Sexy text in the ’50s

In the repressive moral climate of the Ireland of the 1950s, there was little to ease the appetite of the prurient. English tabloids were unknown, and only the banned News of the World could be counted on for unrestrained coverage of the graphic sex lives of our neighbours across the water.
The one exception was the reportage of local seduction cases, where the putative father of an infant would be sued by the the father of a young girl who had given birth 'out of wedlock', as the quaint expression went.
These cases were heard in open court, reported in minute detail in the local papers, the identities of the parties involved fully recorded, the circumstances leading to the seduction openly argued over . Seduction cases were the stuff of village gossip, and the newspapers themselves – mindful of the selling power of a juicy seduction case – spared nothing in devoting full coverage to every aspect.
Seduction cases followed a fairly standard pattern. The plaintiff – the father of the young girl – would have to provide the defence team with the actual date of when the 'intimacy' took place. In addition, it had to be shown that the wronged party was in the service of the plaintiff at the time; seduction was grounded in hard nosed practicality. A Mayo father whose daughter had given birth while working in a Dublin hotel was deemed to have no case.
Many cases arose where the putative father, having first accepted responsibility, reneged on a promise to marry (a course which would have avoided legal action). In a famous Belcarra action, the father recounted how the faithless swain, having promised to marry his daughter, failed to show up at the church. The father told how, soon after the birth, the defendant had visited the house, and even measured the girl’s finger for ring size with a piece of string which he carefully replaced in his pocket, declaring that he was on his way to the priest’s house to make marriage arrangements. Alas, that was the last the girl or the family saw of the potential groom.
When the case came to hearing, the defendant pleaded that he had only agreed out of fear of the violence of the girl’s family.
The judge, unimpressed, made an award of the then large sum of one hundred pounds and costs.
Judges were noted in such cases as being men of the world when it came to deciding questions of paternity. When a defendant in Swinford told the court that he was “as innocent as the Pope in Rome”, the judge told him that he did not believe a word out of his mouth. And at Castlebar, the judge told a Garda Sergeant he was honourably vindicated when a paternity case brought against him needed to be looked at “with deep suspicion” The complainant, he noted, was a lady who had been prosecuted three times for larceny by the same Garda officer.
But the most telling stand-off between Church and State came at Clifden court when the curate of Ballyconneely, Fr Hennelly, had been sub poenad to attend a seduction hearing. On arrival, the priest announced that he would neither be taking the oath or giving evidence, on the grounds that the information he was privy to had been relayed to him as a priest and not as a layman, conceding that he was not referring to confessional information. The judge observed that it was a sad day when a clergyman felt he was above the law of the land, but his ire failed to change the mind of Fr Hennelly, who walked out the courtroom door.