Tag: Dublin

Doing My Bit for Ireland

Source: Margaret Skinnider, Doing My Bit for Ireland (New York, The Century Co., 1917), pp. 202-204

Text: At a moving-picture performance of “The Great Betrayal,” I was surprised at the spirit of daring in the audience. The story was about one of those abortive nationalist revolts in Italy which preceded the revolution that made Italy free. The plot was parallel in so many respects to the Easter Week rising in Ireland that crowds flocked every day to see it. In the final picture, when the heroic leaders were shot in cold blood, men in the audience called out bitterly:

‘That’s right, Colthurst! Keep it up!”

Colthurst was the man who shot Sheehy Skeffington without trial on the second day of the rising. He had been promoted for his deeds of wanton cruelty, and only the fact that a royal commission was demanded by Skeffington’s widow and her friends, made it necessary to adjudge him insane as excuse for his behavior, when that behavior was finally brought to light.

It was on the occasion of my visit to the moving-pictures that I was annoyed by the knowledge that a detective was following me. His only disguise was to don Irish tweeds such as “Irish Irelanders” wear to stimulate home industry. He had been following me about Dublin ever since my arrival for my August visit. To this day I don’t know why he did not arrest me, nor what he was waiting for me to do. But I decided now to give him the slip. In Glasgow I have had much practice jumping on cars going at full speed. The Dublin cars are much slower, so as a car passed me in the middle of the block, I suddenly leaped aboard, leaving my British friend standing agape with astonishment on the sidewalk. Doubtless he felt the time had come for me to carry out whatever plot I had up my sleeve, and that he had been defeated in his purpose of looking on. I never saw him again.

Comments: Margaret Skinnider (1892-1971) was a Scottish revolutionary who fought as a sniper for the Irish republicans during the Easter Rising, being the only woman wounded during the action. The Great Betrayal was the British release title for the Italian four-reel feature film Romanticismo (Italy 1915), a drama of Italian partisans fighting the Austrians in the 19th century, directed by Carlo Campogalliani and starring Tullio Carminati and Helena Makowska. Skinnider dates her cinema visit to August 1916. She left Dublin for the United States, to avoid internment, publishing her autobiography there.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

It’s a Long Way from Penny Apples

Source: Bill Cullen, It’s a Long Way from Penny Apples (Cork: Mercier Press, 2001), pp. 155-156

Text: The Rotunda Cinema had a fourpenny entrance fee for the kids. Sixpence for adults. All sitting on wooden benches. And a shilling for a plush individual cushioned swivelled seat in the back. With five plusher rows up in the balcony for two shillings each. Lovers’ Row, the balcony was called. Privacy guaranteed.

When you paid your money at the ticket box you got a two-inch square of light metal with a half-inch circular hole in the centre. The metals were stamped with the price. Four pingin, six pingin, scilling, florin. You went to the usher, who took the metal token and slid it on to a long iron poker which was notched in tens. Held a hundred tokens, the poker did, so the ushers knew how many people were in the picture house. Simple, yes. Foolproof, no.

Wide open to fiddles it was. Sure, a little chiseller’s hand could reach through the glass slit when the cashier’s attention was distracted and grab a handful. The chiseller got into the pictures plus his Da and the pals. And it went further than that. The lads in Smith and Pearson Iron Foundry made the tokens. Some for the Rotunda Cinema order. And some for themselves. But they killed the golden goose.

The usher, Patsy MeCormack, was demented. ‘The bleedin’ picture house is jammed to the rafters. Standing at the back an’ all, they are. We had nine hundred people and Maureen only sold six hundred and twenty tokens.’

The boss arrived. Mister Johnston. Big meeting in the manager’s office. New system brought in. Patsy McCormack was plonked right beside the cashier’s ticket box. When a punter bought tokens, Maureen shouted the order.

‘Two fourpenny and two sixpenny,’ she’d shout, and wait until Patsy echoed the order, as he took the tokens, before serving the next customer.

‘Two two shillings,’ she’d shout. ‘Two of the best in Lovers’ Row,’ Patsy would shout back, pointing the red-faced couple to the staircase. And so the fiddle was silenced. For a while.

Comments: William ‘Bill’ Cullen (1942- ) is an Irish businessman whose memoir of his impoverished Dublin childhood It’s a Long Way from Penny Apples was a best seller. The Rotunda Round Room in Parnell Street, originally built as part of a hospital, had shown films since the 1890s. In 1954 it was renamed the Ambassador Cinema and continued in business until 1999. Triangular or square metal tokens were employed in some cinemas for a while. The writer goes on to describe other cinema fiddles and how they were countered by pre-printed numbered tickets.

Ulysses

Source: James Joyce, Ulysses (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972 – orig 1922), p. 366

Text: That gouger M’Coy stopping me to say nothing. And his wife engagement in the country valise, voice like a pickaxe. Thankful for small mercies. Cheap too. Yours for the asking. Because they want it themselves. Their natural craving. Shoals of them every evening poured out of offices. Reserve better. Don’t want it they throw it at you. Catch em alive, O. Pity they can’t see themselves. A dream of wellfilled hose. Where was that? Ah, yes. Mutoscope pictures in Capel street: for men only. Peeping Tom. Willy’s hat and what the girls did with it. Do they snapshot those girls or is it all a fake?

Comments: James Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish novelist and briefly (December 1909-January 1910) a cinema manager. In this passage from the ‘Nausicaa’ episode of Ulysses, the lead character Leopold Bloom’s erotic thoughts about Gerty MacDowell include a reference to having seen the Mutoscope peepshow in Capel Street, Dublin. The Mutoscope was a flip-card viewer introduced in 1896 (Ulysses is set in 1904), popularly known as ‘What the Butler Saw’ and notorious for some of the risqué scenes that it showed. The scenes were produced on 70mm and could be shown as projected film or through the flip-card viewer. Peeping Tom (1897) and What the Girls Did with Willie’s Hat aka Kicking Willie’s Hat (1897) were both actual Mutoscope titles, produced by the American Mutoscope Company.