Postcards provide a peek into times past of Galway

Lifestyle – Judy Murphy meets Paul Duffy, a man whose hobby offers fascinating historical views of the Galway of old

If you went on holidays to other places you’d be looking up. Here we aren’t looking up at buildings. We don’t notice what we’ve got in Galway. Tourists are going around photographing and recording and we say ‘they are a nuisance’. But they aren’t. Those pictures are the archives of the future.”

So says retired engineer and amateur historian Paul Duffy, who has spent a lifetime collecting historic postcards, and whose archive offers an amazing insight into how life in Galway City and County has changed since the late 19th century, when photographic postcards first came into use.

Paul’s latest book, Galway City: Snapshots Through Time has just been published and is a follow-up to his 2013 publication, Galway: History on a Postcard, which was a history of the county based on old postcards from Connemara to Portumna and everywhere in between.

For this latest publication Paul has selected illustrations highlighting the changes in the city and Salthill between 1890 and 1950. Some cards from the 1960s have also been included, among them one of the newly-built Galway Cathedral on the occasion of its dedication Mass. This was a milestone in modern Galway history, according to Paul.

The pictures and Paul’s accompanying articles offer a fascinating insight into life of the city and its people. Among the intriguing – if somewhat horrifying – material is an account, from 1852, of people in Eyre Square throwing turpentine on rats and setting fire to them before driving them through the Square.

The book is broken down by area, with separate chapters taking the reader from Eyre Square to Salthill, via the city streets, and then moving through other areas, including Woodquay, Menlo and Renmore.

Many of the postcards dated from the early 20th century, when increasing numbers of people went on holidays to small, family-run hotels in places such as Galway and Salthill, which were becoming tourist venues, even then. People couldn’t afford cameras, so they bought postcards to show people at home where they had been. Some were posted, others were kept as mementos.

From 1900 to 1914 there was a huge growth in the numbers of people collecting postcards, while magazines regularly offered them for free. English magazines such as The Weekly Bazaar often had postcards of Irish towns, including Galway, as it was then part of the UK.

The tram lines, bridges and factories of the day were featured on these cards, making them important from a historic point of view.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.