Take me back to Monto

The girls were gentle girls. If they saw any of the children coming along the street where they were working they would say, ‘Go home, boy’ and they would give them a penny or two. Ah, be God, they were gentle girls, kind-hearted too, they were. It was sad to see the way the madams treated them.” – Billy Dunleavy, born 1907 in the Corporation Buildings.

They weren’t always called whores, at least not in Monto. Dublin’s famous old red light district – less than a square mile in size – was thronged with over 1,500 poor unfortunate girls in its heyday. Nestled in the north inner city near Connolly Station, the den of iniquity got its nickname from Montgomery Street – now Foley Street. The old cobblestones upon which the coppers feared to tread are still there but the fierce madams and the prostitutes that called Monto home between 1860 and 1920 are long since gone.

“The area developed such a reputation that it got a mention in the 1903 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica,” says Terry Fagan, a historian who has spent the past 25 years collecting stories about the red light district immortalised in song and verse.

Born and reared in Corporation Buildings in the heart of what was once one of the busiest red light districts in Europe, Terry has made it his life’s mission to collect every single fleck of information harking back to the days of madams, murder and black coddle in Monto. He set out on voluntary work in the 1970s delivering meals on wheels to the elderly. In exchange they gave him first hand accounts of life in Monto, firing an enthusiasm that grips him to the present day.

“Madam Oblong was a hard woman and you could not argue with her, begod. She would lift up a bacon knife and slash at you with it if you tried to cross her.” – Jem King, born 1911 on East Arran Street, moved to Corporation Street 1916.

As planned and efficient as all organised crime should be, the brothels worked under a class system. Terry explains: “There were the flash houses for the wealthy that would have the pretty girls. When they got older they moved to cheaper houses. Then there were the shilling houses where the girls, old and sick, would earn their last few pennies before they were thrown out onto the streets, riddled with venereal disease, to die.”

The girls poured into Dublin from the famine-crippled countryside and few were fortunate to make the first-class grade. Even if they did, life was a nightmare under the rule of the Madams – brothel keepers tougher than the coffin nails you would require if you messed with them.

Perhaps the most feared of all was May Roberts, a tall and broad woman better known as Madam Oblong. “If a girl said she had three clients but the pimp said she had four then Madam Oblong would have her stripped,” says Terry. “If money was found on her then God help her. May would whip out a big knife and slash her across the face, swish, so she would be of no use to anyone else. Then she would boot her out into the gutter.”

Another brothel keeper Becky Cooper is remembered a little more fondly. Although a fan of the sup, and stern enough to build her own empire within an empire, she went to great lengths to make sure ‘chislers’ never saw what kinky antics the adults were up to.

But if the children had managed to see the illicit goings on they would have witnessed judges, politicians and cops getting their end away for a couple of shillings. “King Edward was known to drop by via the underground tunnels under Monto when he was the Prince of Wales,” says Terry. “James Joyce would call around too. It catered for the biggest names in English and Irish society as well as the drunken sailors and soldiers.”

But there was more to Monto than sex and violence. Modern Irish history was even forged in its alleys. The girls slept with British soldiers and pillow talk was passed on to Irish rebels in safe houses, all the way up to one Michael Collins. Blood was spilt into the gutters of Monto at the hands of the Black and Tans. When Civil War raged in 1922 and the IRA split, Monto became a hiding place for anti-Treaty IRA men. The music and words of the National Anthem were written behind walls there. Kids dodged bullets as they ran to O’Connell Street while smoke and gunfire filled the air one day in Easter 1916.

“The Madams didn’t go, they stayed on in Monto for years after. They went around as if they were saints and we were all sinners. They lived in luxury as brothel keepers. We lived in the squalor of the ‘one rooms’ and reared good hard working families in them. We had done nothing to be ashamed of, they had.” – Elizabeth Dillon, born 1915 on Corporation Street.

All good, bad and indifferent things must come to an end. For Monto the end was ushered in by a man named Frank Duff – the harbinger of the Madams’ downfall.

“Duff decided that there was a need to seek out the women in their lodgings to try to persuade them to abandon prostitution,” Terry explains. Even though the likes of Madam Oblong proved as hard to move as her cold heart, slowly but surely the brothels fell and what was to become the Legion of Mary grew. Endgame crept nearer.

“The final closure of the brothels took place in 1925, during Lent,” Terry explains. “The Legion decided to take on the Madams once and for all.

A date was set for the shutters to fully come down on Monto. A large-scale police raid was organised – kicking off at midnight on March 12, 1925.

“Duff heard that some of the cops were still under the remaining Madams’ thumbs and they were going to be less than diligent in exercising their duty. He tracked down the General to warn him, and in turn the General told the Superintendent that ‘heads would roll’ if the raid did not go ahead as planned.”

The coppers took heed of their superior. That night a convoy of police cars and lorries blazed into Monto. Hundreds were arrested, clients and Madams alike.

The following Sunday a solemn blessing of Monto was organised by the Legion. A procession joined – and watched – by hundreds wound its way towards Monto at the head of which was a simple crucifix carried by Duff.

Terry describes the end of an era. “They blessed each house and on each door they nailed a picture of the Sacred Heart. When they got to the back wall of the Corporation Buildings they stopped and a chair was placed on top of a table. Frank Duff mounted the chair and hammered a spike into the wall as high as he could and hung up the crucifix.”

The people had reclaimed Monto.

For more info on Monto, and there is much, much more, call Terry Fagan at the Dublin City Folklore Centre at (087) 9222491. He’ll also be happy to give details on where to pick up his book Monto, Madams, Murder And Black Coddle