Galway In Days Gone By

Violent lunatic

A lunatic named Meehan was committed to Ballinasloe Asylum on Thursday week by order of Messrs. S.J. McDonogh and C. Kelly, J.P.s, Dunmore. On the previous evening, Meehan entered the shop of Mr. Patrick Finnegan, Gurteen, from which he was ejected owing to his violent efforts to use a knife on the owner.

Mr. Finnegan closed his premises and sent for the police, who proceeded to the place and arrested the lunatic. During the journey to Ballinasloe, his demeanour continued very violent.

Home Rule

But for the great European war, the Home Rule Act would have come into operation to-day. Exclusion, or no exclusion, opposition, or no opposition, the period of suspension would have run its course, and Home Rule would have inevitably become a fact as well as an Act.

Slaughterhouse smell

At the weekly meeting of Galway Urban Council, a letter from Mr. James Hughes, Ball Alley Lane was discussed. He wrote that on the previous Saturday evening a most obnoxious smell was issuing from a private slaughter house at the place. He called the attention of an Urban Councillor to the fact. He also called in the Sanitary Su-Officer to the place.

The Chairman said that, in the interest of everybody these private slaughter houses should be done away with. Mr. Moloney agreed, and said a horrible odour was recently emanating from such a slaughterhouse in his locality.

Chairman: Of course we will have people coming here to protest against the removal of these slaughterhouses.

Mr. Griffin: We don’t care for those people’s opinions; we must serve the public. I don’t care who comes here, we must do what is right.

Mr. Waters, S.S.O., said the medical officer had recommended that the slaughterhouse refuse be removed every day. He saw the place the other day, and there was nothing to find fault with beyond a certain amount of odour that would come from any slaughterhouse.

1940

Soldiers deserted for harvest

Two young men named John P Connolly, Liss, Ballyglunin, and Michael Dolan, Briarfield, were ordered by District Justice Mac Giollarnath at Tuam District Court to be handed over to the military authorities at Renmore.

They were charged with having failed to report for duty when called upon as members of the military Defence Forces and with having absented themselves from duty without authority.

The defendants’ explanation was that they were wanted at home to help in harvest work. Connolly, it was stated, was in the regular army and Dolan in the Volunteers.

“All the preparations for a heavy, full-scale invasion of Britain are going forward steadily with all the German thoroughness of method,” declared Mr. Churchill, the British Premier, in a broadcast statement to the British Empire and America yesterday. Shipping and troops were being massed from Hamburg to Brest and down to the Bay of Biscay. The next week or so, he said, would be a vital period for Britain.

The attack, said the Premier, might be launched at any moment on either England, Scotland or Ireland, or on all three. The ships being assembled for the invasion were being bombed by the R.A.F. and shelled by British warships and could not be held indefinitely. Germany would make the attempt soon if at all.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.