I must explain that the first poor rate was in 1848, and half was made up by local subscription, while the rent was added by the presentment of the county, and not paid out of the rates. It was in those days a common practice for dispensary doctors to put down on the list imaginary subscriptions from friends, so as to draw more from the county.
A young fellow, whose name had thus been used, fired into a Protestant doctor's house, and threatened to murder everybody unless he was given some money.
He obtained half a crown, with which he bought a pint of whisky and a mutton pie; but just as he was putting his teeth into the crust of the latter, he paused in horror.
'I was near being lost for ever, body and soul,' says he, 'this being Friday, and me so close on tasting meat.'
The woman in the place where he bought the provisions proposed to keep the mutton pie for him until the following day.
He thanked her civilly, and went away, but had the misfortune to mistake the police barracks for the rival whisky store, and was promptly arrested for threatening with intent to do injury.
The next day he asked to be allowed to eat his pie, which is how the story came out.
The dispensaries are often worked with more attention to the pocket of those on the premises than is compatible with the principles of honesty, as recognised outside the legal and medical professions. At one dispensary in Kerry the Local Government Board was horrified at the consumption of quinine—an expensive medicine. Indeed, so much disappeared that, if it had not been for the chronic aversion of any low-born Irishman to outside applications of liquid, it might have been surmised that the patients were taking quinine baths. The matter was privately put into the hands of the police, who within a week arrested the secretary getting out of a back window with a big bottle of quinine, which he meant to sell.
That man, for the rest of his life, inveighed against the petty and mischievous interference with private industry tyrannically waged by public bodies.
I should like to claim for Kerry the honour of being the land where the following hoary chestnut originally was perpetrated, the exact locality being Castleisland.