Galway In Days Gone By

Speeding drivers

The “jay-walker”, as the careless pedestrian is called in New York, who daily gambles with life on the streets of the great city and invariably loses, would not have the ghost of a chance in Galway and certainly none of the excitement of the game if all the motor drivers acted as a defendant at Galway District Court was stated to have acted one night recently.

The driver refereed to, it was alleged by the Guards, drove through the city at a speed of 40 miles an hour, and a member of the force narrowly escaped being run down.

He refused to halt when called on and was not at all complimentary in his references to the Guards when afterwards they succeeded in locating him. He was fined 10s. by the district justice for driving in a manner dangerous to public safety.

In America for this offence, he would probably have been sent to Sing Sing for a term of years. The speeder fiend is the product of an age of mechanically propelled vehicles, and if his dangerous activities are to be curbed, 10s. fines will not be a deterrent.

Pictured: Members of the cast, The Courtiers, photographed in December 1987 before taking part in the Renmore Pantomime Society's production of Snow White in Leisureland in January 1988. In front are, from left, Patricia Kinneen, Jacqueline Cunniffe, Grace Kirby and Maire Fenton. Back, from left, Valerie Loughnane, Alan Gantley, Terese Bowe, Tommy Reynolds, Derek Glynn and Lorraine Flatley.