Nurse Mary Griffin

Mary Griffin, Nurse and Midwife.  By Micheál Murphy

In the past, childbirth was a time of considerable risk to mother and baby. Up to the early 1900s transmission of germs was very poorly understood and little was known of aseptic techniques. The only help available to the expectant mother was from family members or the local “handy woman”. Statistics on mortality in Ireland are sparse for that time but it is known that nationally in 1928 about 5% of mothers died in childbirth and infant mortality at that time was almost 7%. The numbers were much higher in poorer regions.

Under a Charities Act of 1851 Ireland had been divided into dispensary districts with each district having a doctor and a midwife. The aim was to provide free medical help to the poor. In 1888 the Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute for nurses was set up to provide a nursing service for the sick poor. A District Nursing Association was formed in any area where a “Jubilee” nurse was appointed and it paid the salary and expenses of the nurse as well as her accommodation. But raising the

money proved impossible in poor areas so Lady Dudley, wife of the Irish Viceroy, established a charitable organisation in 1903 to pay the salary of the so called “Lady Dudley” nurses in congested areas of the west. However, finding suitably qualified nurses was difficult and their appointment was contingent on their agreeing not to marry. 

Nurse Mary Griffin was appointed as a Dispensary Midwife to the Aclare district in 1915. (At that time the county council was responsible for provision of health services throughout the county.) Mary was born in 1878 in Treanrevagh, Killasser to Pat Griffin and Sabina Ruane. In 1905 she was bridesmaid to her sister Sarah who married Hugh O’Hara (brother of Austin) from Kincullew, Aclare in Killasser Church. In 1911, according to the census record, Mary was still residing in Treanrevagh with her mother as well as Sarah and Hugh and their 4 young children.

It is not known where Nurse Griffin received her medical training but her appointment was the beginning of 43 years of dedicated service to the families of the Kilmacteige area until her retirement in 1959 at the age of 80 years. Her home was next door to Price’s house in Aclare.

Hers was not an easy job. She was on constant call, day and night, seven days a week. She never learned to cycle, often having to walk across bogs and fields to attend a woman in labour. At that time the process of giving birth was known as “confinement”. Because of a much denser population and larger families then, Nurse Griffin sometimes found herself trying juggle two confinements at opposite ends of the parish, often in the dead of night.  A family might send a pony and trap to transport her to more remote areas or failing that, a retired soldier named Fahey who lived in the village, drove her with his pony and trap.

 Times were hard for families then and often payment for Nurse Griffin’s services had to be deferred or given “in kind”. It has been said that many a child in the parish was delivered “on the strength of a bag of spuds”.

Nurse Griffin died in 1965 and was buried in her family plot in Killasser graveyard. However, as a gesture of their esteem and in appreciation of her long years of service, a carpark near the cemetery in Aclare has been named Nurse Griffin Park and a monument erected there to her memory by her many friends in the parish.