168 years ago this week, on the 8th of March, work started on the cutting of what we know as the Eglinton Canal. There had been previous attempts to open a passage from the river to the sea. As far back as 1498, the then mayor had a plan to connect the Sandy River with Lough Athalia. It was Alexander Nimmo who first mooted the idea of a canal in 1822. If steamboats could travel from the docks to the Corrib, it would greatly enhance the commercial importance of the city and a valuable connection with the hinterland would be established. His original plan was that this connection would start at the top of Woodquay, where McSwiggans is today, go along Eglinton Street and down the west side of Eyre Square to the docks. The cost proved to be prohibitive and there were a lot of objections from people who owned land or a business along the route.

This remarkable photograph was taken in 1920/21. It shows a group of republican prisoners who are being held in the Town Hall. They are surrounded by barbed wire and are being carefully watched by a soldier whom you can see standing beside the tin hut. He is wearing a ‘Brodie’ helmet which was a steel combat helmet invented by Englishman John Brodie during the First World War. There were probably more soldiers on duty inside the hut watching the detainees, the photographer and anyone else who might have been was passing. A notice on one of the windows reads “No one is allowed within ten yards of this building”.

Elections in the nineteenth century were a great deal more lively, entertaining and violent than those of the present day.

In 1826, Humanity Dick Martin ran in an election against James Lambert. Martin was anxious to win because as a Member of Parliament, he could not be pursued by his numerous creditors. There was a lot of violence between rival factions, major riots, houses burned, many injured and at least one man being killed. Martin won by a landslide, but a Parliamentary enquiry found fraud on a massive scale, and also that the local authorities did nothing to quell the rioting, so Lambert was declared elected.

Seamus Carter was a fluent Irish speaker who was a member of the Gaelic League since its inception. He was the secretary of the Oireachtas when it was held in Galway in 1913, the famous photograph of which hangs in the Town Hall.

He was a noted athlete in his young days, a prominent member of the Galway City Harriers. He was an avid reader and was regarded as a brilliant conversationalist whose stories were often laced with humour. He started work as a teacher in Galway, but then joined the County Council where he worked in the Courthouse for over 30 years, ending up in charge of the expenditure branch. He lived in Shantalla, with his wife, four sons and a daughter.