Billy Gallagher

Since business was so static and challenges so few I got involved socially in a boys’ club run by Past Castleknock Men in Benburb Street.  This was in the model of Belvedere Newsboys and several others and was a place where the boys from Benburb St and Oliver Bond flats could go on selected evenings.  This was financed by the Castleknock Pastmen and ran successfully if rudderlessly for many years.

We had no idea of the philosophy of a boys’ club or indeed its purpose, merely a place where boys (aged 12 – 17) came in the evening basically to beat the shit out of each other.  The only equipment there was a large type of mattress on the floor, about 12 ft square.  They fought on that.  There was a boot repair section where they were taught to do the job and perhaps some of the basic woodwork.  The one functioning item was a boxing team and this competed well and successfully against the other boys’ clubs in Dublin.  There were no girls ever in any of these places, it was as if they didn’t yet exist.

Every summer we held a summer camp for a week.  We got the loan of a Bord na Mona camp in Rathangan in Co Kildare.  All of us would head to Rathangan for a week and live in billets.  These were there to house the Bord na Mona staff when that company was establishing itself and harvesting peat to burn in the turbines around Kildare and Offaly.  The premises were primitive and manned by a manager and his young family.  We employed an army cook for the week.  We travelled to and from Rathangan in our cars, packed 6-8 in each and got there at breakneck speed.

I spent about 10 years in youth work like this and it was there I developed rather than in the Foyle Shirt & Collar Company.