News making the headlines in Christmas 1933

Well, for a start the weather was good, except Christmas Day itself, when rain fell during the morning.

Fermoy’s soccer team was in fine form, defeating Tramore Rookies 4-1 in a Christmas Eve fixture in the Munster Senior League. The team was: J Donovan, J Mulcahy, W Mulcahy, J Seymour, W Clarke, C Grumbridge, T O’Brien, W Higgins, J Field, M O’Toole, F Murphy. Scorers: O’Toole, Higgins, O’Brien and Field.

The ‘Gorgeous Gael’ Jack Doyle, aged 20 and weighing 16 stone spent Christmas in Cork and paid a surprise to 10 East Beach, Cobh. Jack was then part way through a ban on boxing. Reports of a monster sighted in Lough Enagh near Derry, said to be 25 feet long with a gigantic fin and rudder-like tail.

Cork radio listeners were able to hear for the very first time the bells in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. On the last day of 1933, the Kilworth Harriers met at Molly Barry’s forge at 11am, while coursing meetings were being staged at Castlelyons, Glanworth and Rathcormac. While near Glanworth, a farmer was killed by a bull.

Gardai made a general call for people to end careless parking of vehicles (they still have taken little notice 90 years later!).

EGGS

This was the time of Munster Institute’s egg laying competitions, and Mrs J McCarthy of Grange near Kilmallock, was the proud owner of a Rhode Island Red that laid 200 good eggs and 10 second class ones in the period November 7 - December 4. Also, reports sweeping the country that farmers were living on bank overdrafts.

This was the first Christmas of Shanballymore's new church, blessed on December 3 by coadjutor Bishop of Cloyne, the Reverend Dr Roche. On December 2 Eamon de Valera turned the first sod of the Mallow beet factory. Fermoy's Christmas Shopping Scheme, organised by the Fermoy Development Association, entered its sixth year.

For entertainment one went to the Cork Opera House to see Dick Forbes in the pantomime 'Babes in the Wood' while at the cinemas, one had a choice of ‘A Southern Match' at the Palace starring Bebe Daniels, or Gordon Harker in 'This is the Life' at the Savoy, with prices ranging from 1 / -(5p) to 1 /6d (8p). Cork's newspaper boys were entertained to a party given by the Gardai.

Politics were a serious business then, with General Eoin O'Duffy being served with an order to appear before a military tribunal on a series of charges, including incitement to murder the president. There were clashes down in West Cork as Blue Shirts gathered to welcome home John O’Sullivan of Castlefreke, following his successful appeal against illegal arrest.

ABROAD

After a 57-day triaI in Leipzig the trial of a Dutchman, a German and three Bulgarians came to an end. They had been charged with setting fire to the Reichstag in February. Only the Dutchman, Van der Lubbe, was sentenced to death, the remainder being acquitted. While in France, over two hundred people were killed in a train disaster.

And on December 5, prohibition came to an end in the USA.