Frank Duff Interviews
Monto
To give any sort of description of that celebrated district called Bentley Place in the book “Miracles on Tap” would require an extensive treatment. But, let it suffice to say, that it was an historical place going back into the 1700’s. From time to time authority tried to rid the place of some of its awful renown by changing the name of the place, as if that would represent a cleaning up. But, of course, the ill odor transferred itself to the new name at once. In any case, old names also survived and it was even in our day known very much as Monto, Monto being an abbreviation of Montgomery Street. There were other names, Tyrone Street and various other slang names. But Bentley Place is not the real name at all.
Bentley Place was a fictitious name used in the book so as not to draw opprobrium on the people living around there later. Everybody in Ireland knew about this place and it has an unfavorable mention in the Encyclopedia Britannica in its article on prostitution. In the 10th edition of that book it speaks of its carrying on its operations with a greater degree of publicity and noninterference than almost any other place in the entire world. It picks out Algeria as a place which could rival Dublin in that respect. That was not so good. Shiploads of sailors used to come down there in groups, big groups of them. They knew where to come and it was all excused on the grounds that it kept the evil in one spot instead of having houses all over the city. So, that was Bentley Place as it stood in that time.
It first became practical work for the Legion when, in the Sancta Maria Hostel one week at an ordinary meeting, one of the girls of the house was reported as having left during the week and as having gone down to live in that place. So, that provoked an animated discussion and the immediate proposition was made that they send people down there after her because that idea of following-up was an essential portion of the work. The suggestion of so sending people was at once attacked on the ground that that was an impossibility. "You could not possibly send a respectable person into that district. The dangers were many." That didn't exactly satisfy the uprising Legion spirit and it was faced up to that that work would have to be attempted. Then followed some reconnoitering in an effort to find exactly what the whole place was like and to work out whatever degree of safety could be aspired to.
How to Approach the Place
“My knees go from under me”
The Legionaries did a lot of going around talking to people. Strange to say, the great majority of people when approached knew really very little about this thing. You wouldn't learn much from talking to them. Even talking to people living beside the place was not very fruitful. To give an example of this tone which surrounded it, Frank went down to one of the priests into whose district this area normally fell and asked him to do the great favor of walking with him through the district in broad daylight stopping to talk to nobody at all. The idea being that Frank would be seen in the company of the priest, because up to that time he had not been working on the North Side of the city but only on the South. He would be unknown there and his advent, as he pointed out to the priest, might be regarded with all sorts of suspicions. If he wasn't coming in for the purposes of the place, what was his objective? What was his game? And it was just to have that better hallmark placed upon him of being seen with the priest that he asked for that. Now the priest was one of the finest people imaginable as other circumstances have proved, a most heroic type of man, and his answer to that suggestion of Frank’s was, "My knees go from under me," because it was a place of lies and rumors and everything of that kind and he didn't know what sort of slander would be made of his visit to the place.
It wasn't the physical danger he was thinking of. It was the lying, the suggestion that he was frequenting the district. If it was only a physical threat, he would have run down there with Frank. But in spite of all, Frank didn't get very much information. However, he fixed a day when the entry through the place would be made. It was agreed that the approach would be made by Miss Plunkett and Frank.
Mary Kate of Number 8
So, at eleven o'clock in the morning Miss Plunkett and Frank Duff met and went down to that place. Bentley Place was off a street the name of which had originally been Tyrone Street. In those days Tyrone Street was really the main center. Now it had shifted a little bit to the east and the name of Tyrone Street had been changed to Railway Street. Bentley Place was off Railway Street. The area itself consisted of several smaller streets.
Now in his looking around for something that they could use, Frank Duff got hold of the name of a girl living down there. This was not the same girl who had only just gone there. He didn't have any address for her. But he did have the precise address for another girl and there's no harm in telling it now. Her name was Mary Kate and she lived in Number 8, off the place that we’re calling Bentley Place. He remembered that by means of putting it into a nursery rhyme, "Mary Kate of Number 8." He held onto that like glue. Now when they came to the actual entrance to Bentley Place, they looked at the numbers and found that the first number on the left hand side was Number 1 and the number on the other side was 20 or 21. That meant that somewhere at the very far end was Number 8. Normally, they'd do their work with a certain amount of method and would take probably Number 1 all the more so since as it kept them a little nearer civilization so to speak.
“Now We're in For it”
Miss Plunkett and Frank Duff were always prepared for a quick escape. And so they proceeded to walk down to the place. It was a beautiful day. Of course, it was not business hours at that time of morning but there were a fair amount of people just loitering around. They were a very strangely assorted pair and became at once an object of curiosity. Frank Duff was wondering now at what stage would this produce an intervention - at what stage would they be asked their business. As they proceeded, they saw a terrible-looking poor derelict of a man leaning up against one of the walls of the house, one of these unutterably detested creatures. As soon as they came near enough to him for him to notice them, he came to life and he shambled out into their path. Frank said to himself, "Now we're in for it." He wouldn't know what would happen because the place had a terrible reputation for happenings.
To his unutterable surprise the man seized Frank’s hands and greeted him. Then Frank recognized him as a poor creature with whom he had been in contact over on the other side of the city. Apparently Frank had been helpful to him, because he was friendliness itself and he greeted Frank by name. This was wonderfully fortunate because it gave Frank the introduction that he had been looking for and couldn't otherwise get. It was one of themselves who gave him really more than the priest would have been able to. The presence of the priest would have been interpreted that he was instructing Frank how to break up the place whereas this hallmark which now descended on him was the best possible and for that reason Frank delayed there talking to the man so that as many people as possible would get an eyeful of it. He bade him farewell when he thought this was accomplished and they resumed their walk - this time rid of a certain amount of the apprehension. They felt a great thing had been accomplished.
Now they found that Number 8 was the third last house on the left hand side and they went down to it. The hall door was open as most of them were always. They went in and knocked at the first door in the hall, on the left hand side, what would be called in the phraseology of those types of houses, the front parlor, and somebody shouted out to come in and they went in.
There were four girls standing in the room - it was obvious what they were, handsome young girls - and there was a fifth one in bed. Frank at once used their passport phrase, "Does Mary Kate live here?" Now in the narrative in "Miracles on Tap" which contains a very much expanded account of all these things, she is put down as Mary Lyne of Number 9 in order to conceal her identity then. "There she is in the bed." "Oh! She seems to be very, very sick." "Yeah, she's dying." Frank went over to her and she certainly did look as if she was about to expire. She was in a terrible state. He then addressed himself to the other girls and said, "Has she had the priest." "The priest won't come down here!" "Has she had the doctor?" "She won't let us send for the doctor!" Now at this time his confidence was very fully restored and he said to them, "Do you mean to say you're going to let her die there like a dog?" "Now what can we do?"
So,at that Frank went outside and nearly opposite, sitting on a window ledge, was a young tough, one of the unofficial “police” of the area who used to be known as Bullies. Frank beckoned to him and he came over. This was a new business, Frank was being obeyed, and he said to him, "Look, would you mind going around to Stuart Street and bringing a cab? We're taking Mary Kate to the hospital!" “Righto!,” he said and he ran off. Frank went back into the room and gave instructions that they should get her ready to be taken over to the hospital. The girls set to work on that and Frank went and stood outside.
After a very short time up rolled the old four-wheeler cab. Taxies were only coming in around that time. Within a few minutes they had the poor girl in the cab and, accompanied by two of her companions, it rolled off to the old Venereal Hospital in Dublin over at a place called Townsend Street. When she arrived there, the first thing they did was to bring the priest because she was very near death. The Matron of the place, with whom they had a lot of subsequent contact, told them that one hour longer without medical attention and that girl would have been dead.
One hour! So that was extraordinary and struck them with terrible force. From the Legionary point of view they would regard that as a sign. Here was this girl on the point of death and, as if they were led by her Angel Guardian, they went straight to her, no intervening house at all, just straight to her. With medical attention she lived for six weeks. They were visiting that hospital at the time and she said to the Legionaries repeatedly that she hoped she would not recover, that she was very fit to die and she wanted to die. Just before her death she called on the others in the ward to join her in the Rosary and she died on its conclusion. She was buried in the great cemetery of Glasnevin and they all attended the funeral and the population of Bentley Place attended it. Such an outfit gathered together you never saw. Frank remembered that that was consoling to the last degree.
Back to Number 8
“He has been sent in to get rid of us”
So, then, that puts Miss Plunkett and Frank Duff back in the room in Number 8 along with the two other girls. They had a brief chat with them and they suggested the Legionaries come over to their house. Now these girls were only visitors in Number 8. Miss Plunkett and Frank went over to another house on the other side of the road and there were three girls in that room that they went into. Miss Plunkett and Frank settled down to tell them about Sancta Maria and to appeal to them to go and do likewise. They listened again. They had heard about it and they listened very eagerly to the whole account. So far, the Legionaries were having a time which was exactly the opposite to what their anticipation had painted.
While they were talking, a young fellow came into the room, about 22 years of age or thereabouts, a handsome young fellow, whom Frank subsequently christened Rudolph Valentino - he was the reigning film star at the time. Frank said to himself when he came into the room, "Oh, he has been sent in to get rid of us." Instead of coming over and joining in our conversation, he went to the fireplace, put his elbow up on the mantelpiece and listened intently. At his coming in Frank had stiffened himself up for a certain rush on his part. They were not going to leave just because they were requested to do so. That would take a lot of living down about their great exploit in going there and then walking out very meekly. So that was not going to happen. While Frank had one eye on him, he ceased to talk and left it go on with the others. But eyeing him he could see no evidence of viciousness there. He seemed to be really listening and after just observing him for a moment or two, Frank went over to him and entered into chat with him and found an extraordinary sad position.
He was one of the Bullies alright. He was actually the brother of one of the girls with whom they were talking. The name of his sister was Victoria Smith and he was something Smith. He freely spoke to Frank that he was very badly placed and that he was living down there. He admitted he was a shoplifter by day and a Bully by night. Frank argued with him about the dreadful character of that life. He agreed. He said he knew it so very well but there was no way of getting out of it. That was his position. He said he would welcome any change. So Frank gave him a note to Father Devane. He asked Father Devane to insert him into the schedule for the retreats at Rathfarnham Castle and also to give him some time and see what could be done to help him. He gave Frank a promise that he would present that note and he did. He made the retreat and Father Devane sent him over to Liverpool into a job. Years after that he visited Frank at Concilium. He proved to be a steady going person. He had been in employment all the time and a complete success. So that was very wonderful.
A Terrible Time
Then after dealing in that room, Miss Plunkett and Frank Duff left that room escorted by one of the girls as an introducer and they got through a lot of the area. And one of the items of it was extraordinary. Now up to this point they had been dealing with very neat, well-dressed girls who didn't drink-although probably everybody down there drank - but at that time of the morning in any case no sign of drinking had presented itself and the girls were tidy and nice. But they came into another place and ran up against a totally different order - the battered type that had been on the streets for a great number of years and who had sunk with every day, perpetual drinkers, clad in rags, whose appearance was generally dreadful. Frank reckoned there were about eight of them in one house. Among this crowd was a great willingness to listen to them and an apparent possession of good faith. They were extraordinarily nice to the Legionaries and while they were talking, another one came in with a big quart bottle of methylated spirits and a jug of water and some glasses. Well, the moment she came in, they were all transformed. They forgot the Legionaries and they came over and grouped themselves around the provider. Each woman in turn would be given two glasses and she'd get a dose of methylated spirit in one glass and the other glass would be filled to the brim with water. It was like a witch's rite. It really was! It was a most uncanny thing. I had never seen anything like it before. Their eyes were riveted on that bottle. It was the strangest thing in the world. So they got into a circle and the person coming in passed around the circle, giving this to each one in turn. The methylated spirits were drained over followed by pouring in the water and when this went around the whole lot, a new spirit seemed to take possession. They formed into a ring-a-rosy and proceeded to run or dance around the whole place in a circle and some of them seized Miss Plunkett and Frank and pulled them into the revolving ring. If you'd had a television camera to take that scene, you'd have made as much as a million dollars out of it.
So this thing went on for some time, a witches' dance. Then they began to throw themselves onto the beds to get sleep and the Legionaries couldn't get any more conversation with them. But in the time they had been dealing with them, they had told them that they were opening a retreat on the following Saturday evening in 76 Harcourt Street itself because after the second retreat in Baldoyle, that convent became unavailable to them. The superiors of the Order became apprehensive of associating the convent too much with that type of work because they were running, as noted earlier, a holiday home and weekend retreat house out there. They had to look around for other accommodations but were not able to get any. Then they took the big step of saying they’d hold it in the house. This was to be the first retreat held in the house itself, Sancta Maria. These had eagerly agreed to go but when they moved away from that room, the amount of reliance that they placed upon their promises were precisely nil. They did not know whether they would even recall the conversation when they sobered up.
All New Clothes
The spectacle of depravity was great because of that methylated spirit-drinking which was the alternative to the more refined drinks partly because it was cheap and partly because its kick was very great. Actually, it had the extraordinary power that it might be hours and hours since one took the dose of it and to take a drink of water revived the effect. It was depraving in its effects. The girls had pointed out, and very obviously truthfully, that a difficulty in the way of their coming over on the retreat was the state of their clothing. That was as true as could be because they were in a ghastly condition. Rags, real rags and so they were promised clothing. It got to be pretty late and it was now 5 o'clock in the Evening. They had spent the whole day down there and in that whole day not one nasty word had been addressed to them nor had they had one hand raised against them. This was a surprise of surprises. Then they hurried off over to Sancta Maria to tell the tale and it was received with amazement. They told them there that they had arranged for this retreat because they had gotten so many promises. It appears that that they had gotten forty promises during that day. Did ever anybody hear of such an unexpected change in prospects? So that sparked off all the preparations for the retreat and it also meant they would have to forage around to get some clothing for them. On the following Friday, that would be the day before the retreat would begin, Miss Massey, who was at that time the President of the Praesidium, splendid girl, and Frank Duff with a couple of suitcases went down and they went to this particular house where all the ladies were. Strange to say, they found that they remembered their promises and there followed the scene of the distribution of the clothes. This was equivalent for strangeness to the witches' dance of the previous time because they fought like tigers for the articles of clothing and then proceeded without heeding the Legionaries to bring it down to the one male present, they proceeded to change into the new garments. Well, the thing was extraordinary.
“You Must Take Me Away With You Now”
During the course of this business, one of the women beckoned to Frank Duff and brought him outside on the street and she said to him - she was about 38 years of age, one of the elder brethren, - "You must take me away with you now." "Oh, well," Frank said, "there are difficulties in the way of that now. We're not quite ready." "You'll have to take me away now because I hate this life and I want to finish with it. But I'll never find my way over if you don't take me over now." Well, now it was mentioned already that the Legionaries were in the grip of an idea that they now repudiate – that they attached a sort of undue influence to the retreat. They regarded it as part of a procedure that the girls had to conform to, meaning that this was the guarantee of a girl's good intention and fortifying of her in that good intention and so it seemed necessary. But this meant that they had to take the woman over into the house and keep her there without the retreat. They just didn't conform to the pattern of the moment and Frank at the same time said to himself, "Well, now we'll have to do something for her." So a thought came to him. He wrote to the Matron of that Venereal Hospital and asked her as a favor to take this girl in and keep her for the night and if she would manage it, to escort her over to Sancta Maria on the following evening when the retreat was to begin. Frank gave this lady the letter. Now on the following evening when Frank entered Sancta Maria himself in preparation for the retreat, this lassie was the first person to come and greet him.
“There's a fellow”
It had all worked out perfectly and there she was sober and clean and, you might say, Frank Duff had to look six times at her. Well now, she had been on the streets sixteen years and during a very great portion of that time she had been a methylated spirit-drinker and yet that girl never looked back. Her behavior in the Hostel was exemplary. After she was there for perhaps a couple of months, she came to Frank one day and took him aside. "There's a fellow," she said, "living down there" – that meant in the neighborhood of Bentley Place "there's a fellow living down there and he often said he'd marry me if he could rely on me. I want you to go down to him and tell him I'm making an attempt." So Frank took his name and address and went down to see him one Saturday afternoon. He was a docker by profession and Frank went into his room. He was sitting on his bed reading the papers, one of the toughest-looking fellows you could imagine, a powerful tough fellow. He said to Frank, "What do you want?" So he told him that he came from this girl and what she had said to him. "Yes, Yes, I like her very much. Yes, I did say that to her and I'm willing, if you can believe her." Frank gave him his impressions about her and that he thought she was full of good intentions and that sort of thing and her behavior up to that time had been splendid. He asked a question or two and then he remained silent for an indefinite interval. Then he looked at Frank and said, "I'll marry the old hen." That wasn't the other case described previously with regard to the first retreat where Frank also had the same mission to perform. This is a totally different case.
They were married and, according to the fairy tale phrase, they lived happily ever after. That girl never looked back.
Queen of the Spunkers
Now just a word about the retreat itself. After giving those clothes to that group, Miss Massey and Frank Duff then proceeded to go around to try to remind the girls that they had spoken to before about a retreat being arranged and all that but it was a disastrous experience. This was late afternoon now and the place was already in full swing. They only met some of the older girls by accident. The place was thronged with men. Drink was already showing its effects and you couldn't imagine anybody turning up to a retreat. You couldn't get anybody to speak to, just a mad frenzy prevailing all around you. So they departed very dispirited indeed not knowing what the retreat was going to work out to but on Saturday night they found nine had showed up from that area alone.
Well, then they had got a few more from the old lodging houses on the South Side of the city and in any case they had perhaps thirteen or fourteen on retreat in addition to the girls who were in the house and that went off very successfully. There was another terrific restoration. There was a girl called Maggie Ballard. Maggie Ballard was known as the Queen of the Spunkers. Spunk is a slang expression for methylated spirit. Normally it's slang for courage but it is also used to designate methylated spirit. She was called the Queen of the Spunkers and had been 22 years down there. She was originally from Glasgow and she was one of those who turned up and who was a perfect restoration from the first second and never looked back. After she had been with us for some time, we sent inquiries on foot and managed, with her aid of course, to restore her to her family in Glasgow.
At Once to Sancta Maria
Now that was Retreat Number One in the house and it was the beginning of the Bentley Place campaign. This assumed a different character to their previous maneuverings around the low-class lodging houses because they had now a district on their hands. They arranged to visit the place every Friday evening and Frank Duff always took a group of the lady legionaries with him varying that group to some extent, not taking a different group each time but just bringing in a newcomer, so the training-experience would be the propey of a lot of people after a while. This was tremendous. You see, they had never done that sort of work before. To see the absolute efficiency and courage with which they took it on! Ah, it was unbelievable! So, in addition to that, a group of the Legionaries went down every Sunday morning without a man with them on the pretext of reminding them about the obligation of Mass. Well, that was a pretext because you hadn't a chance of getting anybody. They were sleeping off the debauch of the night before. The lot of ladies there would use their tongues on the visitors and that sort of thing and the visitors would be lucky in getting off with that. But that then became the routine and that was followed out altogether. That visitation picked off a girl every now and then. By this time they had made up our minds that their stiff adherence to the retreat as a condition of entering the house was wrong and that meant that, if you picked up a girl in the place, you'd bring her off at once to Sancta Maria. Not so much out of the Sunday morning visits but out of the Friday visitation every now and then they'd pick up one and take her off. The routine there was that if you got a girl to consent, their whole party left, that is, they did not leave either the girls or Frank down there. They were a sort of protection for him and he was a protection for them.
“Are you not going to have a word with us?”
Frank Duff said that there was one case that had always occupied indelibly a spot in his mind because it taught him a very great lesson. It was the case of a girl, Babs Haughey. She had been in that place a fair amount of time and the story is about her. One afternoon in his office a colleague said to Frank suddenly, "I suppose that work of yours for the girls is a shockingly difficult one." "No," he said, "No, on the whole, no." The colleague said, "I suppose you run up against a great number of hopeless cases." "No," Frank said, "they're difficult but we don't use that word hopeless lest it diminish our effort." "Just as man to man," he said, "have you any what you'd call real hopeless cases?" "Yes," and Frank told him about Babs Haughey. He picked her out as the one really hopeless case he knew. He then explained what he based it on. She was a nice girl and she'd never been in even one instance unpleasant to the Legionaries. But Frank could never discern in her during the whole time that he had been visiting the area a spark of religion. For that reason he assessed her in that category. When he told him all this, they drifted back to their work again.
Well, now, that very evening was the evening of their Friday night visitation. By way of a variety that evening Frank was bringing a statue down to some comparatively decent family in the locality and the statue was done up very amateurishly in brown paper. To look at it - Frank was carrying it himself - you could not say what it was. Frank had two of the women legionaries with him and they were going down the opposite side of the street. They came level with her who was with two other girls sitting on the window ledge on the other side. They had our job to do and they weren't going to stop. She hailed them and said, "Are you not going to have a word with us?" They turned abruptly right and went over and stood in front of the girls. After greetings she said, "What's that you are carrying?" "Oh, that," Frank said, "Oh, Babs, no use telling you that because you wouldn't understand." "But I want to know all the same." "It would only upset you. It's outside your sphere altogether. You wouldn't have an idea." "I'm not that ignorant," she said. "Surely I would be able to know something about it." "Oh, no!", and Frank methodically tormented her until he had her in the ninth degree of curiosity. And then pretending to yield to her, "Well," he said, "I don't want bothering your mind but I'll have to give you what you want." He tore off the paper from the head of the statue and the statue looked right at her. Well, she went white. It was really a shock to her and she looked at Frank and she looked at the statue and she looked back to Frank and so forth for a while. Then she said to him in a very peculiar voice, one which he had ever heard from her, a gentle sorrowful voice, "Mr. Duff," she says, "is that really what you think of me?" "Oh, Babs," he said, "I had no intention of hurting you but after all what else could I say." "Why?" she said, "Why?" "Well," he said, "You have been very nice to us. You've never spoken a cross word to us but I've never seen a spark of faith in you." Frank had concluded that she just didn't have any. "Well," she said, "that's where you are wrong. When I turn around, it's not going to be like some of these other ones. It's going to be for good." "Oh," Frank said, "do you really mean to turn around some day?" "I do!" "Well, why not make it now, Babs?" So she eyed him for some time and she said, "I will." And she got up and went inside. It was her own house and she went in to dress herself.
Their system was that when they made a capture like that, they assembled if they were apart. They weren't apart that evening. But if they were apart, they assembled and they all went away together with the girl. Now Frank at once gave instructions sending for a cab. They delivered the statue and she came out ready for the road. They got into the cab and headed for Sancta Maria. When they came to the corner of Stephen's Green and Harcourt Street-there used to be a well-known pub there called the Winter Gardens-Babs said, "Would you do me a great favor?" "I'll do anything for you within reason," Frank said. "Would you get me a glass of whiskey?" "Certainly," Frank said. They stopped the cab and he went over into the pub and he brought out a glass of whiskey to her. She drank that and we went on to Sancta Maria where she was received with joy. Now that girl never turned back, never again offended. And after some time she announced that there was one particular man. When they went to this man, he was just like the others. If he had a sort of guarantee that she was in earnest, he would marry her. And he did. That man was a Quaker and he came into the Church. It meant he had to receive Baptism. Well, there's another case of one who never, never again looked back. So that was a terrific lesson to Frank.
Frank had said, "That's a hopeless case and that very night she slept in Sancta Maria - the very same day I said that she was hopeless. She was never destined to commit another offense. It was a very salutary warning to myself.”
Now that meant this was the routine, perhaps, giving a little picture of the routine always moving on and picking off a girl every time, picking them off regularly. That was in progress for two years and without any unhappy episodes, really. Frank was friendly with everybody down there even with the owners. There were three big owners and it would be a tremendous point of interest to describe the owners. But if you would be interested, you'll get the history of all these things in the narrative of Bentley Place, "Miracles on Tap.” You'll get that background. Also, Frank never fell into the mistake while there of taking sides, of going down in sympathy, a mood of emotionalism, and thinking that the girls were poor, victimized creatures and that the Bullies and the owners ought to be dealt with drastically. They were all the same and they were all people that one wanted to get around. That meant that he was great friends with all the Bullies as well as with the owners.
He Would Just Disappear
That's the last we saw of him
It was the correct policy. The great owner down there was a person that Frank Duff has put down in the narrative as Mrs. Curley. That was not her real name. She owned thirteen brothels in that area. This was a big responsibility. She had a manageress in each place, in each house. There was a whole system, which is detailed in the "Miracles on Tap," of how profits worked out. Now a big owner like Mrs. Curley would get one-third of all the profits, the manageress a third, the girls a third. If the owner only had one house or two houses, very often she acted as manageress and in that case there used to be, as their phrase put it, only one divide. In other words, they each got half. The owner got half and the girls got half. The profits came from the actual prostitution itself and drink because they ran the clock down in that area. Drink was sold without license and at fantastic prices. And then the third great source of income down there used to be robbery. If you were foolish enough to go down with your pockets full of money, well, while you were asleep at night, your clothing was gone through and in a word, you didn't bring any money out of the place. You heard stories, which had foundation, about people coming up to the cattle markets in Dublin or something like that and going down into that place with their pockets full of money, sometimes thousands of pounds, and being stripped of everything and being lucky to have their clothes to get away in. And, of course, there was a lot of talk about murder and that you could easily understand. If somebody began to create real trouble, if he was robbed or something of that, well, they would descend on him and they would proceed to use force towards him and if he died under that, they would all unite to bury him somewhere and there wouldn't be a word.
He would just disappear. If his tracks had been followed into the place, they'd be able to get fifty people to get up and say, "Yes, but he went away at such and such an hour. That's the last we saw of him." That was one of the enticing ideas held before Frank before he went down that if he fell a victim in that way, that there'd be an unlimited number of people to swear that he was there from such and such an hour and then he went on. So, as the expression put it, that there was never a dull moment. But however, the time wagged on. The Legionaries could actually see the moment when they would have cleared the place because the place was visibly diminishing in numbers. Then a marvelous circumstance intervened. Every year in that big parish of Marlborough Street a four-week retreat began on what was formerly called Septuagesima Sunday. It would be three weeks before Lent and this year the retreat was allocated to the Jesuits. One of the three priests who were to give it was Father Devane whose name you have heard .and another of them was Father Mackey, who was a most remarkable person, remarkable! And the third was Father Roche. When the three of them were brought together for this enterprise, Father Devane told them the whole business - that into the middle of this parish came Bentley Place. Normally, the operations of the retreat would not even distantly touch that place. All visitation would stand off from it. All workers would circle around it. But Father Devane spotlighted it and Father Mackey, who was the leader of the team, determined to throw the whole weight of the retreat against it, He didn't quite see, of course, the full scope of it all. But what he did determine to do was to make every possible approach to the place and at this stage they sent for Frank. He gave them a very intimate account of what the place was like and we drew up a great plan of campaign. From the first moment the priests said: "Proceed to organize a great campaign of prayer and supplication against that area refraining from any mention of the place itself." Prayer was mentioned all the time-prayer, prayer, prayer. And as a part of this campaign every legionary in Dublin was to go down and visit not only that area but the whole parish. They drew up a scheme, all other works were dropped, and they proceeded to visit every home, every pub, every club, any place where there were groups of people to be got, and plead for prayer in regard to this great evil.
Now the retreat itself started off tamely as even in those days they used to. There would be plenty of vacant room in the Church and this was no exception. Then, as all this mechanism got going, the attendance at retreat swelled up. You couldn't get in unless you went considerably in advance of the hour and a strange sort of fervor developed.
Mrs. Curley
When this atmosphere had penetrated, it was tangible, Frank Duff went along first to Mrs. Curley, who by this time he knew very well, and he asked Mrs. Curley would she very kindly come to a meeting with the three priests and Frank just to chat over the whole situation there. There was no bullying in question. "No, we're not going to bully you, Mrs. Curley, not at all. We just want to have a chat with you." "Oh, I would love to come along and talk it all over with you." That meeting was held in the Belvidere Hotel, which is not too far removed from the spot itself, and Mrs. Curley, beautifully-dressed, came along and sat down with the four of them. From the first moment it was extraordinary. She said, "If you could close down this place, I'd be the happiest woman in the whole world. I've been going around attending retreats to try to get back to the Church but when I come to the point about my trade, I can't get absolution at all. The condition is I have to shut down and see I have seven children." Now Frank knew all that. She told him that privately and he had the greatest sympathy with her. She had the faith in a big way. She was a fair person. If her trade could be justified, she was an admirable person. But there it was. So they came to the point, "Could she now shut down?" After all, her eldest son was a successful bookie at this time and some of the other children were working and she could now do it. She'd love to, she'd love to. She said in the end she would shut down and then she said, "I will forgive any girl from any of my houses what they owe me. I will clothe every girl from head to foot who will go to Sancta Maria."
That question of debt was a terrible problem down there. All the girls, no matter what their big earnings might be, were in debt. The very clothes on their backs were there on credit. They had bought these clothes originally on credit at appalling prices. There was one of the ladies down there called Roberts and she was the costumier of the whole district. She used to buy clothes wholesale and then she'd charge probably double retail rate and on credit. And on credit means three pence per shilling per week. Three pence per shilling per week and sometimes bigger rates of interest charged. The strange thing was that whatever the owners might be doing, everybody else seemed to be in debt. So this was a marvelous discussion and then they picked another proprietor and had her up. And they all came and they'd have this interview. Well, they got promises from all of them that they would shut down. Not all of these were kept. Then they had a general meeting with all the girls. Just imagine that. The meeting with the girls was very sensational. What they had in mind was the original meeting in Slicker's Lodging House which inaugurated their whole work. This general meeting was held in the kitchen of Mrs. Curley's home.
This was held during the Parish Retreat. This meeting of the girls was held in Mrs. Curley's kitchen. Her house was a three story house over the technical border from Bentley Place. One side of the street was Bentley Place and the other side was not. She was on the other side of the street.
One of the things that Frank was always looking for during all that time was some underground system. Now, when he'd be moving through different houses of Bentley Place, he was always measuring the thicknesses of walls, places where there'd be secret doors, secret places, because a lot of very prominent people of Dublin used to resort to that place and if they went into the public places, they certainly would be asking for blackmailing. For that reason he was convinced that there must be a private system where you could go and be undetected. But in all his time he could never find anything.
Mae O’Blong
But in any case, the retreat wagged on and the amount of fervor created over the parish was astounding. Now, the person who really distinguished himself properly in all those negotiations was Father Mackey. Father Mackey was a wonderful person. Their interviews took in, besides the owners and some of the manageresses, this lady whose name Frank Duff mentioned as Mrs. Roberts. Now Mrs. Roberts had been a celebrated character in her day down there, first as a rank and file girl. Even at the time Frank knew her she was very handsome and very tall and clever. She gravitated from the ranks to be the owner of several houses and her name was known all over the world. It’s not known what her original name was but she was known everywhere as Mae O'Blong and her doings were celebrated. She had married a man called Roberts and had drifted out of the direct trade and she had become the costumier and usurer for that district. In those capacities she was probably responsible for keeping the system going because the girls had to resort to her for their clothes. There was pressure and she gave them credit, of course. It was advantageous with everybody that they should want credit. In addition to the extra prices they were charged usury. She had a little shop. Frank remembered because he had been recommended to go and see her as being a person who had reformed and I interviewed her in that capacity. She was bringing him through her house from one place to another and looking into an open door which he passed, he said to himself, "Oh! Oh! Is that what she is?" The whole room was filled with hangers and women's garments, fur coats, everything. "Oh, so, she's the costumier. Ha!" She was also invited to the meeting with the priests and she came in a coach and was attired, of course, for the occasion. She wouldn't walk up. Coach, if you please, and she came in and took possession of the meeting from the opening. She treated them as four naughty boys. She told them how foolish they were and would they grow up. Didn't they know that men were that sort. Were they so foolish as to not know that men had to be prepared in that way and really this was a beneficial place. She said that in her day when she was running houses, she had a medical certificate put up over every bed proving that the girl in question had not venereal disease and, as she said to them, that after a man had spent his time down there, he was able to go back as clean as a whistle to his wife and children. They had the difficulty that we were trying to keep on a kindly basis, a religious basis, and her clever, clever method was making this impossible. But Father Mackey determined that they’d had enough and he turned on her and he lacerated her. She caved in but, of course, they got nowhere with her. She was one of the worst elements in the whole place.
Well, they reached the stage then having interviewed everybody of consequence and in the main got an affirmative answer - they would close down. Mrs. Curley's problem was her family. How was she going to live? This they managed to meet by saying they will buy the houses from you. They'll buy the houses. Get a valuation of them and they will buy them. Frank managed to secure a purchaser and when the whole thing was over, she abundantly carried through her side of the bargain. That sum of money was paid over and, as part of the eventual maneuver; they filled all those houses with people from all over Dublin who were looking for accommodation. Frank remembered that that was an item Father Mackey disagreed very much with him over. He agreed with everything except the nature of the tenants that they eventually brought in. Frank’s idea was to do two works in one and bring in waifs and strays and his was that you bring in respectable people. Frank’s argument was that there was no respectable person who would go down and live in that area. The place was so appalling - it had an appalling name - that they’d be lucky to get anybody. He had a great phrase for the thing. He said they shouldn't be superimposing one charity upon another. But, in any case, there was an evening fixed and on this particular evening at a given time the place was officially to shut down and every girl was to report over to Sancta Maria.
The End of Bentley Place
This particular day when the place was officially to shut down and every girl was to report over to Sancta Maria, would have been a day or so before the end of the parish retreat. They wanted that to happen during the retreat because this strange atmosphere was helpful. That was a moment of tremendous excitement and about two-thirds of the place closed down. Mrs. Curley closed down all her houses and all her girls came over to Sancta Maria. Two of the other owners did not close down after having promised. Frank’s time was spent running around trying to find all these people that had gone into concealment.
When the Legionaries debated the question, they argued that the place would have to be shut down as it was. If they were satisfied with just having taken away two-thirds, then they'd just go back to resume former operations. That place would always be a temptation to some of the girls they had got and to others from other places because the trade down there would be lucrative and that it would be a continued solicitation. So, they went off and we interviewed the Chief Commissioner of Police, General Murphy, and he listened to them with extraordinary attention. He was a very good man and an auxiliary member of the Legion probably from that time. He was a really good man. He was a General, a military General, having served in the British Army during the war.
So, they drew up a scheme and on a certain night, that would be Thursday night. The police marched into the place in force and they arrested every girl and every man they found in the place. The place was carrying on. The usual body of men would go down, of course, but there was a much lesser force of girls. But they were carrying on. So the police broke in doors and arrested everybody including two of the owners who had opted out. There followed a great trial in Dublin. This became quite a notable thing and they were sentenced. The men were all let out and the girls were let out without penalty.
That concluded the official history of Bentley Place. At the same time they were going around all the lodging houses of Dublin looking for people who would take rooms in the district because the place had after that to pay its way to the new owner. They were being let in for a moderate rent but then that would have to be paid. So the march into the place was the most comical thing ever seen. The luggage and property of the new tenants arrived in all sort of miscellaneous fashions, in little trucks pushed by the people and in perambulators and all sorts of possible ways. And inside a couple of days, there was an inhabited area again. To get rid of those people would require military force. Some of them had for the first time in their lives a home and that they would defend to the last man and woman. So, at once the Legionaries set up a praesidium. This was all done with tremendous speed, efficiency and showing a great command of obedient material. They started a praesidium called Porta CoeIi. The duty of this praesidium was to visit that area and that area alone assiduously and to see that the new atmosphere was given a chance. On the morning of the Sunday when the retreat was to be concluded, they had arranged for a blessing of the whole place. The priests had not come into the place itself during the whole time.
It was about 11 o'clock that they resorted down there. The priests in their most formal get-up went through all the houses blessing them, formal blessings on every one of these rooms. By this time a vast concourse of people had flowed into the place because word had travelled. Then when this blessing of the whole place was done in a very formal way, almost the manner of an exorcism, they came to what you might call the center point of the whole place. It was one street which went along there called Purdon Street. Purdon Street was a part of the area. The place off it would be Bentley Place which was really Elliott Place. Then there were a whole lot of miscellaneous streets and lanes in the place that were all taken in. Half a dozen streets would comprise the thing. And this was just right in the center. They brought out a kitchen table and put it up against a great concrete wall which had been erected to divide a corporation building scheme from this place. Apparently they reckoned at the time this would require some dividing because this wall was almost twenty feet high. The table was put there and from the table the priests spoke to the great crowd and pleaded for prayer and everything that the problem would never assert itself there again.
When Father Mackey who gave the chief talk was finished, he got down off the table and a chair was put on top of the table. Frank climbed up on top of the chair and reaching up as far as he could on this lofty wall, he drove a heavy spike into the wall and we put that crucifix onto it as a formal taking possession of the place. So then they came down off the table and the assembly dispersed.
Now in this particular moment the girls and the men who were captured were all in prison and they petitioned the Commissioner of Police to allow them to go in. Father Mackey and Frank went and interviewed our population and besought them to carry out their promises. They met with a very good reception. They were crediting the Legionaries with the trouble and in the circumstances they were very nice to them. They at once saw the girls and the men were released without penalty. They judged that to be necessary in order to maintain the good relations.
Then followed the prosecution of the two manageresses on the charge of running brothels. One of them was foolish enough to talk and gave herself away and she got a month or two imprisonment. The other one just kept resolutely silent. And, as you know, with these requirements now it's impossible to prove a person guilty unless, of course, police are looking on. So, she got off and vanished out of Dublin altogether. They never heard of her again.
Well, that place never looked back and the moment the girls emerged from jail nearly all of them reported to Sancta Maria and went in. It was the most successful thing of its kind in all history. In fact, Frank said he didn’t know whether religious history produces anything like it. Of course, you get other examples.
Practically every single girl in that place was received into Sancta Maria. Practically every one. Now formerly there was a great vagueness about the numbers down there. For instance, when Frank was going around trying to make inquiries before our first approach, he could never get any estimate as to the number of girls. There were people who had professed to know something about the thing and when you'd say to them, "How many girls are down there?" "Oh! Oh! there are a terrible lot." "How many now, to be precise?" “Wouldn't be able to tell you.” Well, now, Frank’s own estimate based on his years of experience there was that when they went into the area, there were two hundred girls. They'd picked off, probably, one hundred of them, perhaps more, in the ordinary visitation period of two years. They got then a big crowd of the girls in the final close down and they got the remainder after they were released from prison.
Continue at Story of Edel Quinn