Item 6 - Bound volume comprising the minutes of meetings of the Galway Town Commissioners.

c.1000 pp

Bound volume comprising the minutes of meetings of the Galway Town Commissioners. Each entry gives the date of the meeting, the attendance, the business transacted and correspondence; in a small number of instances transcripts of correspondence are included. Printed statements of the commissioners accounts, advertisements for tenders and other official statements are glued onto a number of pages of the volume. During this period the ability of the Town's Commissioners to carry out improvements was effected by the fact that the body owed a considerable debt to the gas company. Entry dated 18 June 1872 reports that 'the cases of the violation by the victuallers of the town slaughtering sheep in their shops and dwellings and also to the necessity of adjudicating promptly on sanitary cases some of which it appears have been suffered to lie over since April last. According to report dated 30 September 1872 it was 'resolved that in as much as we see no other practical way of getting out of debt with the Gas Company they having intimated their intention of increasing the cost of each lamp by two pound per annum and our total inability to effect any improvement in the town while this debt is hovering over us that we feel ourselves constrained to extinguish the public lamps. According to a statement in an entry dated 8 November 1872 the Town Commissioner and the gas company agreed 'that 79 lamps are to be lighted at the rate of £4 per lamp per lamp per annum for the usual hours of the late contract except five nights at full moon. The Commissioners may if they so decide turn off the lamp the summer months ...' Entry dated 1 April 1873 includes a report of the burial committee which was formed in response to an act of parliament which called 'for the Suppression of burials in towns', the committee was investigating the possibility of starting new burial grounds at various sites. According to entry dated 29 May 1873 'Mr. Semple called attention to the bathing place at Salthill concluding by moving that a committee should be now appointed to consider and report upon its state and how it might be improved....' Transcript of a letter dated 16 August 1873 from The Galway Town Commissioners addressed to The Local Government Board explaining the 'difficulty they have met in their endeavours to carry out the Sanitary Act in this town and neighbourhood'. The letter goes on to explain the problems that the Town Commissioners were having in making viticulturists used a designated slaughter house, it is explained that even thought it is prohibited to slaughter sheep and cattle anywhere other than the slaughter house, 'in the last week, though the town has been crowded to an unprecedented degree, and at least 300 sheep must have been slaughtered, only 4 died in the slaughter house, proving that 296 at least suffered by night in narrow and ill-ventilated places where blood and offal poison the atmosphere in their putrefaction and give rise to all infectious disease.' According to entry dated 25 June 1874 'The Claddagh bridge is in a very unsafe state, the footways are very unsafe. The traffic on them should be stopped. The road may still be left open to foot passengers.' Entry dated 22 October 1874 includes a Memorial of the Town Commissioners of Galway to The Local Government Board Ireland. In the memorial the Town Commissioners complain of their inability to carry out their duties because of the financial state of the body, according to the memorial 'The Town Commissioners would ask the local Government Board to have a clause inserted in the provisional order already issued granting them borrowing powers and authorizing the Public Works Loan Commissioners to lend a sum of £3000 to clear off the debt due to the Galway gas company.' According to entry dated 3 January 1876 'it was represented to some members present that the mace and sword belonging to the old Corporation of Galway was in the possession of Mr. West Jeweler Dublin and about being disposed of or melted down....' they resolved to contact Mr. West by telegraph and stop him from disposing of them. According to entry dated 29 June 1876 'The Chairman drew the attention of the Board to the Prisons Bill at present before Parliament and to the importance of having a District Prison at Galway.' An entry dated 6 July 1876 reads 'Read letter from the Irish temperance league enclosing circular to the English and Scotch M.P.s requesting their support to the second reading of Professor Smyth's Sunday Closing bill.' Entry dated 2 March 1877 states that 'The Chairman's letter was again read and the secretary laid before the meeting the plan of the proposed tramways indicating the streets thru which the double line was to run and after some consideration the following resolution was unanimously adopted, and the secretary to foreword same to town representatives.' Entry dated 29th November 1877 expresses 'The marked thanks of this board be tendered to Colonel Bagot and the officers and men of the brigade depot for their exertions in extinguishing the fire that took place on the 20th inst. in William street.' The same entry reports that Colonel Bagot complained that their were insufficient fire hydrants in Galway. According to entry dated 18 July 1878 'A committee of the Cricket Club waited on the board and asked permission to play in the square it was decided by a majority of the board to [allow] them the square free of charge to play on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays after 4 o'clock.' Entry dated 11 September 1879 includes a transcript of a letter from W. J. O'Malley Artist, Cross St., Galway addressed to J. Redington, Secretary, Galway Town Commissioners. O'Malley writes 'I have the honor of presenting a portrait of the late Charles French Blake-Forster J.C. painted by me which I trust the Galway Town Commissioners will accept.' Entry dated 7 May 1880 states that 'a report was read from the Borough Surveyor stating that he had procured a few of the tablets containing the names of some of the streets of the town, which he had placed in conspicuous places in the streets according to their respective name, he recommends that similar tablets be purchased for the remainder of the streets.'

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27/06/2013
20/06/2025