‘No Irish Gentlemen Taken’

Sir, – In relation to the question posed by Joe Humphreys over the authenticity of discriminating signs placed in lodgings across Britain in decades past (“‘No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs’: How common were such notices in Britain?”, Unthinkable, April 29th), he may wish to note the considerable success of a 1954 film Doctor in the House starring Dirk Bogarde and Kenneth More. The film very prominently displays a public notice advertising lodgings, which includes the phrase “No Irish Gentlemen Taken”. The film in question was an enormous box office success that year, estimated to have been viewed by 15.5 million people at cinemas across Britain before numerous television airings over subsequent decades. The inclusion of this particular element in the production (which is largely irrelevant to the plot) would seem to provide irrefutable proof of the social acceptability and authenticity of such signs in Britain of that era. – Yours, etc,

DAVID MOREAU,

Dublin 3.