FROM THE ARCHIVES:Visiting journalist Millicent Trimble found herself making headlines when Clare Mental Hospital Committee complained about girls swimming in Ballycoree Lake, from which the hospital got its water. She fired back this riposte in a letter to the editor. – JOE JOYCE
SIR, UNDER the heading “Girl Bathers Defy the Sergeant” is a paragraph in your issue of Saturday last. Keeping up the romantic charm of the heading, I will state that I am one of those girls, and beg you will give me space for the truth about the “defiance.”
On Tuesday morning, while still in my bathing suit after my swim in Ballycoree Lake, a patient from the Mental Hospital, unshaven and ill-clad, came round and spoke to me, asking if I knew the patients drank from the lake, but stressing the fact that I was a lovely girl and a powerful fine woman. Naturally, because he was a patient and worthy of my pity and sympathy, I was not annoyed (though anxious to get into my clothes), but treated the matter as one of no importance.
Next day, returning from my swim, two men in uniform, without salute or formality of any kind, opened conversation with, “You’ve had a nice cool bathe.” True, they were bonny boys, good to look at – very good – and civil, and they, after much rambling, mentioned something about a committee.
Though I, as a stranger, did not recognise the uniform of the Civic Guard, I asked for their authority or warrant for telling me what I should or should not do.
This was not produced, and naturally I thought it was a kind of joke. I am not married and I have not learned to take orders from stray males that cross my path.
The question of pollution tickles me mightily. I have travelled nearly round the world, have swum in many lands, and up to the present moment in Clare have never been looked upon as “pollution.” Considering that the lake is up to thirty acres, and it is “polluted” daily by many head of cattle, horses, ducks, dogs and a decrepit donkey (which, rumour says, belongs to the Mental Hospital), I do not feel guilty of “polluting” the water.
As a test of this “pollution,” I will offer my cheek to be kissed or my hand to be held by any member of the committee if he will use these same means with the cattle to judge the polluting powers of them and me.
My exquisite sanity and glorious health show me the desirability in this hot weather of doing a few hundred yards’ swim daily, and if by any chance some of these germs of sanity and health could percolate through the four filter beds of the Mental Hospital, would it not do them a vast amount of good?
The bullocks are here daily, and so am I: and, if the committee will take up my challenge regarding the cattle and me (like tea-tasters with delicate palates) and the landlord will allow a concourse of people to see this feat, I will abide by their decision of “pollution.”
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