Cahernalee for drunkenness to tne public street on the night of 13th inst. to appear before Loughrea Petty Sessions.
Defendant: Didn’t you find me outside the barrack door?
Witness: Oh, nonsense.
Defendant, who was then sworn, denied being drunk on the occasion, and added that he went to the police barrack to make a complaint about a man who attacked him on the road. He met complainant at the door, and before he said anything the policeman struck him on the head and knocked him down. Complainant then told the man on guard to take him into the lock up.
Chairman: Have you him summoned for assault?
Defendant: No, your worship.
Have you any witnesses to prove you were not drunk? – I have no witness except the man who was on guard that night. I see him in court.
Constable McGreevy deposed that he was barrack orderly on the night in question. Defendant came to the barrack and made a rambling statement to him about being assaulted on the public street.
Defendant then walked away and was arrested outside the barrack gate on the public street by Acting Sergeant Conroy. Defendant was drunk.
Defendant: I never left outside the barrack door when the sergeant called up the men to arrest me.
Chairman: Was this man very drunk, sergeant?
Acting Sergeant: He was your worship. It was about 3 o’clock in the morning when he came to the barrack, and I believe he was not in very choice company during the night.
Chairman: Oh! stop, sergeant.
A fine of 1s and costs was imposed.
1936
Shoe factory
Satisfactory progress is being made with the preliminary arrangements in connection in Ballinasloe. Plans and drawings have been prepared and copies sent to the chief promoter in London and to the machinery manufacturers. It is expected that reconstruction work on the old fever hospital buildings will begin in a few weeks and that the factory will be working in a couple of months. Those intimately connected with the project believe that work will be well in hand by the New Year.
Connemara board
There is a movement being set on foot in Connemara with a view to having a special Board established along the lines of the old C.D.B. The wheat scheme has been of little or no benefit to Connemara, since the boggy nature of the soil is almost entirely unsuitable to the cultivation of the crop. The Government’s policy of protection for the house market has raised the price of flour by 7s. 6d. per cwt. The inland farmer may recoup that that amount by the sale of his wheat, but the Connemara farmer has no alternative but to write it off as a dead loss.
In like manner, no benefits accrue to Connemara from the operation of the beef scheme. Then the Slaughter of Animals Act had the effect of eliminating from the market the mountainy sheep and the cattle of Connemara, while at the same time it increased the price of beef and mutton to the Connemara consumer.
Council asked for site
Galway has been selected as the site for a factory, the nature of which is being kept secret. This factory will employ between thirty and one hundred hands as work develops. A letter from Messrs. Blake and Kenny, solrs, requested on behalf of a client if the Urban Council are prepared to give him a free site.
Meat inspector
The secretary of the Urban Council said it was about time that something was done in connection with this matter. It was vitally necessary that a full-time veterinary inspector be appointed. Mr Reddington said that the slaughterhouse should be improved before any appointment was made.
Mr. Lydon said he would not agree to the appointment of a full-time inspector. Such an official would cost the Council £400 or £500. Secretary: He would cost £450. Mr O’Flaherty: We are a long time building the abattoir. We have only the same accommodation there now as we had when Galway had only a population of 13,000.
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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