E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten
MacThomáis Me Jewel and Darlin' Dublin
4. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-78849-551-6
Verlag: The O'Brien Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
50th Anniversary Edition
E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-78849-551-6
Verlag: The O'Brien Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Éamonn MacThomáis (13 January 1927-16 August 2002) was an author, broadcaster, historian, Irish Republican , advocate of the Irish language and lecturer. He presented his own series on Dublin on RTÉ during the 1970s and was well known for guided tours of and lectures on his beloved Dublin. He is buried in Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery.
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THE PAWNSHOPS OF DUBLIN
THE EARLY MONDAY MORNING TRAM was crowded. It was the same every Monday morning, not a seat or space to spare. Packed like a tin of sardines, the luggage bay was full of clothes, suits, blankets, shoes and a set of aluminium saucepans. Downstairs one woman sat beside St Joseph; another woman had the Child of Prague on her lap. Two eight-day clocks, each with a different time, took up two other seats. Upstairs, as usual, the Sacred Heart was in the front seat with a glass shade around him. He stood three feet tall, beside a big fat woman who had one arm on the seat and the other around the Sacred Heart.
When the tram stopped at The Fountain in James’s Street, nearly everyone got off. First came the saucepans and the clothes, then St Joseph. Someone stood back to let the woman with the ‘Child’ descend. The last to leave was the Sacred Heart, followed by the two clocks. The procession crossed the street. At the sign of the three brass balls and the name Patrick Gorman, 31 James’s Street, Pawnbroker, the procession ended as it moved up the lane to the counter door. The inside of the shop was a hive of activity. ‘Ask for six and take four’; ‘Wan gent’s suit, navy blue, eight shillings’; ‘Set of saucepans, three shillings’; ‘The coat pocket is torn, Ma’am’; ‘St Joseph again, four shillings’; ‘The Child again, two-and-six’. ‘Here’s yer ticket … yer ticket … are ye deaf?’ ‘Give us six, Tom, on the coat, it’s a Crombie’; ‘I’ll give ya four, the pocket is torn’; ‘Ah go on, Tom, six shillings’; ‘Four is all it’s worth’; ‘Well, give us five’; ‘Four-and-six is as far as I go’; ‘You’re terrible mean, Tom. Make it five shillings’; ‘Seven and sixpence the Sacred Heart in a glass shade’; ‘Four-and-six for the coat. Here’s your ticket’; ‘Only four-and-six for a Crombie, I’ll be kilt when I go home.’
The sign of the three brass balls is almost a thing of the past. In 1838 there were 700 pawnshops in Ireland and fifty-seven in Dublin. One hundred years later there were still forty or more in Dublin. There were three pawnshops in Summerhill, two in Gardiner Street, and one each of the following northside streets: Amiens Street, Talbot Street, Parnell Street, Granby Row, Capel Street, Ellis Quay, Queen Street, Dominick Street, Dorset Street and two in Marlborough Street.
On the south side of the Liffey, there were two in Cuffe Street and Charlemont Mall and one each in St James’s Street, Bishop Street, Richmond Street, Bride Street, Clanbrassil Street, Francis Street, the Coombe, Ardee Street and Winetavern Street. Others were located in Fleet Street, Erne Street, Lombard Street, Baggot Street, Mount Street, Ringsend, at 19½ Main Street, Blackrock, and two in Lower George’s Street, Dun Laoghaire. All were under private names with the exception of the one in 7 Buckingham Street, which was registered as ‘The Great Northern Pawn Office’.
The first things people pawned were their own clothes – coats, dresses, suits, hats, etc. As they got poorer, they pawned the clothes off the bed. As they got poorer still, they pawned religious pictures, statues, clocks, pots, pans, patriotic pictures. And when they were the poorest of the poor they pawned the chair they sat on. The pawnbroker did not make money on the objects pawned, even if the objects were never redeemed. He made his money on the number of pledges (items pawned). The pawnbroker had a fixed levy on each pawn ticket and because of the thousands of tickets issued the profits rolled in. The pawn office was open from early morning until 10.30 p.m. Monday to Saturday. The pawnbroker’s tickets stated: ‘Fine Airy Wardrobes for your Clothes.’ The fine airy wardrobes were dozens of six-inch nails stuck into a wooden wall.
John Brereton’s of Capel Street, with the familiar sign.
Some people didn’t give a damn being seen going to the pawn. Others tried to slip in and out unnoticed. From Trinity College students came with camel-hair coats, college books, Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, Gulliver’s Travels, gold watches and straw hats. Others came with saucepans with no lids, broken shoes, torn coats, religious statues, ponies and carts, bicycles, suites of furniture and gold wedding rings. The pawn was the place to go, make your pledge, get your ticket, redeem the article the next Saturday and pledge it back in the following Monday. Year in, year out, the pawn was a way of life. It put bread on many a poor man’s table and saved many a college student from being evicted out of his Rathmines flat.
Some auction advertisements from Dublin pawnbrokers.
The Pawnbrokers’ Assistants were a very respectable class of gentlemen. At one time they had to live in and were not allowed to get married until they served their seven years’ apprenticeship. Many got married before the allowed time and had to go to bed with their wives during their dinner hour. I knew one assistant who changed his clothes every day. He had to: his mother wouldn’t let him in otherwise. ‘Take off your flea suit before you come in here,’ she’d say, as she threw another suit out the kitchen window. Poor John – he’s dead now – used to change in a shed in the back garden.
Tommy Armstrong was another character who had a pawnshop in Ardee Street. He always tied his trousers at the knees to keep the fleas out. Around this time, Singer sewing-machines were being sold door-to-door at a shilling per week. One day a man stuck his head into Tommy’s pawnshop and said: ‘Mister A, Mister A, would you be interested in a Singer sewing-machine?’ ‘’Deed and I wouldn’t,’ said Tommy. ‘Sure every arsehole in Dublin has wan of them.’ Tommy followed a long line of tradition in the pawnbroking business.
If a rich man wanted money he took the deeds of his house or land to the bank and arranged a loan. That was a business transaction and he was a business-man. If a poor woman wanted bread for her children she took the clothes off the bed, went to the pawn, made a pledge and she was a pauper.
One of the many old pawnbrokers who have since closed the door, Weafer’s of Dorset Street.
St Nicholas of Myra Church in Francis Street has a nice statue of the saint with three gold balls, representing him as the Giver of Gifts. The Lombards may have started the tradition. They were merchants, goldsmiths and money-lenders who came from Genoa, Florence and Vienna. First, they had three gold plates as their symbol. Later, the three gold plates were replaced by three gold balls. The Lombards gave us many of the commercial terms which we use every day: debtor, creditor, cash, bank, journal, diary, ditto, and the old £. s. d. which originally stood for Libri, Soldi and Denarii. The Lombards granted the first loan to the States and took the customs duties (from imports) as their pledges.
The first pawnshop was set up in Rome by the Emperor Augustus. When he fed people to the lions in the Coliseum he took over their property and used it to grant small loans. In the fifteenth century, a Franciscan priest set up a pawnshop in Assisi. His was a special type known as the House of Mont-de-Piete. Germany and Italy followed suit and King Billy (William of Orange) organised one in Holland.
The oldest pawn record in the National Library is a letter to Col. J. Fitzsimmons, Roscommon, dated February 1664, concerning the redeeming of the waistcoat of Sir James Dillon which was pawned for £10 by Lady Dillon. In 1634 the Dublin Corporation pawned the City Seal for £1,000.
‘Ask for six and take four,’ and ‘I don’t care if you’re kilt,’ were common instructions. Today pawnbroking continues and so do the pawn office auction sales. You’ll see them advertised in the small ad. columns of the evening papers. The next time you see three brass balls you’ll know the sign doesn’t mean ‘Two to wan, you won’t get it back.’
DUBLIN PAWNSHOP
Three brass balls
Four black shawls
A clock, St Anthony,
Robert Emmet,
A willow delft,
Another shawl
With bedclothes.
A man with two suits
Scholars with University books.
A plumber with a bicycle,
A jarvey with no horse –
All pledged and lodged
For bread, rent
And drink.
‘One-and-nine
That’s it,’
‘Give us two...
