How Mary shot to fame
QUESTION Is it true that an Irishwoman was one of New York’s first female detectives, known as ‘Dead Shot Mary’? ONE day, in March, 1941, one of New York’s (very few female) Finest, Detective Mary Shanley, was in a bar and grill in Jackson Heights in Queens – she was off duty, drunk and in high spirits when she took out her revolver and pumped a bullet in the air.
Not one of the much-loved pickpocket detective’s finest hours and ‘Dead Shot Mary’ was busted back down to policewoman. But such was the high regard for her that she was soon back in civvies.
The press were amazed that a 5ft 8in, 11st 6lb woman had the strength to subdue grown men, sometimes two at a time – and once took a man out using only her handbag.
Mary Shanley’s father was from New York and mother was from Leitrim, she acquired her nickname for her accuracy with a revolver, but her greatest skill was her innate ability to spot a thief in a crowded store.
Born 1896, Mary was brought up in the notoriously poor Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood of New York. As a young woman, she had little money but plenty of savvy.
With her red hair, she was distinctively Irish looking and always dressed elegantly to mingle with the crowds in Macy’s and in midtown Manhattan, as part of the New York police department’s pickpocket squad. She carried her .32 calibre revolver in an elegant white purse and became the first policewoman in New York to make an arrest using a gun.
After joining in 1931, at the advanced age of 35, Mary turned out to be a brilliant policewoman and a crack shot, despite working in an extremely sexist policing environment in which her brash and outspoken confidence upset some of her more sensitive male colleagues. Mary became the fourth female first grade detective in the department, attaining that grade after eight years’ police work, and making a total of more than 1,000 arrests.
Among them were a dozen of America’s slickest female pickpockets, all based in New York.
She was often to be seen chasing a thief down Fifth Avenue and said she liked her job so much that she would die if she had work in an office. Though she never married or had children she occasionally posed as an innocent mother, bringing along her young niece as cover, and she always had a sixth sense about crooks, being able to instinctively tell who to tail in a crowd. If she spotted a woman she thought was up to no good, she could trail her for a whole day without seeing the other woman try anything funny. She would even follow her home, check her files and keep after her until she could catch her at work.
Mary stayed with New York’s Finest for 26 years, retiring in 1957 to live in a log cabin in Florida, but she later returned to live in the Big Apple, and lived a long life, dying in 1989 at the age of 93. She’s buried at Long Island.
Over the years, her extraordinary life and career have been depicted in films and in the theatre. In 2006, an award-winning documentary film, Sleuthing Mary Shanley, was made about her and in 2016, she was portrayed by Rachel McPhee in a one-woman theatre show in New York. While Mary Shanley was one of the first female detectives in New York city, the first female police officer in America was also Irish. Maggie Connolly Owens was born in 1853 to Irish famine immigrants to America and in 1891, she joined the Chicago police department, starting as a detective sergeant. She went on to serve in the Chicago force for the next 32 years. Tom Foley, Drogheda. Co. Louth.
QUESTION How are fatbergs disposed of?
A FATBERG is a congealed mass of fat, wet wipes, tampons and nappies that can block sewerage systems. They can be huge.
In September, a fatberg weighing 130 tonnes and stretching 800ft – the length of two football pitches – was found blocking a sewerage pipe in Whitechapel, East London. Nicknamed Fatty McFatberg, its smell was described as ‘like rotting meat mixed with the odour of a smelly toilet’.
Eight water workers wearing special protective suits took a month to break it down using spades, chemicals and high-pressure hoses. They each carried a monitor to check for harmful levels of combustible gases. Fatbergs can be put to good use. Scottish Green Fuel Manufacturer Argent Energy turns them into biodiesel at i ts processing plants. The Whitechapel fatberg was used to make 10,000 litres of biodiesel.
A chunk of it also went on display at the London Museum. Gerald Barnes, Liverpool.
QUESTION Can sponges be grown commercially?
SPONGES have been grown commercially, though farming is in its infancy and relies on clean seas.
So- called commercial sponges have a soft and elastic skeleton made of spongine that is able to absorb water, making them perfect for the bath. Phoenicians and Egyptians harvested sponges in the Mediterranean, but it was the Ancient Greeks who r eally exploited this natural resource.
Traditional Greek skin- divers, most famously from the island of Kalymnos, have for centuries dived more than 120ft using a stone ballast and a basket to harvest sponges.
Each Roman l egionaire was given a sponge f or personal hygiene. Sponges soaked in sugary water were given to babies as comforters. Soaked in lemon or vinegar, sponges were also used as an unreliable form of contraceptive. Commercial sponge exploitation was exclusive to the Mediterranean until the 17th century, when it spread to the Caribbean and Florida. From the late 19th century, traditional methods were abandoned in the Mediterranean, leading to over-exploitation of the natural sponge.
Fishermen would rip the sponge from the rocks rather than remove them in a sustainable manner by taking cuttings. In 1985, sponge disease from Tunisia was first reported in the Mediterranean and within f our years had destroyed all sponges along the Greek coast and islands.
This led to attempts to create artificial fisheries at Marseilles in France and Porto Cesareo in Italy with fragments of different species of commercial sponges moored onto PVC vertical structures anchored to the sea bed. At Kalymnos, they were attached to anchored metal plates, but failed due to pollution from the floating cages of a nearby fish farm.
The only successful farms have been established in the clean waters of the Pacific. On Pohnpei island in the Federated States of Micronesia, 12,000 sponges have been produced. Dr Ken Bristow, Glasgow.
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