J&M Cleary, the old-fashioned red-fronted pub under the railway bridge on Dublin’s Amiens Street, used to be known as the Signal House.
That was in the days of Monto, the red light district of Montgomery Street (now Foley Street), Purdon Street, et al – the knot of tenement streets and alleyways that constituted Nighttown in the Circe chapter of Ulysses in which the protagonist, Leopold Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus, visit a brothel, Annie Mack's, at 85 Tyrone Street (now Railway Street).
The Joyce industry's annual Bloomfest tends to accentuate the place of North Great George's Street and Sandycove when celebrating the writer but on Bloomsday Thursday, the back lounge of Cleary's was filled with the sweet scent of coddle as local historian Terry Fagan took those present through Bloom's Monto, courtesy of old photographs he has collected for four decades.
His audience of about 30 included teachers from Rutland National School on Gloucester Place and 10 students from Sewickley Academy school in Pittsburg visiting Ireland for a week.
Accompanying them was Stephanie Rooney, daughter-in-law of Dan, a former US ambassador to Ireland. Earlier, her son Matt and the other students helped fix the garden at the Our Lady of Lourdes Church day care centre on Sean McDermott Street, and gave a talk on voluntary service to St Laurence O'Toole's girls school.
The Bloomsday coddle and local history chat were a conscious effort by some of those active in the north inner city to get the word out that there is more to the area than drugs and guns and gangs and murder. . . even if a large part of that other story is a social history associated with a place notorious for having, at its peak, 1,600 prostitutes.
Those present in Cleary’s were given a brief historical picaresque through seedy Edwardian Monto. Fagan described, with period images, a place of madams and their brothels (1st, 2nd and 3rd class, graded according to the age of the ladies and consequent fees levied); the lower down shilling houses; and lower still were lanes and alleyways where the cheapest services were offered.
There was the notorious triple-door Man Trap (mentioned in Ulysses), where pants down patrons were fleeced of their money by roughed ladies of the night who would escape through a door leading to three more, the one used to make good the departure being unknown to any pursuing frustrated client.
"We need to rebrand the area," said the event's organiser, Father Richard Ebejer of Our Lady of Lourdes Church on Sean McDermott Street, referring to contemporary perceptions of the north inner city. The story of Monto could, along with other attractions, help rejuvenate the area.
“My dream,” he said, “is that in five years time, this area will be abuzz with tourists.”
Terry Fagan, a 65-year-old former coal and timber yard dockland worker, has spent much of the past 40 years collecting his stories about Monto as well as ephemera associated with it.
"Today is Bloomsday," he noted wryly, "and no one comes down here. The Monto is the biggest chapter in Ulysses and still no one comes here. Maybe Enda Kenny will get us the funds for a heritage centre."
Much of what might go into such a centre is piled high inside a flat in St Mary’s Mansions, its windows boarded up but its contents preserved for proper display. One day.
They include recordings of interviews Fagan made with now deceased residents of Monto. They tell the stories of Monto madams Becky Cooper, May Oblong, Honor Bright, Mrs McKenna, Mrs Butler and Mrs Meehan; and of the life and times of the area, during and after the time of Ulysses.
There was much talk, among the teachers and also from former lord mayor of Dublin Christy Burke, about current problems. Primary school teachers Sally O'Herlihy and Dee Heverin are acutely aware that today's notoriety passes as normality for their young charges who are familiar with shootings and sirens.
“The saddest thing is that to them,” said Ms O’Herlihy, “it is sort of normality.”
The day after the recent shooting of Gareth Hutch, "you'd have 10 year olds discussing who the shooter might be," said Ms Heverin.
“And knowing who it is,” Ms O’Herlihy chipped in.
Despite all that, however, neither woman, both teaching in the area for nine years, would leave, noting that school attendance is up, they love their pupils and local parents are hugely committed to the school.
