Search Results for 'Aisling Mitchell'

In September 1907 Stephen L Gwynn MP set out for a prolonged cycle-walkabout through Connemara. He was a very well known man in the Galway area, which he had represented for more than 12 years at Westminster as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party. He was, as well, a literary man and a poet, who took genuine pleasure talking with, and meeting people. With fishing rods and knapsack, he set out on his bicycle on what turned out to be an eventful journey, along Cois Fhairrige to Clifden, through the mountains to Killary and Leenane, across Joyce Country to Lough na Fooey, then on to Ballinrobe and Tourmakeady, and home again along the coast road.*

The Galway Expess was one of the first local newspapers to notice that the increasing numbers of people succumbing, some very suddenly, to the so called Spanish ‘Flu that swept across the world in the early summer of 1918, was ‘virulently infectious’. It speculated that it first reached Ireland through Belfast, and in many cases ‘entire households have been seized,’ industries have been closed, and schools ‘although children suffer less than adults, they spread infection’, have also been closed. ‘Sudden collapses are the most striking feature, the victim being struck down almost immediately.’