Search Results for 'Isolation Hospital'

One of the most enduring of Galway institutions is this band, which has given much pleasure to its own members and countless thousands of the public since it was formed in Forster Street in 1896. The founders were Peter Rabbitt, a Forster Street publican, Michael Spelman, who worked in Moons and Paddy Walsh, the Station Master. It was originally a Fife and Drum band.

The last months of 1920, were the most vicious and bloody in the War of Independence in Galway. There were a lot of killings, burnings, shootings and beatings.

The possible introduction of cholera and smallpox from abroad concerned the Government, and so the Cholera Act of 1893 empowered sanitary authorities to enter lands for the construction of isolation hospitals.

This remarkable photograph was taken in 1920/21. It shows a group of republican prisoners who are being held in the Town Hall. They are surrounded by barbed wire and are being carefully watched by a soldier you can see standing beside the tin hut. He is wearing a ‘Brodie’ helmet which was a steel combat helmet invented by Englishman John Brodie during World War I. There were probably more soldiers on duty inside the hut watching the detainees, the photographer, and anyone else who might have been was passing. A notice on one of the windows reads “No one is allowed within ten yards of this building.”