Days when you could buy 12 pints of beer for £1 in Cork

Many of our Throwback Thursday stories prove to have long lives!

Reader Martin Crichton has written to us from England about one of last summer’s features on fruit picking at farms here back in the day, and the useful opportunity it gave youngsters to earn a few precious pennies.

“I am a Cork man, lived there for 24 years before moving to the UK for work,” said Martin.

I was intrigued to read a piece that Jo wrote about the Rathcooney fruit farm last year as I was just updating my work history on my LinkedIn profile.

“I have a very good memory and happy recollections of my summer working there when I was 10 years old. What is missing from the piece that Jo wrote, and other pieces, was that the majority of the workforce in the summer was child labour. Not illegal of course, and certainly not forced, I should add!”

Well no, Martin, children doing a good day’s work and contributing to the scanty household budget was taken for granted back then.

Practically every child had some scheme or other going, as we have often highlighted in these pages, be it collecting bottles to take back to the Cantrell & Cochrane factory or storing newspapers to take to the recycling centre where they paid you by weight.

When it came to fruit picking or potato digging, these were considered very handy ways of getting that much-needed cash, for sweets, for toys, even for a football or hurley.

It is only lately that youngsters seem to be given an oddly-extended childhood with nothing to do but watch games in their rooms or swoop through Facebook. It’s a pity really, since they are missing out on so much of life’s rich experiences.

“Where have the last 50 years gone since my first job?,” enquires Martin rhetorically.

“Fruit Farm Labourer, Rathcooney fruit farm. Part-time, June, 1975 - July, 1975 · 2 months. Cork, County Cork, Ireland · On-site.

“I was only 10 years old and it was my first ever paid job. (You had to be nine years or older to be considered for work, as I my younger brother did a shorter stint there too, he was nine).

A group of us local kids (Ashburton Row, Old Youghal Road and Dillons Cross areas) used to get up at 4am and walk about four miles to the fruit farm in Rathcooney. It was voluntary, nobody pushed us into it, and we were happy to do it.

The pay was, I think, 1p for every 10 punnets of strawberries filled. It was better pay picking the spring onions as that was a fixed rate... maybe 5p per hour?

“It was coveted work to get for a child back in those days, and they were different times in the 1970s. I vaguely getting paid, in cash of course, maybe 45p to 55p at the end of some good weeks, 17p to 23p on a poor week.

“It was weather-dependent and only available on good, dry days in the summer during the fruit picking season.”

Martin adds: “I come from a poor working class background. We lived at 3, Ashburton Row for 12 years with no hot water or washing facilities, and only an outside toilet next to the coal shed). We had neighbours about eight doors away, the Kerrigans. Not sure if Jo is related to them?”

Well no, Martin, we lived further down towards the city, on Summerhill, but I think the Kerrigans to whom you refer might be the Irish teacher and her sons, Miles and Pat.

We often went up that way, though, going to the Glen on summer mornings or just for a wander round in the evenings. (Do children go for such relaxed wanderings these days, or is it no longer an approved pastime? We used to know every hill, every laneway, every set of steps in the city back in the ’50s and ’60s.)

My sister and I did our stint at Rathcooney for the Grove-Whites in the early 1960s, picking those strawberries in the early morning while the dew was still on them, so that they could be shipped quickly down to the city shops in time for opening hours.

We slept in the family caravan outside the house the nights before, so that we could get up at 4am and cycle up to Rathcooney without disturbing the rest of the household.

And yes, it was hard, back-breaking work. I honestly can’t how much we were paid, but I don’t think it was as little as one new penny per ten punnets. Surely it was more than that? Not a fortune, certainly, but somewhat more than 1p. Perhaps other readers can help out here? Do let us know if you can.

On the topic of what things cost back then, Mícheál Kenefick claims he can vividly recall exact details from the ’50s and ’60s. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could where I put my glasses 20 seconds ago, though?”

Mícheál was a barman in 1965/66 and a helper in 1966/67, and shares a few of the prices charged in hostelries at the time. Readers may find it instructive (if not downright depressing) to compare them with today’s charges.

“A pint of stout was 1/8 and a drop of spirits was 2/5. Therefore, you could get 12 pints for £1.” (Well, don’t forget the 4d change, Mícheál, or was that taken as a tip for the barman?)

“A mixer, which was only rarely purchased, was 5d as most people took a drop of water or a dash of lime or orange squash,” added Mícheál. “Water with whiskey, lime with gin, orange with vodka.

“I left the helper job in November, 1967, not by choice, as helpers were let go when they were 21. This awful practice was not unusual then, as tea boys and messenger boys were also left go at a certain age.

“Notice again it was always boys. This was mostly discontinued in the 1970s.”

You have a point there, Mícheál. Girls generally didn’t go out doing jobs like that, did they? It wasn’t considered the thing. Helping mother at home, maybe running messages or doing household tasks for an elderly neighbour, that was acceptable, but going out into the wider world, definitely not.

I at some time in the 1960s, when Butlin’s Mosney was the centre of the world, asking my mother if I could go up and become a Redcoat for the summer. Her response was shocked but absolute. Certainly not! Similarly, when it seemed a good idea to have a go at being a petrol pump attendant. She wouldn’t even hear of it!

In January, 1968, continues Mícheál, he was earning £8 per week. 

Wages, I would think, didn’t change very much from the 1940s through the ’50s and early ’60s, as inflation wasn’t a word we knew then. How things have changed!

He treasures a large collection of guidebooks which give fascinating information on the cost of staying or dining out in Cork in earlier days, but makes the point that as these naturally concentrated on the higher end of the market, comparisons may not reflect the overall position.

“The following prices are taken directly from these guides and are interesting. I have researched the 1950s rates first, by looking in newspaper adverts of the time, and then the 1960s through the newly published guidebooks, so you can see the rise in prices:

1950s Cork (from newspaper adverts)

Metropole Hotel: Lunch 4/6; Dinner 8/6. Full Board 33/- per day.

Imperial: Lunch 4/6; Dinner 9/-; Full Board 33/6 per day.

Victoria: Lunch 5/-; Dinner 9/-; Full Board 33/6 per day.

Egon Ronay guide, 1964

Metropole hotel: Lunch 8/-; Dinner 15/-.Oyster Tavern: Dish of the day, 9/6. Glass of wine 2/6.

Ashley Courtenay guide, 1965

Acton’s hotel Kinsale: lunch 12/6; dinner 17/6. Weekly 21gns

Good Food Guide 1969/70

Ballymaloe lunch 9/-; B&B 27/-.

Egon Ronay guide ,1969

Oyster Tavern: lunch 8/6; dish of the day (presumably main course at dinner) 11/6.

Silver Springs: lunch 10/6. Rooms from £3 single

Mícheál said: “Not exactly spiralling inflation, I would say, rather a gentle natural rise. Not like today!

“I recently stayed in a hotel on the beach in south-west , and the mid-September rate for full sea view with balcony was €91 per night. If one chooses flights carefully, it is cheaper to overnight in or Spain than locally”

Mícheál spotted a skit on hotel prices recently on Facebook. 

“Someone was looking to stay in Galway for two nights, but had to settle for a week in Spain instead. At the end, he says ‘Sure, you can’t have everything!’ It’s a joke with a sting, I feel!

“It is worth mentioning that if in 1950s Whitegate you said you were going for your dinner at 8 in the evening, the ‘white coats’ wouldn’t be far behind! Or indeed, if Kathleen or my mother were caught strolling casually along the Middle Road with a cup of tea in their hand (coffee almost unheard of), the shock would resonate all around the village. Yet now it’s taken for granted.”

Mícheál, we are really glad you took the trouble to research those price comparisons. There is little doubt we are living in a very different world today. Not only do our kids scorn the idea of earning pocket money by going out and working for it, but at the same time, the price of dining out, staying away, in fact doing anything beyond the basics, is fast becoming beyond the means of many.

To be fair, it’s not just us. Our near neighbour the UK is also floundering in a stormy sea of rising prices.

Brian Cronin, whose mother kept that hotel on the Lower Road by Kent Station in the ’50s and ’60s, noticed this recently.

“Visiting family in England recently, we found hotel rates and dining out quite expensive. A glass of wine cost between £8 and £10, whereas here in Spain we buy bottles of house wine in the supermarket for as little as €1.50.”

Yes, a glass of wine is fast becoming an unaffordable luxury these days, Brian, if you are in Ireland or England. It probably has a lot to do with the swingeing taxes that we and the UK impose on alcohol, whereas in and Spain they have lighter tariffs.

Australia, too, according to those who have visited there lately, is well ahead on the rising cost of living.

“We couldn’t believe it,” comments Katie O’Brien, who was there recently. “It was actually more expensive to dine out, even very simply, than it is in Ireland, and that’s saying something!”

Of course, we expect more these days. Even if many readers grew up in harder times, when you didn’t take plentiful food for granted, when firewood had to be collected to keep the house warm, when chilblains and coughs were inevitable concomitants of winter, and clothes were mended and handed down until they fell apart, we still have become accustomed to a far easier way of living, and would be reluctant to return to olden days.

Are we better off for living in a more comfortable world? Or have we lost some of our self-reliance and resilience? What do you think?

Next Thursday is Samhain, or Hallow-E’en, the Celtic New Year’s Eve. Of course, all kinds of things will be happening this weekend, with a bank holiday on Monday, but those of you who believe in tradition will be keeping their celebrations for Thursday, October 31, when the veil between this world and the Otherworld is at its thinnest, and Themselves come out to walk among us. What memories do you have of childhood Halloweens?

Tell us quick, and we will publish them next Thursday!

Email [email protected] or leave a message on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/echolivecork.