Historic Holly Bough saved for posterity

THE year was 1932, and in the offices of the Cork Constitution newspaper, a journalist was fuming about a topic that has long exercised the people of Leeside: Dublin; or, more specifically, Cork’s relationship to it.

There was a scandalous lie abroad, he felt, that all great Cork people moved to Dublin.

The writer decided to compose an article for the Holly Bough that would dispel this “fatuous but widespread belief”.

Under the pen name ‘Candid Admirer’, he selected ten men - yes, all men, this was 1932 after all - who were leaders of Cork life and wrote a profile of them.

Among them was one John Callaghan (JC) Foley, a self-made farm boy-turned-businessman hailed for his “spectacular rise to fortune” whose “hobby is collecting directorships”.

Perhaps it was that glowing tribute - or perhaps it was the fact that JC Foley died just a few months after it appeared, aged 59, leaving behind a widow and four children - but his family held on to that Holly Bough for posterity.

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One of those four Foley children was Frank, the father of Felicity Foley, a retired solicitor who lives in Model Farm Road, who had that 1932 edition in her possession.

In last year’s 125th anniversary Holly Bough, I wrote an article about its history, and sent out an appeal for people who may have missing editions. When Felicity saw it, she got in touch, and agreed the family would hand their 1932 Holly Bough over to the Cork City Archives.

Thus it was that in August this year, Felicity, her sisters Finola and Catherine, and other family members gathered at Cork City Library for the official handover.

As luck would have it, the library was staging a Holly Bough exhibition at the time - drawing attention to the fact the public can peruse dozens of past editions of the beloved annual Christmas publication on their premises.

Cork City Librarian David O’Brien, along with Library Staff Officer Mary O’Leary, were on hand to gratefully accept the bequest. And, in another quirk of fate, library employee Conor MacHale, a son of Catherine, nipped downstairs for the presentation too!

Other family who gathered for the handover included Robin Foley, who was in Ireland on holiday from Florida, and John Callaghan (JC) Neville - who shares the first names of his illustrious great great grandfather.

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The 1932 Holly Bough is the third oldest copy known to be in existence - a copy of the very first, from 1897, is in the possession of a family in Canada, and a 1924 edition is the oldest in Cork City Library.

The 1932 edition is historically significant, as it was the last Holly Bough published by the Cork Constitution before the Tivy family sold it to the Echo and Examiner group in 1933, for £200.

The front page of the 1932 edition, which cost 3d, was wholly comprised of adverts.

An ad for the Munster Arcade proclaimed Father Christmas would be in-house “from his beautiful villa residence, handing out famous parcels”. Its toys included Hornby trains, Meccano, and “Dean’s famous dolls”.

There was also a large ad for Matthews’ footwear shop on Academy Street - phone 787 - and ads for Roches’ jewellers of Patrick Street, Cooke’s bicycles of Grand Parade, and Canty wine and spirit merchants of Pembroke Street.

The first few editorial pages were devoted to that feature on the great and good men of Cork at that time. Some of the ten are still well-known, such as Lord Mayor Seán French and business- man Jim Musgrave, others are not so well known 91 years on.

J,C Foley is one who has mainly disappeared from public consciousness.

The author of the pen portraits, ‘Candid Admirer’, stated loftily: “It is time that the rest of this country should realise not every Corkman of note has emigrated, and that in intellect, in personality, in enterprise, our city is as rich and alive as it ever was.”

French, a Fianna Fáil stalwart, who died in 1937, aged 48, is described thus: “His opponents regard him as the most lovable of left-wingers. In politics, the besetting sin of the left is intolerance; of the right insincerity. Seán French has walked, without faltering, the dangerous path that runs between.”

The next name in the pantheon of great Corkmen was Richard Wallace, then Chairman of the Harbour Commissioners.

He was said to have been the grandson of the skipper of the first steamer to ply in the harbour, and the son of the skipper of the first steamer to be built in Cork. Also, Richard’s great grandfather was coxswain of Admiral Nelson’s ship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

Wallace’s company was jointly responsible for the popular Palmer-Wallace excursions of Cork at the time, and the Holly Bough said: “The urgent tourist, who kisses the Blarney stone while the chimes of Shandon are still ringing in his head, could not do better than spend a lazy afternoon on the deck of a Palmer-Wallace boat.

“There he will see a cross-section of Cork society - a barrister escaping from a stuffy court, a doctor recovering from the fumes of petrol and anaesthetics, a flapper tapping expectant feet to the music of the band, a charwoman smiling happily at finding herself for a brief few hours in the company of the ‘quality’.”

Wallace’s Avenue, Ballinlough, was named after Richard.

The next great leader in Cork in the 1932 feature was Brother Ignatius Connolly, headmaster at Presentation Brothers College for half a century - and known to one and all as ‘The Man’.

“Many men now occupying distinguished positions owe their success not merely to the education they received from him,” said the Holly Bough, “but to his steady refusal to allow them waste their talents in second-rate occupations.” Jerry Hurley was next up, a Labour Party politician and trade unionist who went on to be a TD. The Holly Bough said: “Had Jerry been brought up in a villa in Montenotte instead of a labourer’s cottage in Clogheen, he would not be the intensely earnest Labour leader he is today.

“To politicians, unemployment is a problem; to Hurley, it is a tragedy. He is not content to look on helplessly or utter platitudes to the workless man about a new social order.” Next on the list was Jim Musgrave, whose glittering sporting career was followed by an equally successful career in business In its portrait, the Holly Bough said Musgrave had embarked on a six-month voyage around Cape Horn at the southernmost tip of the Americas on a windjammer “at an age when his schoolfellows were reading sea stories”.

The Corkman won a rowing race at the Cork International Regatta, in 1902, then turned to dry land and took up rugby as a centre.

Musgrave won five Munster Cup medals and would surely have won an Irish cap if he hadn’t been up against the legendary Basil Maclear in that position. Maclear was one of 25 players inducted to the World Rugby Hall of Fame during the 2015 Rugby World Cup. He served with the British Army in Fermoy and died in Ypres during World War I.

Musgrave also excelled at hockey and golf, with the Douglas club, and became President of the IRFU. Musgrave Park was named in his honour.

In 1932, Musgrave was head of the biggest laundry company in the country, at the Metropole, employing 200 workers.

“When the ‘Boss’ walks through the Metropole Laundry, no smiles are petrified,” said the Holly Bough, “no chill invades the air, the groups of girls continue to sing their selections from grand opera. We should hear little of labour unrest if all employers were like Jim Musgrave.” Musgrave, who also ran the Metropole Hotel, died in 1938.

Next on the list was R.S (Dick) Anthony, a politician and trade unionist, who began his working life as a teenage printer on the Echo and Examiner.

He became a Labour TD in 1927, but was ousted from the party for supporting an anti-IRA Government bill that could have sentenced to death without appeal anyone guilty of IRA violence.

Undaunted, Anthony stood as an Independent and won several elections in Cork. He was also Lord Mayor in 1942 and 1943.

The final two men lauded in the 1932 Holly Bough article were Professor Alfred Rahilly and Philip Monahan.

Rahilly was Registrar of UCC at the time, and became President of the college in 1943. The O’Rahilly building on the campus is named in his honour.

“He is not the bearded, benign, absent-minded professor of the sentimental press as he slowly paces the old College quadrangle,” said the Holly Bough. “He will plunge into a fight with the readiness of Don Quixote, and rake his opponent with a machine gun fire of witty invective. But when the smoke of battle clears away, he feels no malice as he gazes on the mangled body of his adversary.” The tribute to Monahan begins with a description of him as a republican inmate in Lincoln Jail in 1918, where he helped Éamon de Valera escape. He went on to be Ireland’s first local authority manager and was City Commissioner then City Manager in Cork from 1924 to 1959.

The Holly Bough said: “Before his time, the back lanes were filthy, now they are clean and well-surfaced. He has fostered several housing schemes, for one of which he did not hesitate to postpone building the City Hall.

“He is sometimes regarded as a strutting dictator, lusting for power - a picture which is pathetic in its untruth.” The 1932 Holly Bough contained an article recommending various foods in Cork city, such as cakes from Ormond and Ahern’s at 107, Shandon Street; choice teas, turkey, hams, and fruit from A.A Levis, of 96, South Main Street; and Christmas cakes and “bon-bons in fancy boxes” from Gerald D’Arcy, of 5-6, North Main Street.

You could buy margarine and shredded suet from the Shandon Castle Company, special dry cure bacon from Hemsworth’s of 12-15, Cornmarket Street, and dried fruits, icing sugar and “all the sweet things of the season” from Jacobs of 41, Princes Street.

There were recommendations for jewellery, gifts, toys and suits from Montague Burtons, which had no less than three stores on Patrick Street. As for Christmas dinner? “Paddy Flaherty of course! What better?”