'When Mrs Hart died, Jackie closed down the shop, gave his black Scotty dog (Judy) to my father to mind for him and was never seen again'

'When Mrs Hart died, Jackie closed down the shop, gave his black Scotty dog (Judy) to my father to mind for him and was never seen again'

Billy Gallagher describes the border town of Strabane and notes the impact of being on the border for commerce and trade in the town.

Billy Gallagher

Trinity College Dublin

1945

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Billy Gallagher

Childhood and Early Life

Life Story

Donegal, Lifford

1940's

Beside Strabane was the border into Lifford in Donegal. This was a boom town during the war and up to about 1950. My father had a particular relationship with Jackie Hart who ran a shop from the front of his house. My father was never short of cigarettes even during the war, he smoked 60 a day. The brand of cigarette was anything: Bendigo, Merino, Woodbine, Park Drive, Players, Sweet Afton, Craven A, Passing Clouds, Gold Flake. No cigarettes had filters but Craven A had an end that looked like a filter but was only decoration. It was the cigarette for delicate ladies and men with suede shoes.Jackie Hart who ran his shop with his big fat wife could neither read nor write. When he would compile your order, weighing out your £_ pound of bulls' eyes etc, he would retreat to the kitchen to get his wife to come and calculate the money and give the change. When Mrs Hart died Jackie closed down the shop, gave his black Scotty dog (Judy) to my father to mind for him and was never seen again.Lifford from being a boom town in the 1940s became a ghost town in the 1950s. The population was only a few hundred and the ambience and maintenance like all Donegal towns then, deplorable. It didn't evolve from this until the 1990s when the break with sterling and huge price differentials re-emerged between North and South.

Irish Research Council for Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (IRCHSS)

Dr Kathleen McTiernan (Trinity College Dublin)

Dr Deirdre O'Donnell (Trinity College Dublin)