The fees to live in Trinity Hall were four pounds and 4 shillings/ week and included a hot breakfast and a 3-course dinner. (To put this in perspective, a maid’s salary was 1 pound 7 shillings a week). I took the bus downtown every morning and walked east on Nassau Street, entering through the back gate. You had to walk with care, as there would be pools of fresh blood, sometimes frothy, and sometimes slimy, on the sidewalk - tuberculosis was still rife in Dublin and the use of streptomycin, PAS, and Isoniazid was just being introduced. Another indelible memory is of the peacocks on campus. A donor had presented a pair to the college and they strutted around Front Square, dragging their tails on the cobbles, so that they became very ratty, and when they did try to fan their tails out, one just saw greyish wiry spikes! They also produced numerous offspring. Peacocks are raucous birds, and their noise would interrupt our tutorials. I was 21 years old in January 1956, and my parents came over to Dublin, and took me and some classmates out to a celebratory lunch at the Shelbourne Hotel. My birthday gift was a black Morris Minor with a green interior; my friends clubbed together and gave me a beautiful green fringed rug for the back seat. I loved that car and took evening classes for women who wished to learn how to maintain their own vehicles, so I could do the oil-changes, change the spark- plugs, and tune the engine myself, and could also put on the spare wheel quickly, which was useful as tires in those days had “inner tubes”, which punctured easily on the rough Irish roads. On 23 October 1956, university students in Budapest demonstrated against the Communist Regime in Hungary. We Trinity undergraduates wanted to show our solidarity but all political demonstrations were strictly banned in Ireland in the 1950s. To get around the ban, it was decided that ALL undergraduate students would gather in Front Square at noon, and walk in silence, out of the Front Gate, east along Nassau Street, and back into college through the Pearse Street Gate. Nearly 2,000 students gathered on an overcast October day, and walked, mostly three-abreast, out of Front Gate and along the determined route, in total silence. There were many Garda out that day; they had stopped the traffic, and just stood watching as we passed. We carried no banners and no flags and there was no chanting, nor shouting - just silence except for the sound of our feet on the pavement. It was a profoundly moving experience. Despite the ban on demonstrations, there were no repercussions to our march, either from the University “Powers That Be” or from the Garda Siochana. But unfortunately, our show of solidarity had little effect as the Soviet Army moved into Budapest on 3 November 1956, and slaughtered 2,500 Hungarians, while more than 200,000 fled the country. Each med student had to attend a three months’ course on infectious disease at one of Dublin’s two fever hospitals. We would see cases of diphtheria, typhoid fever, bacterial meningitis, and every possible complication of measles, whooping cough, and chicken pox. Many of the patients were severely dehydrated and cachexic [debilitated, suffering
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