Date of Birth: 22nd June 1916

Place of Birth: Askinvillar, Kiltealy, Co. Wexford

Date Interviewed: 18th February 2010

Summary: Maggie O’Connor grew up in a thatched farmhouse near Kiltealy. Her mother died when Maggie was three months old. She talks of life on the farm where her father was “a great man for potatoes”. She gives a colourful description of the double pneumonia that almost killed her. When she finished school she worked at home but when her father died in May 1943 she moved to Dublin. She was then 27 and had no qualifications but managed to get work as a domestic servant. She eventually secured a position with General Richard Mulcahy , a Fine Gael T.D. who she describes a “a gentleman” who “started the Irish Army”. Maggie spent long happy years with the Mulcahys and became part of the family.