Pat Smyth, a civil servant with the National Assistance Board in West Tyrone from the 1930's to the 1950's, recalls his memories, experiences and the larger than life personalities he encountered on the way.

Contemporary stories about social life in West Tyrone were peppered with references to the existence of 'red light' areas where parked Governess horse drawn traps and hack cars lined the streets in late evening, while well-heeled gentry sought their pleasure.

Fintona had been no exception. Significantly those who cast the first stone at Fintona women always left the guilty men alone. In that group I have no hesitation in including many landlords and poor law guardians for condemning fellow human being to exist on a few shillings of poor law relief, in houses inferior to pigsties.

Some woman, faced with the grim prospect of starving, and watching their children starve, would have had few options except the poorhouse or submission to the demands of a whore. The local authorities, who for political reasons refused to house the needy, may not have cast a stone but they certainly slunk away.
   
We saw the reality. When homes were flooded losses were often negligible, for the simple reason that the unfortunate occupants had nothing to lose, not even a change of clothing, or bedding, in most cases, and not even floor boards to get wet. There were many in the community who faulted us and the government 'for giving them people money for doing nothing'.

A County Tyrone old age pensioner's dwelling house -- 1946.

The images of some of the worst houses remain etched in my memory. I remember a squalid mud-walled thatched cabin, the threshold was bedded with sheaves of straw where the timber of the door had rotted away. An elderly lady, muffled up in a shapeless shawl, was barely visible in the ill-lighted interior, seated to one side of the hearth on a settle bed, and another lady wearing an old tweed coat came to the door as I approached.

I identified myself and explained that I was simply making a friendly call, to find out how they were getting on, and to check that they had their allowance books and knew how to handle them. I was cordially invited in and I shook hands with both the old ladies. One was blind - the immobile one. Her sister, obviously over 80, looked older.
   
I noted the stalactites of soot and tar hanging from the ceiling - also the broken windows, blocked up with sheaves of oat-straw and the onion-case on its side beneath the window. There was the unmistakable evidence of hens having nested inside, also the feathers and droppings at the foot of the ancient metal bedstead.

I looked for a table, cooking stove or cupboard, but there was none. A rickety wooden dresser, a tea-chest with a battered loose lid, and a couple of wooden butter boxes comprised the remaining furnishings of this crude bed-sitter which had been home to the family for their entire lifetime.
   
The year was 1948, and Assistance Board had just recently taken over the relief of need from the Poor Law Guardians. Jenny and Rosie until then had to exist on a total of sixteen shillings (80p) a week. Jenny, the elder, had had a blind persons pension of ten shillings (50p) and Rosie had six shillings (30p) by way of Poor Law outdoor relief.
       
They were delighted that the award of National Assistance meant that their struggle to survive had been brought to an end. Now they could look forward to being able to live in comfort, they said, and they were overjoyed with the allowances which had been granted.

I promised to see if anything more could be done, and as I took my leave, I explained that Mr. Stevenson the man who had visited them on earlier occasions, was outside in the car afraid to venture in, because of what had happened to their hens. I also added a word of sympathy.

They shrugged the whole thing off and asked me to tell 'the other man' not to be afraid. 'It didn't matter; he had only done his best. Tell him to come on in. He is very welcome'. When I got back to the car and gave my colleague, Jimmy Stevenson, the message, he was mightily relieved.
   
What had happened was this. Jimmy, a city-bred zealot, had taken his responsibility for the welfare of the client very seriously, and when he had found these two old dears sharing their living quarters with their hens, he had set out to persuade them to behave in a more civilised manner.

Jenny and Rosie had eventually been persuaded to re-house the hens in a crude shelter of sticks and sods, constructed in a corner of the garden behind the cabin. Jimmy had then learnt that a marauding fox had cleared out Jenny and Rosie's hencoop.
   
One case that gave us most job satisfaction was a cultured lady known locally as 'the nun'. Colonel Jones, the newly appointed County Welfare Officer found her first and he immediately urged me to go with him and see for myself and we hurried out to a remote derelict farmhouse near Dooish on a frosty November day.
   
There were only a few walls remaining of the old house with a patch of slates at one corner of the roof to the right of the fireplace. Underneath it there was a pile of frowzy bedclothes, mostly old coats.

A hurricane lamp hung high up on the wall below the slates and there was a bonfire blazing. A witch-like elderly woman with a black apron over her head like a nun's veil, her face and arms blue with exposure, and her hair straggled over her features as she stooped over the fire, was juggling with a square tin containing poultry food.
   
We went over and introduced ourselves, and her immediate response was 'Just a moment till I see to the birds food'. She picked up a pad of jute sack, shifted the tin, and then gave us her attention. A flock of well-fed turkeys ready for the Christmas market was strutting around noisily, gobbling at the strangers.
   
Jones had learnt that 'the nun' had been a member of an Order of Nursing Sisters in France, known as ' butterfly nuns' from the shape of their headdress, and during the war she had suffered a breakdown. She had come home to find the old place derelict.

Her brother who had inherited it had married a neighbour and moved in with her. His sister had squatted in the ruins of the old house and survived by rearing a few fowl. We had a brief chat and when I explained the assistance scheme and offered her money to live on, she immediately launched into a recitation in Latin, which I recognised as the canticle called 'the Magnificat'.

I got the paper work done, which wasn't hard, and assured her that she would have a certain amount a week right away. I suggested that she should either go into lodgings or rent a house and that her rent would be paid. We left her a new woman.
   
I only met her once after that. It was on High Street, Omagh, well dressed with a long umbrella and wearing a black mantilla. She greeted me warmly and told me she had got lodgings in Castlederg.
   
Then there was an eccentric chap who lived alone no more than a hundred yards distance from the tarred road to Drumnakilly. I had heard the many jibes about the Irish who kept pigs in the kitchen - but in ten years experience of West Tyrone, I only once found a human being sharing a room with a bullock!

I remember interviewing this man as he lay in bed in a sizeable room where he had a two-year old calf tied by the neck about five yards from him. It was a weird unforgettable experience. The regular investigating officer had brought me to see this man who was 'not the full shilling', but not sick.

We made no comment on his way of living. He was reasonably clad, well nourished and sensible in his speech. What surprised me was his location - not a remote rural area, but within a short distance of Omagh Town.
   
Another hard case comes to mind. A middle-aged spinster, who lived alone with her aged and bedridden mother and kept pleading with us for extra money for paraffin oil. The case history showed that they had a dilapidated two-storied house with an acre or two of useless land attached.
   
We had found out that she was buying five gallons of paraffin oil, a week, although she had no paraffin heater, just oil lamps so I arranged to accompany the outdoor investigator on a call.
   
When we got there we found that the living conditions were terribly bleak. The old barn of a house was like a fridge and there was only an open fire. Straggling thorn branches protruded four or five feet from the grate and when the butts burned off, the lady of the house just shoved them up a bit. We had hardly sat down to talk to Minnie (not her real name) when there was a piercing shriek from upstairs.
   
'She wants a drink. I'll have to get it for her', Minnie exclaimed. She sprang to her feet and let down the sooty black kettle, which hung from the crook over the fire. Then she picked up an old battered teapot and commenced to drip paraffin oil on the fire to make it blaze under the kettle.

She kept the drip feed going until the kettle boiled. Then got a tin beaker, which she filled with boiling water and mounted the rickety stairs. We heard a bit of an altercation with voices raised. Then Minnie came down again.

'That goes on night and day', she explained. 'She screeches for a drink every half hour, and the water has to be scalding hot or she would pitch it back at me'.
   
We did not need to cross-examine Minnie. One look at the living conditions and another at what the two had to live on was sufficient. It was obvious that a substantial additional award for extra fuel was needed. I told Minnie we needed her mother's allowance book and she told us the Postmistress kept it. Then there was another shriek from her Ma!

'The old folk are gone' a familiar sight in remote areas of the Sperrins

Pat Smyth, 2001