Throwback Thursday: Plea to track down photo of Guinness office boy

THROWBACK Thursday reader Pat Kelly has written to say that he read recently about The Electric Restaurant on the South Mall in Cork city being up for sale.

“I remember that at one time there was a garage and also a filling station there. Was it O’Shea’s?” asks Pat.

“It had, I think, four petrol pumps. Cross’s garage was also on the Mall.”

He asks if anyone realises that the old ‘one day a week’ branch of the Crawford Tech on Parnell Place was at one time the city’s school of anatomy, medicine, and surgery, where the painter Daniel Maclise and the sculptor John Hogan studied the human form, and where, Pat suggests, the doctors would have dealt with body snatchers for their essential supplies!

John Hogan, he adds, of course sculpted the Dead Christ in the South Chapel.

Pat also has some information on why Parnell Place was known at one time as Warren Place.

“In 1752, Robert Warren of Killbarry was High Sheriff of Cork, and in 1796, Augustus Warren held that post, becoming MP for the city in 1884. There are some houses in Cove Street called after Warren. So many of our streets are called after local bigwigs.”

There is a castle at Barnahely, near Ringaskiddy, adds Pat, called Warrens Court. “It’s quite near the cemetery. It’s in ruins of course, but I remember that at one time, a residence was built, attached to the castle. When I started work with Thompsons Bread, my driver had Ringaskiddy on his rounds.”

Can’t you just see how Pat earned his fame as a local tour guide in Cork? If there is anything to be known about our beloved city and county, then he knows it!

His maxim, repeated to anyone interested in local history is “always look up. Don’t just look around, look up!”

And that of course is when you will see things like the old lettering on the sides of buildings, almost faded away but still offering clues to earlier times. And the stone plaque near the bus station on Parnell Place, stating firmly that the place is named Nelson’s Quay.

That Nelson’s Quay sign predates the building it is embedded in by at least a century. We can only be thankful that whoever built the fine sandstone factory was wise enough to retain the plaque.

You do find a few of these echoes of the past around the city still if you look hard.

Where Paradise Place becomes South Main Street - isn’t there one up high on the side of a building there? And that lane near the Courthouse has a very old carved plaque too. Perhaps someone would find a few more for us?

Now - a plea from Joan McCarthy, who writes with a fervent hope that we may be able to help her to track down a photograph which has very personal associations.

“I’ve been doing a little research into old black and white photographs taken in the 1940s/’50s and came across your name and that of Throwback Thursday through the Echo archives,” says Joan.

“I have many beautiful old black and white photographs of my mum and dad, one taken on Patrick’s Bridge in the early 1950s (they married in 1954), and a lovely one of my dad and grandad, taken when my Dad was a teen. 

These are very precious to me, especially as I lost my dad not long ago.

“I’m looking for one in particular of my dad that would have been taken in the early 1940s. He worked as an office boy for Guinness from 1940 to 1944/5. He loved it there but they only kept on office boys until they turned 18.

“I’ve written to Guinness, and received a lovely email from them. They found my dad’s details of employment in their archives, but sadly they don’t have the photo of him.

“He was on a pony and trap, carrying the barrels of Guinness around the city. I imagine it was taken by a street photographer at the time, and I wondered if by any chance you could give me any ideas on how I could find the photograph?

“Such wonderful times, it’s hard to believe how much has changed in 80 years!”

Joan adds: “My dad’s name was Owen McCarthy (formally Eugene) and he went on to become a League of Ireland and FIFA referee. I’m thinking of writing a book about his life, he did so much and I have so many wonderful stories.

“Sadly he passed away in 2021, at the grand old age of 95. It was a huge loss of a great man who deserves to be remembered (he was very humble so he’ll probably kill me but I can hear him chuckling all the same!)

And as for asking help of the Echo, he would surely be delighted. He couldn’t go a day without it. He would read the headlines on the front, then turn to the back page and read from back to front, every single page!

We asked Joan how she knew there was in fact such a photograph in existence, since she clearly doesn’t have a copy. The reply came back quickly:

“I actually did have it, the original copy. Let me explain. Whenever a family member had a big birthday or anniversary, I got into the habit of making books for them. I’d make up little poems about different times in their lives, and I’d add in a photo to go with the story.

“For my dad’s 80th birthday I made him a book, and on the front cover I put that beautiful photo of him in the pony and trap, along with one of him using a mobile phone for the first time (so adorable).

“Anyway, when he passed away, I made sure I got that book back. It was only this week that I felt able to look at it, and would you believe, someone had ripped the photo from the front cover!"

We will do all we can to track down the original, Joan.

We seem to remember publishing a picture of one young man on a Guinness horse-drawn float delivering barrels around the city, in a Throwback Thursday a year or so ago.

Was it around the time we had all that fervid discussion about the exact location of different horse troughs on the main thoroughfares? We will have to search back through the files.

Times really have changed incredibly, adds Joan.

“I was in a shop recently, and asked a young lad for directions to another location. He quickly looked it up on his phone, and then said, wonderingly: ‘How did anyone find their way around before Google maps?’ I said ‘we used an atlas of course’. Imagine my shock when he replied ‘What’s an atlas?’

I remember when the metric system came in and my Nan still used to talk in terms of the old shillings and pence. I couldn’t understand it, but now that’s the way the younger generation think of me, I imagine!

We commiserated with Joan, and observed that today’s kids probably don’t understand phrases like Press Button A or even the principle of dial phones either. Her response was swift.

“Your mention of the ‘Press Button A’ phones brought back wonderful memories. When I was young, and growing up on Pouladuff Road, there was a phone box directly across from our house, so we had the advantage of being able to look across the road to see if there was a queue.

“People would sit on the railings near the phone box, waiting for their turn. Sometimes there was no end to the queue, so we’d have to run over the road and join it if we wanted to contact someone.

“Do you remember, if you felt someone was taking too long on a call for your liking, actually going over and knocking on the glass, and saying ‘Will ya be long there?’ And if they sort of ignored your first question, you’d then actually go and open the door of the phone box (I’m laughing so much!), and get a bit cross, and ask them did they not see the queue (and they in the middle of a call!).

“And what about Button B... if you didn’t press it fast enough you might lose your precious pennies!

“Now here is a real memory of older times and older customs. The phone box near our house would often be ringing when you passed, so automatically you’d go in and answer it, and you’d be asked, ‘Would ya ever run over to (whoever it may be) so and so’s house and give ’em a shout to come to the phone?’

“Those were fantastic neighbourly times which I had completely forgotten about. Thank you Throwback Thursday for such a beautiful trip down Memory Lane!”

Joan closes by reiterating her fervent hope of finding that precious photograph of her dad. And we hope just as fervently that we can help her to do just that.

Her mention of the older style phones, before many householders were fortunate enough to have a private one in their homes (let alone every member of the family having its own private phone and powerful mini-computer in his or her pocket!) reminds us of even earlier days when a small town or village would have its own telephone exchange and most residents shared a party line.

Oh, that party line - stalwart provision of many an Agatha Christie thriller! How often do her minor characters just happen to be listening in when the fateful call is made? How many denouements depend on a busybody overhearing something she shouldn’t have?

Who can remember vigorously winding a handle at the side of the public phone to make contact with the exchange? And putting those pennies in? Twopence, threepence, fourpence, and then moving on and on, ever upwards, until in the end the familiar sight of a public phone box became more of a rarity.

Today the booths are used for all kinds of other things. We have seen neat rows of paperback books displayed in them, free for giving and taking, even acting as little hothouses for growing tomatoes. Many now house lifesaving defibrillators too.

But back in the day they were lifesavers of another kind when someone frantically needed to get in touch with a doctor, a relative, a loved one.

We had a phone in our house, and quite frequently neighbours would come in to use it, tactfully leaving a few pence by the shelf on which it stood before leaving.

One elderly man used to come in once a week for a lengthy call to his brother and spend so long at it that we children christened him ‘The Ringer’, after a famous Edgar Wallace thriller of the time.

And later on, when I was desirous of contacting a boyfriend who was phone-less, I thought nothing of ringing his next door neighbour and asking him to go round and fetch my beloved to the phone.

You didn’t think anything of it back then. But can you imagine trying that now?

Oh wait, you’d have to find a house that still had a phone first… and a boyfriend who didn’t possess a mobile! Could such a world still exist?

Share your own memories with us. Email jokerrigan1@gmail.com. Or leave a comment on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/echolivecork.