Helen Prout: Self-sufficiency, Childbirth, Film Making,
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Description
Helen talks about surviving economically in hard times. Dole benefits were not easily obtained. She had to raise 13 children. The family survived through self-sufficiency in food, including keeping 3 cows and selling or killing their own pigs.
She tells a story about not receiving shoes under a government welfare scheme.
She was keen on the radio and she bought a reel to reel tape recorder and recorded the voices of her family. (She says later that she made home movies.)
She recalls the hospital birth and the christening of her first child, and tells a story about the priest objecting to her daughter’s name.
She started entering films she made in competitions in the 1970s and won several.
She went to work in St Finbarr’s Hospital as a nurse’s aid.
Her children are all self-employed.
Note: This is the last of 3 interviews with Helen; this one was done towards the end of her life,
Date
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Coverage
Relation
CFP00271; CFP00305; CFP00404:
CFP_SR00387_sheehan_2010; CFP_SR00388_sheehan_2010; CFP_SR00389_healy_2010; CFP_SR00390_kelleher_2010; CFP_SR00391_crean_2010; CFP_SR00392_mckeon_2010; CFP_SR00393_twomey_2010; CFP_SR00394_stleger_2010; CFP_SR00395_speight_2010; CFP_SR00396_lane_2010; CFP_SR00397_obrienoleary_2010; CFP_SR00398_jones_2010; CFP_SR00399_saville_2010; CFP_SR00400_magnier_2010; CFP_SR00401_marshall_2010; CFP_SR00402_marshall_2010; CFP_SR00403_murphy_2010; CFP_SR00404_prout_2011; CFP_SR00405_walsh_2011; CFP_SR00407_newman_2010; CFP_SR00408_newman_2010; CFP_SR00409_leahy_2011; CFP_SR00411_newman_2010; CFP_SR00412_newman_2010; CFP_SR00413_finn_2011; CFP_SR00414_ohorgain_2011; CFP_SR00415_oconnell_2011; CFP_SR00416_sheehy_2011; CFP_SR00417_mcloughlin_2012; CFP_SR00418_gerety_2012; CFP_SR00419_kelleher_2012; CFP_SR00420_byrne_2012; CFP_SR00421_cronin_2012; CFP_SR00422_ohuigin_2012; CFP_SR00423_meacle_2012; CFP_SR00424_horgan_2012; CFP_SR00425_lyons_2012; CFP_SR00427_goulding_2011;
CFP_SR00491_fitzgerald_2013.
Heritage Week 2011: CFP_SR00429_casey_2011; CFP_SR00430_tomas_2011; CFP_SR00431_newman_2011; CFP_SR00432_stillwell_2011; CFP_SR00433_oconnell_2011; CFP_SR00434_lane_2011; CFP_SR00435_montgomery-mcconville_2011; CFP_SR00436_ocallaghan_2011; CFP_SR00437_corcoran_2011; CFP_SR00438_jones_2011; CFP_SR00439_ohuigin_2011; CFP_SR00440_mccarthy_2011; CFP_SR00441_crowley_2011; CFP_SR00442_obrien_2011; CFP_SR00443_jones_2011; CFP_SR00444_mcgillicuddy_2011; CFP_SR00445_delay_2011; CFP_SR00446_murphy_2011;
Video Interview: CFP_VR00486_speight_2014
Published Material:
O’Carroll, Clíona (2011) ‘The Cork Memory Map’, Béascna 7: 184-188.
O’Carroll, Clíona (2012) ‘Cork Memory Map: an update on CFP’s Online Project’, The Archive 16: 14. https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/research/corkfolkloreproject/archivepdfs/archive16.PDF
Dee, Stephen and O’Carroll, Clíona (2012) ‘Sound Excerpts: Interviews from Heritage Week’, The Archive 16: 15-17. https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/research/corkfolkloreproject/archivepdfs/archive16.PDF
O'Carrol, Clíona (2014) 'The children's perspectives: Place-centred interviewing and multiple diversified livelihood strategies in Cork city, 1935-1960'. Béaloideas - The Journal of Folklore of Ireland Society, 82: 45-65.
The Curious Ear/Documentary on One (Cork City Memory Map) http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/2011/0816/646858-curious-ear-doconone-cork-city-memory-map/
To view the Cork Memory Map Click Here
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Transcription
HK: And when you had children, Helen, did you have them at home?
HP: No, I had them in St Finbarr’s.
HK: Oh yeah.
HP: And I rec-- and I recall one of the first, the first one that I had in St Finbarrs, I’ll never forget it. Twas the old hospital, I couldn’t, sure I didn’t know any different, I was only home from England and I thought twas a grand place to go in. Went in any way and you had this big long ward, and eh there must have been how many patients, could be 30 patients in there, and then there was a ward alongside of it, a TB ward, and the ward next to that, that was the unmarried mothers.
HK: They were separate?
HP: They had em all separated.
HK: And what happened when they had babies then?
HP: I don’t -- I don’t know what -- I used love to look into that room to see what was happening because it was behind closed doors. But that was alright anyway, when you went to wash yourself in the bathroom, and the whole bloody bath would be full of afterbirths and everything.
HK: Oh God, that’s terrible.
HP: And then you went to the labour ward and they had a radio up over the -- and at that time the song that was blaring out was The Tennessee Waltz. [laughs]
HK: [laughs] In the labour ward.
HP: [laughs] Oh God, I --
HK: You’d want to [unintelligible 13:52] I’d say.
HP: You’d spend 9 days in there.
HK: 9 days.
HP: 10 days, 10 days the first time.
HK: Really?
HP: Yeah.
HK: And would you have the child eh all the time?
HP No.
HK: You wouldn’t. And then you’d come home. Would you have the baby christened there or would --
HP: Yeah, you’d have her christened, you’d have the child christened, you would, they wouldn’t want you coming out at all because --
HK: Unless they were christened, they’d have to be christened first, is it?
HP: Christened inside. And the mother wouldn’t be allowed to go to the christening at all that time.
HK: She couldn’t go to the christening.
HP: No. She wasn’t allowed go to the christening at all. So when June was born, that’s my daughter you know, I remember they brought her out to the christening and this priest, he was very, very cross, and they used baptize a whole row of babies together, and they’d give them all the names as they went along, and he got to June anyway and he said, “June, June Marian” and he stopped and he said, “What kind of a name is that to give a child?” Well, he nearly ate them. And Christy says to him -- He said, “There’s no saint named that.” And Christy said to him, “You’d never know, she might be a saint yet.”