Search Results for 'Guardians'

Castlebar Fever Hospital was the first structure demolished in 1965 when works on what would become the Sacred Heart Hospital commenced. The Fever Hospital and the Workhouse that shadowed it are at the top of the list of former public spaces in Castlebar with a dark and terrible history.

Patrick J. Farragher was a dark-complexioned individual but was otherwise of regular features. His heavy moustache gave him a military appearance. Up to September 1879, Farragher held the lease to a farm on the Mannin Estate in Aghamore.

The first formal meeting of the Board of Guardians of the Galway Workhouse took place in the Town Hall on July 3, 1839, and the building opened on March 2, 1842, one of many such workhouses built around the country. On March 16, the first pauper died from old age and destitution. The numbers of inmates gradually increased to 313 by May 1845, after which the Famine made a huge impact on the project. It was originally designed for 800 destitute persons but this quickly increased to 1,000. Included in the complex was an infirmary for sick paupers but this rapidly became the hospital for the city’s poor.

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When Mitchell Henry entered Westminster parliament in 1871 he went with hope in his heart and a mission to tell the British people the precarious circumstances of the Irish tenant farmer. In many ways he resembled Jefferson Smith in the Frank Cappa film ‘Mr Smith Goes to Washington’ where a naive, idealistic young man has plans to change America.* Mitchell Henry, a liberal, kindly man, had plans to be a voice for the Irish tenant farmer within, what he believed, was a paternalistic landlord system, but he walked into a political cauldron, waiting to explode.

Sarah Shaughnessy was ten years old when she gave evidence and allowed herself to be subjected to cross-examination in the trial of William and Margaret Roche at Castlebar Petty Sessions on 14 June 1916. The case is remarkable for Sarah's courage and the insights it gives us into the system of boarding out workhouse children.

In 1862 a Poor Law Inquiry was held at Castlebar into two serious allegations against Dr John Carter Barrett, Medical Officer at Castlebar Workhouse. Workhouse inmate Mary Howard alleged that Barrett had unlawful sexual intercourse with her.

The public sanitary conditions in Athenry, were regarded as a disgrace, and not conducive to a healthy environment when an epidemic of smallpox erupted there in the spring of 1875.