The Old Age Pension

Where ordinary men and women disdain such epoch-making events as defining battles, they remember such things as this. Indeed this one in particular.

It was exactly seventy years later – in January 1909 – that the Old Age Pension was introduced for people over seventy years of age. In a time when birthdays – indeed birth YEARS – were neither celebrated nor remembered, and official registers were often neglected, it was not that easy for officials to check eligibility for this much-sought-after bonanza. There were people who – having recorded their ages as in the mid-fifties just eight years previously when filling in their Census returns – suddenly remembered that they were, in fact, up to ten years older than that!

‘Were you born BEFORE or AFTER the Night of the Big Wind?’

‘Och, before! Before! Definitely. 

Sure, I min’ it well.’

Officials, calculating from parish birth returns, estimated that the new pension had a 128% uptake of those deemed to be eligible to draw it! They must have been pleased! Indeed, one wag waxed lyrical in praise of his new-found wealth.

‘Twas in Newry I was born, an’ I’ll surely blow m’  horn

As I often did before – without attention

Then your han’ I’ll warmly shake

An’ with joy this statement make

That I’ve lived to be the drawer of A PENSION!

 

Not like the tillers of the soil, who daily grind and toil

Through hours of sleet an’ rain their clothes are drenching!

While the snarling winds do roar

In my bed I’ll snugly snore

Till I wander into town, to spend my PENSION!

 

‘Tis little wonder that I’m cracked

O’er this Old Age Pension Act

For it must have been an Irishman’s invention

Sure the English brains – and Scotch

Would have on’y made a botch

Of granting to an Irishman his PENSION.

 

Since I’m three score years and ten

Ach! I don’t remember when!

Though of poverty I’d suffered apprehension

Indeed when times were at their best,

Such recourse I did detest

An’ I’d scorn them ‘uns that deigned to draw a PENSION.

 

But on that day I drew my crown

Many’s the haff’un I sank down

In a public house whose name I dare not mention

Though it was hardly out of place

An’ I thought it no disgrace

To celebrate the comin’ of my PENSION.

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Still, it was the Night of the Big Wind I was talking about!

The Newry Telegraph of the time noted:

‘Among the numerous devastations committed in this neighbourhood, we learn that in the demesne of Mr Synott (Ballymoyer, Whitecross) the havoc made by the storm was truly lamentable. At least 10,000 trees have been broken or so completely mutilated as to require their being cut down … the houses of the farmers are stripped of their roofs … one fatal accident occurred; a young man, son of a schoolteacher called Allen, was killed by the falling of his chimney which also severely injured several members of his family ..’