John Eddie McEllin was driving force behind Western Hats factory
IN our edition of April 28 I wrote in detail of the opening of Western Hats, known locally as the hat factory, in Castlebar, on May Day, a Wednesday, 80 years ago, which was a major employer for the next 45 years, writes Tom Gillespie.
One of the main promoters who spearheaded the factory development was my grand-uncle, Senator John Eddie McEllin, a member of the renowned Balla business family.
John Eddie played for Mayo in the 1916 All-Ireland football final defeat to Wexford and the 1921 All-Ireland final defeat to Dublin (played in 1923). His grand-nephew Tom Cunniffe of Castlebar Mitchels was a member of the Mayo senior team for many years.
John Eddie was a member of Seanad Éireann, chairman and director of Irish Sugar, and chairman of the Irish Press Group of newspapers, which had been founded by Eamon De Valera.
John Eddie’s nephew, John McEllin of Balla, forwarded me details of a recent lecture given by Mr. Yanky Fachler, chair of the Irish Jewish Historical Society, and author of several books on Jewish history and the Holocaust.
The talk was entitled ‘Marcus Witztum - An Irish Schindler, the mant who set up Western Hats in Castlebar'.
In the late 1930s, a trade delegation, spearheaded by Sean Lemass, the then Minister for Trade, and which included Senator McEllin and Marcus Witztum, a Polish-born Jewish businessman who lived in Ireland, set out on a trip to the continent in search of businesses they might attract to Ireland.
This was happening in a time of turmoil in Europe, when the Nazi Party was becoming a powerful force in Germany, posing a threat to world peace and threatening the extermination of the Jewish people.
Despite these difficulties, the delegation was ultimately successful in attracting three industries to come and set up a ribbon factory in Longford, and two hat factories in Galway and Castlebar.
The Castlebar factory opened on May Day, 1940, and an influx of Jewish people arrived in the town, and Blackfort, close to the area where the factory was situated, became known as ‘Little Jerusalem'.
Mr. Fachler, in his lecture in Strokestown, said Senator McEllin was a key mover and shaker in the Lemass circle.
McEllin’s companies delivered material for new factories, and he used his vast network of political contacts to personal advantage by recommending where new enterprises should be located.
In 1935, both Witztum and McEllin joined Lemass’s head-hunting commission to promote employment in the west of Ireland by bringing businesses from Europe.
When the Council of German Jewry sent a memorandum to the Irish government in 1936 regarding the possibility of Jewish refugee industrialists contributing to the Irish economy, Witztum made certain that Lemass responded in the affirmative.
Witztum started visiting Europe regularly, often with McEllin and Lemass in tow.
Witztum’s first success was in Paris, where he met Henri Orbach, the Jewish owner of a small hat factory, Les Modes Modernes.
In the late 1920s, Orbach’s brother-in-law Serge Phillipson had moved from Berlin to join Les Modes Modernes.
When Witztum came knocking on Orbach’s door to persuade him to relocate his hat factory to the west of Ireland, Serge was sent on a reconnaissance mission.
There was great excitement in Castlebar when it was announced that a new factory for the millinery trade was to be established here.
From the outset, Western Hats was designed to be one of the largest in the country, and was registered in Ireland as a public company with a nominal capital of £100,000.
Among the promoters was Belgian Senator Claossens, who had also invested in Les Modes Modernes in Galway, and in May 1939, he was given the honour of digging the first sod of turf in Castlebar.
The board of directors of Western Hats included McEllin and Witztum – no surprise there – as well as Franz Schmolka, a Czech Jew who was brought over as general manager of the factory.
A few months before the outbreak of World War 2, construction begun on a nine-acre site on the Newport Road, a few minutes’ walk from Castlebar’s Main Street.
The difficulty of getting supplies posed challenges to the builders, but Senator McEllin overcame the obstacles.
Two local contractors took six months to complete the main construction work.
The 350-feet red-brick chimney remained a local landmark for Castlebar and its surroundings up to the 1980s.
The factory was the first building of its kind to use natural resources: turf, water, steam and daylight.
The last machines arrived from Belgium just one week before the country was invaded by the Germans.
Also arriving from Belgium one week before the Nazis invaded was a group of 30 women and seven men from Castlebar who had spent 12 months in Belgium training in the art of hat-making.
It must have been strange for these people, most of whom had never left the country before, to learn how to cope with a strange environment, strange food, a foreign language and an unfamiliar climate.
Under the title of ‘News from Belgium', one member of the group, Kathleen Loftus of Linenhall Street, furnished The Connaught Telegraph with fortnightly accounts of what life was like.
Her columns became a major talking point in the town.
A copy of Kathleen’s letters were presented to the Belgian ambassador in 2007 when he visited the town.
The late Kitty Sloyan, the very last surviving member of the Belgian trainees, passed away in her 97th year a few years ago.
On the last Friday in August 1940, the factory boiler was put into commission for the very first time – and some locals still remember the whistle blowing for one hour to mark the occasion.
With its modern lines and its green latticed windows, Western Hats was one of the most modern in the country.
Soon, shops in Castlebar were selling an excellent range of hats, made by locals out of the very finest of materials, in the latest style and shade, and at a very reasonable price.
Western Hats became one of the largest employers in the region, creating employment for hundreds, and many Castlebar families grew up on stories of family members with fond memories of the factory.
There was even a Western Hats football team that competed in local leagues.
Fred Klepper was a marketing manager from Prague who heard about the Castlebar hat factory. He received a work permit even though he had no actual skills in the making of hats.
With their Irish visas in their hands, Fred and his wife Gretel and their daughter Doris reached Castlebar in the summer of 1939. Fred began work in the spinning department of the hat factory, and the family moved to ‘Little Jerusalem’.
When Western Hats general manager Franz Schmolka left Castlebar for Dublin in 1946, The Connaught Telegraph published a piece praising his technical skills and his direction of the factory.
When Mr. Schmolka died in 1952, The Connaught Telegraph published an extensive obituary.
The architect for the hat factory was a Mr. Auguste Koettgen from Belgium, and John P. McCormack & Sons Ltd., Castlebar, were responsible for the foundations, concrete and steelwork.
Paul Durcan wrote a very moving poem called ‘The Hat Factory’, which contains Holocaust themes:
And what if you were a hatter
And you married a hatter
And all your sons and daughters worked as hatters
And you inhabited a hat-house all full of hats;
Hats, hats, hats, hats.
Hats: the apotheosis of an ancient craft;
And I think of all the nationalities of Israel
And of how each always clings to his native hat,
His priceless and moveable roof,
His hat which is the last and first symbol
Of a man’s slender foothold on this earth…