Page 25 - Garda Journal Winter 2019

GARDA HISTORY | A Passage Garda’s Life
The first group of Garda Síochána to serve Cork city
so grateful that he stopped at the local church to offer up his thanks. When he came out, the bike was gone.
Vehicular traffic through Passage was not a major problem during most of my father’s tenure. During the war years, there was no traffic, outside of an occasional bus or military vehicle. When car traffic returned in the post-war years, there were was a dire need to curtail speeding through the town and to enforce speed limits (which were not posted). By today’s standards, the methods to determine excessive speed were crude. A mark was made on the wall above the Ferry Point. A second one was made on the “Club” wall a few hundred yards away. My father stood at one and a second garda at the other. When a car passed the first point, a signal was given and the second garda started a stopwatch. If the car arrived there under a specified time, the driver was given a summons for speeding. A friend of mine met a doctor in Kinsale who complained about receiving such a summons going through Passage. Radar for detecting speeding violations, was not yet developed.
Enforcement of dog and bull licenses was another ticklish problem with unintended consequences. As far as dogs were concerned, they simply ran loose and when the matter of licensing came up, nobody claimed them. On one occasion, my father went to issue summonses to a man who was known to have several unlicensed Kerry Blues. All he got for his troubles was a nasty bite in the leg which required medical treatment.
Most farmers had bulls and they were required to be licensed. Violations of the licensing laws were usually discovered by Department of Agriculture inspectors on routine visits. They also checked farmers for compliance with the “Compulsory Tillage” laws. They did not, however, issue summonses. That was left to the local gardai, who, as mentioned earlier, had good personal relationships with the farmers involved. They now had the unpleasant assignment of handing them summonses which resulted in a day in court and stiff fines. Again, these actions were not conducive to retaining friendships.
Another contemporary law that resulted from the breakdown of the monetary system after the war was the “Foreign Exchange Control Act”. Most European countries needed
Bountiful salmon moving upriver unhindered during the severe food shortages and poverty of the war
American dollars to purchase materials that could only be obtained in the United States. Essentially, the law required all persons, under the threat of severe penalties including gaol time, to turn over to the government any American currency in their possession. A prominent Passage woman saw an advertisement for a cookbook in an American magazine and enclosed ten dollars in letter to her sister in New York to purchase the book for her. She transposed some numbers on the street address and the letter wound up in the “dead-letter” section of the New York post office. When it was opened, the dollars were exposed. The U.S. Post Office, knowing that a violation of Irish Law had occurred, sent the letter and its contents to the Department of Finance in Dublin. Eventually an order for the woman’s arrest came down to Passage and my father had the unpleasant job of carrying it out. The case attracted considerable interest and the woman was fined heavily.
“During the war years, a great deal of excitement occurred
in Passage with the arrival of a “banshee” in Glenbrook. Her pre-dawn loud wails were first heard in Bailey’s Lane. At first, no one took much notice and most people were asleep anyway. However, the wailing persisted and people began to take notice and stay up to hear her. Rumours were flying that she was moving to different locations each night. It was time to put an end to the “banshee“ problem. My father and another garda staked out Bailey’s Lane and spotted the “banshee” coming up the hill, covered in a white sheet, wailing away. She turned out to be an eccentric local woman who had a tenant in her house whom she could not evict and was hoping that he would be so frightened that he would leave voluntarily. There was much relief in Glenbrook when the episode ended. The gardai had come to the rescue again.
A very publicized historical event was the visit of Cobh born boxer and film star, Jack Doyle and his Mexican movie star bride, Movita, to Raffeen. Jack wanted to show a typical Irish thatched cottage to his beautiful bride and for her to enjoy an Irish breakfast. The cottage of Mrs. Murphy in Strawhall was chosen for the big event. Traffic on this narrow stretch of the main Cork to Ringaskiddy road was closed as the film crew along with newspaper and radio reporters jammed the area. The breakfast went on for several hours with usual interviews and autograph signings. Mrs. Murphy told my father that she was so excited that she wouldn’t clear the table or wash the dishes. She was even going to preserve the egg-shells.
years, was difficult to justify in the minds of some Passage and Monkstown people"
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