Posted by Terry Fagan
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A elderly woman on Summerhill Dublin.
On our monto walking tour, I play a short an audio recording of a woman, Lillo telling the story about going over see the dispensary doctor on Summerhill for her grandmother living in Summerhill Dublin in the 1930s. She tells the story of sitting in a packed waiting room with very sick people, men and women and children, some riddled with TB, many are coughing and spitting on the floor. She tells a very funny story about the doctor.
Lillo recalls word spreads around the tenements of Summerhill there’s a protestant doctor has opened up a new surgery in North Great Charles Street. Her sick granny send Lillo to go and see the Protestant Doctor to ask him to come visit her in her tenement room. But there’s picket on the doctors surgery by the Legion of Mary and other religious groups stopping Catholics going into see the Protestant doctor.
Lillo recalls haven’t to run the gauntlet of the religious groups hitting people and pulling them away from going into the doctors surgery.
Lillo recalls getting bangs of Rosary Beads, slaps to the head. She recalls she ask the doctor to come see her granny in her room in Summerhill. “The doctor and his little Protestant nurse has to get a police escort over to Summerhill to see the granny, on the stairwell on the tenement house neighbours are trying to beat the doctor and the nurse back down the stairs.”
They were told if you let a Protestant doctor into you room he will make you change your religion.
But to hear this woman Lillo tell the story of the Protestant doctor is absolutely hilarious. We do group walking tours on request.
Who Watches the Watchers? 