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https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/files/original/cf155f1117d108de1420e76d6313264c.mp3
bda2cac14952c68ba8b65eedc05a966a
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Donal Ring
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Tim McCarthy
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
109m05s
Location
The location of the interview
City Lights Killeens, Commons Road, Cork
Time Summary
A summary of an interview given for different time stamps throughout the interview
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<p><strong>0.00.03 - 0.07.53</strong></p>
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<p>Interviewer Tim McCarthy begins by giving a brief biographical rundown of Donal Rings career saying that Donal started playing the accordion at the age of thirteen and he was influenced by his father who was a melodeon player and he was playing professionally from the age of fifteen thus winning the acclaim of his peers. He speaks of how Donal garnered a large fanbase locally and internationally. Tim states that much of Donals story has been documented by local media and he states that Brian Lawlor of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, which is housed in Merrion Square Dublin, did two extensive interviews with Donal in 2009 so he states that today they will seek to focus on more local topics and general topics that Brian and other interviewees may not have covered. Tim makes a statement to the effect that Brian’s interviews are available online and the Cork Folklore Project will request his permission to refer to them in relation to whatever they discuss today so it will all be unified.</p>
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<p>Donal says his musical influence started with his father who he says would play morning noon and night and liked playing. That was for the first couple of years and then Donal became friendly with the late Donal Coleman and they got together playing. Donal Coleman was from Grenagh Parish and they joined a little band in Mallow called the Celtic Ceili Band and they were there for two years with a man called Joe Boyle who was from Clonmel Co Tipperary and married in Mallow. After two years they (the two Donals) left and formed the Blarney Ceili Band and joined up with the Murphy’s of Blackstone Bridge who Donal says were very good fiddlers and bass players etc. Donal Ring was there for three years and then decided to go out on his own. He became friendly with a man called Noel Crowley from Dillon’s Cross in Cork City whom Donal says was a great accordion player and who has passed away in the last year. Himself and Donal started a band and the way it started was they tossed a penny, Donal says at the time he was saying the Rosary in Commons Road and each was saying to other to put their name on the band so in the end they tossed a penny and Donal’s name came up so that was how the band started (the Donal Ring Ceili Band). Noel was with him in the band for five or six years and then they organised a tour of London and Noel didn’t want to go as he didn’t like travelling. He says Frank Fitzpatrick went instead and Donal says they got on reasonably well adding you can’t expect miracles starting out. They went to London and had thirteen dates supposed to be booked and when they arrived it was seven. He says they were green and walked into it, he says you learn fast. They enjoyed it and it was a challenge he adds. He adds they went again the following year and it was a great success. It was a great tour he says.</p>
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<p>He says after this they were trying to get on television, (on RTE) There were two programmes called <em><span>Beirt Eile and </span></em><span>Club </span><em><span>Céilí and they were writing in to RTE to get on the programmes and RTE got back to say they were on the casting file and they would get in contact when they (the band) were required. He says it went on like this and Donal says he was very friendly with Tony Hegarty who was managing the band at the time. Tony asked Donal if he knew Jack Lynch to which Donal said he did. Tony advised Donal to go to Jack Lynch’s office on the Grand Parade on a Saturday morning so Donal went down to him. When he called there Jack Lynch asked him if they had ever done broadcasting to which Donal said they had done live broadcasting from Union Quay for RTE. Donal showed Jack Lynch the letters he had got from RTE and Jack said to leave it with him and he would have a word with Mr McCourt <strong>(Note: Kevin McCourt, Director General of RTE from </strong></span></em><strong><span>1962 to 1968). </span></strong><span>Tim asks Donal if he was a judge in Midleton to which Donal says he doesn’t know but that he was the “bossman” in RTE. Three weeks later RTE got in touch to say they were on. He says that was a lucky break and it was thanks to RTE that they got it. From there on the whole thing blossomed he says. Donal adds that Jack Lynch was quite cautious too as he wanted to know whether they had done Live broadcasts and it was the makings of them and they got a lot of work off it. Tim asks Donal if Tony Hegarty is the well known Cork comedian. Donal says he was and he was a great friend. When Donal had no money Tony often gave him 50 pounds and Donal will never forget that. He says he was a great friend and a good manager but he pulled out because they got too busy and there was no need of a manager. He says it was not like today, today he says you have to ring somebody to look for work and he says back then it was the opposite. They (venues) would ring you and book dates with you and confirm them in writing. He says they did the rest themselves. He says Tony Hegarty was their only ever manager and after that he did it himself. He says there isin’t that much to it. He says doing it himself you get to know people better. He says sometimes you could go to a place and you could be told that you weren’t booked at all. He say it happened a few times, he says going back fifty seven years ago they went to Kiskeam (in North Cork) one night to be told they weren’t booked at all and Donal says they were. Another night one New Years Eve they drove up to Kildare as they were booked into a venue only to be told that there must be some mistake and he told them they had been there twelve months previously and the venue had rebooked them but they repeated that there was a mistake. He said all they could do was to get something to eat for the band and drive them home and he jokes, take some abuse because they haven’t some sort of contract with them. He says you wouldn’t get a lot of abuse. He says the contract wasn’t in writing but he would always honour it whether it was or not. He says at that time contracts were mostly in writing but it was starting to go out. He says regarding dances everything would be conformed about the dance only the fee. <strong>(Note: from 7.51 to 7.53 Donal says a saying which sounds like “there was no quarrel with the price you bring them” though it is not 100% clear on the recording)</strong></span></p>
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<p><strong>0.07.59 - 0.11.13</strong></p>
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<p>Tim asks Donal if all of the band travelled together to which he says they did. He says they always had a Volkswagen minibus and he says he had eleven of them in total down the years all of which he wore out. He says the Volkswagen are a great machine. Donal then mentions the name of the local motor supplier of the time, <strong>(Note: at 8.20 Donal mentions the name of his local car supplier of the time who would supply him with the minibuses, it may be Thomas Transport but it is unclear on the recording). </strong>Donal says the manager of the motor supplier whom he would buy the minibuses from was Michael McCarthy who was always very good to him and whenever an exceptional Volkswagen came in Michael would have Donal in line for it. When asked how the band members spent the time in the van on the road he says they would play chess. Jer (or Jerry) Casey and Gary Cronin would be playing chess, Jer was a genius he says. Gary had a miniature board and he would be half an hour making a move Donal says. Jerry would be in the front beside Donal and he straight away make his move and then hand the board back over the seat to Gary who would then take another half an hour to make the next move. He says you would have arguments over very small things when people would get tired and cranky, he says they would tend to pick on the weak points to get the next fellow going. He says they were all great lads even though he had at least fifty band members travelling in the van down the years. Tim asks Donal if he has done a “family tree” meaning a history of the band members. Donal replies to say that his niece in San Francisco is doing a family history of the Ring family which he says is fairly big. Tim says he has seen a fair few bands do a history on their members showing who was connected with whom. Donal says their connection in that respect would be the McCarthy’s and starting with the Cork songwriter Jimmy McCarthy. Donal says he might not have his facts exactly right but he says his own grandmother was a McCarthy and he thinks she was a grandaunt of Jimmy McCarthy. He also mentions a Margaret McCarthy who plays the fiddle in blarney and she played for President Barack Obama in the White House on St Patricks Day. He says she played the fiddle and danced the hornpipe at the same time. He says she is fantastic. Donal says he saw his grandmother dancing the hornpipe and playing the melodeon so it is in the blood. He says the grandchildren from his fathers side the music came from. He says his mother’s side of the family isn’t musical at all.</p>
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<p><strong>0.11.14 - 0.14.56</strong></p>
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<p>Tim asks Donal if they wore uniforms in the band to which he says they did. He says it was important to be dressed neatly. He says they got Irish plaid suits one time which were made by the late Tom Aherne who had a tailors shop on the North Main St in Cork. He says this was in the early 1960’s. He says they also had lovely coats from John Culhane <strong>(note: He probably means John Mannix of Mannix & Culhane on Washington St) </strong>and they got coats and jackets from a man called Nick Buttery. They had jackets of different colours. When asked did someone design them Donal says they were just made to measure and jokes that they weren’t that important.</p>
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<p>Donal says band members helped with the driving and loading of gear. He says when he started first he had two brothers in the band. Jerh Ring was the bass player, Donal says he was killed outside Blarney. He was a good driver he adds. Another brother Michael was also in the band but he didn’t drive. He had another man in the band the late Liam Kelleher who was a good driver. He says it is grand to sit in and not worry about the driver but there are many that you would worry about them driving and you’d get no peace that way. Donal says it was mostly himself driving and he says he started driving trucks which he says he drove for years. He says you’d have to be handy at it or you’d kill half of Cork. He talks for a bit about the truck driving and he says he was glad to get away from it. He says he finished up driving trucks for John O Hoolihan for whom he was driving multi wheeled Atkinson trucks which had no power steering and he would be hauling twenty five tons into Cork and he describes trying to take a turning by the Capitol Cinema on Washington St. He says it was tough work but he enjoyed it. Tim says he used to do this himself and asks what sites he was working from. Donal says the big job he was involved in was the building of the oil refinery in Whitegate. He was working for a firm called Ellis and was hauling material to the site in Whitegate and he was doing this for two years. After that he went to work on the building of Cork Airport for a couple of years. He says this was the biggest project of the time. He says he was hauling blocks for building sites. He worked for a man called Willy Desmond drawing sugar beet to Mallow and picking up the grain in the fields. He says there would be one man on the ground handing in a twenty stone bag. He jokes that you wouldn’t be breaking wind on Patrick St that night. Tim says there wouldn’t have been health and safety to which Donal agrees, he says that has gone too far these days and you’d see fellows working on the roads and there’d be cones on the road for half a mile and then nothing happening at the end. </p>
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<p><strong>0.14.58 - 0.21.10</strong></p>
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<p>Tim asks if any of Donal’s band members achieved success in other areas. Donal says Ger Casey is a professor of archaeology in Dublin now and he was in Donal’s band for eleven years. The first ever violin player he had was Declan Townsend and he is a bachelor of music now. He says several great players never progressed to anything bigger like Tony O Sullivan and Frank Fitzpatrick who he says are still great players. He mentions his own brother Michael who became a panel beater, he says he plays accordion and he is still in the band. He left and he came back a few times he says. Tim asks how the set up of having two accordion players work. Donal says they spent years at it and when there are two playing they have to be bang on and they won’t get away with any discrepancies. They have to keep rehearsing and practising melodies and harmonies. He says when you are playing out in the country at ceilis you are playing jigs and reels and a second box is a great help. Things will go wrong one night and then other nights will go perfectly. Tim mentions that in the case of the Everly Brothers that it was said there was an affinity that produced a natural harmony and would Donal agree with that? Donal says there is no doubt about this. He adds that when Noel Crowley started out the band he was very meticulous as to getting the arrangements right, all the bass parts and piano parts had to be written out. That continued on with Gerry Casey who taught Donals daughter Mary and now she and Donal’s son write the arrangements for the band. Donal says they are not going to record anymore as the age of the cd is gone which he says is hard to believe. He says he has cds recorded and can’t sell them as everyone is downloading now from the internet. Tim asks Donal what he thinks of this, in reply he says his son was in Scotland this year and he played in a place called Dufftown. He was there playing on a Friday night and by example Donal says he was in Pa Johnsons pub on <span>Devonshire St Cork on</span> the following Monday night. He adds that there is an accordion night there on the last Wednesday of every month. On this occasion when Donal was there the proprietor Barry Johnson had the internet on (on a computer or device) and Donal says there was Donals son Donie and Terry McCarthy playing in Dufftown, he adds someone had uploaded two hours of it. Donal says you can’t sell cds under those circumstances. There follows a discussion with Tim and Donal as to whether this puts the focus back on live performances. Donal says that with live performances musicians have to be at the top of their game because anyone can film them with a mobile phone. Donal says that today the band consists of his brother Michael, Donal’s daughter Mary and he has a singer from Ballyroe called Con Hegarty and himself. He says they play in Blarney every Sunday night from 9 to 11. He says he himself will be 80 at the end of the week so playing two nights a week would be too much. He says his grandchildren are all playing, his grandson Aidan plays and another grandson Der plays with Robert Mizzell who is a big Country N Western act and plays the North a lot, Robert Mizzell is American he adds and his grandson is drumming with him. He compares musical ability to hurling and says it is in the blood. He says his grandchildren often play with him.</p>
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<p><strong>0.21.12 - 0.25.36</strong></p>
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<p>Donal says the five row accordion is quite complex to play and he calls it ultimate accordion. He says he didn’t play it as it wasn’t there in his time. He was he was the “push and draw man” and he says he went as far as he could on that. He bought a <em><span>Shand Morino</span></em> accordion which is what Jimmy Shand, the famous Scottish accordionist played which is a very advanced push and pull keyboard. He adds that the five row is the most advanced and he says it is a superb keyboard. He says there is the two and three row which are push and pull. He goes on to speak more about the five row. He talks about the Shand Marino and talks about Jimmy Shand who he says was a marvellous man and the king in his book of playing terms. He says he was 100 years ahead of his time. He speaks about the <em><span>Gallowglass Ceili Band and their influence. He says there were some great bands from up the country played the City Hall in Cork. He lists these acts such as Jackie</span></em><span> Hearst from Newry, Sean Donoghue and his five sisters from Galway and Astor Row (?) from Donegal. He said they had some great nights there especially with </span><em><span>Na Piarsaigh hurling club who he says held great Ceilis. He says Ceilis in the City would draw crowds of a couple of thousand. He says the golden era was from when Jimmy Shand came and as Donal says got the whole thing going. Donal thinks he came first to Cork around 1956 and came again in the early 60’s. Then the Gallowglass Ceili Band came and he says it took off. He says there was nearly thirty years where it was at its peak. He goes on to say that Tony Hegarty was running a ceili in the City Hall and Donal’s band were booked for it and also the Gallowglass were booked and also Jim Cameron from Scotland. Donal was up in the Hall with Tony on Saturday and Tony said he would have to have two thousand for the audience and it ended up having two and a half thousand. Donal recalls on the night that there was a queue on the footpath all the way up Angelsea Street and he adds there was no drink served, just a mineral bar. He says there was never a bar at the ceilis. He says in time the regular bars started building lounge extensions and running “bits of dances” then the normal dance halls, not all of them he adds, had to add a bar to compete. Donal adds any big dance they run now has a bar, they are doing one in Glenville on the week of the interview he says. He says those people drinking would just be having a couple of drinks and maybe a short. </span></em></p>
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<p><strong>0.25.37 - 0.33.16</strong></p>
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<p>Tim asks Donal if there were two scenes going on then, the Showband scene in tandem with the music scene Donal was involved with. Donal says the Showband scene was very big. He mentions Brendan Bowyer. He speaks about the “wagons” the Showbands had, ie their tour buses. He says the wagons would be specially designed and very large. He goes on to say that nearly every parish ran a festival and Donal and the band would have one Irish night during the week. Donal and the band would get the date and they would be going non stop. The Irish night was always a great success because you would get an older crowd coming in for it. He says they often subsidised the Showbands with the crowd they would bring. He says they did the Rose Of Tralee for twenty one years, Upton Steam Rally for fourteen years, Cobh Festival for eighteen years and all these festivals would keep them busy. He says they had a slot on St Francis Hall as well for fourteen years every Tuesday night. Tim says he recalls St Francis Hall as being a popular spot and he asks what else went on there to which Donal says they used to have karate classes and card drives. He says it was owned by St Francis Church (on Liberty St, Cork). He says he thinks now it is a nightclub, they had some great nights there he adds. Tim asks Donal if they came across a lot of Cork Showbands and Donal mentions the Dixies. Tim asks about the connection between Donal’s band and the Dixies and Donal says the connection was with Terry McCarthy sings with Donals son Donie and they play a wide variety of material. <strong>(Note: Terry McCarthy has been part of the Dixies lineup). </strong>Donal says he knows Joe Mac of the Dixies well. He says they’re the same age. Donal says he never played with Joe Mac. He says Terry McCarthy played with Donal and his band in Scotland twice and he says his main ambition is to make the night a success. Tim asks about the Cork band the Arrivals and Donal says he knew them all, he mentions Declan Ryan. Donal says there were some bands in Cork from that time who didn’t receive due recognition, he says one was a group called the <em><span>Modernaires who used to play in the Palm Court Ballroom on Oliver Plunkett St, he says it used to be the ESB office. Alderman John W Reidy bought it and converted it into the Palm Court Ballroom and it was a lovely place but it has since been sold and it is now known as the Oliver Plunkett. Tim mentions that it used to be the Black Bush and Scotts at various points. Donal goes on to mention the Regal from Bantry who he says were a great band. Tommy Power from Douglas also had a band. He also mentions Chris Mahon, he mentions them as being both passed away. He remembers when he was young seeing a band led by a man called Pat Navin or Navan. He doesn’t know where he was from. He says there would be fourteen band members of Pat Navin’s loaded onto a mini bus. He says it must have been a great wagon to take that load. Tim asks Donal if they ever had members from pipe bands or brass bands from the City. Donal mentions one man from the Blarney Brass & Reed Band. He says he was a good saxophone player but didn’t stay with them. He was the only one he thinks. He mentions another man called Jerry Casey who didn’t play with them but all of his sons did he says, he played with a brass and reed band in town. Tim asks if the saxophone was common with ceili bands at this time to which Donal says the Gallowglass Ceili Band was the first to use it. He says they picked it up from listening to Jim Cameron who had a cornet which he says was like a trumpet. The Gallowglass went to the sax, he says if you have a good man playing it can be lovely. Donal had the late Paddy Carey on the sax for thirty one years. He could play every note of it he says which is unusual for a sax player, he could play the C melody which would be part of old saxophones. The Sax player for the Gallowglass Mick Dempsey was a great player and a nice man he says. Donal says they would have recorded with the sax, he says they did about eight LP’s with the sax. Mick Dempsey tutored Paddy Carey on the sax, he says the weakest sax reed you can get is a number three and Mick used to shave it down to one and a half and he would be doing things like burning the top between two pennies. Donal speaks about the trumpet and how Jim Cameron would always play to the side and not directly out to the audience to dampen the sound.</span></em></p>
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<p><strong>0.33.18 - 0.38.42</strong></p>
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<p>Tim asks what were the best years for the music and for the best for the money. Donal says the best years money and work wise were the mid 70’s to late 80’s. Donal says there was a belief that with ceili bands they didn’t need to be paid at all whereas with Showbands they would get a “thousand smackers” and they might have to be fighting for 350 pounds which was their fee in their heydays. He says they came from nothing and had nothing to start with and when they got the work you took it. He says the music didn’t suffer because of the money, they would play their best at all times. He speaks about the problems of having to make sure everyone in the band were paid. He says he had a seven piece band and then it would go down to six and then down to four because of the issues involved with paying everyone. He says nowadays you are down to about fifty or sixty people per gig because he says just the old people are dancing now. On asked did the recession affect things he says it did and he also speaks about drink driving regulations effecting gigs. On asked how did he get the contacts for gigs Donal says the promoters got to know them rather than vice versa and he adds that TV made them. He mentions a singer they had called Pat Daly. He says they never had any breakdowns going to the gigs except for one occasion where they ran out of petrol going from Dublin and they ran out of petrol by Glanmire. He mentions again the reliability of the Volkswagen. He says you would have to fight your corner with some promoters to get your money. He gives an example of a time they played one time they were playing for the GAA in <em><span>Kilcormac</span></em> County Offaly and they were booked to play from 10 to 1. He says at quarter to 12 there was no one there and they were practising and then two people came in, by the next half hour it was full, they had all been in the bars he said. Next thing they were told they had to play till half past 1. He says afterwards five members of the committee came up to him to pay him and they said to Donal that they must give him a cut. They said to him that they hadn’t started playing till quarter to 12 to which Donal said they had no one to play to and they had them booked from ten to one. One of the men then said to Donal, “do you know who I am?” “I’m JJ Spain and I’m the referee in the All-Ireland Semi Final tomorrow”. Donal told him he didn’t give a damn who he was and to this JJ Spain “fired” the money at him. Donal says you get an odd one like that here and there but the majority were great. He mentions Sonny Maybury of Dunmanway and Pat McCarthy of Cappamore in Co Limerick as grand people to play for. He says that with Pat McCarthy he booked him for ten nights and they never discussed money because they had an understanding and he says it would be the same with Sonny Maybury. </p>
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<p><strong>0.38.42 - 0.49.06</strong></p>
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<p>Tim asks Donal if they did a lot of work for charity to which Donal says they did a pile of it. He says one thing the band would do every Christmas Morning would they would play the hospitals. They would play St Finbars and the Mercy Hospital which were the two they play the more often. They would also play St Patricks Hospital (Marymount). They did for about twenty five years. He says he did about twelve albums, when asked were any of them recorded in Cork he says one was done in Ballyvourney, another in Fermoy and the last one they did was in was in Youghal. The rest were done in Dublin and he adds it was expensive, he says it cost 100 pounds an hour and it was no place to be rehearsing as you’d want that done. He says they held a record for the fastest LP recorded and mixed at nineteen hours. He says you’d be talking about a couple of thousand pounds. He talks about one place that rigged the breakdown of the cost of recording. He says the studio suffered a power cut and that Donal walked outside and up the street, he says every house along the street had power so this proved that the studio had rigged the power cut to drag out the recording time and get paid more. They hid it rigged in the studio to cut the power off. Donal says there were two more numbers to record and they had to go back again. He speaks more about the recording process and getting the takes right, the pressures of getting it right etc. He advises always do an extra track. The entire band would play together in the studio. He mentions Bill Somerville- Large of Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin as a great engineer; he adds that he was a jazz pianist. He also worked for RTE he says. He speaks of his work with them on recording and how he helped them out with a piano piece. He says they recorded in <em><span>Tadhg Kelleher’s studio in Ballyvourney which he says was top class. He speaks about recording in Brian O Reilly’s (of the band Loudest Whisper) studio in Fermoy. He says one thing he found there was you would want to be playing very tight and there would be no looseness at all. He mentions the Youghal recording as having been done in Clay Castle Studio. The differences in styles and age gaps are discussed. Bill Somerville-Large was the main producer in Dublin he says. He mentions Trend Studio and the engineers Paul Waldron and John Dallat. He mentions Fred Meyer as a good engineer; if you were in the studio mixing you’d come out nearly stone deaf as he’s have big speakers on. A discussion on mixing in the studio follows. </span></em></p>
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<p><em><span>The instruments of the band are discussed. Donal says he bought his accordion from Jimmy Shand. His brother Michael also bought his instrument from him. He says Jimmy Shand was over in Cork and Donal showed him his own accordion to which Jimmy said the keyboard was buckled, Donal adds that at this time he was driving the lorry and had “fingers like crowbars”. He tells a story about another accordion he was having tuned and how Jimmy Shand advised him to never sell it. He tells how Jimmy sold him a fiddle on the same occasion. Tim asks Donal if Jimmy Shand would have seen him as a protégé to which Donal says he thought a lot of the band and he would give credit where it was due. He tells how Jimmy wrote the Bridie Ring Polka for Donals wife to play and he wrote one for Donal and ones for the band, he was a gifted man he says. Further discussion of Jimmy Shand’s life and career follow.</span></em></p>
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<p><strong>0.49.09 - 1.00.23</strong></p>
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<p><span>Tim asks Donal if he ever featured on a radio show called the Galtee Programme to which Donal says he doesn’t but he would listen to it a lot. It used to go out on a Monday at quarter past one. <strong>(Note: possibly a reference to Galtee Radio, an independent radio station that ceased transmitting in 2001) </strong>Crowleys music shop in Cork is discussed. Donal says he often dealt with Michael and his father Mick Crowley. Donal mentions a man known as Sham or Shan who worked in Crowleys shop when it was on Merchants Quay. He mentions another man whose surname was Welsh who worked for Crowleys. He says it is sad to see Crowley’s gone today. Tim says that Sheena Crowley, the daughter of Michael Crowley is running Crowley’s music shop from above the Palm Court (now the Oliver Plunkett). Tim asks Donal if he ever pass on his skills or teach anyone outside the family to which he says he has a bad patience that way, he says he might give them a hint but he never took up teaching. A discussion on the conditions in the venues follows, Donal says there was no such thing as dressing rooms, there was no heating or fan onstage. He says it improved in time and they got lighting and dressing rooms etc. He says how the cold would effect the instruments such as frost. He says you would have to be hardy. He says sometimes they had problems with band members drinking and disappearing off. He recalls one night when they were playing in Upton and three of the band were drinking. There were spot prizes such as bottles of whiskey. Donal says what he didn’t know was that the three band members had stolen the bottle of whiskey and they didn’t want him to see it so he says they went outside and he describes where the back wheel of the Volkswagen had a panel hiding half the wheel and they put the bottle into this and on top of the tyre where it couldn’t be seen. He says when he was unloading the wagon the bottle fell down with a bang and broke. He jokes that the lads were nearly in tears. He says drink is an awful scourge in a band. Donal says he doesn’t drink other than the off half pint. He says fellas would be falling off the stage or falling off a chair. He describes one time how Paddy Carey who didn’t drink was “fool acting” on stage when they were playing in Cahir Co Tipperary. Next thing before he knew where he was he had fallen into the pit. He describes another occasion when they were playing in Portarlington Co Laois and there big lampshades made from aluminium and hanging over the stage. Next thing he heard a crack and the rope holding up the lampshades broke and it fell down missing drummer Pat Riordan’s head by six inches, he says it would have killed him stone dead if it had hit him. Tim suggests that the Stardust fire in Dublin 1981 changed all that to which Donal agrees. He says fire chiefs came into St Francis Hall in Cork at this time when Donal’s band were playing there and pointed out that all the timber in the venue would have to be removed or else treated with fire proof paint. The fire proof paint option was chosen and Donal says they put no dryers in the paint and it took several months to dry by which time their audience from that venue was scattered and they never got them back. </span></p>
<p><span>Tim asks about punters to the gigs going out all dressed up to which Donal says all the women would be for an hour before the men would come and they’d be on one side of the hall and then the men would arrive in from the bar. He says the style would be fierce. He talks about the dancing. He talks about how bars bringing in lounges affected dancehalls. He speaks about how dancehalls closed around the country and what a shame it is as he says it was a great outlet and people were happy dancing. He says the dancing was great exercise, they would start out the night with waltzes then two steps. He says in his time the foxtrot was considered a sin as it was too modern. He goes into detail about different dances such as the Siege Of Ennis, two hand reel, the Kipe, the stack o barley, the sweets of may, the Slosh which he says is very popular as its non streneous. He speaks about a man from the Northside of Cork City who was called “The MP” Foley. Donal says he did a lot for dancing and the dancers we have today we can give credit to the MP for. Donal says he was a very strict dance teacher. He says he wouldn’t allow close dancing and you wouldn’t be allowed in the door if you didn’t have a tie. Donal says he used to operate in Inniscarra, in Mourneabbey and then would run dances in Macroom, Glanworth. He was all over the place and taught the whole County Donal says. He made money from it but he earned it Donal adds. </span></p>
<p><span> </span></p>
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<p><strong>1.00.24 - 1.04.55</strong></p>
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<p>Tim asks Donal about Ladies Choices and if it was popular Donal says it was popular, and they don’t have that anymore. He says there would be “murder” if a girl refused a dance with a fellow. He says their MC would come up to him and complain that such a lady had refused such a fellow a dance. Donal says he took no notice but that it considered an offense. He says he often saw a fellow getting two or three refusals. He says he never saw any trouble over a refusal. Though he says there would be bitterness. He mentions his memory of the smell of paraffin oil and candle grease which was the treatment of the floor for dancing. When you went into the dancehall run by the MP in Inniscarra there would be a smell of paraffin oil and candle grease and the floor would be like glass. He says then crystals but they can’t be used today because of health and safety. Tim asks him about the competition from set dancing and the contrast with ceilis where the emphasis was more on fun and craic. Donal replies by saying that he thinks set dancing killed the whole thing, (the dancehalls). He says when the set dancing started to come in you had the ceili crowd sitting down watching polka set after polka and unable to contribute and then leaving. He says the set dancing crowd would have towels wiping the sweat off themselves. He says its very competitive and not every couple would dance with the next couple, they would have their own sets. Tim mentions that Donals son Donal Jnr that said before the interview that he had played for Irish dancers, Donal says that is competitive Irish dancing. He says the children are under too much pressure and the parents would be pushing them into it. He speaks about one night when there was a waltzing competition in Timoleague, there was a couple from Blackpool who were good dancers but didn’t win. He says they” lost it completely” and Donal said to the man whose name was Joe that tomorrow night there’ll be another competition and that he would win it but there was no getting through to him, he lost all sense of direction. He say competitions are fine if people are prepared to take their beating if it comes.</p>
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<p><strong>1.04.56 - 1.09.45</strong></p>
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<p>Tim asks if there were any sayings or colloquialisms or phrases that were used to describe events in the venues that you wouldn’t hear anywhere else. To this Donal mentions the late Fr Roberts a <span>Franciscan</span> who used to be in St Francis Hall where there used to be a social for the <em><span>Total Abstinence Association (the Pioneers). He would come in and he would always say to the Carrignavar boys “Where ever you go don’t go far, and keep away from Carrignavar”. He says he heard him saying that numerous times. He was a character Donal says. Donal tells a story about one night when they were starting off and they were playing in Fermoy. It was a two band session and they were on first. Donal and Paddy Carey went to the toilet and he says and while they were in there the MC announced over the speaker “for the last hour and a half you were listening to the Donal Ring Ceili Band” and a fellow in the toilet said “we were then”, Donal jokes that he wasn’t too impressed. He was the smoking in the halls was fierce, he adds that he was a smoker himself for forty three years. He says he had an operation, a quadruple bypass. He says he wasn’t long stopping after that, he says it is all psychological and he had been smoking forty a day. He goes on to talk about the efforts to give up smoking. He says Paddy used to smoke a pipe and there was a lot of smoke from it. He talks about a place in Middlesbrough, England where they played and the smoke was so thick your eyes would be sore. He says it was like thick fog. He speaks about another place in Crosshaven called Johnny’s Return where the smoke was unbelievable. They were playing there when the smoking ban was coming in and Donal said to himself it wouldn’t stop this crowd smoking and he came back three weeks later and there was a case of someone in Donegal who had been fined a thousand Euro for smoking and he says he couldn’t believe, there were no smokers in the venue. He says at the end of the day it was no harm to get rid of the smoking. He speaks about the smell of cigarette smoke on the instruments. </span></em></p>
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<p><strong>1.09.46 - 1.17.46</strong></p>
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<p>Tim asks were there any accidents as a result of dancing. Donal says he saw a lot of bad falls but they always got up, except in one case where a man didn’t get up. He says he died dancing the Siege Of Ennis. He learned after that the man had heart problems and was warned to take it easy but he ignored the advice and he was dead before he hit the floor. He can’t think of anyone breaking a leg or arm. When asked would you see fights break out he says you would the time of the drink but not anymore. When people drinking you might se a skirmish. He recalls one time when they were playing and Ger Daly was the bossman. He says in the mineral bar a bit of an argument started and Ger Daly said “lads, lads, lads, and straight away that stopped it. When asked did they have bouncers in the halls he says they did, you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of them he adds. He mentions the Galtymore dancehall in Cricklewood North London as a great place to play. He says the bouncers would have anyone misbehaving by the scruff of the neck. He says you would conduct yourself there. He says the Irish people who would go to the Galtymore as great. He says it was a great place for the grub. He talks about when they had finished playing there and were about to head for the ferry they got beef sandwiches given to them by the venue. He says they were very honourable and mentions the Byrne family who ran it. He speaks about another venue in Cricklewood they played in called the Spotted Terrier which is not far from the Galtymore. They played for a family called the Caseys who also had the Elephant And Castle. Donal says that they played all over London till they went and played Scotland in 1988. He says once they started playing Scotland they never really went back to England. He says it’s a different country and different scene. He says with them you’d have to play right and play so many bars for each dance and he jokes they’d be standing on the floor looking at you if you did it wrong. Tim asks Donal if they ever came across a tough element in London such as gangsters. Donal says they never encountered that. He says the only trouble they encountered was that most times they played London a bomb might go off. He says they were playing in Dublin the night Nelsons Pillar was blown up. In answer to Tim’ question of did they play the North Of Ireland he says he never played there. There follows a discussion about the Miami Showband Massacre of 1975. Tim says he saw them play the Seaview in Salthill Galway the night before it happened. Donal says they weren’t asked to play in the North during the troubles, after the Troubles when they played Scotland they got a slot in a place north of Belfast (he remembers later it was Ballymena). Donal says he was worried and said it to his friend in Scotland Brooke Lindsey in Scotland who said it to two friends in Belfast who were two brothers, Rea who play accordian. They in turn said that Donal needn’t be worried coming to the North. He says there was no problem but there was a split in the camp, (with the band) which he says is very common. He says they didn’t have a bad night or a great night. He says it was unsettling and you’d prefer to be somewhere else.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tim asks Donal if he ever composed any tunes himself. Donal says just one which is named Donal Rings Jig. He talks about the process of how he composed and recorded it. He says it has been recorded in Scotland since as a man rang and asked could he record it to which Donal agreed. When asked did he get any royalties from it he says not at all and he says people think that if they hear you on the radio you are making money. He says he is registered with IMRO or The <span>Irish Music Rights Organisation.[Restricted Access section here 1.15.43 to 1.16.46 ]</span></p>
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<p><strong>1.17.47 - 1.25.55</strong></p>
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<p><span>He speaks about playing in the Opera House with a tenor called John MacNally for a fortnight one time. Tim says that’s a name he hasn’t heard in a while and that he was very prolific at one stage, Donal says he was a lovely singer and thinks he went to Australia after. </span></p>
<p><span> </span></p>
<p><span>Tim asks Donal if he ever played the old Opera House, Donal says he didn’t but he did see it burning down. He goes on to speak about this, he says he was over the other side of the river watching it. He watched the tail end of the fire early in the morning as the Opera House smouldered. There were a lot of people looking on. He was young at the time and it was a shame to see it burning. He says his parents never went into the old Opera House, they were tough times he says. He says maybe a small bit of snobbery attached to the Opera House and a certain clique if you wanted to get work there you couldn’t get work if you attached to them. He doesn’t know if that still applies to the modern Opera House but he has heard they are tough. </span></p>
<p><span> </span></p>
<p><span>Tim asks does he play music by local composers. Donal mentions Jerry Casey as one, also Noel Crowley who wrote a few melodies for them. There were a few tunes written for their band here and there by various people. Tim asks were there a lot of people writing at the time, Donal says a man did several of what on the recording sounds like “poetry” on the band <strong>(Note: cannot quite make out this word) </strong>written by a man from Whitegate whose name he can’t recall. He says he has some at home and must root them out.</span></p>
<p><span> </span></p>
<p><span>He says they did a lot of rehearsing before they did recordings, as he said before the recording was expensive so they couldn’t rehearse during it. He says they would rehearse without amplification out in the hall. He says in relation to the amps and equipment that they started out with rubbish. He says they would be buying stuff that they thought was great and then it would turn out to be not that good. It would be a long time before you buy the right stuff. He says he bought a Thule speakers and amplifier in America in 1974 that he still uses. The amp is only 100 watt and he says today everyone is using 2000 watt amps. He says he can put it up against any of them. He never had to open them bar one speaker when the wire fell off of it. He speaks about using the PB501 microphone for the accordians and how he came about using it. He says you can’t get them anymore. He has two of them and several members of the band of them. He says a “bomb came down” on a factory that manufactures components for it and you can’t get it anymore. Tim mentions Peavey to which Donal says they wouldn’t be as good as Thule. He always used mikes he says. It didn’t restrict them onstage he says. He says Paddy O Connor of RTE gave him advice on microphones and sound and said don’t forget to play nice and easy. He never used sound engineers in the band. He did the sound himself he says. He says in certain halls you would have feedback problems. He remembers one hall in Portarlington Co Laois and a man said if you can get sound in here I life my hat. Donal says when he put the speakers up on stage the sound was desperate. Eventually he put them on the floor off stage and the sound was perfect. The man who was talking about the sound couldn’t get over it. He says how when he went into a hall for the first time he would whistle and if you heard it echoing back you knew you were in trouble. </span></p>
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<p><strong>1.25.56 - 1.35.23</strong></p>
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<p>Tim asks Donal if he ever played up the Glen, the Glen Hall in Blackpool. Donal says that’s where they started, they didn’t play the new one. He says the place was “black” with people, packed out completely. He say Jimmy O Rourke was running it and Donal says he was the man with the scoreboard afterwards at GAA matches at Pairc Ui Caoimh.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tim mentions that Donal had a song “the Bold Christy Ring” and asks did he know him. Donal says he did and that he was a great man. He says he didn’t talk a lot but he was very sincere. He says he met him after a County Final on a very wet day when the Glen were playing Youghal, Donal and Christy walked out together and they were talking about hurling. Christy said to him “look, if you’re a good player you’re a marked man, and you’ll know after a second ball whether they’re out to get you or not, and if you can’t take care of yourself you’ll be in big trouble”. He doesn’t know who wrote it. <strong>(Note: online sources indicate it is set to the tune of the Bold Thady Quill and the author of the lyrics remains unknbown)</strong> He never spoke about the song to Donal, it was very popular especially in Tipperary he says. He speaks about Paddy Carey singing it at shows and putting in mentions the Barrs, Jack Lynch and Glen Rovers, The Redmonds, Sean Og O Halpin and Julie Coughlan. He speaks of banter between Paddy and people from other counties at shows when he would sing it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Donal says he never met Sean O Riada, he says he did a lot for music. He says he was playing in Cashel County Tipperary recently and a lady came up speaking to him. She said she went to Coolea Irish College and she knew Sean O Riada and her father was a Clareman. She said she had read it the previous week that Sean O Riada was born in Cork and she couldn’t conceive that. Donal says he was a great man and his influence was enormous. He heard that he also played in Ceili bands.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Donal speaks about the Cork singer Sean O Se. He sang with Donal often and they backed him. He is a fine artist he says.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Donal says he knew Rory Gallagher, he says Rory used to go into Crowley’s. He says Rory played the Shand Marino accordion for a while with a band in West Cork and Donal says he has a photo somewhere of it. He thinks the name of the band was the Hawthorn or something like that. Tim mentions that Rory played with a band called the Fontana. Donal mentions a now deceased man called Joe Hayes who said to Donal did he remember when Donal said to Rory Gallagher that he should cut his hair. Donal said that he didn’t remember this. Joe said that it was as Rory was going into Crowley’s Music Shop and Donal who was walking outside on the footpath said to him “hello Rory, you should cut the hair, its getting very long”. Donal says he was a great man.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Donal mentions a Cork tenor called Paul O Leary whom he says was the best tenor in the city.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tim returns to the subject of Rory Gallagher and asks Donal what he thought of his success. Donal says it was unbelieveable. He says he never played with him. Tim speaks about how Rory was experimenting with trad before his death and had worked with Ronny Drew. Donal speaks again about Rory starting on off the accordion.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tim asks did they work to a set list. Donal says they did within reason. It would happen in Scotland all right, they would get a setlist sheet he says. He remembers once they were playing in Dufftown in Scotland and at quarter to two there were three dancers left and he was convinced they would finish up but they kept going to get value for money.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He doesn’t think anyone wrote a song about him, he jokes that a fellow has to die before they will talk about him. Tim says when he was young he would hear of a man who was nicknamed “Take the floor” Dinjo. <strong>(Note: </strong><strong><span>Denis Fitzgibbon who hosted a popular Irish music dancing radio show called Take The Floor)</span></strong> Donal says he had a great influence on the scene. His father was mad for listening to him on the radio. Donal says he worked with him once when they did a tour with the Blarney Ceili band. They did a tour of Kerry and parts of Cork with Dinjo. He agrees that the Irish dancing came across well on the radio because you could hear the tapping. Donal thought it was a great idea.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He says he knew the folklorist and broadcaster Ciarán Mac Mathúna as well, he did great work for Irish music he says. He says Paddy O Connor was talking about doing the recordings with him on the radio recently. He lived for Irish music he says.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tim mentions a number of names of traditional Irish musicians, Jackie Daly, Matt Cranitch and Seamus Creagh. Donal says he went to school with Matt Cranitch’s father and knows Matt well. Donal says he has a saying which he has often told. If you got a line long enough and start in Kinsale and divide Ireland in two up to the North every musician on the East Coast is superior to those on the West which he admits is a controversial opinion. He says all the best musicians were on the Eastern side of the line, he lists some. The Gallowglass Ceili Band, Jackie Ahern, Dermot O Brien, Blarney Ceili Band, Jackie Hearst.. He admits that the <span>Kilfenora Céilí Band were very good and his own father was a great Kilfenora man but he says he never liked the pure trad style, he likes a cleaner style but he says they were a dance band. He says he has a cousin in Ballingeary who is a great player and he jokes he will kill him for saying it but he says when musicians from the West and East coasts play together they’re not together. There’s different interpretations of the tune by different players. </span></p>
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<p><strong>1.35.25 - 1.42.05</strong></p>
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<p>Tim mentions the renowned Clare fiddle player Martin Hayes and asks if he was a member of the <span>Kilfenora Céilí Band to which Donal says he thinks he was. He say the Kilfenora have come along in a big way and he’s delighted for them. Tim mentions Dermot O'Brien the musician from Co Louth who was also a GAA footballer. Donal says the best the three best accordion players in the country were from Louth, he lists them as Dermot O Brien, Fintan Stanley and Paddy Neary. When Tim asks Donal where he would put himself Donal says he was alright to which Tim says he heard he was one of the best. </span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tim asks him if he knew other well known Cork characters such as Bernie Murphy and Bishop Con Lucey. Donal says he knew Bernie Murphy well and he mentions another Cork character from Fairhill who would do a trick where he would flip a penny up in the air then kick it up again with the heel of his shoe and then catch it in his coat pocket. He can’t think of his name but thinks his first name was Donie. Donal says he would do this trick for fun. He was famous for this trick and would do it on the street. <strong>(Note: this mans name was Donie Murphy and his nickname was Mad Donie. This information was found on the Facebook group Old Photographs Of Cork City And County). </strong></p>
<p><strong><span> </span></strong></p>
<p>Donal mentions another Cork character who was known as the Bowler. He would bowl the bowls down Patrick Street. Donal says he came from Shandon. He would wear a white raincoat and a cap and Donal was selling confectionary at the time and he would meet him and the Bowler would say to him “I bate Mick Barry boy!” (Mick Barry the famous bowler). Donal would be ribbing him and said he didn’t to which the Bowler would say “watch this” and he threw the bowl down Patrick Street. Donal says there wasn’t as much traffic on the street then but it was still dangerous as it was an iron ball.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Donal says he met Mick Barry the Cork bowler once when he was sick out in Ballincollig, Donal says his wife Bridies uncle beat him at bowling once, Jamsey Sullivan (James O Sullivan) from Killeens and he had the cup to show for it. He says that Jamsey threw a bowl up on top of the viaduct (on the Cork to Bandon road) but Mick Barry threw the bowl over it which was a sixteen ounce ball. He says the O Sullivan’s were all great bowlers and he mentions another Paul O Sullivan another from Blackpool Benny. He mentions they were also great tug o war men. There was a tug o war team in Killeens one time and in connection with this he mentions a Dan Twohig, he says the Twohigs were great men. He says you could hurt yourself easily at tug o war.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tim asks what did Donal think of Riverdance and he said it was unreal. He says it didn’t do themselves in the band any harm audience wise. He says Michael Flatley is a great dancer and Donal went to see the live show, he says everything about it is spot on. He can see it continuing on, he agrees that it fed the competitive side of dancing.</p>
<p>Tim asks Donal if he thinks RTE were good to Cork music in general to which Donal says he doesn’t think so. He says they had to fight to get on it. He says that they were lucky that <em><span>Donncha O Dulaing liked the band and put them on a lot of shows. He says Gina Dale Haze And The Champions who he says were a great band never got a shot on RTE, he says it was the same with the Gallowglass Ceili Band. He can’t understand it, he says they got on radio all right and the Blarney band but he says “if you’re not in Dublin you’re only in Ireland”. Tim asks about the BBC if they ever contacted them to which Donal says they did a few shows with BBC Scotland. </span></em></p>
<p><span> </span></p>
<p><em><span>Tim asks if the clergy ever got involved in the dancing (in an authoritarian way) to which Donal says they never interfered with them. He mentions a Fr Jim Donovan in Blackpool who was then moved to Dunmanway and he would book them for Dunmanway, he got them a lot of work there. He is now in Ballinlough he says. </span></em></p>
<p><span> </span></p>
<p><em><span>Tim ask if he has seen any young up and coming Cork acts that appeal to him and how he sees the ceili business going. He mentions that his son Donie started an accordion night in Pa Johnsons, the pub and people come from all round for it. </span></em></p>
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<p><strong>1.42.07 - 0.00.00</strong></p>
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<p>Donal speaks about his hopes for the future of ceili. He would like to see it continue but the thinks when his generation are gone we will have to wait a good few years for it to come Back and he believes it will come back in a cycle, he says everything gets a cycle but he can’t see it coming back for a long time. Tim asks him does he go see live acts these days to which Donal says now and again. He says a lot of them are one or two man bands, he says they are earning their money as it is tough with just one or two in terms of setting up equipment etc.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tim asks Donal if he used to read Spotlight Magazine and if he ever made the cover. <strong>(Note: Spotlight was an Irish music magazine mainly focusing on Showbands, it was later re- named New Spotlight). </strong>Donal says he heard of it. He mentions that Top Of The Pops was in that and a song he recorded called “Beautiful City” in Top Of Pops for six weeks. <strong>(Note: The reference to Top Of The Pops appears to be a reference to a music charts related section of Spotlight rather than the BBC music programme). </strong>Donal says he got a call from John Woods of Polydor Records, Donal mentions that he was a brother of Michael Woods the <span>Fianna Fáil TD. John said to Donal that there was big demand for a song called Beautiful City and he asked would Donal and his band record it. Donal says the tenor Paul O Leary whom he mentioned earlier was singing it. They left and Donal was in his car and Paul was after buying a Renault. Donal says he passed Paul, then Paul passed him and vice versa. They arrived in Portlaoise and they were booked in there for lunch. Donal says a Mrs Grey came out and said they were in big trouble and one of the band were after going into the bog in Urlingford. Paul O Leary, and Donal’s brother Michael and Paul O Leary were in the car. She said no one was hurt but they were shaken. Paul had lost control coming into Urlingford and the car swung around and went into the bog. He mentions that Beautiful City was six weeks at number two in the Irish charts; they were just behind the Dixie’s. He says they didn’t come close with anything after. A discussion of Donal’s collection of photographs follows, talk of looking through them on another day is discussed. Tim mentions that Donal was winner of Cork Person Of The Month. A reception in City Hall for him is discussed and Donal says the president of the time Mary Macalise was there. Donal says that the man who set up the Cork to Swansea ferry won it (Cork Person Of The Year), Conor Buckley. He mentions that the service is now gone again. He says of his own night in the City Hall it was a bit nerve wracking. The City Council were very good to him he says and it was a great night. He got Cork Person Of The Month for March he says. He says that Sean McCarthy, the Cork sculptor did a bust of Donal which is out in the hall of his home for the bands 50’th anniversary. He mentions that he’ll be 80 soon and will be having a big night in Glenville at the end of the week. He says he might do simple stuff like Waltzes as jigs and reels are too strenuous at 80.</span></p>
<p><span> </span></p>
<p><span>Tim thanks Donal for speaking to him and wraps up the interview. </span></p>
<p><span> </span></p>
<p><span>Interview ends 1.49.05</span></p>
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Donal Ring
Date
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06.10.2015
Contributor
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Cork Folklore Project
Identifier
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CFP_SR00564_ring_2015
Creator
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Cork Folklore Project
Source
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Cork Folklore Project
Publisher
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Cork Folklore Project
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Cork Folklore Project
Language
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English
Format
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Audio/Wav
Description
An account of the resource
Donal speaks about his career in music with the Donal Ring Ceili Band. How his interest in music stemmed from his father, a melodeon player. His first band with Donal Coleman from Grenagh. The Celtic Ceili Band from Mallow. Accordian player Noel Crowley from Dillon’s Cross. Donal’s early manager the comedian Tony Hegarty. Trying to get onto RTE television, the RTE shows Beirt Eile and Club Céilí. The story of how Jack Lynch helped to get Donal’s band their first television slot on RTE. Kevin McCourt, Director General of RTE. Denis Fitzgibbon. Take The Floor Dinjo.
Stories of touring around Ireland to concerts in Donals Volkswagen mini bus. Dancehalls. Showbands. The Dixies. Joe Mac. Gina Dale Haze And The Champions. The Miami Showband Massacre. Playing in Northern Ireland. How the Troubles effected touring to the North.
Donal’s job truck driving and involvement in the construction of Whitegate oil refinery and Cork Airport. Involvement in transporting sugar beet. Health and safety.
Different makes of accordion. The Shand Morino accordion. Scottish accordion player Jimmy Shand. Louth accordian players Paddy Neary ,Dermot O Brien, Fintan Stanley. Scottish musician Jim Cameron.
Anecdotes about Rory Gallagher and Crowley’s Music Shop. How Rory Gallagher played accordion in a ceili band in his youth.
Singer Sean O Se. Sean O Riada. Country N Western star Robert Mizzell. Windmill Lane recording Studio. Bill Somerville- Large. Clay Castle Recording Studio Youghal. Jackie Daly, Matt Cranitch and Seamus Creagh.
The Gallowglass Ceili Band, the Celtic Ceili Band, the Blarney Ceili Band. Blarney Brass & Reed Band. The Regal Showband. Cork band the Arrivals.
Concerts in Cork City Hall. The Palm Court Ballroom. (the Oliver Plunket) . St Francis Hall. Fr Roberts a Franciscan priest of St Francis Hall. The effect on Dancehalls of the building of lounges in pubs.
Types of dances, the Foxtrot, jigs and reels, Siege Of Ennis, Riverdance, Michael Flatley, the Kipe, the stack o barley, the sweets of may, the Slosh. Dance teacher The MP” Foley. Fiddler Margaret McCarthy. Waltzing competitions. Set dancing.
Road bowling. Bowler Mick Barry. Jamsey Sullivan bowler from Killeens. Tug o war. Dan Twohig.
Donal’s memories of Cork hurler Christy Ring. Christy speaking to him about the techniques of hurling. Na Piarsaigh hurling club.
An eccentric character from Shandon nicknamed “The Bowler” who would claim to have beaten Mick Barry and who bowled a ball down Patrick Street.
Fairhill character Donie Murphy “Mad Donie” and his famous coin trick.
How downloading has effected the sale in cds.
GAA. Hurling. The Barrs. Pairc Ui Caoimh.
Songwriter Jimmy McCarthy, Donal’s family connection with him. Cork sculptor Sean McCarthy. Spotlight Magazine. The song Beautiful City and how Donal and his band had a hit with it in the Irish charts. Donal being awarded Cork Person Of The Month.
The Kilfenora Céilí Band. Clare fiddle player Martin Hayes.
The Stardust fire and its effect on fire safety regulations. Dress attire at dances. Men asking women to dance at dances. Ladies Choices.
Recording sessions and how recording studios charged by the hour, how some orchestrated power cuts deliberately to draw out the recording process. Comical stories of life on the road touring. Playing chess on the tour bus. How a lampshade nearly fell on a bandmember.
Traditional Irish music folklorist Ciarán Mac Mathúna.
accordion
band
Brendan Bowyer
Career
Cars
Céilí
Ceili Band
Clothes
Dancehalls
Dillon’s Cros RTE
media
Music
Sean O Riada
Sean O Se
Showbands
-
https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/files/original/d3568d256018c2628eb28ab4536e9a96.jpg
18106e276a42c57377f1bca3ae962d2d
https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/files/original/fc7a9d14e9dfd1673b8cc2c5901b112d.mp3
825a0448cf288e30077a2fdf1a402967
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<p>Grattan Street Stories: Memory of Place</p>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Occupational Lore; Life History; Built Heritage; Health; Ireland; Cork; Middle Parish
Description
An account of the resource
<p>This collection focuses on a building on Grattan Street which has served as a Quaker Meeting House, a public Dispensary and as the Grattan Street Health Centre. The project was a collaboration between the CFP and the Cork North Community Work Department, Cork Kerry Community Healthcare, Health Services Executive HSE. </p>
<p>The interviewees fall into two main groups: those who worked in the building and those who lived in the surrounding area and availed of the services provided in the building.</p>
<p>This project follows on from the collaboration with the HSE in the “<a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/collections/show/10" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">HSE Orthopaedic Hospital Oral History Project (d'Orthopaedic)</a>”. There is a further connection between the two projects as many of the staff and services once provided in the Grattan Street Health Centre have now relocated to St. Mary's Health Campus (St Mary’s Primary Care Centre) Gurranabraher, the former site of the Orthopaedic Hospital. This topic of the relocation of services is also covered in some staff interviews. <br /><br />To date (October 2021) 13 interviews have been completed for the project.<br /><br />Interviewees discuss the Grattan Street building itself in terms of its historic significance, its benefits and drawbacks as a workplace. Broader themes related to or inspired by the building are also touched on including: personal relationship with the building, staff camaraderie, the problems with parking, memorable incidents at work, patient experiences and descriptions of the people and services for which the building catered.<br /><br />Healthcare professional interviewees detail their training, career progression and comparisons between Grattan Street and other workplaces. Their testimonies also provide a link with the community of patients they served giving further insight into attitudes to healthcare, diseases, vaccines, description of social conditions and the changes in medicine and technology in their working lives.<br /><br />Non-healthcare professional interviewees describe childhood experiences in or around Grattan Street (The Marsh or The Middle Parish), the social, cultural and economic conditions of the area, tenements, businesses, attitudes to and experiences of healthcare, vaccines, diseases, medicines and medical professionals as well as observed changes in these areas over time.<br /><br />Interviewees also reflect on the possible future uses of the Grattan Street building.<br /><br /><strong>Related Reference Sources</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Barrington, R.<em> (</em>1987) <em>Health, medicine and politics in Ireland, 1900–1970</em>. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration.</li>
<li><span>Butler D.M. (2004) <em>The Quaker meeting houses of Ireland</em></span>. Dublin : Irish Friends Historical Committee.</li>
<li><span>Byrne, J. (2004) <em>Byrne's dictionary of Irish local history.</em> Cork: Mercier Press.</span></li>
<li>Cooke, R. T. (1999) <em>My Home by the Lee</em>. Irish Millennium Publications: Cork.</li>
<li><span>Dempsey, P. J. & White, L. W. ‘Childers, Erskine Hamilton’. <em>Dictionary of Irish Biography</em> </span>[Accessed 18 October 2021]</li>
<li>Harrison, R.S. (1991) <em>Cork City Quakers 1655-1939: A Brief History</em>. Cork.</li>
<li>Houston, M. (2004). ‘Life before the GP’. <em>The</em> <em>Irish Times. </em>Available at : <<a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/life-before-the-gp-1.1158599">https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/life-before-the-gp-1.1158599</a> > [Accessed 18 October 2021]</li>
<li>Keohane, F. (2020) <em>The Buildings of Ireland Cork City and County</em>. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.</li>
</ul>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-2020
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
<p>Interviewees: Edith O’Regan, 'Mary', Sean Higgisson, Aoife O’Brien, Eileen Kearney, Imelda Cunning, Jane Ward, Liam Ó hUigín, Joe Scanlan, Mary Mulcahy, Philomena Cassidy, Don Morrissy, Derek O’Connell</p>
<p>Interviewer: <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Kieran+Murphy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kieran Murphy</a>, (<a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a>)</p>
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
<p>Cork, Ireland 1940s-2020s; Waterford, Ireland; Dublin, Ireland; Limerick, Ireland;</p>
Relation
A related resource
<p><strong>Exhibition</strong></p>
<p>Artist Edith O’Regan-Cosgrave (also an interviewee for the project) created a visual artwork based around the Grattan Street Medical Centre building itself, as a workplace and health centre. The artwork incorporated direct quotations from the oral history interviews conducted for the project, and also included brief historical paragraphs about the building researched, written and edited by the <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy. This exhibition was launched on 6<sup>th</sup> February 2020 in “St Peter’s” on the North Main Street where a “Listening Event” was also held to mark the occasion.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:10%;"><br /><br /><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Grattan-Poster-for-Email-286-by-400.jpg" alt="Grattan-Poster-for-Email-286-by-400.jpg" /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:10%;"></p>
<p><strong>Presentation and Listening Event</strong></p>
<p>To coincide with the launch of the Grattan Street Stories Exhibtion on 6<sup>th</sup> February 2020 a listening event and presentation of the history of the Grattan Street Medical Centre building and description of the project was given by <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy.<br /><br /><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/427A7714-1.jpg" alt="427A7714-1.jpg" /></p>
<p><strong>Presentation</strong></p>
<p>In 2019 at the OHNI conference the <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy discussed social media and oral history which included audio excerpts from the Grattan Street Stories Project along with photographs of the building.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:150%;"><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Kieran-OHNI-e1634041838937.jpg" alt="Kieran-OHNI-e1634041838937.jpg" /></p>
<p><strong>Audio Visual Presentation</strong></p>
<p>An audio-visual slideshow was produced featuring oral testimony from the Grattan Street Stories Project and combined with suitable images of Grattan Street and from Edith O’Regan-Cosgrave’s exhibition. This was created by <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy.<br /><br /></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:10%;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnjEtQeOb3I&t=1s&ab_channel=CorkFolklore" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Audio Visual Presentation Available to listen and view here.</a>
<p><strong>Health and Vaccines Oral History Research<br /></strong><br />Many of the interviews conducted for the Grattan Street project formed an integral part of the testimonies and research for the innovative<br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/health/about" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">'Catching Stories'<span> </span>of infectious disease in Ireland </a>project funded by the Irish Research Council.<br /><br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/health/about" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Catching-Stories-Poster.jpg" alt="Catching-Stories-Poster.jpg" /></a></p>
<strong>Social Media</strong> <br /><br />Numerous suitable audio excerpts from the oral history interviews have been edited and shared on CFP's social media channels.<br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1139167201582288901" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1139167201582288901</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1140909542240391168" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1140909542240391168</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1141264486768238592" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1141264486768238592</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1189872295923376133" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1189872295923376133</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1228322700415860736" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1228322700415860736</a>
<strong>Orthopaedic Hospital</strong><br />Cork Folklore Project in collaboration with the HSE conducted an oral history project focussing on the Orthapaedic Hospital in Gurranabraher. <br /><br /><span>Many of the staff and services once provided at the Grattan Street Health Centre site were moved to St. Mary's Health Campus (St Mary’s Primary Care Centre) Gurranabraher, the former site of the Orthopaedic Hospital. </span><br /><br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/collections/show/10" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">HSE Orthopaedic Hospital Oral History Project (d'Orthopaedic)</a>
<strong>Swimming Article</strong><br /><br />Kieran Murphy and James Furey co-authored an article about<br /><a href="https://tripeanddrisheen.substack.com/p/swim-city?s=r" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Swimming in Cork</a> which appeared in the online magazine Tripe + Drisheen. This article features a number of interview extracts collected as part of the Grattan Street Stories Project.
<strong>Related Interviews<br /><br /></strong>CFP_SR00756_Quilligan_2019;<br />CFP_SR00758_Broderick_2019;<br />CFP_SR00670_OShea_2018;<strong><br /><br /></strong>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Cork Folklore Project
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Audio
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
16 .wav Files
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Liam Ó hUigín
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Kieran Murphy
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
59 Minutes 41 Seconds
Location
The location of the interview
Ballyphehane
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
.wav
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
24bit / 48kHz
Time Summary
A summary of an interview given for different time stamps throughout the interview
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.00.00 - 0.00.31</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p>intro</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.00.31 - 0.02.55</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Memories of Grattan Street and surrounding area Shops and Buildings</strong></p>
<p>Grattan Street was a busy street with many businesses. Most important was the fire brigade. When the new St Francis Church was being built (Broad Lane church as it was called by people in the Middle Parish) the fire brigade amalgamated with Sullivan’s Quay and the priest of Old Broad Lane church moved into the old fire brigade building while new church was being built.</p>
<p>Children missed the excitement of the fire brigade.</p>
<p>Very vibrant street. 6 pubs: Kellehers, Crosses, Landers, Carrols (later called the Tostal Inn), Ramble Inn (owned by Mrs Brick) two Murphys public houses near Broad Lane which runs from Grattan Street to North Main Street.</p>
<p>Shops and sweet Shops: The Rodisses, The People’s Dairy, The M Laundries, 2 Gents Hairdressing Saloons (called barber shops): Leahy’s and Keanes. Where the Community Centre is now was called Mechanics Hall, because the mechanics had a union and meetings there. Later it was known as Matt Talbot Hall.</p>
<p>There were lots of tenement houses in the area.</p>
<p>[Liam’s phone rings.] </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.03.06 - 0.05:04</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Tenement Houses, Lanes, playing in Graveyard</strong></p>
<p>Where Patrick Hanely Buildings are now there were tenement houses. Liam only barely remembers them as they were being demolished in the late 1940s and early 1950s. They were derelict sites for a while, which was his playground.</p>
<p>St Peter’s Cemetery down Peter Church Lane, playing among the headstones, and hiding or planking cigarettes.</p>
<p>Shops: Manning’s Shops at corner of Henry Street and Grattan Street, Mrs Mullins at corner of Coleman’s Lane. From Coleman’s Lane to Adelaide Street there were 4 or 5 houses there with 4 or 5 families in each house. Remembers Shinkwin? Family, the Dineens. When they moved out they went to Gurranabraher, Ballyphehane and the suburbs in Ballincollig.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.05:04 - 0.06.56</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Childhood Games and Activities</strong></p>
<p>Very little Traffic on the roads at the time. Liam was living in Henry Street round the corner from Grattan Street. Recalls soccer matches from one end of the street to the other and wouldn’t see a car. Friends who came from Blarney Street or Barrack Street couldn’t understand why the streets were so wide and loved it for a game of football.</p>
<p>If a woman with a pram approached while they were playing football they would pick up the ball or if they played near the Mercy Hospital they knew that they should keep quiet without anyone telling them and Liam thinks that has changed today.</p>
<p>Many of his friends live in Grattan Street and everyone was a happy family until there was a row and they had a battering match with “stones down the quarry”.</p>
<p>They used to swim by the Mercy Hospital by the ladder. And then on to ‘the pipe’ up the Lee Fields and then the weir and every second day they had the Lee Baths one day for boys one for girls. Today it’s mixed. </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.06.56 - 0.11.32</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Poverty-Buying on Credit and using Pawn Shops</strong></p>
<p>Could get messages or shopping on tick or on credit. Milk, bread, quarter (pound) of cheese. There was no bottle of milk you had to bring in your own jug. If you ran out of money the shopkeeper would write it into a book and at the end of the week you could pay it off. A few people could afford not to be ‘on tick’.</p>
<p>There were a few pawn shops on the North Main Street one near north Gate Bridge Jones, another across from Coleman’s Lane called Twomeys. There may have been more. There was one at the bottom of Shandon street owned by Jones as well.</p>
<p>There were 18 or 19 pawn shops around the city one at bottom of Patrick’s Hill, one by fire brigade station on Sullivan’s Quay, two on Barrack Street.</p>
<p>People would pawn clothes. Tradesmen would pawn trowels on Monday morning. Often for drink/ alcohol. Wives would pawn husband’s suit and take it back the following Saturday for going to mass. Nearly everyone used the pawn it was the forerunner to the Credit Union.</p>
<p>If you pawned a pair of shoes for 10 shillings, you got a docket and you had to pay 11 shillings to get it back.</p>
<p>Wives would be stressed making sure they could get the husband’s suit back in time for mass.</p>
<p>It was a thriving business. If you didn’t claim your pawned items after a certain period it was put for sale in the window.</p>
<p>Some people would pawn things openly. Other people would hide it under a shawl, or pretend to be pawning something for someone else. People felt ashamed. Almost everyone was scraping a living.</p>
<p>Even some shopkeepers looked after people who may not have had enough to pay at the end of the week.</p>
<p>At Christmas the shopkeeper would give you a present of a Christmas Cake or Christmas Candle depending on what type of customer you were. </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.11.32 - 0.13.02</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Work, Pawns, Showing off Wealth</strong></p>
<p>Liam doesn’t remember what or whether his family pawned. Liam’s dad was a docker which was paid on a daily basis and his mother was shrewd enough to put away some money every day. He knew that relations of his pawned things though.</p>
<p>Bracelets, wedding ring, engagement ring, rarely a watch very few people had watches.</p>
<p>Liam knew someone who went to work in Dagenham and he came back a Dagenham Yank with a different accent “a twang” and a watch. He walked into centre of Henry Street, pulled up his sleeve and pretended to be winging his watch while looking at Shandon clock tower just to show off his watch. </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.13.02 - 0.13.46</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Telephone</strong></p>
<p>Phones were also very scarce. One shop in Henry Street had a phone and there was a queue there for people wanting to use it. There was another phone booth by Vincent’s Bridge coming down Sunday’s Well. Liam remembers playing there and being afraid to go in to answer the phone.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.13.46 - 0.18.37</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Tenement conditions, Emigrants, Social Comparison, Fuel Poverty</strong></p>
<p>Laneways around there: Philip’s Lane from Grattan Street to North Main Street. Skiddy’s Castle from Grattan Street to North Main Street. Coleman’s Lane, Peter Church Lane (now Avenue), Broad Lane (at the back of the church), all on to North Main Street from Grattan Street.</p>
<p>Conditions were basic looking back with an outdoor toilet. One family on Henry Street had ten families with one cold tap in back yard and one toilet between them. They had to clean out every morning and bring an enamel bucket upstairs every morning.</p>
<p>Had an inferiority complex about relations coming home from England. The relatives would be dressed up in finery but later Liam discovered they were also badly off but made the effort when coming home.</p>
<p>The story of someone’s uncle who came back from America after 40 years and the family had moved out to the suburbs and they had a barbeque. And the uncle used the toilet inside the house. He said he used to eat inside and the toilet was outside and now it is reversed!</p>
<p>They used newspaper instead of toilet paper.</p>
<p>Turf and timber blocks for fuel for heating which father got going out the Straight Road.</p>
<p>Some people got a voucher for a peck of coal which might only be a large shovel full. Some families got vouchers for free shoes like in the shop Furlongs in South Main Street (owner may have been lord mayor later) Liam wasn’t sure where the vouchers came from- maybe the Health Board. Doesn’t think there was any child benefit. Maybe the Sick Poor would provide the vouchers. They would visit people and the people would try to hide that they were calling. </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.18.37 - 0.22.42</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Cooking, Bathing, Hygiene and Medicines</strong></p>
<p>No cooking facilities only the fire. Mother would cook pot of potatoes on the fire and then transfer to the hob.</p>
<p>1948 no electricity in Henry Street at the time.</p>
<p>When they got gas in mother told him not to leave kitchen door open to hide it from Liam’s grandmother who lived upstairs and was the real tenant. It wasn’t an oven it was a thing on a stand with two rings on it. Older people were afraid of being gassed.</p>
<p>Saturday night the galvanised bath was put in front of fire with hot water and washed, and if you were the last person in the bath the water would be dirty. And then the children were lined up against the wall to get a weekly does of cod liver oil, or Brutlax, California syrup of figs, Senna? All because of worms. Some newspaper put on the table and hair combed with fine tooth comb to get rid of lice- it was an ordeal.</p>
<p>Brutlax was like chocolate but a laxative.</p>
<p>Milk of magnesia used as well. Given those every Saturday night to prevent you getting sick. Some of them had a terrible taste.</p>
<p><span>If someone got sick taken to the dispensary. </span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.22.42 - 0.24.12</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong><span>Children’s Games Different for boys and girls</span></strong></p>
<p><span>Spent much time in the derelict site where Patrick Hanley Buildings are now, used to connect to Cove street. They had battering matches with stones and they were going to the Mercy Hospital 4 or 5 times a week. They used to play chasing hiding from the nuns around the Mercy Hospital.</span></p>
<p><span>Could bring a spinning top and hit is with a whip up and down the road without fear of traffic.</span></p>
<p><span>Girls would tie a rope to a pole and swing around it and skipping as well. </span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.24.12 - 0.31.57</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Food, traditions, routines. Lunch at Work</strong></p>
<p>Porridge for breakfast which you eat if you were given. His grandchildren now have a choice of 5 cereals. Goodie- bread and milk mixed maybe with sugar sprinkled on it.</p>
<p>Some shops on North Main Street like Simcox or Currans Bakery you could get bread wrapped in soft tissue paper which was kept in a drawer at home for when visitors came to use for the toilet because it was better than newspaper.</p>
<p>Potatoes and cabbage. Father loved pigs meat: pig’s heat, backbone, pig’s tail, crubeens. Liam still loves a crubeen except for the trouble of cooking of it, and it’s messy to eat.</p>
<p>Mother was reared around Vicar Street. Barrack Street, Blarney Street, Shandon Street: that’s the way people lived because there was little Gurranabraher built and Ballyphehane wasn’t built yet.</p>
<p>Tripe and drisheen is still a favourite, can get from Reilly’s in the market. Tripe cut into little pieces, with cornflower, onions, “white sauce”, drisheen put in later. Tripe and drisheen would be weekly. Liam loved the pig’s tongue because it was lean. Set day for each food.</p>
<p>Liam’s dad was a docker and he would cut the ear off the pig’s head, put it in a sandwich with bread and butter, wrap in newspaper and that was his lunch. He wasn’t the only one.</p>
<p>Thinks tripe is from sheep’s stomach. Blood in the drisheen.</p>
<p>Connie Dodgers for Lent allowed one meal and two collations. Con Lucey said you could have a biscuit with a cup of tea as a collation. Liam thinks it was Larry McCarthy’s bakery that made a biscuit twice as big as the normal one.</p>
<p>For Lent had to fast every Friday and couldn’t eat meat, except for people of a certain age.</p>
<p>Religion was a big thing for people at the time.</p>
<p>Lent didn’t bother Liam’s dad.</p>
<p>Dockers worked hard. Where Elysian Tower is now, where the Eglinton Baths were Liam went with his mother and a bowl of soup and bread and butter and a tea towel over it. The dockers sat on the kerb eating their soup and sandwiches and they were all black with dirt no washing of hands.</p>
<p>All the work was shovelling coal, Liam worked there for 2 days and had enough of it- nearly wanted a small shovel to fill the shovel he had. His dad was small but very wiry and strong. “They were marvellous people”</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.31.57- 0.37.05</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Pastimes, Shops and Opening Hours </strong></p>
<p>Dad spent time in the pub maybe too much. People listened to the radio or sat in front of the fire reading the newspaper. Some people with go hunting or play football or hurling.</p>
<p>Liam plays golf now but at the time it was only for the elite doctors and solicitors. Liam’s dad never stood inside a golf club.</p>
<p>Liam was 10 when his mother died she would offer him tripe and drisheen or a creamy cake for dinner and he would choose the cake.</p>
<p>The corner shops are gone now because of the supermarkets.</p>
<p>Corner shops on Henry Street were: Bode’s?, Mannings, Horrigan’s, Dermot’s on Adelaide Street. Dermot’s was first all-night shop in the city- wouldn’t be there during the day. Open from 8pm to 8am. A salesman in coca cola told Liam that Dermot lived on Pope’s Quay and owned a Morris Minor car and he drove it to Adelaide Street 7 days a week and the car was ten years old and there wasn’t 5,000 miles on it because that was all the driving he did.</p>
<p>In Ballypheane Liam sees people carrying lots of bags after shopping in Aldi on Tory Top Road. Liam remembers going to Dermot’s for quarter pound of cheese (3 or 4 slices), half pound of tea, 2 eggs, there were no fridges so you bought and you ate them there was little storage. Dermot would put greaseproof paper over the blade and cut perfectly a few slices of cheese which had come from a timber box. Girls were interested in the box for making cots for dolls. There was no variety of cheese available just the one block. Sugar was available in quarter pounds rather than big bags. Men coming home from the pub would be sent back out to get a box of cocoa or milk from Dermot’s.</p>
<p>There was no one on the street after 12 o’clock unlike today when there’s lots of people around after nightclubs. </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.37.05 - 0.39.00</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Death of Mother and Family Living Arrangements</strong></p>
<p>When Liam’s mom died his aunt who had 6 children moved upstairs from Liam. She has 5 daughters and 1 son and the son died of meningitis at 4 years old. Liam’s grandfather was dead. Aunt moved to grandmother in Vicar Street to look after her. Liam was going to school in Mardyke, father’s place during the day, went to grandmother’s in Vicar Street for food and washing and then back to the Marsh to sleep. He skipped school for almost 3 months (‘on the lang’) until the school wrote to his dad, who gave him a lecture. He was nearly 14 then and on the verge of leaving school anyway. </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.39.00 - 0.44.13</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>The Dispensary now Grattan Street Health Centre, Tinsmith and Nurse</strong></p>
<p>Lots of cases of meningitis. Everyone in Cork used to go to the Dispensary. Everyone now in their 70s seems to remember Dr Cagney. He would give a bottle of coloured water. If you forgot your bottle you had to go to Mr Gamble the tinsmith in Grattan Street. He made ponnies, gallons, billycans. But when plastic came in there was no need for tinsmiths.</p>
<p>Remembers getting injection or vaccination from Dr Cagney, thinks it may have been for smallpox but is not sure. He dreaded the needles for the syringes which were “like six-inch nails”.</p>
<p>You went through a gate, into a yard and there were steps leading up to the entrance. A grey-haired woman maybe called Mrs O’Keefe. There were benches like in a church. There were hatches. You queued up for the doctor. And the hatches gave you the medicine.</p>
<p>Other place for illness was Mercy Hospital.</p>
<p>Recalls a midwife Nurse Anthony who called to people’s houses. Liam thought when younger than it was the midwife who brought babies on her bicycle. Aunt lived on Thomas Street (a continuation of Peter’s Street) to the back entrance of the Mercy Hospital where the “dead house” was where Liam’s mother was laid out. Remembers the Quirkes and the Horgans, Glandons?, McCarthys living there too and they all moved out when Mercy took over the whole block.</p>
<p>Liam doesn’t remember playing around inside the Dispensary.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.44.13 - 0.45.35</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Making vs Buying Lunch</strong></p>
<p>People who worked in Dispensary didn’t live in area. Doesn’t think people make lunches for work anymore. In modern day people go to shops like Spar for sandwiches and rolls. Wives/mothers used to make “lunches for them in the morning” for children who were working and there was a can with milk, tea and sugar.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.45.35 - 0.46.14</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Families Living in Dispensary Grattan Street</strong></p>
<p>Thinks Mrs O’Keefe was only working there, possibly the cleaner. Mrs O’Keefe may not have been her name. Liam doesn’t think they were charging people in the dispensary.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.46.14 - 0.50.55</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Attitude to health, Pubs, Fights, Market Gardens, Childhood Mischief</strong></p>
<p>There was no such thing as being left on a trolley. The Mercy hospital was the only hospital Liam knew, and every child in the Marsh went there at least once after a fall, hit with a stone on the head, a few stitches. Although, Liam’s aunt lost a son to meningitis. Didn’t have the medicines we have today.</p>
<p>They were simple times but he doesn’t remember going hungry ever.</p>
<p>Lots of pubs on Grattan Street and people were spending lots of time and money which put a burden on the family. Saturday night on Grattan Street there would usually be a fight, stripped to the waist.</p>
<p>Bonfire night used to be a great night but no longer.</p>
<p>No awareness of mental health. Called the Lee Road the Madhouse Road. First coloured person Liam ever saw was on Sheares Street and when they saw him they called him “Johnny the Black” and they got a chase.</p>
<p>A chase was very important for children at the time. Fisherman on Wise’s Quay near Vincent’s Bridge the children used to throw stones in to frighten the fish away and the fisherman would chase them.</p>
<p>Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday the market gardeners would bring their produce on horse and carts to the Coal Quay and the shopkeepers would come to buy vegetables off them. Liam and the children would steal (“knock off”) some cabbage and carrots. “Oliver Twist was only trotting after us”.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.50.55 - 0.51.15</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Sweets</strong></p>
<p>You’d get a few sweets in Woolworths from the girls who worked there, to prevent them trying to steal them!</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.51.15 - 0.55.10</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>WW2 Air Raid Shelters in Cork</strong></p>
<p>Three air raid shelters on Sheare’s Street, 2 in Henry Street and maybe a few in Grattan Street, at least one. O’Connell on Sheares Street was in charge of air raid shelter no 3. Fear of being bombed by German’s during World War 2 mass concrete buildings rather than underground. Liam has photograph of an air raid shelter on Patrick Street outside the Victoria Hotel and a photograph of it being knocked down. </p>
<p>The son of the man who had the key to air raid shelter no 3 would rent out the space to old children if it was raining and they wanted to use it to play cards. In the 1940s. he lived at corner of Moore Street and Sheares Street. They were being demolished in 1948 or 1949. Air raid shelter remains inside the door of Elizabeth Fort and there are 2 on the grounds of the South Infirmary (Victoria Hospital), they’ve now been converted to stores. </p>
<p>If you stand at bottom of South Terrace and you look up at “Rock Savage” on top of the hill at the back of the South Infirmary you can see it protruding out.</p>
<p>Liam remembers the LDF became the FCA and that their “top coats” were good as blankets during the winter as you could put your hands into the pockets. Nearly every house had an army coat on the bed.</p>
<p>Everyone was issued with a gas mask, Liam has one from a friend of his. Everyone had to be measured for their gas mask at the city hall or in schools. Liam’s dad wasn’t not in the LDF but his uncle was and it was his coat that was on the bed.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.55.10 - 0.59.24</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Grattan Street, Dispensary, surrounding lanes, Terence MacSwiney connection</strong></p>
<p>Grattan Street was busy, vibrant street, always something happening there. Can’t believe seeing the traffic there now.</p>
<p>Liam took a photograph of Prince Charles stopped in traffic outside the plaque to Patrick Hanely Buildings.</p>
<p>The Dispensary was a historical place, there was a time when Grattan Street was a river and Meeting House Lane from North Main Street (at the side of Bradleys) was the entrance to any of the buildings on Grattan Street. Henry Street was known as Penrose Quay.</p>
<p>On Adelaide Street at the back of where Curran’s Restaurant was there was a square called Penrose Square- after the Penrose Family that lived in Tivoli.</p>
<p>If you come down Coleman’s Lane from Grattan Street and enter North Main Street up on the wall there are four plaques for the building where Terence MacSwiney was born. People think he was born in Blackpool because they confuse him with Tomas MacCurtain. Terence married one of the Murphy brewers. Liam is very interested in Terence MacSwiney and loves talking about him, maybe because he comes from the same area in Cork.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.59.24 - 0.59.41</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Outro. Interview Ends.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<p>Liam Ó hUigín: Grattan Street, Healthcare, The Marsh</p>
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CFP_SR00727_OhUigin_2019;
Relation
A related resource
<strong>Other Interviews in this Collection</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/240" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00696_O'Regan_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/242" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00704_Collins_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/243" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00706_Higgisson_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/244" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00712_O'Brien_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/245" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00713_Kearney_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/246" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00714_Cunning_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/247" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00717_Ward_2019</a>;<br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/249" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00728_Scanlan_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/250" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00729_Mulcahy_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/251" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00732_Cassidy_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/252" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00760_Morrissy_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/253" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> CFP_SR00762_OConnell_2019</a>;
<br /><strong>Other Interviews with Liam in the CFP Archive<br /></strong><br /><a href="http://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/134" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00422_OhUigin_2012</a>; <br /><a href="http://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/document/2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00439_OhUigin_2011</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/67" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00539_OhUigin_2015</a>;
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
24 July 2019
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Description
An account of the resource
<p><span>Liam grew up on Henry Street in The Marsh and recalls playing football on Grattan Street which was busy and full of activity with businesses, pubs, shops a fire station, barber shops and tenements. He discusses some shops and games in more detail.</span></p>
<p><span>Speaks of the poverty in the Middle Parish which necessitated buying goods on credit and selling clothes and jewellery to pawnshops. Mentions pawn locations. Mentions bringing empty bottles to shops to fill them with milk.</span></p>
<p><span>Discusses the conditions of the tenement houses in the Middle Parish including the sanitation arrangements such as outdoor toilets and the use of newspaper as toilet paper, he also mentions heating issues including timber, turf and coal which was available via a voucher scheme. Further discusses cooking, washing in the tenements including the introduction of gas and electricity. Also mentions medicines for lice and worms administered at home.</span></p>
<p><span>Says that boys and girls played different games separately when he was growing up. Mentions some of these games in more detail.</span></p>
<p><span>Discusses foods (including tripe and drisheen, pig’s tongue, Connie Dodgers) meal routines and the shops where food was purchased. Liam and his mother brought lunch to his father where he worked on the docks.</span></p>
<p><span>Returns to the topic of corner shops and shopping and the types of food available there, further comparing this to supermarkets today.</span></p>
<p><span>Speaks of the death of his mother and the change in living circumstances that this entailed.</span></p>
<p><span>Describes getting a vaccination in the dispensary, what it was like inside and who worked there.</span></p>
<p><span>Mentions fights outside bars at night time.</span></p>
<p><span>Talks about air raid shelters built in Cork city during the Second World War, what they looked like and where they were located.</span></p>
Accommodation
Adelaide Street
Air Raid Shelter
Alcohol
Bakeries
Bakery
Ballypheane
Ballyphehane
Barbers
bars
Bathing
Baths
Billycan
Bonfire Night
Bread
Breakfast
Broad Lane
Buildings
Bullycans
Business
businesses
Buying on Credit
Cagney
Car
Cars
Catholic Devotion
Catholicism
Cemetery
changing technology
Chase
Chemist
Childhood
Childhood Games
Children
Children’s Games
Christmas
Christmas Cake
Church
Churches
Cigarettes
Class
Clothes
Clothing
Coal
Coal Quay
Coleman’s Lane
Community Centre
Connie Dodgers
Cooking
Corner Shop
Corner Shops
Credit
Credit Union
Crubeen
Crubeens
Customer
Customers
Dagenham Yank
Death
Dermot’s Shop
Disease
Diseases
Dispensary
Docker
Dockers
Docks
Dr
Drink
Drisheen
Eglinton Baths
Elizabeth Fort
Elysian Tower
Emigrant
Emigrants
Emigration
Employment
Families
Family
Fast
Fasting
Father
Fighting
Fights
Fire Brigade
Fire Station
Fishermen
Food
Football
Friends
Friendship
Fuel
Fuel Poverty
Gender Roles
Golf
Grandmother
Grattan Street
Grattan Street Health Centre
Grattan Street Medical Centre
Graveyard
Great Coat
Hair Lice
Hairdresser
Hairdressers
Headstones
Health
Heating
Henry Street
Hobbies
Home
Hospital
House
Illness
Illnesses
Jewellery
Lanes
Laneways
LDF
Lee
Lee Baths
Lee Fields
Lent
Lice
Living Arrangements
Local Defence Force
Lunch
Manning’s Shop
Mardyke
Marsh
Mass
Mass-Going
Meal
Meals
Meat
Medication
Medicine
Medicines
Meningitis
Mental Health
Mercy Hospital
Middle Parish
Midwife
Mischief
Money
Mother
North Main Street
Nurse
Nurses
Opening Hours
Outdoor Baths
Outdoor Swimming
Outdoor Toilet
Parents
Pastimes
Patrick Hanley Buildings
Pawn Shops
Pawning
Pawns
Pawnshops
Peter Church Lane
Pharmacist
Pharmacy
Phone
Phones
Planking
Playing
Poverty
Public House
Public Houses
Pubs
Race
Radio
Religion
River Lee
Sandwich
Sanitation
School
Schooldays
Second World War
Shandon
Shandon Bells
Sheares Street
Shoes
Shopkeeper
Shops
Sick
Sickness
Skipping
Skipping School
Slang
Soccer
Social Conditions
South Main Street
Spinning Top
Sport
St Francis Church
St Peter’s
St Peter’s Cemetery
St. Francis Church
Street Games
Streets
Sugar
Sullivan’s Quay
Sweets
Swim
Swimming
Telephone
Telephones
Tenement
tenement houses
Tenements
Terence MacSwiney
The Lee
The Marsh
The Middle Parish
Theft
Tin
Tinsmith
Toilet
Toilets
Tory Top Road
Traditions
Traffic
Tripe
Tripe and Drisheen
Vaccination
vaccine
Vaccines
Vegetables
Vincent’s Bridge
Voucher
Vouchers
Watches
Weir
Winter
Woolworths
Work
Working
World War II
World War Two
WW2
-
https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/files/original/45972ec60a5886287a836a9c8ebc7384.jpg
ae9fc409612d45e7999000aeb670923e
https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/files/original/45dcc7f3bcbe8251b1e9e4a7322c87cd.wav
998539b47d95038fac740b777fd27632
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<p>Grattan Street Stories: Memory of Place</p>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Occupational Lore; Life History; Built Heritage; Health; Ireland; Cork; Middle Parish
Description
An account of the resource
<p>This collection focuses on a building on Grattan Street which has served as a Quaker Meeting House, a public Dispensary and as the Grattan Street Health Centre. The project was a collaboration between the CFP and the Cork North Community Work Department, Cork Kerry Community Healthcare, Health Services Executive HSE. </p>
<p>The interviewees fall into two main groups: those who worked in the building and those who lived in the surrounding area and availed of the services provided in the building.</p>
<p>This project follows on from the collaboration with the HSE in the “<a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/collections/show/10" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">HSE Orthopaedic Hospital Oral History Project (d'Orthopaedic)</a>”. There is a further connection between the two projects as many of the staff and services once provided in the Grattan Street Health Centre have now relocated to St. Mary's Health Campus (St Mary’s Primary Care Centre) Gurranabraher, the former site of the Orthopaedic Hospital. This topic of the relocation of services is also covered in some staff interviews. <br /><br />To date (October 2021) 13 interviews have been completed for the project.<br /><br />Interviewees discuss the Grattan Street building itself in terms of its historic significance, its benefits and drawbacks as a workplace. Broader themes related to or inspired by the building are also touched on including: personal relationship with the building, staff camaraderie, the problems with parking, memorable incidents at work, patient experiences and descriptions of the people and services for which the building catered.<br /><br />Healthcare professional interviewees detail their training, career progression and comparisons between Grattan Street and other workplaces. Their testimonies also provide a link with the community of patients they served giving further insight into attitudes to healthcare, diseases, vaccines, description of social conditions and the changes in medicine and technology in their working lives.<br /><br />Non-healthcare professional interviewees describe childhood experiences in or around Grattan Street (The Marsh or The Middle Parish), the social, cultural and economic conditions of the area, tenements, businesses, attitudes to and experiences of healthcare, vaccines, diseases, medicines and medical professionals as well as observed changes in these areas over time.<br /><br />Interviewees also reflect on the possible future uses of the Grattan Street building.<br /><br /><strong>Related Reference Sources</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Barrington, R.<em> (</em>1987) <em>Health, medicine and politics in Ireland, 1900–1970</em>. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration.</li>
<li><span>Butler D.M. (2004) <em>The Quaker meeting houses of Ireland</em></span>. Dublin : Irish Friends Historical Committee.</li>
<li><span>Byrne, J. (2004) <em>Byrne's dictionary of Irish local history.</em> Cork: Mercier Press.</span></li>
<li>Cooke, R. T. (1999) <em>My Home by the Lee</em>. Irish Millennium Publications: Cork.</li>
<li><span>Dempsey, P. J. & White, L. W. ‘Childers, Erskine Hamilton’. <em>Dictionary of Irish Biography</em> </span>[Accessed 18 October 2021]</li>
<li>Harrison, R.S. (1991) <em>Cork City Quakers 1655-1939: A Brief History</em>. Cork.</li>
<li>Houston, M. (2004). ‘Life before the GP’. <em>The</em> <em>Irish Times. </em>Available at : <<a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/life-before-the-gp-1.1158599">https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/life-before-the-gp-1.1158599</a> > [Accessed 18 October 2021]</li>
<li>Keohane, F. (2020) <em>The Buildings of Ireland Cork City and County</em>. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.</li>
</ul>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-2020
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
<p>Interviewees: Edith O’Regan, 'Mary', Sean Higgisson, Aoife O’Brien, Eileen Kearney, Imelda Cunning, Jane Ward, Liam Ó hUigín, Joe Scanlan, Mary Mulcahy, Philomena Cassidy, Don Morrissy, Derek O’Connell</p>
<p>Interviewer: <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Kieran+Murphy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kieran Murphy</a>, (<a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a>)</p>
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
<p>Cork, Ireland 1940s-2020s; Waterford, Ireland; Dublin, Ireland; Limerick, Ireland;</p>
Relation
A related resource
<p><strong>Exhibition</strong></p>
<p>Artist Edith O’Regan-Cosgrave (also an interviewee for the project) created a visual artwork based around the Grattan Street Medical Centre building itself, as a workplace and health centre. The artwork incorporated direct quotations from the oral history interviews conducted for the project, and also included brief historical paragraphs about the building researched, written and edited by the <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy. This exhibition was launched on 6<sup>th</sup> February 2020 in “St Peter’s” on the North Main Street where a “Listening Event” was also held to mark the occasion.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:10%;"><br /><br /><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Grattan-Poster-for-Email-286-by-400.jpg" alt="Grattan-Poster-for-Email-286-by-400.jpg" /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:10%;"></p>
<p><strong>Presentation and Listening Event</strong></p>
<p>To coincide with the launch of the Grattan Street Stories Exhibtion on 6<sup>th</sup> February 2020 a listening event and presentation of the history of the Grattan Street Medical Centre building and description of the project was given by <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy.<br /><br /><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/427A7714-1.jpg" alt="427A7714-1.jpg" /></p>
<p><strong>Presentation</strong></p>
<p>In 2019 at the OHNI conference the <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy discussed social media and oral history which included audio excerpts from the Grattan Street Stories Project along with photographs of the building.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:150%;"><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Kieran-OHNI-e1634041838937.jpg" alt="Kieran-OHNI-e1634041838937.jpg" /></p>
<p><strong>Audio Visual Presentation</strong></p>
<p>An audio-visual slideshow was produced featuring oral testimony from the Grattan Street Stories Project and combined with suitable images of Grattan Street and from Edith O’Regan-Cosgrave’s exhibition. This was created by <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy.<br /><br /></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:10%;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnjEtQeOb3I&t=1s&ab_channel=CorkFolklore" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Audio Visual Presentation Available to listen and view here.</a>
<p><strong>Health and Vaccines Oral History Research<br /></strong><br />Many of the interviews conducted for the Grattan Street project formed an integral part of the testimonies and research for the innovative<br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/health/about" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">'Catching Stories'<span> </span>of infectious disease in Ireland </a>project funded by the Irish Research Council.<br /><br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/health/about" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Catching-Stories-Poster.jpg" alt="Catching-Stories-Poster.jpg" /></a></p>
<strong>Social Media</strong> <br /><br />Numerous suitable audio excerpts from the oral history interviews have been edited and shared on CFP's social media channels.<br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1139167201582288901" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1139167201582288901</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1140909542240391168" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1140909542240391168</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1141264486768238592" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1141264486768238592</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1189872295923376133" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1189872295923376133</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1228322700415860736" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1228322700415860736</a>
<strong>Orthopaedic Hospital</strong><br />Cork Folklore Project in collaboration with the HSE conducted an oral history project focussing on the Orthapaedic Hospital in Gurranabraher. <br /><br /><span>Many of the staff and services once provided at the Grattan Street Health Centre site were moved to St. Mary's Health Campus (St Mary’s Primary Care Centre) Gurranabraher, the former site of the Orthopaedic Hospital. </span><br /><br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/collections/show/10" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">HSE Orthopaedic Hospital Oral History Project (d'Orthopaedic)</a>
<strong>Swimming Article</strong><br /><br />Kieran Murphy and James Furey co-authored an article about<br /><a href="https://tripeanddrisheen.substack.com/p/swim-city?s=r" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Swimming in Cork</a> which appeared in the online magazine Tripe + Drisheen. This article features a number of interview extracts collected as part of the Grattan Street Stories Project.
<strong>Related Interviews<br /><br /></strong>CFP_SR00756_Quilligan_2019;<br />CFP_SR00758_Broderick_2019;<br />CFP_SR00670_OShea_2018;<strong><br /><br /></strong>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Cork Folklore Project
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Audio
Format
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16 .wav Files
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Joe Scanlan
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Kieran Murphy
Duration
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88 Minutes 55 Seconds
Location
The location of the interview
Middle Parish Community Centre, Grattan Street
Original Format
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.wav
Bit Rate/Frequency
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24bit / 48kHz
Time Summary
A summary of an interview given for different time stamps throughout the interview
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.00.00 - 0.00.30</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Intro</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.00.30 - 0.01.41</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Memories of dispensary and Vaccination</strong></p>
<p>Dispensary was a beautiful looking building especially as it was surrounded by tenements.</p>
<p>Barrett family were caretakers. 6 GPs worked there and remembers 4: Dr Galvin (low-sized woman), Dr Jimmy Young (who played hurling for Cork), Dr Kiely (male), Dr Michael Cagney his family’s GP, delivered him and his brother at home. Waiting room was like church seats. His mother usually brought with him.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.01.41 - 0.06.06</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Vaccination in the Dispensary Grattan Street</strong></p>
<p>Vaccination: his dad brought him. Front door was in Grattan Street. Queue of boys outside. None of the boys who came out looked happy, they all suffered from the fear and pain. Joe was about 8 years old. Instrument doctor had was like a branding iron for cattle or a bolt. The needle was the size of a nail. Dad held his wrist and arm very tight. His dad brought him for ice-cream afterwards.</p>
<p>When he was 12 there was another round of vaccines and he was determined not to take them until he discovered they were like sugar cubes not needles.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.06.06 - 0.09.24</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Fleas and Head Lice treatment</strong></p>
<p>Everyone had fleas and headlice, but some of his friends still deny that they had it possibly out of shame. Everyone left their doors open, as they had nothing to rob. Dads got paid on Friday night and there was a small party at the weekend- raspberry and crisps in the pub.</p>
<p>Went to the dispensary to get prescription for head lice.</p>
<p>When mother cut his hair she put it in newspaper and threw it in fire and you could hear fleas and lice banging. “Scabs and bits of hair here and there” You could see dead fleas and lice on the back of other boys collars in school.</p>
<p>DDT “defestor” Mrs Shinnick? Pharmacist gave them a green bottle which smelled. The liquid burned the scalp. Fine tooth comb to get the dead lice out. The smell would last for hours. And in school the following day people would recognise it and know you had had lice.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.09.24 - 0.10.53</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Smoking Doctor trying to get him to give up smoking</strong></p>
<p>Dr Jimmy Young (or maybe Dr Cagney) moved to a private clinic on the South Mall. Joe was smoking as a young teenager. If he was caught a neighbour would kick him in the arse before telling his dad. His dad never hit him but would put his hands on his belt which was sufficient threat. Dad brought him to Dr Young to be told how bad smoking was. And while he was telling Joe to give up cigarettes he was smoking a Woodbine cigarette at the time. People smoked everywhere except church.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.10.53 - 0.12.07</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Dared to ask Garda for a cigarette</strong></p>
<p>Doesn’t drink or smoke now. Had to take a dare when asked by a friend. Friend dared him to ask a Garda for a cigarette. Garda kicked him in the arse. Walked like John Wayne for a week!</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.12.07 - 0.15.30</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>‘Kick the Bucket’: hypochondriac ‘character’ in Dispensary </strong></p>
<p>A head cold was serious at times. Practically impossible to get a house call from a doctor. So they would be bundled up in sheets like a mummy and transported to the dispensary. Mother saw a man in the waiting room nicknamed “Kick the Bucket” because he was a hypochondriac convinced he was going to die soon.</p>
<p>Joe saw him as he got older and went to the doctor on his own. Kick the Bucket died at 81 and the news spread faster than the fire at the Opera House or Jennings.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.15.30 - 0.15.46</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>End of Dispensary</strong></p>
<p>After a while doctors got their private surgeries and A&Es accident and Emergencies opened. The dispensary sort of dwindled out.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.15.46 - 0.16.42</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Grattan Street injuries Playing as Children</strong></p>
<p>Lots of memories from around Grattan Street area. Born on Devonshire Street near Pat MacDonald Paints, and there was a big population living in the Marsh. More than 100 children playing on the streets around Peter Street and Grattan Street. Alleyways, where car parks are now, there were their soccer pitches. They counted 120 potholes in their soccer pitch, big enough to fall knee deep into. If you fell in you could twist an ankle or break a leg. Friends would lift you out of the way of the pitch but you had to crawl to the Mercy Hospital yourself because the match had to go on.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.16.42 - 0.18.59</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong><span>Battles and fights with rival groups of boys</span></strong></p>
<p><span>Their rivals were the Coal Quay boys. Saturday evening they would raid the Coal Quay for the left over rotten fruit. They had timber palettes set up as a barricade and after 12 o’clock mass on a Sunday the Coal Quay boys would come. (had to go to mass otherwise someone would tell the Presentation Brother or you parents. Joe did miss a few) Battering match would start. Rotten apples. Soggy bananas. Tomatoes were the best. No stones. Whoever ran out of ammunition first you had to run away. 30 guys running down Coleman’s Lane would be easy targets. But the Marsh lads could spread out on Grattan Street. </span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.18.59 - 0.24.29</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Halloween skull as Jack O Lantern from Tomb in St Peters</strong></p>
<p>There was no real fighting just wrestling. Maybe some fighting with firsts. No kicking someone in the head. Boxing with community centre against Mitchelstown. Joe couldn’t hit a small boxer and they had to stop the fight.</p>
<p>Around the same time it was Halloween in St Peter’s graveyard all the tombs and headstones were in the centre not along the side. They were able to get into the tombs and went in with a match and were surrounded by bones in the dark. Didn’t need pumpkins they decided they would get a nightlight scandal, buy matches from Mr Barry and get a skull from the tomb and scares girls.</p>
<p>Heard something moving in the tomb one night. His dad was a postman and he had a big torch but Joe could never find it when he wanted it.</p>
<p>Always bring cigarette butts out of the tomb. Used safety pins to get the most out of the cigarette.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.24.29 - 0.26.24</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Cigarettes and getting money from empty bottles</strong></p>
<p>8pm in the evening and at 8am the doctors and surgeons left or arrived at the Mercy Hospital, and they could’ve smoked in their offices at the time. Doctors sometimes threw away a cigar butt. Sometimes the children followed a doctor for 10 minutes and he might not throw the butt away! As they got older they went to Mr Barry’s shop and could get 2 fags (cigarettes) and a match for an empty bottle of Lucozade, which they could get from the Mercy Hospital. All the glasses were returnable at the time. They decided to take more bottles. 2 bottles would get you 4p four pence and you could go to the pictures (cinema) for 3p thruppence (three pence) and have money left over for cigarettes and a match. Tanora bottles from Jennings.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.26.24 - 0.31.03</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Fishing for Money trouble with the Bailiff</strong></p>
<p>Dermot’s Cake shop on Adelaide street best cakes and creamy milks straight form the cow.</p>
<p>Decided to take up poaching to get some money. Lots of mullet and salmon in the river at the time. Was rarely caught poaching because he could plank (hide) them at home within a few seconds. Sold them to Burns on Douglas Street, the Uptown Grill in MacCurtain Street (which must have lasted 60 years) the woman there said to bring over any more because they’re so fresh the blood is still hot in them! </p>
<p>Mr Hurley the bailiff caught him occasionally and took his fishing rod and reported him to his mother and tell her to send Joe over to collect his fishing rod. He’d ask which rod was his in a room full of confiscated rods. Joe’s was the cheapest “Black Prince” but he’d get a more expensive one. Needed money for cinema and chips. Best two chippers: Hayden’s on Shandon Street and Kiely’s on Maylor Street. Wrapped in newspaper, lots of vinegar and salt. Tastiest part was to squeeze the vinegar out of the newspaper even with the dye running in it.</p>
<p>Slogging apples down the Mardyke selling to woman Dooney Dawney.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.31.03 - 0.34.24</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Money & Sweets: Selling fishing Rod & tricking shopkeeper</strong></p>
<p>Sold the rod for money to an angler and bought a cheap rod again. He was a well-known angler on the Lee. Good anglers and fairly good anglers but luck plays a big part. Ahern sisters owned a shop a Sheare Street (Sheares Street). Penny bars and sweets ‘blackjack’, ‘cough no more’, ‘macaroon’ (Erinmore tobacco). Asked for penny bar that was up high so she would have to climb up and they would take a bar from the lower shelf. They once took it in turns to ask how much a bar was even thought they were all a penny and she eventually banned them all for life from the shop. It took them a year or two to get back on good terms. </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.34.24- 0.35.55</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Safety of City in Past, Making floats for fishing, Social & Income Inequality</strong></p>
<p>Never any trouble when growing up. Joe’s 2<sup>nd</sup> eldest son is 38 lives on Northside, daughter on the southside and eldest son still lives in the Marsh. His children would say the Marsh was a great place to rear children.</p>
<p>Where the Woolshed Bar [on Sheares Street] is now used to be Woodford Bournes the wine makers. And on the corner Paddy worked the guillotine to make ‘the corkies’ corks for the wine bottles for Woodford Bournes. Joe’s dad was a friend of Paddy & “they used have a drink together”. Joe would go to Paddy for bits of cork to make floats for fishing. He would bore a hole through the cork for the fishing line. “so we got everything for nothing”. Even got clothes from Coal Quay for very little. Some of his friends deny that they ever wore clothes from the Coal Quay. Joe thinks there was no in between either you were rich or you were poor.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.35.55 - 0.36.45</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Story of Man with nothing worth stealing</strong></p>
<p>Remembers old man second-next-door-neighbour and there was someone prowling around his house. He had nothing worth stealing only a transistor radio which everyone had so there was no one to sell it to. This neighbour shouted out “come on in if you want something. I have nothing and you’re welcome to half of that!”</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.36.45 - 0.38.50</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>The Marsh today: Families vs Students</strong></p>
<p>Joe’s son Michael would still love to raise his children in the Marsh area, even with the volume of traffic.</p>
<p>Joe thinks the Grattan Street area cannot take anymore offices or traffic. He says that the HSE have many of the buildings.</p>
<p>Joe is lucky as he owns his own house. Married a Coal Quay girl Breda Dineen.</p>
<p>There are plans to build student accommodation with 350 rooms on Grattan Street where the Munster Furniture and Hardware was. Joe says he will sell up and leave the parish if that is built. It will break his heart to do it but he can’t put up with any more.</p>
<p>Talks about Edel House being discussed on the radio. And thinks there were a lot of “undesirables” in there. In recent times they were warned to behave themselves on the streets and Joe thinks that they do. He thinks that as well as genuine cases there are people looking for houses.</p>
<p>Joe would like the HSE to take some buildings further out in areas like Montenotte, Model Farm Road and the Lee Road. He thinks that people who work for the HSE live in these places so won’t choose them for buildings to provide services. As a result buildings and services are put in the city centre.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.38.50 - 0.40.25</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Shawlies and booming trade on Coal Quay</strong></p>
<p>South Main Street, Castle Street, North Main Street when he was a child was booming.</p>
<p>Joe’s grandmother was a shawlie. Joe’s wife re-enacts the shawlies. Joe remembers vermin everywhere on Coal Quay especially on Monday morning. Near where Bodega is now where Clayton Love’s used to be, the Loft Carpet is there now shawlies could trade in there too. You could trade indoors but you paid more to be out of the rain than trading outside. Joe’s grandmother traded under the clock and only sold fish- mackerel and apples. You’d be surprised how many ‘lords and ladies’ would buy their fruit and veg in the Coal Quay because it was fresh with mud still on the cabbage brought in by farmers on horse and cart.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.40.25- 0.41.15</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Ryan’s Pub on North Main Street and sleeping Farmers</strong></p>
<p>Mary Ryans bar many people went in there in the mornings for a ‘pick me up’ to keep warm. Farmers would abandon the horse and cart to go in there. Most horses would know their way home even if the farmer had too many “nips of Powers”. The farmer would fall asleep in the back of the cart and wake up in Blarney or Ovens. Joe would jump on the back of the cart without the farmer knowing and go out the Carrigrohane Straights which was the countryside then. Then they might swim in the Lee Fields sometimes in their clothes. ‘We were young, foolish but happy’.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.41.15 - 0.42.05</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Food, Shoes and the Pawn</strong></p>
<p>Weren’t getting T-bone steaks at home. But they had potatoes, vegetables and homemade skull (bread). Was never hungry. Mother would get remnants of lino from the Munster Furniture and Hardware and cut them for insoles for their shoes. They had good shoes for going to mass which you had to take off straight away at home to be sent to Jones’s Pawn on the end of Shandon Street. </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.42.05- 0.43.30</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>School Violence and good teacher</strong></p>
<p>Hated St Joseph’s School because always got kicked in the ankle or had his toe stepped on or a clatter on the back of the ear for not being able to spell. Left there and went to St Francis School and the entrance was from North Main Street by Bradley’s Supermarket or by Broad Lane beyond the dispensary.</p>
<p>Learned more in last two years in St Francis from lay teachers than he did from St Joseph. Teachers may have scolded them but never hit them. “Anything you don’t understand ask me” the teacher told them. Joe was watching the clock for when to leave, and watching the tides to know when the tides were bringing back the fish. </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.43.30 - 0.44.50</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Changes in the Marsh for families: safety & shopping</strong></p>
<p>Joe’s son would love to live in the Marsh to rear his children. Couldn’t let them run around on the street with the traffic. But they would have Fitzgerald’s Park and close to Mercy Hospital. 5 minutes from 3 different supermarkets. Sometimes hear people singing or shouting coming back from the pub. The neighbours come to watch. Only incident he remembers in 36 years is that a few car mirrors were broken. Grattan Street is off the beaten track despite Washington Street being so close.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.44.50 - 0.46.15</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Food or not at School</strong></p>
<p>Not given food in St Francis School but given food in St Joseph’s in the morning “to toughen you up for the beating you would get in the afternoon”. Cocoa and creamy buns in the morning. A few years later they cut back to scones which weren’t the same!</p>
<p>One time Joe didn’t get cocoa and a bun because his dad had gotten a promotion. And it upset Joe that all his friends got it.</p>
<p>At the age of 10 or 11 he was in St Francis “the Rowdy Boys College”. St Peter and Pauls School was before Joe’s time.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.46.15 - 0.48.17</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Food and Cooking</strong></p>
<p>Homemade skull or loaf of bread. His mother would make the bread. And nine times out of ten it would turn out right. the Hills were the biggest population of their aunts and cousins. Across the road from them was nanny Hill. Joe would get his dessert there. For school lunch he’d go home and get a sandwich with soup in the winter and diluted raspberry. Cheese sandwich- “poor man’s meat”. Very lucky to get a ham and cheese sandwich. When going back to school he would pause outside his house no 9 Devonshire Street. Across the road was 34 Nanny Hill’s house and she would bring over the heel of homemade skull plastered with blackcurrant jam which he’d eat on the way back to St Joseph’s on the ‘Dyke [Mardyke] only 5 minutes’ walk, but took him 10 or 15 minutes because he didn’t want to be punctual. He would get a punch from a brother for having a ring of jam around his lips.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.48.17 - 0.49.40</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>School beating by Presentation Brother and boy’s father’s revenge</strong></p>
<p>There is a [Presentation] brother who is now married and living in Grange with a son and daughter. Joe would call him names if he ever met him again. A friend of Joe’s spent three nights in the Mercy Hospital after a beating from this brother. He made him take down his trousers until he only had his Y-front underwear on and beat him there with a four-foot bamboo cane. He was lying on his belly in the Mercy.</p>
<p>There’s a black fire escape in St Joseph’s which is still there. The father of that boy had the brother hanging over the fire escape. People were screaming. And Joe and others were hoping that he would drop him.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.49.40 - 0.51.39</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Relief after school, Priest Friend assisting the Marsh Community</strong></p>
<p>Joe’s life began when he left that school because the fear was gone. He was able to concentrate in school then. In St Joseph’s the teacher was only interested in teaching 4 or 5 smart guys and the rest were punch bags. When Joe was 21 he had as good a job as any of his peers. The brothers were sadists he says. Thinks it took 5 years to become a priest and 7 to become a brother. They were young men who had never seen life and mostly put there by their parents.</p>
<p>A retired priest, friend of Joe’s, ‘an t-athair Ó Murchú’ who was the priest in St Peter and Paul’s and is now in Belgooley. Joe goes down to him once a week on a Sunday and they bring him a creamy cake. When people were fighting for things in the parish he supported them, even when they weren’t agreeing with the HSE. The car park where Munster Furniture is the HSE were talking about putting a multi-storey car park there 30 years ago which was diverted to Dunnes Stores Car Park.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.51.39 - 0.53.03</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>The Marsh Community object to multi-storey carpark</strong></p>
<p>People in the Marsh chained themselves across Grattan Street to stop trucks coming in to build a multi-storey car park. But they told the Gardaí in advance so they were on their side and they had no trouble. Joe knew the sergeant well and they used advise them the best way to have a peaceful protest and yet stop everything.</p>
<p>Joe has many other memories but feels a little bit under pressure because of the recorder.</p>
<p>Other things that they did ‘fighting for their rights’ because they could see offices and buildings going up that they opposed.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.53.03 - 0.58.30</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Problems with multi-storey car park and Student Accommodation in the Marsh</strong></p>
<p>Was in a meeting with the Council and Paul Moynihan from City Hall explained what was happening. The council own so much of the car park and building to right of Munster Furniture and Hardware. So if the council don’t sell these to the new developers there won’t be enough room for the student accommodation. Joe doesn’t have anything against students but object to their parties which have aged some local residents. Thinks in the past students didn’t behave how they do now.</p>
<p>Joe & his wife decided they’d leave if the student accommodation is built, they don’t mind whether they go to the northside or to the southside, but somewhere on a bus route or somewhere near the city. Joe says he’s getting emotional because he always swore that he would die in the Marsh.</p>
<p>Joe would like to see a small 5 or 6 storey hotel being built instead and there’s space for coaches. Or family housing being built.</p>
<p>They named out other places where student accommodation could be built eg. The Good Shepherd building across from the Lee Fields and Joe was told the students would have so far to walk because they would be high-end students.</p>
<p>Joe says the students behave like riff-raff when they are drunk.</p>
<p>He was told the accommodation would have security.</p>
<p>Joe knows one of the security men for the student accommodation on Lancaster Quay and they are behaved inside the complex but outside there is no control.</p>
<p>Joe fears that students will be drinking in doorways in the Marsh or outside on tables which are being built for them to study on. Joe said that if they are 320 high-end students they will have cars and nowhere to park them, and they will have more money for alcohol. So Joe said the riff-raff students would be better!</p>
<p>Joe can’t believe a walk from St Anne’s to UCC is too far. </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.58.30 - 1.04.41</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Sicknesses past and changes now</strong></p>
<p>People died from diseases which no one knew what caused them. Some diseases that were killing people have simple cures now.</p>
<p>Joe is more concerned about sicknesses today including insects like ticks and leeches.</p>
<p>They would go to the dispensary for medication and prescription. If anything was too serious they would send you to the A&E but first get you to sign a form saying you had visited him so that he could get paid. </p>
<p>Lots of measles. Chickenpox. Mumps used to be a killer disease especially for men as it could make you impotent.</p>
<p>If you went to get medication from the Dispensary you had to bring your own empty bottle. Completely different attitude from doctors now. Might have been given tablets even if there was nothing wrong with you.</p>
<p>People who were sent to St Anne’s because of a drinking/ alcohol problem for a few weeks but never came out.</p>
<p>Joe didn’t get a clip in the ear growing up but he did do it for his children.</p>
<p>Joe used to drink and just wanted to sleep after it. He thinks that women today wouldn’t take the abuse that women used to put up with.</p>
<p>One man who went to St Anne’s was signed out by his niece years later and he was afraid of the double-decker bus and went back in of his free will to St Anne’s.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.04.41 - 1.06.53</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Issues with HSE Services in the city Centre</strong></p>
<p>Joe hopes HSE look elsewhere for offices rather than in the city centre.</p>
<p>Methodone clinics around Cork Joe was told need to be in the city because they won’t travel for it which means it needs to be near Grattan Street.</p>
<p>There’s a Community Garda. But Joe and his wife have not seen a Garda on the beat for three weeks.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.06.53 - 1.09.04</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Work of the Middle Parish Community Centre </strong></p>
<p>Joe and others including George [Patterson] do their best to keep the Middle Parish Community Centre going.</p>
<p>Narcotics anonymous rent out a room upstairs. Alcoholics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous. There’s been no vandalism.</p>
<p>Joe saw a man he knew going to Narcotics Anonymous outside La Verna near St Francis Church and he shook his hand because he was proud of him for trying to give up.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.09.04 - 1.26.27</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Experiences as an alcoholic and trying to give up</strong></p>
<p>Joe describes himself as a “dry alcoholic”. Joe hasn’t drunk for six years. He didn’t realise he had a drink problem because he was never aggressive or barred from anywhere.</p>
<p>It took Joe years to realise he was unable to home after work without first going to the pub. And that he was having a few pints in a number of bars and that this was adding up to ten pints a night. He decided eventually that he would stop. If someone had told him that he had a drink problem he would have been “highly insulted” and thought he could stop drinking any time he wanted.</p>
<p>He went to a few AA meetings and they didn’t suit him.</p>
<p>He used to smoke 55/60 cigarettes a day while driving articulated trucks long distance for 35 years all over Ireland. He gave up cigarettes and thought it would be easier to give up alcohol.</p>
<p>Ten years ago he gave up alcohol for 2 years. Alcoholics’ Anonymous saying is ‘one day at a time’. He was down in Inchydoney Hotel with his family and dogs. He was tired after lots of driving to Dublin, Wicklow and delivering salt to Killybegs. He kept track of his progress being off alcohol and appreciated the support of his wife.</p>
<p>He went into the hotel and had some coke. The Munster Final was on. While waiting at a busy bar for more Coke he saw two men he knew drinking stout. And he ordered a pint of Murphys stout after he saw them. He made ten attempts to leave the pint there, but it overpowered him. He had a devil on one shoulder and a guardian angel on the other. He usually drank a pint in four sups. He went close to the toilet for his first sup in case he was sick from not being used to drinking after two years. He ordered a half-pint of Murphys. He felt fairly content because he felt he could handle the alcohol now.</p>
<p>He had two pints of Beamish in Forde’s with a friend of his on a Friday. And slowly he was having more pints and on Wednesdays as well as Fridays until “the drink had a hold of me again”. He knew he couldn’t handle whiskey. Collapsed three times due to liver poisoning.</p>
<p>He had to come home from Turkey when he collapsed, his doctor said they saved his life. He wasn’t allowed to eat or drink for 4 days.</p>
<p>His GP was waiting for him at midnight when he arrived home in Cork and brought him to the Mercy. He told Joe he was lucky because his liver function was only at 52% working. It took 17 hours for his liver to get to 53% working.</p>
<p>After a few weeks he started drinking again. He collapsed at home one morning unconscious for 20 seconds. GP took tests. Went to the Regional Hospital and put in intensive care. Dr Seamus O’Mahony was his liver specialist out there. Seamus told him not to waste his time if he was going to keep drinking and not to come to him without his wife because she would tell the truth about his drinking.</p>
<p>Doctor asked him how many units he drank and Joe asked to speak in pints not units. Joe said 20 pints. The doctor said that’s a lot to have in a week. And Joe’s wife said that’s on a Saturday! Two drinking sessions on a Saturday.</p>
<p>He was getting liver function tests on a regular basis and his liver was getting stronger.</p>
<p>Joe used to give up alcohol two days before going to the doctor but didn’t realise that alcohol makes triglycerides in the body which take days to be broken down.</p>
<p>Joe used drink cans of beer at home when his wife was away. He would vomit it up after two ‘slugs’ or gulps. And then he would try to drink it again. </p>
<p>He said that you have to admit it to yourself that you have a problem. He realised that if he didn’t stop he wouldn’t see his five grand-children grow up.</p>
<p>He has never been happier than he is now sober. His children can ring him at any time for a lift. And his children can depend on him.</p>
<p>Joe still takes one day at a time.</p>
<p>Joe knew a guy who was 33 years sober and he went to London and started drinking and was knocked down by a bus.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.26.27 - 1.28.44</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Family living in the Dispensary building Grattan Street</strong></p>
<p>Barrett family who lived in the Dispensary had children who are still alive living in southside who would be older than him. “they were all genuine down to earth people”. To the left of where the marriage registrar is now is where they lived. On the right hand side was an old lady sitting in a box like a phone box cut in half. And she would take people’s details as they entered. The double doors to the clinic were closed. The Barrett sons went to St Joseph’s School as well. </p>
<p>Joe jokes about a previous interview I had with a friend of his Liam O hUiginn, and jokingly says he’s a very old man. Joe also apologises again for not being used to “speaking in public” pointing at the digital recorder.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.28.44 - 1.28.55</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Outro. Interview ends.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Joe Scanlan: Grattan Street, Healthcare, The Marsh
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CFP_SR00728_Scanlan_2019;
Relation
A related resource
<strong>Other Interviews in this Collection </strong><br /><br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/240" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00696_O'Regan_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/242" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00704_Collins_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/243" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00706_Higgisson_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/244" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00712_O'Brien_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/245" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00713_Kearney_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/246" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00714_Cunning_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/247" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00717_Ward_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/248" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00727_OhUigin_2019</a>;<br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/250" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00729_Mulcahy_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/251" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00732_Cassidy_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/252" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00760_Morrissy_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/253" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> CFP_SR00762_OConnell_2019</a>;
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
25 July 2019
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Description
An account of the resource
<p><span>Joe recalls the dispensary on Grattan Street, its waiting room and the names of the doctors who worked there. He describes in detail his visit there to get a vaccination as a child. Discusses medical treatments administered at home by his mother including those for fleas and head lice. </span></p>
<p><span>Recalls as a teenager being told by a doctor who was smoking to give up smoking. Comments on how widespread smoking was at the time. Humorous story about asking a Garda for a cigarette. </span></p>
<p><span>Story of Cork character ‘Kick the Bucket’, a young man who was convinced he was going to die very soon but lived to be 81.</span></p>
<p><span>Speaks of playing on the streets of The Marsh and The Middle Parish as a child and how they would go to the Mercy Hospital if they were injured playing football. Describes rival groups of boys from Grattan Street and the Coal Quay having fruit throwing fights. </span></p>
<p><span>Describes how as a child he used a skull from a tomb in St Peter’s Cemetery to use as a Jack O Lantern. Returns to the topic of underage smoking and acquiring cigarettes from adults. </span></p>
<p><span>Explains a form of recycling where he collected empty glass bottles to return to a shop in exchange for money. He used the money for cigarettes and matches or to pay for a cinema ticket. Recalls Dermot’s Cake shop on Adelaide Street.</span></p>
<p><span>Talks about his passion for fishing, avoiding the bailiff and selling his fish catch to local fish and chip shops. Tells of his fishing rob being confiscated by the bailiff and retrieving it. </span></p>
<p><span>Mentions children taking sweets from a shop on Sheares Street without paying for them. </span></p>
<p><span>Discusses income inequality and buying clothes on the Coal Quay. Explains how he made floats for fishing from wine bottle corks made by his dad’s friend for Woodford Bourne’s on Sheares Street.</span></p>
<p><span>Reflects on crime and safety in the city centre and tells the story of a house being burgled where the owner shouted out that he had nothing worth stealing.</span></p>
<p><span>Outlines some long standing Grattan Street residents’ concerns about their neighbourhood today including students, student parties, students drinking on the street, cark parks, bus routes, student accommodation, Edel House, increased traffic, methodone clinics, community Gardaí and the HSE’s use of buildings in the city centre.</span></p>
<p><span>Remembers Shawlies on the Coal Quay, including his own grandmother. Describes the products sold there and farmers bringing vegetables with dirt on them by horse and cart. Mentions Ryan’s Pub on North Main Street and how the farmers might frequent it.</span></p>
<p><span>Speaks of the simple food and meals he ate, and how his shoes were pawned but bought back in time to wear for mass.</span></p>
<p><span>Recalls the violence and fear of St Joseph’s School and wanting to leave to go fishing. Speaks of his preference for St. Francis School where he was not beaten and learned a lot. Outlines getting food and cocoa in the morning at school. Tells the story of a father confronting a Presentation Brother for an excessive beating to his son. </span></p>
<p><span>Talks about food and his mother making bread and mentions other foods and treats from his grandmother.</span></p>
<p><span>Speaks about fatal diseases in the past including mumps. To receive medication in the dispensary you had to bring your own empty bottle. </span></p>
<p><span>Speaks about the work of the Middle Parish Community Centre especially in relation to addiction. This prompts Joe to speak of his own story of dealing with his alcohol addiction, the risks alcohol posed to his health, liver disease, his desire to see his grandchildren grow up and his happiness now he has successfully remained sober for many years.</span></p>
<p><span>Mentions the Barrett family who lived in the dispensary building.</span></p>
Accommodation
Addiction
Adelaide Street
Alcohol
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholism
Alleys
Angler
Angling
Animals
Anti-Social Behaviour
Asylum
Bailiff
Bar
bars
boys fighting
Bread
Building
Built Heritage
Car
Car Park
Caretaker
Carpark
Cars
Cart
Cemetery
Characters
Childhood
Children
Children’s Games
Chipper
Chippers
Chips
Cigarettes
Cinema
City Centre
Clothes
Coal Quay
Cocoa
Coleman’s Lane
Community
Cooking
Cork Characters
Corporal Punishment
Crime
Dermot’s Shop
development
Disease
Diseases
Dispensary
Doctor
Doctors
Drink
Edel House
Families
Family
Farmers
Father
Fighting
Fights
Film
Films
Fish and Chips
Fishing
Fishing Rod
Fitzgerald’s Park
Fleas
Food
Forde’s
Friends
Fruit
Gamblers Anonymous
Games
Garda
Gardai
Grandmother
Grattan Street
Graveyard
Halloween
Headlice
Health
health and hygiene
Home
Home Ownership
Horse
Horse and Cart
Horses
House
House Ownership
Housing
HSE
Hygiene
Ice-cream
Illness
income inequality
Inequality
Joseph’s School
Kick the Bucket
Lee Fields
Lice
Liver
Liver Disease
London
markets
Marsh
Mass
Meals
Medication
Medicine
Mercy Hospital
Methodone
Middle Parish
Money
Mother
Mumps
Munster Furniture
Munster Furniture and Hardware
Narcotics Anonymous
North Main Street
Parents
Parking
Pawn
Pawn Shop
Pawn Shops
Pawning
Pawns
Pawnshop
Pawnshops
People
Pharmacist
Pictures
Playing
Pothole
Potholes
Poverty
Prescription
Presentation Brothers
Priest
Produce
protests
Pubs
Recycling
Religion
Ryan’s Bar
Ryan’s Pub
Safety
School
Selling
Shawl
Shawlies
Shawls
Sheares Street
Shoes
Shopkeeper
Shopping
Shops
Sickness
smoking
Sober
Sobriety
St Anne's Mental Asylum
St Joseph’s School
St Peter’s
St Peter’s Cemetery
St. Anne's Asylum
St. Anne’s
St. Francis Church
St. Francis School
St. Peter’s Cemetery
Stealing
student accommodation
Students
Sweets
Swim
Swimming
Tanora
Teacher
Teachers
Teenager
The Marsh
The Middle Parish
Theft
Tomb
Treat
Treats
Uptown Grill
Vaccination
vaccine
Vaccines
Vegetables
Violence
Waiting Room
Woodbine
Woodbines
Woodford Bourne
Woodford Bourne's
Woodford Bournes
-
https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/files/original/964c5543f34a8b53c7216fc6049ed5d7.jpg
e245f89b3e8cbbb2c200a3033ee23a69
https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/files/original/55664d27d1d86acac3291bc0e0bbbb40.mp3
c6f7b639a9c85fe29042f5582739a54b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<p>Grattan Street Stories: Memory of Place</p>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Occupational Lore; Life History; Built Heritage; Health; Ireland; Cork; Middle Parish
Description
An account of the resource
<p>This collection focuses on a building on Grattan Street which has served as a Quaker Meeting House, a public Dispensary and as the Grattan Street Health Centre. The project was a collaboration between the CFP and the Cork North Community Work Department, Cork Kerry Community Healthcare, Health Services Executive HSE. </p>
<p>The interviewees fall into two main groups: those who worked in the building and those who lived in the surrounding area and availed of the services provided in the building.</p>
<p>This project follows on from the collaboration with the HSE in the “<a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/collections/show/10" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">HSE Orthopaedic Hospital Oral History Project (d'Orthopaedic)</a>”. There is a further connection between the two projects as many of the staff and services once provided in the Grattan Street Health Centre have now relocated to St. Mary's Health Campus (St Mary’s Primary Care Centre) Gurranabraher, the former site of the Orthopaedic Hospital. This topic of the relocation of services is also covered in some staff interviews. <br /><br />To date (October 2021) 13 interviews have been completed for the project.<br /><br />Interviewees discuss the Grattan Street building itself in terms of its historic significance, its benefits and drawbacks as a workplace. Broader themes related to or inspired by the building are also touched on including: personal relationship with the building, staff camaraderie, the problems with parking, memorable incidents at work, patient experiences and descriptions of the people and services for which the building catered.<br /><br />Healthcare professional interviewees detail their training, career progression and comparisons between Grattan Street and other workplaces. Their testimonies also provide a link with the community of patients they served giving further insight into attitudes to healthcare, diseases, vaccines, description of social conditions and the changes in medicine and technology in their working lives.<br /><br />Non-healthcare professional interviewees describe childhood experiences in or around Grattan Street (The Marsh or The Middle Parish), the social, cultural and economic conditions of the area, tenements, businesses, attitudes to and experiences of healthcare, vaccines, diseases, medicines and medical professionals as well as observed changes in these areas over time.<br /><br />Interviewees also reflect on the possible future uses of the Grattan Street building.<br /><br /><strong>Related Reference Sources</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Barrington, R.<em> (</em>1987) <em>Health, medicine and politics in Ireland, 1900–1970</em>. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration.</li>
<li><span>Butler D.M. (2004) <em>The Quaker meeting houses of Ireland</em></span>. Dublin : Irish Friends Historical Committee.</li>
<li><span>Byrne, J. (2004) <em>Byrne's dictionary of Irish local history.</em> Cork: Mercier Press.</span></li>
<li>Cooke, R. T. (1999) <em>My Home by the Lee</em>. Irish Millennium Publications: Cork.</li>
<li><span>Dempsey, P. J. & White, L. W. ‘Childers, Erskine Hamilton’. <em>Dictionary of Irish Biography</em> </span>[Accessed 18 October 2021]</li>
<li>Harrison, R.S. (1991) <em>Cork City Quakers 1655-1939: A Brief History</em>. Cork.</li>
<li>Houston, M. (2004). ‘Life before the GP’. <em>The</em> <em>Irish Times. </em>Available at : <<a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/life-before-the-gp-1.1158599">https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/life-before-the-gp-1.1158599</a> > [Accessed 18 October 2021]</li>
<li>Keohane, F. (2020) <em>The Buildings of Ireland Cork City and County</em>. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.</li>
</ul>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-2020
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
<p>Interviewees: Edith O’Regan, 'Mary', Sean Higgisson, Aoife O’Brien, Eileen Kearney, Imelda Cunning, Jane Ward, Liam Ó hUigín, Joe Scanlan, Mary Mulcahy, Philomena Cassidy, Don Morrissy, Derek O’Connell</p>
<p>Interviewer: <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Kieran+Murphy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kieran Murphy</a>, (<a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a>)</p>
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
<p>Cork, Ireland 1940s-2020s; Waterford, Ireland; Dublin, Ireland; Limerick, Ireland;</p>
Relation
A related resource
<p><strong>Exhibition</strong></p>
<p>Artist Edith O’Regan-Cosgrave (also an interviewee for the project) created a visual artwork based around the Grattan Street Medical Centre building itself, as a workplace and health centre. The artwork incorporated direct quotations from the oral history interviews conducted for the project, and also included brief historical paragraphs about the building researched, written and edited by the <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy. This exhibition was launched on 6<sup>th</sup> February 2020 in “St Peter’s” on the North Main Street where a “Listening Event” was also held to mark the occasion.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:10%;"><br /><br /><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Grattan-Poster-for-Email-286-by-400.jpg" alt="Grattan-Poster-for-Email-286-by-400.jpg" /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:10%;"></p>
<p><strong>Presentation and Listening Event</strong></p>
<p>To coincide with the launch of the Grattan Street Stories Exhibtion on 6<sup>th</sup> February 2020 a listening event and presentation of the history of the Grattan Street Medical Centre building and description of the project was given by <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy.<br /><br /><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/427A7714-1.jpg" alt="427A7714-1.jpg" /></p>
<p><strong>Presentation</strong></p>
<p>In 2019 at the OHNI conference the <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy discussed social media and oral history which included audio excerpts from the Grattan Street Stories Project along with photographs of the building.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:150%;"><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Kieran-OHNI-e1634041838937.jpg" alt="Kieran-OHNI-e1634041838937.jpg" /></p>
<p><strong>Audio Visual Presentation</strong></p>
<p>An audio-visual slideshow was produced featuring oral testimony from the Grattan Street Stories Project and combined with suitable images of Grattan Street and from Edith O’Regan-Cosgrave’s exhibition. This was created by <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy.<br /><br /></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:10%;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnjEtQeOb3I&t=1s&ab_channel=CorkFolklore" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Audio Visual Presentation Available to listen and view here.</a>
<p><strong>Health and Vaccines Oral History Research<br /></strong><br />Many of the interviews conducted for the Grattan Street project formed an integral part of the testimonies and research for the innovative<br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/health/about" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">'Catching Stories'<span> </span>of infectious disease in Ireland </a>project funded by the Irish Research Council.<br /><br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/health/about" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Catching-Stories-Poster.jpg" alt="Catching-Stories-Poster.jpg" /></a></p>
<strong>Social Media</strong> <br /><br />Numerous suitable audio excerpts from the oral history interviews have been edited and shared on CFP's social media channels.<br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1139167201582288901" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1139167201582288901</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1140909542240391168" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1140909542240391168</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1141264486768238592" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1141264486768238592</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1189872295923376133" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1189872295923376133</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1228322700415860736" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1228322700415860736</a>
<strong>Orthopaedic Hospital</strong><br />Cork Folklore Project in collaboration with the HSE conducted an oral history project focussing on the Orthapaedic Hospital in Gurranabraher. <br /><br /><span>Many of the staff and services once provided at the Grattan Street Health Centre site were moved to St. Mary's Health Campus (St Mary’s Primary Care Centre) Gurranabraher, the former site of the Orthopaedic Hospital. </span><br /><br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/collections/show/10" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">HSE Orthopaedic Hospital Oral History Project (d'Orthopaedic)</a>
<strong>Swimming Article</strong><br /><br />Kieran Murphy and James Furey co-authored an article about<br /><a href="https://tripeanddrisheen.substack.com/p/swim-city?s=r" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Swimming in Cork</a> which appeared in the online magazine Tripe + Drisheen. This article features a number of interview extracts collected as part of the Grattan Street Stories Project.
<strong>Related Interviews<br /><br /></strong>CFP_SR00756_Quilligan_2019;<br />CFP_SR00758_Broderick_2019;<br />CFP_SR00670_OShea_2018;<strong><br /><br /></strong>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Cork Folklore Project
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Audio
Format
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16 .wav Files
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Don Morrissy
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Kieran Murphy
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
61 Minutes 10 Seconds
Location
The location of the interview
Cork Folklore Project Hub, North Cathedral Visitor Centre, Roman Street
Original Format
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.wav
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
24bit / 48kHz
Time Summary
A summary of an interview given for different time stamps throughout the interview
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.00.00 - 0.00.19</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p>intro</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.00.19 - 0.00.00</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Earliest Memory Playing Fermoy</strong></p>
<p>In Fermoy about 3 years old playing under a table in a big room.</p>
<p>His grand-aunt <span>Julie O’Connor known as Auntie Jess owned the Grand Hotel in Fermoy. She bought the hotel. She was an entrepreneur. She was on good terms with the clergy.</span></p>
<p><span>She didn’t like his name Donal and called him Don which stuck.</span></p>
<p><span>She only had one eye, she wore a false eye.</span> </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.02.41 - 0.03.24</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong><span>Where he lived growing up</span></strong></p>
<p><span>Initially grew up in Grattan Street</span></p>
<p><span>Moved to Mardyke when mother bought house in 1949 and he stayed there until 22 when he went to Dublin.</span> </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.03.24 - 0.07.13</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Living in Grattan Street Dispensary & Children’s Games</strong></p>
<p>Was told that he played with a girl and a pram.</p>
<p><span>Played gobs with local children. Gobs: throwing stones up and caught them on the back of your hand.</span></p>
<p>Remembers playing with bricks on the stairs in Grattan Street.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.04.40 - 0.06.27</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Pharmacist Father</strong></p>
<p>House had three bedrooms. Maybe had a kitchen and at least another room downstairs. Assumes there was an indoor bathroom was unusual.</p>
<p>Father was a pharmacist, met Don’s mother in Fermoy where he trained and they got married in Mallow. He was from Quilty in County Clare and they moved there after living for a while in Fermoy.</p>
<p>He opened his own business in Clare- wasn’t a good businessman- he wasn’t good at getting patients to pay for their medicines and medications. He got a job as the pharmacist in Grattan Street in Cork city.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.06.27 - 0.07.46</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Description of Father & Spanish Flu</strong></p>
<p>Vague memory of father. Not very tall. Kind man. Good singer and piano player. Father went to Rockwell College where he caught<span> Spanish flu which stunted his growth at around 5 foot 6. His name was John or J.J and also known as Sean.</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.07.46 - 0.10.14</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong><span>Family & School</span></strong></p>
<p><span>His father stopped working in Grattan Street and there were issues between him and Don’s mother so they split up.</span></p>
<p><span>Moved to Mardyke when mother bought house in 1949 and he stayed there until 22 when he went to Dublin</span></p>
<p>Went to St Joseph’s school on the Mardyke. He is said to have run home twice from school on first day.</p>
<p>Only knew of one person with a car, a teacher called Bob Tanner. “bob” was slang for shilling and “tanner” was slang for sixpence so he was known as “One and Sixpence”. He had an old ‘bockety’ Ford which holes in the floor through which you could see the road. Lots of children from the Marsh area- Sheare Street, Grattan Street etc. would have gone there.</p>
<p>Don will be collecting his grandson after the interview and there will be lots of cars and no brothers teaching in the school.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.10.14 - 0.12.20</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Violence & kindness of different Presentation Brothers in School</strong></p>
<p>Didn’t like the brothers, “they were brutes” except for a few kindly ones. He doesn’t like authority. Went to Presentation Brothers Secondary school where the lay teachers were more humane.</p>
<p>The brothers were physically violent. Don expresses surprise that although one hears court cases about brothers sexually assaulting pupils that he hasn’t heard ones relating to physical assault.</p>
<p>One very nice, good man was Brother Pascal who was very musical. He ran an accordion ban, a flageolet band (woodwind instrument) and a choir. Pascal ended up teaching deaf pupils in Greenmount.</p>
<p>He didn’t like anything about school.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.12.20 - 0.14.40</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong><span>Childhood Games & Local Area</span></strong></p>
<p><span>Got up to mischief outside school. Lots of children in the Mardyke at the time who he played with.</span></p>
<p><span>House he grew up in was beside Fitzgerald’s Park where he could play. They played football, cowboys and Indians, Robin Hood and climbing trees.</span></p>
<p><span>He grew up surrounded by famous sports people including Noel Cantwell who has an avenue named after him who captained Manchester United. Tommy Kiernan and Barry McGann played rugby for Ireland. He grew up near Sundays Well Tennis Club, Cork Cricket Club, university playing fields, and the public baths. And he can’t play any of those sports.</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.14.40 - 0.19.07</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Description of Mother & her Guesthouse</strong></p>
<p>Mother came from outside Youghal from a farm. Later worked with his grand aunt in Fermoy. Small lady. Ran her house as a guesthouse. She bought the house intending to keep students. Lots of commercial travellers stayed there and tourists in the summer. His 2 sisters sent to boarding school Loreto Convent Fermoy where his mother had gone.</p>
<p>She didn’t have a great sense of humour. Her main concern was providing for them. She lived to be 97.</p>
<p>Commercial travellers were salesmen who called on retail shops to get goods into the shop. Recalls a commercial traveller called Mackintosh for Dell Comics, and he had stacks of comics in the van and he gave one of each to Don. There was one for keys, fire alarms. Often colourful characters who had their own cars.</p>
<p>Guests also included chauffeurs who drove rich Americans around Ireland. The Americans may have stayed in the Metropole Hotel. The cars were big Austin Princesses like a Rolls Royce and they were parked on the Mardyke and were never damaged. He got a spin in them.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.19.07 - 0.24.09</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Home Life: Guests, Food & Cooking, Description of the House, Card-playing</strong></p>
<p>Felt like the house wasn’t theirs because there were always strangers in the house. Always 4 or 5 students staying with them. When older he got to know the students. Grew up on his own and still describes himself as a recluse.</p>
<p>Mother cooked breakfast and tea but not a midday meal. She was a very good cook. Did all her own baking.</p>
<p>Basic meals: eggs for breakfast. A fry in the evening. Chips were made on a Friday which were cooked in lard and put in brown paper. Whiting fish which he hated on a Friday as meat wasn’t allowed for practicing Catholics.</p>
<p>They ate in kitchen while the guests ate in the dining room. When the guests weren’t eating it became the sitting room. Fire lighting always in the sitting room. It was like a game of whist always moving tables.</p>
<p>His mother was a very good card player they played at Christmastime when her friends Elsie and Liam who were teacher came to visit. They used to play the card game 110. Elsie used to pick up cards from the discard pile of cards which was a form of cheating but she was never prevented from doing it.</p>
<p>For a small house it was very busy. Don still owns the house.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.24.09 - 0.25.41</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Don’s Holidays and his Mother’s Holidays</strong></p>
<p>Mother took a few days off around September where she stayed with an unmarried cousin Maureen Hennessey in Sandycove Dun Laoghaire. She also visited Elsie and Liam in Malahide. Describes travelling from north Dublin to South Dublin as a great distance.</p>
<p>He was sent to an uncle and aunt during the summer for a holiday. Had cousins around his age living on the farm his mother grew up in where he stayed on holidays. His uncle had a buckrake which had spikes and was attached to the back of the tractor. His uncle put straw on it and put the children on the straw and he drove the tractor so they were swung from side to side. Don doesn’t think this was very safe.</p>
<p>Remembers the summers as hot and sunny.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.25.41 - 0.29.21</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>University and Debating</strong></p>
<p>Went to UCC in 1963 for a 3 year Commerce degree. Worked in Cork briefly and then in a Canadian merchant bank for 3 years in Dublin. And then he came back to Cork.</p>
<p>UCC was the most important time in his life. Gained confidence and met lots of people. Total freedom compared to school. Met his wife there. Was not a great student he says.</p>
<p>Was involved in debating which allowed him contact with other universities. Recalls debating against Michael D. Higgins. Thinks he began university later having started working first possibly in the ESB.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.29.21 - 0.35.55</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>UCC: The debating Society, Study, Lecturer’s Gowns, Rules and grounds and gardens</strong></p>
<p>There was a Commerce Society. The Philosophical Society of “philosoph” was the big one. It had people from every faculty where they “talked rubbish”. Once won the speaker of the year award. The debates were held on Saturday night.</p>
<p>The auditor of the philosoph was Oliver Lyons who was a teacher in Carrigtouhil later once said “I am the philosophical Society” in response to a challenge to the rules.</p>
<p>Don had about 50 in his class. A son of his did Commerce with 300 in his class.</p>
<p>Doesn’t think they had to study as hard back then.</p>
<p>First lecture the dean came in late wearing a white linen jacket and panama hat, a famous economist John Busteed. He expected them to do some work but “not as hard as the little girls in Woolworths”.</p>
<p>When you registered in UCC you met the registrar and the president.</p>
<p>Don was called mister for the first time. The president told him to work hard.</p>
<p>All lecturers and professors wore gowns.</p>
<p>Recalls the nicely cut grey suit of the president.</p>
<p>RAG week was a very tame event compared at the time.</p>
<p>In his 2<sup>nd</sup> year a classmate said that the new first years were too pushy and they should have been more humble.</p>
<p>There was a rule that you couldn’t walk on the grass on the Quad and that girls were not allowed to lie on the grass anywhere.</p>
<p> The lower grounds were wild and had subtropical plants, where the Glucksman is now and it’s more tamed. He preferred it wild.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.35.55 - 0.38.25</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Work, Marriage, Honeymoon</strong></p>
<p>Worked in Cork for 9 months then moved to Dublin. Had a flat in Clyde Rd. graduated 1966 and married his wife Deirdre on Monday 14<sup>th</sup> August 1967, went to Achill for their honeymoon. Stayed a few nights in Butler Arms Hotel in Waterville and stopped in Limerick in the Royal or the George Hotel. They didn’t realise there were any buses in Limerick!</p>
<p>When she arrived back in the flat in Dublin there were 4 quasi-empty milk bottles in the sink! They are still married after 53 years.</p>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.38.25 - 0.41.22</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Pensions Work in Dublin</strong></p>
<p>Worked with Royal Trust Company subsequently Royal Trust Bank. They were money managers. Pioneered the area of privately invested pension funds, until that time insurance companies dominated the market. Spent his life working in pensions because of that experience. They expanded to merchant banker and money market transactions. He learned a lot although only peripherally involved- much more than he learned in UCC. He didn’t like his new boss and left they job because of him- is not sure it was the best decision.</p>
<p>Flat in Clyde Rd and also bought a house in Dublin with the aid of a company loan. Mortgage interest rates were at 8% or 9% and his was 4% or so. Paid £5,500 for the house and sold it a year later for £6,500. Ballinclea Heights in Killiney. </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.41.22 - 0.43.15</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Living Accommodation in Cork & Buying Houses</strong></p>
<p>Rented a place behind Oriel Court Hotel in Ballincollig. The big house and outhouses had been converted into flats. They rented what had been the stables. Then bought a house in the city centre of Cork on Western Road which they sold and bought another house further up Western Road which was also sold and they now live in Shanakiel where they are for 34 years.</p>
<p>They nearly forgot the baby when they were moving house!</p>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.43.15 - 0.45.51</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Hopes for Cork development</strong></p>
<p>Change in development in Cork over the years. He says he doesn’t meet people in Cork city in the way he used to.</p>
<p>Is looking forward to the new changes in the city on the quays and docks which over the next decade will be huge he thinks. He would look to see the equivalent of Dublin’s financial centre in Cork.</p>
<p>McCarthy from Fexco said he wouldn’t move from Killorglin to Dublin because it doesn’t have scenery. Believes it’s possible for people to work from anywhere now.</p>
<p>Would also like to see Cork have an IT hub.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.45.51 - 0.49.10</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Grattan Street Dispensary for Weddings</strong></p>
<p>Dispensary on Grattan Street he doesn’t know what happened to it. Although he was back in the building for a wedding.</p>
<p>Never got to go back and look inside.</p>
<p>He was married in Honan chapel which had more appeal to him than a room in the old dispensary.</p>
<p>Recalls a cut-stone building facing onto Grattan Street. Never remembers being inside the dispensary. Left the dispensary when he was 3 years old.</p>
<p>In St Josephs School he met boys from Sheares Street and Paul Street but doesn’t think they had the opportunity to go to university.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.49.10 - 0.50.36</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Outlook and reflection on life</strong></p>
<p>Raised as an only child and glad that his own children have been raised differently. Adamant after his own childhood that he would look after his own children as best he could.</p>
<p>Believes that his own background gave him a sense of insecurity and hunger which drove him to find security.</p>
<p>Retired early and was involved in a number of business deals of varying success.</p>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.50.36 - 0.52.34</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Grattan Street: Dairy, medicine and cream</strong></p>
<p>Recalls Grattan Street being busy and having tenement houses.</p>
<p>There was a dairy on each end of Grattan St. Bradleys dairy at Sheares Street end and another one at the Kyle St end. It was all horse drawn carriages- few cars and lorries.</p>
<p>The dairy sold butter. Was sent on his bicycle with an Andrews Kruschen Salts jar. His mother took the Kruschen salts every day as medicine. It was a small brown bottle half size of beer bottle with screw on top, with grease proof paper to prevent leakage. The jar was for cream which cost sixpence. They also sold butter pats but they didn’t buy butter there.</p>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.52.34 - 00.54.44</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Tripe and Drisheen</strong></p>
<p>His mother never cooked tripe and drisheen. Tried them since and didn’t like. Drisheen “the most gelatinous horrible stuff”. Thinks tripe should be nice with onions and milk.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>His mother told a story that after giving birth she was confined to bed for weeks in a nursing home in Fermoy and as a special treat the nun in charge gave her tripe and his mother broke down in tears because she couldn’t eat it.</p>
<p>Don knows men who were reared on tripe and drisheen.</p>
<p>Likes black pudding. Has eaten haggis which he liked the taste of.</p>
<p>He asked what Haggis was and was told that he didn’t want to know!</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.54.44 - 0.55.06</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Pawn Shops and Lack of Money</strong></p>
<p>Didn’t have any dealings with pawn shops that he knew of even though there wasn’t much money around.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.55.06 - 0.57.36</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Coal Quay, Shawlies Status and Respectability</strong></p>
<p>Recalls the Coal Quay and the shawlies, which he suggests was not a complimentary name.</p>
<p>Discusses how he read that there were degrees of respectability or status. At the bottom were shawlies, then women who wore coats and scarves, then women with coats and hat, and above that were women who wore costumes and hats.</p>
<p>Says he wasn’t aware of that at the time.</p>
<p>He subsequently saw a clip of the Coal Quay on television where a women wearing a hat and coat turned her back to avoid being recorded as being in the Coal Quay</p>
<p>Mentions Katty Barry’s pub where crubeens were sold at closing time. Though he was “wild enough” in college he didn’t drink until he left college and began to work.</p>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.57.36 -1.01.02</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Cork Dancehalls 1960s</strong></p>
<p>Recalls the Main Rest in UCC which transformed into a dancehall one night a week, and everyone went to “The Rest”.</p>
<p>Robin Power (who trained as a dentist but became an entrepreneur) started a dance in the Arcadia known as The Dinosaurs, which he thinks was on Thursday or Friday night which everyone wanted to attend if they had enough money.</p>
<p>A typical student might have a bicycle but at the time Robin Flower had an Alfa Romeo!</p>
<p>Brought big Irish bands there like Sandy Shaw.</p>
<p>Arcadia was a designed ballroom with a mirrored disco ball which made it more romantic and exotic.</p>
<p>The rest closed at 11pm and the Arcadia at 12 midnight.</p>
<p>He met a women from Ballinlough who said she walked home from the Arcadia late at night because it was so safe back then, but she was afraid of seeing a ghost! That’s how innocent things were.</p>
<p>The Arcadia still stands it is student accommodation now across from Kent train station.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.01.02 - 1.01.10</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Outro</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p></p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Don Morrissy: Grattan Street, Healthcare, Working Life
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CFP_SR00760_Morrissy_2019;
Relation
A related resource
<strong>Other Interviews in this Collection </strong><br /><br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/240" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00696_O'Regan_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/242" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00704_Collins_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/243" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00706_Higgisson_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/244" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00712_O'Brien_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/245" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00713_Kearney_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/246" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00714_Cunning_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/247" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00717_Ward_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/248" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00727_OhUigin_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/249" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00728_Scanlan_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/250" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00729_Mulcahy_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/251" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00732_Cassidy_2019</a>;<br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/253" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> CFP_SR00762_OConnell_2019</a>;
Rights
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Cork Folklore Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
1 .wav file
Subject
The topic of the resource
<span>Ireland; Cork; Dublin; Middle Parish; The Marsh; Grattan Street; Occupational Lore; University; </span>
Description
An account of the resource
<p><span>Don recalls his entrepreneurial great-aunt who owned the Grand Hotel in Fermoy. </span></p>
<p><span>Recounts early years in the Grattan Street Dispensary building where his father was the pharmacist. </span></p>
<p><span>Describes growing up on the Mardyke close to St Joseph’s School and Presentation Brothers School which he attended. Talks about the violence of corporal punishment. </span></p>
<p><span>His mother ran a guesthouse in the family home, including preparing all the meals for the customers who were mostly university students and commercial travellers with their own cars which was rare.</span></p>
<p><span>Remembers summer holidays on a cousin’s farm.</span></p>
<p><span>Describes his time in University College Cork as the most important in his life. Discusses student societies, debating and the university grounds.</span></p>
<p><span>Outlines his working life in pensions, career direction, marriage as well as living accommodation.</span></p>
<p><span>Expresses his hopes for building developments in Cork and the emerging opportunities of remote working there. </span></p>
<p><span>Reflects on how his background has formed his outlook on life.</span></p>
<p><span>Describes cycling to collect cream from Bradleys Dairy on Sheare’s Street in an Andrews Kruschen Salts jar. Also mentions his distaste for tripe and drisheen.</span></p>
<p><span>Talks about a hierarchy of respectability in Cork based on types of clothing, with shawlies being the lowest rank.</span></p>
<p><span>Discusses Cork dancehalls in the 1960s including UCC, the Arcadia and the people who organised them.</span></p>
Arcadia
Bands
Business
Cars
Childhood
Childhood Games
Children’s Games
Clare
Coal Quay
Commercial Travellers
Cooking
Corporal Punishment
Dancehalls
Dances
Entrepreneur
Fermoy
Fitzgerald’s Park
Food
Gobs
Grattan Street
Guesthouse
Healthcare
Honan Chapel
Katty Barry
Mardyke
Marriage
Medicine
Medicines
Middle Parish
Music
Musical Instruments
Parents
Playing
Presentation Brothers
Public Baths
Respectability
School
Schooldays
Shawlie
Shawlies
Shawls
Sheares Street
Spanish Flu
Sport
St Joseph's School
The Marsh
Tripe
Tripe and Drisheen
UCC
UCC Philosoph
University
University College Cork
Weddings
Working
Working life
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https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/files/original/47998d1b6000a76e70981ad7252a7f04.jpg
e245f89b3e8cbbb2c200a3033ee23a69
https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/files/original/859e801dd14591ec7d7a25917a9ecc6c.wav
42cd57234548f74e7bc3b88c245586c0
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<p>Grattan Street Stories: Memory of Place</p>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Occupational Lore; Life History; Built Heritage; Health; Ireland; Cork; Middle Parish
Description
An account of the resource
<p>This collection focuses on a building on Grattan Street which has served as a Quaker Meeting House, a public Dispensary and as the Grattan Street Health Centre. The project was a collaboration between the CFP and the Cork North Community Work Department, Cork Kerry Community Healthcare, Health Services Executive HSE. </p>
<p>The interviewees fall into two main groups: those who worked in the building and those who lived in the surrounding area and availed of the services provided in the building.</p>
<p>This project follows on from the collaboration with the HSE in the “<a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/collections/show/10" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">HSE Orthopaedic Hospital Oral History Project (d'Orthopaedic)</a>”. There is a further connection between the two projects as many of the staff and services once provided in the Grattan Street Health Centre have now relocated to St. Mary's Health Campus (St Mary’s Primary Care Centre) Gurranabraher, the former site of the Orthopaedic Hospital. This topic of the relocation of services is also covered in some staff interviews. <br /><br />To date (October 2021) 13 interviews have been completed for the project.<br /><br />Interviewees discuss the Grattan Street building itself in terms of its historic significance, its benefits and drawbacks as a workplace. Broader themes related to or inspired by the building are also touched on including: personal relationship with the building, staff camaraderie, the problems with parking, memorable incidents at work, patient experiences and descriptions of the people and services for which the building catered.<br /><br />Healthcare professional interviewees detail their training, career progression and comparisons between Grattan Street and other workplaces. Their testimonies also provide a link with the community of patients they served giving further insight into attitudes to healthcare, diseases, vaccines, description of social conditions and the changes in medicine and technology in their working lives.<br /><br />Non-healthcare professional interviewees describe childhood experiences in or around Grattan Street (The Marsh or The Middle Parish), the social, cultural and economic conditions of the area, tenements, businesses, attitudes to and experiences of healthcare, vaccines, diseases, medicines and medical professionals as well as observed changes in these areas over time.<br /><br />Interviewees also reflect on the possible future uses of the Grattan Street building.<br /><br /><strong>Related Reference Sources</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Barrington, R.<em> (</em>1987) <em>Health, medicine and politics in Ireland, 1900–1970</em>. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration.</li>
<li><span>Butler D.M. (2004) <em>The Quaker meeting houses of Ireland</em></span>. Dublin : Irish Friends Historical Committee.</li>
<li><span>Byrne, J. (2004) <em>Byrne's dictionary of Irish local history.</em> Cork: Mercier Press.</span></li>
<li>Cooke, R. T. (1999) <em>My Home by the Lee</em>. Irish Millennium Publications: Cork.</li>
<li><span>Dempsey, P. J. & White, L. W. ‘Childers, Erskine Hamilton’. <em>Dictionary of Irish Biography</em> </span>[Accessed 18 October 2021]</li>
<li>Harrison, R.S. (1991) <em>Cork City Quakers 1655-1939: A Brief History</em>. Cork.</li>
<li>Houston, M. (2004). ‘Life before the GP’. <em>The</em> <em>Irish Times. </em>Available at : <<a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/life-before-the-gp-1.1158599">https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/life-before-the-gp-1.1158599</a> > [Accessed 18 October 2021]</li>
<li>Keohane, F. (2020) <em>The Buildings of Ireland Cork City and County</em>. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.</li>
</ul>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-2020
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
<p>Interviewees: Edith O’Regan, 'Mary', Sean Higgisson, Aoife O’Brien, Eileen Kearney, Imelda Cunning, Jane Ward, Liam Ó hUigín, Joe Scanlan, Mary Mulcahy, Philomena Cassidy, Don Morrissy, Derek O’Connell</p>
<p>Interviewer: <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Kieran+Murphy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kieran Murphy</a>, (<a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a>)</p>
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
<p>Cork, Ireland 1940s-2020s; Waterford, Ireland; Dublin, Ireland; Limerick, Ireland;</p>
Relation
A related resource
<p><strong>Exhibition</strong></p>
<p>Artist Edith O’Regan-Cosgrave (also an interviewee for the project) created a visual artwork based around the Grattan Street Medical Centre building itself, as a workplace and health centre. The artwork incorporated direct quotations from the oral history interviews conducted for the project, and also included brief historical paragraphs about the building researched, written and edited by the <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy. This exhibition was launched on 6<sup>th</sup> February 2020 in “St Peter’s” on the North Main Street where a “Listening Event” was also held to mark the occasion.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:10%;"><br /><br /><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Grattan-Poster-for-Email-286-by-400.jpg" alt="Grattan-Poster-for-Email-286-by-400.jpg" /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:10%;"></p>
<p><strong>Presentation and Listening Event</strong></p>
<p>To coincide with the launch of the Grattan Street Stories Exhibtion on 6<sup>th</sup> February 2020 a listening event and presentation of the history of the Grattan Street Medical Centre building and description of the project was given by <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy.<br /><br /><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/427A7714-1.jpg" alt="427A7714-1.jpg" /></p>
<p><strong>Presentation</strong></p>
<p>In 2019 at the OHNI conference the <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy discussed social media and oral history which included audio excerpts from the Grattan Street Stories Project along with photographs of the building.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:150%;"><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Kieran-OHNI-e1634041838937.jpg" alt="Kieran-OHNI-e1634041838937.jpg" /></p>
<p><strong>Audio Visual Presentation</strong></p>
<p>An audio-visual slideshow was produced featuring oral testimony from the Grattan Street Stories Project and combined with suitable images of Grattan Street and from Edith O’Regan-Cosgrave’s exhibition. This was created by <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/community-oral-history-outreach-officer/">CFP Community Oral History Outreach Officer</a> Kieran Murphy.<br /><br /></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:10%;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnjEtQeOb3I&t=1s&ab_channel=CorkFolklore" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Audio Visual Presentation Available to listen and view here.</a>
<p><strong>Health and Vaccines Oral History Research<br /></strong><br />Many of the interviews conducted for the Grattan Street project formed an integral part of the testimonies and research for the innovative<br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/health/about" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">'Catching Stories'<span> </span>of infectious disease in Ireland </a>project funded by the Irish Research Council.<br /><br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/health/about" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img src="http://corkfolklore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Catching-Stories-Poster.jpg" alt="Catching-Stories-Poster.jpg" /></a></p>
<strong>Social Media</strong> <br /><br />Numerous suitable audio excerpts from the oral history interviews have been edited and shared on CFP's social media channels.<br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1139167201582288901" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1139167201582288901</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1140909542240391168" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1140909542240391168</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1141264486768238592" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1141264486768238592</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1189872295923376133" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1189872295923376133</a><br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1228322700415860736" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://twitter.com/corkfolklore/status/1228322700415860736</a>
<strong>Orthopaedic Hospital</strong><br />Cork Folklore Project in collaboration with the HSE conducted an oral history project focussing on the Orthapaedic Hospital in Gurranabraher. <br /><br /><span>Many of the staff and services once provided at the Grattan Street Health Centre site were moved to St. Mary's Health Campus (St Mary’s Primary Care Centre) Gurranabraher, the former site of the Orthopaedic Hospital. </span><br /><br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/collections/show/10" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">HSE Orthopaedic Hospital Oral History Project (d'Orthopaedic)</a>
<strong>Swimming Article</strong><br /><br />Kieran Murphy and James Furey co-authored an article about<br /><a href="https://tripeanddrisheen.substack.com/p/swim-city?s=r" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Swimming in Cork</a> which appeared in the online magazine Tripe + Drisheen. This article features a number of interview extracts collected as part of the Grattan Street Stories Project.
<strong>Related Interviews<br /><br /></strong>CFP_SR00756_Quilligan_2019;<br />CFP_SR00758_Broderick_2019;<br />CFP_SR00670_OShea_2018;<strong><br /><br /></strong>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Cork Folklore Project
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Audio
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
16 .wav Files
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Aoife O'Brien
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Kieran Murphy
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
80 Minutes 1 Second
Location
The location of the interview
Grattan Street Medical Centre
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
.wav
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
24bit / 48kHz
Time Summary
A summary of an interview given for different time stamps throughout the interview
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.00.00 - 0.00.52</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Role in Grattan Street Medical Centre</strong></p>
<p>Clerical Officer in Grattan Street Medical Centre for 18/19 years. From Cathedral Road originally. Only Northsider working in Grattan Street Medical Centre!</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.00.52 - 0.02.44</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Background, Childhood and Games</strong></p>
<p>Grew up in cul-de-sac terrace called School Avenue.</p>
<p>Primary school: St Vincent’s.</p>
<p>Games: “piggy”, skipping ropes. Convinced her friends that there were fairies in trees by her house. Took over older sister Sinead’s job in Grattan Street Medical Centre. They played together with Sinead as the teacher and Aoife as the student in their grandmother’s room using chalk which got on grandmother’s clothes and she never knew when it came from. Started school with boys & girls she was friends with and still friends with many of them today.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.02.44 - 0.03.37</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Childhood Games: Piggy</strong></p>
<p>Describes the game how it’s made and its rules (also known as hopscotch or pickey) chalk on the road and use a shoe polish tin. Very popular where Aoife was from.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.03.37 - 0.05.06</strong></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Grand Mother’s shop on Churchfield Green</strong>.</p>
<p>Grandmother’s surname was Stephens and people who know Aoife from the shop know her as Aoife Stephens. Had friends up near the shop. Shop closed 20 years ago. Her dad drove her and siblings from school to the shop after school. Her mom worked up there.</p>
<p>Aoife and her friend Paula went to the “Pound Shop” or collected old wool from people’s houses to make ponytails in imitation of Like “Rainbow Brite Dolls”.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.05.06 - 0.07.37</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Grandmother’s Shop- description, shopping notes, fun </strong></p>
<p>Shop was hub of activity. Customers sent up notes with the items they wanted. Children played hiding in fridges. “Light-fingered”- as children they took things from the shop. It was a grocery shop selling: milk, bread, cold meats, sweets, cigarettes.</p>
<p>Recalls a funny incident when her cousin Leonard got a note which had “S. Towels” meaning sanitary towels but he asked his dad “what are stowels?”</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.07.37 - 0.13.23</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Grandmother: Description, her Funeral, Summer Holidays with her, Christmas Day, Caring for others, Cooking Tripe and Drisheen</strong></p>
<p>Aoife thought her grandmother wasn’t patient because she had a quick tongue. Now looking back she thinks she was very patient. Aoife’s sister went to live with their grandmother when granddad died.</p>
<p>Used to stay in caravans down in Youghal. Eventually they rented a house from a woman called Maureen. About 13 children stayed there in Youghal with grandmother for the summer. Grandmother doted on all of them.</p>
<p>At her funeral people had very fond memories of her. She was an agony aunt and confidante. A neighbour could chat in the shop for 3 hours with her.</p>
<p>Family always went to grandmother’s house for Christmas Day. When grandmother sold the house she came to live with Aoife’s family and the rest of the family came to them for Christmas. <br /><br />Grandmother always had an apron or pinnies [pinafores]. She was glamourous at the time. She used to go to the Isle of Man and she used to wear wigs because they were in fashion. Aoife called her grandmother Mrs Bijoux because she had so much jewellery. She would put so much jewellery on for special occasions that she probably couldn’t bend some of her fingers! She had fur coats. A lovely old lady. Grey hair and loved her cigarettes. She never really inhaled them it was just a habit and for comfort. Loved chocolate. Went for a nap after dinner. She woke at dawn and put the washing on.</p>
<p>She cooked tripe and drisheen for Aoife’s dad who worked nights in Irish Steel. Grandmother loved feeding people. Steak and gravy could be cooked in the morning so Aoife’s mom only had to heat it up. “The smell alone would turn me off” the tripe and drisheen. “Fairly gruesome now to be honest”. “she knew by my face not to even ask” if Aoife wanted to taste any.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.13.23 - 0.14.55</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Christmas Day</strong></p>
<p>Start 10am. Aoife’s parents & her 3 sisters. Uncle Jim now deceased. Aunt Geraldine. Grandmother had 2 girls and 2 boys. Neighbours would call in. Everyone in a small kitchen. It was the hub of the family. Fighting over toys and batteries.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.14.55 - 0.16.53</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>School</strong></p>
<p>Enjoyed it. As admin for the vaccinations department in Grattan Street Medical Centre she has goes back to St Vincent’s twice a year for vaccines: HPV (human papillomavirus), Men C (meningitis C) and Tdap (tetanus and low dose diphtheria and low dose pertussis (whooping cough) booster). School still looks and smells the same. Saw her picture on the wall sitting next to two girls who she is still best friends with now.</p>
<p>Liked the subjects Art, French and Business Organisation (“Biz Org”).</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.16.53 - 0.20.11</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>After School: Courses and Jobs</strong></p>
<p>Did a secretarial course in Terence MacSwiney Community College and a City and Guilds Course. Work experience in solicitor’s office in Washington Street doing dictation and typing but felt a little bit like it was over her head. Worked in Dovertron Electronics in Dublin Hill which had the contract for the Sky Box where she worked for 6 months.</p>
<p>Worked in Bourns Electronics: 8 months soldering. Saturday job in a butchers in North Main Street- she hated smell of meat lasted 3 Saturdays!</p>
<p>Handed in CV to line manager and staff officers in HSE. Offered job 2 weeks after the interview. Feels like Grattan Street Medical Centre won’t let her go. Feels like part of the furniture.</p>
<p>The secretarial skills course she took included: computer skills, typing, floppy disks, word processing, dictation, typing, telephone manner,</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.20.11 - 0.22.31</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Recalls Grattan Street when visiting her sister before working there</strong></p>
<p>Aoife used to call into Grattan Street Medical Centre to visit her sister who worked there. She attended Michael O’Sullivan in the eye clinic when she was in school. She was familiar with the building. It is strange to be working in the building where she had been as a patient. There was a school nurse who she was afraid of and Aoife became her secretary.</p>
<p>Smoking: Canteen was halved at the time and smokers were on one side of it. People could smoke in their offices.</p>
<p>She stepped into her sister’s job. She felt very welcomed.</p>
<p>Aoife says that she doesn’t take direction very well, she prefers to do things her way. Her sister was very particular.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.22.31 - 0.25.00</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Memories as a Patient- and pretending to need glasses!</strong></p>
<p>Dark room, waiting to be called. As a child she was desperate to get glasses and braces. She used take silver foil from cigarette packets to put around teeth to imitate braces. She wore her grandfather’s glasses which had thick lenses “like jam jars” in the hope that she herself would need to wear glasses. She told Dr (Michael) O’Sullivan that she couldn’t see much of the (eye-test) board. Later on, after a year or two working in Grattan Street Medical Centre, she discovered that she did need glasses.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.25.00 - 0.26.23</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Difficult to leave Grattan Street Medical Centre</strong></p>
<p>Sister loved Grattan Street Medical Centre and was heartbroken to leave. Aoife has been in her office since March 2001. In facy she has been there longer than she has been in her own home. “My whole life story is been in the walls”. Leaving Grattan Street Medical Centre is tough for her and some of the others working there.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.26.23 - 0.32.57</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Description of Role and duties</strong></p>
<p>Every child in junior infants is offered a vision check MMR, booster vaccination and senior infant child is offered hearing check. Aoife and Síle (Sheila?) in Grattan Street Medical Centre cover the North Lee area from Macroom to Youghal, not the city, Glounthaune, Carrigtwohill, Cobh, Midleton area. Aoife works from the city to east Cork, there’s a very big workload so she must be organised. It’s a very rewarding job. It requires building a rapport with primary schools and secretaries.</p>
<p>As part of her work she needs to: send out forms to 58 primary schools and get packs ready for the schools and all the students and get the forms back by courier. The form have to be sorted based on the vaccination date schedule and people removed from the list if they refuse the vaccine. They also check that children weren’t vaccinated before eg. a “repeat student” (a student repeating a class or year) or maybe the student has lived in another country where they were vaccinated so that must be followed up. </p>
<p>They are almost busier in the summer months because the details of every child that has been vaccinated must be inputted into the system.</p>
<p>Aoife gets called a lot because she has been in Grattan Street Health Centre for so long that she has many answers to questions, for instance she buys all of the stationery for the building.</p>
<p>The computer system has changed in the last few years, it’s now a national system. Previously there was one system for Cork and Kerry but a different one for Galway etc. The new system is more time consuming at present but will be easier in the long run.</p>
<p>Cards on the database. Notes written on the cards which are kept as well.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.32.57 - 0.36.55</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Vaccinations in Secondary Schools</strong></p>
<p>Aoife goes to secondary schools providing administrative support as part of the vaccine programme. Visits a school twice: once for 1<sup>st</sup> dose of HPV and Men C and then 2<sup>nd</sup> dose of HPV and the Tdap. Boys aren’t given HPV at present but they will next year (2020) which will make things very busy.</p>
<p>Either Aoife brings the forms or the AMO Area Medical Officer will. Sometimes the school secretary sends 4<sup>th</sup> years (fourth year /transition year students) to help them. Checks that the students have the right consent forms. Ensures that the students get back to class after waiting 15 minutes after the vaccination.</p>
<p>First time the students have been at an appointment or vaccination without a parent. A bit of nerves from them.</p>
<p>Tdap is Tetannus. Men C for meningitis. HPV the cervical cancer vaccine.</p>
<p>Aoife says that nobody wants to get a vaccine but generally it’s fine.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.36.55 - 0.40.30</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Rare cases of people refusing vaccines and possible reasons why</strong></p>
<p>Not many people refuse the vaccinations. Some consent forms are confusing for people, especially if English is not their first languages. Aoife sees form where people sign to accept and refuse a vaccination so those have to be cleared up.</p>
<p>When a child is vaccinated a parent has to be present.</p>
<p>People refuse vaccines for personal reasons- don’t agree with them or have never taken them and won’t start now. Aoife mentions the controversy around the MMR but says that she cannot get involved as an admin. If she or a parent is unsure about something there is a doctor on call to answer any questions re vaccines.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.40.30 - 0.42.52</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>The Building itself in Grattan Street Medical Centre</strong></p>
<p>Aoife thinks that the Grattan Street Medical Centre building has character, it is quirky. It is not clinical like you think a medical centre might be. “There’s probably music in the walls of this building”, “It’s a happy building”. The roof leaks, door hinges break, things crack and things break. She has shared the office with the same girl for a few years and they will be separated when they leave. They know when to talk to each other or leave each other alone.</p>
<p>Pigeon poo has come down from the ceiling onto people.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.42.52 - 0.46.30</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Neighbourhood around Grattan Street Medical Centre</strong></p>
<p>So near town. On lunch can go to the bank. Few houses that live around them know them. Car park has been a source of hatred because so many use it and the school as well. No point in falling out with staff or neighbours over cars. A few people “fond of the drink” would come into the building there was never trouble there were always characters about the area. Could find people sleeping rough at the side of the building.</p>
<p>Will miss the location. Know the people in the local shops and chemists with whom she’s built up relationships. Goes to the furniture shop on North Main Street, they ask when she’s leaving Grattan Street Medical Centre and she says “don’t mention the war! Just don’t talk about it because I can’t talk about it.” Feels it’s the end of an era and it’s sad.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.46.30 - 0.50.41</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Moving to St Mary’s Primary Care Centre Gurranbraher</strong></p>
<p>Aoife’s workplace is moving to the old orthopaedic hospital now the St Mary’s Primary Care Centre in Gurranabraher. She feels institutionalised being in Grattan Street Medical Centre so long. Aoife has organised social aspect of Grattan Street Medical Centre eg. the Christmas party and lunch parties for people leaving. She even once served lunch after she had made the orders. It’s like a family away from home. There’s about 50 staff but never there at the same time.</p>
<p>GPs, mental health, public health nursing, dental will all be up in St Mary’s. Aoife wonders about how they will keep the soul of Grattan Street Medical Centre when they move. Some people are delighted to be moving to a new building. But for Aoife it’s the people that make it.</p>
<p>Change is good even though it’s scary. Will ensure they still do nights out, lunches, Christmas events. Wants to keep something about Grattan Street Medical Centre as well.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.50.41 - 0.54.30</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Social Aspects of Grattan Street Medical Centre</strong></p>
<p>Tradition before Christmas breakup day bring some food to the canteen between 12:30-2:30 big lunch in canteen. A feast- people make the effort. Aoife puts Christmas music on an old CD player. Some people play instruments eg. Violin.</p>
<p>Party night at the airport hotel, plays. You can’t please everyone- you’ll never get the date right or the venue right.</p>
<p>Takes lots of patience and organisation to do the social events. Recommends that people pay for the meal beforehand and she gives the restaurant the money and then everyone pays for everything extra themselves.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.54.30 - 0.56.45</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Organising Social Events and responsibility for money</strong></p>
<p>People think when you work for HSE they may think you get subsidised nights out. Mindful that she’s handling other people’s money. Bad snow one Christmas and only 2 members of staff made it to the party in Oriel House Ballincollig. There was no refund and that may have affected the turnout the next years.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.56.45 - 0.59.20</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Stories from Grattan Street</strong></p>
<p>Wasps coming through the decorative vents in the ceiling one year.</p>
<p>Leaks in the roof.</p>
<p>Boiler broke down and Aoife spotted smoke on the way to work.</p>
<p>Flooding prevented staff from getting to work in Grattan Street.</p>
<p>Professor Drumm (Brendan Drumm) head of HSE was visiting and there was new cutlery arrived and lots of scones from Duggan’s cake shop around the corner. Aoife was giving the scones to people as they were leaving even Prof Drumm.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>0.59.20 - 1.04.00</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Assumptions about the HSE</strong></p>
<p>Aoife has a pensionable job and works hard for it. And HSE is in the news a lot, eg the cervical test issues. But Aoife can only account for the work she does. Elderly people would always ask her the same two questions; can you get me a medical card and can you get me glasses?</p>
<p>Welfare officers used to be downstairs in Grattan Street Medical Centre there could be an array of different characters. Sometimes there would be uproar with someone trying to skip the queue for the welfare officer.</p>
<p>Gone to look at the style in weddings in the registry office in the front of the building.</p>
<p>First gay marriage in Cork in the registry office.</p>
<p>Everyone gets on there’s never been a major falling out between staff. Nice, friendly place to work even though shabby.</p>
<p>Taken phone calls from elderly people who are looking for a different department and Aoife goes out of her way to help them.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.04.00 - 1.06.39</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Crimes and Old Dispensary</strong></p>
<p>Doctor’s handbag was taken and the thief got disorientated ran into the clinic room not out front door and dropped his mobile phone.</p>
<p>Someone covered Sean (the porter’s) duties and a laptop was stolen.</p>
<p>Aoife’s car was broken into one day.</p>
<p>People had a misconception that Grattan Street Medical Centre was the old dispensary that there was drugs there. Only thing they could get was head lice lotion, bandages.</p>
<p>Says the building belonged to the Mormons [means Quakers] who gave it to HSE to help the poor of Cork.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.06.39 - 1.09.15</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Accidents: Windows and Filing Cabinet</strong></p>
<p>Window have been here for a while. Sign on her office window which said “brrrrrr” and that was the noise the window made when it was windy! The window came away from the fitting one day while opening it.</p>
<p>Hit her head into an open filing cabinet after answering phone once. Went to the Mercy (hospital) with the cut which wasn’t able to be stitched.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.09.15 - 1.11.13</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Cars</strong></p>
<p>Aoife was youngest in Grattan Street Medical Centre for a long time. “The baby of Grattan Street”. Aoife has a thing for cars. Could go out at lunchtime and could come back with a new car. Went to move her car and someone told her to call her parent to move it because she looked so young.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.11.13 - 1.12.00</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Ghost of Grattan Street Medical Centre</strong></p>
<p>Someone had a meeting and something fell and Sean the porter told them it was the ghost. Aoife says the “Ghost is actually real” heartbroken and traumatised by having to leave.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.12.00 - 1.12.58</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Different Dynamics in new Primary Care Centre</strong></p>
<p>Dynamics will be different in St Mary’s: won’t all be meeting in the canteen or chatting</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.12.58 - 1.13.42</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Changes to job in new</strong> <strong>Primary Care Centre</strong></p>
<p>Currently all files and printer are in her office but in St Mary’s those are all centralised. Expects teething problems. </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.13.42 - 1.16.32</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Grattan Street can’t let go of Aoife</strong></p>
<p>Would still take the job if she had the time over. Even though Aoife has tried to leave her job a few times something has always happened so that she ended up staying eg. an application form she sent off was blank, once there was a mix up with a panel, another time the job she went for changed from HSE to social work, she lost 6 family members in 6 or 7 years.</p>
<p>Always had someone to turn to, support, friendly ear and chat in Grattan Street Medical Centre.</p>
<p>“Burning the place down so no one can have it!”</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.16.32 - 01.18.40</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Hopes for future of Grattan Street Medical Centre</strong></p>
<p>Disability services, child adolescent mental health, eating disorder clinic. Hate to see it turned into apartments. Lovely community- it should be kept. Food after Christmas parties is brought up to Edel House and food brought to Penny Dinners as well. Lots of vulnerable people in the area and lots of elderly people. Hopes podiatry can keep a room for foot care for the elderly with diabetes etc. prefer to see it remain as something that’s giving to the community.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.18.40 - 1.19.01</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Reflections on Grattan Street as Workplace</strong></p>
<p>Quirky characters. Fun place to work.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.19.01 - 1.19.50</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Fairies</strong></p>
<p>Aoife imagined fairies in the trees at her childhood home. Says she has a great imagination. She perhaps took the idea from The “Secret Garden”, she also loved “The Never Ending Story”.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><strong>1.19.50 - 1.20.01</strong></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Outro</p>
<p><strong>Interview Ends</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Aoife O'Brien: Grattan Street, Healthcare, Working Life
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CFP_SR00712_O'Brien_2019;
Relation
A related resource
<strong>Other Interviews in this Collection</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/240" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00696_O'Regan_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/242" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00704_Collins_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/243" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00706_Higgisson_2019</a>;<br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/245" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00713_Kearney_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/246" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00714_Cunning_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/247" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00717_Ward_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/248" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00727_OhUigin_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/249" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00728_Scanlan_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/250" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00729_Mulcahy_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/251" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00732_Cassidy_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/252" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CFP_SR00760_Morrissy_2019</a>; <br /><a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/items/show/253" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> CFP_SR00762_OConnell_2019</a>;
Language
A language of the resource
English
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
16 May 2019
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
1 .wav file
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cork Folklore Project
Subject
The topic of the resource
Ireland; Cork; Northside; Middle Parish; The Marsh; Occupational Lore; Medicine; Family; University; Built Heritage
Description
An account of the resource
<p><span>Aoife describes growing up on the Northside near Cathedral Road and playing games with her friends.</span></p>
<p><span>Describes her grandmother who ran a shop on Churchfield Green. Her grandmother was a confidante to many locals. Her grandmother eventually moved into their family home, where Aoife describes how she cooked tripe and drisheen. Aoife also speaks about a typical Christmas day with her family and neighbours visiting. </span></p>
<p><span>Recalls her school days and subsequent courses and jobs before her clerical officer role in Grattan Street, taking over her sister’s role.</span></p>
<p><span>Remembers her first experiences of Grattan Street as a child patient wanting to get glasses. Is reluctant to leave Grattan Street as she has so many memories there. </span></p>
<p><span>Explains her work in administration for the schools vaccination programme. Mentions rare cases of vaccine hesitancy or refusal. </span></p>
<p><span>Describes the quirky character of the Grattan Street Medical Centre building and as a happy place to work despite its defects. It’s location in the centre of the city is also beneficial. </span></p>
<p><span>Aoife talks about her role organising social events for the medical centre staff- Christmas parties and leaving parties. Hope to maintain these traditions when the staff move to St Mary’s Health Campus Gurranabraher. </span></p>
<p><span>Recalls stories from Grattan Street including wasps, pigeons, floods, characters and the boiler.</span></p>
Accident
Accidents
Admin
Administration
Apron
Build Heritage
Building
Buildings
Built Heritage
Cake
Cake Shop
Canteen
Car
Car Park
Car Parking
Career
Career Decisions
Career Path
Cars
Cathedral Road
CD
CD Player
Cervical Test
Chalk
Change
Childhood
Childhood Games
Children’s Games
Christamas
Christamas Dinner
Christmas
Churchfield Green
Cigarettes
Clerical Officer
Clerical Work
Clinic
Colleagues
Community
Computer
Crime
Crimes
Database
Disability
Dispensary
Disrepair
Dolls
Drisheen
Dublin Hill
Duties
Fairies
Fairy
Family
Father
Floods
Food
Friends
Games
ghost
Glasses
Grandparents
Grattan Street
Grattan Street Medical Centre
Gurranabraher
Health Centre
HPV
HPV Vaccine
HSE
Instruments
Irish Steel
Job
Leaks
Lunch
Marriage
Meals
Medical Centre
Medicine
Memory
Music
Name
Names
Neighbour
Neighbourhood
Neighbours
News
North Main Street
Northside
Nurse
Office
Organising
Parents
Parking
Parties
Party
Patient
Patients
Perceptions
Picky
Porter
Poverty
Registry Office
Responsibility
Sanitary Towels
School
Schooldays
Scone
Scones
Secretarial Skills
Secretary
Shop
Shopping
Shops
Sibling
Sister
Skills
Skipping
Smell
Smells
smoking
Social life
St Mary's Health Campus
St Mary's Orthopeadic Hospital
St Mary’s Primary Care Centre
St Vincent's
Staff
Stories
Summer Holidays
Traditional Food
Traditions
Training
Tripe
Tripe and Drisheen
Vaccination
Vaccinations
vaccine
Vaccine Hesitancy
Vaccines
Wedding
Weddings
Work
Work Colleagues
Working
Working life
Worklife
Workplace
Youghal