'They are so debilitating, it's so important to get vaccinated': Healthcare provider Imelda Cunning explains how important it is to get vaccinated.
Imelda Cunning, originally from Glasgow, Scotland. Trained as a podiatrist. Imelda moved to Ireland in 1999. Upon taking her position a podiatrist in Grattan Street medical centre she noticed the difference between her patients in Glasgow and those in Cork. Imelda then goes on to describe the long term effects of different infectious diseases and how important getting vaccinated is.
Cork Folklore Project
CFP00714
Cork Folklore Project
7 May 2019
Interviewee: Imelda Cunning
Interviewer: Kieran Murphy
Cork Folklore Project
MP3 audio file, 5 minutes 30 seconds
SP0008_CFP00714_Cunning
Three deaths in a year: John 'Chris' Kelleher, in conversation with CFP interviewer Michael Daly, explains how his mother lost her husband and two sons, to tuberculosis, diphtheria and the croup within a year of each other.
John was born in 1929 in Fair Lane, later called Wolfe Tone Street. His mother, Mary Margaret Kelleher (1901 - 1970) was married twice; her first husband died of Tuberculosis in 1924. In this excerpt, Johnny tells of his mother being widowed and having further tragedy fall upon her family. Where she lost two of her sons, one to Diptheria and one to Croup.
Excerpt length: 2minutes 22 seconds
Full transcript of this interview extract:
John Kelleher: They were good times.
Michael Daly: Yeah, brilliant. Tell me a bit about your family, actually. Were you from a big family... ?
JCK Well now, my mother was married twice. Her first husband was a bloke by the name of Freddie Murphy. Now Freddie was - - he was involved in newspapers. Now he would be what you would call - - then - - a shopper. He was the man between the Echo office and the newsboys of the time. He’d take the papers out, give ‘em to ‘em, collect money, get it back, get his commission. Now unfortunately he died in 1924, a young man, with TB. Now, the TB that was going at the time - - there was different types of TB, but this was - - this particular TB that was rampant in the country at the time, it was better known to the people as consumption, because you can understand what it done to the people, it just - - if you got the TB, it just consumed you. So he died at the age of twenty-four. So that left my mother with four children. So she had no choice - - there was no welfare, the state was only three years old - - she had to go out selling newspapers for to rear the four of them. Now he died in February ’24, but unfortunately she buried one of the boys in June 1924 and she buried the other boy in September 1924.
MD Oh.
JCK Now both of those lads - - young fellas - - died, one with diphtheria, the other with the croup. If I’m right I don’t think they exist today. But that was the time, so she was left with the two girls then. Then she eventually met my father, married my father, and there was three of us from that marriage. Well, she kept on the papers then, as I came - - my brother went to England when he was only about seventeen, so he wasn’t very much involved with papers, but my sister and myself were involved with them. I was with my mother all the time, with the papers. Actually, ‘til the last day of her life she was with the papers. She died suddenly in Christmas 1970.
MD Oh, Okay.
JCK We used to be down by the Colosseum, and she died sudden, after coming up from the Colosseum.
Cork Folklore Project
CFP00390 <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/document/104" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">[For the CFP Audio Archive Catalogue entry for the full interview click here.] </a>
Cork Folklore Project
21 July 2010
Interviewee: Johnny Chris Kelleher
Interviewer: Michael Daly
Cork Folklore Project
.MP3 audio file, 5 minutes 17 seconds
SP0005_CFP00390_Kelleher
'Even still, to this day, it'll never, ever, leave me': remembering blindness from German Measles
German Measles
Alison Morley, who was interviewed by Lorraine Cahalane in 1998, grew up on the Northside of Cork City. At the very beginning of the interview, she is asked about her earliest memory, and she recalls getting her sight for the first time at the age of four, after having lost her sight after contracting German Measles. She describes what it was like to be blind as a child, and how that experience will never leave her.
Full transcript of this interview extract:
LC Right. Now, Alison, what would be your most earliest memory?
AM Em, remembering as a child of the age of 4 that I was just after getting my sight for the very first time cos I was blind and em
LC And how were you blind? What happened?
AM Eh, it was just by contracting German Measles
And when I just got my sight back then it just seemed like being like everybody else
LC Right
AM You know. Frightening been in an ambulance and
LC Do you remember being blind, what it was like?
AM Yeah I do, I remember, em, like, trying to hold onto things and touching the door to see if the door was open or closed or holding the table to get myself in and out and things like that. Not being able to see my sister.
LC Oh right.
AM Cos I didn’t realise what she looked like. But then being in hospital, and knowing people are coming into the room but you can’t see them
LC Yeah
AM You know and then all of a sudden you can see again
LC Right
AM And looking, the very thing of, even fruit inside in a basket. You could always touch things, but you could never see them, I never knew what they looked like. Even to touch the difference between an orange or an apple or a banana or a pear or something like that. Or even smaller fruit but eh, no it always sticks, I think it always will, it’ll never leave me.
LC And at that age kids are very curious aren’t they? Like the 2 and 3
AM Yeah exactly. Em, you know even trying to, as I said a while ago, the difference between even a door opened and closed, you know, trying to discover, is it open, is it closed, can you walk straight through? You know. Or even touching things. In my, most of the time I can even remember walking through a door and ending up crying as a child because you get so agitated that you just, you know you’re getting annoyed with yourself that you didn’t actually open the door before you actually walked through it.
LC And how’d your mother cope with this? Like when you started walking now for instance?
AM Em I suppose grand, well it was just normal for people to you know, she had to, I suppose she had to cope with it, because she had to show me what to do, she had to show me how to touch things and, like, put my one leg forward if you’re going down a step now or things like that that, I’m not going to fall but em, I don’t know, I suppose she ju.. In a way I suppose when I look back at it now she might have, she probably did cope well with it you know ‘Cause there wasn’t much of an age gap between me and my sister that eh, she just had to do it I suppose.
LC Right. And do you remember your fir.. like your vivid memory now, would be the first thing you saw? What was that?
AM I was actually in an ambulance on the way to the hospital and, em, telling them, telling the nurse and telling my mother that I can see, and they just thought it was a lie, that I didn’t want to go to hospital, and I was telling them the colour of something that was there, and I can tell her what she had on her and I said, ‘Mom don’t bring me to the hospital, I can see, I can see’ and they just couldn’t believe it ‘till they actually done a test, but kept me in then under observation just in case it was going to go again and why was it going.
LC Right
AM Was there something wrong with the brain that was affecting my eyesight or something. But…
LC Jesus, you’re very lucky
AM Yeah even still, to this very day, it’ll never ever leave me. You know and I’ve a little one and I’ve often told her about, like I say, ‘Mammy didn’t have any sight when she was your age now,’ and you know and like, it’s, I don’t know I suppose
LC [unintelligible]
AM Exactly. And no one can ever actually experience it only, I can’t experience it, I can’t even imagine it now, you know, I can’t kinda turn around and say, ‘God did that really happen to me,’ because it did, and I just had to learn to cope with it but even if I see blind people today saying, ‘I could still be like them if my sight never came back’.
LC I know yeah
AM You know.
LC Jesus.
AM But em…
LC Very lucky.
AM Yeah, exactly.
Cork Folklore Project
CFP00199 <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/document/191">[For the CFP Audio Archive Catalogue entry for the full interview click here.] </a>
Cork Folklore Project
13 May 1998
Interviewee: Alison Morley
Interviewer: Lorraine Cahalane
Cork Folklore Project
.MP3 audio file, 4 minutes 02 seconds
SP0002_CFP00199_Morley
Two girls with measles in 'Low Babies', only one returned to school
measles
This excerpt is from Cork Folklore Project Sound Recording CFPSR00311, carried out on 14 June 2000.
Sister Marie Collins was born around 1920 in Limerick, to farming parents, and became a Presentation Sister and a teacher. She attended primary school in Monaleen, near where the University of Limerick is currently situated. Sister Collins was interviewed in 2000 by the Cork Folklore Project, and during the interview she reflects on the way in which certain memories from her early childhood stand out in isolation. Speaking of a scene that comes to her memory with clarity, as an isolated incident, she says: ‘Now, I remember that, and I have no memory before or after but that stands out in my mind. Do you know, extraordinary things. I remember the first day I went to school, being around the teacher’s table, but I have no recollection of the night before or days afterwards… I’d love to write down memories without anything before or after, just things that struck me there and then.’
She goes on to recount one such vivid memory, of a girl who had been in Low Babies (Junior Infants, the first primary school class that children attend) with her:
Full transcript of this interview extract:
SR Marie Collins
And we must have been in Low Babies, we had a high stool and a low stool and there were the High Infants and The Low Infants. and the two of us got the measles. And I can still see this little one, Kitty O’Brien, she had straight hair and a fringe, and a little bow on top of her head. And when I went back after the measles she was dead, she had died from the measles. I can still see her little wee face. And I got measles, and I didn’t die, but she died. So, you know, things like that. You’d say: ‘I can’t remember a bit of before or after but I remember that.
Cork Folklore Project
CFP00311 <a href="https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/document/192" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">[For the CFP Audio Archive Catalogue entry for the full interview click here.] </a>
Cork Folklore Project
14 June 2000
Interviewee: Sister Marie Collins
Interviewer: Sean Walsh
Interviewer: Dolores Horgan
Cork Folklore Project
CFPSR00311
audio file (.mp3)
English
SP0001_CFP00311_Collins
Ireland, Cork, 1930s