The Brown Suitcase The book is set in Northern Ireland, but has references to Eire, England, Wales, Australia, New York, and Los Angeles. My great grandfather purchased the suitcase from a small antique store in Dublin. He selected it because it had steel protectors on each corner, so he felt it would last him a long time. He was on his way to Connoly Train Station, when he heard gunfire. He turned to see the Garda firing shots at two men who were running away from the bank and toward him. He felt a sharp pain in his groin and fell to the ground. The bullet had ricocheted of the steel corner of the suitcase and burst his femoral artery. He was pronounced dead when the ambulance crew arrived. From that moment, life for the O'Malleys changed forever. My mother always said that the suitcase was cursed and that everything that happened to her was because of that curse. When you have read the book, you may feel that what happened to her was more the result of bad decisions rather than bad luck! The story begins at a Hiring Fair in Strabane, N.I. in 1927, when my mother was just 14 years old. It relates to her lifetime events over a period of 32 years. She endured many trials and tribulations, some of which were disastrous, some awful and some just unbelievable, and funny. It is appropriate to say that Truth is often stranger than fiction. There are references to politics, religion, historic events, family interactions, cruelty, abuse, neglect, and violence. There are some sexual innuendoes, which were based on actual events, but these are left mostly to the readers imagination. The ups and downs are continuous all the way from rags to riches and back again. There are moral references to the abuse and neglect of children, abject poverty, and the attitude of the church. PROLOGUE What you are about to read is based on events, which happened in Ireland, the place of my birth. The things that I describe in relation to my family did occur, the places we lived in did exist, the conditions we suffered were accurate and the disasters that befell us were real. I have changed the names of people, places, and timelines to protect the identities of families, colleagues, relatives, and friends. I retained the name of Belfast, capital city of Northern Ireland and of Strabane (where the hiring fairs took place). I have understated some events, as they were too horrific to describe in full. This of course is not a documentary, it is a story about the O'Malley's, so I have used poetic licence to try to ensure that the reader will enjoy the book. I have emphasized some events to try to bring the stories to life. My references to the Catholic church are as described to me by my family and the opinions given are my personal opinions - you must draw your own conclusions. You may wish to apportion blame to some of the individual characters in my book, for some of the terrible and repetitive incidents which occurred, but I blame the ignorance of the times, the beliefs that were prevalent and the absolute poverty which widely prevailed in Ireland just before and after the second world war. I hope and pray that Fieldstown and places like it never exist in the future and that the emancipation of women and the wellbeing of children will flourish in any part of the world, where abuse and discrimination still prevail. Finally, I would like to pay homage to St Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases, without whom I would not have been alive to write this devastating account of abuse and deprivation.