Galway in Days Gone By
Galway In Days Gone By
1918
A tragic lesson
At Tuam Petty Sessions on Monday, Mrs. Mullens, Tierboy-road, Tuam, was prosecuted in connection with the death of her six months’ old baby, which was recently burned. Mr. Comerford, D.I., did not press the charge on the ground that the unfortunate mother had already suffered sufficiently; and Thomas Kilcommins, who made a heroic attempt to rescue the baby by covering his head with a bag and creeping through the smoke to the burning cot in the kitchen, was complimented by the Resident Magistrate.
The saddest feature of tragedies such as these is that the lesson they afford to mothers is learnt in sorrow all too frequently. Fireguards should be made absolutely compulsory, not merely in law, but in fact.
In this respect, the law is more frequently honoured in the breach than in the observance, and in the result the children of the poor who live in crowded spaces are perpetually subjected to the dangers of fire.
No winter passes without the lives of innocent little ones being sacrificed to this neglect of a very elementary precaution. Now that special efforts are being put forward to preserve the health of the rising generation, and to stop the appalling infant mortality, this aspect of the question should receive special attention, and it should be an instruction to all who have the care of children to take every reasonable precaution against subjecting them unnecessarily to the dangers from fire.
Shipbuilding prospects
At the meeting of the Harbour Board on Tuesday, a letter was read from the Secretary to the Admiralty, in reply to the Board’s resolution calling attention to the facilities obtaining at Galway for the establishment of a shipbuilding yard, stating that the suggestions made by the Board had been noted, but there was at present no intention of extending the programme already approved for the establishment of national shipyards.
1943
Galway to be “bombed”
On Sunday next the warning siren will sound once again in Galway City and suburbs calling into action the members of the Civil Defence organisations – Local Security Force, Red Cross, Knights of Malta Ambulance, Fire-fighting service, Rescue Squads, Decontamination Squads and the Emergency Messenger Corps.
It will be the first mobilisation since the city has been divided into seven areas, each of which has its own assembly post under its own first aid station.
Under this arrangement, the members of the Local Security Force, instead of assembling at the L.S.F. Hall in Father Griffin Road or at the Eglinton Street Garda Station as heretofore, will muster at specified points in their respective districts.
The new arrangement should prove much more effective than the old. It has only one drawback – each of the seven areas requires at least fifty men to cope successfully with any war emergency in that district, and the entire strength of the Galway L.S.F. is barely a third of the requisite 350.
The extra men are urgently needed. So far from danger being past the peril to this country was never more imminent. Recent speeches of the Taoiseach and other prominent Irishmen of all parties should have made that quite clear even to our most determined optimists. The war is very far from being over, and we are a long way from being out of the wood. Apart from the young men in the L.D.F. there are hundreds who should be in the L.S.F. They must join before it is too late.
Sunday’s exercises will be based on the supposition that an air raid has taken place and that the city has been heavily bombed. In theory, buildings will have been demolished, fires started, and many persons killed, injured and trapped in ruins. Gas, water and electricity supplies will have been damaged. The telephone service will have been seriously interfered with. Roads will have been rendered impassable.
The Civil Defence forces will have to deal with all these matters as if they were “the real thing”, and the manner in which every section does its work will be watched carefully by the Umpires, who will include many army officers.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
1922
The demon drink
The most contemptible of all types of mankind is he who partakes of intoxicating drink throughout the entire day and far into the night. He is never drunk, nor is he ever sober. He is appropriately called a “soaker”.
At the meeting of the Ard-Fheis, Mr. de Valera made a statement which, to those who do not understand the full significance, may not have appeared very germane to the issue. But we are given to understand that his declaration that he was “sorry the drink evil was coming again to the country” was timely, and ought to be followed up with strong action by those upon whom the discipline and good conduct of the Irish people, and the army, which is their servant, depends.
Mr de Valera said he believed he was expressing the united view of every member of the Dáil and of the Officer Board of Sinn Féin when he said that he believed Ireland was really in danger the time the drink evil came back. They wanted the support of the organisation to end that evil, and generally, restore order.
We are informed by clergymen who know rural County Galway and the habits of the people intimately that the young men of to-day do not drink to intoxication, but they have acquired more dangerous habits in certain areas: they “soak” drink for long periods at a time, and their addled minds are, therefore, open to any suggestion of mischief or evil, whilst their power to do honest work such as strong clean men glory in is dulled.
Inevitably, demoralisation follows. We trust that this tale of degeneracy is exaggerated, but we very much fear that it is too true. The fact that Mr. de Valera should make public reference to it at the Ard-Fheis is significant.
“Half the mischief,” a well-known clergyman informs us, “is hatched out at cross-roads public houses by men who spend hours there when they might be doing honest work at home.”
It is well that the country should be aroused immediately to this most insidious of all dangers, for if alcoholic demoralisation should spread, then of a surety the road to utter demoralisation and ruin would be a speedy one to travel, and all the best traditions of our Irish manhood would soon be undermined.
Although we do not, and never have, advocated total abstinence against temperance, better a thousand times that we should lose altogether the liberty to touch intoxicants than that our young men, and, alas, also some of our women, should be reduced to the degrading level of “soakers”.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
1922
Collins interview
Mr. Michael Collins told Mr. John Steele of the “Chicago Tribune” in an interview to which the romantic interest of the head of a new State attaches that he had just returned from the country where he had spent the week-end reading John Mitchell’s account of the American Revolution and the years following.
This might pass, he said, for a history of the present days in Ireland – “there are the same divisions, the same disorders, the same rebellious elements. America won thorough. So shall we.”
Following this optimistic note, the head of the Provisional Government told Mr. Steele that if Mr. de Valera and his followers refuse to cooperate to end the campaign of anarchy, then he is prepared to fight.
But it will not be civil war. It will be simply a police measure. “If this peace effort fails,” he is reported to have said, “then there will be no other. Every avenue of co-operation will have been explored, and we shall have to take strong action to restore order in the country. It is not an easy problem; for a revolutionary Government, in the nature of things, must take some account of motives. There is a lot of plain looting, robbery and violence going on.
“That is common criminality and must be punished. Also, there is a certain amount of commandeering from what, after all, is a patriotic, if misguided motive. That, too, must be stopped; but it requires a different method. Then there is the question of disarmament. There are too many guns in the country – uncontrolled guns, I mean – and they’ve got to be got in. a gun is a dangerous thing for a young man to have. Some day he may use it in a quarrel over a girl, or over a shilling, or over a word. That is one of the problems the revolutionary Government has got to solve, and is determined to solve, but it cannot be done in a day or two.”
He added that Irish people had the right to vote at an election, even if they voted wrongly.
Second bite of apple
The residence of Captain Gardiner, Lismanny, was raided by armed men on Saturday night and a Ford car taken.
It is stated that when visited some time ago, the car could not be taken away as it was out of order and the raiders had to content themselves by taking the wheels.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
1922
Raids and robberies
During the past week a regular epidemic of raids and robberies has taken place in and around East Galway, as a result of which considerable sums of money, jewellery, clothing etc. have been taken away from their owners.
In certain districts scarcely a residence has been immune from the midnight marauders who continue to pursue their nefarious deeds with unrelenting vigour, and in the present state of things, apparently, without fear of detection.
To the least observant, it is obvious that the parties who perpetrate these outrageous are a band who avail of the unsettled condition of affairs now existing, and all right-thinking persons, anxious for the restoration of normal conditions, will earnestly hope that peace will soon come to our distracted land so long torn by internal strife, and that there will soon be an end to crime which tends to disgrace a country once famous for its honour and chivalry.
Home raided
At two a.m. on Sunday morning the residence of Mr. John Cobban, a Presbyterian farmer living at Shanbally, about three English miles from Ballinasloe, was raided by a party of armed and disguised men who arrived in a motor car.
Entrance was affected by breaking a pane of glass in a window through which one of the party got in and opened the door for the others.
The raiders then searched the house, taking with them some jewellery, overcoats, £5 in cash, and a suit of clothes belonging to Mr. John Cobban, junr., and also his watch. Mr. Cobban is a Scotchman who has lived in the district for about fifty years.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Galway TD tells Dáil local farmers “in fear” over future amid call for greater support
Lidl submits plan for new store in Claregalway
HSE official says planned new ED at UHG not likely to reach target of 2026
Local TD says parents not sending kids to school should have child benefit cut
HSE capital plan confirms €9.3m investment for various projects underway at Portiuncula Hospital
The top three worst junctions in Galway City!
Masterplan for Galway Airport site ‘in next few years’
Exodus of landlords from Galway City rental sector
Sign of the times – village goes from five pubs to just one in a decade
Burglaries skyrocket in County Galway
