Date of Birth: ‘Sliabh Ban’, Ballywilliam, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford

Place of Birth: 27th October 1937

Date Interviewed: 13th June 2011

Summary: Biddy Connick lived with her three brothers, her mother and her grandparents in a single-storey cottage which had a kitchen and two bedrooms. Her mother would visit other houses to wash clothes by hand. At night she would knit to provide clothing for the family. Biddy remembers collecting dried cow dung from the fields in summertime to provide fuel for their open fire. She talks of the food they ate. A pig’s head and feet were “lovely and sweet” and she talks of “the scringe in the pig’s ear”. The 15th of August was the day for the annual bus trip to Tramore. They brought a packed lunch and tea in a bottle but never had money for the amusements. Biddy was fourteen when she started her first job as a live-in childminder and domestic help for a dentist in New Ross. She then took up farming and talks of the dangerous work she did on a threshing machine. She gave up farming when her husband died.