Search Results for 'Michael Dee'

I get both embarrassed and amused, in an hysterical sort of a way, reading back over the recent social history of poor Cathleen Ní Houlihan. Particularly when it touches on anything sexual. It is surprising that any of us were born at all, such was the misery caused at the mention that anyone might be enjoying a healthy sexual relationship with a partner. The impression was given that everyone who had sexual contact outside marriage was not only in a state of serious sin, but that they were some kind of social pariah, to be scorned and driven away from normal society. Even sex within marriage could be shaky. It really was a subject that could not be discussed in public at all without inviting legions of self-righteous men and women out on the streets proclaiming well-meaning but ill-informed opinion.

Sometime in the 1880s my grandfather, Philip O’Gorman, left his home town of Littleton (An Baile Beag), north Tipperary, and walked into Galway. He must have been very well educated because his first job was reading the Dublin newspapers in two pubs in High Street. The Dublin papers arrived on the afternoon train. Then, surprisingly, he got a good job as an assistant librarian in the university. Surprisingly, because at the time it was a predominantly a Protestant institution. From there, he rented a small shop in High Street, established the Galway Printing Company, and cycled around Connemara getting orders for small printing jobs. These were later dispatched from the Claddagh quays to be delivered or collected from the small harbours all along the coast.