Extraordinary life of Ballyvary bonesetter
I HAD an almighty déjà vu moment when Bernard Joyce of the Ballyvary & Keelogues Community Page published an article from The Connaught Telegraph of June 26, 1975, on their Facebook page, writes Tom Gillespie.
It was written by my colleague Tom Rowley, from Parke, then a young reporter with the Connaught, on the life and times of legendary bonesetter, the late Paddy O’Hora from Keelogues.
Photographer Tom Campbell took the photo and the ‘victim’, with a fine head of hair then, being ‘treated’ was none other that yours truly.
I recall the morning vividly. We travelled with Tom Campbell to Paddy’s tidy home near Keelogues Church.
To set up the photo I had to remove my shirt and with my back to the camera, Paddy posed as if he was resetting my left ‘dislocated’ shoulder.
In fact he did, and I could feel something move as Tom Campbell clicked away.
The following week Tom Rowley’s article appeared in The Connaught in the Castlebar Topics page.
The heading read: ‘I spent half my time patching up after doctors - Paddy O’Hora: A master of the not so gentle art of bonesetting’.
Here is a taste of what appeared in the article:
Now the second last active bonesetter in Ireland, he is a final link in a tradition which has been in the O'Hora family for 900 years.
Since he slotted his first dislocated bone back into place when just a young schoolboy, almost 40 years ago, he had dedicated his life entirely to bone setting.
His amazing ability to snag dislocated bones in the body into place and to set bone fractures has won him acclaim throughout the world. He has accumulated huge sums of money, most of which, he admits, he squandered.
Now 51, Paddy O’Hora was born and still lives in Keelogues, over eight miles from Castlebar.
To his house perched high on a hill near the local parish church thousands of people have called over the past four decades, seeking relief from various ailments.
A car is laid on to ferry him to patients too ill to make the journey to Keelogues.
His masterly bone setting is obviously unique. The medical profession does not treat him with the scepticism with which they treat faith healers.
Indeed, over the past decade, he has had to treat three west of Ireland doctors for bone injuries. And one of them was a leading surgeon.
When I met him last week he had just finished treating three car loads of people from Roscommon, Clare and Leitrim, most of whom had simple dislocation injuries.
Next week he will be making his 27th trip to America to attend a clinic there for one week. His air fare is being paid by a group of people who cannot afford to or see no sense in incurring the expense of coming individually.
Of the long list of men in the O’Hora family who have had the gift of bone setting over the past 900 years, Paddy is the only one to have travelled abroad to treat patients.
In the early 1960s he went to America to attend at a clinic for one week, and ended up staying for three years.
This is typical of the jagged pattern his life has taken. Born in 1924, he had little option but to continue the family tradition of bonesetting, seeing he was the only boy in a family of nine.
He set his first bone when just a 12-year-old schoolboy. His father, a small farmer, had been involved in the Troubles and was in jail. A small group of people came to the O’Hora house seeking his services. Instead it was his son Paddy who righted their dislocations.
Shortly after this he left Keelogues National School, his only formal education, and went to work repairing roads with Mayo County Council.
While working with the council he had started bonesetting on a steady scale, and when he quit the road job he devoted most of his time to earning a fair income from practising the family tradition.
O’Hora is a down-to-earth man. Money, he says, is not the most essential thing in his life. His fee for treating dislocations, slipped discs, back and spinal injuries is usually around £5. For fractures it is much higher at £20.
"In most cases I charge people according to their means. If a patient is well off then I will charge my full price. But if they have nothing I will also do the job. I have treated people along the roadside who had nothing to offer in return. The gift I have cannot be bought just by producing a wallet of money."
Today Paddy O’Hora, a man who is a legend in his own lifetime, lives alone, his father and mother having died within the past 10 years. He is unmarried and happy to live out his life as a bachelor.
Leaning over a fire that didn’t exist in his scantly-scantly-furnished kitchen - his home clinic - he talked about his incredible life.
He admitted: "If I saved all the money I earned over the years from bonesetting I could afford to buy half of Castlebar.
"I never kept a record of the number of people I treated but it must run into tens of thousands. The fees I received would, I suppose, have topped the one million pound mark."
Much of the money, he admits, was squandered, mainly on drink.
However, he did furnish his eight sisters with full secondary education, boarding them into convents in Castlebar, Balla and Kiltimagh.
Paddy added: "As far as money is concerned I have no regrets in life. I made a fortune and spent it. As long as I have my health I am happy as the day is long. Remember there are no pockets in the final suit."
* Read part 2 in next Tuesday's print edition