Week III
The extraordinary case of Dr James Connolly, who was summoned to appear at a sworn inquiry by the Local Government Board in November 1876, after been asked by Patrick Barrett to come to his home as his wife was in labour and in distress. The doctor had refused, showed every appearance of being drunk, and used obscene language. When, some eight hours later, he eventually did call to the Barrett home, a still born child was delivered.
During the inquiry however, witnesses testified as to the doctor’s good nature. He admitted taking ‘the occasional class of ale’, but that he was sober during his conversation with Barrett, and sober when he treated Barrett’s wife at her home. Only when he felt threatened by Barrett had he used ‘the opprobrious expression complained of’ which he very much regretted.
Except for a gentle tap in his wrist for the use of ‘intemperate language’, unbecoming for a medical man, the case against Connolly was dismissed.
The surprise witness in the case was Mrs Barrett herself who swore that at all times the doctor treated her with kindness and attention. On a previous occasion the doctor had ‘come without a visiting ticket, or money’ and saved her life. The woman went further, stating in writing, that if the doctor was not pardoned ‘she would shorten her days’. New evidence has arisen, however, that made all Mrs Barrett’s evidence a total nonsense. Mrs Barrett had been bribed.
A great injustice’
The Barrett case was ‘extraordinary’ because the doctor’s drinking habits were all too well known. Two years later Mr T Kyne, a Poor Law Guardian, who had also been present at the Barrett inquiry, now came into possession of startling new evidence that would make the Local Government Board’s decision null and void. He was demanding a new hearing.
In a lengthy letter to the Board of Guardians, who had joint responsibility to appoint the dispensary doctor, he lamented that a ‘great injustice must inevitably be done to society and to the sick poor’ so long as Connolly, ‘this paragon of propriety (he adds mockingly ), is suffered to libel and trammel on committees of management, as well as his inexorable habit of insulting, by the use of the most obscene language, many of those who stand in need of medical treatment.’ Kyne also asked the Guardians to immediately rescind the appointment of Dr Connolly.
He goes on to state that on a recent occasion two witnesses saw the doctor ‘stretched out on the barrels at Mr Lydon’s pub at Dominick Street’ unable to speak. One of the witnesses was a Mr Thomas Kearns, who in an almost exact repetition of the Barrett case, appealed to the doctor to attend his sick wife. Yet despite being presented with a ticket (required to cover costs of a home visit ), the doctor ‘lingered in a public house’ used ‘obscene language’, the result of which led to the death of the man’s wife.
A ‘menacing attitude’
Furthermore on the previous Friday, Mr Kyne, was passing through the village of Moycullen, on his way to Galway, when outside John Geraghty’s public house, he saw Dr Connolly, who turned towards him and put himself ‘in an insulting and menacing attitude’. In a grotesque show of contempt, the doctor put his hands ‘under his throat, and putting out his tongue as far as it could extend, his face full of contortions, and in this threatening attitude kept shaking his head towards me until I passed’.
Mr Kyne was so shocked that he could scarcely believe it. He turned back intending to ask for an explanation, but the doctor had turned into Geraghty’s bar. Kyne thought it best to leave matters alone, but on the same day, he was reliably informed, that Dr Connolly went to attend a patient, but was so footless from drink that he tumbled on to the bed, and fell upon the sick man!
A sovereign and a quart of wine’
Mr Kyne reminds the Guardians that on a previous occasion the doctor’s behaviour was so egregious that the Local Government Board had dispensed with his services altogether. But at the very next meeting of the board, Dr Connolly was reinstated. He was warned to ‘attend to his duties and to behave himself’, but, Mr Kyne’s letter continues, all was well for a short time until Pat Barrett of Ballinahallia reported Dr Connolly for drunkenness, neglected to attend for eight hours after receiving the ticket; the consequence was the death of Barrett’s child, and obscene language when Barrett attempted to remonstrate with him.’
And then Kyne produced his dramatic evidence. Mrs Barrett, the poor woman who had lost her child, and whose husband had pleaded with the doctor to attend her, and whose evidence in the doctor’s favour completely won the day and allowed him to carry on his professional career with absolute impunity, admitted ‘accepting a sovereign and a quart of wine to give false evidence at the hearing.*
‘Inquired fully’
Referring to Mrs Barrett’s letter to the Local Government Board that if it did not pardon the doctor, ‘I will shorten my days’, Kyne asked the Guardians if they could imagine for one moment that Mrs Barrett ‘would shorten her days if Dr Connolly had been removed, or would she have ever put her mark (signed ) such a statement but for the influence of Dr Connolly, ‘her medical attendant and other sinister motives.’
‘We, as dispassionate men of the world, never doubted for a moment but the husband was right, and we have been strengthened, nay fully convinced, in this opinion since the bribery came to light’.
In a final swipe at Dr T Brodie, the Inspector of the Local Government Board, who heard the case against Dr Connolly, following the accusations made by Pat Barrett, which were all overturned by corrupt witnesses, Kyne reminds the Guardians that Brodie had stated that he had ‘inquired fully’ into the whole matter, and was satisfied that the doctor was innocent of all charges. ‘Never was a more groundless assertion made’, concluded Mr Kyne.
‘Offering of gratitude’
Most people are familiar with the flowery words that an articulate drunk man can proclaim. Dr Connolly when summoned by the Local Government Board to account for his interfering with the witness Mrs Barrett, announced: “I neither bribed nor caused to be bribed, Mrs Barrett, nor any other person during the course of my life. The woman voluntarily came forward as a witness, and proved not unmindful of my professional services on her behalf.
Neither by wine nor gold was her evidence bought; her testimony was the spontaneous offering of gratitude.”
Although the report does not say, we have to assume that the services of Dr James Connolly were no longer required.
Next week: The Dispensary service in Galway town.
NOTES: *Mrs Barrett made a statement ‘in the presence of two respectable ratepayers of the district’: ‘ I acknowledge to have received from Dr Connolly of Moycullen, on October 31 1876 to sum of one pound sterling, which sum he told me not to divulge’.
Story taken from ‘Moycullen Dispensary - Correspondence between Local Government Board and menbers of the Moycullen Dispensary committee etc. May 8, 1878.
PHOTO 111… The Devon Commission reported in February 1845 (the first year of the Great Famine ) that sixty-three per cent of the farms of county Galway were under 5 acres and that fifty-three of the rural families lived in cabins having two to four rooms. The Commission considered the tillage methods in Galway were primitive with crude inefficient ploughs, and harrows. Houses and lands were subject to quite heavy local taxation. The Country Cess, a tax on goods produced locally, varied from 5d to 18d per acre per half-year. Furthermore there were rents to be paid and other taxes on windows and carriages.
Unemployment among the farming class was pitiful. The supply of labourers was much greater than the demand, and farmers were quite ruthless in offering wages at bare subsistence level at the numerous hiring fairs around the county. A labourer hired locally usually got a small patch of land from his employer on which to grow potatoes; but the lot of the Connemara ‘Spalpeen’ and his family was precarious to say the least.
