Prostitution in Athy in the mid-19th century

Despite the fact that over 1,200 inmates of the local Workhouse died during the Great Famine I have been unable to find any references to these deaths in the Minute Books of Athy Town Commissioners. Indeed, references to the Great Famine was not found anywhere in the Town Commissioners’ Minute Books. The recently elected Town Commissioners had busied themselves in attempts to remove the turnpike gate on the Castlecomer Road. At a meeting in Kennedy’s Hotel on 27th April 1846 the Town Commissioners and the local farmers agreed to the removal of the turnpike gate, resulting in the free passage of goods in and out of Athy. Seven years later Alexander Duncan in a speech at the inauguration dinner for the Commissioners new chairman, Michael Lawler, referred to the progress Athy had made in the previous 20 years. However, one area in which complaints were still raised by some members of the local society related to the presence on the streets of Athy of the world’s oldest profession. As a garrison town with a cavalry barracks at Woodstock it was inevitable that the issue would be a source of concern for the Town Fathers. The first mention of prostitution in the Minute Books of the Athy Commissioners was recorded on 11 August 1856 when the Commissioners appointed Mr. Cross and H. Hannon to wait on the local magistrates relative to the scandal of public prostituting in the town. On 2nd August 1858 the Commissioners had a public notice posted throughout the town. ‘Caution to persons keeping any place of public resort within the town for the sale of refreshments of any kind who knowingly supplies any common prostitute or resorting therein to assemble and continue in his premises after this notice will be prosecuted according to law. BY ORDER HENRY SHEILL TOWN CLERK.’ On 2nd May 1859 Thomas Roberts was appointed assistant to the Inspector of Nuisances for the purpose of prosecuting public prostitutes and street beggars for which he was to be paid four shillings per week with an additional two shillings and six pence for each conviction of a prostitute. Roberts brought a number of local prostitutes before the magistrates the following June, but all the cases were dismissed as the magistrate considered the method of paying Roberts two shillings and six pence for each conviction ‘injudicious.’ Thereafter Mr. Roberts efforts were largely confined to dealing with the vagrant beggars which the Town Commissioners on 1st September 1860 noted were to be found standing at doors or loitering about obstructing the public. The Town Commissioners’ attempt to rid the town of prostitutes was by all accounts less provocative, and certainly more law abiding than the measures adopted by Father Thomas Lawler, the local Parish Priest. On 1st August 1829 Fr. Lawler had three ‘bad women’ stripped and chained. Their offences were not stated, nor was the extent of the stripping or nature of their chaining detailed. However, it is reasonably safe to assume that the three ‘bad women’ were members of the profession which always proliferated in towns such as Athy where army barracks were located. Father Lawler, who had been ordained to the priesthood in 1816, was appointed P.P. of St. Michael’s Athy in 1825, a position he held until his death on 15th June 1835. He was only forty-four years of age when he died. On 8th January 1862 the Commissioners posted the following notice throughout Athy. ‘Whereas it had been brought under the notice of the Commissioners a nuisance existing within the township viz vagrants constantly begging on the public street and at private doors. I hereby direct that in all cases where the law is violated same vagrants be summoned before the Justice. ROBERT MOLLOY CHAIRMAN.’ Apparently the vagrants, beggars and prostitutes took little heed of such stern exhortations as we find the Town Commissioners on 6th July 1868 resolving ‘to appoint a man to take care that all vagrants and beggars be kept out of the town and all prostitutes shall be brought before a magistrate and at once be dealt with summarily.’ The level of prostitution in Athy in the middle of the last century can be appreciated on examining the records of the local magistrate’s court which during a three week period in 1856 recorded six convictions for prostitution in the town. The local people were not altogether happy with the situation as evidenced by a report in the Leinster Express of a hearing of the magistrate’s Court in Athy in June 1859. The evidence adduced in court indicated that upwards of 30 persons had followed ‘one of the frail sisterhood’ from 10.00 p.m. to 3.00 o’clock in the morning as a result of which Margaret McCann charged William Cullen, Robert McNally, John Brown, William Brennan and James Aldridge with throwing stones at her. Apparently the defendants had ordered her to leave town ‘or else they would throw her into the River Barrow.’ Even if there was little subsequent change in the habits of the ladies of the night, Athy was in 1857 to show progress in another aspect of town life which will be dealt with in a later Eye on the Past.

Our streets are slowly dying / Athy Brickyards

‘Brickmaking in Ireland’ written by Susan Roundtree and published recently by Wordwell, is a comprehensive record of where clay bricks were made in Ireland and how this locally made indigenous material shaped the character of Irish buildings for more than four centuries. Maisie Candy, who with her pupils in Churchtown National School, produced a short-written account of brick making in the Churchtown locality, identified thirteen brickyards in the Churchtown area at the beginning of the 20th century. These were Morrin’s of Ballyroe, Keegans of Ballyroe, Foley’s of Brownstone, Doyle’s of Churchtown, Donlon’s of Shean, two on Heydens’ farm at Brownstone, Lawler’s of Churchtown, Heyden’s of Churchtown, Hosies of Coursetown, Doyle’s, Maxwell’s and Harris’s of Malthouse. George Wilkinson, architect, in the first year of the Great Famine wrote of how bricks of good quality were being made in the Athy area and sent by canal boat to Dublin. Athy’s handmade bricks are today to be found in the Dublin suburbs, particularly Rathmines and Rathgar and in Guinness’s malthouse and hop stores. The earliest ordnance survey map of 1827 shows brickworks around Athy. These included three separate brickyards in Milltown and three brickyards in the adjoining townland of Cardington. George Kinahan, geologist, in his papers 1883-1889 refers to the first-class facing brick, 9inches x 4 ½ inches x 3 inches made by Webster Company of Athy. This is a name I have never previously met with in connection with brickmaking in South Kildare. The Geological Survey of Ireland database recorded the location of eight brickmaking factories in the Athy area. Courtown West, Blackford, Barrowford which was linked by tramway to the Athy Brickworks, three at Milltown and two at Cardington. Perhaps the best known brick factory was the Athy Brick and Tile factory which was opened at Barrowford on Thursday, 8th June 1893. Bricks stamped ‘Athy Brick and Tile Co.’ were produced by machinery initially for building works on the Curragh Army Camp and subsequently for the Dublin market. The factory had its own railway line siding from about 1900 which allowed the bricks to be brought by train using the Dublin Waterford line. The brickmaking industry faced severe competitive difficulties in the early decades of the 20th century. Concrete was increasingly used for building construction and bricks, more expensive to produce, were gradually confined to facing and decorative uses. The closure of the brickyards in South Kildare began as early as the 1890s, while Athy Brick & Tile Co., the last brickyard still operating, was experiencing difficulties in the 1920s, if not earlier. It had fallen into decline following the start of World War I and its railway siding was removed in the last year of the war. Its machine-made brick was still in demand but Athy’s Urban District Council’s building programme in 1932 was the subject of a request by the Council’s architect, Mr. Heaney, that Dolphin Barn brick be used instead of Athy brick which he indicated was not available in sufficient numbers. The Council understandably directed that only Athy brick was to be used. Five years later Councillor Tom Carbery failed to get his fellow Councillors to support his motion not to use Athy brick for any local housing schemes unless the brickyard proprietor P.P. O’Doyle paid union wages to his workers. Peter P. Doyle, as Secretary of Athy Tile & Brick Co., had attempted to revive the brickmaking industry in South Kildare in the 1920s and was helped in this by the local Council’s Slum Clearance Programme which saw the construction of houses at Dooley’s Terrace and St. Joseph’s Terrace. However, this was to change in the mid-1930s. On 20th January 1936 at a meeting of Athy Urban District Council the members considered a letter received from P.P. Doyle of Woodstock Street who was then the Managing Director of the Athy Tile & Brick Co. In that letter Mr. Doyle referred to an architect’s report regarding dry rot in the floors of houses recently built at St. Patrick’s Avenue. He pointed out that the boards laid in concrete was proof of the unsuitable of concrete for building purposes. He went on to claim that the houses erected in brick at the Bleach over ten years previously had given every satisfaction. He continued: ‘We have supplied Athy bricks to the Christian Brothers, Messrs Guinness’s, the Great Southern Railway branch in Athy which is a classic in architecture.’ He quoted the architect William H. Byrne who used Athy brick in the Hibernian Bank Athy and always found first quality bricks very satisfactory. Messrs Bradbury and Evans architects, also quoted by Doyle, claimed that ‘Athy bricks are harder and better burned than any other bricks used in Dublin and that their appearance in our opinion is vastly superior.’ Mr. Doyle’s letter was read by the Town Clerk without any comment being made by the Councillors who were present at the meeting. Clearly if the local brick factory could not get support from the town’s Urban District Councillors it's future was dim. And so it was. Athy Tile & Brick Co., the last surviving brick factory in South Kildare, closed soon afterwards. The brickmaking industry in South Kildare was for many men, women and young boys for decades in the 19th century and into the 20th century the only employment available in the area, apart from seasonal agricultural labouring. The brickmaking men and women and young boys who worked as bankers, middlers, sourers, upstrikers, off bearers, wheelers, catchers and burners are like their job titles long forgotten.

Cabin from R.Y.S. Quest in which Shackleton died

A significant milestone will be reached next week in the redevelopment of Athy’s eighteenth century Town Hall with the arrival of the most important artefact of the Shackleton Museum. That artefact is the ships cabin from R.Y.S Quest, the ship which carried Ernest Shackleton’s last expedition to the Antarctic and the very cabin in which he died on the 4th January 1922. The cabin was acquired by the Museum in 2016 following a tip off by Eugene Furlong of Cork who became aware of it’s existence in 2008 and first visited it in 2014. The cabin had been removed from the Quest in the early 1920’s and used as a garden shed by a Norwegian family who had it in their ownership for many years. Having been advised by Eugene Furlong of the cabin’s existence the Shackleton Museum Board made approaches, with Eugene’s assistance, to the owner to buy the cabin. Agreement was reached following lengthy negotiations on a price for which I must admit, the Museum did not have the funds. Kildare County Council came to their rescue and paid the full contract price following which we were able through the generous support of DFDS, a shipping company, to have the cabin brought to Letterfrack, Co. Galway for restoration. A benefactor from Naas also covered the cost of the pre-transport costs in Norway. Over the last number of years the cabin has been undergoing careful restoration and conservation under the guidance of Sven Habermann of Conservation Letterfrack, who also carry out work for many state institutions such as the National Museum, the National Gallery and the National Library. The story of its restoration featured in an excellent documentary made by Moondance Productions which first aired on RTE on the 4th January 2022 and later on the BBC. The focus of the documentary was Sven Habermann, the German born conservator who through the lens of the documentary film maker told the story of his meticulous research into the cabin’s history and careful restoration of the cabin over the last number of years. The results of this work was revealed at the very end of the documentary where a very emotional Alexandra Shackleton, granddaughter of the Explorer, saw the cabin for the first time, as it would have been on the night that Shackleton died. We are very fortunate that a number of recordings of interviews with members of the crew including Dr. Leonard Hussey and Dr. Alexander Macklin relation to the last hours of Shackleton’s life have survived. They describe a man struggling with ill health but still anxious to pursue the adventures of his youth. Very movingly Dr. Hussey, relates how Shackleton found it difficult to sleep on the night he died and sought the soothing sound of music, through Hussey’s banjo playing, of some traditional lullabies to help him to sleep. With Shackleton’s death, the heart went out of his expedition and many months later the crew on the ship returned to the United Kingdom and notably the ship Quest was sold to a Norwegian shipping company. The cabin itself was removed from the ship shortly thereafter as its location on the ships deck was not conducive to the whaling and sealing operations of it’s new owners. The ship would stay at sea for almost 40 more years. In 1928 it took party in the search for survivors of the airship Italia which was lost in the Arctic. She transported the members of the 1930 British Arctic Air Route expedition north when she was described as a ‘broad-beamed, tubby little ship, decks stacked with gear’. The ship was again in the cold regions in 1935 for the British Greenland expedition and this was followed by service in World War Two as a minesweeper and light cargo vessel. It's long life of service came to an end when the ship sank on the 5th May 1962 after being hold by ice. All the crew survived the sinking The ship has been back in the news recently with its re-discovery on the ocean floor off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The remains of the 38m long two masted schooner were located by a team led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. It is mostly intact lying in 390m of water but if you want to a true relic of that noble little ship, it’s cabin, the place of Shackleton’s death with be a focal point of the new Shackleton Museum opening in Athy in June 2025.

Remembering Henry Howard / Paul Cunningham

This week saw the passing of two Athy men who were associated in my mind with Gaelic football. They died within a day of each other. Henry Howard was President of Athy Gaelic Football Club for many years past. Geraldine Park was his second home and for as long as I can remember Henry devoted his time and energy to the local G.A.A. Club. He was a wonderfully helpful man who met and greeted everyone with a cheerful word or two. He was especially helpful to me while I was organising the recent book fairs on behalf of Athy Lions Club. I got to know Henry and his wife Patricia during the long drawn out campaign to stop the Inner Relief Road planned for construction through the centre of our town. Both were very active members of the development group which consist of concerned residents of the town who worked tirelessly to get the Outer Relief Road built instead of the proposed Inner Relief Road. They were part of the several teams which went from door-to-door canvassing support for a plebiscite of the local people and attended public meetings held over a period of many years in various venues throughout the town. Henry Howard and his wife Patricia were unremitting in their support for what eventually turned out to be a wonderful addition to the road network serving the people of Athy. Henry’s wake was held in the Gaelic Football Club premises where he had spent many years of his long life volunteering on a daily basis. His was a labour of love for the Athy Gaelic Football Club was, as I wrote earlier, his second home. He was elected President of the club approximately 16 years ago and I must claim some indirect involvement in his presidential election. As a member of Athy Gaelic Football Club I attended Annul General Meetings for many years following my return to Athy in 1982. It was at an Annual General Meeting sometime in the mid to late 1980s that I questioned the appropriateness of electing year after year a member of the local Catholic clergy as the club President. It was, I explained, an unnecessary throwback to a time in our history when community leadership understandably came from the educated clergy, but the time had come for lay members to take charge. Looking back over the years since the founding of the Geraldine Club the only clergy man justifiably elected to the presidential position was the local curate and exceptional footballer, Fr. Frank Mitchell. In any event my intervention at that A.G.M. resulted in the election of Tim O’Sullivan as the Club President and in later years the election of Henry Howard. Henry’s passing is a great loss to the Geraldine Club which over the years has benefitted from his involvement and that of so many other men and latterly women. Paul Cunningham for several years was a classmate of mine in the local Christian Brothers School during the 1950s. He left school at an early age but I can still picture in my minds eye Paul’s excellence as a Gaelic footballer. I am reminded of the only time in my school days when the local Christian Brothers School participated in the Leinster Colleges championship. Brother Brett, the Superior, had visions of our Wednesday afternoon football practice in Geraldine Park, resulting in an appearance at Croke Park for the Leinster School Finals. The Athy school team played Moate College on their grounds and we were defeated very heavily. My memory of that day is of Paul Cunningham’s high fielding of the ball, ala Mick O’Connell of Kerry, but his brilliance was not sufficient to save Athy C.B.S. from a humiliating defeat. Paul was chosen for the Kildare County Minor panel and played for a time with Athy G.F.C. and later with Rheban. He emigrated at a young age to London and there he played with Round Towers and Dr. Crokes. I understand he played with Dr. Crokes in a tournament game in Croke Park and during his London playing days was awarded Player of the Year Award. Paul did not achieve the footballing success of his late father Jim ‘Tarman’ Cunningham who won county championship medals with the Athy senior team in 1933 and 1934. The 1930s was the most successful decade for Gaelic footballing in Athy and ‘Tarman’ had with him on the winning teams the likes of Barney Dunne, Paul Matthews and Tommy Mulhall. A further championship title success was achieved in 1937 but by then ‘Tarman’, like his son Paul decades later, had emigrated to England. Our sympathies go to the family and friends of Henry Howard and Paul Cunningham.

Johanna Lyons Artist

The part played by the local Community Arts Centre in promoting the Arts and cultural awareness within our community may not be apparent to many. It was something which struck me as I reviewed the events and exhibitions planned for the Woodstock Street Centre during the month of June. I was particularly pleased to see notice of an exhibition by local girl Johanna Lyons which started in the Community Arts Centre on Thursday, 13th June and which continues to the end of the following week. I have known Johanna for many years and during the long period she has been practising and perfecting her skill as an artist. From a very rudimentary, in effect a very basic start to her artistic career she has by dint of commitment and hard work become an artist of merit whose work I am privileged to have in my own personal collection. Johanna who was born in the Curragh came to Athy over forty years ago and now lives in Castle Park. She first attended art classes under Pascal Fitzpatrick in VTOS at a time when the Training Centre was located in the original Model School on the Dublin Road. She later attended Ormond College in Kilkenny and the combination of the two courses set her on an artistic path which she has travelled ever since. She works mostly in oil and produces work which can be regarded as excellent. Her Exhibition in the Athy Community Arts Centre is I believe her second Exhibition and promises to give us a rare insight into the work of a genuinely talented artist whose work has improved immeasurably over the years. This Exhibition which opened last Thursday continues this week. The picture with this weeks Eye on the Past is one of Johanna’s paintings which is privately owned but will hopefully be included in the Exhibition. Johanna Lyons’s solo Exhibition will be followed on Thursday, 20th June by an Exhibition of work by well known female artist including Elizabeth Cope, Eileen McDonagh, Ciara O’Keeffe, Emily Rainsford and Cathy Callan. This is just one of several events which will be held in the Athy Community Arts Centre and the Town Library in the week of the Johnny Marr Concert which will take place in the former Dreamland Ballroom. All the events over a two week period are supported by Kildare County Council and the Athy Community Arts Centre in conjunction with Athy Photographic Society and promises to deliver a wonderful backdrop to the revival of dance hall days memories which will flow from the Johnny Marr concert in Athy’s former dancing mecca. An interesting addition to Athy’s written word is the Made of Athy Guide and map which will be launched in the Athy Community Arts Centre on Friday following the Marr Concert the previous day. A musical event which will form part of the guide launch will be a performance by Castledermot resident, Chris Swaine who is presently compiling an album of original songs. Chris whose musical genre has been described as somewhere between country and soft rock has previously performed in the Community Arts Centre. He will be joined by Athy’s own Carmel Day for a concert in the Centre before the end of the year. In the meantime, do visit the Johanna Lyons Exhibition in the Athy Community Arts Centre and show your support for a local artist who can justifiably be proud of her work.