We Believe

"Sixth Interview

An Interview with Frank Duff BENTLEY PLACE-PART I

There were four girls standing in the room-it was obvious what they were, handsome young girls,-and there was a fifth one in bed. I at once used our passport phrase, "Does Mary Tate live here?" ... "There she is in the bed." "Oh! she seems to be very, very sick." "Yeah, she's dying." I went over to her ... and she certainly did look as if she was about to expire. She was in a terrible state. I then addressed myself to the other girls and I said, "Has she had the priest?" "The priest won't come down here." "Has she had the doctor?" "She won't let us send for the doctor!" Now at this time my confidence was very fully restored and I said to them, "Do you mean to say you're going to let her die there like a dog?"

In this interview Walt Brown, Treasurer of the Philadelphia Senatus, seeks Prank Duff's personal remembrances of the events which led up to the Legion's assault on Bentley Place. Although the details of this Legion action are set forth in his book, "Miracles on Tap, " Mr. Duff's narrative in this interview breathes new life into the characters of that story while revealing some new information and insights.

This interview took place on August 28,1979.

Q. We again have the privilege of talking with Mr. Frank Duff. In a previous interview Mr. Duff told us about one of the first works of the Legion of Mary, the work with the Street Girls in Dublin, which resulted in the establishment of the first Legion hostel, Sancta Maria. As a result of that work the Legion then attacked Bentley Place known at that time as one of the dens of prostitution and other related vices. In my visit to the Concilium office last night I saw on the wall a Crucifix which was used in that work and I've also read the book you've written about Bentley Place, "Miracles on Tap." But today I would like to have your personal remembrances of that Legion undertaking in 1923.

A. I'm willing. To give you any sort of description of that celebrated district would require an extensive treatment and I will not attempt that because it could take up a very great portion of the time at our disposal. But, just let it suffice to say, that it was an historical place going back into the seventeen hundreds. From time to time authority tried to rid the place of some of its awful renown by changing the name of the place, as if that would represent a cleaning up. But, of course, the ill odor transferred itself to the new name at once. In any case, old names also survived and it was even in our day known very much as Monto-Monto being an abbreviation of Montgomery Street. There were other names, Tyrone Street and various other slang names. Let me inform you that Bentley Place is not the real name at all.

Q. That I didn't know.

A. Bentley Place was a coined expression not to draw opprobrium on the people living around there at that time. Everybody in Ireland knew about this place and it has an unfavorable mention in the Encyclopedia Brittanica in its article on prostitution. That was the 10th edition of that book which speaks of its carrying on its operations with a greater degree of publicity and noninterference than almost any other place in the entire world. It picks out Algeria as a place which could rival Dublin in that respect. That was not so good. Shiploads of sailors used to come down there in groups, big groups of them. They knew where to come and it was all excused on the grounds that it kept the evil in one spot instead of having houses all over the city. So, that was Bentley Place as it stood in our time.

It first became practical politics for us when, in the Sancta Maria Hostel one week at our ordinary meeting, one of the girls of the house was reported as having left during the week and as having gone down to live in this place. So, that provoked an animated discussion and the immediate proposition that we send people down there after her because that idea of following-up was an essential portion of the work. The suggestion of so sending people was at once attacked on the ground that that was an impossibility. "You could not possibly send a respectable person into that district. The dangers were many." That didn't exactly satisfy the uprising Legion spirit and it was faced up to that that work would have to be attempted. Then followed some reconoitering in an effort to find exactly what the whole place was like and to work out whatever degree of safety could be aspired to.

We did a lot of going around tackling people. Strange to say, the great majority of people when approached knew really very little about this thing. You wouldn't learn much from talking to them. Even people living beside the place would not be very fruitful. To give you an example of this tone which surrounded it, I went down to one of the priests into whose district this area normally fell and I asked him to do me the great favor of walking with me through the district in broad daylight stopping to talk to nobody at all. The idea being that I'd be seen in the company of the priest because up to that time I was not working on the North Side of the city but on the South. I'd be unknown and my advent, as I pointed out to him, might be regarded with all sorts of suspicions. If I wasn't coming in for the purposes of the place, what was my objective? What was my game? And it was just to have that better hallmark placed upon me of being seen with him that I asked for that. Now he was one of the finest people imaginable as other circumstances have proved, a most heroic type of man, and his answer to that suggestion of mine was, "My knees go from under me," because it was a place of lies and rumors and everything of that kind and he didn't know what sort of use would be made of his visit to the place.

Q. Was it dangerous with just the two of you going in?

A. It wasn't the physical danger he was thinking of. It was lying-the suggestion that he was frequenting the ·district. If it was only a physical thing, he would have run down with me. But in spite of all, I didn't get very much information. However, we fixed a day when the entry through the place would be made. It was agreed that the approach would be made by Miss Plunkett and myself.

So, at eleven o'clock in the morning we met and we went down to this place. Bentley Place was off a street the name of which had originally been Tyrone Street. In those days Tyrone Street was really the main center. Now it had shifted a little bit to the east and the name of Tyrone Street had been changed to Railway Street. Bentley Place was off Railway Street. The area itself consisted of several smaller streets. Now in my looking around for something that we could use, I got hold of the name of a girl living down there. This was not the girl who had only just gone there. I didn't have any address for her. But I did have the precise address for another girl and there's no harm in telling it now. Her name was Mary Kate and she lived in Number 8, off the place that I'm calling Bentley Place. I remembered that by means of putting it into a nursery rhyme, "Mary Kate of Number 8." I held onto that like glue. That meant that when we came to the actual entrance to Bentley Place, we looked at the numbers and we found that the first number on the left hand side was Number 1 and the number on the other side was 20 or 21. That meant that somewhere at the very far end was Number 8. Normally, we'd do our work with a certain amount of method and we would take probably Number 1 all the more so since as it kept us a little nearer civilization (LAUGHS), so to speak.

Q. You were always prepared for a quick escape.

A. Yes, a readier escape. And so we proceeded to walk down to the place. It was a beautiful day. Of course, it was not business hours at that time of morning but there were a fair amount of people just loitering around. We were a very strangely assorted pair and became at once an object of curiosity. I was wondering now at what stage would this produce an intervention-at what stage would we be asked our business. As we proceeded, we saw a terrible-looking poor derelict of a man lolling up against one of the walls of the house, one of these unutterably detested creatures. As soon as we came near enough to him for him to identify, he came into life and he shambled out into our path. I said to myself, "Now we're in for it." (LAUGHS) I wouldn't know what would happen because the place had a terrible name for happenings. To my unutterable surprise he seized my hands and hailed me. Then I recognized him as a poor creature with whom I had been in contact over on the other side of the city. Apparently I had been helpful to him, because he was friendliness itself ...

Q. That was a good break!

A .... and he greeted me with my name. This was terribly fortunate because it gave me the introduction that I had been looking for and couldn't get. It was one of themselves who gave me really more than the priest would. The presence of the priest could only mean that he was instructing me how to break up the place (LAUGHS) whereas this hallmark which now descended on me was the best possible and for that reason I delayed there talking to him so that as many people as possible would get an eyeful of it. I bade him farewell when I thought this was accomplished and we resumed our walk-this time rid of a certain amount of the apprehension. We felt a great thing had been accomplished, Now we found that Number 8 was the third last house on the left hand side and we came down to it. The hall door was open as most of them were always. We went in and knocked at the first door in the hall, on the left hand side, what would be called in the phraseology of those types of houses, the front parlor, and somebody shouted out to come in and we went in. There were four girls standing in the room - it was obvious what they were, handsome young girls - and there was a fifth one in bed. I at once used our passport phrase, "Does Mary Kate live here?" Now }et me explain that in the narrative "Miracles on Tap" which contains a very expanded account of all these things, she is put down as Mary Lyne of Number 9 (LAUGHS) in order to conceal her identity. "There she is in the bed." "Oh! She seems to be very, very sick." "Yeah, she's dying." I went over to her and she certainly did look as if she was about to expire. She was in a terrible state. I then addressed myself to the other girls and I said, "Has she had the priest." "The priest won't come down here!" "Has she had the doctor?" "She won't let us send for the doctor!" Now at this time my confidence was very fully restored and I said to them, "Do you mean to say you're going to let her die there like a dog?" "Now what can we do?" So, at that I went outside and nearly opposite, sitting on a window ledge, was a young tough, one of the unofficial police of the area who used to be known as Bullies. I beckoned to him and he came over to me. This was a new business, I was being obeyed, (LAUGHS) and I said to him, "Look, would you mind going around to Stuart Street and bringing a cab? We're taking Mary Kate to the hospital!" "Righto," and he flashed off. I went back into the room and I gave instructions that they should get her ready to be taken over to the hospital. The girls set to work on that and I went and stood outside. After a very short time up rolled the old four-wheeler cab. Taxies were only coming in around that time. Within a few minutes we had the poor girl in the cab and, accompanied by two of her companions, it rolled off to the old Venereal Hospital in Dublin over at a place called Townsend Street. When she arrived there, the first thing they did was to bring the priest because she was very near death. The Matron of the place, with whom we had a lot of subsequent contact, told us that one hour longer without medical attention and that girl was dead.

Q. One hour more and she would have been dead!

A. One hour! So that was extraordinary and struck us with terrible force. You realize from the legionary point of view we would regard that as a sign. Here was this girl on the point of death and, as if we were led by her Angel Guardian, we went straight to her, no intervening house at all, just straight to her. With medical attention she lived for six weeks in the place. We were visiting that hospital at the time and she said to our members repeatedly that she hoped she would not recover, that she was very fit to die and she wanted to die. Just before her death she called on the others in the ward to join her in the Rosary and she died on its conclusion. She was buried in our great cemetery of Glasnevin and we all attended the funeral and the population of Bentley Place attended it. Such an outfit gathered together you never saw. (LAUGHS) I remember now that that was consoling to the last degree. So, then, that puts Miss Plunkett and myself in the room in Number 8 along with the two other girls. We had a brief chat with them and they suggested we come over to their house. They were only visitors in Number 8. We went over to another house on the other side of the road and there were three girls in that room that we went into. Miss Plunkett and myself settled down to tell them about Sancta Maria and to appeal to them to go and do likewise. They listened again. They had heard about it and they listened very eagerly to the whole account. So far we were having a time which was exactly the opposite to what our anticipation had painted. While we were talking, a young fellow came into the room, I'd say 22 years of age or thereabouts, a handsome young fellow, whom I subsequently christened Rudolpho Valen- tino (LAUGHS) - he was the reigning film star at the time. I said to myself when he came into the room, "Oh, (LAUGHS) he has been sent in to get rid of us." Instead of coming over and joining in our conversation, he went to the fireplace, put his elbow up on the mantlepiece and listened intently. At his coming in I had stiffened myself up for a certain rush on his part. We were not going to leave just because we were requested to do so. That would take a lot of living down (LAUGHS) about our great exploit in going there and then walking out very meekly. So that was not going to happen. While I had one eye on him, I ceased to talk and left it go on with the others. But eyeing him I could see no evidence of viciousness there. He seemed to be really listening and after just observing him for a moment or two, I went over to him and I entered into chat with him and I found an extraordinary sad position. He was one of the Bullies alright. He was actually the brother of one of the girls with whom we were talking. The name of his sister was Victoria Smith and he was something Smith. I forget his first name now. He freely spoke to me that he was very badly placed and that he was living down there. He admitted he was a shoplifter by day and a Bully by night. I argued with him about the dreadful character of that life. He agreed cordially with me. He said he knew it so very well but there was no way of getting out of it. That was his position. He said he would welcome any change. So I gave him a note to Father Devane. I asked Father Devane to insert him into the schedule for the retreats at Rathfarnham Castle and also to give him some time and see what could be done to help him. He gave me a promise that he would present that note and he did. He made the retreat and Father Devane sent him over to Liverpool into a job. Years after that he visited me here. He proved to be a steady going customer. He had been in employment all the time and a complete success. So that was very wonderful.

Then after dealing in that room, we left that room escorted by one of the girls as an introducer and we got through a lot of the area. And one of the items of it was extraordinary. Now up to this point we had been dealing with very neat, well-dressed girls who didn't drink-although I suppose everybody down there drank-but at that time of the morning in any case no sign of drinking had presented itself to us and the girls were tidy and nice. But we-came into another place and we ran up against a totally different order the battered type that had been on the streets for a great number of years and who had sunk with every day, perpetual drinkers, clad in rags, whose appearance was generally dreadful. I reckoned there were about eight of them in one house. Among this crowd was a great willingness to listen to you and an apparent possession of good faith. They were extraordinarily nice to us and while we were talking, another one came in with a big quart bottle of methylated spirits and a jug of water and some glasses. Well, the moment she came in, they were all transformed. They forgot us and they came over and grouped themselves around the provider. Each woman in turn would be given two glasses and she'd get a dose of methylated spirit in one glass and the other glass would be filled to the brim with water. It was like a witch's rite. It really was! It was a most uncanny thing. I had never seen anything like it before. Their eyes were riveted on that bottle. It was the strangest thing in the world. So they got into a circle and the person coming in passed around the circle, giving this to each one in turn. The methylated spirits were drained

over followed by pouring in the water and when this went around the whole lot, a new spirit seemed to take possession. They formed into a ring-a-rosy and proceeded to run or dance around the whole place in a circle and some of them seized Miss Plunkett and myself (LAUGHS) and pulled us into the revolving ring. (LAUGHS) If you'd had your television camera to take that scene, you'd have made as much as a million dollars out of it.

Q. We could have made a spine-tingling Hollywood horror movie!

A. So this thing went on for some time, a witches' dance. They they began to throw themselves onto the beds to get sleep and we couldn't get any more conversation with them. But in the time we had been dealing with them, we had told them that we were opening a retreat on the following Saturday evening in 76 Harcourt Street itself because after the Number Two retreat in Baldoyle, that convent became unavailable to us. The superiors of the Order became apprehensive of associating the convent too much with that type of work because they were running, as I told you, a holiday home and weekend retreat house out there. We had to look around for other accommodations and we were not able to get any. Then we took the big step of saying we'd hold it in the house. This was to be the first retreat held in the house itself, Sancta Maria. These had eagerly agreed to go but when we moved away from that room, the amount of reliance that we placed upon their promises were precisely nil. We did not know whether they would even recall the conversation when they sobered up.

Q. That's understandable.

A. The spectacle of depravity was great because of that methylated spirit-drinking which was the alternative to the more refined drinks partly because it was cheap and partly because its kick was very great. Actually, it had the extraordinary power that it might be hours and hours since you took the dose of it and to take a drink of water revived the effect. It was depraving in its effects. The girls had pointed out, and very obviously truthfully, that a difficulty in the way of their coming over on the retreat was the state of their clothing. That was as true as could be because they were in a ghastly condition. Rags, real rags ...

Q. How very sad.

A .... and so we promised them clothing. It got to be pretty late and I would say it was now 5 o'clock in the Evening. We had spent the whole day down there and in that whole day one nasty word had not been addressed to us nor had we had one hand raised against us. (LAUGHS)

Q. That must have been a very pleasant surprise.

A. Well, this was a surprise of surprises. Then we hurried off over to Sancta Maria to tell the tale and it was received with amazement. We told them that we had arranged for this retreat because we had gotten so many promises. I would be inclined to say that we got forty promises ...

Q. Forty promises!

A .... during that day. (LAUGHS) Did ever anybody hear of such an unexpected change in prospects? So that sparked off all the preparations for the retreat and it also meant we would have to forage around to get some clothing for them. On the following Friday, that would be the day before the retreat would begin, Miss Massey, who, I think, was at that time the President of the Praesidium, splendid girl, who died only comparatively recently, and I with a couple of suit- cases went down and we went to this particular house where all the ladies were. Strange to say, we found that They remembered their promises and there followed the scene of the distribution of the clothes. (LAUGHS) This was equivalent for strangeness to the witches' dance of the previous time because they fought like tigers for the articles of clothing. (LAUGHS) and then proceeded· without heeding us (LAUGHS) or me, perhaps, I suppose, to bring it down to the one male present, they proceeded to change into the new garments. (LAUGHS) Well, the thing was extraordinary.

During the course of this business, one of the women beckoned to me and brought me outside on the street and she said to me-I'd say she was about 38 years of age, one of the elder brethren,-"You must take me away with you now." "Oh, well," I said, "there are difficulties in the way of that now. We're not quite ready." "You'll have to take me away now because I hate this life and I want to finish with it. But I'll never find my way over if you don't take me over now." Well, now I mentioned to you already that we were in the grip of something that we now repudiate-we attached a sort of undue influence to the retreat. We regarded it as part of a ritual that the girls had to conform to, that that was the guarantee of a girl's good intention and fortifying of her in that good intention and so it was necessary. This meant that we had to take her over into the house and keep her there without the retreat. We just didn't conform to the pattern of the moment and I at the same time said to myself, "Well, now we'll have to do something for her." So a thought came to me. I wrote to the Matron of that Venereal Hospital and I asked her as a favor to take this girl in and keep her for the night and if she would manage it, to escort her over to Sancta Maria on the following evening when the retreat was to begin. I gave my lady this letter. Now on the following evening when I entered Sancta Maria myself in preparation for the retreat, this lassie was the first person to come and greet me.

Q. The exception worked out perfectly.

A. It had all worked out perfectly and there she was sober and clean and, you might say, I had to look six times at her. Well now, she had been on the streets sixteen years and during a very great portion of that time she had been a methylatedspirit-drinker and yet that girl never looked back. Her behavior in the Hostel was exemplary. After she was there for perhaps a couple of months, she came to me one day and took me aside. "There's a fellow," she said, "living down there" -that meant in the neighborhood of Bentley Place"there's a fellow living down there and he often said he'd marry me if he could rely on me. I want you to go down to him and tell him I'm making an attempt." So I took his name and address and I went down to see him one Saturday afternoon. He was a docker by profession and I went into his room. He was sitting on his bed reading the papers, one of the toughest-looking fellows you could imagine, a powerful tough fellow. He said to me, "What do you want?" So I told him that I came from this girl and what she had said to me. "Yes, Yes, I like her very much. Yes, I did say that to her and I'm willing, if you can believe her." I gave him my impressions about her and that I thought she was full of good intentions and that sort of thing and her behavior up to that time had been splendid. He asked a question or two and then he remained silent for an indefinite interval. Then he looked at me and said, "I'll marry the old hen." (LAUGHS) That wasn't the other case I told you about previously with regard to the first retreat where I also had the same mission to perform. This is a totally different case.

Q. I remember the first case. How did this match work out?

A. They were married and, according to the fairy tale phrase, they lived happily ever after. That girl never looked back.

Q. The fairy tale Princess wed her Prince Charming. That's almost miraculous.

A. These are what I'd call First Class Miracles. Now just a word about the retreat itself. After giving those clothes to that nest, Miss Massey and myself then proceeded to g'o around to try to remind the girls that we had spoken to before about a retreat being arranged and all that but it was a disastrous experience. You see, this was late afternoon now and the place was already in full swing. We only met some of the older girls by accident. The place was thronged with men. Drink was already showing its effects and you couldn't imagine anybody turning up to a retreat. You couldn't get anybody to speak to, just a mad frenzy prevailing all around you. So we departed very dispirited indeed not knowing what the retreat was going to work out to but on Saturday night we found we had, as far as I recall, nine from that area.

Q. Another miracle!

A. Ah, and from that area alone. Well, then we had got a few more from the old lodging houses on the South Side of the city and in any case we had perhaps thirteen or fourteen on retreat in addition to the girls who were in the house and that went off very successfully. There was another terrific restoration. There was a girl called Maggie Ballard. Maggie Ballard was known as the Queen of the Spunkers. Spunk is a cant expression for methylated spirit. Normally it's slang for courage but it is also used to designate methylated spirit. She was called the Queen of the Spunkers and had been 22 years down there. She was originally from Glasgow and she was one of those who turned up and who was a perfect restoration from the first second and never looked back. After she had been with us for some time, we sent inquiries on foot and managed, with her aid of course, to restore her to her family in Glasgow.

Now that was Retreat Number One in the house and it was the beginning of our Bentley Place campaign. This assumed a different character to our previous maneuverings around the low-class lodging houses because we had now a district on our hands. We arranged to visit the place every Friday evening and I always took a group of the lady legionaries with me varying that group to some extent, not taking a different group each time but just

. bringing in a newcomer, so the training-experience would be the property of a lot of people after a while. This was tremendous. You see, they had never done that sort of work before. To see the absolute efficiency and courage with which they took it on! Ah, it was unbelievable! So, in addition to that, a group of the Legionaries went down every Sunday morning without a man with them on the pretext of reminding them about the obligation of Mass. Well, that was a pretext because you hadn't a chance of getting anybody. They were sleeping off the debauch of the night before. The lot of ladies there would use their tongues on the visitors and that sort of thing and the visitors would be lucky in getting off with that. But that then became the routine and that was followed out altogether. That visitation picked off a girl every now and then. By this time we had made up our minds that our stiff adherence to the retreat as a condition of entering the house was wrong and that meant that, if you picked up a girl in the place, you'd bring her off at once to Sancta Maria. Not out of the Sunday morning but out of the Friday visitation every now and then we'd pick up one and take her off. The routine there was that if you got a girl to consent, our whole party left, that is, we did not leave either the girls or myself down there. They were a sort of protection for me and I was a protection for them.

Q. You had your own mutual protection society.

A. S o, although we worked more or less as a unit, that didn't mean we went around hand in hand.

Q. Since we only have less than a minute left on this tape, we had better conclude this part of the in· terview on Bentley Place. We'll conclude the story of Bentley Place as told by Mr. Frank Duff in our next interview.

This interview is available on video- cassettes and audio-cassettes from:

Concilium Legionis Mariae, Morning Star A venue, Brunswick Street, Dublin 7, Ireland.

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