He was drunk as an owl according to the judge

I came across a story last week in the Irish Examiner Archives. It was published over 60 years ago.

At Clonakilty District Court, a man was charged with being drunk and disorderly on June 21 in 1963. Supt. P. Comer told the Justice that despite the fact that the defendant had been notified to be in court he had not turned up. The man was an itinerant and was at present on the road.

The Justice bound the defendant to the peace for two years, or in default two months imprisonment. The same defendant was also charged with the dangerous driving of a horse and trap while under the influence of drink.

Garda P. O’Leary said that while on duty at the Cross, Clonakilty, on the previous August at about 5 p.m., he saw the defendant driving a pony and cart at a very fast pace up the main street of the town. There was a passenger in the cart who was lying out over the side of it.

He stopped the vehicle, and the horse skidded to a halt. He ordered the defendant off the cart, and when he was getting down, he got entangled in the reins and fell. The passenger was staggering all over the road. He arrested the defendant, who fell several times on his way to the barracks.

Sergt. T. Horan, Clonakilty said he charged the defendant, when he became sober, and he had nothing to say. He was hopelessly drunk when arrested at 5 p.m. and was still drunk at 9 p.m. when he was meant to release him but could not.

In sentencing the defendant to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour, the Justice said, “Under present modern traffic conditions, this kind of conduct cannot be tolerated.”

The passenger in the cart, was fined 7 shillings and 6 pence for being drunk and incapable. When the defending solicitor remarked that his client’s condition was due to lack of food, the Justice remarked: “He must have been as drunk as an owl.”

An amusing tale in hindsight but if you look at many court cases past and present, you’ll notice that alcohol, or the abuse of it, continues to play a considerable role in how we conduct ourselves in this country. We have fiddled around with the legislation over the years to try and get a grip on our relationship with drink, including raising the price of it, but it hasn’t worked.

Those of us of a certain vintage will remember the old chicken suppers dished out to patrons after midnight in night clubs to legalise the consumption of alcohol after hours. If you wanted a drink, you bought your food and ate it whether you were hungry or not.

The law required the meal to be ‘substantial’ and there were many arguments in courts across the land about what constituted a substantial meal. Pubs and clubs varied the menu but rarely did the offerings go beyond the basic minimum standard required to keep the police from the door even though a substantial meal was defined as a meal which would be considered a normal mid-day meal.

I can remember studying that Intoxicating Liquor Act in my early days in the Garda College in Templemore back in the late seventies. It was without doubt the single most complicated piece of legislation we had to digest.

There were certain hours during the day when you could have a drink, but those hours varied depending on the day of the week. They also differed on certain times of the year and there were days when drinking alcohol was completely illegal like Good Friday and Christmas Day but there were exceptions.

There was a bar and a café in Kent Railway Station once upon a time and if you had a ticket to travel by train you could have a pint there on either of those days. Or if you took a ferry to the UK you could have your pint on board or in the airport if you were booked on a flight. There were many happy customers in those days with train tickets in their pocket who had no intention of going any further than the bar counter.

There were special rules for clubs and specific rules for theatres. You could have a drink half an hour before the commencement of a show and up to a half an hour after it finished. You needed a book of rules in your pocket to figure out when to go for a pint.

A liquor licence was required to sell alcohol, but they weren’t straight forward either. An Ordinary Publicans On- Licence allowed for the consumption of alcohol on the premises while an Off – Licence permitted the sale of alcohol for consumption at some other place. There was a Special Exemption Licence which allowed the license holder to continue serving alcohol for a period after normal closing time.

Then there was a restaurant Licence, a restaurant certificate, a limited restaurant certificate, and a wine retailers on-licence all of which had special conditions attached. You could get an occasional licence for special event being held at a place which did not otherwise hold a license for up to maximum of six days. An occasional license allowed the holder of an on license to sell alcohol which his on license allowed at a place to which no license was attached. Confused?

Well, the proposed Sale of Alcohol Bill aims to replace the country’s patchwork of 100 laws governing alcohol sales in pubs, restaurants and off licences, some of which date back more than 200 years, with a single, modern piece of legislation.

That’s long overdue but unless there is a cultural shift in how we treat alcohol, we’ll never be rid of the drunken owls.