Unsettling truths on the marginalised

The Gmelchs recorded Travellers’ lives in 1971. A new documentary sees them catch up 40 years later, Colette Sheridan reports

SHOWING on RTÉ One this evening is Unsettled — From Tinker to Traveller, a new documentary, directed by Liam McGrath and Kim Bartley, about an American couple (both professors of anthropology at San Francisco University) who came to Ireland in 1971 to live with a Travelling community in the Dundrum/Balinteer area of Dublin, known as Holylands.

George and Sharon Gmelch, were looking for an aspect of Irish culture to study. They became interested in Travellers and lived for a year in a barrel top wagon with members of the Traveller community. They documented life in the community at a time when many people didn’t read or write or have cameras. The Gmelchs carried out some of the first academic research into Travellers and published a number of books including The Urbanisation of an Itinerant People and Tinkers and Travellers.

McGrath, who made Southpaw – The Francis Barrett Story, about the Traveller Olympic boxer, was making the documentary Blood of the Travellers when he came across a Traveller family looking at old photographs. When he went about getting clearance to use the photographs for Blood of the Travellers, he was told about the Gmelchs, who had taken them. He contacted the couple, who said they were returning to Ireland.

“Last summer they arrived at my office looking for a copy of Blood of the Travellers,” says McGrath. “I chatted to them and after they left I realised that their journey back to Ireland should be documented. They had come back to see what had changed in 40 years. It all happened very quickly. RTE came on board straight away. The documentary is about these Americans who had a friendship with and understanding of some Travellers.”

McGrath filmed the Gmelchs as they sought out the families they got to know on their first visit here. “The descendants of the families are now dispersed so we went from Dublin to Wicklow as well as Gorey and Moate. Most of the Travellers who were the same age as the Gmelchs had died. It’s one of the striking things about the documentary. The Gmelchs are only in their mid-60s. But the life expectancy of Traveller men is just 61, while that for women is 70.1.”

McGrath discovered that the first visit of the Gmelchs to the Travellers “was remembered vividly by Travellers who were children of nine or ten at the time. The Gmelchs fitted into family folklore. They were always taking photographs and interviewing members of the community. A lot of the Travellers had very fond memories of them.”

For those who didn’t remember them, the Gmelchs’ return was an opportunity for the Travellers to find out about their parents and grandparents and what life was like 40 years ago.

McGrath says that suicide was a subject that came up in the making of the documentary. “Every family we met had some connection with suicide in the recent past. One of the most startling facts that the Gmelchs discovered is that a Traveller man is six times more likely to die by suicide than a settled man.”

Sharon Gmelch points out that suicide was seen by Travellers “as a rare and shocking occurrence 40 years ago. Oddly enough, a man had committed suicide in the camp that we lived in only a few weeks before we arrived. So it was not unknown. When we returned last summer, we were surprised at how many Travellers brought the subject up because someone — sometimes more than one person — in their family had taken their own life.”

There is, says Gmelch, no single or simple explanation. “Grief after the loss of a family member can cause someone else to take their own life to escape the pain. Or it can be done in the belief that they’ll be able to join them. Suicide can also be an escape from conflict and violence or feelings of shame. Underlying all this, some Traveller men seem to feel they no longer have a purpose in life.”

McGrath feels that sensational programmes such as My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding are driven by ratings. Society in general is “indifferent” towards Travellers. But McGrath and the Gmelchs have come to know Travellers beyond the stereotype.

Last week, a previously unseen archive of 3,000 photographs of Irish Travellers taken between 1971 and 1972 was handed over to the National Folklore Collection in UCD on behalf of the Gmelchs by the Connors, Maughan and O’Donaghue families.

* Unsettled — From Tinker to Traveller is on RTE One at 9.30pm this evening.