14-04-2020, 09:34 PM
15982
Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)
Back to basic ideas for a lot of folks.
There were other uses for buckets in the old tenements years ago, but let’s not go into that.
Speaking of tenements.
I remember the old folks talking about this particular chemist shop when I was a youth, it seemed everyone had great faith in this man.
Harry Mushatt was a native of Lithuania, he settled in Ireland and set up his “chemist” shop in Dublin’s poorest tenement district, known as the Liberties in the 1920’s. An excerpt from “Dublin Tenement Life” helps explain what the times were like back then.
“You never saw doctors.* You could go to a chemist and even if your throat was cut, he’d give you a cure for it.* He’d put a dressing on it.* Mr. Mushatt was in Francis Street-he was the masterpiece, for a bad chest, bad back…..from north, south, east and west, people’d* come for them.* People trusted him as he concocted his own old fashioned medicines in the rear compounding room.* His lotions, potions, and tablets were thought to be the purest medicines.* People really believed in them, swore by them.”
And Harry Mushatt’s own words.
“We made our own medicines in the shop. My brother and I made up forty-four different preparations, from skin ointments, psoriasis ointments, foot pastes, stomach bottles, skin crčmes, tablets for kidneys, headaches, neuralgia….all different things. Oh, there was a bond of trust and they’d come into the shop and it would be packed out.* Tenement people, if one wasn’t feeling well, or met with an accident, Go to Mushatts!, they’d say....They came from all over Dublin”
Sure enough Mr. Mushatt was yer only man and all you had to do was tell him what was wrong with you and he would make you up something for it, and he was always on the ball. He also had a wicked sense of humour.
This event is true because the wife’s mother lived in that area when she was young, I have never known her to tell a lie God rest her, she told me that one day her father was on his way to work when he developed a severe stomach pain, he was right outside Mushatt’s and went in.
“Mr. Musheatt, I’ve an awful pain in me belly, It’s a big day in work today and I’m running late, can yeh make me up something in a hurry?”
“No problem Sir, by the way, the Pope was in here earlier with the very same complaint”
“Your havin me on, I don’t believe you!”
“Well you asked me to make up something in a hurry”