27/02/2023
‘Making Lace, Hats and China: Women in Past Galway Industries’, is the title of a free public event on International Women’s Day, 8th March, co-organised by the ICHLC and the Galway Council of Trade Unions. The venue is the Galway Mechanics Institute and the kick-off time is 8.15 pm,
There will be short presentations from three speakers. With a focus on Headford lace Norma Owens’s talk is entitled, ‘Reading between the threads: lace as a source for women’s labour history’. Mary Cunningham will talk about the hat factory in Bohermore, Les Modes Modernes, which operated between 1937 and 1972, while Yara Könst’s subject is Royal Tara China, which was produced in Mervue between 1953 and 2003. Yara and Norma are both postgraduate students of History at the University of Galway; Mary is an oral history researcher.
Interspersed with the talks, there will be appropriate musical contributions from members of the Galway Ukelele Group.
Our photograph (courtesy of Heather Gardiner) shows workers in the hat factory, c. 1940. Three of them have been identified. Miss Schwenk, supervisor (holding the glass), with Mai Lyons (right) and Ethel Murray (2nd from right), both of St Joseph's Terrace. The hat factory was established by Jewish refugees fleeing N**i persecution.
