Come here to me!

We do not want contraception, abortion, divorce, homosexuality, secular schools or any of the trappings of an uninspiring secular Ireland.

So summed up the politics of Una Bean Mhic Mhathuna in a letter to The Irish Times in May 1976.

Una*, along with her friend and fellow campaigner Mena Cribben, is another colourful character in the world of reactionary Irish politics. She has been a dominant figure for over forty years having been a founding member of Mna na hEireann (c. 1972 – late 1970s) and the Irish Housewives Union (c. 1980 – early 1990s) as well as being active with the Council for Family Rights (1980s), Anti-Abortion Campaign (1983), No Divorce Campaign (1996/97), Friends of Youth Defence (1990s) and Coir (2000s).

Una grew up in Gurranabraher in Cork where her brother Larry White, a leading local activist with Saorise Eire (offshoot of Saor Eire), was shot dead by the Official IRA in 1975.

Una’s mother Mary was also a devout Catholic:

She married Seamus, a renowned folk singer from West Clare who has worked with Conradh na Gaeligle and Comhaltas Ceoltori Eireann, in the late 1960s.

Along with Aine Ni Mhurchu, she set up Mna na hEireann in 1972 to help in the fight against “the legalisation of contraception, abortion and divorce.” In an interview with Irish Times journalist Mary Leland the following year, Una proclaimed that:

a handful of women in Dublin … claim to be speaking for the majority of women in Ireland we believe that it’s not a majority opinion at all. The same number of women are always involved, and some of them, the most vociferous are foreigners.

Una also spoke fondly of “when Ireland was truly Ireland when we had our own language, culture and religion (and when) we were a moral nation”.

She told the journalist that “abortion and contraception, as far we’re concerned, are one and the same” and went on to say:

We don’t believe that anyone makes the conscious decision to to use artificial contraception; they do it under the pressure from propaganda. If they were to make a conscious decision they would have to know all the aspects of whatever method they were using and therefore they would be making a conscious decision to kill a child. And that’s murder.

Here’s an example of the kind of letter the group were sending to the papers in this period. Note the term “international vested interests”.

In April 1974, Mna na hEireann distributed leaflets outside Catholic Churches in Cork which proclaimed that “Ireland could easily support 40 million people and that the Billings method of Birth Control was 100% sure and safe”. It transpired that some local parish priests had given the group permission to distribute the leaflets and put up posters.

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In his classic Dublin Made Me, the War of Independence and Civil War veteran C.S Andrews remembered the day of his Holy Confirmation by writing:

Anyway, on the great day, my mind was more preoccupied with football than with religion because my father had promised to take me to a cup match that afternoon between Bohemians and Shelbourne at Dalymount Park and I was afraid that the ceremony would not finish on time!

While all Dublin clubs are working class institutions, some stretch back into the nineteenth century with Bohemians founded in 1890 and Shelbourne in 1895. All clubs in Dublin seem to have club historians who as a labour of love dig deep and share their findings in club programmes and the like, but what every club could do with is a oral history collection. Dublin city Library and Archives have recorded a fantastic series of interviews with Shels officials, fans and players which will appeal to all League of Ireland fans.

I enjoyed all of the interviews, which come with a blurb detailing some of what is recalled in the conversation. Below is an example.

Track 8 – Sands, Chris: Born in 1937, Chris Sands is a life-long supporter of Shels. He talks about the early history of Shels from its foundation in 1895 as a “Dockers team”, club rivalry with Shamrock Rovers in the 1940s, the failure to purchase Shelbourne Park, and attending the Olympic Dancehall after matches. He also talks about his involvement with Shelbourne Supporters Development Group in recent years and his views on Ollie Byrne.

It’s likely most Shels fans are familiar with these interviews being online, but that other LOI supporters haven’t stumbled across them. Hopefully, Dublin City Library and Archives will roll this project out to other clubs in their area.

By interviewing both fans and players, the oral history aims to extend the history of Shelbourne FC beyond the traditional perspective of events on the pitch and to show the inter-relationship between sport, culture and everyday life in Dublin. The oral history records the impressions and emotions attached to the activity of playing for and supporting Shelbourne FC, as well as details of the playing pitches, players, managers, and traditions of a by-gone era. These memories will be preserved at Dublin City Library and Archive, and made accessible to historians and future generations to come.

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There is some debate over which was the first Chinese restaurant to open in Dublin.

Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire in his fantastic study ‘The Emergence, Development and Influence of French Haute Cuisine on Public Dining in Dublin Restaurants 1900-2000: An Oral History‘ suggests that The Luna (11 Uppr. O’Connell St.) was “Dublin’s first Chinese restaurant” having been set up in the “early 1950s”. This information was provided by Mary Lee, a daughter of one of the four Hong Kong restaurateurs who were behind the original venture.

However contemporary newspaper articles suggest that the ‘Asia Chinese Restaurant’, 71 Lower Leeson Street, was the first of its kind to open in the city.

Patrick Campbell, journalist who used the pseudonym Quidnunc in The Irish Times, wrote on January 5th 1957:

“(of being) invited to the opening of Dublin’s first Chinese restaurant and found it in a house in Leeson Street. From the hall, it wasn’t too clear where the restaurant was situated in the house, so we opened the first door we saw, to find ourselves looking into the kitchen…”

It was noted in October 1957 that Dublin had ‘three oriental restaurants’ – the Asia Chinese, the Cathay at 19 Kildare St and the Golden Orient at 27 Lower Leeson St which Mac Con Iomaire has described as actually providing “Indian food …with Kenyan influence”. The three restaurants pulled together that month to help feed the fifty strong cast of the Chinese Classical Theatre which was in town.

The Asia China Restaurant was subsequently described in December 1960 as “the first Chinese eatery opened in this town”. The article also mentioned that “Dubliners have of late shown quite an increasing preference for the delicately-cooked and served Chinese dishes, and the number of Chinese restaurants has now increased from one to three.”

I believe the other two were The Cathay and the Luna.

The former was opened in Kildare Street in September 1957 by a 30 year old Chinese businessman by the name of ‘Casey’ Chang from Malaya. After having lived in London for three years, he came to Dublin on a holiday and loved it so much that he decided to relocate here with his family. He brought over a chef and two assistants from Hong Kong and a Chinese stove, saucepans and food from London to start up the restaurant.

In another article in January 1958, it was reported that Dublin had oriental two restaurants, that being, the Asia Chinese and the Cathay. So, it would be possible to calculate that the Luna was opened sometime between January 1958 and December 1960.

Ed-meister, whose paternal grandfather helped open The Luna, has written online:

“It was established by my paternal grandfather with his business partners in the late 50s/early 60s on Dublin’s premier location, O’Connell Street. During that time, my grandfather was one of the handful of the first Chinese immigrants to Ireland.  It was the first time Dubliners could savour Chinese food, and whereas nowadays it is normal fare, back then it was considered extremely exotic. Favourites included curry and ‘sweet & sour’ dishes. My grandfather told me how long queues would form outside as Irish people were tempted to try a new, exotic foreign cuisine.”

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In January 2011, we featured a post here on the site about Joseph Edelstein, who was a one time leading businessman in the Jewish community in Dublin who fell on hard times. Edelstein had been an active Home Rule campaigner, active with the Judaeo-Irish Home Rule Association, and was the author of the hugely controversial text ‘The Moneylender’ in 1908. That text proved divisive among Dublin’s Jewish community, with some feeling it reinforced negative stereotypes.

Below is the books cover, as on display today in the Jewish Museum here in the capital.

Philip Blake was the artist responsible for the cover of this book, though precious little is known about him. The Irish Comic News blog are appealing for information on Blake, and have an interesting post on him on their site at present. It’s a fantastic read, and details some of Blake’s work for the Freeman’s Journal newspaper.

Anyway, Blake seems like an interesting character, but I haven’t been able to find out much about him. In the 1901 census he was 32 and living alone in a flat at Leeson Street Lower, Mansion House, Dublin, his occupation is given as “artist, cartoonist, newspaper illustrator, black and white” and his birthplace as Co. Meath. The Mormon genealogy site has a Philip John Blake, born in Castletown, Meath, on 19 January 1869, son of Philip Blake and Elizabeth Martha Cogan, as well as an older brother, Richard Thomas Blake; I’ve found the family in the 1901 and 1911 census, and Phil’s not at home either time, but Richard Thomas is there in 1901, so this looks like the correct identification.

However, There’s no sign of Phil in the 1911 census. I’ve tried the England and Wales census and the Scotland census, but no luck there either. He’s either died or gone somewhere else. And I’ve found, formerly advertised on AbeBooks, an edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem The Cloud, published in Katoomba, New South Wales, Australia, about 1915, illustrated with photographs and “illuminated by Phil Blake & Co. Artists”. The chin of the female figure on the cover, below, suggests that this is our man.

One of my favourite books in recent times was the collection of cartoons from the late Ernest Kavanagh, whose work appeared in The Irish Worker during the revolutionary period before his death on the steps of Liberty Hall during the Rising. While certain cartoons from our political past have become well-known, the artists themselves haven’t. If you know anything about Philip Blake, pop over to Irish Comic News and let them know.

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Few days bring the same feelings of freedom and release to a youngster as the day you finish secondary school. Granted, you’ll be back in a few weeks afterwards to do your Leaving Cert, but when the bell goes you genuinely just want to chuck your uniform in the nearest bin and move on.

In 1975, a group of students made the national media for locking themselves in their class room, blasting pop records and just doing what they wanted on their last day of school. It’s a great innocent story, though at the time they evidently provoked the wrath of the nuns who ran the school!

Click to expand the newsreport and read it clearly.

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Last Friday we posted this fantastic image below to our Facebook page. Taken by Wally Cassidy, it captures the legendary Dublin street performer Thom McGinty, better known as the Diceman, strolling down Grafton Street. It led to dozens of fantastic comments from Dubliners who remembered seeing the Diceman perform on the streets of the capital. It is worth sharing here for anyone who hasn’t connected with the Facebook page to see.

In 1991 the Irish Press wrote that:

It is interesting how the name of The Diceman stuck with street mime artist Thom McGinty. Years ago his first job was publicising The Diceman, a shop in Grafton Street selling games and novelties. the shop is long gone but Thom McGinty is still known by its name and the 40 year old Scotsman is now integral part of Dublin street life.

From the discussion the image sparked, I was directed towards this brilliant YouTube compilation of shots of McGinty, put together by the folks at the Gallery of Photography.

McGinty passed away in February 1995, and fittingly his coffin was carried down Grafton Street, where he had become a real fixture of Dublin life. He is remembered by Diceman’s Corner in Meeting House Square today.

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While it is well known that the American abolitionist and anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass visited Dublin in 1840s, something which Barack Obama focused on in his speech here last summer, what he made of Dublin is something many of us are perhaps unfamiliar with.

A letter Douglass wrote to William Lloyd Garrison in the United States, which was printed in The Liberator on 27 March 1846, is available in full to read online here. It is a truly grim account of Dublin in the 1840s. My thanks to James Moore for directing me to this great piece of social commentary.

I spent nearly six weeks in Dublin, and the scenes I there witnessed were such as to make me “blush, and hang my head to think myself a man.” I speak truly when I say, I dreaded to go out of the house. The streets were almost literally alive with beggars, displaying the greatest wretchedness—some of them mere stumps of men, without feet, without legs, without hands, without arms—and others still more horribly deformed

During my stay in Dublin, I took occasion to visit the huts of the poor in its vicinity—and of all places to witness human misery, ignorance, degradation, filth and wretchedness, an Irish hut is pre-eminent. It seems to be constructed to promote the very reverse of every thing like domestic comfort.

The immediate, and it may be the main cause of the extreme poverty and beggary in Ireland, is intemperance. This may be seen in the fact that most beggars drink whiskey. The third day after landing in Dublin, I met a man in one of the most public streets, with a white cloth on the upper part of his face. He was feeling his way with a cane in one hand, and the other hand was extended, soliciting aid. His feeble step and singular appearance led me to inquire into his history. I was informed that he had been a very intemperate man, and that on one occasion he was drunk, and lying in the street. While in this state of insensibility, a hog with its fangs tore off his nose, and a part of his face! I looked under the cloth, and saw the horrible spectacle of a living man with the face of a skeleton. Drunkenness is still rife in Ireland. The temperance cause has done much—is doing much—but there is much more to do, and, as yet, comparatively few to do it.

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Just on the outskirts of Dublin lies the historic university town of Maynooth. It is the home of Ireland’s main Roman Catholic seminary, St Patrick’s College, which has been churning out priests since 1795.

One particular room in the college has been associated with demonic apparitions, suicide and paranormal activity for over 150 years.

In the mid 19th century in Room Two of Rhetoric House, two young seminarists took their own lives, nineteen years apart, and the room has been the source of many tales ever since.

Rhetoric House in the South Campus, built in 1834, was formerly a residential house for trainee priests. It now hosts the Department of History.

On 1 March 1841, a young student from Limerick by the name of Sean O’Grady (b. 1820) jumped out of room and fell to his death. (1) It is not known as to what possessed O’Grady to do such a thing but the common legend suggests that a ‘diabolic presence‘ had something to do with it.

Nineteen years later student Thomas McGinn (b. 16 June 1833) from Kilmore, Co. Wexford came up to college in a week early to take his matriculation tests. (2) During this time he stayed in Room No. 2. When term began, he was moved to a different room and was subsequently told that he had spent a week in a room where a previous student had killed himself. It preyed on his mind night and day. On a Friday morning after mass, McGinn went into Room No. 2 cut himself with a razor and then threw himself out of the window.

Dr. McCarthy, the former Vice-President of the college, visited him in the infirmary before he succumbed to his injuries. Apparently he gave them an account of the demonic occurrences that happened in the room that led to his actions. His grave marking state states that he died on April 21 1860.

After this, the tale goes on, a priest spent the night in the room and was so terrified by whatever he saw – he refused to speak about it – that his hair turned bright white.

Obviously shaken by all the events that had just taken took place, Dr. McCarthy  urged the Trustees to take action, and the result was the resolution in the Trustees’ Journal which reads:

“October 23rd 1860. The President is authorised to convert room No. 2 on the top corridor of Rhetoric House into an Oratory of St. Joseph and to fit up an oratory of St. Aloysius in the prayer hall of the Junior Students”.

St. Joseph is the Patron of a Peaceful Death.

The dead students are buried in unconsecrated ground on the fringe of the college cemetery, but the graves are marked.
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