The Gallaghers of Ballinrobe

TUBERCULOSIS IN IRELAND
An estimated 7,000 Irish people died from
the dreaded “consumption” in 1921, Uncle Michael
among them.
Suggestions about treatment for tuberculosis
were plentiful at the time, but none were proven
effective. Many lacked any scientific backing and
others were useless – or worse. Some doctors insisted
it was absolutely necessary that bad teeth be attended
to. Others focused on cleanliness. One ad from the
early 1900s touted the popular product Chlorodyne as
the best-known remedy for a number of ailments,
including consumption. Its principal ingredients were
a mixture of laudanum (an alcoholic solution of
opium), tincture of cannabis and chloroform. It lived
up to its claim of relieving pain, if not as a TB cure.
It was not until the 1950s that an antibiotic
treatment became available that would eventually
ease the scourge of the bacterial infection of the
lungs. The disease was passed on when someone
breathed in droplets containing the bacteria sent
airborne when an infected person coughed, sneezed,
sang or spoke loudly.
The Tuberculosis Prevention Act of 1908
had given power to county councils to provide clinics
for the treatment of the disease, but County Mayo
was still without a tuberculosis officer in 1923. That
August, the County Council’s Finance Committee
approved advertising to hire such an officer. By
October 1924, Dr. James G. Thornton had filled the
post and was visiting towns on a regular basis to
An ad from 1903 calls Chlorodyne the most
wonderful and valuable remedy ever discovered.
provide examinations. He held clinics in Ballinrobe
for two hours on the first Friday of the month,
according to a notice in the Connaught Telegraph.
A sanatorium opened in Ballinrobe in 1924,
after the Creagh Estate was handed over to the
County Mayo Board of Health. Until 1954, 40 or 50
patients at a time were treated at Creagh, then known
as St. Theresa’s Sanatorium. At their outset, many
sanatoriums in Ireland were dismal places, giving rise
to the description “coughin’ in, coffin out.” Mortality
remained high through the 1930s, but sanatoriums
eventually became more like hospitals that could
provide relative relief to the suffering. The constant
battle to defeat the disease eventually proved a
success, and by the 1970s, consumption had all but
vanished from Ireland.
In his few short years, Michael had lived up to
many of the expectations his family held for their first child
back in 1897. He was the godfather when his brother Jim
was born in 1911. When Michael’s Grandfather Peter
Gallagher died in 1912, it was up to Michael, then 15, and
his father to work the farm. Even if still a boy at heart, he
would now be engaged in a man’s work. Uncle Michael
would have been the first to help his father in the fields, the
first to help his father build or repair stone walls, and the
first to help cut turf in the bog. He would have been a great
aid and comfort.
Aunt Delia was the only one really close in age to
Michael. But there was three years difference between
them, and Delia would spend time as a child living with her
maternal grandfather. She did remember her brother as fair
and attractive, describing him as “comely.” Standing 6 feet
tall, Michael was looked up to – both literally and
figuratively – by his younger siblings. Everyone wanted to
be like Mike. Michael’s closest friends likely included his
cousins next door, Peter and Owen Gallagher. Michael and
Owen were the same age; Peter was seven years older.
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