Clodagh Finn: The silver tea set that tells story of Irish marriage bar
Karen Hoban with the tea-set given to her mother Mary Staunton by Mayo County Council, a wedding gift but also a (forced) retirement gift as married women could not return to their public-service jobs. Picture: Julien Behel.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but an object can tell the story of a lifetime.
The truth of that is evident as Karen Hoban talks about the silver-plated tea-set which was given to her mother by Mayo County Council when she got married in 1972. But there was nothing silver-plated about the harsh push out of her position that came with it, otherwise known as the marriage bar.
Mary Staunton, as she was then, “was unceremoniously dumped out of her job because she, of all things, got married”, to quote the no-nonsense words of culture minister Patrick O’Donovan at the launch of the thought-provoking Changing Ireland Galleries exhibition at Collins Barracks in Dublin on Wednesday.
He was particularly moved by the tea-set, one of some 250 objects designed to offer a kaleidoscope of perspectives on Ireland over the last century. He urged children to go to see it as a reminder of how women were once treated in this country.
And what treatment. The marriage bar forced tens of thousands of Irish women out of their public-service jobs between 1924 and 1973. The impact of that is still too vast to contemplate. All those lost contributions to society. All of those women prevented from making them.
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Karen Hoban remembers her mother talking about how unfair the marriage bar was but, like so many others, she accepted it at the time.
Indeed, she was even excited about leaving work, as the entry in her diary for Tuesday, March 21, 1972 shows: “Last day at work with Mayo Co Council. One of the best days I ever had at work. Said goodbye to all the staff. Not a bit lonely. Received my gift of silver. Delighted with it. Went to Westport after work to look at furniture. Did not buy anything. Came home on the train. Mammy had the other two cakes almond pasted. Washed my hair.” What does it say about her clerical-officer job that her last day at work was the best? But then Mary Staunton, aged 25, was distracted, and delighted, by her upcoming wedding to Anthony (Tony) Hoban.
There were no wedding planners then. Or long lead-ins. It’s pretty impressive to read how she squeezed so much into a two-day shopping trip to Dublin just three months before her wedding.
“Thursday 6 January 1972: Got up 7.45 to catch train to Dublin… Did a lot of shopping. Bought curtain material in Cleary’s, very pleased with it. Also wedding dress material in Roches. Went by bus to Uncle Tom’s and to 8 o’clock mass. Then went to Noreen’s party. Got to bed about 3.15.
“Friday 7 January 1972: Got up at 10am. Went into city. Got out some savings from GPO. Bought bridesmaids material in Casssidy’s. Had lunch in ‘Golden Spoon’. Very good. Mammy bought outfit in Brown Thomas. Rushed to station. Big crowd on train. Got home at about 11.15. Very tired.”
When she got home, Mary Staunton sewed up a storm. She made her own wedding dress, three bridesmaids’ dresses (with matching hairbands), a dressing-gown, a bolero and curtains for all the windows of her new house in Westport.
There were petitions from her children to use the specifically appointed hot-chocolate pot, but all without success.
The years fleeted by, as they do, and Karen inherited the tea-set when her father died three years after she lost her mother to early onset Alzheimer’s, at the age of 68, in 2015.
Just like her mother before her, the set was left on a shelf unused. When it started to tarnish, Karen contacted the National Museum in Turlough Park as she felt it represented an important slice of Irish social history.
That is how it ended up at Collins Barracks, a micro-story in this new history of Ireland which is told to stunning effect through exhibits as diverse as Rory Gallagher’s Fender Stratocaster, a decommissioned IRA rocket launcher, a 1950s steam press from the Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry, exquisite sculptures by artist Kathleen Cox from the 1930s and a bottle of Milk of Magnesia indigestion tablets.
Dónal Maguire, the museum’s Keeper of Art & Industry, and Dr Éimear O’Connor, Director of Collections, are making that point as they stand beside a dress worn by Áine Ní Cheanainn, the only woman appointed to the authority of RTÉ in the 1960s.
It beggars believe that this professional woman felt she needed to have sleeves added to Neillí Mulcahy’s design before meeting the then Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid.
Decades of repression, fear and second-guessing are evident in those hastily added puffy sleeves.
The silver tea-set has resonated hugely for similar reasons. Karen Hoban is a little bewildered by the attention it is attracting (minister O’Donovan has mentioned it three times) but then her mother’s experience was shared by so many other women who felt shut out of public life during the five decades the marriage bar was in force.
Mary Staunton had wanted to study art, but she didn’t get a chance to do that as a young woman. Instead, she got a job in a hotel in Castlebar before getting a coveted post as a clerical officer in the county council.
Her new husband worked in his parents’ pub and got a raise after getting married but, during the first two decades of their marriage, they experienced recession, inflation, very high interest rates on their mortgage, cut backs and strikes in industry.
The loss of a steady public sector income did not go unnoticed but, more than that, it was perhaps harder to bear the sense of being barred from working outside the home.
In later life, Mary Hoban did get to pursue her love of art. She did endless night classes in art and wrote poetry, some of which was published.
When her children, Karen, John, Darragh and Ronan, were older, she enrolled in Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (now Atlantic Technological University) to do a degree in Fine Art.
She was half way through it when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, but her daughter says her art helped her through her illness.
Mary Hoban might be bemused to find herself in the spotlight now, but the observations she recorded in the diary she kept for three months before her marriage say so much about the Ireland of the 1970s.
They range from the superficial — was off air for two weeks in 1972 when its host Gay Byrne was ill — to the deadly serious. On January 30, 1972, she noted: “Heard the sad news that 13 people had been shot dead by British soldiers during a peaceful march in Derry.” Two days later, she mentioned the parade, followed by mass, in Castlebar to remember the victims. “Very dreary day in every sense. Heavy, cold rain.”
It’s a pity she kept the diary for just three months as her entries offer a fascinating insight into the lives of women in the last year of the marriage bar.
She’s left us her tea-set though, or rather her daughter has passed it on to the next generation. Put on the kettle. It’s time to reflect on how far we have come, but also to talk about how much more needs to be done.
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