Dublin Folktales (21 page)

It was then that the inspired voice of Betty floated down from the tenement steps above. ‘Glory be to God’, she cried. ‘That coal is blessed. It’s made my poor unfortunate sister rise up and walk again. Glory be to God. And the coalman.’ she added, just in case, for Jemmy could be contrary at times and might delay next week’s delivery if sufficiently vexed.

Fitzer the apprentice kept going and went to stay with his sister in Mullingar for a fortnight, for safety. The priest, when he heard he was hurrying to bless a dead cat, stayed and prayed with Molly and Betty instead for the miracle of the Holy Coal even if he knew in his heart and soul that something was dreadfully amiss in their collective minds. Jemmy drove off in the certain knowledge that the sisters were going to become faith healers for hire, the priest was going to go insanely mad at some stage, and Mrs Burke was
going to be looking for a new cat from him. There was one thing he was sure of. He had seen a lot of things in his time, but he had never ever seen flying coal pass down the street before or since. It’s the sort of thing you don’t see much of at all in these days of prosperity in the new Ireland. More’s the pity.

Some people live their lives in as quiet and orderly a manner as possible, while others seem to want to cause as much disruption as they can. To deal with the disruption, a special unit of the police was drawn together in 1950s Dublin and lasted until the retirement of Detective Sergeant Lugs Brannigan, the man who was to lead it for so many years. His name struck fear into the hearts of criminals and disturbers of the peace alike. The shout that Lugs was on his way was often enough to scatter a crowd to their homes or lodging houses. They would immediately flee lest they be caught by the no-nonsense Brannigan and his men.

A Dubliner himself, born at the South Dublin Union on St James’s Street, Jim Brannigan joined the Garda Síochána and doled out street justice in his own way though the 1930s and ’40s. Such was the success of his rough and ready methods, that he was given a squad of like-minded officers to assist him in his work. Lugs Brannigan, or James Christopher Brannigan, or Jim Brannigan, was born on Little Christmas Day, 6 January 1910 and lived in his native city until his passing on 22 May 1986. He finished training as a garda in June 1931 in the Garda training depot in Phoenix Park, not far across the river from where he was born.

When street gangs presented a real problem to Dubliners and to their enjoyment of life in the capital, a robust
response was called for, or so went official thinking. Lugs and his newly-formed crew were nicknamed the Brano Five Team. They formed a roving unit, from 1964 onwards, that was called out to trouble spots in Dublin, when ordinary beat policing was not succeeding. They used one car and one Bedford van as unit transport. The van carried two burly men and a number of Alsatian police dogs for crowd control. The car carried three more large police officers armed with regulation-issue batons and their fists and booted feet. This unit became well known around the dance halls and cinemas of Dublin, where young people met and where trouble could break out if one or other of the gangs had a mind to cause it. Late-night buses into problem areas of the city were followed by the unit anticipating disorder. A non-fare payer might have second thoughts on causing disruption when Brannigan boarded the bus to assist the bus conductor with his troublesome passenger. If the passenger was lucky, he was allowed to pay the fare and to sit down, if not, he was removed from the bus to face Lugs’ justice.

The unit often patrolled the streets to keep order. Indeed, the claim is made that Brannigan sat through
Rock around the Clock
some ninety times, in his role as pacifier, when local Teddy Boys imitated international reaction and rioted throughout the showing of the film. On one occasion, an erring motorist on O’Connell Street managed to collide with the rear of the unit’s van, as the van slowed to allow a garda speak to a group of loitering youths outside the cinema. Such was the power of Brannigan’s name that the driver fell to uncontrollable shaking at the prospect of a meeting with Lugs Brannigan over minor damage to the van. Brannigan left another guard to take the details. A crowd soon gathered, giving Brannigan and his men the opportunity to show they were fair observers of the law in their own right.

While Brannigan was determined to put an end to street fighting in the city, he was an enthusiastic boxer himself. During the 1930s, he was a member of the Garda Boxing
Club, fighting at cruiser-weight, light-heavyweight and heavyweight and eventually winning the Leinster heavyweight title in 1937. While his fists were considered as potential lethal weapons, he often offered a prisoner the choice of fighting him one-to-one and going free, or being charged in court with an offense. Such was the weight that Brannigan carried with the judiciary, a case brought by him was reasonably sure of success.

The unit was successful in pacifying smaller gangs and hard men alike. Brannigan’s biggest difficulty was with the Animal Gang, whose numbers in any street fight could range as high as 100. They were bent on fighting with potatoes studded with razor blades, batons, knives, bottles and anything else that could cause injury to an opponent. Garda reports of the mid-1930s show the feuding Animal Gang marauded through Dublin, engaging in fierce pitched battles on the streets, to the terror of all in their way. Members of the gang gatecrashed dancehalls, where they attacked people against whom they carried grudges. Garda reports said that the Animal Gang had no political motivation and that unlike the European phenomenon of fascist gangs spreading terror through the continent’s cities, the Animal Gang were simply hooligans.

It is said, that on one night, when Lugs Brannigan caught up with a number of gang members in a dance hall, the assembled patrons parted like the Red Sea before Moses, as he took the three hooligans outside and there dispensed his own judgement and punishment on them. Brannigan’s crusade against the Animal Gang came to a head at Baldoyle Racecourse in north County Dublin in 1940. He and other gardaí arrested seven prominent members of the gang at the course. Four more were taken into custody later that night. All eleven were sentenced to prison terms in Mountjoy and the gang was dealt a fatal blow.

Things were not easy for ordinary people in Dublin in the 1950s, when unemployment and emigration were the
norm for many. Idle hands make work for the devil they used to say, and it was no surprise to Lugs Brannigan that as many as ten gangs formed in the city. Nightly battles and scuffles broke out as they fought for control of territory. In the middle of the mayhem Brannigan was to be found trying to stem the spread of gang warfare. It was Brannigan’s unofficial warfare that courts often turned a blind eye to when complaints of garda misbehaviour were made by defence counsel to judges. Especially when it came to a Brannigan charge, since it was well known that Lugs gave the culprit a chance to fight it out or come to court. Judges were not about to allow a defendant to walk away without just cause.

Some lawbreakers, on hearing that Lugs Brannigan was looking for them, simply took the boat across to Britain, for a while or for good, to escape a certain beating or a jail term. Such a course of action served Brannigan’s desire for a quiet city just the same.

Brannigan was a boxer and a boxing referee of such toughness that he continued to be a referee for amateur boxers well into his seventies and past retirement. Nonetheless, fighting members of street gangs had its effect on the bodies of the gardaí that faced the hooligan element in late-night Dublin City. Many of the fighters were armed with knives, the weapon of choice for street fighting. Many would throw razor spuds at their opponents or try to get in close to tear the skin off the face of their opponent with the exposed blades. Many were simply drunk and ugly and would attack from any direction without warning, with any weapon they could find. Many just sank their teeth into their foe’s body. Others left welt marks on flesh where they struck with studded leather belts. Many people sported multi-coloured bruises for months afterwards. Knuckledusters were worn on the hand and their metal teeth tore skin away from flesh and left scars that took a long time to heal. Scars would remain on both lawmaker and lawbreaker.

Brannigan suffered many attacks over the years. By the time he finished with his life in the Garda, his body was like a relief road map of the city, with souvenirs of the many confrontations he endured with some of the most violent and crazed people in Dublin. He was philosophical about the injuries his own physique endured, saying that he gave as good as he got. Far from being self conscious of his scars, Brannigan was happy enough to discuss his physical souvenirs with anyone who had a serious interest in them. For display purposes, the remnants of the punishment inflicted on his legs by all and sundry were a source of particular fascination. The boot was put into him with cheap boots, shoes, runners, bare feet, steel toe-capped working boots and more in his time. All of which left his legs crossed with a mass of scar tissue from his wounds. There were lumps on his legs where there should not have been lumps, and hollows where the flesh had caved in from some attack and had never returned to normal. Still, it did not stop him refereeing amateur boxing matches in his retirement for many years.

A particular story was told of a city prostitute who reported to him that a false client had stolen her money and would not return it to her. Lugs is said to have followed the man to where he was celebrating his new-found wealth and retrieved the woman’s earnings for her. One can imagine how surprised and shocked the man was to discover that Lugs Brannigan wanted a word with him in the street outside the hotel.

Jim Brannigan left the Garda as a detective sergeant in 1973, after more than forty years’ service. He retired to the quietness of Summerhill in County Meath where his interest turned to raising budgerigars. He worked part-time as a personal bodyguard for visiting celebrities and occasionally as a doorman at city centre late-night venues. Lugs Brannigan passed away in 1986, by which time policing methods had changed and society no longer had any desire for the rough and ready justice that was the hallmark of Lugs Brannigan, boxer, pacifier, garda and Dubliner.

Many people on the run during the War of Independence took refuge in a family home at Christmas in Dublin. While it was a dangerous thing to do, some people accepted the risk for the sake of the season. Once St Stephen’s Day had been and gone it was back to days of danger, filled with the fear of what might happen next.

When hostilities ended, many of the fighters simply took their weapons home with them rather than hand them in. They hid their arms away, just as the rebels of yore would conceal pikes in the thatch for future use. This practice left it wide open during subsequent arguments of any side to claim that if matters went much further, the gun would have to be sent for to settle the argument. It rarely was sent for, but the thought was there just the same.

A chance remark was made in one particular house leading to the belief that the gun on the high nail in the kitchen of the house was a real gun, and what’s more, was loaded for action. Of course it wasn’t a genuine gun at all. It was an old-fashioned toy gun made of some metal that was both heavy and rough. It was a cap gun that detonated a single cap at a time, thrilling children of times past. For them, it sounded just the same as Napoleon’s artillery might have sounded in battle, had they been there. Imagination is a powerful thing. It had been the plaything of the eldest boy of the family but
when he discovered girls he had no further use for toy guns. His sights were on other targets, forevermore.

His father, the postmaster and an old rebel, painted it gun-metal black and when it was dry he added another coat to make it look really dark. Then, he climbed onto a high chair and drove a nail into the wall of the high-ceilinged kitchen where he hung the gun by its trigger guard, above the fireplace. It was the most effective security device imaginable, for it seemed to anyone with a mind set for mischief that it was a real weapon and what was more it was near at hand to a man that knew how to use it.

It stayed where it was, until one Christmas Eve, when some layabouts thought it a good idea to rob the post office of its Christmas funds, despite the deterrent hanging upon the nail in the kitchen. By then, Pauric the postmaster had finished work for the day and all the Christmas payments had been given out and all the savings accounts had been raided by people withdrawing funds to buy last minute presents. In short, when the three local robbers launched their daring raid, there was as little money in the post office as ever there would be.

The streets had grown quiet as people wound down their activities in expectation of a family reunion around the Christmas tree. The darkened premises were locked and barred from the front. So the route for the robbers was around the back and through the household quarters. That way took them through the kitchen where the Christmas cake was sitting and where a Christmas pudding, wrapped in its cocoon of greased cloth, was hanging from a cross door. Pauric’s wife May, who was the power behind the post office throne, was not there. She had gone to the city to buy her family’s treats, presents and surprises for the great day. The three robbers, Petey, Liam and Maurice, easily gained access to the kitchen and from there to the post office itself. They were bitterly disappointed to discover the cash they were expecting to load up in their bags had flown the coop. Gone!