SHAY ELLIOTT and Collected Short Stories

If I could back-pedal for a moment to try to give an idea of Dublin in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s as a backdrop to the immense popularity of bicycle racing in Ireland Post World War II Dublin was in the throes of social unrest caused by high unemployment, poverty, and unending labour strikes. Roaming gangs, in particular the Animal Gang out of Gardiner Street and the Hawks Nest Gang from Dominick Street terrorized the inner city. Parishes were seldom ventured out of. Every crammed tenement house bred Artful Dodgers and other candidates for nearby Mountjoy Jail, known colloquially as ‘the Joy’. In this landscape a descent to the nether regions of crime and incarceration was a rite of passage; fragile blossoms withered on the bough in the arid environment of the inner city. Established families lived in dread of being separated from lifelong neighbours and resettled in the new outlying ‘Corpnoration’ estates of Cabra, Drimnagh and Finglas; areas according to writer Brendan Behan, where they ate their young. In desperation thousands took to the mailboats from the North Wall to begin new lives in Great Britain, Canada, the USA and Australia. Winston Churchill was heard to quip that Ireland could have the six counties of the North if the Irish returned Liverpool and Birmingham. Infectious bacterial diseases were rampant in Dublin. In 1948 Ireland had the highest infant mortality rate in Europe. Over 10 % of the lower income groups, mostly children, died of or were infected with tuberculosis, chickenpox, diphtheria, whooping cough, scurvy, scabies, measles, mumps and ringworm. In 1950, five years after the end of World War Two and six hundred years after the 14th century Renaissance, Ireland was the last medieval jewel in the Vatican’s crown. The Knights of St Columbanus were feverishly proscribing the most gifted writers and intellectuals of Western civilization from Huxley to Sartre. The power and prestige of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid rivaled that of the Jesuit monk Torquemada in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in 1483. And if Dublin lacked Auto-da-fe’s and garroting, heads rolled nevertheless when John Charles invoked Article 44 of the Constitution, which he co-authored , and flexed his political muscle; witness his scuppering of the Mother and Child scheme of the innovative Minister of Health Dr. Noel Browne. But for all that and the penurious squalor of the inner city we were a happy lot. Knowledge, however modest, would have had to accept a measure of guilt for its acquisition if it compromised the serenity of our blissful ignorance. It was an age of innocence, of sodalities, penny candles and midnight Masses, of miraculous medals and regular sightings of the Venerable Matt Talbot and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Pompous Bishops emblazoned in gold vestments served Mass, glowing in the candle-lit luminescence of the High Altar of the Pro Cathedral. Angelic altar boys in black soutanes and white surplices chanted Latin hymns in candlelight processions amid the crumbling tenements of Marlborough Street. At 16 years old we played spin-the-bottle, drank fizz and had a first shave with a Macs Smile. A Kingston shirt made all the difference when with a tremulous heart one savoured a first kiss. Dublin’s inner city in winter was like a setting for a Becket play. Beneath the claustrophobic dome of the night sky the buckling walls of decaying tenement houses were buttressed up by massive wood beams. Whole families often occupied one single room. The nefarious glimmer man made his nightly rounds dimming the sputtering gas globes of fin de siècle lampposts in streets lost in shadow and despair. Dublin’s gothic skyline always seemed less pervading in the darkness than in the harsh light of day. This was the setting then that brought one to the sport. Bicycle racing offered a chance to travel, to breathe fresh air, to escape the grim environment of a Dickensian Dublin.