Smorgasbord Posts from My Archives -#Memoir #Waterford #Ireland 1930s – The Colour of Life – The Art of Making Snares – 1934 by Geoff Cronin

My father-in-law, Geoff Cronin was a raconteur with a encyclopedic memory spanning his 93 years. He sadly died in 2017 but not before he had been persuaded to commit these memories of his childhood and young adulthood in Waterford in the 1920s to the 1940s.

The books are now out of print, but I know he would love to know that his stories are still being enjoyed, and so I am repeating the original series of his books. I hope those who have already read these stories will enjoy again and that new readers will discover the wonderful colour of life in Ireland nearly 100 years ago.

The Art Of Making Snares 1934

When I was a boy, seventy years ago, rabbits were as plentiful in the countryside as seagulls at the seaside. They were a valuable source of food for poor people – at a time when work was scarce and badly paid and Social Welfare was non-existent. If you didn’t have work you went hungry, or depended on the charity of neighbours, unless you had a bit of land on which to grow things to eat or to sell.

The famous Mrs. Beeton’s instructions in her cookery book on how to make rabbit stew began with “First catch your rabbit”, and the methods for so doing were varied. To hunt them with dogs, you needed two, first a terrier to flush them out of the thickets, and then a fast dog to take them on the run. The latter would be a whippet, or a lurcher, which was a cross between a greyhound and a collie, or indeed any kind of mongrel that could run faster than a rabbit. If you had money, you could buy a ferret (Ten Shillings) and a run of purse-nets for sixpence each, or a hank of netting twine and make the nets yourself. Gin traps were often used too, but most people felt they were a cruel method. Last on the list was a snare, made by twisting together several strands of fine brass wire, and making a lasso. This would be set in the path used by a rabbit, and secured with stout string to a peg driven into the ground beside the rabbit run. When the rabbit ran down his path, his head went through the noose and he was held fast until the owner of the snare came at dawn and put him in his bag.

Making the snare was a vital part of the operation and as a boy fond of hunting I longed to know exactly how to make them. I had visions of catching rabbits for the pot or maybe even selling them for sixpence each as some of the locals did.

In my quest for this vital knowledge, I met with Jack, a casual farm worker who had nine children. It was well known that they practically lived on rabbits, and that Jack was the expert on anything to do with hunting, including making snares. He took me with him a few times into the depths of the local woodlands, where he marked some likely rabbit runs suitable for laying snares. On one of these occasions a rabbit jumped out of a grass clump and had run about fifteen yards when Jack, without hesitation threw his stick and knocked him stone dead. On the way back, I asked Jack if he could teach me how to make a snare. I wasn’t prepared for his answer.

“If you’re going to first Mass in Crooke next Sunday, bring a coil of wire and a few eyelets with you, and I’ll show you. The shop that sells the wire has the eyelets as well.”

I agreed, and promised to meet him but wasn’t quite clear on exactly the how and where. Anyway, I got the wire for sixpence and the eyelets for tuppence, I put the lot in my back pocket where my jacket would cover it, and got the bus to Mass at 8 a.m. that Sunday with my family.

There was no sign of Jack in the chapel yard when my family and I arrived and as we entered the chapel I mentally wrote off the whole thing, telling myself that adults didn’t always keep their promises.

The stairs to the gallery, where my family always sat, had a landing, where a stained glass window was set into the wall. It was there that I found Jack, ensconced on the deep window ledge with the sun shining in on his back.

The stained glass window & ledge

He beckoned me to sit beside him. I hung back a bit as the rest of my family went on up to the gallery. Once they were out of sight of us I sat in on the ledge with him and whispered “What about the snares?” He smiled and said “At the first stand up,” and put his finger to his lips.

I knew what he meant, but I doubt, dear reader, that you will, so perhaps I should explain. The men at that time went to Mass on a Sunday largely because their women folk insisted, or had to be ferried there, or because the priest would find out if they didn’t, or because of what people might think. Anyway, it was a chance to meet other locals and have a chat before, after, and sometimes, during Mass. In general, they were quite removed from the liturgy, and hence the gospel was known as “the first stand up”, followed by “the little sit down”, and when the priest entered the pulpit for the sermon, that was “the big sit down” and could last for half an hour. But I digress!

Now, I handed the wire and the eyelets to Jack and he uncoiled a couple of feet of the wire. Then he took a three-inch nail out of one jacket pocket, and a round stone, the size of a goose egg, out of the other one. Next he took an eyelet and slipped it onto the nail, the point of which he stuck quietly into the window sill. He held the nail upright and as the congregation shuffled to its feet with the usual coughing and general noise, Jack hit the nail with the stone, driving it well into the wood. The sound was just like an iron-shod heel striking one of the metal brackets which secured the pews.

Snare

Jack then looped coils of wire around the eyelet on the nail whispering “Four strands for a rabbit, five for a hare, and six for a fox. Remember that.”

The loops of wire were about a foot long and having snapped the wire, a second nail was inserted in the free end, and I was told to twist it. I did so and in minutes, I had a miniature wire rope with an eyelet at one end. Both nails were withdrawn and the small end put through the eyelet to make a perfect noose. At the “big sit down”, the performance was repeated, and by the time the sermon was over, I had two perfect snares, which I hid under my jacket for the bus trip home.

I caught many a fine rabbit with those two snares and many others which I made with my new-found know-how, and I never forgot Jack and his kindness in showing a little boy the tricks of the trade.

Jack disappeared soon afterwards, and I heard that he had “taken the boat”, and gone to England to provide for his family. Oddly enough, I remember best the smell of his pipe, which he smoked whenever he had the price of a plug of tobacco.

The mighty hunter. Circa 1930
***

Description of a guy who had a prominent chin:
“He has a chin fit to poke a cat from under a bed!”

©Geoff Cronin 2005

 

About Geoff Cronin

I was born at tea time at number 12 John Street, Waterford on September 23rd 1923. My father was Richard Cronin and my mother was Claire Spencer of John Street Waterford. They were married in St John’s Church in 1919.

Things are moving so fast in this day and age – and people are so absorbed, and necessarily so, with here and now – that things of the past tend to get buried deeper and deeper. Also, people’s memories seem to be shorter now and they cannot remember the little things – day to day pictures which make up the larger canvas of life.

It seems to me that soon there may be little or no detailed knowledge of what life was really like in the 1930s in a town – sorry, I should have said City, in accordance with its ancient charter – like Waterford. So I shall attempt to provide some of these little cameos as much for the fun of telling as for the benefit of posterity.

Thank you for visiting today and I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse of Waterford in the 1930s courtesy of Geoff Cronin. As always your feedback is very welcome. thanks Sally.

Smorgasbord Posts from My Archives -#Memoir #Waterford #Ireland 1930s – The Colour of Life – The Miser 1931 by Geoff Cronin

My father-in-law, Geoff Cronin was a raconteur with a encyclopedic memory spanning his 93 years. He sadly died in 2017 but not before he had been persuaded to commit these memories of his childhood and young adulthood in Waterford in the 1920s to the 1940s.

The books are now out of print, but I know he would love to know that his stories are still being enjoyed, and so I am repeating the original series of his books. I hope those who have already read these stories will enjoy again and that new readers will discover the wonderful colour of life in Ireland nearly 100 years ago.

The Miser – 1931

When I was a boy, in the early 1930s, there was always music in our house. My mother was an accomplished pianist and singer and my father had a very fine tenor voice. He would sing songs such as The Trumpeter, Songs of Araby, The Toreador’s Song from Carmen and Friend of Mine and my mother would play the accompaniment on the piano. They sang many duets also and on wet days and Sundays as children we would gather round the piano and mother would play all the popular and comic songs of the day. A right old sing-song would be enjoyed by all. I vividly remember my favourite, which was “Minnie the Moocher”!

Both my parents were heavily involved in the Wallace Grand Opera Society in its heyday and consequently they knew everybody in the musical scene of the day and most of their friends came from that circle.

Two of their friends who often visited us were a Jewish couple, Isaac Levi and his wife Florence, whose maiden name was Goldring. They were immigrants from Poland and had fled from there in the early 1900s when Jews were being persecuted. Incidentally, they told me that they had been promised in marriage to each other when they were children.

Classical music was their forte and they often regaled us with duets; he on the violin and she on the piano. I still vividly recall their rendition of Brahm’s Hungarian Dance which was “something else”.

Levi had a shop at No. 8 John Street, Waterford, where he dealt in furniture and antiques and did good business. My father told me that when the Levi’s came to Waterford and took the shop at No. 8, they had with them a very old man, probably the uncle of his wife, and he carried on the business of money lending. As part of that business he used to buy gold sovereigns and half sovereigns and it was known that he would pay one pound and sixpence for a sovereign and ten shillings and threepence for a half sovereign. These coins were solid gold, with a milled edge, and were worth one pound, and ten shillings respectively. The sovereign weighed one fine ounce while the half sovereign was half a fine ounce. At that time all precious metals were measured in “Troy Weight”.

Now this old man could be seen daily sitting in a rocking chair, in the window of the furniture shop, holding in his hands a small Buckskin bag and shaking it constantly as he rocked to and fro. It was this practice that earned him the nickname “The Miser”. The street urchins and indeed many adults used to congregate outside the shop and could be heard saying “see how he loves his money, even the sound of it jingling in his money bag.” They could not have guessed the old man’s secret!

My father explained it to me as an object lesson to illustrate the acumen of the Jewish businessman. Apparently the old man collected the gold coins for a particular purpose. When he had collected whatever he considered to be a sufficient number of them he put them in the small leather bag and shook them for, let us say a week. Then at the end of that time, when he emptied out the coins, there remained in the bag a residue of gold dust. This happened because the milled edges of the coins rubbing against each other, when the bag was shaken, resulted in tiny flakes of gold coming off each coin.

The real beauty of this procedure was that when fifty coins went into the bag the same fifty came out again and the deposit of gold dust, however small, was a net profit. So, to quote my father, you can have your cake and eat it … if you know how!

This story, which is true, instilled in me a very healthy respect for Jewish businessmen which has remained with me to this day.

©Geoff Cronin 2005

 

About Geoff Cronin

I was born at tea time at number 12 John Street, Waterford on September 23rd 1923. My father was Richard Cronin and my mother was Claire Spencer of John Street Waterford. They were married in St John’s Church in 1919.

Things are moving so fast in this day and age – and people are so absorbed, and necessarily so, with here and now – that things of the past tend to get buried deeper and deeper. Also, people’s memories seem to be shorter now and they cannot remember the little things – day to day pictures which make up the larger canvas of life.

It seems to me that soon there may be little or no detailed knowledge of what life was really like in the 1930s in a town – sorry, I should have said City, in accordance with its ancient charter – like Waterford. So I shall attempt to provide some of these little cameos as much for the fun of telling as for the benefit of posterity.

 

Thank you for visiting today and I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse of Waterford in the 1930s courtesy of Geoff Cronin. As always your feedback is very welcome. thanks Sally.

Smorgasbord Blog Magazine Weekly Round Up – June 27th – July 3rd 2022 – Chart Hits 1998, Roberta Flack, Podcast Story, #Waterford 1930s, Reviews, Guest Posts, Health and Humour

Welcome to the round up of posts you might have missed on Smorgasbord this week.

As well as decluttering in the house this week I have also been working through my posts and files, updating and cleaning up links.. I found a promotional video that I thought I would dust off and share on social media again.. the view has changed but the invitation is the same.

Other than that it has been a quiet week getting on with the house redecorating (my role at this point is purely supervisory lol) I just make sure the working half of the partnership is fed and watered on a regular basis.. strawberries seem to be a great motivator..

I did have a mishap this week and clearly whilst I am more than happy to lay the blame at the feet of WordPress, it is more likely I hit the wrong button. A post I was working on published and whilst I was able to delete from the automatic postings to social media of course an email notification was sent to thousands!

I have now inserted a fail safe and schedule the post for the correct date before I format. That way if anything goes wrong it won’t hit the airwaves.

I did send a notification out to all those who receive then to apologise and hope you will pop in on the 16th to read the finished post.. a heartwarming I Wish I Knew Then by Hugh Roberts.

Thanks to my friends William Price King and Debby Gies for their music and humour contributions this week and you can find out more about them on their own sites. .

William Price King joined me on The Breakfast show this week for the second part of the hits from 1997 and for the third part of the series about Roberta Flack. You can also find William – Blog– IMPROVISATION– William Price King on Tumblr

Debby Gies shared some great funnies earlier in the week and is taking us to The Bahamas tomorrow morning.. Over on her blog you can you can catch up with her posts including her book review for Ending Forever by Nicholas Conley, a social media rant and a surprise and an exploration of epistolary writing.. D.G. Kaye

Carol Taylor will be joining me on Wednesday with a repeat of her wonderful series A-Z of foods with the letter B. Carol is in England for a month to visit her family but has left her blog well stocked. This week a recipe for Chicken with Mango, a look ahead at July’s Friday food reviews including special food celebrations, Spices in the Larder, the cuisine of Denmark and Saturday Snippets with ‘Glory’ the theme. You can find all her posts Carol Cooks2

Thanks too for all your visits, comments and shares this week… they mean a great deal..♥

On with the show…..

Chart Hits 1998 Part One – Celine Dion, Shania Twain, Mariah Carey & Whitney Houston, Boyzone.

William Price King meets the Music Legends – Roberta Flack – 70s and 80s Collaborations

– Tales from the Irish Garden – The Royal Wedding by Sally Cronin

Memoir #Waterford #Ireland 1920s – The Colour of Life – My Grandfather’s Story 1930 by Geoff Cronin

#Ireland 1930s – The Colour of Life – The Crane by Geoff Cronin

Size Matters: The Sequel by Sally Cronin -#Obesity #Weightloss Introduction.

The Obesity epidemic – Part One – Finding a point to intervene in the life cycle

July 2nd 2022 – #Writing D.G. Kaye with Wendy Van Camp, #Review Olga Nunez Miret, #Stress David Kanigan, #Idioms Janet Morrison, #WIP Stevie Turner, #Personalities Cheryl Oreglia

#Romance #Music – Flowers and Stone by Jan Sikes

Smorgasbord Book Reviews Round Up – June 2022 – #Shortstories Stephen Geez, #Malaya Apple Gidley, Fantasy C.S. Boyack, #Thriller Simon Van de Velde, #Poetry Balroop Singh

I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now! #Equality by Noelle Granger

I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now! #Life #Loss by Staci Troilo

#Humour – Gerard Philey’s Euro-Diary: Quest for a Life by Brendan James

First in Series – #Fantasy Yvette M. Calleiro, #Fantasy Audrey Driscoll

First in Series – #Psychological Thriller Lucinda E. Clarke, #Paranormal Romance Staci Troilo

#Romance Linda Bradley, #Paranormal Thriller Mae Clair

Hosts Debby Gies and Sally Cronin – Therapy Dogs and Age Memoire

June 30th 2022 – Another Open Mic Night with author Daniel Kemp – Law Suits and Pit Stops

 

Thanks very much for dropping and I hope you will join me again next week.  Sally

Smorgasbord Posts from My Archives -#Memoir #Waterford #Ireland 1930s – The Colour of Life – The Crane by Geoff Cronin

My father-in-law, Geoff Cronin was a raconteur with a encyclopedic memory spanning his 93 years. He sadly died in 2017 but not before he had been persuaded to commit these memories of his childhood and young adulthood in Waterford in the 1920s to the 1940s.

The books are now out of print, but I know he would love to know that his stories are still being enjoyed, and so I am repeating the original series of his books. I hope those who have already read the stories will enjoy again and that new readers will discover the wonderful colour of life in Ireland nearly 100 years ago.

The Crane 1930

The Grey Heron was always known as “the Crane” among the locals of Woodstown when I was growing up there. A large and apparently solitary bird, frequenting bog holes and other lonely places, it fascinated those of us who hunted rats, and anything that moved, along the banks of the streams near our home.

For my own part, I found the mysteries of nature so amazing that I was able to believe most of the lore I was able to glean by talking to those more knowledgeable than myself in that pursuit. Often I stood quietly and listened avidly to the conversation of the local men when they sat on the stone at the “Gap” of a summer’s evening, smoking their blue fumed pipes, or playing a hand of cards on the balding grass patch where the sand showed through.

It was in this way I learned all about the crane; how he had only one long gut and was so nervous that if you could get near him and make a really loud noise, he would drop dead – “and why wouldn’t he, with only one gut. Sure it stood to reason.”

Another well proven fact was that if a man were to shoot a crane, on purpose, or even by accident, that man would never be able to father a child. Indeed I heard that precise reason given as to why a neighbour and his wife had no family. The fact that they were both in their fifties when they wedded seemed not to enter into the particular discussion.

It was on one of my listening sessions that I heard the following story, declared at the time to be “as true as Jazes.” Here it is as near verbatim as my pen will reach:-

*****

“Meself and another fella were down in the lower village of Cheekpoint one evening near sunset and we were sitting on the wall by the bank of the river watchin’ the shallows to see if there was any fishin’. T’was a weak tide, slow and still by the bank where the water was slack and you could see the mudbank beginning to show up the river a piece. We were there thinking of nothing at all when down floated an auld crane, and dropped into the shadow of the bank in a few inches of water. We were looking down on him from above and could see him as clear as anything.

They’re very nervous, ye know, and of course they have only one gut inside in ’em.
Anyway, he stood there, still as a stone, takin’ in everythin’ We never moved and after a while he began to stroll around slowly, watchin’ the water to see would he find his supper – they ate crabs and small fishes and that class of thing.

Did you ever see the way he walks? Well, I’ll tell ye; he never lifts the foot out of the water and never a ripple even though his feet are as long as your hand. Lookin’ at him goin’ along like that, you’d think he couldn’t move fast, but upon me song, you’d be wrong! Wait till I tell ye now – the next thing we saw was yer man (the crane), frozen still, like a stick lookin’ down be the side of a rock and his neck crooked back like an “S-hook”, and not a stir out of him.

I thought bejazes he was gone asleep, when quick as a flash down went his head into the water – and you know they have a bake like a feckin’ harpoon – up came the head again and he had a fair sized eel caught in his bake.

Well, straight away, he lifted his head up in the air, opened the bake, and down the gullet went the eel – it was all over in a second – but hauld on now till you hear…

Off he went, strollin’ like before, but he wasn’t gone three yards when out came the eel wriggling out of the crane’s arse and dropped into the water – they have only one gut ye see, and there was nothin’ to stop the eel goin’ right through yer man.

Well if that crane moved fast when he first caught that eel bejazus he moved twice as fast now. Round he swung, took a step a yard long, down went the bake and up again like a flash with that eel caught again. He paused for a second and swallowed the eel for the second time.

We thought that was that, and the oul’ crane had bested the eel, but true as God, we were wrong again. No sooner did the crane start to walk again, than out of his arse wriggled that eel again, and down into the water he dropped. By this time, we were looking out of our mouths at the carry on. We never seen the like before.

Well, bejazus boy, lighnin’ was slow compared to the speed at which that crane turned and dived on the eel for the third time, and he caught him tight in that big bake. He wasn’t goin’ to be done out of his supper, d’ye see. But now, he didn’t swallow the eel this time. Instead, he held him in his bake and commenced to look around slowly. After a while he walked in to where there was a fair sized rock stickin’ up-out of the water. An’ then bejazes, didn’t he turn his back to the rock, lifted his tail, sat down on the rock, and swallowed the eel with one gulp. Well he sat there for a full ten minutes until, I suppose, the eel smothered inside him. At any rate, when he walked off through the water, that eel never appeared again. And that’s a fact boy – there’s cranes for you now!!”

©Geoff Cronin 2005

 

About Geoff Cronin

I was born at tea time at number 12 John Street, Waterford on September 23rd 1923. My father was Richard Cronin and my mother was Claire Spencer of John Street Waterford. They were married in St John’s Church in 1919.

Things are moving so fast in this day and age – and people are so absorbed, and necessarily so, with here and now – that things of the past tend to get buried deeper and deeper. Also, people’s memories seem to be shorter now and they cannot remember the little things – day to day pictures which make up the larger canvas of life.

It seems to me that soon there may be little or no detailed knowledge of what life was really like in the 1930s in a town – sorry, I should have said City, in accordance with its ancient charter – like Waterford. So I shall attempt to provide some of these little cameos as much for the fun of telling as for the benefit of posterity.

Thank you for visiting today and I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse of Waterford in the 1930s courtesy of Geoff Cronin. As always your feedback is very welcome. thanks Sally.

Smorgasbord Posts from My Archives -#Memoir #Waterford #Ireland 1920s – The Colour of Life – My Grandfather’s Story 1930 by Geoff Cronin

My husband’s father Geoff Cronin was a raconteur with a encyclopedic memory spanning his 93 years. He sadly died in 2017 but not before he had been persuaded to commit these memories of his childhood and young adulthood in Waterford in the 1920s to the 1940s.

The books are now out of print, but I know he would love to know that his stories are still being enjoyed, and so I am repeating the original series of his books. I hope those who have already read will enjoy the stories again and that new readers will discover the wonderful colour of life in Ireland nearly 100 years ago.

Grandfather’s Story 1930 by Geoff Cronin

Geoffrey Spencer

Geoffrey Spencer, my maternal grandfather, born of a farming family in County Waterford about 1830, was not the eldest son of that family, and as such, he could not expect to inherit the family farm, and instead he would be “fortuned off”. He would be given a cash inheritance, the size of it being determined by the amount of money available at the time, and after due consideration was given to the rights of other family members. Since most of a farmer’s cash would be locked up in livestock, land and crops, actual cash would not be plentiful at the best of times. However, family history has it that in or about 1850 Geoffrey Spencer came into Waterford City with £100 in his pocket to seek his fortune in some area other than farming.
When he walked down the quay, and bear in mind that ships of all shapes and sizes would have been tied up three abreast for some miles up river waiting to unload, he came upon a group of merchants having a heated debate about a particular ship which was for auction that day. The point at issue was that the ship, a 200 ton Barquentine, was moored in the river and it was rumoured that her bottom was not sound and she was to be sold “as she stood”, as nobody was prepared to pay the cost of pulling her up on the graving bank to examine the bottom, least of all the owner. This fact served to strengthen the rumour that “she had worm in the bottom”.

In any event, the auctioneer arrived on the scene and set the auction in train, and the young Spencer, knowing nothing whatsoever about ships and sensing the possibility of a bargain, bid £100 for the ship. There was no other bid and she was knocked down to him.
Now there was such interest and controversy about the ship that a group of merchants offered to have her pulled up on the graving bank and examined, and they would share the cost. Geoffrey Spencer offered no objection to this, as it was very much in his interest to know if he had a sound ship, and she was duly hauled up. After minute examination by the port surveyor, she was pronounced sound. The gamble had paid off!

A Barquentine has three or more masts with square sails only on the foremast. The “Madcap” is shown above.

One man who had shown a keen interest in the proceedings was a Mr. Nelson, a local bank manager, who congratulated my Grandfather on his purchase, and told him the ship was worth at least £400, and that he could use her as collateral to finance a voyage cross-channel. I must assume that he gave my Grandfather advice on how best to make use of the ship, because he subsequently engaged a Captain Cummins as skipper, a crew was hired and she sailed off to Wales with the young Spencer on board to bring back a cargo of coal. The cargo he sold piecemeal on the side of the quay and thus began his career as a coal merchant and ship owner.

In the course of his travels to the Welsh coalfields, my Grandfather learned how the mine operated, and he realized that there were many mines and they all needed two things to function. They needed pit props to support the mineshafts, and also ponies to draw coal from the face to the loading points. These were the early days of mining and the needs were basic.

Pit Ponies at work. From “The Penny Magazine”

Armed with this information, he set up a trading arrangement with the Welsh mines, and I only know the name of one of them – it was the Powell Duffryn Coal Company (Originally started by Thomas Powell around 1837). He would bring over a cargo of pit props and ponies, and bring back a cargo of coal.

This worked out very well, as he knew all about horseflesh from the farming, and also there was an abundance of suitable timbers to be had, so he was soon showing handsome profits, there being a strong market for coal at the Waterford end. Over time the balance or trade swung so much in his favour that he was able to acquire shares in several mines, which subsequently would prove to be very valuable indeed.

As the Spencer business grew, he purchased a berth in Waterford Harbour, just above the bridge on the Waterford side of the river. He engaged the services of a Captain Furness to skipper a second ship, called (I believe) The Zada. His first ship was the Madcap, and he had at least four other ships, but I don’t know all their names. They were mainly Barquentine sailing ships of about 200 tons. This was the common size of coasters of the period, and they would have been two or three-masted schooners.

There are paintings of some of his ships in one of Waterford’s Museums – in the Waterford Municipal Art Collection.

Geoffrey Spencer was married twice. His first wife was Johanna Lyons, and his second wife was Minnie O’Keefe from Lisnakill, Co. Waterford. Only two sons from his first marriage survived to adulthood, and they were David and Jim.

The “Oriental”

David worked in the coal business with his father, and died in his thirties. Jim worked a farm in Kilcohan, which his father had acquired. He later set up a dairy business in Johnstown, Waterford, which was still going in the 1960s, run by his family.

My grandfather was a born entrepreneur. He lived on the corner of John Street and Waterside, and his premises consisted of a large coal yard, big enough to hold two or three cargos of coal, and a pub with living quarters, where he raised two families. His second family by Minnie O’Keefe consisted of Joe, the eldest, Frank and a daughter, Claire, who was my mother.

His second wife died when my mother was three years old, and she recalled, even in her old age, the horror of being lifted up to kiss her dead mother good-bye, as she lay in her coffin.
At age four my mother went into the Ursuline Convent as a boarder, and because her father was “in trade”, the nuns were reluctant to accept her. However, I guess that, because of his considerable wealth at that stage, he probably made them an offer they could not refuse. I believe that the Ursuline nuns, at that time, were recruited from families who held titles and such like. At any rate, they were regarded very much as “top drawer”. My mother was a boarder there until she left school.

To get back to Spencer the entrepreneur, he built a row of houses, including “the dairy” in Johnstown, as an investment. He owned a limekiln, and a large piece of land in Poleberry, which his son David sold (while drunk) to a local builder who shall be nameless.

I should tell you that in those days, owning a limekiln was equivalent to owning a cement factory today. More building was done then using lime mortar than cement, which was still a novelty. Part of the business of a lime-works then was the supply of fresh-water sand, and the source of this was an inexhaustible series of sand banks in the river Suir, about ten miles up-river at Fiddown. “Lighter men”, who owned dumb barges – they had no engines – would pole their way up-river on the flood tide and anchor at the sand bank of their choice.

The Lime Kiln

They lived on the barge, or lighter, as they were sometimes called, and during the hours of daylight, they would single-handedly shovel sand into the hold of the barge until she was full – I think they held up to sixty or seventy tons – which took almost two weeks. They then cast off on full tide, and poled the barge down river in stages whenever the water was slack. When they got to the Scotch Quay, they poled their way up the tributary, through the park, and moored at John’s Bridge on the Waterside, and there they would unload on the quayside, which meant a week or ten days shovelling again. Incidentally there was a limekiln just at this point. The river was, however, navigable for lighters up to where the Spencer limekiln was situated. This was a strategic advantage for that kiln, as limestone – the raw material – as well as fresh-water sand could be delivered onto the actual site of the lime works.

The same river, being tidal, powered a grist mill situated just above John’s Bridge. There was a tunnel running under that mill, which had a sluice gate on it. The gate was open while the tide was coming in, allowing the water to flow through to the Millers Marsh, and thence up the water lane, which went up the back of St. Ursula’s Terrace, and formed the headrace for the mill. The sluice gate was closed at full tide, locking in the full of the headrace, and as the tide receded, the gate was opened and the outflow of water drove the mill wheel, which was undershot.

Geoffrey Spencer lived at the pub/coal-yard until his death in 1917 at the age of 80 years. He went to seven o’clock Mass every day of his life, and never wore an overcoat. When he died, apart from his property, he left £60,000 in cash, his shares in the Welsh mines, a full yard of coal and a concrete barge full of coal on the berth at the quay, and his ships. He was the last man in Waterford to own a fleet of sailing ships. His total estate, with the exception of £1,000 and the family silver left to my mother, was left to his son Joe.

A farm of approx. 100 acres at Ballindud, Co. Waterford, which my grandfather had inherited from his brother-in-law John Lyons, went to the youngest son Frank, and is still in Spencer ownership. The smaller farm at Kilcohan, was assigned to Jim Spencer, the only survivor of the first marriage, and up to recently, was in Spencer ownership, when it was sold for some millions to a supermarket chain.

Here ends my knowledge of Geoffrey Spencer, a man of great business acumen, who made his mark on Waterford of the Ships in no uncertain way. He is buried in Ballygunner Cemetery, and over his grave stands probably the most impressive monument there – a white marble figure of Christ carrying his cross. R.I.P.

The inscription reads
Erected
In grateful and affectionate
Remembrance
of
our Dear Father
by the loving children of
Geoffrey Spencer
Waterford
Who died 9th April 1917 in his 80th year

Unique Historic Pictures Recently Discovered No. 7 – A Quayside Scene

Newspaper clipping from “The Munster Express” – July 11th 1952

Note: Although the article states that the lighters were “oar-propelled”, they were actually “pole-propelled”.

 

About Geoff Cronin

I was born at tea time at number 12 John Street, Waterford on September 23rd 1923. My father was Richard Cronin and my mother was Claire Spencer of John Street Waterford. They were married in St John’s Church in 1919.

Things are moving so fast in this day and age – and people are so absorbed, and necessarily so, with here and now – that things of the past tend to get buried deeper and deeper. Also, people’s memories seem to be shorter now and they cannot remember the little things – day to day pictures which make up the larger canvas of life.

It seems to me that soon there may be little or no detailed knowledge of what life was really like in the 1930s in a town – sorry, I should have said City, in accordance with its ancient charter – like Waterford. So I shall attempt to provide some of these little cameos as much for the fun of telling as for the benefit of posterity.

Thank you for visiting today and I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse of Waterford in the late 19th century courtesy of Geoff Cronin. As always your feedback is very welcome. thanks Sally.

Smorgasbord Short Stories – Milestones Along the Way – #Ireland #1930s – Divine Guidance by Geoff Cronin

Following on from The Colour of Life, my father-in-law Geoff Cronin wrote two more books with stories of life in Waterford and Dublin from the 1930s. He collected the stories on his travels, swapping them with others in return for his own and then treating us to the results of the exchange. Geoff also added some jokes overheard just for the Craic…Over the next few weeks I will be sharing selected stories from  Milestones Along the Way.

Divine Guidance

As a young boy I was intensely curious about everything and anything and one day I came across a man I knew digging a hole in a field.

When I asked him what was the purpose of the hole he told me he was digging a well to provide water for the owner of the field. After watching for some time I asked him how he knew where to dig and he picked up a fork of whitethorn which he had cut earlier and said, “I use this”!

I was fascinated as he explained all about water divining saying it was also called dowsing and how in ancient times water diviners were regarded by the church as being in league with the Devil. I picked up the twig and he showed me how to hold it, waist high and with the apex of the fork facing away from my body, and my hands with the palms facing up.

As I stood by the hole, holding the twig as instructed, it began to twist in my hands and ended up pointing down into the hole. It was a very weird feeling and the man laughed when he saw my face. “Be God boy you have it” he exclaimed. “You have a rare gift so you have. Now you know how to find water and it’s not everybody that can do that”!

A water diviner at work

A divining rod.

How to hold a divining rod.

I was elated and he gave me the whitethorn twig to keep and I couldn’t wait to tell my mother and the rest of the family. They all tried to do it and not one could succeed so I became a diviner and dowser through no fault of my own and enjoyed mild celebrity for a while.

Water divining became my party piece and though I never got anyone to “dig a hole” I could find existing water pipes, mains etc. It was many years later, when I put my talent to the test. It happened that my daughter bought a piece of land with the intention of building a house on it and she asked me if I could locate a source of water there. So I cut my twig and walked the land from all angles and located a strong reaction repeatedly in a certain spot which I marked. Subsequently a hole was bored there and a good source of water was found. So I was fully vindicated.

Over the years, I bought books on the subject of dowsing and discovered that builders, before excavating on a site often engaged a dowser to make sure there were no water tanks or reservoirs buried beneath the ground. They also got people with metal detectors but since these could not detect plastic pipes the dowser had the last word.

On a visit to Washington DC I wandered into that city’s biggest book shop – it was as big as a football pitch – and there I encountered an immaculately dressed manager, complete with sharkskin suit and rimless glasses. I asked him where I might find books on water divining.

“How’s that again sir”? He asked.

“Water divining” I repeated.

And he replied “all the new religions are down at the far end of the store”. I had to smile!

©Geoff Cronin 2008

Geoff Cronin 1923 – 2017

About Geoff Cronin

I was born at tea time at number 12 John Street, Waterford on September 23rd 1923. My father was Richard Cronin and my mother was Claire Spencer of John Street Waterford. They were married in St John’s Church in 1919.

Things are moving so fast in this day and age – and people are so absorbed, and necessarily so, with here and now – that things of the past tend to get buried deeper and deeper. Also, people’s memories seem to be shorter now and they cannot remember the little things – day to day pictures which make up the larger canvas of life.

It seems to me that soon there may be little or no detailed knowledge of what life was really like in the 1930s in a town – sorry, I should have said City, in accordance with its ancient charter – like Waterford. So I shall attempt to provide some of these little cameos as much for the fun of telling as for the benefit of posterity.

I hope you have enjoyed this weeks stories from Geoff and I hope you will pop in again next Saturday. Thanks Sally.

Smorgasbord Posts from My Archives -#Memoir #Waterford #Ireland #History – The Colour of Life – James the Landlord 1939 by Geoff Cronin

My father-in-law, Geoff Cronin was a raconteur with a encyclopedic memory spanning his 93 years. He sadly died in 2017 but not before he had been persuaded to commit these memories of his childhood and young adulthood in Waterford in the 1920s to the 1940s.

The books are now out of print, but I know he would love to know that his stories are still being enjoyed, and so I am repeating the original series of his books that I posted in 2017. I hope those who have already read will enjoy again and that new readers will discover the wonderful colour of life in Ireland nearly 100 years ago.

James the Landlord – 1939

When I lived in Woodstown in the 1930s our house was on the edge of a sandy beach which stretched for half a mile in either direction and our landlord, James, lived in the cottage next door.

James was a lean, old, guy in his late eighties. He had a full head of curly hair, a square foxy beard and spent a lot of his days chopping firewood from a huge stock of logs in his front yard. In his young days James had been a stone mason and his wife had been the cook in the “big house” which now stood deserted on the wooded estate nearby.

There was an eight foot high storm wall which ran the length of our house – and the cottage next door. This protected both properties from the sea when the tides ran high. In the winter we had to barricade the french windows at the back of the house and I clearly remember going to sleep to the regular thump of waves crashing against that wall. In the summer holidays those french windows were always open and we could just walk out, pop over the wall and be on the beach, or in the sea if the tide was a high one.

James the Landlord, collecting cockles

On a fine evening, after she had listened to the nine o’clock news on our battery radio, my mother would stroll out to the storm wall for a quiet smoke and a chat with James. He would also have heard the news and it would be discussed in detail, as well as the weather forecast. James knew how to turn on the radio and how to connect the batteries but he had no clear idea of how it worked or what “airwaves” were. The Irish broadcasting station was “Athlone”, the BBC was just “The English Station” and the whole apparatus was popularly known as “The Wireless”.

On one occasion James’s wireless broke down and when the local bus arrived he handed it to the bus driver with instructions to bring it to the wireless man in town and ask him how much to fix it. On his return the bus driver reported that it would cost thirty shillings to fix it – it needed a new valve. James was shocked at the cost and told the bus driver to enquire “what would he charge just to fix Athlone!”! After much argy-bargy he capitulated, paid the thirty bob and the wireless was returned “as good as new!”

I recall the time when King George V of England was ill and dying and there were hourly bulletins from Buckingham Palace regarding his condition. Mother and James were in conversation about it:

“Well James,” she said. “What do you think about the news?”

“Ah ma’am they’re bulletin about it all day,” he replied, “and I think meself that the poor bloody bugger is shagged.”

He was right you know and the king died next day.

When the war came and the German propaganda machine came into play the infamous James Joyce, or Lord Haw Haw as he was known, could be heard coming through the BBC line and contradicting everything the English announcer would say. Because of the varying strength of the signals, each station would come and go amid bursts of crackling interference. James thought their contests were very entertaining and he would refer to the announcers as The German and The Englishman.

One evening the contest had been hot & heavy and James described it to my mother as follows:

“The Englishman came on the wire and he commenced giving out the news and the next thing was The German got up behind him and shoved him off the wire. Then, after a while, The Englishman got strong and managed to get back up on the wire and you couldn’t hear The German at all, except in fits and starts. But then, after The German got a rest, he got up on the wire along with The Englishman and they started shouting at each other and there was a fierce struggle and be the ’tarnal didn’t The Englishman get the better of The German and pushed him off altogether. Then The German got right wicked and commenced shovellin’ gravel up agin the wire for pure spite. After that we got the rest of the English news and there was no sign of Lord Haw Haw, but begod it was a right battle between the two of ’em.”

Incidentally, the “gravel” was radio interference which occurred when the station was being “jammed” and there was a conflict of signals.

James told my mother on another occasion that he was giving up listening to the weather forecast from Athlone and was changing his allegiance to The Englishman because he was “giving out much better weather!”

At an earlier stage I began getting slightly envious of James because he owned three goats which provided him with milk. He also had two dogs, Mikey and Barney, who used to come running when I played the mouth organ and they would sit down in front of me and howl unmercifully.

I had a dog of my own, a female named Jack, which I had acquired from a man called Larry who was famous for having a wooden leg. Incidentally, for a fee of a penny Larry would hand you his stick and let you hit his leg with it. This went on for some time until one kid hit him an unmerciful whack on the wrong leg! Needless to say, the air turned blue on that occasion and the culprit’s parentage was called into question in no uncertain manner and this ended the “penny a whack” game.

Now, I couldn’t wait to have my own goat and I got a kid through the generosity of a pal I used to meet on the school bus. He told me to call to his parents’ farm and I could take one of the kid goats recently born there. I gladly accepted and having walked the two miles to his place I then had to carry the kid back to my home in my arms. There is an old saying “Even a hen is heavy if you carry it far enough!” – and I really learned the truth of that by the time I got home.

With the aid of a baby’s bottle I fed the kid until it was strong enough to join James’s “herd” as they went out to graze. I called her Dora and she would follow me about like a dog. When in time she had kids herself and was giving milk I only had to whistle and she would come to be milked.

Woodstown 1937 – Left to Right James (The Landlord), Two workers at the Barron Estate, Billy Gough – worker at the Salmon Weir next door to our home.

But to return to James – he was an expert carpenter, though that was not his trade. He was also a great gardener and a mine of information on all kinds of plants and vegetables. He had a large garden which supplied him with vegetables all year round and he tilled it himself until he was in his late ninety’s. As a boy, I hung around him a lot and he would help me with small carpentry jobs and advise me how to handle and feed my ferret, show me how to dig lugworms for fishing, how to milk a goat, or to harvest a can of cockles on a Friday to be eaten in lieu of fish. In short, he was the source of information about anything except new fangled contraptions like the wireless!

One day I found him in the garden, sitting on an old worn bench in a sunny corner and he was chewing on an onion. I was amazed and asked him why a raw onion? He said “you should eat everything that grows and comes in season – that’s why the lord put it there.”

James’ brother Patsy lived with him and he seemed very odd to me. It was said that he was a bit daft, to put it mildly. Apparently he had at one time farmed a smallholding in Rosduff, a nearby townsland, and he had kept pigs.

An apochryphal story told against Patsy related how when pig-feed went up in price he decided that, since pigs had no intelligence, he would simply reduce the rations to the irreducible minimum and maybe even train them to do without food altogether. The story goes that he almost had them trained when for some strange reason they died!

***

Our house on Woodstown Beach was a double-fronted villa type building, standing in its own grounds, and the rent was thirty pounds a year. On one occasion, when my father was paying the rent, James asked him if he would consider buying the property. The asking price was three hundred pounds and my father thought that this was exorbitant and didn’t buy. Such were the economies of the 1930s! Today’s value on the same house would be a hundred and fifty thousand, at a conservative estimate.

Well, we lived there until 1942 when we returned to the city to live over the shop at 12 John’s Street. I donated Dora the goat to James for the enhancement of his “herd” and I believe she lived a long and happy life there. James lived to be over a hundred and was still chopping his own firewood until a few days before his death.

Front view of our home at Woodstown early 1930s.NB. The slats across the lower part of the window were to keep the local goats, which belonged to James the Landlord, from parking on the lower window sill.

My childhood in Woodstown was nothing short of idyllic and I have many happy memories of my time there. One thing I will never forget is the thrill of stepping out the french windows, over the wall and onto the beach in the early morning, when it had been swept clean by the tide, and running along with sheer exuberance knowing that mine were the only footprints on the beach.

©Geoff Cronin 2005

About Geoff Cronin

I was born at tea time at number 12 John Street, Waterford on September 23rd 1923. My father was Richard Cronin and my mother was Claire Spencer of John Street Waterford. They were married in St John’s Church in 1919.

Things are moving so fast in this day and age – and people are so absorbed, and necessarily so, with here and now – that things of the past tend to get buried deeper and deeper. Also, people’s memories seem to be shorter now and they cannot remember the little things – day to day pictures which make up the larger canvas of life.

It seems to me that soon there may be little or no detailed knowledge of what life was really like in the 1930s in a town – sorry, I should have said City, in accordance with its ancient charter – like Waterford. So I shall attempt to provide some of these little cameos as much for the fun of telling as for the benefit of posterity.

Thank you for visiting today and I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse of Waterford in the 1930s courtesy of Geoff Cronin. As always your feedback is very welcome. thanks Sally.

Smorgasbord Posts from My Archives -#Memoir #Waterford #Ireland 1930s – The Colour of Life 1936 – #Waterford – The Financier and The Farmer’s Wife by Geoff Cronin

My father-in-law, Geoff Cronin was a raconteur with a encyclopedic memory spanning his 93 years. He sadly died in 2017 but not before he had been persuaded to commit these memories of his childhood and young adulthood in Waterford in the 1920s to the 1940s.

The books are now out of print, but I know he would love to know that his stories are still being enjoyed, and so I am repeating the original series of his books that I posted in 2017. I hope those who have already read will enjoy again and that new readers will discover the wonderful colour of life in Ireland nearly 100 years ago.

The Financier and The Farmer’s Wife 1936

Smullian was a Jew who lived in Parnell Street when I was a boy. His wife was by way of being a very good singer and featured in the Wallace Grand Opera Society which had been thriving there in my father’s time.

Smullian had a brass plate on the outside of his front door which glittered and said “J. SMULLIAN. FINANCIER”. In fact, he had a money lending business and he also bought and sold “job” lots of groceries and salvage from marine claims which arose in the port from time to time – there was a considerable cargo trade in and out of Waterford Port in those years.

The money-borrowing clients, mostly poor people, would not necessarily be in the market to buy salvage goods from Smullian, but he was well known among the farming people of the outlying areas who came to town once a week to sell their butter and eggs and were always on the lookout for a bargain of any kind.

Cute farmers, and the equally cute wives of these cute farmers, were known to have dealings with Mr. Smullian from time to time, and it was generally agreed that “he’d have the odd bargain, alright”.

One such lady from the agricultural community dropped in to Smullian’s office about mid-day on a Saturday, after selling her butter in High Street Market. It was a casual visit to see if he had anything interesting to sell, or rather to see if he had anything at all useful at an interesting price.

Smullian treated his client with the utmost deference, he informed her that he had a consignment of Dutch matches, which he fully recommended and she could have a packet of twelve boxes for ninepence, saving a massive 33⅓ percent on shop prices. She looked at the open sample box carefully. She knew, of course, that anything coming from a foreign place could be suspect, but they had good strong stems and fat round heads and she plunged.

“Ninepence it is” she said counting out three coppers and a sixpenny bit and she put the packet in her basket, covering it carefully with newspaper so that “nobody would know her business”.

Now, threepence may not sound much of a saving to you, my dear reader, but you should know that at that time, potatoes sold for sixpence a stone (14 pounds), a seat in the cinema was fourpence, and you could buy five Woodbine cigarettes for two pence, or four apples for a penny. So, a woman who saved threepence on one transaction, could well feel pleased with herself.

This particular lady was well pleased as she drove home to her little farmhouse with her husband in their pony and trap. She had already decided to buy another dozen boxes of these matches next Saturday, and that would see her through the winter months. She had also decided to say nothing to her neighbour ’till the week after, when maybe they’d be all gone.

Eight o’clock mass that Sunday morning was in a cold church, two and a half miles drive from the farm, and it was near ten o’clock by the time they got home, and she knelt at the hearth to light the fire and put on the kettle for the tea. “Himself” was coming in after unyoking the pony when he heard his wife fervently cursing on her knees by the hearth.

“The divil blast that bloody Jewman for a swindlin’ bastard” she ranted.

“Hauld on there girl” said himself, “what’s wrong at all?”

“These God cursed Dutch matches won’t light,” she said, tears of rage and shame rolling down her face, for she had boasted of her bargain to her husband on the way home.

He picked up the box and tried to strike one. No good – another, the head crumpled – one more, not a spark. He put down the box, smiled indulgently at her, and said “you were codded girl” and handed her his own box of “decent” matches.

She lit the fire, got the breakfast, and life proceeded in the house. After the breakfast, she took the dozen packets of Dutch matches and placed them carefully on the chimney-breast, beside the picture of the Sacred Heart, and thought about next Saturday and her anger simmered.

When next Saturday came, she went to town as usual and on arrival she marched with resolute step to the door with the brass place which said J. Smullian, Financier. She went in and rapped on the little office counter.

As Smullian appeared, greeting her graciously, she slammed down the matches, which incidentally had dried off to perfection after spending the week on the chimney piece.

“Them matches are useless,” she snapped. “They won’t light and I wants me ninepence back, and I may say you have a neck to be coddin’ decent people out of their hard earned money.”

“Just a minute Ma’am” he said, totally ignoring the insult. “Let me see.” He took up the nearest box and opened it taking out a match. He looked at it carefully, and then, lifting up his knee in front of him, he reached behind and swished the match swiftly along the underside of his buttock, the friction causing the match to light perfectly. He blew it out and took out another, and repeated the process, and again it lit. As he extinguished the third match, he closed the packet and moved it towards her with a smile.

“There’s nothing whatever wrong with these matches, dear lady,” he said “They light perfectly.”

She reddened with anger and replied “It’s all very well for you to say that Mr. Smullian, but where the hell do ye think I’m going to find a Jewman’s arse at seven o’clock in the morning when I want to light a fire?”

I leave it to you to guess whether or not she recovered her ninepence!

***

Mikey was a very short man who rode a very old, very high bike. He was described by one of his colleagues as being –
“Like a cat up on a pair of scissors.”

©Geoff Cronin 2005

About Geoff Cronin

I was born at tea time at number 12 John Street, Waterford on September 23rd 1923. My father was Richard Cronin and my mother was Claire Spencer of John Street Waterford. They were married in St John’s Church in 1919.

Things are moving so fast in this day and age – and people are so absorbed, and necessarily so, with here and now – that things of the past tend to get buried deeper and deeper. Also, people’s memories seem to be shorter now and they cannot remember the little things – day to day pictures which make up the larger canvas of life.

It seems to me that soon there may be little or no detailed knowledge of what life was really like in the 1930s in a town – sorry, I should have said City, in accordance with its ancient charter – like Waterford. So I shall attempt to provide some of these little cameos as much for the fun of telling as for the benefit of posterity.

Thank you for visiting today and I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse of Waterford in the 1930s courtesy of Geoff Cronin. As always your feedback is very welcome. thanks Sally.