Search Results for 'The Galway Express'

Week II

St Patrick may never have made it to Galway, I could not find any legend that associates him with the city, except maybe for anyone who went to Athenry to get their arse painted green. The anniversary of the saint’s death has been celebrated for many generations and the central focus of the day was usually the parade.

Clifden was not the only town to experience the terror of British forces running wild, shooting, and setting fire to buildings. The previous year, July 19 1920, Tuam suffered a similar experience as Clifden, only mercifully no resident was killed on that occasion.

“...give me your tired, your poor,

In the early decades of the 19th century fortunes were made in giving hundreds of thousands of emigrants safe passage to America. As the decades slipped by the numbers grew into millions. Liverpool had the main transatlantic business for these two islands, but Galway, situated some 300 miles closer to America, and with the onset of powerful steam-driven ships, believed that a better and quicker service could be provided.

The first book printed in Ireland was The Book of Common Prayer in 1551. As printing became more sophisticated, newspapers became inevitable. The first gazettes were published originally in manuscript – the word gazette being derived from gazetto, a coin of Venice, the amount paid for reading the news. The earliest printed newspapers began to appear around the end of the 16th century. These were small, quarto in size, printed on one or both sides of the page, or of four pages containing intelligence of public interest which were variously called 'Books of Newes', ‘Newe Newes’, 'Wonderful Newes', ‘Bloody Newes out of Ireland’, etc.

November 1920 was a bloody month in Galway with the killing of Eileen Quinn, Fr Michael Griffin, Michael Moran, and Harry and Patrick Loughnane. D Company Auxiliaries had made their presence felt.

In the centre of Oranmore, stands a statue to a local man who was shot in Dublin one hundred years ago this week. Joe Howley, Officer Commanding Number One Brigade IRA Galway was killed leaving what is now Heuston Station, Dublin on December 4 1920, and was pronounced dead at 12.30 a.m. December 5 in George V Hospital Dublin.

The tall building in the centre of our picture of New Docks Road taken in 1903 was known as “Gas Tank” Flaherty’s pub. We presume he got his nickname because of the gasworks across the street. It was here that the distinguished English painter Augustus John lived for several weeks in 1914. He did a lot of painting and drawing around the city and especially the docks area, but when the World War I started, he began to worry that the locals would regard him as an English spy, so he went back to England.

THIS WEEK marks the centenary of one of the darkest episodes in the history of Galway as violence erupted on its streets resulting in a “night of terror” that left three young men dead.