COUNTY VIEW: Westmeath bachelors and Mayo brides

The expression ‘Westmeath bachelor’ has long found its way into popular parlance. The late Joe Dolan sung his praises. And every year, the Westmeath Bachelor Festival is a high point in the midlands summer festivities. With regard to the aforementioned festival, a connection of sorts has been made with Mayo with our own Louis Walsh acting as chief adjudicator for the popular event.

But the Westmeath bachelor links with Mayo go much further back than that.

It all began in the 1940s, at a time when the standard of housing was poor, and where families were forced to live in what today would be regarded as primitive conditions. A letter was received by Westmeath Board of Health from a married lady in Athlone complaining that she and her family were compelled to reside in a condemned ‘shack’, while three or four labourers’ cottages in the locality were occupied by bachelors. The letter was the catalyst for a controversy that would elevate the bachelors of Westmeath – much to their discomfort – into the national headlines, and provide the media with a story that would run for several years.

The Athlone woman’s letter got a sympathetic reception from the Board of Health, then headed by a government appointed commissioner, PJ Bartley, who had been charged with the running of the body. It was very unfair, Mr Bartley agreed, for the Board of Health to have as tenants single men who were absent at work all day, while families were in need of suitable accommodation. He there and then resolved to carry out a ‘bachelor census’ of the county so as to compile a list of the numbers of unmarried men, without dependants, who were occupying Board of Health cottages.

And then came the ultimatum, the edict that would see the Westmeath bachelors make national and international headlines. Mr Bartley went on: “If our bachelor tenants (meaning those of marriageable age) are still unmarried at the end of six months, their position will be seriously reconsidered. It is unfair that the ratepayers should be asked to expend £8,000 a year on the provision of houses for single men while so many families struggle to find somewhere to live.” 

The census was duly carried out. The result was that 350 bachelor tenants suddenly found themselves in danger of losing their homesteads unless they married within the stipulated six months. At the same time, the number of applicants living in condemned houses exceeded 600.

It was at this point that the enterprising Castlebar Carnival Committee decided to enter the fray. The Committee, which ran its annual carnival in order to raise funds for the development of the recently acquired MacHale Park, and always eager to find ways to promote the event, saw its opportunity. A letter was despatched to Commissioner Bartley offering ‘a way out of his difficulties’. The Committee was about to host a Beauty Queen contest as part of the carnival, and it suggested that if the Commissioner were to send his bachelors to Castlebar, they would find a bevy of beauties ready to enter matrimonial alliances with the men from the midlands.

Commissioner Bartley had previously served in a similar capacity in Mayo and, as such, well knew of the Castlebar ability to ‘talk up’ its carnival. His tongue-in-cheek reply noted that he was aware ‘that a certain public authority in Mayo was unable to secure the services of even one cook in the whole county, from Blacksod to Ballyhaunis. There might be a bevy of beauties for the bachelors, but there would be no cooks’.

By now, the Westmeath bachelor crisis was attracting global attention. Commissioner Bartley was able to report the arrival of hundreds of letters each day from eligible females, many of them in Britain, seeking to be put in touch with the love-starved council tenants. And Castlebar, meanwhile, cranked up the publicity machine for all it was worth.

An emissary from the bachelor brotherhood, a Mr Hughes from Mullingar, was invited to Castlebar to see for himself, and to help select a winner from one of the ‘Queen’ heats. Asked to make the choice between two equally attractive contenders, he declined the offer, simply remarking that he would have liked to have sampled their cooking first. 

Back in Athlone, the 350 bachelors on matrimonial death row hastened as best they could to beat Commissioner Bartley’s nuptial deadline. In the end, the threat of eviction was never carried out. The announcement of new council housing schemes across the county took the sting out of the protests against the bachelor tenants.

The Westmeath bachelors, and their Mayo brides to be, became a footnote of social history, remembered only in Joe Dolan’s song, and an annual festival.