Who is Mrs Quin
Nanette Norris was born in 1900 in Kesh, Co Fermanagh and was brought up first in Co Donegal, then in Cashel Co Tipperary. But it is as ‘Mrs Quin’ that she is remembered. Today, 73 charity shops bear her name.
As a girl in Cashel, she became friendly with Alice Armitage and the two met again in Dublin. By then, Nanette had qualified as an anaethetist in the Rotunda, which was where she met her gynaecologist husband, James Quin.
They married in 1926 and Nanette continued to practise for a time. She was fond of children and had great empathy with young patients, but had no children of her own.
She renewed her friendship with Alice Armitage and supported her in the formation of the National Council for the Blind of Ireland, then called Wireless for the Blind. This charity moved several times before being established in Whitworth Road, Drumcondra, where it is still to be found.
Nowadays, the area houses a training school, a library and many other facilities, but then it was all in the future and funds were urgently needed in order to bring NCBI into line with other major charities.
Nanette Quin was a born fundraiser. She wasn’t wealthy, but she was determined to make money for NCBI. So she did what every shop manager has done ever since – she gathered a group of volunteers to help her. With the help of the Nesbitt family in Dublin, friends of hers and owners of Arnotts stores, she found a small shop, which was free at the end of its lease and took it over for three weeks. She cajoled and sometimes bullied her friends into parting with model gowns, furs and even jewellery and took a great deal of money for the charity.
For years, she opened an end-of-lease shop for a few weeks before Christmas, but insurance problems obliged her to stop in the end.
She then moved to Drumcondra, where her "little shop" was a concrete shed in the NCBI grounds. She continued her work for the charity almost until she died, in 1989.
In 1996, NCBI opened the first charity shop to be named Mrs Quin’s. The location was Wexford and the general manager, the late Martin Kenny, planned to open 100 shops. Sadly, Martin died in 2006, but his successor, Barry Magee, is just as determined to maintain and extend the chain, now numbering 73, with more envisaged for later in the year.
Mrs Quin would be proud of the shops that bear her name.