Dr. Giles O'Neill, the Taaffe Legal Practice, identifying those who died in Athy Workhouse

Many of you, like myself, got a letter from the HSE a week or so ago informing us of the retirement of Dr. Giles O’Neill from 11th June. Messages of good wishes poured into Dr. Giles’ practice in the following days but it seems we were all somewhat premature in consigning the good doctor to a life of unending leisure. It now transpires that Dr. Giles has retired from the HSE General Practitioners list and will be replaced by Dr. Emma Carroll of the same practice on the Carlow Road. The fourth generation O’Neill general practitioners intends to stay on in the practice working two days a week dealing, I presume, with private patients. My Eye last week on Dr. Giles’ retirement prompted several people to ask the question of me – when do you propose to retire? I’m afraid the good man above will retire me and in the meantime I will continue as long as Dr. Giles keeps me in good trim or as I often say to my friends, ‘so long as I can continue to cast a shadow’. The June bank holiday found me spending a few days in Connemara where unlike the rainy weather which greeted the TriAthy athletes, the western countryside was basking in glorious sunshine. I had overlooked that this year’s June bank holiday was an important anniversary in my working life as it was on the Tuesday after the bank holiday Monday 40 years ago that I opened my own practice. Joining me that day was a young Eithne Wall as we waited the arrival of the first client to the first-floor offices of Taaffe & Co. Solicitors. I had rented rooms over the Hibernian Insurance offices located in the former Hibernian Bank premises on Leinster Street. During the past four decades the offices have been relocated to three other locations, but what has remained constant is the wonderful staff who have joined me over the years. Eithne Wall, with forty years’ service, is followed by Noreen Prendergast with 36 years’ service, Deirdre Dooley with 31 years’ service and Lisa Walsh who has been part of the staff for 22 years. All of the girls joined the office when they were single and their names have been recorded in those names, although all of them have since married. My son Seamus, after 5 years working as an archaeologist, joined the practice as a solicitor in 1997. Individually and collectively they have made an enormous contribution to the work of my office which because of the nature of its business deals with a myriad of sad human situations. On our fortieth anniversary I pay a heartfelt tribute to Eithne, Noreen, Deirdre, Lisa and Seamus. Clem Roche and Michael Donovan have been working for some months past on retrieving the names of those unfortunate persons who died in Athy’s Workhouse. Opened in January 1844 the Workhouse was a last refuge for a starving people who could not survive without institutional help during the Great Famine. In later years deaths were recorded as occurring in the Workhouse, Athy’s Infirmary and Athy’s Fever Hospital. The Infirmary was attached to the Workhouse, while Athy’s Fever Hospital was a separate institution first opened in February 1841. The perilous state of public health in the town of Athy was a matter of concern, particularly following a cholera outbreak in 1827 and an influenza outbreak ten years later. A Mr. Keating, whose premises in Market Square burnt down in 1836, was the beneficiary of a public collection intended to help him rebuild his premises. Instead, the generous man donated the community’s gift amounting to three hundred pounds to the building of a Fever Hospital in Athy. Officially designated as a District Fever Hospital under the Fever Ireland Act of 1847 it continued to be operated independent of the Workhouse until 1854. Those who died in the Workhouse, the Infirmary and the Fever Hospital were, so far as we know, buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery. Clem Roche and Michael Donovan have recorded 3,088 deaths with no records available for the first twenty years or so of the Workhouse existence. There are no memorials or grave markers to remember the thousands who were buried in St. Marys. The work of Clem and Michael is the first step in remembering and commemorating those unfortunate people which Kildare County Council is committed to doing in the near future.