Vera Breslin (née Shortall), a great-grandmother and sixth generation street seller of fish in Dun Laoghaire, has passed away. Her death marks the end of an era leaving few, if any, old-style Dublin street hawkers left in the coastal town. Hundreds of people have taken to Facebook to share their memory of Vera, who died in her early 80s in Blackrock Hospice.
Vera at her stall. Photo credit : Michael Merrigan/Andrew Gerard Ball.
A family steeped in fishing and martime history, the 1901 census shows her fisherman father Richard and mother Ellen Shortall living at 15.3 Lower George’s Street with their three sons and three daughters. Ten years later, the family had moved to nearby 5.5 Clarence Street with son Henry joining in his father’s footsteps. Richard and Ellen raised a total of five sons and nine daughters.
Born at 11 Clarence Street in circa 1931, Vera began her working life at the age of seven helping her father cast nets for herring and accompanying her mother selling fish door-to-door.
Tragedy struck the family in December 1934 when her two older brothers, Richard (20) and Henry (19), drowned in Dublin Bay with their bodies washing up in at Sandymount Strand. A friend John Hughes (20) of 8 Bentley Villas also died in the accident. They were described in a 1988 article as “hobblers, nuggety men who went out to sea in all kinds of weather in skiffs to be the first to get their hook on arriving ships and get paid for tying them up in Dublin.”
A similar catastrophe occurred in 1916 when two local men, Harry Shortall (an uncle of Vera’s) and his friend “Rover” Ward, were lost at sea while hobbling.
For well over seventy years, Vera sold fresh fish on the streets of Dun Laoghaire. She started on Upper George’s Street but after the trams were discontinued she moved to Convent Road where she was based from the 1940s until very recently.
Every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning, Vera pushed her pram from her home in Bentley Villas to her pitch on Convent Road. It was said that you could set your watch by her and locals valued her as the best source for local news and gossip.
Throughout the 1980s, a weekly Friday customer was the Italian Ambassador to Ireland who would pull up in a chauffer driver car to purchase fresh fish for his traditional fish-on-Friday meal.
A 2000 Irish Times piece described Vera’s typical working day:
6am … Vera’s husband Paddy, a retired dock worker, cooks breakfast for the pair. Vera’s nephew then drives her to the fish auction at the Dublin Corporation wholesale market while Paddy and their sons assemble the market stall … Vera assembles her post by 9.45am. Selections vary according to market availability, but there are often less-glamorous but delicious-tasting fish such as red gurnet, mullet and ling sharing space with delicate plaice, sole, fresh and smoked ray wings and hake …
During lulls, Vera sips tea from her thermos, or sits on an overturned milk crate on the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette. Paddy brings her a hot dinner at noon. The stall closes at 6pm at which time Paddy carts away the disassembled stall to a nearby storage area, using the old pram.
Last Summer, a photo of Vera was posted on a Facebook group for current and former Dun Laogahire residents attracting hundreds of comments. As Vera was not an active Social Media user, all the comments were printed off and presented to her.
Vera with printed out Facebook comments. Picture credit – Don Mc Manus.
While her four grown up children chosen different career paths, Vera’s nephew George Rogerson of George’s Fish Shop in Dun Laoghaire is continuing the family’s proud fishmonger tradition which dates back to the 1800s.
Vera’s removal will take place on Saturday to St. Michael’s Church, Dún Laoghaire, arriving at 9.45am for 10am. Funeral Mass followed by burial will take place in Dean’s Grange Cemetery.
Sources:
Pram Women of Dublin, Ireland of the Welcomes (Jan-Feb 1988).
Elizebeth Field, Alive Alive-O: A day in the life of a fish trader, a modern-day Molly Malone, The Irish Times (17 June 2000).
