Paul Malpas

I have just returned after a couple of days in Dublin and I am amazed at what I saw. By nine o’clock at night there was not a shop doorway or office block entrance available or vacant. The homeless were in command and sleeping in niches that offered only the scantest protection from the incessant rain. There must be some remedy for this disgraceful scene, especially with the thought that there are 300,000 vacant dwellings in Ireland. Surely it is not beyond the wit of the Health Service Executive to put two and two together and make four, somehow.

When daylight comes to the streets, the pavements fill with beggers of all nationalities and I am not sure there is a link between the doorstep dwellers and the beggers, they appear different in terms of age and nationality. It is disturbing and sad that such a situation exists. It was always to some extent there, with the women and children of the travelling community but the begger’s numbers have increased tenfold these past few years and it is not just women and children of the travellers now, it is man woman and child of most nationalities known.

A walk down Talbot Street or up O’Connell Street will show you the problem, grotesquely deformed cripples and other limbless unfortunates litter the pavements, saying nothing, but holding up empty plastic coffee cups for us rich or not so rich, to fill up with loose change. Not only is it very uncomfortable to witness and so perplexing to deal with, it can also do no good for the lifeblood of Dublin, it’s tourist industry.

Obviously all these poor people are supported by the state and if not you would wonder how they came to the country. Some will be mentally impaired and somehow or other should be cared for by the authorities. The country cannot wash it’s hands of them and allow them to die like dogs in the street. This is not Ireland of 100 years ago. I might have the whole thing wrong and it might be that the State is falling over itself in caring for these people but I am only expressing the thoughts of the occasional visitor who has this problem thrust in his face.

But enough of rant, I came to Dublin at the invite of O’Brien Press to attend the launch of a new book by a young writer, Neil Richardson. I was interested in attending such an occasion because I had watched a performance of a play by Neil entitled “From the Shannon to the Somme” in March this year in the Little Theatre in Athlone. See my blog of that title posted on 27th March 2010. I was then so impressed not only with the acting and the direction of the play but also with the script and how well it was researched by one so young. Neil is in his mid-twenties.

So I was pleased and proud to attend this launch having spotted the writers talents some months ago. It is his first book and it has taken three years of research and is entitled “A Coward If I Return, A Hero If I Fall” which is a line in the poem “Lament” by the Donegal writer, Patrick McGill, who fought the whole of the First World War with the London Irish Rifles. It tells the same story as the play but this time in facts and figures and explains the anguish of the families on receiving the dreaded telegram and paints pen pictures of the Irish men and boys who volunteered to fight in this atrocious conflict and describes the dichotomy faced by the 200,000 returning Irishmen at the end of the war.

They had enlisted in 1914 into what was then their army and what had become the enemy’s army, by the time they were demobbed in 1919. They were coming home to hatred, social ostracization, unemployment and having to live with this and the inevitable post traumatic stress brought on by the war. Nationalistic zeal was running high and they were shunned and forgotten. We are not talking about a few thousand men here, but something like 30% of the 17-35 year old male population, a vast amount of people. Faced with these difficulties is it any wonder so many of them did not return but chose to try and make a go of it in England, America, Canada and Australia. To quote Yeats, everything was “all changed, changed utterly”

The evening commenced with a eulogy on the writer by Michael O’Brien, the publisher, who was amazed that one so young could write with such maturity. Dr. Tom Conan, former Lt. Colonel in the Irish Army and now Defence Correspondent for The Irish Times amongst other things, followed up, reporting some of the startling facts gleaned from the book. There were 50,000 Irishmen killed in that war, roughly the same amount as Americans killed in Vietnam. Vietnam is seared into the American psyche, these 50,000 Irishmen were forgotten in that surge of nationalism in the 20s and 30s. In Easter Week in Dublin 450 civilians, rebels and British soldiers were killed, in that same week in Loos in Northern France 538 Irish soldiers, mainly from Dublin, met their death, mostly by chlorine gas, a horrible killer. The world knows about the dead in Dublin but nothing about the dead in Loos. His talk was emotional and serious and explained the soldiers lot in conflict.

Neil then spoke of his early interest in the war, his long years of research and his pleasure at seeing so many people at the National Library for this occasion. It was obvious from his easy speech on the subject, while he rattled off names and numbers, facts and fables that his research had been deep, accurate and unique.

I brought the book home and started reading and finished the last of its 350 pages in two days. It is a compelling, eye-opening and easy read. It explains the problems it set itself in its title, in a way that, as far as I know, has never been tried before. It’s uniqueness in this genre is a main reason for buying the book. I was so pleased to have accepted the invitation on behalf of the Connaught Rangers Association and so proud to have been at such an august occasion.

Best of luck Mr. Richardson with this work and may you have continued success throughout your career.

First of all I would like to apologize to anybody who reads this blog on a regular basis.  I have been very busy and have only managed to squeeze in one blog in the last week.  A cousin of mine died  a week ago, trgically young at 54 years of age and I went over to England last Thursday to a very emotional but lovely funeral.  A funeral is a very necessary and cathartic experience for all that have been  touched by the deceased’s life.  The tentacles of humanity, stretching out and gathering in all those people, who have at some stage  had their spirit lifted by the finished life-force, for one final celebration.  It is happy and sad and necessary and this particular celebration was made all the greater by the beautiful panegyric of the priest, Father Bernard Sparks, a great and longtime friend of the family.

I left the gathering after a couple of hours and went back to my daughter’s house in a very contemplative mood.  For reasons I will not bother you with, I had not seen the lady, my first cousin, for a number of years.  As you all grow up and move around and settle into a path of life, touch can easily be lost and this is what made this death all the harder for me.  At one time I was so close to her and her family and now I would not have recognized her in the street.  She died before I knew her and yet at one time I knew her well.  Somehow I had missed out on a good life and that is a big miss.

Away I came and the following morning was more than pleasantly surprised from a comment I received on a blog I wrote  on 12 January 2010 called The Importance of Blogs. I had just heard that Catherine, who has just died, was terminally ill and I dedicated this blog to her and her family.  It traced her mother’s  family tree back to the Famine in Ireland, it was a piece of their history they were unsure of because of their mother’s premature death, nearly 50 years ago.

This comment was from a lady who had just read this blog and realized that she was a second cousin of mine and Catherine’s, her grandfather and my grandmother were siblings.  She was from a branch of the family that had gone their separate ways in the 1930s and for whatever reason  touch had been lost.

That is why the blog is such an amazing and powerful tool if used properly.  You often think that once a piece has been posted, that is it, gone and forgotten, but the internet and blog field leaves it there like a bright shiny cherry on a tree waiting to be picked and eaten by passing strangers.  It is there for evermore, hopefully to be appreciated by everyone and that is what happened.  So now as one cousin goes another comes to light and hopefully will not disappear as quickly.

As I was writing these words this morning, there came news that  will only double my efforts in this field.  My daughter, Katy, has entered the final stages of pregnancy with the anticipation of twins.  She is slightly premature but the experts say that this is normal with multiple births and that mother and foeutuses are fine, with estimated weights of 5lb with still four weeks of cooking  to go.  However she will now have to go into hospital for their delivery,  a thing she dreads.  She was looking forward to a home birth and had an army of midwives lined up to take care of any eventuality.  She will have to be forthright and clear minded and not let these tinkerers of mortality, the doctors, try to bully her into treatment she does not want, just to suit the timetable of the maternity suite.

My wife has flown the coop and is now in Dublin boarding the Holyhead boat with a rolling pin in hand.  God help the doctors at Stepping Hill Hospital.   I am left with the young fellah, a mop and bucket and various dusters and told to make sure the house is perfect on her return.  That might not be until these twins are weaned so I have plenty of time.  The male’s station in life as with all things historic is a lonely one, but I suppose I have the pub and my blog and all the interesting things that both these channels deliver, but I must get on, the mop is doing a lonely dance in the bucket of hot water I prepared earlier.

As part of my retired life, I spend a lot of my time on research which turns into a wild goose chase, I run into a brick wall and cannot get any further, but I hope this particular recent subject will not.  I am already fond of this family and I do not properly know them yet.

This line of research concerns the Dignan family of Ballinagard House, which is  situated two kilometres south of Roscommon town on the Athleague or Galway road.  It was a large house of 12 rooms and was owned at the time ie the turn of the 20th Century by Charles Coleman Dignan, the Under Sheriff of Roscommon.  The Under Sheriff as far as I know is or was a court official, normally a solicitor, who carried out the wishes of the courts.  For example he might organize bailiffs to enter a property to seize goods etc, or he might be responsible for the serving of summonses.

Charles Coleman Dignan had lived in Roscommon all his life, born in 1858 and marrying his wife, a local woman, Angelina Victoria in early 1886.  He was 28, she was 21.  During their marriage Angelina had 10 pregnancies, one a still birth,  the other eight surviving well into adulthood.  They were:-

Maud M born in 1886

Joseph Patrick born in 1888.

Eveleen Victoria born in1891.

Alfred Charles born in 1892.

Albert Guy born in 1894.

Mabel B. born in1897.

Cecil Joseph born in 1899.

Hilda Angelina born in 1902.

Ethel W. born in 1906.

Ballinagard House was a fine stone built house with a slated roof, it had six outhouses consisting of a stable, a harness room. a coach house, a cowshed, a dairy and a hen house.  They had one live-in sevant, but there must have been others who lived in a cluster of dwellings round the big house like the King’s and the Igoe’s who classed themselves as agricultural labourers and Edward Flanagan who classed himself as a groom/domestic servant in the 1911 census.

The Dignan family, all practising Catholics, were doing well for themselves and were stalwarts of polite Roscommon society and it can be seen that like the majority of people in Ireland at this time, although born and bred in the country, in this case Roscommon, they would have considered themselves happy to be part of Queen Victoria’s Empire.  Look at the names they gave their children, except for Joseph Patrick, the rest of the names could be from anywhere in England.  Ireland to them was as much part of England as Lancashire or Warwickshire.

All the children as far as I know did their basic education at Roscommon National School before being finished off at a convent or Grammer School and this is where I come in.  Joseph Patrick, when he was 14 years and 10 months old, was sent to St. Bede’s College in Manchester for two further years of education, 1903-1905, Alfred Charles attended 1906-1909 and Albert Guy 1908-191911.   St. Bede’s was the school I went to 1957-1963.  We have all something in common, we have all knelt in the same little chapel, built in 1895, at the school, doing penance for our sins,  we have all walked its long dark corridors and we have all had the rudiments of Latin, Greek, Mathematics and English Literature chisled onto our brains, never to be forgotten.

Joseph Patrick left St. Bede’s in the summer of 1905 after presumably boarding at the school for two years, he became a clerk in the Bank of Ireland, where he was probably posted to some far flung branch.  He certainly was not working in Roscommon at the time of the Census in 1911.  At the moment I do not know where he spent the years 1905-1914, but in September 1914 he enlisted as a Private soldier in the 19th (Service) Battalion of the Manchester Regiment, which suggests to me that he was back working in Manchester at that time.  He put down his occupation as clerk, not bank clerk, which would have given him extra Kudos, but just plain clerk.  He might have had relations in the town whom he lived and worked with and who he might have lived with while at St. Bede’s.  All these questions I hope to answer shortly; I do seem to remember my mother speaking of a business family in North Manchester called Dignan, who were big in the Church and in Commerce.

Anyway after seven months training as a private soldier, without going overseas, he applied for and received his commission, as a 2nd Lieutenant in his local regiment, the Connaught Rangers, on 22 May 1915, in fact in the 4th battalion, which normally had a home at King House, the barracks in Boyle, Co Roscommon, where I was yesterday.  Myself and Joseph Patrick Dignan have a lot in common.

The sad part of this story is that from the 4th Battalion, which was a reserve Battalion suppling troops to the 1st, 5th and 6th Battalions of the Connaught Rangers in the field. he was attached to the 8th Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, who were stationed at Finner Camp in South Donegal.  In February 1916 they were posted to France, to the Loos sector where they had their first taste of the trenches at the end of that relentless and hopelessly inefficient Battle of Loos that had started the previous September.  From there they were  moved south to take part in the latter stages of the Somme offensive where they succeeded in capturing the heavily defended village of Ginchy in September 1916 before being moved up to the southern end of Ypres to Wyschaete where Joseph Patrick sadly met his end on 16th October aged 28, taking part in a night patrol.  He is buried in Kemmel Chateau Military Cemetery.

His two younger brothers, Alfred Charles and Albert Guy, were both commissioned and served with the South Irish Horse, a cavalry regiment, after enlisting in 1914.  Their young brother, Cecil Joseph, was stopped from going to St. Bede’s, like his brothers, because of the war but he once he became 18 in 1917 and he too was commissioned into the South Irish Horse in 1918.  The South Irish Horse had been turned into an infantry regiment in 1917 because of the need for foot soldiers and became the 7th (South Irish Horse) Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment, which was virtually wiped out on 21st March 1918 on that first day of the German Spring Offensive.  The South Irish Horse were stationed at Poziere, a few miles out of Albert on the Bapaume road as the Germans threw everything they had at the British army in a last ditch attempt at breaking the four year stalemate tjhat was the Western Front and  ending the war.  Despite early successes the Germans were halted and gradually forced back.  Lt. Albert Guy Dignan was 23  on that first day, his body was never found and he is remembered on the Poziere Memorial in the Poziere British Cemetery.

Charles Coleman Dignan, the Lieutenant Recruiting Officer for the town and district of Roscommon paid a heavy price for his duties to King and Country with the loss of his two sons.

If anybody reads this blog and can add to this story in any way please contact me through the comments section of the blog or e-mail me on malpas46@eircom.net.  In the months to come I hope to have a fuller version of this family’s story.

Thank you for reading this post and to Joseph Patrick and Albert Guy Rest in Peace.  They will never be forgotten.

Finally I would like to thank Oliver Fallon, Chairman and Chief Researcher of the Connaught Rangers for some of the military facts in this blog.

As I moved out of my early teens and started to stumble around trying to make sense out of what was happening around me, my circle of friends and aquaintances increased, but they were nearly all culled from the working class areas of Manchester.  Harpurhey, Gorton, Longsight, Chorlton on Medlock, Ardwick and Wythenshawe.  There were one or two from finer parts, but with these, our mutual attraction was sport and mainly cricket.  It did seem that like attracted like and we at the bottom had a job climbing the ladder to join the cleaner and more studious from the hygenic outer suburbs, who had a different, more relaxed, but I do not think as exiting a life as that which we were trying to pursue.  I remember one chap from Gorton explaining to me one night that I should not be in this elite group of working class kids, because we lived in Birchfields Road and were therefore rich and middle class.  I could not understand his logic, we did not have a pot to piss in, but lived off the aspirations of my parents.  I suppose his argument was a little bit of inverted snobbery that Old Labour revelled in.

However his outlandish views did not stop me from ploughing my furrow and the friendliness of the girls kept my furrow very straight.  Okay we did not live in some landlord slum, but we walked everywhere or caught the bus if we had any money and time was pressing and it was amazing how good and cheap the bus service was then.

Most of my memories of those teenage acquaintances were of the lack of fathers; by the time these kids were 15 or 16, the fathers, when they were needing them the  most were disappearing.  No, there was no migration of healthy masculine types to the arms of women demanding what the 1960s expected of them.  No, these men were dying.  Once they had passed 40 the ravages of the war and 20 years in the terrible conditions of the working class workplace took their toll.  They were dying of all types of respiratory illnesses, the last vestiges of TB and heart conditions brought about by excessive smoking and bad diets.  The lad who had accosted me about where on the class scale I should be, had lost his father the year previously and in some bizarre thought process considered himself lower than me.  His father’s loss was a massive blow and as with them all it took him years to recover.  I remember one kid, we will call him B, when we were about 14 and in a Latin class with Ron Smith.  There was a knock on the door and in walked Geoff Burke, the Headmaster, “B your father died this morning, remain in school and go home at your normal time”.  The delivery and shock was nearly as bad as the event.  Certainly Burkes bedside manner was not what you would expect and B naturally blubbed at the back of class for the rest of the day.  We at 14 did not know what to say or do, nor it seemed did any one else.

These sudden departures of fathers at the demanding age these kids were at, affected them in a far more serious way than we can believe, these were loving fathers not the feckless fruit of 21st century philosophy.  These men were dying because employers were cutting whatever corners there were to be cut.  There was no thought of Health and Safety or no regulatory bodies to control all the thousands of back street workshops that brought Europe back from the brink in those times ravaged as they had been by wars and recessions.

The housing stock was atrocious in the poorly maintained landlord estates, and massive waiting lists in the few slightly better maintained corporation owned properties.  Most houses in the districts mentioned had no internal toilets, relying on outside loos, there were even some  with shared accommodation.  Most houses only had cold water, with hot water being heated by gas fired water heaters over kitchen sinks or by back boilers behind fires, that needed total precision when planning a bath, when every one lined up to take it in turns to spruce themselves up in two inches of degenerating and murky warm water.  Pity the last man in.  In some cases that precision was not available so that baths were not as frequent as they might have been.  There were no showers, no central heating, relying on one fire in one room as the only source of heat.  To day new and well refurbished houses stand in their place but it strikes me that the quality, kindness and friendliness of the people is not there.  That generosity of spirit that pulled everyone along seems to have vacated the cupboard.

We all suffered strange illnesses and everyone was plagued with boils and other skin eruptions, an obvious sign of vitamin deficiency.  We ate enough but probably a lot of the wrong thing.  Fresh fruit and vegetables was not a must-have but as a whole we were generally fitter.  There was no television so most people spent more time out of the house playing sport or going to the cinema two or three times a week.  there were no cars so every one walked.  Even in winter in the dark, black streets of Manchester everybody walked with not a worry in the world.  You were as safe as houses.  We often used to walk there and back to Manchester, three miles each way.

We had no money but we had a few brains between us and that enabled us to pick our way out of the maze and eventually after a few years pottering about in the mire of life we made a decent fist of what we set out to do.  No thanks at all to most of the so called education we received free gratis, but more to do with guts and having seen the bottom of the heap.

It seems today that if you have not made a success of your life at twenty, you are a failure.  Bollocks to that.  Head down and keep ploughing is how I have always tried to live.