by Jack Lynch
CHAPTER ONE
When I was old enough to be curious daddy told me of a run-in he had with the Black and Tans, before he was married to mammy. He and Mr. John Joseph O’Connell, a Blacksmith who lived up the ‘Rope Walk’, were walking up Harbour Row, and when they were close to Kidney’s Strand, near the Preaching House Steps, some Black and Tan soldiers accosted them. It was during the troubles and the soldiers were drunk. They took the hats off daddy and Mr.O’Connell and threw them on the ground. After searching them they then ordered both men to pick up the hats and go. Daddy picked up his hat, and said nothing. Mr.O’Connell refused and said, “If you were gentlemen you would pick up the hat and put it where you got it.” Without warning a shot rang out and Mr.O’Connell died on the spot, shot through the heart. Daddy was twenty-seven years old. He never forgot this episode. It had a profound effect on him. He tried his best to get help, as the soldiers laughed. He kept the memoriam card of Mr O’Connell on the mantelpiece at home for years after, and this was the picture that ignited my interest to find out about it.
Mammy came to work as a barmaid in the Imperial Hotel in Cobh when she was about eighteen years old, and the romance blossomed. Mammy also had a run-in with the Tans. She was eighteen then and not yet married. She was working in the bar of the hotel, where my father met her. One evening a Tan soldier ordered a drink. He was drunk and when she gave him the drink he handed mammy a live hand grenade for payment. The pin was loose in it, and the Tan told her to hold it tight. She was petrified and shaking. He laughed and went back to his table and mates. An Officer of the regular British army was present, and took the grenade from mammy and made it safe. He had the Tan removed, amid scuffles, and had him escorted back to barracks.
In 1925, my father John and my mother Julia were married in Dromtarriff R.C. church in the Diocese of Kerry, even though the church was near Kanturk, in Co. Cork, where mammy was born on the 25th November, 1904. Daddy was born in Midleton, Co. Cork, on 23rd June, 1894, and spent most of his younger days around East Ferry and Aghada, Co. Cork. He went to school in Saleen National School, Co. Cork.
He moved to Cobh and started to work in Haulbowline, as a labourer. Soon, he became a salesman and repairman, for Singer Sewing Machines, who had a shop at Harbour Row. Not long after he married he bought a Prudential Insurance book, and worked with this Company as an agent. Years later, the Irish Assurance Co. took over and he retired on pension, as Assistant Superintendent. Whilst retired, he took a spare time job as a driver with Shannon Car hire and Travel Company.
Two years after my parents married I was born at, at home, No. 4 Carrignafoy Terrace, on March 5th 1927. Like all good Catholic families then I was baptised the next day by our Parish Priest, Rev. Fr. William F. Browne. I was the first male born, the second child, of six girls, and three boys in our family. There were three or four still born babies also born in the family. Eileen and I were the only Lynch children who were born at No. 4 Carrignafoy Terrace. This was a terraced house, which had one window already blanked out upstairs, before daddy moved in. In those days apparently the more windows that were in a house, the more tax that was paid. You paid for natural light! The house is still like that today. I don‘t remember anything about the inside or the garden of this house, as our family moved to Harbour Row, when I was about two or three years old.
My father John Lynch was known by all as Jack. I was brought up to believe that my paternal grandfather was Michael Lynch, and my paternal grandmother, was Ellen Prenderville, though as I’ve said there is some doubt that Ellen was in fact my father’s birth mother. Both were from East Cork. She married Michael Lynch, and lived in East Ferry, Co.Cork. She then moved to Cobh, with her husband Michael, and my father. This must have been post 1911 as the Census showed them all residing in House number 4, Garranekinnefeake, Rostellan, Co. Cork.
My predominant memory of Nan Prenderville is that her left hand was missing. I was told that a pig had bitten it off at the wrist, when she was a baby in a pram. She was left with a stump. I remember her well. When she was old and ill, she was confined to bed. Every day, including school days, I ran to the top of the three-story house, where she was in bed, and I rubbed Sloan’s liniment into her back. She gave me a halfpenny and acid drops, which she kept under her pillow. The acid drops were all stuck together from being under the pillow, but I didn’t care about that. Her hair was white and long, and when she was well she loved sitting on a chair outside the front of the house and talking to people passing by. She wore black clothes, all the time, and had a black shawl over her shoulders. I remember daddy cried when we recited the rosary at her wake.
All my younger sisters were scared of her, because they thought she was very frightening with her long white hair and sharp features. To them she looked like a witch, but with the exception of Eileen they were much smaller and younger than me at the time. To me, she was my grandmother, and I loved going up to see her.
She died in our house on January 23rd 1938, when I was almost eleven years old. I remember her laid out in the bed, but strangely I cannot remember the funeral hearse at the house, or of it being driven to Corkbeg Cemetery in Whitegate for her burial. In fact, I cannot recall anything about the removal, or funeral, which is unusual as I was so close to her.
My sister Eileen told me, years later, that she attended the funeral, whilst mammy and I stayed at home. At the time mammy was pregnant with Jerry. Eileen also said that while Nan was dying she was hallucinating, and giving out to Eileen and mammy for not offering a cup of tea to Binna, whom she said was in the next room. Eileen tried to assure her that there was nobody in the room, and she went downstairs to tell mammy what was happening. Mammy laughed, and said to Eileen. “Wait, Jack will be in soon and will go up to her.”
Binna was a young family member - a girl aged seventeen, who had died, and Nan had been heartbroken and could not forget her. I arrived home, and headed for Nan’s room, only to be bawled out as well, and told to get a cup of tea for Binna. I took the stairs, two or three at a time with a loud yell, to find mammy and Eileen, doubled up, laughing, at the end of the stairs.
From the year 1930, my very first memory was probably when I was about three years old. I was in bed, in the top front bedroom, in the house at Harbour Row. I awoke crying, and had a very strange feeling in my arm. On the bedroom wall I saw what I thought was a snake. Eileen, my older sister by one year and two months, was asleep in the same bed. Daddy cuddled me, and rubbed my arm, and said that it was dead as I had been lying on it while asleep. After some rubbing the feeling returned to the arm. The snake turned out to be the shadows cast by the fire burning in the grate. Mammy and daddy were sitting in front of the fire and, even though we had four bedrooms, all four of us slept in this room until we grew up some more. Each bedroom had an open fire grate.
I also clearly remember when I went to bed at night, and only candles in candleholders lit up the stairs and bedroom, I was petrified when I saw the shadows that were cast on the ceiling and stairs. Quite often, hot candle grease dripped onto the floor and burned my hands, as I ran shaking, up or down the stairs.
Another early memory was of when I was in daddy’s bed, I remember waking up to go to the toilet. I was probably about four years old, as I had not yet started school. Daddy was reading a book at the time. The next thing I remember was getting back into bed and I ducked under the blankets. I heard daddy laughing out loud. “What did you get up for?” He asked me, as he peered through his reading glasses. “I went to the lavatory,” I answered, and he then burst into another peal of laughter.
“You did not go to the lavatory! You stood at the end of the bed and you tried to pull your trousers over your head, and when you couldn’t do it, you came back to bed” he said. He was still laughing as I fell as
leep.
I think my first memory of Christmas day was about 1933. Eileen, mammy, and I were in the sitting room and the fire was blazing. I can’t recall where Anthony and Patty were, as they were only babies at the time. The crepe-paper decorations, fairy lights, and the Christmas tree were all in place. The room looked wonderful, but daddy was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, the door opened and Santa came in, with his bag on his back. Eileen and I were mesmerised, and we didn’t have any idea he was going to call on us. We joyfully jumped around his bag as he took out toys and sweets. This was great! His voice was very deep and he asked us if we were good children, of course we said “Yes.”
He hugged us and, after some time, he started to leave the room to visit other children. As he went upstairs I stood and watched him. I asked mammy where he was going and mammy said, “He’s going up to the chimney in the room where there’s no fire burning.”
As he got up about five steps, Santa’s outer garment became raised, and I noticed that he was not wearing Santa boots but black shoes which looked familiar. To crown it all, he was also wearing yellow and black speckled socks, similar to socks which daddy used to wear. I shouted to mammy, “Santa is wearing daddy’s socks and shoes.”
Santa froze on the stairs, and mammy took a fit of laughing, which she could not control. The tears ran down her face, and I could not understand the reason at the time. Eileen too looked on in bewilderment, whilst Santa went upstairs very fast. I thought I saw him shaking as he half-ran up the stairs. The best laid plans of mice and men, had come crashing down. Even at this point in time, I did not suspect who Santa was. Eventually, daddy arrived, and I told him that Santa had worn his socks and shoes. He said, “I left them out for Santa, because Santa’s feet got wet on the way to the house.”
Did I detect a glance at mammy, and a wry smile? I believed but never forgot. Like all very young children it was easy to amuse us and sometimes we did not know right from wrong. Tommy Dodd was a dwarf who regularly came along Harbour Row. We were frightened of him, but this didn’t stop us teasing him, much to my disgust when I now think about it.” “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me and Tommy Dodd.” was just one of our taunts. On one occasion, two of us teased him, and he chased us. We were very small, and I remember he gained on us with his bandy legs working overtime as he chased us to the door of my home. I was terrified, and ran to mammy and she put her arms around my friend, and me, as Tommy came in the hall. Poor mammy was as terrified as we were,
“Jesus, he’ll kill us all.” she kept saying.
I felt her body shaking with fear as she held us very tight. Tommy stopped, looked at us for a few seconds, and turned towards the front door. We waited anxiously as he went out of the hall. Then we all breathed again. The poor man was harmless, but was annoyed at us. He had to put up with so much of this cruel mockery. My friend and I never again called him names.
When my sister Eileen and I were very young mammy sat next to us told us the story of Rupert the Bear, which was in the Daily Express every day. For me, Rupert was a live person, as well as a bear. My eyes saw his every movement, which were not depicted in the newspapers. The words of the story made him real to me. To this day I smile whenever I see his picture in papers, or magazines. Nowadays, his check trouser is in colour, and the same soft face looks out at me. We looked forward to these stories, and it’s really the only newspaper story that I can remember during my early childhood, before I eventually read ‘Mutt and Jeff,’ in the Evening Echo. From this I progressed in later years to reading, and swapping, the Dandy, Beano, Our Boys, and many more comic books. Of course I can’t forget Pudsey. I think he was a character in the religious magazine, Far East. Other reading materials in the house were; The Cork Examiner, the Holly Bough, Ireland’s Own and The Messenger.
One year before Anthony and Patricia were born in 1931, daddy was told that it would be too dangerous for mammy to have any more children, as she had a very difficult time delivering another set of the twins in 1930. In fact, she received the Last Rites of the church, and spent three months in hospital after the birth of the first set of still born twins. What happened? She had five more children, and some further still born babies. Daddy was told that she should wait five years before having any more children. In total she had thirteen children. So much for, “Increase and multiply, and fill the whole earth.” On one occasion, I was in the kitchen, when a school friend of daddy’s arrived, and daddy spoke quietly to him. I did not overhear what was said, but daddy left the kitchen and returned with a white shoebox. His voice was low and shaky as he spoke to his friend John Will Lyons. I heard a few words about a stillborn baby. There were tears in daddy’s eyes, and he quickly put the cover on the box and returned upstairs. I was not aware that mammy had been in labour, or that she had a baby at this time, but either Dr. O’Connor, or Dr Hennessy had been in the house. When I was older, there were times when I witnessed mammy fainting, on the kitchen floor, and did not realise that she was going through the change of life.
I have memories of mammy at other times washing our clothes with bars of Sunlight soap, and using the Swedish scrubbing board to get rid of the grime and dirt. The Swedish scrubbing board was a wooden board with a series of contoured ribs, running horizontal to the tub, where the washing took place. The tub was galvanized. The clothes were rubbed up and down the ribs to dislodge any dirt, and to allow the soap to penetrate the garment or cloth. There were no rubber gloves in those days, and precious little hand creams were available, so mammy’s hands were rough, and sore, from the constant contact with this hard soap and cold water. She had to boil the water in a kettle on the stove whenever she had washing to do. The clothes were rinsed out in cold water, in winter and in summer. She used the mangle out in the yard to get out as much surplus water as possible from the clothes. The mangle was a device with two wooden rollers, and a handle. The wet clothes were fed through the rollers by turning the handle. It was hard work, particularly in the winter months. The babies’ nappies were made from terry towelling, and these were soaked, washed, dried, aired and rewashed, over and over again. What a soul-destroying job! In those days there were no electric gadgets, or central heating, and we used coal, turf, and wood fires to keep warm. Mammy, and other women, tried to dry the clothes with these manual and primitive aids. Remember, in those days there were large families, so there were plenty of nappies to be recycled. There were nine of us little ones in our family alone.
This routine carried on when my brothers and sisters arrived, and while mammy was pregnant. Dr John O’Connor seemed to be in the house a lot, especially when the liners arrived from America. Liners constantly arrived in the harbour so the chances were that one or two would be anchored whilst mammy was giving birth. We were told that each new baby arrived on the liner from America. In theory this makes us all Yanks! Other babies were found under cabbage leaves, but no Lynch baby was - according to the stories we were told whilst growing up.
Besides breast milk we were all given milk straight from the cow, with no pasteurising, homogenising, or processing of any kind. Solid food was made from bread, and sugar, mixed in milk, and this was called ‘goody.’ I loved this food, and continued eating it for years. I always had a sweet tooth!
CHAPTER TWO
As children we were all very active. We used to spend hours playing outdoors, away from the house and exploring the areas around us. Although, we also engaged in more structured physical activities from time to time that children these days tend to enjoy. I remember when I was very small, that daddy used to take Eileen and me to the States Hotel, (now the Commodore Hotel) where we did various gymnastic and running exercises. I have a memory of a man called Fogy Lynch (no relation), who took children for these exercises. I think he had served as a gym instructor in the British army in the past and was now retired, or at least that’s what I remember about him. We climbed ropes, which were not too high, ran up and down the length of a long room, and picked up old broken type gas fire mantles, which he used
for the racing exercises. He even tried to teach us fencing! It was an unusual type of exercise class, there’s no doubt about that, but we loved it!
In those days, with all the freedom we had, both because mammy had so many children to mind and because of the time it was children were left to their own devices much more than they are today and accidents were common occurrences. As a very young lad, probably when I was around five or six years old, I was playing down in the bushes, in the Bath’s Quay, and I jumped up to catch the top of a small wall, at the Bath’s gate. I was trying to get out of the bushes and onto the road. The top of the wall was curved, smooth, and difficult to grip especially with a small hand like mine. There was a strip of barbed wire nailed to the wall, which Roger Cooney, the caretaker, put there to stop us going into the bushes, and as I jumped up my hand slipped on the curve, and the ball of my right thumb got caught in the barbwire which ripped my thumb open. The cut was very deep, and bled profusely. Somebody heard me crying, pulled me over the wall, and took me home. Mammy was demented when she saw all the blood and ran up the street to Eddie Twomey’s Post Office at No 41, and phoned for the doctor.
Dr. Hennessy came, yet again as he seemed to be in our house a great deal, and when he stopped the bleeding he said he could see my ‘black pudding’. He was referring to the black vein, which was very visible. He then said he would have to stitch it. I immediately went bananas, and cried “No, No”. After I calmed down, he said he would not stitch it and did a great job on closing the wound without taking a needle and thread to it. I still have the scar to this day and it’s almost two inches long!
Christmas for us children was a major event, we looked forward to it from October on and it was a very special time for our family; full of tradition and ritual and lots of fun. On Christmas Eve, mammy and daddy used to start preparing for the Christmas dinner. My uncle and aunts would arrive with the goose from Kanturk. This was an annual event and we all looked forward to it. The goose was plucked, singed, and cleaned. A flaming piece of newspaper was used to singe and remove any bits of feathers or down which was not fully removed from the carcass during plucking. The giblets were used for making soup and gravy. The goose was stuffed, and the ends were sewn. I never once tasted a turkey for Christmas while I was in Cobh.