ULYSSES AND THE JOYCE OF GOOGLING

We've just had the first Bloomsday after the expiry of  European copyright on James Joyce’s work. June 16^th – as even non-Joyceans know – is the  day in which James Joyce set his Ulysses – and the date on which he and his wife Nora Barnacle had their first “date” in 1904.

    I’ve never been a Joycean. I’ve hardly ever got beyond a few pages of Ulysses before putting the book down and promising to give it another go some other time. But last year on Bloomsday I picked the book up yet again, and just one random passage – and the ramifications thereof –  brought it home to me in a flash … (and I use that word advisedly) … why so many people – not all of them academics – love delving ever deeper into Joyce’s masterpiece.

    Now, the erudite Joyceans amongst you will have to indulge me while I bring the other 99 per cent of the population the fruits of my amateur investigations. We start on Sandymount Strand, where Leopold Bloom meets a brazen strap who shows him her knickers. But enough of that sort of thing; during his more salacious mental meanderings on this occasion, Bloom briefly remembers a “poor Mr O’Connor” whose wife and four daughters died after eating polluted shellfish from that very strand.

    So who was this unfortunate gent? Was he a literary invention?  I put the book down and picked up my trusty laptop. And within minutes what had started as a brief aside soon brought onto the stage Michael Collins, Peter Pan and Micheal Ó Suilleabháin, author of the Blasket Islands classic “Fiche Bliain ag Fás”. And there are also cameo roles for W.B. Yeats and even Michael Jackson amongst many others.

    It turns out that Joyce’s “poor Mr O’Connor” was James O’Connor, an old Fenian, who was a journalist with the United Irishman when terrible tragedy befell his family in June 1890. His wife and four of his daughters died, despite the efforts of two doctors – in their home at Seapoint Avenue after eating shellfish they had collected from the seashore at Blackrock. Sewage pollution was blamed.
    But one daughter, Moya, survived, and at the age of 18, when her father remarried, she went to London and joined the civil service. While there, she met and married Crompton Llewellyn Davies, a successful barrister. Moya Llewellyn Davies had grown up an ardent republican, and her husband too supported Sinn Fein. They came to know Michael Collins in London, and when the War of Independence began, they were both well placed to give him useful intelligence from within the establishment.
    They moved to Ireland and bought Furry Park House in Killester (it’s now an apartment complex) – which became a safe house for the IRA. Collins himself stayed there – and it is rumoured by some that he and Moya had a “fling”. Other historians say that Moya was a fantasist in that regard, and a nuisance, too, in the eyes of some of Collins’s colleagues.
    But she did smuggle guns for the IRA in her car, for which she was imprisoned. She is mainly remembered today for translating, along with George Thompson, Fiche Bliain ag Fás into English. 
    But what of Yeats, I hear you cry? We go back to James O’Connor to bring him in: he was one of the pall-bearers who carried the coffin of the great Fenian John O’Leary in 1907. And what kind of Ireland, according to the poet, was buried in that same funeral? That’s right: romantic Ireland. It’s still dead and gone. More than ever now.
    Crompton Llewellyn Davies, meanwhile, was rumbled as a spy and lost his job – quite a comedown for someone who had once been a confidante of Lloyd George.
    Crompton, by the way, had several nephews, and it was these Llewellyn Davies boys – George, Jack, Peter, Michael, and Nico –who inspired J.M. Barrie to write Peter Pan. He used to stay with that branch of the family and took a keen interest in the boys, we’re told. He unofficially adopted them after their father’s death, and paid for their education from the proceeds of  Peter Pan, a huge stage hit in its day. Barrie’s biographers have argued as to whether his keen interest in the Llewellyn Davies boys was an unhealthy one. Some argue that it was indeed unnatural for an adult man to spend so much time playing with young boys; others say that he was an innocent in matters of sex generally – his own marriage to the actress Mary Ansell remained childless. One of the Llewellyn Davies boys was adamant in later life that nothing untoward ever took place.
    But aside from all that, there is also the theory of  “the curse of J.M. Barrie”: many of those who had dealings with him came to tragic ends, starting with the childhood death of his older brother David in a skating accident. And the writer Anthony Lane pointed out that Arthur Lewellyn Davies died from cancer in 1907, his wife Sylvia died three years later; their son George was killed in Flanders 1915, and Michael drowned while swimming at Oxford.
    Which brings us – one way and another – to Michael Jackson – who called his house Neverland.
    To uncover all these connections took mere minutes of browsing the internet. But I must go back to Ulysses now and read a few more lines. God knows what else I might find. Or should that be “Google knows”?
    One wonders what Joyce would have done with such a tool at his disposal. Maybe he’d never have written a line.

 ENDS 

 Éanna Brophy

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN PACKIE SAVED?

A MEMORY OF ITALIA 1990

It was the illustrious Con Houlihan who uttered the best line about the stirring events of 1990. “I missed the World Cup”, he wrote, “I was in Italy at the time.”

Anyone who was alive and in Ireland in those heady summer weeks knows exactly what Con meant: the fevered excitement was all happening at home, unbeknownst to those football fans and media folk who were following the boys in green through the sun-baked cities and stadia of Italy where the games were being played.

But where were you when Packie Bonner saved? Everyone of a certain age can remember where they were when the man from Donegal stopped the penalty kick from Romania’s Daniel Timofte.

Me? I was in France actually. Away from it all. But it was on the quayside at Le Havre (of all places) that I witnessed a scene that revealed the transformative effect on Ireland of  Packie’s momentous save.

The drama had been building slowly over the fortnight of our family camping holiday in France. As we toured with our trailer tent from one campsite to another, I was following – with a somewhat detached interest – the progress of our team, thinking that they would exit at an early stage, glorious in defeat as was the custom. Somehow, we  became aware that Kevin Sheedy had suffered a leg injury, and that this diminished our chances even further.

On an outdoor screen in one campsite, Ireland was playing Holland, and the only team colours being worn by those around the screen were orange. The Irish – ourselves and one other family – were keeping very quiet as the all-star Dutch team dominated the game from start to finish. Not quite the finish of course, because in the dying minutes, Packie lobbed a long ball all the way up to Niall Quinn who somehow scrambled it into the back of the net. Cue sudden loud Irish cheers and surprise on the faces of the Dutch who hadn't suspected we were amongst them.

On the homeward leg of our journey, we were still some miles from Le Havre when the car radio began to pick up RTE Radio’s coverage of the match against Romania. Tension mounted as the minutes passed  and it began to seem possible that it would go to penalties.

Listening intently as we drove, we somehow found the quayside in Le Havre. There was no ship yet in sight, and the place seemed remarkably quiet. In front of us there was a line of cars parked along the quay, some with Irish registrations and others with various continental plates. The ferry was late: we learned later that it had stayed out at sea so as not to lose the television signal carrying the match broadcast.

Ashore, on our crackly radio the shootout started. One all. Two all. Three all. Four all. Then Timofte let fly – and  Packie saved! Suppressed bedlam in our car. Still all was quiet outside. Dave O’Leary lined up. Kicked. And scored. What followed on that quayside was astonishing. Car horns sounded. Car doors burst open. Grown men and women jumped out and began to dance and hug each other. Small boys in green appeared as if from nowhere, waving large inflated shamrock balloons and kicking plastic footballs up in the air and against the warehouse walls.

Inside other cars, the foreigners cowered, puzzled no doubt at this sudden wild display.

And then the ferry arrived. Ramps crashed down and out poured a cavalcade of cars and trucks, all blowing their horns. People leaned out of the windows and waved to us waiting to board. Our lot waved back and blew our own horns.

The occupants of the other cars had by now got out and stood there scratching their heads. Perhaps they told each other this was a traditional ceremony every time the ferry arrived – the wild offshore islanders exchanging greetings with each other as they departed or arrived home.

The man who guided us into our parking place on the car deck was beaming with delight. “You’re going home to a very happy country”, he told us with a choke in his voice. “I’ve just been on the phone to the wife and she said the whole place is six feet up out of the water!”

I was working for The Sunday Press at the time. I turned up I in the office next morning to be greeted by the editor and told to pack my bags. I was to go to Rome. For the match against Italy. “But”, I whimpered, “I know nothing about soccer. I’ve never even been to Dollier.”

“Dalier”, said the editor patiently. My further protestations were brushed aside. “We don’t need expertise, we need colour. And all our other people over there are exhausted.” the editor explained, adding kindly “You’re all we have left.”

With this endorsement ringing in my ears I packed my bags again (adding the Boys’ Guide to the Rules of Association Football) and set off for Italy, where I was greeted by a tattered, sun-roasted, red-eyed bunch of barely recognisable colleagues who greeted me with an enthusiastic cry of “What the f… are you doing here?”

I tried hard to convey to them how things had changed back home. But it was a seasoned sports writer from another paper who told it best. He had been writing about football for 40 years to the complete indifference of his wife. “But I rang home the other night”, he exclaimed, “and the very first thing she asked was ‘How is Kevin Sheedy’s leg?’ ”

And so, just two nights after getting off the ferry in Rosslare, I found myself standing behind the Irish goal, where I had a perfect view of  our new national hero, Packie Bonner. And a view, too, of his nemesis, the man whose name would for years rank alongside that of Cromwell in the hearts of Irishmen everywhere.

Effin Scillachi.

ENDS

© Éanna Brophy

A SKIP IN THE GARDEN

A skip

In the summer-lit garden

Of a peeling-framed sale-agreed house

Awaiting the shock of new children

Stood piled high

With a lifetime’s leavings

A Zimmer

Frame shone at its summit

What decades had passed since the days

When its owner, the faithful departed

First learned how to toddle

And skip?

Éanna Brophy July 2006

PHILIP MARLOWE IN WATERFORD by Eamonn Chandler

It became known some time back that Raymond Chandler had Waterford connections ... 

THERE WAS  a cold wind blowing that night.

It was the kind of wind that comes down the river  past the glass works and the fertiliser factory and makes your nose itch so you want to pick a fight with someone – even if  you don’t happen to be married to them.

But I wasn’t looking for a fight that first night in Waterford when I walked down these wet streets, past Reginald’s Tower gleaming in the moonlight like a bad tooth.

 I pushed open the doors of  a small hostelry. I was here to recharge the batteries after too many close calls and even closer women in Los Angeles.

I just wanted a quiet beer in a quiet corner,  but as soon as I sat down I knew this might not be about to happen. For  one thing the television was too loud.

Then the  door opened again and this blonde walked in.

When I say walked I mean she walked in the way Hitler’s army walked into Poland, only without the same grace and elegance.

“So this is where you’re hiding” she snarled. I could see she meant me, and several other men nearby looked pretty relieved at this. A silence fell on the bar like a sheet in a morgue. The proprietor had turned off the television set  where some kind of  sports game with sticks had been going on. Or maybe it was a local war, because there was more blood and bandages than you’d see on a good night in Madison Square Garden.

But this blonde and what she might be about to do to me looked like a better night’s entertainment: I could tell from the way the company settled back and steadied their drinks.

“Give us another large there, Paddy” shouted one man who looked like he’d spent the day throwing tractors just to keep in shape – if you could call it a shape. “And a large Paddy, too, Paddy”, he said. This Waterford was getting to be a very confusing place.

“I’m not hiding” I said, “just recuperating”

“So you thought you could vanish and leave me high and dry”, she snapped.

“High, maybe”, I said, “but you’ve never been dry”.

She started to cry then  and I knew I’d been too quick as usual with the slick wordplay.

I could see the crowd was getting uglier. And that’s saying something considering where they started.

“That’s no way to talk to a lady” said the tractor man.

“Who are you calling a lady?” snarled the female visitor . “Haven’t you heard of women’s lib in  this neck of the woods?”

The tractor man looked puzzled as though he’d swallowed some unidentified substance from the River Suir in his glass.

“But I’m on your side” he complained. “Do you want me to punch this no-good husband of yours for deserting you like that?

“He’s no husband” said the blonde. “He took my money to do a job and never finished it. Then he vanished for ten months and it took me this long to track him down.”

The tractor man suddenly looked at me with a new  interest.

“Oh!”, he said, “you must be a builder then? I have a few jobs need doing meself.”

I thought I’d better explain. “I’m not a builder, I’m a Private Eye.”

“But you took this woman’s money and ran”, said the man behind the bar.

“Wouldn’t you?’’ I said. “She wanted me to bump off her old man so she could inherit his oil wells.”

“Just a goddam minute” said the blonde. “I never asked you to bump him off. I just wanted you to scare him a bit.”

“Wouldn’t waking up beside you not do it?” I said, and bowed acknowledging the smattering of applause this had inspired. “Anyway I did scare him, and he dropped dead. That’s why I took off.”

“But he didn’t drop dead, that’s the trouble”, she said, “He went to hospital and got so healthy that he  ran off with a bimbo one third his age.”

“Well that should do it soon enough”, I said, “Why don’t you relax and join me in a drink?.”

“I’ll have a large” she said.

The tractor man beamed. “Boys!,”, he said, “she speaks our lingo.”

She cosied up to me then. “I’m going to be be rich soon”, she murmured, her breath rasping past my ear like a CIE diesel coming out of a tunnel.

I took a deep breath and a longer drink.

“By the way” she said, “That money I gave you must have run out faster than you did. What have you been living on since then?”

It was the question I’d been waiting for all evening.

“Welfare my lovely,” I said.

Copyright Éanna Brophy

_____________________________________________________ 

THE FLYING ENTERPRISE SAGA - A sea story that gripped the world

by Éanna Brophy

IT BEGAN ON A CHRISTMAS DAY  – and for the next 14 days the sea saga off the south-west coast of Ireland was to grip the whole western world. It was the Apollo 13 of its time –  the dying days of 1951 and the first ten of  1952. Every day, the radio and newspaper reports became longer, more detailed and more excited as everyone -  from small boys to grandparents - kept watch to learn what might be the fate of the stricken freighter Flying Enterprise and its heroic skipper, Captain Kurt Carlsen.  


The Flying Enterprise listing in heavy Atlantic seas

 The ship that was to inspire such massive media coverage was an ordinary 6,700 ton cargo ship that would by now be long scrapped and forgotten had it not sailed into the worst storm to hit the Atlantic in 35 years. It was sailing from Hamburg in Germany bound for New York with a cargo of pig iron and furniture. On board were 40 crew and 9 passengers.

The Flying Enterprise was 300 miles off the southwest coast of Ireland on Christmas Day when it was hit by huge waves driven by a 100 mph gale. Crew and passengers were tossed violently from side to side. The ship battled on, but on December 27^th the pounding of the seas took its toll: the freighter cracked right across the deckhouse and down one side. One of its holds filled with water and it began to list badly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy2m--YvOSg

The Enterprise had been driven by the force 12 winds well north of the traffic lanes. The captain, 37-year-old Danish-born Kurt Carlsen tried to steer it back to where other ships might be able to come to its assistance.  His requests for help were heard, and two U.S. Navy vessels – a destroyer and a transporter rushed to the area. The crew and passengers prepared to jump into the freezing sea: each passenger to be accompanied by a crewman. They were all safely picked up and taken aboard a ship bound for Rotterdam.

That left just one man on board – Captain Kurt Carlsen. He declared that he was staying with his ship – and that was when the world began to pay attention.

Reading about it in the old newspaper files of the time one can see how the story grew and grew. A few days after Christmas there is a one-paragraph mention of the Flying Enterprise – among several other ships that were in peril on the high seas in that awesome winter weather. Then it began to get individual attention as the headlines began to proclaim: “Lone Captain Stays With His Ship”.

Day by day the story grew as the New Year of 1952 dawned and the Enterprise remained afloat, though listing even more than 60 degrees. By now it was getting six-column front page treatment, with aerial pictures that showed Carlsen on the deck, the ship looking tiny amid the mountainous waves.

There was no television in those days, but the story could have been written for the newsreel companies, who supplied cinemas worldwide with news events. This one was probably better than the main features from Hollywood – and in Captain Kurt Carlsen it had  the very personification of  cool, calm hero.

There was hardly any accessible food or drink left on board the wallowing Enterprise. Its main engines had stopped and what light there was on board came from batteries. But Captain Carlsen reported by radio to the US transporter Golden Eagle (skippered by one William E. Donahue) that he was contentedly dining on currant buns, some beer and Rhine wine. He confessed to being “a little tired” but that otherwise everything was “fine and dandy”. He quipped that he had no alarm clock and would try not to disturb the US crew unduly. They later got a messenger line  to him and sent over coffee, cigarettes and magazines. Before that his only reading matter had been a book “The Seaman and the Law” (probably the driest material on board).

His mother, meanwhile, was now being interviewed, telling reporters that her son, who had emigrated to America in 1938, had always been “a very good boy, but very obstinate”.

The second chapter of the Flying Enterprise saga started on January 2^nd when the tug Turmoil set off from Falmouth in England to try to rendezvous with Carlsen and tow his ship to safety. No other tug in the vicinity could take on this challenge: the 1,136 ton Turmoil was what we would now call a “state of the art” tug, the fastest and biggest on this side of the world. It had been unavailable until then because it was busy towing a storm-hit tanker into Falmouth. A new storm began to blow up as the Turmoil set out. Its skipper was Ted Parker – but it was the Turmoil’s first mate, Kenneth Dancy (27) who was to gain his own slice of fame in the next few days.

By January 4^th the newspaper headlines were proclaiming “Tug Now Alongside”. By now no elaboration on those three words was necessary.  Everyone in Europe and America knew which tug it was and of what it was alongside. There were wars and rebellions and political developments going on elsewhere, but for some reason the eyes of the world were fixed on one small corner of the Atlantic and two small ships bobbing side by side.

The Turmoil made several attempts to get a line on board. Captain Carlsen leaned out precariously, holding the rail with one hand as he tried to grasp the line, but to no avail.

Then Kenneth Dancy made his epic leap.

The Turmoil had edged as close as possible to the other ship and First Mate Dancy (whose favourite hobby was knitting) jumped across the gap between them, bringing with him the tow line. The newspaper headline writers went wild – and the deed was later flashed on millions of cinema screens – where audiences would queue - not to see the main feature, but for the thrilling newsreel.

Now a hawser could be reeled aboard the Flying Enterprise and it could be towed to shore. But where? Falmouth was favoured, but Bantry Bay was closer. And Brest in France was also in range. The tug company and the Enterprise’s owners, opted for Falmouth. The two ships set out, followed by a flotilla of other craft, and shadowed overhead by ’planes. It was now ten days since the Enterprise had put to sea – but its story was not over yet.

For the next three days they inched closer to Cornwall. Each days’s mileage was reported and avidly read. “100 Miles To Go” … “36 Hours From Port” … “57 Miles Off Falmouth” ….

It was no longer a case of whether Captain Carlsen would heroically go down with his ship in the old tradition: he and Ken Dancy would probably be rescued if it sank – but by now everyone wanted the Flying Enterprise to survive. And it was listing at nearly 80 degrees.

Falmouth was filling up. Over 300 reporters and cameramen had taken up every available hotel and boarding house room in the seaside town. Irish newspapers joined in, no longer satisfied to simply print the daily agency reports. Kevin O’Kelly of the Irish Press (and later of RTE)  was among them, sending back colourful descriptions of a town keeping vigil. The seafront was swathed in flags and bunting, waiting to greet two storybook heroes.

Then on day 13 the towline snapped. The Flying Enterprise was once more adrift.

Could a new line be got to her in time? “Carlsen In Peril”, screamed one headline,

(forgetting about Kenneth Dancy) but the skipper himself commented laconically that it was “nothing very alarming” and said that they would both try to get some rest.

But the Flying Enterprise was doomed. It began to list further. Carlsen and Dancy donned their lifejackets and walked out along the sloping funnel and jumped into the angry waves. They were quickly hauled aboard the Turmoil just before the Enterprise slid below the waves. The saga had lasted 14 days. The ship had been 30 miles off land.

(Its sinking did not command the front pages of Ireland’s papers next day however: sadly the main news on January 11^th 1952 was about the previous night’s crash of an Aer Lingus Dakota, the St Kevin, in Snowdonia, Wales, killing all 20 passengers and its crew of  three).

Kurt Carlsen became a world hero. He was feted in London, and went home to New York to be greeted with a ticker tape parade on 5^th Avenue. (He lived in New Jersey with his wife Agnes and two young daughters.) 

He passed through Shannon Airport on the way and was presented with a lifebuoy from the city of Limerick by Lord Mayor Stevie Coughlan.

Captain Carlsen told the Irish reporters that Bantry had not been an option as a safe haven, because the weather dictated otherwise. He also joked that he was a little nervous facing into his first ever transatlantic flight. And he might well have had good reason – the plane had to turn back to Shannon because of ice on its wings. The New York ticker tape parade had to be postponed for a day – but then it rivalled the welcome given to the returning war hero General Douglas McArthur.

Kurt Carlsen was somewhat taken aback by it all. “I wasn’t able to sleep last night thinking about this”, he said “Now I realise just how much trouble I’ve stirred up.”

• Questions were asked at the time about the reasons why Kurt Carlsen had decided to stay aboard the Enterprise. Had it been less a matter of heroics and more a business decision by his company, the Isbrandsen Line to prevent anyone else getting its estimated £1,400,000 salvage value?  A spokesman was quick to point out that even if he had abandoned ship, it would not have been deemed a derelict subject to salvage, as the company had commissioned the tug Turmoil and therefore still held possession.

• A brief court of inquiry was held in New York, where one Enterprise officer questioned whether the cargo had been stowed properly, but Carlsen said that he had been happy with it, and would have stowed it the same way again. The court wished him well and congratulated him.

• Carlsen turned down Hollywood offers for his story, and ignored all other commercial offers, but he was so famous for a while that a beer was named after him. He  went back to sea within months at the helm of  a new freighter called Flying Enterprise II, and went on sailing until he retired in 1976. He died in October 1989.

• And what of Kenneth Dancy? He returned home to a hero’s welcome from a 20,000 crowd in his native Tunbridge Wells – and was presented with a cheque for 100 guineas by his former headmaster. He always played down his “dramatic leap”, saying that the two ships had been just a foot apart, and that he had “just stepped” onto the Enterprise. He later married a Dutch girl and when last heard of was living near Rotterdam.

• British divers discovered the wreck of  the Flying Enterprise in 2001. It lies on its port side at a depth of 280ft in the western approaches to the English Channel.

                                   ========================================

THE BIZARRE CASE OF THE

DUBLIN BABY KIDNAPPINGS

WHEN BABY Patrick Berrigan was stolen from his pram in a Dublin street on December 18 1954 the incident triggered a bizarre sequence of events that became the biggest news story in years to hit two cities – Dublin and Belfast. It was to culminate not only in the recovery of  Patrick – but also in the finding in the same house of a little girl who had vanished four years earlier – also taken from a pram on a Dublin street.

A third baby was also missing. Pauline Ashmore was taken from her pram in Camden Street in October 1954. She had not been found when the Berrigan baby vanished. And she was still not found when he was tracked down in Belfast. It was to be some weeks before her disappearance would be solved in a dramatic media coup. That story would help change the face of Dublin’s evening newspaper market where, just 50 years ago, three papers were locked in a battle for readers: the venerable Mail, the dominant Herald and the brash new upstart Evening Press.

The taking of  little Patrick Berrigan from his pram outside a Henry Street shop just a week before Christmas provoked a huge nationwide search. And a fair degree of panic. Mothers in Dublin and elsewhere were panic-stricken. No baby was left unattended in a pram for even a split second. People wondered - where would the baby thieves strike next?

But the vigilance of one woman gave gardai the break they were looking for:  Mrs Louise Doherty was travelling to Belfast on the evening of December 18 and noticed a woman behaving oddly with the baby she was carrying. At one point, she was to tell a court later, the baby seemed to be carried upside down.  Mrs Doherty got talking to the other woman, who said the baby was distressed because it was hungry. No, she did not have a bottle to give it: her sister had given her one earlier but it got broken.

The RUC called to a house in Belfast a few days later and found Patrick Berrigan safe and well. He had been brought to Belfast by Mrs Margaret McGeehan. She had lost two babies of her own – the most recent being stillborn some six weeks earlier.

She soon admitted that she had taken Patrick, and he was quickly reunited with his delighted parents, who lived in Moore Street..

Then came a sensational twist to the story. One of the other children in the house caught the attention of the policemen. Bernadette McGeehan, aged 4 1/2, turned out to be another missing baby: she was in reality Elizabeth Browne, who had, at the age of 3 months, vanished from her pram in a crowded Henry Street where her mother was selling papers.

Mr and Mrs Browne travelled from their home in Ballyfermot and picked her out from a line-up of seven children. They had no doubts that she was their Elizabeth – and all doubts were removed by a birthmark.

Mrs McGeehan vehemently denied that she had taken this baby from Dublin. She maintained that she had been given the little girl four years earlier by a local woman called Ellen Brown (spelt differently) who had since died. In the court case afterwards she claimed that this Ellen Brown had been “keeping company” for some years with a Patrick McDonagh, whom she described as having “a stick leg” since the war.

Mr McDonagh (who indeed had a wooden leg as a result of wartime air-raid on Belfast)  turned up in court and said that he had lived with Ellen Brown in a rented house on Lonsdale Street.
 
In court he gave his occupation as “street vocalist” and said that Ellen had been his singing partner. They had had three children – all boys. She had never had a little girl. They knew Mrs McGeehan because she had rented the same house later.

A Dublin guesthouse owner produced evidence that Mrs McGeehan had been in Dublin coinciding with baby Elizabeth’s disappearance. Mrs McGeehan was later sentenced to two years imprisonment. Elizabeth, who had spent four years being called Bernadette, had been removed to a Belfast children’s home – and was returned to her real parents on 5^th February 1955 after the completion of legal formalities.

All these developments had been watched by another Dublin couple, Christy and Margaret Ashmore
of  Cashel Road Crumlin. They went through highs and lows of hope and despair as the Belfast saga unfolded: they had hoped that their missing baby Pauline might also be found in Mrs McGeehan’s home – but it was not to be.

But perhaps it was the intense spotlight on the baby stories that  prompted a mystery man to phone the Evening Press newsroom on Tuesday, January 25^th 1955. This man offered to sell the paper a story about what he called  “a medical wonder”. He knew where there was a woman who was about to give birth again – just three months after having had another baby. Pressed by the news editor about the birth date of this first baby, he said it was October 19^th.  This was the day Pauline Ashmore had vanished.

The only picture of  the missing Pauline had been printed in papers all over Ireland, and shown on cinema screens. The Evening Press (then just four months old itself) sent a reporter and a photographer, Jim Flanagan and Harry Stevens, to the address at Oliver Bond Flats that had been given to them by the mystery caller (who insisted on remaining anonymous). There they talked to a Mrs Hughes, whose daughter Mrs Therese Fitzpatrick was then in the Coombe Hospital to have her baby. Mrs Hughes gave the pressmen permission to photograph the little baby girl she was minding for her daughter. Then they raced back to the office, printed the picture and compared it to the one they had of Pauline Ashmore.

It matched. They had already alerted the gardai, who now brought the picture to Mrs Ashmore. She had no doubts whatsoever: this was Pauline. The gardai brought her to Oliver Bond House and she was reunited with her baby. The new evening paper had the scoop of the decade, and the story of the Dublin baby kidnappings was at an end.

Medical evidence given in Dublin Circuit Court on Ferbruary 25^th described Mrs Fitzpatrick as “unstable”at the time, and her own evidence was that she had not known what she was doing when she saw the baby and took it from its pram. Her husband told the court that when he came home and found her playing with this baby, he had jokingly asked her where she bought it. Therese Fitzpatrick was given a 12-month suspended sentence, and a kindly Mr Justice McLaughlin expressed the hope that the mothers of Dublin could now stop panicking.

ENDS

by Éanna Brophy (Published in Irish Times December 2004)

THE SNOWS OF TENERIFE

You’ve heard, I’m sure, of The Snows of Kilimanjaro, but let me tell you a tale of  the snows of Tenerife. Snow in Tenerife? Yes, it happens. This is the story of how we (my wife and I) together with Jimmy Barry Murphy (not his real name) and Hans and Heidi (not their real names either) along with sundry others, got stranded in the snow there one fine sunny morning a few Januaries ago.

The deckchairs around the pool were already filled with sunbathers, and on the nearby beach  the bronzed and the beautiful – and the rest – were lathering themselves with suntan lotions as we passed by on our way to catch the local bus to take us up Mount Teide, the island’s highest peak (and Spain’s highest too, at some 3,700 metres). We knew from a previous trip that the climate up there could be quite different from that of  Playa de Americas, so we had brought our light zippy jackets with us, just in case.

Nearing the bus stop we realised that the bus was already there and quickened our pace: there is only one bus up Mount Teide, and one down in the late afternoon. We arrived panting at front door of  the bus, to fnd it was being jammed open by a large Corkman wearing his county’s GAA strip of maroon and white. His face was of a similar colour to his jersey, and we realised that we had been laughing at him (to ourselves) a few days earlier when we saw him prostrate on the beach, his corpulent torso

bared to the hot sun and turning rapidly roaring red.

“I saw ye coming and told Pádraig here to hould his horses”, he beamed, ushering us on board. The driver, who clearly was not a Pádraig, scowled and took our money impatiently before gunning his engine and steering out into the morning traffic. We thanked our Corkonian ally and made our way down the aisle, to smiles from most of the motley band of passengers, many of whom, like ourselves, were prepared for the cooler climes aloft. There were no smiles from one couple who were attired as though for an assault on the North Face of the Eiger. Dressed identically in uniform dun-coloured heavy-duty trekking gear,  Hans and Heidi were like stage-Germans from a British war film. As we passed by their seat, he looked elaborately at his watch and made some aside to her in German about “the  lazy English”. I decided not to take umbrage on either score and sat down at the back of the bus.

The road up to the higher reaches of Teide winds steeply, almost vertical at times, and the landscape changes from bare rock and ribbon building to pine-clad slopes. We emerged at last on to the plateau-like moonscape near the summit, to view the spectacular cratered vista created here by volcanic activity over centuries.

At least that was the idea. But we could not see much of  anything. Because it was snowing. Not just a few picturesque snowflakes, but a mini-blizzard, sweeping across the road in front of us and covering the countryside in inches of the dreaded white stuff. The bus skidded as it pulled into the car park of the parador hotel and restaurant which is the main destination for day-trippers. We got out to be greeted by an icy blast that knifed through my pathetically light jacket. But at least we had full-length trousers on, unlike Jimmy from Cork, who been regaling us on the way up with detailed re-runs of the previous year’s achievements of  both Cork’s hurlers and footballers.

“Sure come on and we’ll get a brandy”, he said as we all huddled against the savage cold. All, that is, except Hans and Heidi, who stood to one side, snug  and smug in their mountaineering garb while they perused a map. They even had two pairs of those tall walking sticks you’d associate more with the Alps or the Himalayas.

We ignored them and followed Jimmy across the car park to the door of the restaurant. We were looking forward to some breakfast, having skipped it to catch the bus, as we knew this restaurant from our previous visit. Shock horror. It was closed. Surely some mistake. We tried pushing and pulling at the glass doors, to no avail. There was a dim light to be seen beyond the food counter. One of our party began to knock loudly on the door. Kicking it would have been next, but a small cross-looking woman appeared inside and began to shout and gesticulate at us. Someone who understood Spanish interpreted and then said. “They’ve no food delivered, and the staff can’t get up here from Puerto de la Cruz (on the north side of the island) because of icy roads. She wants us to go away.”

Petrified and hungry we turned to see our bus heading off. It would not be back until 4 pm. The departing bus was bad enough, but there was also the sight of Hans and Heidi, sheltered behind a rock and pouring themselves two steaming mugs of coffee from a large flask. Then from a rucksack they took out enough food to feed a small army. Did they offer us any? Nein! They finished their repast and then strode masterfully off into the swirling snow. Before they went, Hans smirked at us and waved goodbye, saying, “There is no such thing as bad weather. Only bad equipment”. He sounded like a parody of Dr Strangelove.

The rest of us bonded together and hid from the penetrating snow as best we could, either in the small porch of the restaurant or under the dramatic outcrops of rock that normally are such a scenic highlight. Swapping travellers’ tales, we made lots of new friends before we all froze to death. No, that didn’t happen. Instead, the snow began to stop and the sun began to shine … and a small bus appeared bearing the staff of the restaurant. Soon we were all inside, eating and drinking  and toasting our survival.

In no time after that, we were able to head off and explore as though the snow had never been.

That afternoon we assembled to await the bus. Jimmy and the rest of our new friends were there, but no sign of Hans and Heidi. We climbed aboard and the driver began to shut the doors. Just then two distant figures appeared, stumbling along a rocky track and waving at the bus. The driver didn’t seem aware of them as he prepared to drive off. Did Jimmy – or  any of us – jump up and call the driver’s attention to his missing passengers? Did we what?

Two days later on the beach, we noticed a familiar-looking couple, but couldn’t quite place them at first without their mountaineering clothes.

Then we noticed that the woman had her left foot encased in plaster from toe to ankle.

Did we feel guilty? To paraphrase a famous tribunal star: “Did we ….?”

ENDS

Copyright: Éanna Brophy (Published in Sunday Times September 2011)