Letter from James Finn to May Fay, 19 February 1916

Foo, Bar; Bar, Foo

Letter from James Finn to May Fay, 19 February 1916

1 I know you wouldn’t come
between a hungry man
and his food. So goodbye
my dearest love for the
present. Hope to have a
letter from my darling girl
tomorrow. With fondest love
and kisses From your loving James National Health Insurance Commission (Ireland),
Pembroke house
Upper Mount Street,
Dublin. 19th Feby, 1916. My dearest girl, I must keep my promise that
you should have a letter tomorrow but
I am pretty afraid I shall not be
able to make it very interesting as I have
absolutely no news at all to relate. Luckily
I won’t be in the same difficulty next
week as I presume you will not insist
on my sending you a letter from Lockardstown
to Togherstown on Sunday next.I am
looking forward very keenly to my visit
as I’m dying to see you. How is the 2 ankle getting on since you went home.
I suppose all right now that you have such
a lazy time as you say you have.
We are expecting Moll home tomorrow for
a few hours. It’s grand for her to
be so near now, she can come home any
time she pleases. My mother had a
note from her during the week. She finds both
the town and the staff in the office
very pleasant so we are all hoping she
will get on well. On re-reading your letter (I always
read them about 20 times) I was sorry
to see that your mother and yourself
were so worried about Tim. Of course it’s hard lines that he should have to go
so far away at his age but all the
same he’s amongst his own to a certain
extent and Jennie & himself will be
great company to each other. Besides there
are plenty at home in any case to keep
your mother company and it’s a good
job for any young chap to stir out early
if he has to earn his own living. I see too
many cases here in town of fellows living on
their parents up to 20 and 25 years of
age and then trying for rotten clerks jobs
in Government Departments at 25/- or 30/-
a week. That reminds me that I have
been enquiring about Johnnie in a few places 3 places but up to the present without success.
It’s the devil entirely to get jobs for men
clerks at present; the women are taking the
bread out of all our mouths but I’m still
hoping that I may succeed. Pity he’s not
hearing anything from Cork. I thought that was
pretty well a dead cert. Tell Mrs Seery that
I am making further efforts and I will write
to her in any case next week. Today is a great improvement on
yesterday. It’s very bright and pleasant but
very cold. I’m writing this in the office and the
fire is gone out as well as all the staff (Saturday
afternoon) so I’m afraid you won’t be able to read
it my hands are so cold. I must close now. One
of the beautiful charwomen put her head in just now
so I must go. She is evidently wondering what the
hell is keeping me in and she wanting to clean up the
room. In any case I want my dinner and I

This is from a series of letters written between James Finn and his fiancée Mary (May) Fay. They became engaged in January 1916 and married in June. He lived in Dublin, she in Westmeath; he was 20 years older than her at 39 and had become acquainted with her during his regular visits to his relative Mrs Mary Seery, her neighbour. Throughout the series their relationship develops from the first somewhat tentative letters. They were not to be married long: in 1919 he fell ill with the great flu epidemic, it led to heart damage and he died in 1922 as she was expecting their fourth child. She held on to his letters as her reminder of him. Despite many offers and her difficult finances she never married again. She took in lodgers and trained (and practised) as a midwife, chiropodist, and public health nurse while raising her children. She proved to be an excellent entrepreneur, charmed bank managers into giving her loans (against the norm of the time) and bought properties one after another, many of which were broken up into flats. James Finn was a civil servant, working in the National Health Service Commission on Mount Street. Family history says that he was advising on the restructuring of the civil service as part of setting up the new government in 1922 and that eminent figures in that project were visiting him in his sick bed so that they could consult with him. Neither May nor James were politically active, although like many in the Civil Service, James learned Irish and as can be read in the letters after Easter, he knew many who more caught up in the Easter Rising. One can sense their shifting sympathies in the letters. He's looking forward to his next visit to Togherstown (Lockardstown). He's working in his office on a Saturday afternoon. He's been trying to help his cousin Johnnie find a job

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How to cite

Letters 1916, published by the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities, Vienna, 2026 (https://letters1916static.github.io/letters1916-static/item__5551.html)