The penny picture-house matinee was a bargain missed by generations of children since 1914. Every week (writes a correspondent) I would receive my "Saturday penny" in return for cleaning all the shoes in the house, and that penny in a few hours' time would buy my admission to St. George's Hall, Belfast.
To-day one of the slang terms for the films is "the flicks," but in the old days they really did flicker. However, as we had no experience of anything better, we thought the pictures as near perfection as they could be.
At the height of the Home Rule campaign the "Pathe Gazette," then the only news-reel, showed Sir Edward Carson addressing a crowd from the balcony of the Ulster Reform Club. From the juvenile audience in St. George's Hall there at once arose a howl like feeding-time in the lionhouse, a chorus of air-raid sirens and the cries of a cup-tie crowd, combined, condensed and amplified. Young Unionists shrieked their approval. Young Nationalists screamed their indignation. It sounded much the same.
I was seated - in actual fact, I was standing - on the back of a foyer, and whether the wails of those around me were Unionist or Nationalist (writes my correspondent) I could not make out. In the circumstances I remained quiet.
The Irish Times, September 6th, 1940.