Sr. Dominics envelope

Sometime before she passed away the well loved former Matron of St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sr. Dominic, gave me an envelope of papers which included a few photographs, a newspaper cutting and some notes. Amongst those notes was an unsigned typewritten poem, ‘The Little Wayside Chapel in a Green Old Irish Lane’ which I recognised as a poem by Rev. J.J. Malone, the Dunbrin-born Catholic clergyman who spent his adult life ministering in Australia.

The poem was included in Fr. Malone’s book of poetry, ‘Wild Briar and Wattle Blossom’ published in Melbourne in 1914. Included in that collection also were two other poems with echoes of his childhood in Dunbrin, ‘The Old Whitewashed Schoolhouse of Shanganamore’ and ‘By the Banks of the Barrow’.

More interesting for me however was the manuscript of a ballad entitled ‘The Bullock’s Revenge’, the writer of which had written after the title ‘By John J. Malone, Dunbrin, Athy’ and dated the manuscript ‘20th of November ‘87’. Was this I wonder the handwriting of J.J. Malone himself who had a number of books published while he was in Australia. Born in 1863 and ordained 26 years later J.J. Malone was just two years away from ordination when ‘The Bullock’s Revenge’ was written out on the sheet of paper now in front of me and dated just a few months before the Pope condemned the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting as practiced by the Irish Land League. I am not at all satisfied that the manuscript is in Fr. Malone’s own hand as his name was James Joseph and so was unlikely to sign any document ‘John J’. However, I am reasonably satisfied that he wrote ‘The Bullock’s Revenge’ which records the misfortune that befell Larry Curtis when he was attacked by bullocks on the Misses Malones lands. Does anyone know anything of the Misses Malones or Larry Curtis, all of whom feature in the ballad?
In the meantime the photographs in the envelope given to me by Sr. Dominic, of which there were three, two of which are reproduced here, are of interest because they show a house, a garden and a well known curate of this parish, all now no more. The house, or more correctly the cottage, was the thatched residence of the local curate and was located at Woodstock Street, approximately where the Malone Place houses are to be found. Incidentally, Malone Place is named after Edward Malone, a local I.R.A. leader during the War of Independence who was a nephew of Reverend J.J. Malone. Fr. Kinnane is the curate in the photograph and he is shown standing in his garden which was a particularly famous feature of the cottage. I believe that Fr. Kinnane served in St. Michael’s Parish in the 1930s and perhaps later. No doubt he will be remembered by many of his former parishioners.
The other photograph comes from a national newspaper cutting dated 13th January 1969 and shows a man I well recall as a regular in the C.Y.M.S. when it was in Stanhope Street and later still when it was located in the former Social Club premises in St. John’s Lane. Martin Hayden was 82 years old, according to the details given in the newspaper. He died three years later on 13th January 1972 and is buried in Old St. Michael’s Cemetery with his brother Patrick who died 18 years previously. I would like to hear from anyone who remembers Martin and indeed his neighbours who lived in Meeting Lane.

Sr. Dominic

On the 6th of November, 1933 Kathleen McHugh of Ballycorman, Ballylinan, a few miles outside Athy entered the local Convent of Mercy. On the 8th of May of the following year she made her first profession and received the name Sr. Mary Dominic Joseph. She then spent four years training as a nurse in the Mater Hospital, Dublin, before returning to Athy on the 14th of January, 1940 to work in the County Home which is now known as St. Vincent's Hospital. Sr. Dominic was to spend the next forty one years working there.

Initially an assistant to the ageing Sr. Angela, then matron of the County Home, Sr. Dominic was herself to be appointed to that position on the lst of April, 1957. One of her abiding memories of the 1940's and 1950's was the role played by the County Home in providing temporary accommodation for the homeless. In those days there were very few local authority housing schemes and privately owned rented accommodation was a common feature of town life. Evictions for non-payment of rent were not infrequent and it was to the County Home that dispossessed families were obliged to go for shelter. The strict separation of the sexes initiated on the opening of the County Home as a workhouse in 1844 ensured that husbands and wives, brothers and sisters were kept apart while living in the County Home.

Sr. Dominic remembers the ingenious use made of tea chests and butter boxes by families leaving the County Home to make a new life for themselves outside the institution. Tea chests and butter boxes fulfilled the dual roles of packing the few precious family possessions while later they served as table and chairs until times improved and furniture could be bought.

Tramps or vagrants who came to the County Home were always assured of kindness from Sr. Dominic. She was never known to turn away anyone deserving of assistance even if sometimes it took the help of the local Gardai to calm the boisterous and drunken behaviour of "the knights of the road" before they could be admitted to the County Home. The 'casuals' as they were called were invariably males who were required to do some work in return for their keep before they were discharged from the County Home. Usually they were employed in bringing turf to feed the open fires which heated the wards of the County Home. At other times they brought hot water in buckets from the boiler room to the various wards, all the while presenting Sr. Dominic with the additional problem of maintaining discipline in the female wards. On Saturday evenings special passes were available to the men living in the County Home who were able to walk into town where they had every opportunity to spend the half crown which they were allowed to retain out of their pensions. No such passes were however available to the women inmates. Drink was very cheap in those days and many a time the County Home wheelchair was despatched to town to wheel home the unfortunates who had indulged too well if not too wisely.

Another group who were regular visitors to the County Home were travellers who availed of it's maternity facilities for their confinements. In those days long before we became aware of politically correct language itinerants were called “tinkers” and to them the County Home was invariably referred to as 'the Spike'. When the time for the confinement came near the expectant mother went into the County Home while the rest of her extended family camped on the roadside nearby.

Sr. Dominic retired in 1981 and is today living in retirement in the Convent building in the grounds of St. Vincent's Hospital. She will be celebrating a very important birthday next February but wild horses would not drag out of me any indication of her age. She remains today as formidable as ever with a generous and charitable nature for which she is fondly remembered during her long association with the County Home.