Before Boots.
Sibling of Daedalus writes:
A photo (top) of 10 Merrion Square, Dublin, the location of Ireland’s first family planning clinic (The Fertility Guidance Company Limited), which opened on February 25, 1969.
It had a back entrance which was thought convenient in case of a police raid.
The persons involved in setting up the clinic were James Loughran, Joan Wilson, Robert Towers, Maire Mullarney, Dermot Hourihane, Yvonne Pim and Michael Solomons.
Women attending the premises were prescribed the pill (the only contraceptive legally available in Ireland at the time), or alternatively supplied with condoms, diaphragms and spermicides posted in Donegal by doctors from Northern
Ireland or smuggled through customs by Michael Solomon’s elderly mother and mother-in-law.
If supplies ran low, there was always Macleans Children’s Toothpaste, which had incidental spermicidal effect. Good times.
The clinic carried on business unraided from Merrion Square until 1974, when it moved to Synge Street. It subsequently became the Irish Family Planning Association.
