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| Bridge Street, Waiting for de Valera, March 16th, 1922 |
In the Waterford News for 22 September 1922 an
interesting article was published titled: ‘Dungarvan To-Day’. The author’s name is not given but it may have
been written by Edmond Keohan. Over the
next few weeks, we will reproduce some extracts from it.
Life in Dungarvan appears to be much the same as of
old as far as appearances go, but on closer examination one is impressed with
the great changes that have taken place in the economic life of the people. For
a time, some couple of weeks ago, there was much need of goods for the wants of
the inhabitants, and what was considered almost as of much concern, there were
no newspapers coming to the town. Whenever
a newspaper came into the town it was loaned from one to another and was
regarded as an article of very special value. Before this, the Cork Examiner used to supply
news daily, but the general tenor was so much censored that it soon began to be
regarded as a quite different news medium…Even now, though supplied with a
daily service from Dublin of metropolitan papers, we miss the absence of news
from Cork. A letter from Dungarvan to
Cork has to be taken hundreds of miles by sea and land before it reaches its
destination. It goes first to Waterford,
thence to Dublin, across to Liverpool, and back by steamer to Cork. Contrast this service with the time before the
broken bridges and explosions, when a letter posted in Dungarvan at three
o’clock p.m. would be delivered to Cork the same evening. From Waterford the mails come one a day, but
the journey is perilous. On a few
occasions the mail bags were seized, and the military were obliged to scour the
country for their recovery, and happily succeeded in their different searches.
Then, again, with regard to the life of the people,
there is the danger of sniping and attack upon the town. On the night of the bomb explosion the people
were terrified. The streets were
crowded, but after the loud rumble and the rifle shots which succeeded it
pedestrians ran in all directions, but all the while there were careless
fellows who kept standing at the corners, and curiosity was a more powerful
factor with them than the danger of being exposed to rifle fire. Now the military quarters in the different
portions of the town have been fortified, sand-bags have been built up and
other defences erected. The closest
guard is kept at night, and ones hears repeatedly the challenges of the
sentries from their posts of duty.
