Galway in Days Gone By

Galway In Days Gone By

Published

2 years ago

April 8, 2021

Stephen Corrigan

Graham and Concepta Keane, both of Clarinbridge, as "Me and my Little Dutch Ladey". photo: Joe O'Shaughnessy

1921

Connemara shootout

Constable Pearson, R.I.C., Maam, Connemara, was shot through the right lung and liver during an ambush at Screebe at four o’clock on Wednesday afternoon.

He was one of a cycling party of six policemen who left Maam at one p.m. for the purpose of serving jurors’ notices and distributing old age pension money in the Rossmuck district.

On their return the sergeant and Constable Feeley were cycling in front, and the four other constables some distance behind. As they approached the little church at Screebe, shots rang out from the thicket.

The sergeant immediately rolled off his bicycle and rolled towards the ditch in the roadside for cover. He was followed immediately by Constable Feeley. Both policemen found themselves in the hands of the ambushers, who secured their revolvers and about twenty-five pounds in money which the sergeant carried.

Almost at the same moment, the four policemen who followed at a distance of 150 yards dismounted, and opened fire with their rifles. Shots were fired in return and Constable Pearson fell wounded.

The four policemen, including the wounded constable, made their way back to Screebe Lodge, nearby – where, it will be recalled, Lady Dudley was drowned last summer – taking with them their bicycles and arms.

The sergeant and Constable Feeley were later released uninjured. Constable Pearson was attended to by Dr. Kennedy O’Brien, Oughterard, and subsequently Surgeon Ml. O’Malley, Galway, was brought to the scene. He found that the bullet had gone right through the injured man’s lung and liver, and passed out at the back. He entertains hopes of recovery.

Reprisals

Following the ambush there was considerable activity of Crown Forces. Five houses in the district are reported to have been burned.

These include a house at the back of the thicket where the ambush took place, and the co-operative store at Camus, about a mile distant. An unconfirmed report states that the house in which Mr. Pádraic Pearse formerly resided at Turlough, and that of Mr. Conroy, National Teacher, have also been destroyed by fire. The district is barren and impoverished, consisting mostly of rocks and fishing lakes, and the thicket at Screebe is practically the only area of woodland in the neighbourhood.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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Galway in Days Gone By

Galway In Days Gone By

Published

1 day ago

March 23, 2023

Stephen Corrigan

Young participants during the St Patrick’s Day Parade in Athenry on March 17, 1996.

1923

Optimistic outlook

The optimism of Mr. P. J. Boland was a refreshing thing at the inaugural meeting of the Galway Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday. He saw great good in Galway: it was a delightful place to live and in a place worth working for.

It possessed the elements of greater good in the future; a prideful local patriotism; a desire to see things better done here than elsewhere.

That was a factor that should be availed of but was not. Why? Because men talked and talked of what should be done, but had no organised driving force to translate their ideas into action. Hence the present effort to establish a Chamber of Commerce.

This optimism is a heartening thing, and it will be justified if the new members enter the Chamber of Commerce in the spirt shown by the chairman of the inaugural meeting.

When the Sligo Chamber was being inaugurated of the 29th December last, a Senator A. Jackson, D.L., who presided, pointed out that there was scarcely an important town in England, Wales or Ireland, and certainly not a seaport town that had not a Chamber of Commerce in existence for many years.

He pointed to the significant, but fairly well-established fact in the matter of projected legislation far more importance was paid to representations from Chambers of Commerce than to representations made by municipal bodies or harbour boards.

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.

Galway in Days Gone By

Galway In Days Gone By

Published

1 week ago

March 16, 2023

Stephen Corrigan

Spectators outside Athenry Church awaiting the St Patrick’s Day Parade

1923

Post office raids

A series of wholesale raids on unprotected Connemara sub-post offices are reported. Lettermore and Cashel offices were raided and robbed on Friday night.

Carraroe, Costello and Kilkerrin were also visited by armed men and any money and stamps available were taken. The sums abstracted from these offices vary from £20 to £30.

Telegraph and telephone instruments were broken wherever they were found, and in consequence, the people living in these remote areas on the western seaboard have been much inconvenienced.

Costello bridge was blown up on Friday night last, when most of the raids took place.

1948

Telephone service

In the course of his address to the annual meeting of the Galway No. 1 branch of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union on Sunday Mr.

Everett made a statement regarding the telephone service at Galway which is of great interest to the business community in particular.

He admitted that the delay during busy periods of the day on the Galway-Dublin trunk service amounts at times to about two hours, and that this has on occasions been exceeded owing to one or more of the three existing circuits being out of order.

Delay on busy periods on the lines connecting Dublin with Tuam, Loughrea, Athenry, Clifden and Claremorris was also admitted.

The fact of these days is only too familiar to telephone subscribers in the West. Repeated protests on the matter have been sent forward by the Corporation and the Chamber of Commerce of Galway among others, but hitherto there has been no tangible result.

The facilities now available might perhaps have been adequate twenty years ago, but they are insufficient, to put it mildly, for present-day requirements and business is very seriously handicapped in consequence.

During the war years there was not only a shortage of the equipment which would be needed for improved facilities, but such equipment as could be obtained was more urgently needed for security purposes. It seems however that the war-time difficulties are well on the way to disappearing and the minister was in a position to make some promise of improvement.

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.

Galway in Days Gone By

Galway In Days Gone By

Published

2 weeks ago

March 9, 2023

Stephen Corrigan

Young contestants taking part in the three-legged race during St Patrick’s Parish Sports at the Sportsground, College Road, on May 23, 1982.

1923

Food prices

The local committee appointed under the Free State Commission on Food Prices will hold its first public sitting in Galway next week.

The announcement should be received with general satisfaction in a town that, notwithstanding its natural advantages of lake and sea and fertile countryside, provides for its people little of the natural fruits of the earth except at prohibitive prices.

Mr. H. J. Reid, of 20, Dominick-street, Galway, is, as announced elsewhere, acting as secretary of the local committee. Those who desire to give evidence – and who does not desire to prove that life is a hard thing these days and that we could all be very well off if only the profiteer would have a heart? – should communicate with Mr. Reid at once.

Already, we understand, half-a-dozen citizens have expressed themselves willing and anxious to tell the committee how the problem of living affects them. We do sincerely hope that the cooperation of the people themselves will render it possible for the Galway committee to make the most exhaustive inquiries and to do effective work.

It should be remembered that it is our own committee appointed by our own Government – the Government not of the profiteer but of the plain man of Ireland – to do our work.

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.