The Curious Case of the Mayo Librarian (17 page)

12.
Stephen Brown,
A Guide to Books on Ireland
, p.x.

13.
Stephen Brown,
Ireland in Fiction
, p.xii.

14.
Mary E. Daly,
The Buffer State
, p.167.

15.
Catholic Bulletin
, vol. xxi, no. 4, April 1931, p.322.

16.
F.S.L. Lyons,
Culture and Anarchy in Ireland
, p.82.

Up to this time the procedures of the Local Appointments Commission had been treated as confidential. However, following the legal advice of the attorney general, John A. Costello, the government compelled the Commission to pass on detailed reports of the selection procedure in the Mayo librarian case, some of which President Cosgrave revealed in his Dáil statement of 11 December 1931. During the 1928 Dáil debate on the workings of the LAC, President Cosgrave and Minister Ernest Blythe had placed great emphasis on the necessity of a guarantee of strict confidentiality in order for the LAC to do its work properly. However, due to the pressure of circumstances, the government now reversed its stance.

In his statement Cosgrave took the Dáil through the various steps the LAC had taken with regard to easing the requirement for the Irish language. He also made it known that the selection board was made up of Catholics and that the other four successful candidates at the time were also Catholics. Further details of the workings of the LAC and its interview procedure were disclosed to the Catholic hierarchy at a later date. It was also divulged that, despite protestations to the contrary in her letter, Miss Ellen Burke had failed the Irish language test. In fact, the state papers reveal that the government gathered much more detailed information from the Local Appointments Commission, including not only the procedures used and the make-up of the selection board but also the exact marks received by the candidates at interview.
1

It is worthwhile to examine the recruitment procedure in more depth. On 12 February 1930, the advertisement was first issued to the press. As was customary at the time all the existing county librarian vacancies were listed together. They would be the subject of one set of interviews rather than a separate round of interviews for each vacancy. There were four vacant posts in Carlow, Kilkenny, Mayo and Cavan. On 4 May 1930 the initial interviews were held. James Montgomery, the film censor, chaired the board. The other members were W.J. Williams, lecturer, UCD, Christina Keogh, librarian, Irish Central Library for Students, Richard Hayes, senior assistant librarian, National Library and Thomas E. Gay, librarian, Capel Street Library. Nineteen candidates were called for interview and at the end of the proceedings just four were deemed to be ‘technically qualified and competent.'
2
The successful candidates were all female. Taken in descending order, Iona M. McLeod, Brigid Barron, Letitia Dunbar Harrison and Kathleen M. White all passed the interview.

However, the latter two were deemed not to have competent Irish. The first two had sufficient Irish and were offered their choice of which county librarian post they wished to take. This might seem unusual but this was the practice at the time. As an
Irish Independent
report put it, ‘The board placed the candidates in the order of merit, and the Local Appointments Commission then, according to the custom which obtains in connection with the filling of all vacancies where more than one exists, invited the candidates first on the list to take a choice, and so on, until there was only one post to be filled.'
3
Iona McLeod elected to go to Carlow and Brigid Barron to Kilkenny. As Miss Dunbar Harrison and Miss White had failed the Irish element of the selection process the Mayo and Cavan posts were left unfilled.

On 15 May 1930 the vacant posts for the two counties were re-advertised along with two more vacancies in the newly established library services of Meath and Leitrim. These counties had recently adopted the Public Libraries Act and were looking for their first librarian. Presumably, the reason for this flurry of activity was that the Carnegie Trust had set the end of 1930 as the deadline to avail of their grant scheme for rural library schemes. It was decided that those who had applied for the original vacancies did not have to re-apply and also that the same interview board would be used. The interviews were organised for 12 July 1930. However, at short notice Mr Montgomery was not available due to business commitments so the interviews went ahead without him, with Mr Williams as chair of the four-person interview board. It was also decided neither to re-interview any of the candidates from the first round of interviews nor to charge them the application fee, not unless their circumstances had changed in the meantime. In the case of one candidate, Feargus MacMurchadha, who had attained a library qualification since the first round of interviews, it was decided that he would be re-interviewed.

In all, nine candidates were called to interview on the second occasion, on 12 July 1930. By this time Waterford had adopted the Public Libraries Act so there was a post available there also. The selection board produced five successful candidates and listed them in the following order (the marks are out of a possible total of 700).

Mary McNevin – 530

Gerald Guise-Brown – 365

Feargus MacMurchadha – 360

Letitia Dunbar Harrison – 320

Kathleen White – 280
4

As on the previous occasion, the successful candidates were given their choice of the vacancies in order of merit. Mary McNevin opted for Meath, Gerald Guise-Brown for Cavan and Feargus MacMurchadha went for Waterford. After the first three had exercised their choice Letitia Dunbar Harrison chose Mayo and by process of elimination Kathleen White was left with Leitrim.
5
To modern eyes it might seem a somewhat unusual way of filling vacancies but it was the method commonly used by the Local Appointments Commission at the time whenever there were a
number of vacancies available. The leader of the Labour Party, Mayo TD T.J. O'Connell, was particularly critical of this procedure. It was also pointed out that if the successful candidates who were deemed to have good Irish were allocated to Gaeltacht counties the original controversy would have been averted.

While Irish was a requirement for many civil service and local authority jobs, in reality there was a shortage of people with sufficient knowledge of the language. Libraries were no exception. An
Irish Independent
journalist was told by a well-placed government source that ‘persons with a real training in library work and who know Irish are very few.'
6
It was for this reason that the LAC relaxed the requirement between the first and second set of interviews, an action that later fuelled many conspiracy theories.

President Cosgrave indicated in his Dáil statement of 11 December 1930 that the selection board had been made up of people of the Catholic faith. It could in fact be said of James Montgomery, the chairman of the board that interviewed Letitia Dunbar Harrison, that he was a devout and conservative Catholic. Formerly an employee of the Dublin Gas Company, James Montgomery served as official film censor from 1923 to 1940.
7
He was in many ways a deeply committed Christian. Describing his attitude to his role as censor he was not reticent about his religious motivation.

‘I take the Ten Commandments as my code,' he declared.
8

James Montgomery had also gone on the record to assert that he feared, not the Anglicisation of Ireland, but rather the Los Anglicisation of Ireland. In his first year as censor it was said that he had watched over ten thousand miles of film. This may have been an exaggeration, though there was no doubt that he was an avid fan of the cinema. His friends ‘chaffed him' that he still spent a great deal of his spare time going to ‘the pictures' as an ordinary spectator.
9

The general opinion of Mr Montgomery was that he was a conservative Catholic and that his role as censor frustrated him in that he did not have the legal powers to impose a more rigid film-censorship policy. The ultra-traditionalist
Catholic Mind
had even awarded Mr Montgomery its seal of approval for his work. The journal said of him that ‘he has, within his powers, done everything possible to clean the cinemas. He is one of the most courageous Catholic actionists in Ireland.'
10

A graduate of Queen's College Galway, W.J. Williams obtained both a higher diploma and a masters in education from UCD. From 1914 to 1924 he was a tutor and supervisor at All Hallows College and was also on the lecturing staff of the College of Science. Following the amalgamation of the College of Science with UCD he became a lecturer in education. During the 1930s Mr Williams was the clerk of convocation with the National University of Ireland. In 1943 he was appointed as chair of education in UCD. In a curious coincidence a controversy arose over his knowledge of the Irish language. The Gaelic League protested at his lack of fluency. ‘The College made clear, however, despite the Gaelic League's vigorous objection, that even in so crucial an appointment as the most influential chair of education in the country, academic criteria counted for more than strictly national requirements. After a brief but very ill-tempered controversy Professor Williams was confirmed in his appointment.'
11

Professor Williams' role as chair of education was approved by the senate of NUI by twenty-three votes to seven. This was in spite of the National University Convocation urging his rejection by one hundred and one votes to ninety-four.
12
The other members of the selection board all had distinguished careers in the area of librarianship.

In 1930 Richard Hayes was an assistant librarian with the National Library. By the end of the decade he had become its director. During the Second World War he was recruited by the Irish army's head of intelligence, Colonel Bryan, to act as an interrogator and code breaker. Hayes was a War of Independence veteran who was both a self-taught codes and ciphers expert and a distinguished linguist.

According to one historian of the period, his code-breaking ‘achievements during the Emergency have frequently been distorted, yet the documentary evidence indicates that in real terms they have not been exaggerated.'
13
In fact the British came to realize that Richard Hayes was so exceptionally able as a cryptographer that he had, in fact broken their code messages from London. Of Hayes' code-breaking skills it was said by Cecil Liddell, the British head of MI5's Irish section that ‘his gifts in this direction amounted almost to genius.' As Hayes himself asserted, in the ‘unseen war of brains between the cipher makers and cipher breakers … the cipher breakers won.'
14

Hayes worked in the National Library in the mornings, then got on his bicycle and rode up to Collins Barracks where he collected the night's harvest of messages and decoded them. He was assisted by three army lieutenants who had no special knowledge of cryptography. Hayes was also involved in the interrogation of any German spies captured during the course of the Emergency.

Despite Ireland's so-called neutrality, there was a great deal of co-operation with their British counterparts. As Liddell put it ‘there was no doubt that this co-ordination was largely due to Colonel Bryan's enthusiasm as an intelligence officer and to Dr Hayes' cryptographic zeal. It is very doubtful if his military superiors agreed to the passing of the ciphers to the British and certainly his political superiors would not have done so.'

Tom Gay, the Capel Street librarian, had been a member of the Irish Republican Army and was reportedly a key figure in Michael
Collins' extensive intelligence network during the War of Independence. Four Dublin Castle officials had been recruited by Michael Collins: Ned Broy, James MacNamara, Joe Kavanagh and David Neligan. ‘During their weekly debriefings, these agents passed valuable information at a Dublin safehouse owned by Tom Gay, an inconspicuous librarian.'
15
As David Neligan himself put it in his autobiography, ‘Broy, McNamara and myself used to meet Collins once a week in the house of Tommy Gay, 8 Haddon Road, Clontarf … The three of us G-men travelled separately on trams to Gay's house. Collins generally cycled on an ancient machine.'
16
Not only was Tom Gay's house used as a meeting point but so was his place of employment, Capel Street Library, which was conveniently close, just across the river from Dublin Castle.
17

David Neligan described Tom Gay as ‘a tiny Dublin man, with bronchial trouble which made his life a burden … he led a double life, a bookworm openly and also, secretly, a confidential courier for Collins. He was so unobtrusive that neither the library nor his home came under suspicion. I often left urgent messages in the library and one could be sure of their prompt and safe delivery. As I pushed my way through a lot of down-and-outs who frequented the reading-room it used to strike me that the place would be the last to be suspected by the British and I was right.'
18

This inconspicuous librarian was also a committed trade unionist. He was a member of the Irish Local Government Officers' Trade Union (which later became the Irish Local Government Officials' Union). Tom Gay served on the union's national executive, as well as acting as chairman of its Dublin corporation branch. So prominent was he in the ILGOTU that he was elected as its honorary president on 12 June 1927 at City Hall, Cork.
19

Tom Gay was considered ‘a polished and fluent speaker … [who] was frequently sought to support often forlorn causes and rarely failed to turn up and give his earnest and sincere support. He possessed an extraordinary energy and unselfishly devoted prolonged periods to intensive efforts.'
20

Mr Gay left the library service during the Emergency to act as Director of Air Raid Precautions (ARP) for Dublin. He subsequently worked as private secretary for the Dublin city manager. Mr Gay seems to have been a bundle of energy. He was also involved with the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association and was one of the founders of the Camogie League. He must have been a busy man at the turn of the decade because he was also heavily concerned with the newly formed professional body representing librarianship in Ireland, the Library Association of Ireland. He became chairman of the executive board of the LAI and was joint-editor of
An Leabharlann
, the organisation's magazine.