Tag Archives: Overlooked Dublin Characters

Following the mystery of Jimmy Wet Bread yesterday.

Meet Jack Haugh.

Also known as Mill Cushin

He was the drinking man’s Bang Bang.

“..[t]here was something of appearance in his manner between a knave and a fool; but the former had the greater preponderance.  He was blind of one eye, had a large bottle nose and was eternally on the broad grin.  It was his usual custom to walk the streets with a stout piece of shillelah in one hand, and a kind of cap in the other, soliciting money from almost every person he met, and was never at a loss for a pleasant story or a miserable tale, describing the necessity he was under of paying a rapacious landlord or landlady, to prevent his passing the night under a bulk in the streets.”

James Caulfield, Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons (1820)

 

Forgotten Dublin Street Characters (Sibling of Daedalus)

The back steps of the Coombe Maternity Hospital, Dublin.

Sibling of Daedalus writes:

Fortycoats, we know. But Wet Bread? A corruption of ‘wet the bed’? Had he bladder control problems?

 

No, that was Splash Splash.

Anyone?

Pic via Kathleen

Update:

Eamonn Mac Thomais (here in the Liberties in the late-1970s) would know.