Category Archives: Skibbereen

Irish Cinema and the Desire for Change in April 1916

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Among the Situations Wanted ads, the Waterville projectionist seeks new prospects; Irish Independent 1 Apr. 1916: 6.

Among the Situations Wanted ads, a Waterville projectionist seeks new prospects; Irish Independent 1 Apr. 1916: 6.

Desiring a change of job, Edward McCabe, the operator (projectionist) at the cinema in Waterville, Co. Kerry, put a small ad in the Irish Independent outlining his five years of experience and seeking “good offers only.” McCabe was expectant – or at least hopeful – of an improved situation, and given cinema’s continuing growth despite the war, his prospects seemed good. Change was certainly coming to Ireland in April 1916, if not of the kind for which McCabe expressed a desire. Planned and executed by a small group of insurgent nationalists, socialists and women’s rights campaigners against British rule, the Easter Rising that month would be the catalyst for profound social and political change, but the cinema had few direct links with it. Although the Rising took place largely in Dublin between 24 and 29 April, the failure of the rebels to land arms in north Kerry – far from Waterville in the south – and the arrest of Rising leader Roger Casement as he was set ashore from a German U-Boat on 21 April influenced events in Dublin and elsewhere. When the Kerry events caused the planned Easter Sunday Rising to be initially cancelled and then rescheduled to Easter Monday, Frank Hardiman and his comrades in the Irish Volunteers and the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood in Galway were thrown into confusion. Manager of the Galway’s Town Hall Picture Palace for James T. Jameson’s Irish Animated Picture Company, Hardiman was arrested on Tuesday, 25 April, paraded with other rebels through the streets and imprisoned on a ship in Galway Bay (“Statement of Frank Hardiman”).

Beside the iconic ruins of the Dublin Bread Company on Dublin's Lower Sackville/O'Connell Street in late May/early April 1916 were the ruins of the smaller Grand Cinema, its projection box visible.

To the left of the iconic ruins of the DBC (Dublin Bread Company) on Dublin’s Lower Sackville/O’Connell Street in late April/early May 1916 were the ruins of the smaller Grand Cinema, its projection box visible on the first floor. Source: Irish Times.

The Rising was even more of a surprise than this for most people working in Irish cinema, and the few who became directly involved did so because they got caught up in events. Despite apparently having no direct role in the Rising, Irish-American diplomat James M. Sullivan, who had recently founded the Film Company of Ireland (FCOI), was arrested outside his home in Dublin on 28 April and imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol until 6 May (“Irish-American Minister”). The FCOI’s offices at 16 Henry Street would be completely destroyed during the fighting of Easter Week, but the disruption and destruction that were the Rising’s most immediate effects on cinema in Dublin can be seem most clearly in the many photographs of the ruined Grand Cinema – the mangled remains of its projectors clearly visible – beside the iconic hulk of the Dublin Bread Company on Lower Sackville/O’Connell Street. The World’s Fair Waxworks at 30 Henry Street, one of the first and cheapest picture houses in the city, was also completely ruined. Other picture houses were also damaged, if not to this extent, and the military authorities who administered the city after the surrender of the rebels prohibited all entertainments for a time.

Cinema was prohibited as part of a general curfew rather than for any direct role in the Rising, but it did constitute revolutionary change of a kind in Ireland, bringing an explosion of imagery to people and places that could not have experienced anything like it before. This is perhaps epitomized by the Waterville Cinema that Edward McCabe desired to leave on the eve of the Rising. It opened in late December or early January 1916, when a rare notice appeared in the Kerryman commenting on the success of its opening (“New Cinema, Waterville”). It changed the films it showed four times a week, on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, including such bill toppers as Chaplin’s The Property Man (US: Mutual, 1914), appropriate for a village that now hosts a Chaplin festival. That Waterville had a picture house at all is remarkable, given that the 1911 Census put its population at just 300 inhabitants and that the village itself was located on the extreme western periphery of Europe. It must have been a precarious enterprise, and it is extraordinary that it lasted even until McCabe sought to leave. The frequent changes suggest that the proprietor attempted to attract patrons several times a week in a region where many inhabitants were subsistence farmers or fisherfolk. Indeed, Ireland’s west coast held a special place in the nationalist consciousness because its remoteness made it a bastion of a tradition Irish culture that was often presented as an ascetic pastoralism conducted in the Irish language. If cinema could be in such a small, remote and traditional place, it seems it could be anywhere. However, Waterville and its environs had something that other poorer parts of the west did not. The peripherality of this part of Kerry had actually made it a hub of modernity, the site in the 1860s for the landing of the first transatlantic telegraphic cable and building of a telegraph station, located on nearby Valencia Island. News from America came first to this remote spot in south Kerry, and Waterville’s population included many who worked as relatively highly paid telegraphists. The patronage of these cable workers and their families who settled in the areas appears to have kept the cinema going at least until McCabe departed.

Skibbereen Coliseum SS 22 Apr 1916

Announcement of the reopening of Skibbereen’s Kinemac as the Coliseum; Sikbbereen Eagle 22 Apr. 1916: 8.

Despite its unusual demographics, Waterville was by no means alone among remote locations in south Kerry and west Cork experiencing the new media of the 1910s, albeit that these changes were occurring in towns with much larger populations. Founded by vibrator entrepreneur Gerald Macaura in 1914, the troubled Kinemac in Skibbereen (pop. 3,021) reopened on 25 April 1916 under a new name, the Coliseum, managed by Andy Wright’s Southern Coliseums. Clonakilty, Co. Cork (pop. 2,961) also saw developments in its cinema enterprises, some of which were not entirely legal. On 23 March, 19-year-old Michael “Murt” O’Donovan was charged at a special court in the town with defrauding Alexander Bonthorne of Faulkland, Scotland and Malachy Brady of Tudor House, Roscommon by failing to supply home cinema equipment for which they had paid him (“Special Court”). O’Donovan had no link to Clonakilty’s picture house, which drew audiences from its hinterland. “‘Where are the boys of the village tonight?’” asked the columnist of the Southern Star’s “Shannonvale Notes.” “They are at the ‘Movies’ escorting certain young ladies and their lady friend who lives up [the] street. Since the Cinematograph started in Clon, it has been well patronised by the boys of our village.” Accompanying young ladies to the cinema was not looked on favourably by young men everywhere. When some of Clones, Co. Monaghan’s unmarried men founded a bachelors’ club to resist a mooted Bachelor Tax, they expressed their opposition to the practice of bringing local ladies “to picture houses, on excursions, picnics, motor drives, or cycle runs” (“Clones Bachelors”).

Even in such towns as Naas, Co. Kildare (pop. 3,842), which had only occasional picture shows, cinema could be encountered on a stroll. “I confess I knew very little of Charlie Chaplin until the other day,” the Kildare Observer’s “Items and Ideas” columnist revealed. “Several times have I heard references to him in a ditty chanted in chorus by small boys from the lanes of Naas as they paraded the suburban thoroughfares.” The columnist included the words, sung to the tune of the 1907 song “Red Wing”:

The moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin,

His boots is crackin’, for want of blackin’,

And his khaki trousers need a mendin’

Before we send him

To the Dardanelles.

By April 1916, many involved in Irish cinema were resisting or embracing changes sought by the British government, which was increasingly finding cinema useful in various ways. Despite the industry’s strenuous lobbying against it, the government was undeterred in its determination to divert some of the money spent on entertainments into its much depleted war reserves; it set 15 May as the day on which the new Amusement Tax would be imposed on picture houses and theatres. There seemed little firm opposition to it outside the industry in Ireland, the Evening Herald arguing that no valid argument can be advanced against it” (“Where Ireland Goes Out”).  Film’s increasingly direct role in recruiting in Ireland was highlighted when H. Higginson announced that he – like Edward McCabe – desired a change and was resigning the managership of the newly reopened Clontarf Cinema in Dublin to lead a cinema recruiting campaign. He proposed to give two shows in each place the campaign reached, the first exhibiting army and navy films, and the second offering a regular drama and comedy programme whose proceeds would go to various war funds. He also intended “to arrange so that the first man who is actually accepted and passed by the doctor for service with the colours will be presented free with a high-class solid silver luminous wristlet watch, the usual shop price of which is 43s” (“Cinema Recruiting Campaign”). No such recruiting event appears to have been reported later in April, but James J. Stafford’s lent his cinema for a “war meeting” in Longford on 14 April at which films showed “what the war means, in many phases, and the large gathering that thronged the Theatre were treated to a series of recruiting speeches which were generally acknowledged to be the strongest delivered since the start of the military canvass of the country” (“War Meeting in Longford”).

The long-running campaign for educational uses of film gained a new public advocate in mid-April 1916 when David Gilmore from Belfast’s Ormeau Road wrote a letter to the Belfast Newsletter outlining how the dangers of carelessly discarded fruit peel might be ameliorated cinematically. He suggested that “if each cinema show displayed a short film at each exhibition depicting the evil of throwing slippery things on the sidewalk, and a reading caution not to do so, thousands of children would take thought and not throw peel, &c., where people would slip on it.” His enthusiasm for this early public service film extended to an imagined scenario: “The little silent drama could show a child throwing peel down, a person slipping thereon, lying in a hospital, and then creeping about on crutches. Or the drama could end by a funeral, as slipping on orange peel has caused in more than one case” (“Throwing Orange Peel”). He may have been joking, but if not, he displayed a surprising unawareness that films already dealt extensively with casually or maliciously tossed peel, film comedians having done, if anything, too much to exploit the banana skin’s comic potential.

Cellists Clyde Twelvetrees and Joseph Schofield Source: Royal Irish Academy of Music blog.

The changes that picture houses had brought to Dublin’s entertainment world meant that they competed for audiences with popular theatres. By no means for the first or last time, this was explicit again in the week beginning 17 April 1916, when the Empire Theatre’s programme consisted not of its usual variety acts but of the film The Rosary (US: Selig, 1915), starring Kathlyn Williams. The film has been shown first in the city at the Theatre Royal over the 1916 New Year week and had had subsequent runs at the Princess Cinema in Rathmines (14-16 Feb.), the Phoenix Picture Palace on Ellis Quay (6-9 Apr.) and the Dame Street Picture House (13-15 Apr.). Despite the recent showings at the Phoenix and Dame, Empire manager Barney Armstrong must have considered this religious-themed film a good prospect in the run-up to Easter weekend because he offered additional musical attractions that would see the film accompanied “with organ and full orchestra effects” (“Empire Theatre”). When shown at the picture houses, the film had received little attention from newspaper critics, but when it appeared at the Empire, the main daily newspapers gave it as much critical attention as they gave to any other show. However, they gave it a mixed reception. Although the Evening Telegraph reviewer called The Rosary a “splendid” film – perhaps referring to its seven-reel length – s/he complained that it showed “a woeful ignorance of Irish Catholic sentiment, and the impersonations [offer] very little suggestion of an Irish atmosphere” (ibid).

The Bohemian advertises its engagement of Twelvetrees prominent in its Easter programme, beside the Carlton’s ad for its attractions, including Erwin Goldwater’s solo playing; Dublin Evening Mail 22 Apr 1916: 2.

The Bohemian advertised its engagement of Twelvetrees prominently in its Easter programme, beside the Carlton’s ad for its attractions, including Erwin Goldwater’s solo playing; Dublin Evening Mail 22 Apr 1916: 2.

The disparities in the press attention that the Rosary received at the picture houses and at the Empire were an indication that theatre remained the dominant entertainment medium, but there were also indications that this situation was changing. In attracting patrons to The Rosary, the Empire advertised the superiority of the musical attractions it could offer. However, several of the city’s picture houses were enhancing their musical offerings to compete against each other and the theatres. On St Patrick’s Day, 17 March 1916, concert violinist Erwin Goldwater had become resident soloist at the recently opened Carlton Cinema. This somewhat undermined the Bohemian Picture Theatre long advertised claim that it possessed the largest and best orchestra of any of the city’s picture houses. In response, the Bohemian engaged Clyde Twelvetrees – concert cellist and professor of the Royal Irish Academy of Music – to play as part of its daily programme. “Up to the present,” the Irish Independent commented, “if one wanted to hear a few famed soloists one had to attend the big concerts; but now one can hear the very best at convenience (“Dublin and District”). And these musical opportunities were set to increase, as Dublin’s Pillar Picture House engaged another renowned cellist, Joseph Schofield.

Schofield’s debut at the Pillar did not, however, take place as scheduled, at 4pm on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916. By that time, members of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army under Patrick Pearse and James Connolly had taken possession of the nearby GPO, and the Rising was underway. Dublin’s cinema screens would remain dark for two weeks as more urgent changes took the stage.

References

“A Cinema Recruiting Campaign.” Dublin Evening Mail 6 Apr. 1916: 4.

“Clones Bachelors Establish a Washing, Cooking and Household Managing Club.” Anglo-Celt 1 Apr. 1916: 11.

“Clontarf Cinema Theatre to be Opened on Sundays.”  Evening Telegraph 31 Mar. 1916: 3.

“Dublin and District.” Irish Independent 22 Apr. 1916: 4.

“The Empire Theatre.” Evening Telegraph 18 Apr. 1918: 6.

“Irish-American Minister: Unpleasant Experiences in Dublin.” Evening Herald 9 May 1916: 1.

“Items and Ideas.” Kildare Observer 1 Apr. 1916: 5.

“New Cinema, Waterville.” Kerryman 8 Jan. 1916: 8.

“Shannonvale Notes.” Southern Star 15 Apr. 1916: 1.

“Special Court in Clonakilty.” Skibbereen Eagle 1 Apr. 1916: 3.

“Statement of Frank Hardiman.” Bureau of Military History, Witness Statement 406, p. 2-3 <http://bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/reels/bmh/BMH.WS0406.pdf#page=1&gt;

“Throwing Orange Peel, &c., on Sidewalks.” Belfast Newsletter 12 Apr. 1916: 6.

“War Meeting in Longford.” Longford Leader 22 Apr. 1916: 1.

“War Pictures.” Longford Leader 15 Apr. 1916: 1.

“Where Ireland Goes Out.” Evening Herald 13 Apr. 1916: 2.

Kinemac, Pulsocon, Skibbereen: A New Lexicon for Irish Cinematic Sensation

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“Some people when they want to be amused go to a theatre, a circus, or the Kinemac,” explained a writer in the Southern Star in October 1915. This newspaper primarily addressed a readership in the environs of Skibbereen, Co. Cork, for whom the Kinemac, the local entertainment hall, was the place where “[a]s a rule they get the full value of their money in laughter, hearty or otherwise” (“Skibbereen and Carbery Notes”). Indeed, in Skibbereen, the Kinemac appeared for a time to be synonymous with popular entertainment and particularly moving pictures. For instance, when in March 1915, Jeremiah McCarthy – leading stoker of HMS Devonshire – related his war experiences in the battles of Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank, the seriousness of these contrasted with his demeanour while in Skibbereen, where he was described as being “as cheery and light-hearted as a small boy going for the first time to the Kinemac” (“Skibbereen Man in North Sea Battles”). Similarly, when The O’Donovan – chief of an Irish sept and colonel in the Munster Fusiliers – addressed a recruiting meeting in the west Cork town of Ballydehob in May 1915, he told his hearers that it was necessary to give a graphic account of German brutality in Belgium, which he said had been particularly expressed in the rape of Belgian women:

The man who lives out in the country, though he may see the films occasionally at the Kinemac, does not realise these things, nor appreciate the horrors that would happen his own country, his wife and daughters, and his sisters if the Germans ever invade Ireland, as they may, if not driven back in Flanders and France. (“Ballydehob Meeting.”)

So, although the word “Kinemac” does not echo down cinema history, these references give an indication of the degree to which this picture house had become embedded in the entertainment culture of west Cork in 1915. That might seem of limited local interest, but the story of the Kinemac has national and international aspects unique in early Irish cinema. It was built by a local man with money he had made selling his mechanical vibrators to the world; it was founded in order to provide funding for the paramilitary Irish Volunteers; and it was a financial failure.

Financial failure was some way off when on 14 December 1914, the Kinemac was opened with much ceremony by Henry O’Shea, mayor of Cork city, for the proprietor, Gerald J. Macaura (“The ‘Kinemac’”). O’Shea’s attendance was an acknowledgement of Macaura’s support for the Skibbereen Volunteers and the Irish Parliamentary Party. When the Skibbereen Volunteers were founded earlier in 1914, Macaura had donated £50 in cash, and he had – seemingly on an impulse of his own– bought a set of silver-plated instruments for the establishment of a Volunteer band in the town. He built the Kinemac in order to provide a continuing source of funds for the training of local boys by J. G. Chipchase, a bandmaster he had brought from England. Even before the Kinemac opening, Macaura’s munificence had been rewarded with the title of honorary colonel of the Volunteers.

Part of the patent document for Macaura's

Part of the patent document for Macaura’s “movement cure apparatus,” dated 23 Dec. 1902.

Such munificence was possible because “Colonel” Macaura was more internationally famous – and eventually notorious – as “Dr” Macaura. Dr Macaura was the inventor and popularizer of the Pulsocon, a handheld vibrator. Born Gerald McCarthy in Skibbereen, the son of a master cooper and Fenian activist, Macaura emigrated to the United States where he had relatives in construction (“Death of Dr. Gerald J. Macaura”). His obituary repeated the claim that he had worked with Edison, but this seems to be as spurious as his medical education. Both a professional connection with the most prominent inventor of the age and the letters “Dr” or “Prof” before one’s name were part of a formula for a lucrative career in quackery. In 1898, “Professor” Macaura demonstrated to the people of Skibbereen and of Cork city that he also possessed the indispensable quality of showmanship, when he treated them to a demonstration of his prowess in hypnosis (“Hypnotic Seance”). Returning again in 1901, having “pursued his course of studies in the Sheerin Psychological College, Columbia, Ohio, [and having had] conferred on him the degree of Doctor,” he held a fundraising entertainment with Edison’s latest phonograph in aid of the Skibbereen Temperance Hall (“Entertainment in Skibbereen”). And in December 1902, Macaura patented a device in the United States that would provide the basis of his fortune. Beginning life as the somewhat prosaically titled “movement cure apparatus,” this would later become popular as the more colourful “Oscilectron,” “Pulsocaura,” and – most famously – “Pulsocon.”

Ad for Macaura's demonstration of the Pulsocon in Dublin, 13 April 1911.

Ad for Macaura’s demonstration of the Pulsocon in Dublin, 13 April 1911.

Macaura’s career with the Pulsocon was an international one, but aspects of it can be seen in the way he operated in Ireland. In 1911, he held lavishly advertised demonstrations of the device in Dublin and Cork presenting himself as “Dr. G. J. Macaura, F.R.S.A., of the National Medical University, Chicago.” The Dublin demonstration was held at the Theatre Royal, the city’s largest theatre, on 13 April, an event whose lack of an entry fee ensured a very full house. Following this public launch, he offered to consult with sufferers from ailments ranging from rheumatism to deafness at his Institute at 16 D’Olier Street in the city centre. The Institute remained in operation with frequently ads until 17 June, when Macaura moved his show to Cork, where he used the same publicity techniques and public meeting – in this case, at the Assembly Rooms on 15 August – before establishing an Institute there until 20 September. The Pulsocon show did not come to so small a town as Skibbereen, but the money Macaura earned from these lucrative shows funded his exploits there.

Interest in the Pulsocon continues; these images are from here, here and here.

Interest in the Pulsocon continues, particularly as part of a hidden sexual history of the early 20th century; these images are from here, here and here.

When he hit on the idea of the Kinemac in late 1914, therefore, Macaura was a self-made man, used to success and overcoming such occupational hazards as his prosecution for fraud and the illegal practice of medicine in France between 1912 and 1914 (“Dr Macaura Arrested,” “American ‘Medicine Man’”). As a mark of that success, the returned cooper’s son bought Lough Ine House near Skibbereen and began disbursing funds as an entry into Irish nationalist politics. As Macaura’s largess grew, the local papers were careful to assert his lack of political ambition. “Although not a politician,” the Cork County Eagle observed when the Kinemac was first announced in October 1914,

Dr. Macaura is very keen on the Volunteer movement. He speaks highly of Mr. John Redmond’s services to Ireland, and it is under his leadership that Dr. Macaura has bestowed these gifts on the movement. When the Hall, which will be a costly structure, is completed. Dr. Macaura’s contributions to the local Volunteer fund will amount to close on £1,000.” (“Skibbereen National Volunteers.”)

Nevertheless, despite the fact that his business was based in London, Macaura returned to Skibbereen at strategic intervals.

He was not, however, intending to manage the Kinemac himself and seems to have expected that his Skibbereen ventures would become self-running and self-funding. The Kinemac was to be operated by a committee associated with the Volunteers, and Macaura expected it to provide a profit that would cover the band’s expenses. As somebody involved in a branch of show business in the United States and Europe, Macaura had undoubtedly seen the money that could be made from picture houses. But he does not seem to have considered whether or not a town with as small a population as Skibbereen could sustain a full-time picture house. Something has already been said here about a population in the region of 5,000 being needed to make a picture house financially viable in the mid-1910s. Skibbereen’s  population of just 3,021 in the 1911 census made it likely that a full-time picture house would struggle to earn a profit. And it did.

Ads for the Kinemac, 2 Jan., 30 Jan. and 6 Mar. 1915.

Ads for the Kinemac, 2 Jan., 30 Jan. and 6 Mar. 1915.

Initially, the Kinemac resembled many picture houses across Ireland. It offered a nightly show beginning at 8pm, changed the programme on Mondays and Thursdays and charged 3d., 6d. and 1s. admission. It could accommodate 209 patrons on 119 tip-up seats in brown leather cloth, 68 tip-ups in green plush, and 22 leather-covered seats (“Kinemac, Skibbereen”). It offered a programme of dramatic, humorous and travel pictures, including special war films, with such attractions as The Sign of the Cross (US: Famous Players, 1914) receiving special publicity in early March 1915.

Despite such spectacles, the Kinemac was already failing to meet its running costs six months after it opened when it ran into political controversy because of its links to the Volunteers and their band. Following the recruiting drive by The O’Donovan and others, 22 Skibbereen men left the town to join the 9th Battalion of the Munster Fusiliers on 10 June 1915 “amidst a scene of great enthusiasm” (“Volunteers’ Departure”). However, the recruits were played onto the train not by Macaura’s Volunteer Silver Band but by the band of the Baltimore Fishery School because the Volunteer Band committee, led by Councillor Timothy Sheehy, refused permission for them to play. The reasons for this are not clear, but it could be that Sheehy and other members of the committee had not agreed with John Redmond’s policy on the National Volunteers entering the British Army. This is suggested by a mock-heroic ballad in the Cork County Eagle commemorating these events, which observed of Sheehy that “There never was a public thing / That he had not on hand, sir, / Except recruiting against the Huns, / For which he refused the Band, sir” (Simple).

At the end of June 1915, Macaura returned to Skibbereen and had a handbill distributed calling the townspeople to a meeting in the square so that he could explain his disagreement with this decision on the use of the band and the financial difficulties faced by the Kinemac (“Clearing the Air,” “Skibbereen Band Crux”). This was an extraordinary move to undermine his local opponents, and the public meeting was a forum in which he excelled. As the ballad said of Macaura’s actions,

He built this Hall for Picture Shows,

And called it the ‘Kinemac,’ sir,

Gave its control to a Committee,

To which now he has give the sack, sir;

That Kinemac has changed its name

And is known as the ‘Picturedrome,’ sir;

And Michael John is Agent now,

And Manager – one Macowan, sir.” (Simple.)

Suggesting that the committee was biased against the town’s Protestants, who had in turn boycotted the Kinemac, Macaura removed the committee and replaced them with his agent Michael J. Hayes. He closed the Kinemac for the summer months and arranged that it would be run in the autumn by Alex McEwan, the well-known proprietor of Cork city’s Assembly Rooms Picturedrome. And on 10 July, the Macaura Silver Band gave a send-off to five Skibbereen recruits (“Send-Off to Skibbereen Recruits”).

Ad for an auction of the Kinemac's furnishings and building materials. Cork County Eagle 4 Aug. 1917: 4.

Ad for the auction of the Kinemac’s furnishings and building materials. Cork County Eagle 4 Aug. 1917: 4.

However, the Kinemac did not prosper, even under a professional picture-house manager. In part, this may be attributed to a lasting and perhaps not unearned ill will towards Macaura. When he attempted to get his cinematograph licence changed into McEwan’s name by Skibbereen Urban Council, Sheehy complained that Macaura had taken back a gift he had given to the Volunteers in the presence of the Lord Mayor of Cork. McEwan did, nevertheless, run the Kinemac in late 1915, but did not return for a second season. In his stead, Southern Coliseums – which ran the Coliseum and Tivoli in Cork city and which among its other venues, opened a Coliseum in Waterford in October 1915 – reopened the Kinemac as the Coliseum, Skibbereen, on 25 April 1916, the day after the Easter Rising had begun in Dublin. Again, the picture house failed to attract enough patronage, with a local columnist commenting in September 1916 that “it is a pity that the Coliseum was not patronised better since its re-opening [following a summer hiatus] a fortnight ago, but the meagerness of the attendance each night may be attributed to the exceptionally fine weather” (“Local and Other Newsy Items”). Whatever the reasons for poor attendance, Macaura eventually cut his losses on the Kinemac and sold it all – from furnishings to structural timbers – for scrap in August 1917.

The story of the Kinemac is more than just a curious case of a failed picture house at a time when cinema was on the ascendant. It throws unusual light on the motivations of those who built these venues. While this is probably the only case in which a vibrator salesman built a picture house to fund a nationalist band, it exposes the importance of considering a broad constellation local circumstances when assessing the reasons why a picture house succeeded or failed.

References

“American ‘Medicine Man’ Sentenced as Swindler.” Freeman’s Journal 15 May 1914: 9.

“Ballydehob Meeting.” Skibbereen Eagle 29 May 1915: 10.

“Clearing the Air: Colonel Macaura Puts a Plain Issue Before Skibbereen People.” Cork County Eagle 26 Jun. 1915: 11.

“Death of Dr. Gerald J. Macaura: Skibbereen Loses Distinguished Son: Worked with Edison.” Southern Star 10 May 1941: 3.

“Dr Macaura Arrested.” Freeman’s Journal 25 May 1912: 4.

“Entertainment in Skibbereen by Professor Gerald J. Macaura.” Southern Star 5 Oct. 1901: 5.

“A Hypnotic Seance.” Cork Examiner 27 and 29 Aug. 1898: 1; Southern Star 30 Jul. 1898: 1.

“The ‘Kinemac’: Opening Ceremony at Skibbereen.” Southern Star19 Dec. 1914; 1.

“The Kinemac, Skibbbereen: Important to Builders and Others.” Ad. Cork County Eagle 4 Aug. 1917: 4.

“Local and Other Newsy Items.” Cork County Eagle 23 Sep. 1916: 7.

“Macaura Volunteer Silver Band: Concert at the Kinemac.” Cork County Eagle 20 Mar. 1915: 9.

“Send-Off to Skibbereen Recruits.” Cork County Eagle 10 Jul. 1915: 12.

Simple, William. “Skibbereen.” Cork County Eagle 14 Aug. 1915: 9.

“Skibbereen and Carbery Notes.” Southern Star 9 Oct. 1915: 9.

“Skibbereen Band Crux: Dr. Macaura Comes from London.” Southern Star 26 Jun. 1915: 5.

“A Skibbereen Man in North Sea Battles.” Cork County Eagle 6 Mar. 1915: 9.

“Skibbereen National Volunteers: Dr. Macaura’s Munificence.” Cork County Eagle 3 Oct. 1914: 4.

“Volunteers’ Departure.” Southern Star 12 Jun. 1915: 5.