"I’m glad you’ve mentioned him, because now that he’s on record and in years to come people will listen and know his name because he was a very young man, twenty-two."

Interviewer: After The Great War, your grandparents and parents had some experience of the Spanish flu. Here we are in a pandemic in 2021, tell us about the Spanish flu in 1919

Willie: The only thing my mother said was that she took it herself when she was a girl of twenty-one or twenty-two in her prime just and she got through it.  She said one in three of the ones she knew about Irvinestown died, in a way it was worse than this pandemic, locally anyway.

Things have changed a lot, my mother used to talk about how scarce money was.  There were eight in the family and my father and mother, and her family had to live on twelve shillings a week of a wage. My grandfather was a gardener at Castle Archdale and that would be 60p now, it wouldn’t buy you too much today.

She said one Monday morning the grandfather was going to his work and there was enough to feed the family on Monday morning but there was nothing left.  He used to take a bit of lunch with him but there was nothing for his lunch that day and he said to the wife, my grandmother “maybe you’d take a bit of sprigging and take it down to McGregor’s shop and you’ll send me a bit at dinnertime. Sprigging was a thing that was done, nearly a bit like crocheting only it was done on linen cloth.  There was always ones with money to buy it.  My grandmother started sprigging but my grandfather was going to work on his bicycle, he had to get off to go up a hill and, there was a layer of snow and he saw a hole in the snow, and he poked down, and he got a half a crown, that would be 12p now. He took it back and he said, that’ll keep us today anyway”. That was poverty, we never knew it to that extent.  We hadn’t much in the thirties and forties, but we had enough, what more do you want?!

Interviewer: The statistics on the Spanish flu are unbelievable.  Your mother and grandmother were taking about one person in three in Irvinestown dying.

Willie: That’s right yes, there were a lot of hard things happened. My mother knew a young man about 1920, Willie Cassidy.  His father was a sergeant in the RUC in Irvinestown and for some reason Willie Cassidy was got in a field lying, out the Dromore Road out of Irvinestown.  He had been shot in the night. Apparently, it had been a wet night, but Willie’s clothes were still dry, so it proved that he had been shot in a house and left there.  There was great grief in Irvinestown because it was senseless killing. Willie Cassidy, my mother said, wasn’t involved in any shape or form with anything and she said they were all mourning a young fella of twenty-two being killed. 

You know Peter it’s the same today, hundreds, thousands I suppose, innocent people killed what for? You’d be sorry.

Interviewer: When was Willie Cassidy killed?

Willie: I think it was 1920

Interviewer: The time of partition and all the troubles.

Willie: She said there was a force got up about that time, The Black and Tans and she said they were unscrupulous. Mostly there were ex-army men, and they were called The Black and Tans because they wore black trousers and khaki jackets, the colour of their clothes. She said they were unscrupulous, a nod in anybody’s direction got them shot. Of course, they weren’t the only ones shooting at that time, there was tit for tat shooting too.

Interviewer: What happened to Willie, was he a victim of the Black and Tans or was he an IRA victim?

Willie: Well, they never really found out, but it looked like as if maybe they were Protestants that shot him, but they weren’t sure. The father gave evidence at the inquest, and he said he had served the Crown all his working live and he said, “to my knowledge my son wasn’t involved in anything”. It was heart-breaking to listen to him, my mother said.

Interviewer: I’m glad you’ve mentioned him, because now that he’s on record and in years to come people will listen and know his name because he was a very young man, twenty-two.

Willie: Twenty-two that’s right and naturally my mother would’ve been near the same age maybe a year or two older.  So senseless, what for in the long run?