In our Day by Kevin C. Kearns

Author:Kevin C. Kearns [Kearns, Kevin C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gill Books

CHARLIE DILLON, b. 1915

Northside car and bicycle minder.

“If the women dealers went on the beer there might be jealousy and then there’d be a row between them. Oh there was always a row on a Saturday night. Me mother was a dealer, and she’d be fighting two or three of them. Pulling hair out of one another! Women’d get a grip, like a dead person’s grip, and it was very hard to get out of it. And kicking and all. The women was better than the men. Oh, the language!”

FRANK WEAREN, b. 1902

Political activist and one of the last two old-time lamplighters in Dublin.

“When I was eighteen I was active in the Movement and I got a Mauser rifle. And I’d a .38 [revolver] in my pocket.

“I seen a few actions when we done raids on the North Wall and Shell-Mex. In any case, I was arrested and interrogated and brought up to Mountjoy in a horse caravan. We were political prisoners.

“And after Easter it was announced to a big meeting, ‘There’s a general strike on ... we’re going on hunger strike in Mountjoy!’ All we drank every day was salt and water. But that kept the bowel free, kept your kidneys flushed and kept the stomach expanded. The first three or four days was dreadful! One fella, Jesus, so thin and the colour of that quilt – yellow. He got yellow. I had headaches, dreadful headaches. And if you had bad teeth that was the first thing that deteriorated. You got no end of pain. Get up in the middle of the night roaring and bawling ... ‘Oh, doctor, get a pair of pliers and pull it out!’ You’d be that frantic. Our own doctor, Dr Jim Ryan, a prisoner there, used to tell them, ‘If you can’t stick it, give it up!’ Some of them did. But I was determined either to come out on me feet or come out dead.

“I’ll tell you what was terrible ... you were dreaming every night only of fancy food ... cake shops, ice cream, fish and chip shops, meals you were having at home. You’d wake up roaring and bawling. It was pandemonium ... Jesus, it was dreadful. A hell it was ... a hell on earth! And there was big strong men there that lost their mind, one was called Hobo Kavanagh and another fella was a blacksmith by trade.

“So, I finished there on hunger strike and got out in November 1923 after doing twenty-seven days’ hunger strike. And I tumbled out of bed and they put me on a stretcher ... handed me over to my own confederacy. I got a glass of lukewarm milk. Then, ‘Drink that, Frank’ and they took out a bottle of whiskey and poured a drop. ‘It’ll put some life into you’ – and it did and I sat up!”

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