Tag: WW2
Albert Haslett
The Shankill during WW2
As a child, Albert grew up with his parents and 9 brothers and sisters in the Hammer, a poor neighbourhood of Belfast. The area was characterised by poor housing conditions. “The houses were just two up and two dow...
May Blood
Talking with Baroness Blood
May was born during World War Two and grew up in Roden Street, a mixed area of Belfast with her mother and sister. He family was separated due to the evacuations during the war. “For the first six years of my life I t...
Sam McAughtry
In conversation with Sam
Internationally respected, Sam McAughtry is a writer and broadcaster who was born in the Tigers Bay area of Belfast in 1923. Sam, one of a family of ten children, recalls the living conditions of the time “Tigers Bay ...
Margaret McDevitt
Growing up on the Donegall Road
As a child Margaret lived on Ulrika Street now Ulrika Terrace on the Donegall Road with her older sister and brother. “There were no nurseries and you didn’t get to school until you were seven years old” Margar...
Albert Fry
Engineering and the Irish Language
Albert was born during the Second World War and grew up in a family of five in North Queen Street, close to Belfast City Centre. “My main memory is soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. Another main memory is prisoners from G...
Kate O Hanlon
Nursing at the RVH
The eldest of five children, Kate O Hanlon was born in the Markets area of Belfast in 1930. Her father worked in the Market, “That was a fruit market, where the Waterfront is today, that was all fish markets and the b...
Billy Dunlop
WW2 & the trade union movement
After a pleasant childhood spent in Delaware Street on the Ravenhill Road in east Belfast, Billy entered the world of work in the post office as a telegraph messenger at a tender age, “I started at the age of 14 years...
Padraic Fiacc
The life of a poet
Poet Padraic Fiacc was born Patrick Joseph (Joe) O Connor in Belfast on Elizabeth Street in 1923. The First World War had ended and Padraic remembers that “everybody went half mad when the war was over, and my moth...