Irish Mist Liqueur: a unique Tullamore product, and now a chance to talk, recall and publish recollections. We need your help.

For about forty years Tullamore was home to the production, bottling and marketing of a world-class product, Irish Mist liqueur. The background to the project to establish a whiskey-based liqueur came from English contacts of the Williams distillery company, B. Daly, and arose out of the scarcity of whiskey in England as the war came to an end in 1945. By late 1947 production of the liqueur compound – a mixture of honey, sugar and whiskey – commenced in Tullamore. Sales were good initially, but with the return of competitors to the market, such as Drambuie, and difficulties with the English shareholders progress slowed.

The good news is that with the support of Creative Ireland and Offaly County Council we are on an excursion to find out what made Irish Mist a product distributed worldwide and using the best designs for packaging. It was all started in Tullamore in 1947 so you can help fill in the gaps. We want to hear from people with memories. We want to record it in book form while there are people who can give first-hand accounts. You have a story to tell and you may have pictures. Please contact John Flanagan, Ardan Heights, Brian Jaffray or Michael Byrne. Why not email us info@offalyhistory.com or call to Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore. The work on the project has now started so get in early with your contribution of a memory or a picture.

Desmond Williams, a grandson of the founder of the firm was with the product from the start. He concentrated his sales skills on the wealthy Irish in America and by 1953 had established a small market there. It was his famous father-in-law, Oliver St. John Gogarty, who introduced Irish Mist to the U.S. when he personally conveyed four miniatures to a trade agent there in late September 1949, by way of samples of the new product.[1] Later, it was Irish connections such as that with Jim Costello (formerly of Ferbane, Offaly) and owner of a unique bar and restaurant in New York with an avant-garde clientele who gave an order for two cases and was willing to take another eight of a small shipment in 1950.[2

Impressions of an Ireland Dream. De Jean Frazer, T.C. Luby and a Birr book launch. By Laurel Jean Grube

I dreamed of someday going to Ireland and exploring my ancestry. But I am afraid to fly; not only because of feeling trapped in a plane high in the sky over the ocean but because of the pain I have experienced in my ears on domestic flights.

Can you believe it, this past November my husband got me on an airplane? And it did not require knocking me out. Just painkillers, nasal spray, decongestant, chewing gum, hard candies, a small teddy bear to clutch, and a prescription for an anxiety pill, nothing drastic. The ear pain was still present, and the nervous shaking was only subdued by continuous prayer.

This was my first trip outside the United States, and I was pleasantly surprised by the warmth of the people of Ireland.

We took this journey to launch a book I co-edited with two gentlemen from Dublin, Terry Moylan, and Padraig Turley. I met them through the internet when double-checking a fact about my ancestor, John De Jean Frazer, for the novel I am writing about him and his son-in-law, Thomas Clarke Luby.

Terry and Padraig were starting a book to republish the poems of Frazer, my third great-grandfather. My novel includes some of those poems and I had wanted to honor him myself and bring him out of the cobwebs and into the light. I was happy to accept the invitation to join these gentlemen on an eye-opening adventure.

The execution of three young Tullamore men at Birr during the Civil War, 26 January 1923. By an eyewitness, Fr Colm Gaynor, a Birr curate (d. 1949). A contribution from Offaly History to the Decade of Centenaries

Fr Colm Gaynor was a Catholic curate in Birr in the years 1922–37. Originally from Tyone, Nenagh his valuable memoir was published in 2003 and included with that of Sean Gaynor and Eamonn Gaynor. The book was published by Geography Publications as Memoirs of a Tipperary family: the Gaynors of Tyone, 1887–2000. It is available from Offaly History Centre to buy or to read at Bury Quay, Tullamore.

The three young Tullamore men were William Conroy (20), Patrick Cunningham (22) and Colm Kelly (18) and they were executed by the Free State military in the grounds of Birr Castle on 26 January 1923. They were from poor families in the town and had no one of influence to speak for them. It is said that a fourth young man was allowed to go free.

Writing later to the Military Service Pensions Board about the execution of three men, Sean McGuinness, brigade O/C and on the Republican side said :

The three had been expelled from their IRA active service unit for some minor misdemeanours. McGuinness wrote that the men returned to Tullamore, where they “remained unemployed and I presume penniless and without a smoke”. He claimed they were executed by the Free State for a “few minor robberies”, though the court records show they were summarily executed for armed robbery. McGuinness suggested that “their crime was nothing compared with that of the great betrayal of the Republic by the authority responsible for the killing of these three youths”.

Such was the legacy of bitterness understandably arising from the Civil War.[1]

Clara and Ballycumber men among twenty that went over the wall at Mountjoy in 1919. By Pat McLoughlin

On the 29^th March 1919, 20 IRA Volunteers escaped from Mountjoy jail in broad day light.  This escape was planned by Michael Collins on the outside and Piaras Béaslaí on the inside.  A prison strike had been taking place in the jail in support of four prisoners who were not being afforded political status.  In the lead up to the escape this strike was halted because the escape plan had a better chance of success with a quieter atmosphere in the prison.

The plan was to get Piaras Béaslaí and JJ Murphy both MPs and Padraig Fleming a volunteer from the Swan, Co. Laois out, followed by the four prisoners not being afforded political status.  A list of men with long sentences was created and it was decided that men serving short sentences or who had sentences close to completion would not escape.  Padraig Fleming had conducted an extraordinary fight for treatment as a political prisoner in Maryborough (Portlaoise) jail, enduring hunger strike, torture and physical mistreatment for months.  In Mountjoy he was the Officer Commanding the political prisoners.

The escape was planned for 3 p.m. on Saturday March 29^th.  On the previous Monday the four prisoners being denied political status broke away from the warders in charge of them and led them on a big chase around the field before being recaptured.  As a result, they were kept in a metal cage for exercise and guarded by no less than eleven warders.  If these precautions were continued their chances of escape were slight, while the presence of so many warders also presented a serious obstacle to the escape plan.  On Fleming’s orders the four prisoners caused no more problems for the warders and the prison authorities were lulled into a false sense of security.

Sanders and Christie: two gentlemen of Birr in 1900: a disputed county surveyor’s will worth £30,000. By Michael Byrne

When Richard B. Sanders, the county surveyor (today a county engineer) for King’s County,  died in Cumberland Square, Birr in 1900 he left an estate of the value of £30,000. This would have been enough to build 300 council ‘cottages’ in those days when smaller houses such as those of in Cappaneale, Birr and Davitt Street, Tullamore could be built for £100 each. Sanders was an Antrim man and was born in 1845. He had involved another Birr resident, also from Antrim, the solicitor Archibald Christie, in the making of his will. Albeit in the worst possible way by asking him to be a witness but without having given him any instructions. Both were neighbours in Cumberland Square (as it then was, now Emmet Square). Both of them would have been under the watchful eye of John Wright, the editor of the King’s County Chronicle and resident of Cumberland House. Nearby was the Ormond Club of which we can assume both Christie and Sanders were members and perhaps also of the Birr Masons, then going strong.

Bro Pat Guidera S.J. recalls his time in Tullabeg, Rahan from 1948 to 1990 – no 1. Contributed by Offaly History

Brother Pat Guidera S.J. (born 1900, died 1992) was a familiar figure in Tullamore over a period of forty-two years from his transfer to Tullabeg College in 1948 up to its closure in 1990. Today the old college is falling to ruin. Many will recall its very good order up to the 1990s and thereafter it was used in part as a nursing home. Brother Guidera wrote a short ‘Story of my life’ in 1991 and this is an extract from that now very scarce memoir – of which there is a copy in Offaly Archives (courtesy of the Irish Jesuit Archives). The college was opened in 1818 and several volumes have been published on its history but few as intimate as that of Bro. Guidera. His memoir is interesting also for the marked distinctions in the religious orders between those fully ordained and those who were effectively providing support services in the college or convent. Brother Guidera was a carpenter cum painter and many will remember him carrying the usual large carton of cigarettes in the town for his colleagues in the college. His recollections of life in the Rahan area show the value of personal histories so why not give it a go.

Irish Sporting Lives. By Terry Clavin

Irish Sporting Lives (Royal Irish Academy, 2022) brings to life sixty figures who in their individual ways illustrate the drama and diversity of Irish sporting history.

This collection of biographical essays draws from the Dictionary of Irish Biography (DIB) and spans 200 years from the early nineteenth century. It is edited by DIB researchers Terry Clavin and Turlough O’Riordan, with an introductory essay by former Tullamore GAA clubman and Offaly Gaelic football coach, Ireland’s foremost sports historian, Professor Paul Rouse. 

The biographies in Irish Sporting Lives encompass serial winners and glorious losers, heroes and villains, role models and rogues, enduring legends and forgotten or overlooked greats. Trailblazing women feature prominently, and their stories highlight the adversity they had to overcome in pursuing their sporting dreams. Aside from household names such as George Best, Jack Kyle, Christy Ring, Lady Heath, Alex Higgins and Jack Charlton, the volume will also inform readers about less well-known but equally fascinating figures. These include Vere Goold, the only Wimbledon tennis finalist ever convicted of murder; Dave Gallaher, New Zealand’s most revered rugby captain; and Martin Sheridan, the winner of nine Olympic medals for the USA.

The Last Bend: A Personal History of Peter Henry’s Travelling Shop. By Vincent Henry

The stories in this book by Vincent Henry are based on real events and are as accurate, he states, as he could make them, with many factual accounts that document characters and happenings from the end of World War II to the beginning of the 1980s.

Prologue

Two months after the end of World War II, my parents, Peter Henry and Elizabeth O’Brien, who had recently married, made a far-reaching decision. Responding to an advertisement in the local Westmeath-Offaly Independent, they purchased a grocery shop with attached living premises, in Clara, County Offaly, right in the centre of Ireland. A Protestant lady called Miss Poff sold the house, shop and sizeable garden to my parents for the princely sum of £900. This was money my mother had received as an inheritance from her father.

My father, who was thirty-two years of age at the time, had spent his working life farming but wasn’t particularly fond of that occupation. He was the eldest male in his family, but his younger siblings were eager to take over the farm and he was more than happy to venture into a new career in the grocery business.

‘The Emergency,’ as World War II was known in Ireland, was still in operation at that time. Each family continued to use ration books for basic necessities such as tea, bread, butter and eggs. Showing his entrepreneurial spirit, my father circumvented the letter of the law by securing basic foodstuffs from the surrounding rural areas. He dealt directly with local farmers, and as a result was able to provide a lot of basics over and above ration allocation quotas.

Thus began our travelling shop – or ‘the van,’ as it was invariably called.

Have an ‘Offaly History’ Christmas with over a dozen new books this year

It has been a good year for new publications contributing to the history of County Offaly and helping us to get to know ourselves and our place better. When the annual report of the Tullamore Credit Union is dropped in the door you know Christmas is close. Seeing the cover and that the credit union is now sixty years old set us thinking of phases in our history. The year 1923 marked the end of the civil war. After a period of growth from 1891 to 1918 things got difficult. You could write off 1923–63 in terms of the economic engine. It was mostly switched off with exceptions in Tullamore Yarns, the Bacon Factory, Tullamore and the Williams and Egan businesses serving the midlands. The emerging Bord na Mona and ESB were providing jobs in west Offaly from the 1950s and east Offaly later, but it was the 1960s before a general ‘all boats’ lift up occurred. Equally you could say that since September 2001 (and the mobile phone) we have been living with anxiety which seems to grow every year especially since Brexit 2016 and now the war and climate change. Not to mention all the things we have to do online to comply with the requirements of banks and government. These books are all available from Offaly History, Bury Quay (and online http://www.offalyhistory) and our friends in Midland Books, Tullamore.

Who is the Birr poet John De Jean Frazer? By Terry Moylan

This question has popped up recently arising from the launch last week in Birr by Offaly History of a book containing the complete poems of John De Jean Frazer. The Tullamore launch is Thursday 24 Nov. at Offaly History Centre at 5 p.m. so the editors may get to meet you there. You are welcome to attend.

John De Jean Frazer was a poet and cabinet-maker, the son of a Presbyterian Church minister from Birr, then known as Parsonstown. He was also a quite accomplished artist.

While his exact date of birth is not known, it is pretty certain he was born in 1804 and died a young man in 1852.

He was believed to from Huguenot stock, this belief coming from the use of `De Jean` in his name. We are not sure of this, and certainly a recent DNA test by one of his descendants cast doubt on this, as it showed no French DNA but rather Scottish. Frazer is certainly a Scottish name and is quite common in Ulster. His being from a Presbyterian family tends to make me believe that a Scottish ancestry is more likely to be correct. The `De Jean` in his name could be explained by possible sympathy with the ideals of the French revolution.