Today’s Irishman’s Diary tells the fascinating story about how the plaque on George Bernard Shaw’s birthplace on Synge Street was erected, not by the city council, but by a devoted fan and local bin man.
“The other dustman in Shaw’s life was Patrick O’Reilly, who emptied dustbins around the Synge Street area for 40 years before retiring in 1953. The following year I interviewed him for the Edinburgh magazine Chambers’s Journal.
O’Reilly’s connection with Shaw had started more than 40 years earlier when he saw Shaw’s Man and Superman in the old Rotunda Theatre. In his tiny and scrupulously clean municipal cottage around the corner from Synge Street, he showed me the tattered volume of Shaw’s plays he had taken down each day for 40 years, as well as the 26 letters and five postcards Shaw had written him.
In 1944, Dublin presented Shaw with the freedom of the city and sent representatives to Ayot St Lawrence with the roll of freemen for Shaw’s signature. Two years later Shaw celebrated his 90th birthday. The postman brought him a small present from Ireland, a little gold shamrock the Dublin dustman had bought in a pawnshop.
Back from Ayot St Lawrence came a card. “A golden shamrock!” Shaw wrote. “What a charming gift! It is on my watch-chain and it will remain there until I myself drop off it.”
In 1947, O’Reilly wrote to Shaw saying he had collected enough from his bin customers to erect a plaque to him on the Synge Street home where he was born.
Would Shaw approve the inscription, “He gave his services to his country, unlimited, unstinted and without price”? Shaw’s reply was typical. “Dear Pat: Your inscription is a blazing lie. I left Dublin before I was twenty and I have devoted the remainder of my life to Labour and International Socialism and for all you know I may be hanged yet.” Shaw then sent over a drawing showing the design he wanted for the plaque – a wreath of shamrocks in marble with the inscription mentioned above.”
The story continues here. For those interested, The Shaw Birthplace museum is open from June – August on Tuesdays, Thursdays & Saturday s from 11.00am-3.30pm.
Photo credit - Renaud Camus
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