When trams ran the capital
QUESTION Who took the decision to scrap Dublin’s original tram system? THE first trams to appear on Dublin’s streets were drawn by horses and operated from 1836. Initially, three firms ran the service until they amalgamated into the Dublin United Tramways Company.
The last horse tram ran in January 1901, by which time the entire city system was electrified, with around 96km of tracks serving 280 trams.
These included a special director’s tram used at times by the company’s chairman, William Martin Murphy, and other top personnel to check that the system was working satisfactorily.
The double-decker electric trams, which ran from the city centre to south-city districts such as Sandymount, Blackrock, Dún Laoghaire, Dalkey and Terenure, were considered expensive and, in the early days, were mainly used by white-collar workers.
The DUTC introduced the first motorised bus services in 1925 and gradually took over the traditional tram routes. Following the Transport Act of 1944, control of the DUTC was vested in the newly formed Córas Iompair Éireann (CIE), which then had 113 trams still operating.
It became increasingly clear the tramway system, with many of the trams and tracks in a poor state of repair, was heading for extinction. Buses were able to move quicker and at less cost, while able to reach parts of the city where tram tracks didn’t exist.
The last CIE trams ran from Westmoreland Street to the Blackrock depot on the night of July 9, 1949, when vandals posing as souvenir hunters ripped them apart in an orgy of violence. An eventful era in the history of Dublin transport had reached a dramatic finale, although a Great Northern Railway tram service from Sutton Cross to Howth Head lasted for another ten years, by which time the city centre was under the exclusive domain of the buses.
Patrick Myler, Booterstown, Co. Dublin. BY the early years of the 20th century, Dublin trams had a worldwide reputation for technological innovation. William Martin Murphy, an entrepreneur from west Cork, was the man responsible for introducing electrification to the Dublin tram system.
He had founded a company in 1891 that started out as the Dubsold lin United Tramways company; it took over all the local tram companies in Dublin and created a private firm that ran the entire city tram network.
Murphy was also the man who created Independent Newspapers and brought modern technology into newspaper production.
He was also notorious for being the leader of the employers’ side in the 1913 Dublin lock-out.
Alan Murray, Galway.
QUESTION Inhabitants of Leicester are called Rat-eyes, from the Roman name for the city, Ratae. What other inventive nicknames are there for Britain’s towns and cities?
SCOTLAND has some good nicknames for its towns. Inhabitants of Arbroath are called Red Lichties, after the red light that used
to guide fishing boats back from the North Sea to the harbour.
Those from Fraserburgh are Brochs. Its origin is the Old English burh, meaning burgh or town. W. Gregor’s Folk-Lore of NorthEast Scotland (1881) claims: ‘Aberdeen will be a green,/An Banff a borough’s toon,/But Fraserbroch ’ill be a broch/When a’ the brochs is deen.’
A Keelie is a young tough from any large town, but the most common is a Glasgow Keelie. It is derived from the Gaelic gille meaning ‘a lad’. A Gallach is a person from Caithness; it comes from the Gaelic gallaibh meaning ‘among the strangers’.
An inhabitant of Dumfries is a Doonhamer. The term comes from 19th-century railway workers from Dumfries who worked in Glasgow and referred to their town as doon hame (down home).
Alan Jacobsen, Hawick, Borders. EVERYONE knows Scousers come from Liverpool, but it is less well known that the term comes from the Norwegian word lobskaus, a stew that was made and at the docks at Liverpool.
Liverpudlians were once also known as Woollybacks. This term was derived from dockers hauling woollen bales onto ships, which would leave a thin layer of wool on their backs. Inhabitants of Blackpool are Donkey Lashers from the Victorian practice of riding donkeys on the beach.
A Janner is a name given to anyone who speaks with a Devon accent, but was originally used as naval slang to mean a person from Plymouth. It came about because of the way West Country folk pronounce the name John – ‘Jan’.
Hartlepool folk are Monkey Hangers, from the story that citizens hanged a monkey thinking it was a Frenchman.
J. B. Miles, Southampton.
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