A Christmas Visitor, 1940

by PJ Heneghan

In the old days for us kids every Christmas spent in Tralee was wonderful.  I was six years old when our family in 1933 left Tralee to settle in Dublin. After the move we returned to Tralee at least three times every year to visit our grandmother, but the Christmas visit was always the highlight of each year.

The Christmas of 1940 was particularly memorable. The fact that a war was raging in Europe and that supplies for the festive season were becoming scarce had little impact on us. In fact our isolation on the edge of Europe only added to the excitement as we followed developments on the Continent.

That Christmas we arrived at our grandmother’s home several days before the Great Day itself.  Grandmother announced that we had a visitor.  A Dr. Foley had been installed in the lodger’s room upstairs and he expected to be with us for a few days until his car had been repaired.

The story was that Dr. Foley was on a journey from Dublin to visit friends in Dingle when his car developed engine trouble, and he had to leave it in the Kerry Motor Works for repairs.  The company told him that there would be a delay of a day or two as they had to get a new part from Dublin.  Dr. Foley went to one of the local pharmacists to find out where he might get congenial lodgings for what he hoped would be a brief stay in Tralee.  It helped when Paddy Walsh, the pharmacist, told him that he might just find a vacancy at Moyderwell with a Mrs. Martha Foley.

Grandmother usually kept one lodger at her home, and it happened that the incumbent gentleman had left the room vacant while he went home to County Cork on his Christmas vacation.  Pat, as we called him, was an inspector with the Department of Agriculture.  Pat was a very miserly person, and he refused to pay Grandmother rent for the period when he was away.  Grandmother saw no option but to accept this. The poor foolish woman also agreed that Pat, pending his return in January, could leave his clothes and personal effects in the room over the Christmas period.  Pat well knew, of course, that grandmother would find it hard get a lodger just for the Christmas period.

Dr. Foley therefore came like manna from heaven. There was the moot point whether grandmother should clear the room of Pat’s effects during his absence.  She had scruples about the letting to Dr. Foley, although not about the doctor personally.  He was after all a Foley, one of the clan, so to speak.  All grandmother’s scruples were overcome when Aunt Chriss – her daughter, a widow, who also lived in the house with two of her young children – argued that Pat could not expect the room to be left idle when he had paid no rent for the period of the vacancy.

And so, on our arrival from Dublin, we came to sit around the fire in the parlour late on the evening of 22nd December 1940, chatting with Dr. Foley, who had just returned from the cinema.  He had taken to the cinema with him Aunt Chriss’s daughter Eileen, a comely young lady who enjoyed the unexpected treat.  He had also returned with a box of chocolates for grandmother, and she was well pleased.  As we chatted the goodies were being shared around.

My brother Frank, aged nine at the time, had just started to take piano lessons, and he was persuaded to perform a few party pieces.  Dr. Foley was most impressed, and urged my mother to spare no expense in developing this talented child. He discreetly asked whether money would be a problem, and offered to help if necessary.  He promised my mother that he would speak to some officials of the Dublin College of Music, where he had good friends who could help.  (To quick-reel ahead for a moment, Frank was later to become the head of this very college.)

The following day we occupied ourselves helping grandmother in her visits to the market, opening the envelopes with her arriving Christmas cards and affixing stamps to the outgoing mail, and generally at her request doing odd jobs around the house.  Meanwhile, Dr. Foley came and went, but told us that that he hoped to leave on Christmas Eve for Dingle, as he expected the car would be ready by then.

On the 24th of December Dr. Foley left.  My father arrived from Dublin late that evening and my mother filled him in on our impressive visitor and of his extraordinary interest in Frank. They figured that as they spoke the good doctor was with his friends in Dingle.

Christmas came and went.  We attended Midnight Mass, visited the crib, had our usual turkey and plum-pudding Christmas meal, enjoyed our children’s party on St. Stephen’s Day and stayed up in the parlour late each night, while in the kitchen the adults played ferocious rounds of a card game called “31”.  Occasionally we tiptoed into the hall and enjoyed listening to the sounds of slaughter and post-mortems which emerged from the kitchen at the end of each game.

At the beginning of January, life returned to normal.  My father had gone back to Dublin, while my mother, two brothers and myself stayed on as usual until the 6th of January when the school holidays ended.

The drama started on the morning of 2nd January 1941.  Pat returned about 11 am.  I remember, as if it were yesterday, the commotion that broke out on the top floor.  Pat was arguing loudly with Aunt Chriss in his room and then came out onto the landing, roaring that Mrs Foley should attend at once in his room.  Where were all of his shirts?  Where were his stockings?  Where were his jodhpurs?  Pat’s work, I should explain, involved walking about in muddy farmyards and sodden fields which required him to wear knee-length stockings and short britches.  All of the clothing which he had left in his room was missing – except for a pair of old braces, coloured green, white and orange, an army issue from his service in the LDF (our local defence force, established at the start of the war period we called “the emergency”).   Grandmother was not the kind of person to respond to peremptory demands in her own home, but on this occasion she thought it better to go up to the top floor to see what was amiss.

Grandmother told Pat about the nice Dr. Foley, but it began to become clear that the clothes so carefully hoarded by Pat were now “gone west” – possibly to Dingle.  Pat, the miser, had it seems for over a year been hoarding shirts, socks, ties and indeed anything that was likely to become scarce with the war increasingly likely to last for some time.

A formal post-mortem took place in the parlour, the whole family being present. We all contributed.  Some remembered Dr. Foley’s comings and goings during his stay, and how he appeared very slim when returning to his room, but rather well upholstered when going out.  He frequently asked for bowls of hot water in his room.  Why was that?

Grandmother went to see the pharmacist.  Yes, of course, Paddy Walsh remembered Dr. Foley, for he had referred him to my grandmother and later, several times, supplied him with morphine for a patient. This might explain the need for bowls of hot water.  The Kerry Motor Works on the other hand did not remember Dr Foley at all!

There seemed to be no other option at this stage but to go to the civic guards, but Pat refused point blank to consider this.  What would his Department think?  Someone in his room, with access to his clothes and his papers!  Well, to his clothes anyway – the papers had not been touched!  Aunt Chriss later aired her suspicion that Pat had also been using his bedroom as an office, and was likely to have been receiving an allowance for this from the Department.  Did the allowance, she wondered, continue to be paid in his absence?

It was decided not to bring the police into the picture just yet.  What proof positive did we have that Dr. Foley was a thief?  The talk went on, but no action was taken.

About the middle of January when all of the hullabaloo had died down, Aunt Chriss was walking in Strand Road, at the other end of the town, when she noticed a couple walking slowly ahead of her.  They were deep in conversation.  The man looked a little like Dr. Foley, but Aunt Chriss could not be quite sure.   The lady was one of the very respectable local family, a nice girl but not exactly in the first flush of youth.  What should Aunt Chriss do?  What if she were mistaken?

The matter was quickly decided for her when the man paused for a moment, bent over, and adjusted the stocking on his right leg.  It pulled up away above his knee.  Definitely one of Pat’s missing hoard!

Aunt Chriss doubled back and went into the Garda Station, which was at the entrance to Strand Road.  The guards responded immediately and took the good doctor in for questioning.  There was really no contest!  He confessed at once to the theft and was duly detained pending his appearance in the district court.

The full picture emerged at the hearing.  “Dr. Foley” was Peter Wavin (not his real name), released in mid-December from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin.  He had hitch-hiked his way to Tralee.  His was a very sad story.  He belonged to a very respectable family from the midlands and had had a good education.  He had become hooked on heroin following a long and serious illness.  On arrival in Tralee he had called to the County Hospital and conned the Reverend Mother into parting with £5.  He visited the Prior of the Dominican Church with greater success, receiving £10.  He then set up temporary headquarters with grandmother. The remarkable feature of the case was that he had made no attempt to work his charms on the Foley family, except to borrow the name as a platform for his further operations.  His crombie coat was liberally provided with pockets, which enabled him to clean out Pat’s store of clothing.  When arrested he had been (Aunt Chriss’s conjecture) sizing up the single daughter of the Strand Road family as a prospective spouse, but fortunately for her there this did not come out in court.

Dr. Foley was sent off to Limerick Gaol for a period, the length of which escapes my memory.  We never heard of or from him again.

It was a memorable Christmas indeed.  As con-men go, “Dr Foley” was up there with the best!

Decimalisation: This will never take on in Wexford, Mr. Morrison!

by Patrick J Heneghan

The approach of D-Day in Ireland was one of the challenges that the country had to meet in 1971.  “Going decimal” with our currency was to happen in tandem with the British.  11 February 1971 was the date fixed for the introduction of the new decimal notes and coins in Ireland.

For the first forty years of my life to 1971, we had been used to dealing with the complication of having 20 shillings in the Irish pound and 12 pennies in the shilling. We also had farthings.  The penny was divided into four farthings, which were tiny coins scarcely the size of the nail on your small finger, just about enough for a child to buy a few boiled sweets. The ha’penny (halfpenny) coin was worth two farthings.  The new system was to divide the pound into 100 pennies.  The old penny was then worth 0.42 of the new penny.

My earliest recollection of a money dealing was at age five when I went with my pal John Donohue to the grocery shop at the end of our terrace in Tralee, and put a penny in a slot machine.  I lost my penny, but a kind neighbour, seeing my distress, relieved it by pretending that I had overlooked to take my winnings out of the pay-out slot. She gave me the handsome amount of two pennies, an two-to-one win.  I was cute enough to know what she had done, bless her heart! – and I had sense enough to keep away from the one-arm bandits from that day on.

One of the skills we had to learn in school was to be able to total columns of cash figures.  For book-keeping there were three columns.  The pound column carried the sign £ on top (a stylized letter L for libra), on the next column was s (for solidi or shillings) and on the third column was d (for denarii or pennies).  The notations for the new decimal columns were just two, £ and p (for pounds and pennies).

It was publicly announced that initially the old and the new coinages were to be circulated in parallel, until the appointed day came for the use of the old coinage to be discontinued. In the interim, shops were to display price-tags on goods in both the new and the equivalent old currency.

Obviously it would be necessary for the civil service in which I worked to familiarise itself with the new system, and a post of “Decimalisation Officer” at Assistant Principal level was created to promote the new system.  This post was to be filled by open competition from within the Departments.   Many of us tried for the job, and the eventual appointee was Harry Morrison, an officer from the Department of Local Government.  He was an excellent choice: he was a skillful presenter and he was also endowed with a wonderful asset and a sense of humour.

I was present on several occasions when Harry addressed meetings for civil service and semi-State personnel.  His presentations were a combination of useful information followed by Question-and-Answer sessions in which he related his experiences, some of which were quite hilarious, particularly the tales he brought back from rural areas.  Some of his answers to the questions thrown at him came in the form of witty one-liners.  Had he been in Hollywood, he would have given Bob Hope a close run for his money!  An earnest young man from an assurance company had a problem stemming from the fact that his company’s contracts were all set out in the old L.s.d currency.  The company’s solicitor had advised that the clients’ premiums had to continue to be dealt with in the old currency.  What advice could Harry give him on this problem?  Harry’s response was short and sweet:  “Get a new solicitor!’.  (Sustained laughter)   There was an old lady in Wexford who one evening, after having listened attentively to what Harry had to say, came around afterwards to congratulate him.  ‘That was a wonderful speech you gave, Mr. Morrison,’ she said, ‘ but you know – that’s never going to catch on in Wexford’.

In the various Departments local Training Officers held meetings for the various grades of staff who would have to meet the requirements of the changeover.  I was in the Central Training Unit of the Department of Finance and a few days before D-Day the Unit called together the heads of all Departments (i.e. the Secretaries, now styled Secretaries General) to satisfy them and ourselves that there were no loose ends out there that we did not know about.  We had about thirty persons in attendance, as some of the Secretaries brought their deputies with them. On the final one of the three days we spent on our work we set up small tables and divided the attendance into groups of four.  On a sheet on each table we placed one of a series of questions touching on situations of a type we felt would be commonly met with when D-Day arrived and the two currencies would circulate in parallel.   One example of what we set out will give the flavor of exercise.  Take for example the question on Table 7 the discussion of which was particularly memorable:

At most of the railway stations some incoming travellers will wish to buy a newspaper or periodical from a waiting newsvendor.  D-day has arrived and you have a mixture of coins in your pocket, as does the newsvendor.  The papers you usually buy cost nine pennies old money.  You take your purchases and give the newsvendor on shilling ‘old’ money. What change will you get?

Most of the ‘trainees’ arriving at Table 7 spent a few minutes pondering the question, and after that lively exchanges began.  Then the notebooks came out and juggling with figures commenced.  Just as it seemed that faction fights might break out, a training officer intervened and asked the group if they would like to move on, and said that the Table No. 7 question and others would be discussed at the concluding session.

The answer to the Table No. 7 question is:  You should get either three pennies old money or one penny new money.  Remember the newsvendor will have to make dozens of these decisions without delaying his customers.   Most vendors of low-priced goods would have worked out for themselves well in advance the various combinations likely to be tendered, probably far more efficiently than the civil servants who devised the new system.  It was up to the purchasers of items such as morning papers also to have their mode of payments worked out in advance and tender the right combinations of coins, or risk being ‘jipped’ of a small fraction of a penny on each transaction.  In the example, receiving change of three pennies ‘old’ money would represent no problem to the customer, but a customer receiving in change one penny ‘new’ money would suffer a loss of 0.26 of one penny (new money).  Most street vendors however were not likely to run out of coinage of either the new or the old currency.  For purchasers of goods of higher value, vendors such as shopkeepers were supplied with official conversion tables, which relied on a certain amount of rounding up of prices, so that what customers lost in the swings would be recovered later in the roundabouts.  Provision was also made for goods to carry dual- price tags.

At the end of our training session, we managed to tie up all the loose ends – or very nearly did so.
Only one question remained: “Is there anyone now who does not know what the changeover to decimalisation is all about?’ Only one hand was raised and the question was: ‘What exactly does the term D-day stand for?’  The individual in question, I believe, had to apply later for early retirement!

How did it all work out in the end?  Long before the use of the old coinage was to cease, the public had adapted to the decimal coinage.  There were complaints that a general rise in prices followed decimalisation, a phenomenon that was found to have occurred also in other countries that changed over to the decimal system.  Inflation, of course, said the politicians.  It never goes away!  - and they of all people should know.