COUNTY VIEW: From bakers to bankers — a Castlebar family’s service to the fledgling State

In the stirring struggle for independence of 100 years ago, there are many stories of individual and family heroics that are little more than footnotes to a sprawling narrative. One of these was the extraordinary support given by a Castlebar business family as the new state, and particularly the new Mayo County Council, sought to break free of the imperial chain.
The Gavin family of Castlebar were the foremost family bakery in Co Mayo. Established at the turn of the century, just two decades before the War of Independence, its fleet of vans made a familiar sight as it distributed bread across the county.
Staunchly Republican, the business was in the hands of brothers Patrick and Tommy and their sister, Nora, who herself had lost her job as telegraph operator in Kiltimagh Post Office when she disclosed valuable inside information to the Irish Volunteers, then preparing for rebellion against British forces.
But it was in a completely different context that Gavins, the bakers, were to provide a vital service to those promoting the nationalist cause at administrative level, as recounted by James Laffey in his landmark history of Mayo County Council ‘Rebels in the Courthouse’.
It was 1920, and the rebel, newly elected, Sinn Féin-dominated Mayo County Council had pledged its loyalty to the clandestine (in British eyes) Dáil Eireann. The Council thus decided to boycott the official Local Government Board, and to take its direction from – and, crucially, to transmit its rates revenue to – Dáil Eireann. The result was that the British Government set out to break the new Sinn Féin councils by starving them of finance, unless and until the councils agreed to revert to transmitting their rates monies to Dublin Castle.
The response from Mayo was unequivocal. It would continue to levy and collect the rates, but the funds would be retained for the use of Dáil Eireann. However, this in turn entailed Sinn Féin councils terminating all existing arrangements with Local Government Board-sanctioned treasurers (bankers). The Dáil directed that rate collectors would lodge the payments into the bank accounts of secret trustees, ‘men of standing in the community and of unimpeachable character’, so placing the funds out of the reach of the Local Government Board.
And so it was that Mayo County Council turned to the Castlebar bakers, Gavin Brothers, to act as the secret trustees of the rebel council. The Gavin premises was located just opposite the Courthouse – as it is to this day – conveniently close to the then offices of the council. In addition, Gavins also had the bread contract for the British Army barracks in Castlebar, which placed them under less suspicion than might otherwise have been the case. They were also able to make large cash lodgments in the bank and attribute those to their expanding business.
It proved to be an ideal arrangement. Between 1920 and 1921, Patrick Gavin was able to lodge over £34,000 in the Castlebar branch of the National Bank, a sum equivalent to €2.5 million in today’s money. It was, says Laffey, an arrangement that helped to ensure that Mayo County Council avoided the fate of its counterpart in Longford, which declared bankruptcy in 1921.
Gavins continued to support the council right up to the Truce, even providing vans to smuggle council members into council meetings when things were at their worst in the spring and early summer of 1921.
The story of the bakers who became bankers in the national cause highlights the ingenuity of the council’s officials and the integrity of the trustees in whom the council placed complete trust. And it is but one of the myriad acts of selfless loyalty of which little was ever subsequently spoken, and for which neither praise nor recognition was ever sought.