The end of the Irish Poor Law?: Welfare and healthcare reform in revolutionary and independent Ireland 9781784996734

Citation preview

This book examines Irish poor law reform during the years of the Irish Revolution and Irish Free State. A significant addition to the growing historiography of twentieth-century Ireland, this work moves beyond political history. It demonstrates that concepts of respectability, deservingness and social class were central dynamics in Irish society. This book provides the first major study of local welfare practices, policies and attitudes towards poverty and the poor in this era. Exploring the poor law during revolutionary Ireland, the book provides fresh and original insights into this critical juncture in Irish history. It charts the transformation of the former workhouse system into a network of local authority welfare and healthcare institutions including county homes, county hospitals and mother and baby homes. This work makes an important contribution not just to historiographical understandings, but also to modern-day debates on institutions in Ireland’s past. New insights into medical history and hospital care are also provided. The book is based on under-utilised local and central government records and not only reveals the attitudes of the poor relief officials, but also sheds much light on the poor and how people engaged with the system. It is also comparative in context and places the Irish experience of poor relief reform against the backdrop of wider transnational trends. This work has multiple audiences and will appeal to those interested in Irish social, culture, economic and political history. The book will also appeal to historians of welfare, the poor law and the social history of medicine.

The end of the Irish Poor Law?

The end of the Irish Poor Law?

The end of the Irish Poor Law? Welfare and healthcare reform in revolutionary and independent Ireland

Donnacha Seán Lucey is Lecturer in the History of Medicine at the University of Liverpool

L uce y

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

ISBN 978-0-7190-8757-8

9 780719 087578

Donnacha Seán Lucey

The end of the Irish Poor Law?

The end of the Irish Poor Law? Welfare and healthcare reform in revolutionary and independent Ireland DONNA C HA S EÁ N L UCE Y

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Donnacha Seán Lucey 2015 The right of Donnacha Seán Lucey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN  978 0 7190 8757 8  hardback First published 2015 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

Contents

List of figures and tables vi Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations viii Introduction 1 1 The poor law and the Irish revolution: the case of the Cork workhouse 13 2  From outdoor relief to home assistance 41 3  Single mothers and institutionalisation 82 4  Child welfare and local authorities 119 5  From workhouses to hospitals 148 Conclusion 189 Bibliography 194 Index 210

Figures and tables

Figures 2.1 Average expenditure of each board of health and public assistance per 1,000 of population,1926–29 57 2.2 Expenditure on home assistance per 1,000 of population in the Irish Free State and in the Kerry Board of Health and Assistance and South Cork Board of Public Assistance, 1922–39 59 3.1 Infant mortality rate and illegitimate infant mortality rate, 1923–50 91 4.1 Expenditure on boarded-out children in Kerry, Cork South and Irish Free State per 1,000 of population, 1924–39 134 5.1 Local authority expenditure from capital and loan accounts, 1922/23–1938/39 156 Tables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Home assistance per 1,000 of population in South Cork, Kerry and Irish Free State 68 Unmarried mothers in the three Sacred Heart mother and baby homes on 31 March 1933–41 90 Destination of discharged unmarried mothers from the three Sacred Heart mother and baby homes, 1935/36–1938/39 101 Children discharged from the three Sacred Heart mother and baby homes,1935/36–1938/39 103 Children maintained by the Kerry Board of Health and Public Assistance, 1925–32 137 Categories of inmates in Irish workhouses on 31 March 1909–20 151 Length of stay of inmates in the Cork workhouse in 1911 and Cork District Hospital and County Home in 1926 157 Paying and free patients in Cork and Irish Free State voluntary and semi-voluntary hospitals, 1933 167

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the Irish Research Council which provided me with a Postdoctoral Fellowship to undertake the research that this book is based on. I am also grateful to the Centre for Contemporary Irish History, Trinity College Dublin where I held this award, and Professor Eunan O’Halpin who mentored the fellowship. I would also like to thank Professor Virginia Crossman and my current colleagues on the ‘Poverty and Public Health in Belfast and its hinterland’ project based in Queen’s University Belfast: Professor Peter Gray, Dr Georgina Laragy and Dr Olwen Purdue. I would also like to thank the staff of the following archives and libraries: the National Archives, Dublin; the National Library of Ireland, Cork County and City Archives, Kerry County Library, Kerry Diocesan Archives and the Oireachtas Library. Further thanks to Manchester University Press and Tony Mason. I would also like to thank Dr Ida Milne and Dr Ian Miller for reading earlier drafts of this work. I would like to thank my family including my mother Joan, sisters Sineád and Eileen, aunt Eileen, and my wife’s parents Paul and Renee. Finally I want to thank my wife, Leanne, to whom I dedicate this book.

Abbreviations

CCCA CDHCH CMOH DÉD DÉLG DIB DLGPH HAO IHS IRA ITGWU KBHPA KCL LGB NAI NHS NLI NSPCC OAP OL SAO SCBPA TD UCD

Cork County and City Archives Cork District Hospital and County Home County Medical Officer of Health Dáil Éireann Debates Dáil Éireann Department of Local Government Dictionary of Irish Biography Department of Local Government and Public Health Home Assistance Officer Irish Historical Studies Irish Republican Army Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union Kerry Board of Health and Public Assistance Kerry County Library Local Government Board National Archives of Ireland National Health Service National Library of Ireland National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children old age pension Oireachtas Library Superintendent Assistant Officer South Cork Board of Public Assistance Teachta Dála University College Dublin

Introduction

This book examines the poor law and attempts at its reform during the Irish revolution (1918–23) and in the initial decades of Irish independence. This period represented one of the most formative and crucial eras in Irish politics and society, with ideas of culture, nation, state and identity widely contested. Historical analysis of the history of welfare and the poor law during this seminal period remains limited, and this book’s appraisal of the relief of poverty addresses a previously underdeveloped aspect of the first decades of twentieth-century Ireland. The work provides a study of the intersection between welfare and politics during the revolutionary and the Irish Free State years. It examines the attitudes of advanced nationalists during the war of independence towards the poor and poverty, and the welfare policies enacted by Free State reformers. The transformation of public assistance regimes in independent Ireland is investigated. In particular, the establishment of county, district and cottage hospitals from what were formerly workhouses is examined. A key research question is whether the terms of entitlement to poor and medical assistance, based on poverty and destitution under the poor law, were actually transformed in the Free State? The book’s focus is not limited to national developments, and it analyses poor relief practices at a local and regional level. It contextualises the development of the Irish Poor Law system, and its subsequent transformation under the Irish Free State, within the wider reforms of welfare regimes that concurrently occurred throughout inter-war Britain and Europe. In doing so the book engages with the burgeoning international historiography which examines poor relief, welfare and healthcare in the first half of the twentieth century. Laissez-faire socio-economic thought influenced the development of nineteenth-century poor relief practices, and as a result principles of deterrence permeated many of the new welfare systems including the English New Poor Law, which was introduced in 1834. From the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and particularly during the early twentieth century, insurance-based welfare reform was introduced.

2

the end of the irish poor law?

In Ireland and Britain the Old Age Pension Act of 1908 and National Insurance Act of 1911 signalled the establishment of social security and represented the need for the state to provide more substantial assistance than provided under deterrent relief systems. These reforms were mostly targeted at the labouring and deserving classes. Generally speaking, these groups were increasingly politicised through the labour movement and viewed as central to the economic health of nations during an era of imperial expansion from the latter nineteenth century.1 By the early decades of the twentieth century, developing notions of citizenship, brought about by franchise reform, led to governments further bestowing rights on their citizens and expansion in welfare systems. However, those who were considered as failing to live up to social ideals, and whose poverty was viewed as emanating from personal failings, were chastised as immoral and subject to harsh policies, which were often influenced by eugenic concerns over population quality in many inter-war western societies. Such ideas resonated with the debates regarding the deserving and undeserving poor which permeated the mid-nineteenth-century poor law. This book analyses poor relief and poor law reform in Ireland within such contexts. Understandings of the Irish Poor Law and local authority welfare and healthcare during revolutionary and early independent Ireland remain limited. The reform of the poor law in independent Ireland is largely viewed as a failure. The 1919 Democratic Programme – the Irish republican declaration of social and economic objectives read out at the revolutionary First Dáil – claimed that the ‘Irish Republic’ would abolish the ‘odious, degrading and foreign’ poor law system: J. J. Lee, the Irish historian, sardonically notes that Irish independence merely succeeded in bringing about a ‘degrading and native system’.2 The Democratic Programme subscribed to traditional nationalist interpretations which denigrated the poor law as a cruel and British system. However, recent historical research has demonstrated that the poor law had a far more complex place in Irish society than these viewpoints allowed. Workhouses were multifunctional welfare and healthcare institutions that provided mostly for the sick, elderly, infirm and young. Traditional depictions of families being forced into workhouses and placed in separate wards did not ring true for most of the post-Famine years. The poor law was not synonymous with the workhouse and large numbers of the destitute and sick poor were relieved in their own homes with outdoor relief and through the dispensary system. The multifaceted poor law could be harsh, stigmatising and marked by class and gender prejudices. These traits, however, were juxtaposed with developing notions of care, changing terms of entitlement and the gradual dilution of the principles



introduction 3

of deterrence that underpinned the introduction of the Irish Poor Law in 1838. From the 1880s nationalists gained control of many boards of guardians and the 1898 Local Government Act democratised these bodies. In effect, as the historian Virginia Crossman has argued, the welfare policies of the post-Famine Irish Poor Law reflected the attitudes inherent in Irish society.3 The development and reform of the poor law from 1918 must be understood from this viewpoint and not through the traditional nationalist perspectives, which depict Irish independence as heralding the closure of the workhouse and the repelling of the hated British Poor Law. This book addresses a number of significant gaps in Irish historiography. The Free State’s Cumann na nGaedheal government (1923–32) is largely seen as adopting harsh welfare policies which viewed poverty as a result of the poor’s personal and moral failings.4 The early Free State reductions in the old age pension and rejection of extended social insurance in 1925 have been well documented. The 1924 Dáil Éireann (Irish Parliament) comments by the Minister of Industry and Commerce, Patrick McGilligan, which warned that due to fiscal constraints people ‘may have to die from starvation’ was the nadir of Free State social policy.5 A number of survey works on the Irish welfare state in the twentieth century have been completed. Sophia Carey’s Social Security in Ireland 1939–52 adopts a schematic framework and implements a range of political and welfare theories to explain the development of the Irish welfare system during the critical stage of the establishment of social security.6 Contextualised within modern theoretical perspectives on social policy, Carey argues that independent Ireland was shaped by both a colonial legacy and the influence of the Catholic Church, which resulted in a unique welfare state compared to other European countries. Mel Cousins’ work examines the development of Irish government welfare policy between the years 1922 and 1952. It highlights that social conservatism and fiscal liberalism were the prevailing influences on the Cumann na nGaedheal government. Cousins also examines the emergence of the Fianna Fáil-led government in 1932 and the following period of welfare expansion which witnessed a range of new social policies including reforms of the old age pension, new unemployment schemes and benefits, unified health insurance, a Workmen’s Compensation Act and the introduction of a widows’ and orphans’ pensions scheme.7 The economic historian Cormac Ó Gráda has examined the significance of the old age pension, introduced in 1908, to the main political parties of independent Ireland. The political fallout from the Minister for Finance Ernest Blythe’s infamous reduction of payments in 1924 led

4

the end of the irish poor law?

to the pension becoming something of a defining issue between Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedheal.8 Catholic social teaching, and in particular the influence of vocationalism and social Catholicism expressed in Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno (1931), also became influential during the period under study.9 The Catholic Church’s sway on social policy and its place as a major welfare provider has been well established, although Ireland never became a full vocationalist state. Much of this historiography investigates welfare largely through the prism of high politics or social science theoretical frameworks and examines state-centred social security measures and not public assistance. The study of relief provision at a regional and local level in independent Ireland remains unexplored and this book’s concentration on local authority public assistance addresses this lacuna. It also considers the circumstances of the poor and how they engaged with the system. Examinations of nineteenth-century welfare and healthcare regimes have demonstrated the diversity of local experience. This is the case for the post-Famine poor law system where local relief regimes were determined by multiple factors, including local traditions of assistance, attitudes of individual poor law boards, strategies adopted by the poor and the character of local politics.10 Such parochial localism in welfare provision characterised relief regimes throughout Ireland and Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.11 Much regional and local variation continued to demarcate local authority welfare practices despite the centralising tendency of social security provision. In inter-war Britain significant differences in the healthcare provided by municipal local authorities existed.12 In turn, understanding assistance in local contexts in the Irish Free State is important to ascertain a fuller and more nuanced picture of poor relief. The majority of funding for local welfare services came from the local rates, which led to much local and regional difference. A number of case studies have pointed towards the importance of local factors in determining local authority welfare policies. Labour Party control of Kildare County Council in the early 1920s led to an expansion in the local relief system. In contrast, in county Carlow resentment among ratepayers and farmers towards the perceived extravagance of local government succeeded in keeping the rates down and limiting welfare expansion.13 This book adopts a case study approach and throws light on the poor law in Cork city and county Kerry. Such a local perspective represents an innovative approach to the historiography of the Irish Free State, which has tended to study post-revolutionary politics and statebuilding.14 This contrasts with the history writing of post-Famine and revolutionary Ireland which has been marked by intense scholarship on local developments.



introduction 5

To date, the historiography of post-independent local authority welfare has largely centred on administrative developments. The disbandment of boards of guardians and rural district councils – the former was legislated for under the 1923 Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act, the latter under the 1925 Local Government Act – demonstrated a reforming zeal in the new Free State. They were replaced by boards of health and public assistance that were subsidiaries of county councils. Local authority power was further eroded with the 1926 Local Authorities (Officers and Employees) Act. This gave the central government appointed Local Appointments Commission responsibility for the selection of local officials such as doctors, inspectors and engineers.15 In 1929 legislation was introduced that initiated a process which introduced full-time managers into local administration and culminated in the part-transfer of power from locally elected county councils/boroughs to professional administrators.16 Such reform has been viewed as the successful rationalisation of an inefficient, expensive and British local government system, which was marked by patronage and cronyism. It has also been posited that these reforms represented the centralisation of power in the hands of a new parliamentary elite, which distrusted and wished to eliminate potential political dissent from the local state.17 This situation contrasted with Britain where central government’s influence over local government remained consultative and advisory, although similar local–central government tensions were evident in parts of interwar Europe.18 Local government administrative developments in Ireland have received much attention from historians and political scientists. However, the implementation of local welfare reforms, which was central to this process, has largely been ignored. This book’s exploration of poor law reforms in Cork and Kerry addresses this significant historiographical gap. This book also concentrates on the place of the poor law during the politically tumultuous 1918–23 years, which witnessed armed insurgency, Irish partition and the establishment of the Irish Free State in December 1922. Local and political life, especially during what has been termed the revolutionary period, has been the focus of much research and historiographical debate since the 1990s. Historical work on the poor law during these critical years has concentrated predominantly on Dublin Castle’s Local Government Board (LGB), the establishment of the rival Dáil Éireann Department of Local Government (DÉLG) in 1919 and the administrative reforms undertaken by the revolutionary authorities.19 Limited exploration of local relief regimes that were administered by a new generation of republicans has been carried out. Poor relief was frequently politicised during times of unrest. This

6

the end of the irish poor law?

was evident during the Land War of the 1880s when the nationalist takeover of boards of guardians from landlords led to the politicisation of local welfare policies.20 This is the first study to examine relief regimes enacted by newly empowered revolutionaries during the war of independence. Importantly, this provides an analysis of the attitudes of Irish revolutionaries to the poor which has been overlooked to date by historians. This book is divided into three sections. Chapter 1 explores the social attitudes which prevailed among republicans and how these impacted on revolutionary welfare regimes. This chapter depicts how, during the height of the Irish revolution, schisms over poor law reform prevailed in republicanism and competing ideas and attitudes towards the poor, poverty and welfare existed. It concentrates primarily on the case study of Cork city, which was one of the most radicalised regions of Ireland at this time. Chapter 2 traces the development of relief policies during the Free State. Central and local authorities continued to emphasise the moral failings of the poor, and the introduction of strict carceral measures for those considered ‘idle’ was widely articulated. Local bodies attempted to introduce new measures to test the eligibility of ablebodied males such as the establishment of work schemes. This chapter demonstrates that, despite the removal of workhouses, principles of deterrence continued to pervade local relief policies. The second section of the book moves away from the relief of the able-bodied and concentrates on other recipients of welfare. Chapter 3 examines local authority relief of unmarried mothers under the reformed poor law in the Irish Free State. Through the mining of previously underutilised archival material, this chapter explores the relief of such women in county homes, formerly workhouses. It also examines the relationship between county homes and other institutions, including mother and baby homes and Magdalene Laundries. In particular, the book uncovers the role that both central and local officials played in the committal of women into these institutions, and develops on the current historiography of lone motherhood and the state’s reaction to and institutionalisation of such women in independent Ireland.21 This is one of the few studies that examines how the system worked locally. In modern Ireland, the past institutionalisation of unwed mothers has emerged as a highly controversial issue. Allegations of abusive and disciplinary institutional regimes led to the 2013 McAleese Report that inquired into the state’s involvement in Magdalene Laundries. In 2014 revelations of high infant mortality rates in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home brought this layer of institutional provision into sharp focus, leading to the establishment of a commission of inquiry which is ongo-



introduction 7

22 ing at the time of writing. ­­ Outside of the discipline of history, cultural theorists, sociologists and criminologists have viewed county homes as part of what has been termed the ‘nation’s architecture of containment’ – a network of institutions that also included industrial schools, lunatic asylums, mother and baby homes, orphanages and Magdalene Laundries which incarcerated individuals who did not conform to Irish society’s social and moral mores.23 Historical studies on county homes in the Free State, however, remain limited. This chapter probes to what extent the former workhouses can be described as ‘containment’ institutions through an exploration of documentary evidence which to date has largely been ignored. Furthermore, the experience of women, who often demonstrated some agency, in county homes is illuminated. The fourth chapter scrutinises local authority child welfare policies. Focusing primarily on county Kerry, it builds on previous historical work which scrutinises the institutionalisation of children and the boarding-out practices of local authorities.24 It highlights the relationship between industrial schools and government, and analyses competing child welfare policies and debates in local and central government. The chapter also questions the extent to which child welfare, both institutional and boarding-out, can be viewed as a form of social control. Furthermore, it asks whether local authority policies represented progressive forms of assistance. The final chapter examines efforts to transform former workhouses into district and county hospitals in the Free State. Historical studies of Irish healthcare have largely concentrated on the national picture with limited exploration of developments from below.25 The inter-war era in British healthcare historiography is increasingly viewed as one of expansion in hospital services. Local authorities partly succeeded in eroding the principles of deterrence and less eligibility associated with workhouse infirmary medical care.26 The reforms of the Irish Free State, although initially mooted in the 1900s, represented the first break-up of the poor law in Britain or Ireland. Similar legislation was not introduced in Britain until the 1929 Local Government Act, and in Northern Ireland the poor law remained, albeit in a much reformed manner, until 1948. This chapter examines attempts to separate poor relief from medical assistance in the early years of the Free State. Many local authority hospitals continued to act as multifunctional institutions and remained associated with the relief of poverty. This chapter also examines patient fee-payment and outlines how new terms of entitlement to medical relief and means-testing were established after independence. Voluntary hospitals, which were more prestigious and had greater medical expertise than local authority hospitals, are also examined.

8

the end of the irish poor law?

Methodology This book largely concentrates on case studies of two regions – county Kerry and Cork city. County Kerry had a largely rural economy and many of its 149,171 inhabitants in 1926 were dependent on agriculture. Much of the region was economically poor – particularly along the seaboard – and marked by a small farm economy. A general unskilled labourer class was prominent in the county’s towns. A more prosperous class of middle-to-large farmers in the countryside and shopkeeper/­ publicans and traders in the towns and villages was also common. Under the poor law there were six workhouses in the county. The other region of study, Cork, was the second largest city in the Irish Free State. Cork county borough’s population was 76,673 and the county had 365,747 inhabitants in 1926. Cork and Kerry lie in the south and south-west of the country, and they provide examples of public assistance in a predominantly rural county and urban city. Examinations of regionalised poor law regimes necessitate in-depth local examinations and it is not feasible for one historian to encompass the whole country.27 It should be noted that this book assesses the public assistance side of healthcare, which provided curative medicine through local authority hospitals and the dispensary system. It does not examine the public health branch of local provision, which included environmental measures such as sanitation, sewerage and running water. This aspect of public health was also responsible for preventive personal medical services including maternity and child provision, control of infectious diseases, the school medical service, and the treatment of tuberculosis and venereal disease. Such provision was administered by sanitary local authorities, and from 1926 County Medical Officers of Health, who had prevention rather than curative public assistance as their guiding principle. The lack of historical work on local authority welfare and poor relief in independent Ireland demonstrates the need for case studies and also the innovative nature of this research. This study provides a template for future examinations of local welfare regimes in other parts of the country. Such research is necessary to build up a full and comprehensive picture of poverty, relief and the experience of the poor in twentiethcentury Ireland. The paucity of such studies is in marked contrast to the abundance of local and county works on political and military aspects of the Irish revolution. This work also avoids the danger of falling into a parochial or local study. The Cork and Kerry examples are placed in a national context through an examination of official records, publications and policies. Statistical data is scrutinised which further places the two regions in wider trends. This work also locates the Irish experience



introduction 9

among British and transnational developments and is conceptualised within the most up-to-date international literature, which makes the work relevant beyond Irish history. It adds to the emerging historiography of inter-war welfare states and the decades leading up to post Second World War universal welfarism. The records of the Irish Free State’s Department of Local Government and Public Health (DLGPH) remain highly problematic for research. This department was established at the foundation of the Free State and remained until 1947, when its functions were transferred to three new departments: Health, Social Welfare and Local Government. DLGPH records are dispersed across these various departments. Some material is located in the National Archives of Ireland although many of these records were inaccessible and proved of limited use to this book.28 This work is based on a range of other sources, which have received limited attention from historians. The most important sources are the local records of the South Cork Board of Public Assistance (SCBPA) and the Kerry Board of Health and Public Assistance (KBHPA). These records illuminate local welfare policies and the attitudes of officials. They also provide insights into the workings and conditions in institutions, and the lives of the poor. Buried in these archives, information has been identified regarding other institutions whose records are closed to researchers, particularly the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork city. Such material is of importance and sheds light on the nature of institutionalisation in Irish society: despite numerous government reports there remains a lack of such historical evidence relating to twentieth-century institutions. Material on local authority child welfare also reveals much about familial circumstances and poverty in the Free State. The sensitive nature of much of this material led to some problems that impacted on the structure of the study. Access to the archives of the South Cork Board of Public Assistance was not available post-1932; the chapters on welfare policy for lone mothers and children are mostly reliant on the Kerry authority, for which records have been fully consulted. The chapters on home assistance and medical relief are based not just on local authority material, but also newspapers, and incorporate both the Cork and Kerry examples. The chapter on the poor law and the Irish revolution focuses on the Cork case study because of the extraordinary developments in the city. Where possible Cork city and county Kerry are compared and contrasted, but the nature of the surviving material makes it impossible to consistently or systematically adopt such an approach. This work makes extensive use of the minutes of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, and the Insane Poor that was held throughout 1925 and 1926 and reported in 1927. This is the first study to examine the minutes of evidence

10

the end of the irish poor law?

that were unpublished, although the commission’s report has been widely utilised by historians. The commission took evidence from central and local government officials and individuals involved in the welfare of the poor throughout the country, and this source is vital to understanding welfare and public assistance in the mid-1920s Irish Free State. This study also mines witness statements from the Bureau of Military History, which help to reveal the activities and attitudes of mid-ranking government officials during the Irish revolutionary years who were central to implementing reforms. In all, this book provides new insights into the political, social, economic and cultural underpinnings of poor law and welfare reform during revolutionary and independent Ireland. Notes  1 L. Lucassen, ‘A brave new world: the left, social engineering and eugenics in twentieth-century Europe’, International Review of Social History, 55:2 (2010), 265–96; L. Frohman, Poor Relief and Welfare in Germany from the Reformation to World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); J. Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit: A Social History of Britain, 1870–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 230–3; Y. S. Hong, Welfare, Modernity, and the Weimar State, 1919–33 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).  2 J. J. Lee, Ireland, 1912–1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 124.  3 V. Crossman, Poverty and the Poor Law in Ireland, 1850–1914 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), p. 226.  4 Lee, Ireland, p. 127. For the most recent work on Cumann na nGaedheal, see M. Laffan, Judging W.T. Cosgrave: The Foundation of the Irish State (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2014); C. Meehan, The Cosgrave Party: A History of Cuman na nGaedheal, 1923–33 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2010).  5 Lee, Ireland, p. 127; E. O’Halpin, ‘Politics and the state, 1922–32’, in J. R. Hill (ed.), A New History of Ireland: Ireland, 1921–84: Vol. VII (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 116.  6 S. Carey, Social Security in Ireland, 1939–52: The Limits to Solidarity (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007).  7 M. Cousins, The Birth of Social Welfare in Ireland, 1922–52 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003), pp. 57–72. This government also implemented a policy of industrial development which increased the numbers of insured employed from 355,000 in 1933 to 415,000 in 1937.  8 C. Ó Gráda, ‘“The greatest blessing of all”: the old age pension in Ireland’, Past & Present, 175:1 (2002), 124–61.  9 Lee, Ireland, p. 271; D. O’Leary, Vocationalism and Social Catholicism in Twentieth Century Ireland: The Search for a Christian Social Order (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2000).



introduction 11

10 For local and regional variations, see Crossman, Poverty and the Poor Law in Ireland; G. Laragy, ‘Poor relief in the south of Ireland, 1850–1921’, in V. Cross­man and P. Gray (eds), Poverty and Welfare in Ireland, 1838–1948 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011), pp. 53–68; D. S. Lucey, ‘Poor relief in the west of Ireland, 1861–1911’, in Crossman and Gray (eds), Poverty and Wel­fare in Ireland, pp. 37–53; O. Purdue, ‘Poor relief in the north of Ireland, 1850–1921’, in Crossman and Gray (eds), Poverty and Welfare in Ireland, pp. 23–36. 11 S. King, Poverty and Welfare in England 1700–1850: A Regional Perspective (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); K. Snell, Parish and Belonging, Community, Identity and Welfare in England and Wales, 1700–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); S. Williams, Poverty, Gender and Life-cycle under the English Poor Law, 1760–1834 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2011). 12 For the most comprehensive account of regional variation in English and Welsh municipal medicine, see A. Levene, M. Powell, J. Stewart and B. Taylor, Cradle to Grave: Municipal Medicine in Inter-War England and Wales (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011). 13 T. Nelson, ‘Kildare County Council and perceptions of the past’, in T. Dooley (ed.), Ireland’s Polemical Past: Views of Irish History in Honour of R. V. Com­erford (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2010), p. 187; B. Donnelly, ‘Local government in county Carlow, 1800–1970’, in T. McGrath and W. Nolan (eds), Carlow: History and Society. Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin: Geography Publications, 2008), p. 872. 14 F. McGarry, ‘Southern Ireland, 1922–32. A free state?’, in A. Jackson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 663. Some work on Free State local politics has emerged; see M. Farrell, ‘A “cadre-style” party? Cuman na nGaedheal organisation in Clare, Dublin North, and Longford-Westmeath, 1923–27’, Éire-Ireland 47:3&4 (2012), 91–110. 15 The most comprehensive study of these transformations is M. E. Daly, The Buffer State: The Historical Roots of the Department of Environment (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1997). See also R. Barrington, Health, Medicine and Politics in Ireland, 1900–1970 (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1987), ch. 5. 16 M. Potter, The Municipal Revolution in Ireland: Local Government in Cities  and Towns since 1800 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011); E. O’Halpin, ‘The system of city and county management’, in M. E. Daly (ed.), County and Town: One Hundred Years of Local Government in Ireland: Lectures on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Local Government Ireland, Act, 1898 (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2001), pp. 35–44. 17 Potter, Municipal Revolution in Ireland, pp. 289–301. 18 B. Taylor, M. Powell and J. Stewart, ‘Central and local government and the provision of municipal medicine, 1919–39’, English Historical Review,

12

the end of the irish poor law?

122:496 (2007), 397–426; B. Doyle and A. McElligott, ‘The rise and fall of European municipal power since 1800’, International Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 7:1&2 (2011), 17. 19 This episode has been extensively analysed and will not be repeated here; see Daly, The Buffer State; E. Marnane, Cork County Council: The First Hundred Years, 1899–1999 (Cork: Cork County Council, 1999), pp. 127–69. 20 D. S. Lucey with V. Crossman, ‘“One huge abuse”: the Cork Board of Guardians and the expansion of outdoor relief in post-Famine Ireland’, English Historical Review, 127:523 (2011), 1408–29; D. S. Lucey, ‘Power, politics and poor relief during the Irish Land War, 1879–82’, Irish Historical Studies, 37:148 (2011), 548–98. 21 L. Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child: Maternity and Child Welfare in Ireland, 1920s–1960s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007); M. Luddy, ‘Unmarried mothers in Ireland, 1880–1973’, Women’s History Review, 20:1 (2011), 109–26; M. Luddy, Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 22 Department of Children and Youth Affairs, Report of the Inter-Department Group on Mother and Baby Homes (July, 2014), http:dcya.gov.ie/­­documents/ publications/20140716InterdepartReportMothBabyHomes.pdf (accessed 2 September 2014). 23 J. M. Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007); E. O’Sullivan and I. O’Donnell (eds), Coercive Confinement in Ireland: Patients, Prisoners and Penitents (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), pp. x, 7. 24 M. Maguire, Precarious Childhood in Post-Independence Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009); S. A. Buckley, The Cruelty Man: Child Welfare, the NSPCC and the State in Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). 25 Barrington, Health, Medicine and Politics, ch. 5. 26 A. Levene, ‘Between less eligibility and the NHS: the changing place of Poor Law Hospitals in England and Wales, 1929–39’, Twentieth Century British History, 20:3 (2009), 322–45; J. Neville, ‘Explaining local authority choices on public hospital provision in the 1930s: a public policy hypothesis’, Medical History, 56:1 (2012), 48–71. 27 For example, Crossman’s Poverty and the Poor Law in Ireland emanated from a major multi-researcher project. 28 For a discussion of this material, see Department of Justice and Equality, Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to Establish the Facts of State Involvement with the Magdalen Laundries [hereafter McAleese Report] (Dublin, 2013), http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/MagdalenRpt2013, p. 4 (accessed 2 September 2014).

1

The poor law and the Irish revolution: the case of the Cork workhouse

Traditionally Irish historiography has been marked by an emphasis on high politics, although increased focus on popular politics has emerged, especially since the 1990s. Some historiographical debate has concentrated on the social dynamics of the highly formative 1916–23 period, which witnessed the rise of militant republicanism, revolution, partition and the establishment of the twenty-six county independent Irish Free State. Many historians have downplayed the potential for social radicalism during these pivotal years. The controversial historian of the period Peter Hart has asserted that revolutionary violence did not follow ‘poverty’ and was not a result of social deprivation.1 More recent work has highlighted how a lack of economic or class grievances was evidenced in the attitudes of many who spearheaded Irish revolutionary republicanism.2 However, class tensions between poorer farmers/ labourers and the provincial bourgeois of larger farmers and shopkeepers and publicans in the towns were prevalent in the countryside. Such social dissonance was a continuation of divisions in nineteenth-century Irish nationalism.3 The land question and its inherent social tensions continued to be of importance throughout the revolutionary years and during Irish independence.4 Labour and class struggle in the advanced nationalist movement is viewed as being of secondary importance to the politics of Sinn Féin and the later split over the Treaty. This was demonstrated when Sinn Féin successfully prevailed upon Labour not to contest the December 1918 election and argued that ‘Labour must wait’.5 Despite this, the general strikes, soviets and Red Flag demonstrations played an essential part in the ‘national struggle’ and had much more potential for social radicalism.6 In general, the sectarian, ethnic, military and cultural aspects of the war of independence/civil war have received far greater historical attention than explorations of class during this era.7 Some of these debates have been highly contentious.8 A large number of local and regional studies of the war of independence have also been undertaken.9 Another

14

the end of the irish poor law?

important facet of the period was the republicans’ role in local government. One historian has noted that the most adventurous of all the revolutionary Dáil’s experiments in civil administration was its takeover and transformation of local government.10 Some historical work has focused on the administration of the Sinn Féin and Dáil courts, which established an alternative judicial system.11 Research on local government remains largely limited to the establishment of the Dáil Éireann controlled Department of Local Government in 1919 and the allegiance of the majority of local authorities to the revolutionary government.12 The impact of this critical period on poor law policies and relief recipients has been virtually ignored, although the revolutionary movement was widely concerned with local authority bodies. There was a long tradition of nationalist involvement in poor law and welfare politics. During the 1880s local nationalists gained influence on poor law boards in a significant challenge to the landed classes’ power.13 Land League takeover of poor law boards also led to the realignment of welfare practices. Local nationalists utilised poor law welfare as a form of patronage, tied entitlement to political outlook and attempted to re-mould local welfare regimes in accordance with their political and social objectives.14 The Irish revolution also witnessed a transformation in local government in which Sinn Féin activists wrestled control from supporters of the Irish Parliamentary Party. This chapter concentrates on the subsequent republican administration of the poor law, particularly in Cork city, which provides insights into social class, poverty and the place of the poor during the Irish revolution. Welfare and militarism Throughout the First World War welfare became increasingly politicised in Ireland. In Germany and Britain the totalisation of war led to the rapid expansion of wartime assistance programmes and preventive social welfare programmes with a national, military and social significance.15 Such welfare expansion was evident in Ireland with the separation allowance allocated to the wives of serving soldiers. This was administered by the army and through local relief committees assisted by the pension authorities and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Association.16 The separation allowance was not administered by elected local authorities and further represented the central state’s involvement in social assistance. Separation allowances lessened dependency on the poor law system and by 1916 the LGB believed that the provision had brought a reduction in poor relief recipients.17 By February 1915 the separation allowance was 12s 6d for a wife, plus 5s for a first child, 3s 6d for a



the poor law and the irish revolution 15

second and a flat 2s per child for the rest.18 Such state welfare helped to maintain some political support for the Irish Parliamentary Party. This was demonstrated in a number of by-election triumphs for the moderate nationalists in 1917 and 1918 in south Armagh and in Waterford where soldiers’ wives openly supported and campaigned for the Parliamentary Party, and leaders including Joe Devlin propagated welfare measures such as the 1908 Old Age Pension Act as successes of moderate nationalism.19 Ireland witnessed the rise of advanced nationalism after the 1916 Easter Rising. Sinn Féin and Irish revolutionary discourse and propaganda took a highly moral tone and portrayed Britain as ‘an unclean and impure sink of perversion’.20 Much of this rhetoric was designed to morally dichotomise Ireland from Britain. In particular, soldiers’ wives – commonly known as ‘separation women’ – were a frequent target for advanced nationalist vituperation.21 Republican opinion vilified the perceived immorality of these women and attention particularly focused on their alleged increased drunkenness and perceived sexual transgressions. In turn, such women supported the British Army and at times disturbed Sinn Féin meetings.22 Over 140,000 Irishmen, many married, enlisted in the army, which ensured that the ‘separation women’ had much support in local communities.23 Recruitment was especially strong in urban districts such as Cork city where large numbers enlisted at the outbreak of war after recruitment was promoted by leading nationalist MPs including William O’Brien and Maurice Healy.24 Many of the poorer classes who enlisted were motivated by the prospect of their families getting the separation allowance.25 In Cork city a great deal of poverty existed, particularly in the ‘slums’, which were as overcrowded as Dublin’s notorious tenement housing. In 1918 the city engineer, J. F. Delany, estimated that 18,645 city residents – nearly a quarter of the population – lived in ‘undesirable’ houses approaching the condition of ‘unfitness for habitation’.26 Advanced nationalist condemnation of the ‘separation women’ further alienated sections of the poor from the republican movement and also associated welfare provision with immorality. By the end of the First World War the political climate had drastically changed in Ireland. The 1918 General Election was a success for the advanced nationalist and republican Sinn Féin Party which sought to establish an Irish Republic separate from the United Kingdom. Countrywide, the conditions of the poor worsened as the post-war economy stuttered and demobilised soldiers increased unemployment. Sinn Féin attempted to place the republican movement at the head of responses to the deteriorating economic and social circumstances in Cork city. From late 1917 a food crisis and anxiety over potential

16

the end of the irish poor law?

famine conditions was brought about by the introduction of government food rationing, continued supply shortages and price inflation.27 In early January 1918 a deputation of leading Sinn Féin members and republicans in the city, including Liam de Róiste, Tadhg Barry and S. Twomey, came before the Cork Board of Guardians. The deputation warned of the threat of famine and highlighted that there was a ‘great scarcity of food in the country’. They complained that farmers exported food to profit from the post-war inflation-fuelled prices and stated that they aimed to prevent such activities.28 Local republicans did not confine their criticism to farmers, and during a January 1918 Cork ‘Food Meeting’, Tomás MacCurtain – the leading Cork republican who was shot dead by police in 1920 – spoke of ‘merchant princes’ and the need to establish committees which would get money from traders to provide food.29 Soon after the ‘Food Meeting’, the Cork Sinn Féin executive informed cattle traders and dead meat dealers that meat exportation had to cease.30 The ongoing crisis reached a high point in February 1918 when it was reported that food supplies had run dry in the city’s markets. Local Sinn Féiners and members of the Cork Trades Council responded by establishing the Cork People’s Food Committee to prevent the exportation of food.31 At its inaugural meeting the republican trade unionist, John Good, claimed that the British government was secretly trying to bring famine and accused it of handing food over to the military.32 MacCurtain claimed that the republicans ‘saw the danger’ and took ‘action’ on the food question and successfully prevented the exportation of meat from the city. He also criticised the failure of public boards and complained that business people were only concerned about their ‘selfish interests’.33 Efforts at food control were latent with class divisions and threatened the alienation of middle-class supporters from the republican movement. In January 1918 some Sinn Féin supporters were accused of exporting cattle.34 During the following month the moderate nationalist Cork Examiner newspaper claimed that Sinn Féin’s policy towards food exportation was ‘unjust to trader and farmer alike’ under an editorial entitled ‘The Food Agitation’. De Róiste was warned that divisions would arise over the food question at a Sinn Féin meeting in the predominantly rural area of Whitechapel in the hinterland of the city.35 This further demonstrated to Sinn Féin the danger of promoting the interests of one class over another and the potential for social dissonance within advanced nationalism. The Sinn Féin leadership nationally was determined to avoid, or suppress if necessary, conflicts and clashes which distracted attention from the ‘foreign enemy’.36 The potential for such divisions, aligned with the government’s introduction of food



the poor law and the irish revolution 17

price regulation, undermined the republican movement’s food policy in the city. Agrarian agitation broke out in other parts of the country and republican-sanctioned land seizures by agricultural labourers from grazing and larger farmers were common. However, Sinn Féin, fearing unrest and political division between the landed and landless in the countryside, stepped back from food and agrarian agitation.37 Destitution and poverty did increase although the projected famine was staved off. The number of outdoor relief recipients rose after a number of years of successive decreases. In March 1920 the number of recipients on outdoor relief (33,440) had reached the highest level since 1913.38 This increase in poverty was evident in Cork city. In early 1918 the weekly cost of poor relief in the city rose from £147 in January to £204 in the second week of February.39 By the half-year ending March 1919, £5,698 had been spent relieving 2,545 persons, compared with £5,009 on 2,510 persons in March 1918. The LGB noted that, while such an increase was brought about by ‘existing conditions’, there should be a ‘thorough and frequent’ examination of recipients by the poor law’s relieving officers.40 While larger numbers sought poor relief, republicans increasingly criticised local government bodies, which remained partly in the hands of old Irish Parliamentary Party supporters. Local government – long the preserve of moderate nationalists – was seen by republicans as financially wasteful, extravagant, corrupt and marked by cronyism. It has been argued by the historian Michael Laffan that Sinn Féin’s view of the Irish as a virtuous, honourable and wronged people led to self-righteousness among its members, particularly in attitudes towards local government.41 In 1922 Liam de Róiste wrote in his diary: ‘an assumption made by many Sinn Féin public men was, and still is, that only they are honest in public life; all others are intriguers, jobbers and self-seekers’.42 Such attitudes came to the fore when a leading Cork volunteer and IRA leader, Seán O’Hegarty, was appointed to the position of storekeeper in the Cork workhouse in 1917.43 In a workhouse the size of Cork, which annually expended close to £20,000 on indoor relief provision, the position of storekeeper was important and had responsibility for all incoming and outgoing goods.44 O’Hegarty, who was encouraged to take the position by Cork’s Sinn Féin executive, stated prior to his election: ‘if elected to the position I would be able to check, to some extent, the corrupt practices which exist in all poor houses’.45 O’Hegarty’s appointment was controversial and accusations of intimidatory tactics emerged. It was also viewed as a victory by the republican movement over supporters of the Irish Parliamentary Party and its local organisation, the Ancient Order of Hibernians.46

18

the end of the irish poor law?

After his appointment, O’Hegarty undertook a sustained public campaign which highlighted what he perceived to be abuses in the administration of the workhouse. O’Hegarty was of the opinion that the public looked to Sinn Féin to clean up the ‘corrupt administration’ which he believed permeated all ‘popularly elected’ public bodies.47 O’Hegarty maintained that such an objective was only achievable by ‘clearing out the old gang’ and denigrated the Cork guardians as ‘a hopeless, helpless lot’. He claimed that the existing guardians used the poor law system as a source of personal patronage and that they considered ‘the ratepayer’s money [was] everybody’s money’.48 O’Hegarty believed that the guardians were ‘a disgrace to public morality’.49 O’Hegarty’s indefatigability was demonstrated when he presented evidence to Dublin Castle’s LGB – notwithstanding his commitment to armed insurrection against British rule – to highlight the extent of the corruption. The propagation of local government reform by republicans such as O’Hegarty was fused with anti-British and anti-home rule rhetoric. Those who were associated with the poor law and its administration were vilified as corrupt, immoral and unpatriotic men who contrasted with the moralised and idealised republican movement. Sinn Féin and poor law boards The cancellation of local elections in 1916 and 1918 ensured that many elected officials were supporters of the moderate nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party. Despite the rise of Sinn Féin in political and public life, local government remained outside the hands of republicans in many regions.50 In Cork, Sinn Féin did succeed in gaining influence over the poor law board as early as 1917 after the chairman of the board of guardians, Michael McCarthy, retired and was replaced by Denis Hayes  – on taking the chair Hayes stated that his election was due to his association with ‘Sinn Féin and the Volunteers’.51 Support for the old Irish Parliamentary Party was evident among many guardians and political dissensions between the rival factions were evident.52 This was demonstrated on the death of the constitutionalist nationalist leader John Redmond in March 1918 when long-standing guardians such as Michael Ahern – originally elected as a Parnellite in the 1880s – attempted to adjourn a board meeting.53 Labour politics were also prominent during this period. The historian John Borgonovo demonstrates that from 1916 the Cork labour movement became revitalised under the driving force of the militant ITGWU (Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union), which by the end of 1917 claimed 4,000 members. Strikes were also increasingly common as post-war economic conditions worsened. Cork



the poor law and the irish revolution 19

trade unionists supported republicanism and in the 1920 local elections formed a pact with Sinn Féin, albeit as the junior member.54 In 1920 the first local elections were held since 1914. County borough municipal elections were held in January 1920. In Cork, public boards’ ‘immorality’ was high on the Sinn Féin election agenda. Under the banner of ‘Sinn Féin and Workers Party’, Seán O’Hegarty campaigned in Cork on the platform of bringing moral purity to public life. He stated at one election rally: ‘if they [republicans] got elected and did not keep the public boards clean things would continue to be as bad as they were before’.55 Liam de Róiste highlighted the need for ‘honest administration’, although he maintained that the national cause was more important than any local issue.56 The municipal elections were the first to be held under proportional representation and in Cork republicans won thirty out of fifty-six corporation seats: countrywide the results were 550 Sinn Féin, 394 Labour, 355 Unionist, 238 Nationalists, 161 independents and 108 municipal reformers.57 The elections for the county councils, poor law boards and rural district councils were held in June 1920. These elections witnessed a Sinn Féin landslide and the widespread success of republican and labour candidates over moderate nationalists. In Kerry, the majority of Sinn Féin candidates in the poor law elections went uncontested. When some candidates without Sinn Féin support threatened to contest the elections in the Listowel region, a circular was sent to the ‘old guardians’ leading to the withdrawal of their nominations, suggesting republican election intimidation.58 The Tralee Board of Guardians elected Éamonn O’Connor – an ex-hunger striker – as chairman, a labour candidate, Heaslip, as vice-chairman, and another Sinn Féiner named T. Clifford as the deputy vice-chairman.59 After the election local government bodies throughout county Kerry pledged their loyalty to the revolutionary Dáil Éireann.60 Similarly, in Cork the poor law elections were not contested and Sinn Féin gained control over the board of guardians, leading to the appointment of Seán Jennings as chairman.61 By 1920 Jennings was a leading Cork Sinn Féin administrator and also sat on the benches of the local Dáil courts.62 He was representative of a new class of revolutionary administrator who ran the local proto-state established by Irish republicans.63 On his appointment Jennings commented that no charges of ‘jobbery and debauchery’ would be made against them like previous public bodies.64 Only two Cork guardians from the previous board retained their seats in 1920: John Good, a republican and labour activist, and John Gamble. A total of twenty-four new guardians were appointed to the Cork board, the majority Sinn Féin supporters.65 The revolutionary Dáil Éireann, established in January 1919, was slow to impact on local government.66 It, however, became a major focus

20

the end of the irish poor law?

of the revolutionary government after republicans gained control of the majority of local authorities in the 1920 local elections. The Minister for the DÉLG, W. T. Cosgrave, was at this time imprisoned and in April 1920 was temporarily replaced by Kevin O’Higgins because of anticipated developments.67 After Clare County Council lodged the rates in secret accounts, Dublin Castle’s LGB – the British central authority for Irish local government – issued a circular that stated that boards in allegiance with Dáil Éireann would have central government funding withdrawn.68 The vast majority of county councils remained loyal to Dáil Éireann during an era when two rival local government administrations existed. Cut off from central government funding, republican local authorities were further financially weakened by the worsening political, military and social conditions and subsequent difficulties in rate collection.69 In turn, the need for economies and retrenchment was central to republican local government reform. The 1920 Dáil Éireann Commission of Inquiry into Local Government recommended the abolition and amalgamation of workhouses and the placing of inmates on outdoor relief, which the revolutionary department estimated would make an annual saving of £50,000.70 The department wrote to all local authorities and described the workhouse was an ‘evil institution’ and instructed that amalgamation be implemented ‘immediately’.71 Boards of guardians in each county were to arrange for workhouse closures, amalgamations and the dissolution of local boards. The DÉLG was primarily concerned with the achievement of economies, and informed all poor law unions that expenditure had to be ‘drastically cut down’. Many boards were in a desperate financial condition, including the county Kerry Tralee guardians, who by January 1921 could not afford to pay salaries or grant outdoor relief.72 The DÉLG viewed amalgamation as the panacea for this perilous financial position and informed the Tralee guardians that such steps were necessary for the survival of local administration in the county.73 The amalgamation and break-up of the poor law was undertaken under the cloud of severe economic strain and in the context of near financial ruin for local authorities. The process was further complicated by the involvement of many leading local government officials in the IRA, which meant they were being sought by the authorities. Proposed amalgamations and dissolutions also generated opposition. The Tralee Board of Guardians resolved that it strongly objected to the abolition of the board and reminded the department that they were the ‘represented elected members’ of the district’s ratepayers.74 Opposition from figures in the Labour movement emerged after Kerry County Council agreed to the removal of all non-medical inmates from the Tralee workhouse to the Killarney



the poor law and the irish revolution 21

County Home. The Tralee Workers’ Council wrote to the DÉLG complaining that the scheme did not meet the approval of workers in the town. The Workers’ Council criticised the fact that under the scheme Tralee town had no institution for the elderly and ‘destitute’, and they opposed what they described as the ‘deportation’ of the ‘citizens of Tralee to Killarney’. The council also complained that the abolition of the guardians went against the ‘principles’ of democratic government.75 Local politics further complicated matters and an unofficial rival amalgamation committee was established led by Albinia Brodrick (Gobnaít Ní Bhruadair), sister of the Irish unionist leader Lord Midleton; she was a militant republican and Sinn Féin member of Kerry County Council.76 Despite these protests, the amalgamation was pressed through in November 1921 when all non-medical cases – the elderly, infirm, ‘mental’, children and ‘unmarried mothers’ – who could not be relieved outside an institution were transferred to the county home. The acute medical wards remained open in the newly renamed Tralee District Hospital, and the number in the institution fell from 293 in September to 158 in October.77 Although plans for the closure and amalgamation of workhouses appeared initially popular, resistance such as occurred in Tralee was apparent throughout much of Ireland.78 In the county Cork town of Mallow plans for the closure of the town’s workhouse were stridently opposed. At a public meeting in December 1921, the local Catholic cleric, Canon Corbett, called on ‘every battalion of the IRA’ to resist amalgamation and said that they would ‘be traitors to their dead comrades’ if they accepted such plans.79 A combination of localism and fears over the loss of welfare services led to much resistance to workhouse closures. Republican reform and the Cork workhouse No plans were in place for the closure of the Cork city workhouse – one of the largest institutions in Ireland. It became increasingly difficult, however, to administer the poor laws as the city became a focal point for military hostilities between the British forces and republicans.80 The board’s fortnightly meetings were frequently adjourned. By the end of 1920 the Cork Board of Guardians was faced with severe organisational and financial strains. In December 1920 the lack of funds forced the board to get a bank overdraft of £8,208 for operational costs, and in January 1921 the guardians had no credit to meet cheques that amounted to £7,000.81 By this stage the guardians had already decided to disband the board during a meeting in November, and place the poor laws in the hands of three paid vice-guardians.82 The appointment

22

the end of the irish poor law?

of vice-guardians was not only driven by financial difficulties, but also local innovation and republican desire to reform the poor law. The republicans were specifically concerned with the institutional working of the Cork workhouse. Jennings later commented that on hearing of ‘happenings inside the walls of the union’, they decided that a ‘departure from the old system of administration was necessary’.83 According to Siobhán Lankford – wife of Séamus Lankford, the chairman of the viceguardians – the Cork revolutionaries were intent on a ‘clean-up’ of local authority institutions including the workhouse.84 The disbandment of poor law boards and the placing of poor law unions in the hands of paid vice-guardians was a feature of the LGB’s administration. The central authority frequently dismissed local authorities for transgressions often relating to financial irregularities. The appointment of vice-guardians was also a common tactic used by the LGB to deal with recalcitrant nationalist local poor law boards during the political battles of the 1880s. The Cork Board of Guardians was disbanded in 1889 when the number in receipt of outdoor relief reached record levels after nationalists gained control: the vice-­­ guardians succeeded in reducing the relief rolls and cost.85 However, the Cork Sinn Féin guardians’ self-appointment of vice-guardians was highly irregular and motivated out of a wish to radically alter the system. W. T. Cosgrave, the DÉLG minister, sanctioned the appointments and stated: The proposal embodied in the resolution of the board has been considered by this department and while it is felt to involve a rather drastic departure from precedent, yet as it represents the considered and deliberate opinions of the sub-committees of the board, I do not think it well to withhold sanction.86

Séamus Lankford was appointed as vice-guardian along with two deputy vice-guardians who were long-standing Cork republicans – Pat Higgins and Seán Nolan – to run the poor law in the city, initially for a period of three months.87 They were to report weekly to the DÉLG and monthly to the board of guardians and received a combined salary of £100 a month.88 Lankford, the most senior of the three guardians, was typical of many in the revolutionary movement. In 1912 he became an officer of Customs and Excise in the British civil service, and worked in various posts in England until 1918 when he returned to Cork after receiving a conscription call-up.89 On his return he became involved in republican politics and culture and was the main organiser of the Gaelic League in the county. In 1920 Lankford began working closely with the leading Cork republican Terence MacSwiney – elected as Sinn Féin Lord



the poor law and the irish revolution 23

Mayor in 1920, he subsequently died on hunger strike – and acted as the first registrar of the Dáil Éireann courts in Cork. The increasingly chaotic political and social conditions of the era combined with the DÉLG’s inexperience led to limited supervision, and the vice-guardians’ administration of the poor law went largely unchecked. The independence that Lankford was afforded was a significant departure from the previous poor law administration, when the minutes of meetings were examined by the LGB and proceedings regularly reported in newspapers. Also, the vice-guardians ran the workhouse in the context of ongoing political and military agitation against the Crown forces in Cork city, which was at this stage one of the most radical, revolutionary and violent parts of the country. Their management of the workhouse was unsurprisingly marked by this remarkable period. The Sinn Féin poor law commissioners were sought by the British forces and soon after their appointment Nolan was imprisoned. Lankford was frequently hunted by the authorities, who on a number of occasions raided the workhouse searching for him; however, he often slept in the wards and managed to avoid arrest.90 On another occasion the IRA came to the workhouse and removed and executed an inmate of the infirmary, Michael Walsh, on the grounds that he was an informer to the British.91 The IRA in the city also used the workhouse as a jail. A night attendant in the lunatic ward described this and stated: ‘during the troubles men with revolvers brought drunken men, who were always rowing, to the workhouse’.92 One of the vice-guardians, Higgins, stated in 1923: During the troubled times the male lunatic division was a place for pandemonium­–­ all kinds of people were put in there – robbers, drunkards, imbeciles and people suffering from DTs. Spies and prisoners were brought in, and as they had no other place for them, they put them into this division as a disguise.93

The vice-guardians initiated radical reform of the workhouse, which amounted to an attempted break-up of the poor law system locally. These reforms also represented the revolutionary movement’s encroachment on poor law politics, and the interaction of republican civic administration with poor relief recipients. Republicans at times viewed the poorest, particularly within urban regions, with suspicion and believed they were morally corrupt and British sympathisers. In September 1917 Liam de Róiste wrote in his diary that in ‘garrison towns’ there was much immorality ‘kept well beneath the surface of society’.94 Propagation of nationalist Gaelic identity and culture in this period promulgated moral virtues such as sobriety, self-respect and ­­self-reliance. As the ­­historian Fearghal

24

the end of the irish poor law?

McGarry has explained, this was specifically related to notions of the superiority of the imagined ethnically and culturally pure indigenous race known as Celts or Gaels over the corrupt and immoral British.95 Similar concepts of national superiority were common throughout European societies. The mixing of various categories of inmates in workhouses was long criticised. The 1906 Poor Law Commission had recommended that inmates, including the able-bodied, unmarried mothers and children, should be provided separate institutions from other categories such as the elderly, intellectually disabled, and acute, chronic and mentally ill. The vice-guardians quickly attempted to enact such reforms. The workhouse boys’ school was closed and the young males were placed in industrial schools and boarded out.96 By 1923 it was reported that there were no healthy boys and very few girls in the workhouse. The vice-guardians also attempted to deal with single female parents or ‘unmarried mothers’ in the workhouse. A new system was introduced and when such women entered they were ‘placed under the care of a nun’, who the vice-guardians believed made ‘every effort to assist them in every way’. This was designed to prevent the abandonment of ‘hope’ which was viewed as the cause of ‘subsequent relapses’.97 In July 1921 the vice-guardians had more freedom after the Anglo-Irish Truce and went to London to examine provision for ‘unmarried mothers’. Lankford got a Catholic religious order (the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary of the Chigwell Convent) to agree to come to Cork to set up an institution for ‘unmarried mothers’. A former gentry ‘Big House’, abandoned by a loyalist family after the Truce, was bought and Bessborough Home was established. Women and children from workhouses in Cork city, Mallow, Kanturk, Millstreet and Macroom were sent to the home.98 A 1923 government inquiry commended this development.99 Other reforms included the removal of the workhouse infirmary matron of thirty-one years’ standing, a Sister of Mercy nun named Mary O’Keefe, on account of her not being ‘properly qualified’. The vice-guardians reported to Dáil Éireann that because of the importance of the newly named Cork District Hospital the sister had to be replaced by a person with ‘proper qualifications’ and experience in ‘up-to-date hospitals’.100 The running of workhouse infirmaries, and in particular the appointment of religious ‘nursing sisters’, had long been left to the religious orders. The willingness to challenge the matron in the institution indicated Lankford’s radical tendencies.101 The vice-guardians also identified what they believed to be a range of other abuses associated with the poor law. One of the major reforms initiated was the reduction in the diet of workhouse inmates.



the poor law and the irish revolution 25

The vice-guardians ­­ suggested to the medical staff that they amend the dietary scales owing to cases of waste. Lankford informed the DÉLG, in a sign of his abrasiveness, that he consulted the medical staff not only to get their professional opinion but also with a view to more ‘effectually countering any adverse comment by pseudo-humanitarians’.102 The institution’s medical officials agreed to the diet reductions, which were also sanctioned by the DÉLG.103 The actions of the Cork viceguardians had wider support. In March 1921, five months after their appointment, the vice-guardians submitted an interim report to the DÉLG outlining the reforms in the Cork workhouse’s administration.104 The vice-­guardians were highly critical of the previous board for abusing expenditure, for which they claimed that the unsuspecting public paid ‘through the nose’.105 The vice-guardians outlined how they had introduced the stock-taking of medical and surgical supplies and stated that under the previous board the medical department was ‘conspicuous’ for its ‘happy-go-lucky’ administration.106 The reduction of the dietary scale, renegotiation of contracts and the ‘strict economy’ of coal saved £1,000 in six months; other savings included £22 on the cost of soap.107 Elderly inmates in receipt of the old age pension were charged 7s 6d towards their maintenance, which provided the guardians with an estimated £800 per annum. The guardians also stated that fever patients, where capable, paid for their treatment, a practice which was not formerly followed.108 In all the vice-guardians claimed to have made a saving of £30,000. The cost-cutting measures enacted by Lankford and the vice-guardians received support from many quarters. The interim report was welcomed in the local newspapers. The Cork Weekly News believed that the report justified the vice-guardians’ appointment, and that they had unearthed ‘irregularities, wanton waste and something like organised illegalities’. The newspaper was favourable towards the placing of poor law administration under a ‘few capable administrators’.109 The DÉLG also reacted positively to the Cork reforms and the interim report was printed and distributed to local government bodies as a blueprint on how to run and reform local government. In August 1921 the DÉLG sanctioned the vice-guardians’ re-appointment for another three months after ‘a careful perusal of the interim report’.110 Cork republicans considered the vice-guardians’ actions as a revolutionary reform of civic government. Jennings later recounted that few of them had any ‘acquaintance with public affairs or public administration’, but they considered themselves the product of a ‘new school’ whose chief ideal was to ‘purge’ public institutions of corruption.111 In 1923 Jennings stated that Cork’s Sinn Féin administration came to have such a strong interest in the workhouse

26

the end of the irish poor law?

because it wanted ‘to purify public life’.112 The reform of the poor law was important to Cork’s republicans and allowed for the depiction of the successes of the republican civic administration. Republican local government reform did not occur in a vacuum and resonated with developing ‘scientific’ approaches to local administration. Local elites who traditionally controlled local authorities were criticised for lacking the financial, technological and administrative professionalism needed to efficiently run local government.113 In the United States, municipal authorities were increasingly placed under management systems that limited the involvement and influence of elected officials. Such ideas were popular in Ireland, particularly in Cork, during this period. In 1920 a Cork solicitor named John J. Horgan published an article on the United States system of city management in the Catholic Jesuit journal Studies, which recommended that similar experiments be adopted in Irish local government.114 Such thinking was prevalent in the early years of the Free State and resulted in the increased centralisation of local government and the introduction of city managers in county boroughs, a practice that was later extended to county councils.115 These measures are viewed by historians as one of the most distinctive innovations in public administration introduced in independent Ireland.116 The economic retrenchment and administrative reform evident in the Cork vice-guardians’ rhetoric would become influential principles in the 1920s. This reforming zeal was intermeshed with harsh social attitudes. In the interim report, Lankford was highly critical of many of the workhouse inmates, whom he viewed as undeserving, and justified poor relief retrenchment on moral grounds. Lankford was of the opinion that many of the perceived abuses were associated with medical relief: this echoed evidence heard at the 1906 Irish Poor Law Commission that the better diet and conditions in infirmary wards encouraged patients to stay longer.117 The vice-guardians listed abuses which included patients’ unwillingness to contribute to their maintenance, and that inmates faked illness to gain the hospital diet and to extract sickness benefits under insurance schemes.118 The vice-guardians were generally suspicious of inmates in the infirmary wards and Lankford’s wife, Siobhán, later wrote that many ‘were not really sick’, ‘had opted out’ and were engaged in ‘stealing and trading’ in the workhouse.119 The vice-­­guardians also believed that the district hospital had been abused by many ‘in good circumstances’ who were not entitled to medical relief. The vice-guardians succeeded in extracting payment from some patients, although they did stress that such measures were only taken against persons who could contribute to their support.120



the poor law and the irish revolution 27

A casual class of paupers – often termed mendicants, vagrants or tramps – had long utilised Irish workhouses for short-term relief. Such paupers were considered the most undeserving type of poor relief recipient and were particularly prominent in urban workhouses.121 The Cork workhouse traditionally received a large number of short-stay inmates: this was demonstrated in 1911 when 20 per cent of a sample of 800 admissions remained in the institution for less than twenty-four hours.122 Lankford identified these paupers in the Cork workhouse and complained that ‘undesirable persons of every description appeared to have considerable liberty in entering and leaving the workhouse’.123 Lankford’s wife later wrote that a ‘floating population’ of ‘undesirables’ had made the workhouse their own.124 Moralistic attitudes towards such paupers were nothing new; during the 1906 Irish Poor Law Commission much hostile evidence was presented on ‘tramps’, and punitive measures such as labour camps were promoted, although more sympathetic evidence was also offered, indicating a divergence in attitudes.125 The Cork vice-guardians also believed that some inmates were engaged in criminal activity in the workhouse. This included the practice of ‘illicit shoe making’ by which inmates used equipment stolen from the workhouse’s workshop to re-sole shoes smuggled in with soles from workhouse shoes. The stealing of workhouse property was a problem identified by the vice-guardians. A workhouse nurse named Walsh described how the vice-guardians ‘raided’ the female ward before Christmas in 1920, after which they discovered quantities of enamel mugs, clothing and ‘all sorts of little “articles” planked in the mattress[es]’.126 It was believed that inmates intended to take the items out of the workhouse at Christmas when they would be sold for a ‘nice sum’.127 The guardians also introduced medical boards to certify as to the fitness of patients to work. Conditions for some inmates were made so difficult under the vice-guardians’ administration that many left, and Lankford’s wife later claimed the ‘institution knew them no more’.128 Other measures included limitations on the admission of ‘undesirables’, which although not ‘strictly legal’ under the poor laws was viewed by the vice-guardians as beneficial to the ‘institution’ and provided ‘comfort to the inmates’.129 Overall the vice-guardians enforced a punitive workhouse regime which was based on deterrence. The new regime was very similar to the English New Poor Law principle of less eligibility, which determined that workhouse conditions were to be inferior to those of the poorest labourer outside: less eligibility was not introduced as an organising principle of the Irish Poor Law because of the extent of Irish poverty. Lankford subscribed to these ideas and in May 1922 stated: ‘people in the workhouse should not be made more comfortable than people outside’.130

28

the end of the irish poor law?

The radical steps introduced by the Cork vice-guardians were undertaken within the wider climate of poor law reform and the deterioration of military and political circumstances. Throughout 1921 Dáil Éireann collaborated with republican local government bodies in a complex process of workhouse amalgamation. At a December 1921 Cork County Council meeting on the amalgamation of Cork’s workhouses, Lankford identified the issue of able-bodied inmates as highly problematic in any reformed system of poor relief. He recommended the establishment of labour homes for the ‘incorrigible pauper’ and for what he termed as ‘the true workhouse rat’.131 Lankford believed that such labour homes would be punitive and not become the ‘over comfortable place’ that workhouses had. He also informed the meeting that ‘the moral tone’ of workhouses would ‘not improve’ until the able-bodied and ‘unmarried mothers’ were removed.132 Welfare policies enacted by Lankford and the vice-guardians were deeply influenced by harsh, moralistic and unsympathetic attitudes towards sections of the poor who were viewed as undeserving. Sinn Féin and Labour dissensions over poor law reform Many of Sinn Féin’s harsher welfare policies were, however, contested. The cutting of poor relief was often controversial: this was demonstrated in Cork city in the late 1880s when the reduction of outdoor relief led to demonstrations.133 Dissension over the actions of the vice-guardians emerged soon after the Anglo-Irish Truce. Initial discord resulted from the reduction of the wages of workhouse officials, who were organised by the Cork Workers’ Council and the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union.134 Although Sinn Féin and the trade unions were united in the appointment of the vice-guardians, divisions had begun to emerge by late 1921. In August 1921 the trade union members of the dissolved board of guardians called for the vice-guardians to be ‘subservient’ to the board that was ‘elected by the people’. They also demanded that new appointments, dismissals and salaries of officials be under the remit of the elected guardians.135 The president of the Cork Trades Council, George Nason, who had previously supported the republican takeover of the poor law board, also criticised the vice-guardians for the workhouse reforms and brought to light complaints from patients in the institution.136 These concerned the general treatment of the workhouse inmates, particularly in relation to the lack of food, clothing and coal for patients, and were investigated in December 1921.137 The subsequent Sinn Féin appointed inquiry ruled that the complaints were unfounded and credited the administration with making £30,000



the poor law and the irish revolution 29

in savings. Jennings claimed that the vice-guardians had ‘proved to the ratepayers the proper way to administer the affairs of the union’.138 The DÉLG continued to support the administration and argued that the ‘economies and improvements’ justified the vice-guardians’ appointment.139 After the inquiry Cork Sinn Féin’s executive recommended the re-appointment of the vice-guardians for another three months.140 Republican support for the vice-guardians was strong. In September a republican named Breen complained that the Trades Council spread ‘vague reports of harshness and tyranny’ in the workhouse that had no basis in reality. Breen also reported that one of the vice-guardians, Higgins, had previously been ‘on the run’ with the iconic republican and former Cork Lord Mayor, Tomás MacCurtain.141 MacCurtain was shot dead by the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1920 in what was one of the most controversial incidents of the period. These poor law debates were aired within the context of monumental events in Irish political history. The December 1921 signing of the AngloIrish agreement led to the partition of Ireland. Anti-Treatyite republicans rejected the settlement and the Irish Civil War broke out in June 1922 and lasted until May 1923. Against this backdrop of deepening crisis, the divisions in Cork between the Trades Council and Sinn Féin over the poor law continued. During a May 1922 guardians’ meeting to decide on the re-appointment of the vice-guardians John Good – republicanLabour poor law guardian – brought forward a litany of charges against Lankford and his colleagues. These included claims that a ‘child’ and ‘cripple’ were beaten in the workhouse and that the reductions in diet and coal led to increased deaths.142 Good claimed that they acted in a ‘tyrannical’ manner and that they had ‘shown no sympathy with the poor’ and criticised Lankford’s previous public reference to some inmates as ‘workhouse rats’. He called for an inquiry into the charges. Another elected guardian, Miss Sutton, stated that the vice-guardians ‘work[ed] against the poor’ and claimed that many of the workhouse inmates were afraid to complain for fear that they would be ‘victimised’.143 The vice-guardians vehemently defended their actions in the face of such criticism. In July Lankford and Higgins stated in a letter to the guardians that their policies were at the vanguard of revolutionary local government reform and ‘paid commissioners’ would be adopted throughout the country. Indicating their moral motivations, Lankford and Higgins believed that they had tackled the ‘blackguards’ and demonstrated a ‘spirit of impartiality in an atmosphere of iniquity and social corruption’.144 Lankford had previously criticised Good and other Labour activists for ‘masquerading as protectors of the poor’.145 Lankford and Higgins also condemned the guardians who opposed their

30

the end of the irish poor law?

actions as ‘politicians who wish[ed] to foist themselves on the public as humanitarian “friends of the poor” or “friends of the worker”’.146 The vice-guardians continued to garner much support. The DÉLG repeatedly cited reductions in expenditure and administrative reforms as justification for the vice-guardians’ actions. The majority of the board of guardians supported their reforms and re-appointed the vice-guardians for another three months in May. The editorial of the Cork Weekly News highlighted that the vice-guardians had checked ‘waste and extravagance’ and brought ‘moral results’ to the running of the Cork Poor Law and outlined how the DÉLG printed and circulated their ‘methods of management’. The newspaper supported their efforts and claimed that the poor laws could not be ‘effectively’ dealt with by elected guardians meeting on a weekly basis, many of whom, it believed, promoted ‘their personal popularity by doing a “good turn” for a friend’.147 The guardians’ success in reducing the rates was popular among sections of Cork society. In July 1921 the Cork Chamber of Commerce forwarded a resolution to the guardians that noted ‘with pleasure the great saving effected by the very efficient management by the viceguardians’.148 Support for the vice-guardians was predicated on moralistic attitudes regarding the personal failings of the ‘undeserving poor’, which were prevalent throughout society and not just in republicanism. This was combined with support for the zealous administrative reform of what was perceived as the failed, corrupt and costly British poor law. The dissension over the Cork workhouse took place within the wider context of the first general election in independent Ireland in June 1922. This allowed the Labour Party the opportunity to contest an election after supporting Sinn Féin in 1918. In Cork city the Labour Party organised on a platform of rising social discontent which emanated from unemployment and economic distress. The Trades and Workers’ Council’s accusations about the vice-guardians’ maltreatment of the poor was politicised in the election campaign. The election represented a significant success for Labour, which won 21 per cent of the national vote. In Cork city the Labour candidate, Day, topped the poll.149 Throughout the initial months of 1923 dissension between the Cork Trades and Workers’ Council and the vice-guardians continued over workhouse conditions and the disbandment of the elected guardians. In May 1923 Nason inspected the workhouse and submitted a report to the National Executive of the Labour Party.150 The political context was further complicated by the continuation of trade union disputes in the city and throughout much of Ireland. Despite the rhetoric of the Democratic Programme, much of Sinn Féin’s politics was characterised by hostility to organised labour, working-class interests and social-



the poor law and the irish revolution 31

ism.151 In an era of rapid political transformation, the issue of the poor law was of importance to the Labour Party in Cork, and provided a means of discrediting Sinn Féin, which opposed much of the trade union and labour activity. These divisions in Cork city were largely along labour and Sinn Féin lines and the fervent pro- and anti-Treaty politics which was enveloping the country in civil war was not evident in the fissures over the poor law. A departmental inquiry into the vice-guardians’ administration was finally established in January 1923 and was conducted by two DÉLG inspectors, Séamus Ua Murchadha and Seán MacCraith.152 The terms of reference of the inquiry were set to concentrate on 1) the system and principal administration of the guardians; 2) how they affected the management and efficiency of the union; 3) what financial benefits, if any, accrued to the ratepayers; 4) how far and in what manner the system affected the comfort of the poor, and what hardships, if any, were inflicted on the poor as a result; 5) what legislation was required to meet practical legal difficulties affecting the better administration of the union.153 The inquiry had to be abandoned after the Dáil Éireann inspectors were kidnapped and threatened at gunpoint amid the chaos of the civil war. It was later recalled in May 1923 but was impeded by the refusal of the Catholic bishop, Daniel Cohalan, to permit nuns working in the workhouse to give evidence. Also Lankford – by this stage retired from the poor law and working in the civil service – refused to give evidence under oath.154 After an extensive inquiry heard evidence supporting the claims of both sides, the inspectors ruled that the viceguardians ran the institution correctly but that the conditions could not be reduced any further.155 It is argued in Peter Hart’s controversial study of the IRA in Cork that the social boundaries of the republican movement skirted around big farms and affluent suburbs, but also stopped short of the back lanes, cabins and workhouses inhabited by the ‘unemployed, idle or itinerant’.156 While republicanism was not necessarily the movement of the Catholic bourgeois of the Irish Parliamentary Party, it also was not the movement of the urban poor who made up the ranks of unskilled labourers most likely to turn to the poor law. Many republicans and volunteers, particularly in Cork, were the working and lower middle classes employed in skilled labour, clerkships and shop assistantships; those who had a stake in society and who defined themselves against what they viewed as a culture of poverty and deprivation.157 Lankford’s depiction of workhouse inmates resonated with how many of the volunteers saw their enemies: within republicanism, young men of the IRA were considered sober, clean-living and self-respecting while

32

the end of the irish poor law?

their enemies were typically assumed to be degraded and drunken, and British army recruits were viewed as being almost entirely drawn from the ranks of the undeserving poor.158 Such attitudes were reflective of a puritanical ethos which would play an important role in the invention of modern Ireland.159 Many of the poor were viewed as failing to live up to the moral values of the new revolutionary reformers; in turn the undeserving poor were subjected to prescriptive and dogmatic attitudes. Also, concepts of welfare entitlement in advanced nationalism were more tied to political outlook than poverty and need. Nationalist political welfare organisations emerged to provide relief to the families of men killed or injured during the revolutionary years; these included the Irish National Aid Association, Prisoners’ Dependents Fund and White Cross.160 Entitlement to such assistance was predicated on political activism. Advanced nationalist views regarding the undeserving poor also echoed attitudes articulated since the late Victorian period after the ‘discovery’ of poverty and the ‘residuum’ or ‘submerged tenth’ unearthed by Charles Booth in 1890s’ London.161 While such social investigations helped to publicise the existence of poverty, they also represented new fears regarding the poor who were dichotomised between the ‘respectable’ and the ‘residuum’. Influenced by the eugenics movement, poverty was seen as somewhat hereditary. In the early 1900s these ideas surfaced in discussions about mental deficiency, birth control and housing reform.162 The Edwardian social reformers Sidney and Beatrice Webb forcefully argued for the break-up of the poor law and a move away from stigmatising and deterrence-based welfare measures.163 However, much anxiety remained regarding those whose ‘character’ inherently led to ‘immorality’ and ‘idleness’.164 These concerns were widely evident in both the 1906 Irish Poor Law Commission and UK-wide 1909 Poor Law Commission in which punitive measures for the undeserving classes – mostly embodied in the vagrant, criminal and immoral poor – were articulated. The Cork republican vice-guardians’ actions reflected much mainstream social thought on the ‘immoral’ and ‘undeserving poor’ evident not just in Irish society but throughout much of British and European welfare policy. It has been recently argued that not much attempt has been made to analyse the mentalities of those who made up the Irish revolution.165 This chapter’s exploration of the attitudes of some revolutionaries towards the poor and poverty has demonstrated a facet of the period which has received little if any consideration in the historiography.



the poor law and the irish revolution 33

Notes 1 P. Hart, ‘The geography of revolution in Ireland, 1917–23’, Past & Present, 155:1 (1997), 163. 2 R. F. Foster, Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890– 1923 (London: Allen Lane, 2014), p. 328. 3 F. Campbell, Land and Revolution: Nationalist Politics in the West of Ireland, 1891–1921 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); F. Campbell, ‘The social dynamics of nationalist politics in the west of Ireland, 1898– 1918’, Past & Present, 182:1 (2004), 175–209. For a regional account of the social dynamics of nationalism during the late nineteenth century, see D. S. Lucey, Land, Popular Politics and Agrarian Violence in Ireland: The Case of County Kerry, 1872–86 (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2011). For recent work on the land question and social class, see B. Casey (ed.), Defying the Law of the Land: Agrarian Radicals in Irish History (Dublin: The History Press, 2013). 4 T. Dooley, ‘The Land for the People’: The Land Question in Independent Ireland, 1923–73 (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2004). 5 N. Puirséil, The Irish Labour Party, 1922–73 (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2007), p. 8. 6 C. Kostick, Revolution in Ireland. Popular Militancy 1917–23 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2009), p. 218; E. O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland, 1824–2000 (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2nd edn, 2011); C. McCabe, ‘The Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and the National Union of Railwaymen in Ireland, 1911–1923’, PhD dissertation, University of Ulster, 2006. 7 P. Hart, The IRA at War, 1916–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. vii. 8 This has concentrated on the controversy surrounding the work of Peter Hart, which will not be expanded on here. For the divisive nature of this dispute, see J. M. Regan, ‘The “Bandon Valley Massacre” as a historical problem’, History, 97:325 (2012), 70–98; D. Fitzpatrick, ‘Ethnic cleansing, ethical smearing and Irish historians’, History, 98:329 (2013), 135–44. 9 M. Coleman, County Longford and the Irish Revolution, 1910–23 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003); M. Farry, Sligo: The Irish Revolution, 1912–23 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2nd edn, 2012); F. McCluskey, The Irish Revolution: Tyrone 1912–23 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2014). 10 D. Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life 1913–21: Provincial Experience of War and Revolution (Cork: Cork University Press, 2nd edn, 1998), p. 154. 11 H. Laird, Subversive Law in Ireland, 1879–1920: From Unwritten Law to Dáil Courts (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005). 12 Daly, The Buffer State. 13 W. Feingold, The Revolt of the Tenantry: The Transformation of Local Government in Ireland, 1872–86 (Boston, MA, 1984).

34

the end of the irish poor law?

14 V. Crossman, Politics, Pauperism and Power in Late NineteenthCentury  Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006); Lucey and Crossman, ‘One huge abuse’; Lucey, ‘Power, politics and poor relief’. 15 L. Frohman, ‘The break-up of the poor laws – German style: progressivism and the origins of the welfare state, 1900–18’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50:4 (2008), 1006. 16 For the administration of the Separation Allowance, see Annual Report of the LGG, 1915, pp. 15, 46–9; Annual report of the L.G.B…, 1916, p. xv. 17 Annual report of the L.G.B… 1916, p. xix. 18 K. Johnston, Home or Away. The Great War and the Irish Revolution (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2010), p. 242. 19 M. Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Féin Party, 1916–23 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 126. 20 B. Novick, Conceiving Revolution: Irish Nationalist Propaganda During the First World War (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 132–3. 21 Novick, Conceiving Revolution, p. 158. 22 Luddy, Prostitution and Irish Society, pp. 178–84. 23 K. Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 7. 24 The Royal Munster Fusiliers were drawn largely from Cork and Kerry; see T. Bowman, Irish Regiments in the Great War: Discipline and Morale (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), p. 143; C. Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 40; G. White and B. O’Shea, ‘Cork and the Great War’, in G. White and B. O’Shea (eds), A Great Sacrifice: Cork Servicemen Who Died in the Great War (Cork: Cork Evening Echo Publications, 2010). 25 A. Drumm, Kerry and the Royal Munster Fusiliers (Dublin: The History Press, 2010), p. 40; Johnston, Home or Away, p. 39. 26 For ‘slums’ and housing in Cork, see M. Dwyer, ‘Housing conditions of the working classes in Cork city in the early twentieth century’, Cork Historical and Archaeological Journal, 117 (2012), 91–9; M. Dwyer, ‘Abandoned by God and the Corporation: housing and the health of the working class in Cork city, 1912–1924’, Saothar: Journal of the Irish Labour History Society, 38 (2013), 105–18; D. Keogh, Jack Lynch: A Biography (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2008), pp. 2–3; J. F. Delaney, Report of the City Engineer on the Local Government Circular of 25 December 1918 (Cork: Guy and Co., 1918). 27 For a full account of the ‘food crisis’ in Cork and Ireland, see J. Borgonovo, The Dynamics of War and Revolution: Cork City, 1916–18 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2013), ch. 10, pp. 168–86; I. Miller, Reforming Food in post-Famine Ireland: Medicine, Science and Improvement, 1845–1922 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), pp. 173–96. 28 Cork Examiner, 4 Jan. 1918.



the poor law and the irish revolution 35

29 Cork Examiner, 19 Jan. 1918. For an outline of MacCurtain’s career, see P. Maume, ‘MacCurtain, Tomás’, DIB, Vol. V, pp. 897–9. 30 Cork Examiner, 5 Feb. 1918. 31 Borgonovo, The Dynamics of War, p. 181. 32 Cork Examiner, 18 Feb. 1918. 33 Ibid. 34 Cork Examiner, 18 Jan. 1918. 35 Cork Examiner, 20 Feb. 1918. 36 Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, p. 253. 37 Borgonovo, The Dynamics of War, p. 183. 38 Figures were for the last Saturday in March; see Annual Report of the LGB for Ireland… 1913, H.C., 1913 [Cd. 6978], xxxii.457, p. xii; Annual Report of the LGB for Ireland… 1920, H.C., 1920 [Cmd. 578], xxi.1, p. xxv. 39 Cork Examiner, 15 Feb. 1918. 40 Cork Examiner, 14 Nov. 1919. 41 Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, p. 218. 42 Quoted in Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, p. 219. 43 For an in-depth account of O’Hegarty’s activities in the IRA, see the work of John Borgonovo, including Spies, Informers and the ‘Anti-Sinn Féin Society’: The Intelligence War in Cork City, 1919–21 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007). 44 For the year 1913/14 the Cork Board of Guardians expended £19,729 on the maintenance of inmates; see Annual report of the LGB for Ireland… 1914, H.C., 1914 [Cd. 7561], xxxix.595, p. 242. 45 Cork Examiner, 17 Jan. 1920. 46 K. Girvin, Seán O’Hegarty: Officer Commanding First Cork Brigade, Irish Republican Army (Millstreet: Aubane Historical Society, 2007), p. 32. 47 Cork Examiner, 12 Nov. 1920. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 For county Longford, see Coleman, County Longford and the Irish Revolution, p. 88. 51 Cork Examiner, 23 Nov. 1917. 52 Cork Examiner, 8 Mar. 1918. 53 Michael Ahern was a member of the Cork Board of Guardians from the mid-1880s when nationalists took control of the board; see Cork Examiner, 29 May 1885; Lucey and Crossman, ‘One huge abuse’. 54 Borgonovo, The Dynamics of War, ch. 11. 55 Cork Examiner, 10 Jan. 1920. 56 Cork Examiner, 12 Jan. 1920. 57 Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, p. 327. 58 Kerryman, 15 May 1920. 59 Cork Examiner, 14 June 1920. 60 Kerryman, 19 & 26 June 1920.

36

the end of the irish poor law?

61 CCCA: BG 69/01, ‘Inspectors’ report of sworn inquiry into the Cork viceguardians, 1923’, p. 2; Cork Examiner, 14 June 1920. 62 Jennings was involved in Cork republican politics prior to 1916; see Bureau of Military History, Witness Statement 168, Liam Roche (de Róiste), ‘Sinn Feín Member’, http:// bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/reels/bmh/BMH. WS1698%20PART%202.pdf (accessed 17 September 2012) 63 M. Maguire, The Civil Service and the Revolution in Ireland, 1912–38: ‘Shaking the Blood-stained Hand of Mr Collins’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010). 64 Cork Examiner, 14 June 1920. 65 For a full list of guardians for 1920 and 1922, see Guy’s Cork Almanac and Directory, 1920 (Cork: Guy & Co., 1920), p. 121; Guy’s Cork Almanac and Directory, 1922 (Cork: Guy & Co., 1922), p. 121. 66 Daly, The Buffer State, p. 47. 67 Bureau of Military History, 1913–21, Witness Statement 501, T. J. McArdle, Secretary of Department of Local Government, 1919–21, ‘Local Government administration in Ireland 1919–21’, http://­­bureauofmilitaryhistory. ie/reels/bmh/BMH.WS0501.pdf#page=1, p. 7 (accessed 2 September 2014). 68 Daly, The Buffer State, p. 52 69 The effects on local government administration and finance are well documented; see Daly, The Buffer State, pp. 47–92; Potter, Municipal Revolution in Ireland, pp. 196–242. 70 Bureau of Military History, 1913–21, T. J. McArdle, p. 105. 71 Ibid. 72 KCL: BG/154/A/67, Tralee Board of Guardians minute book, 15 Jan. 1921. 73 KCL: BG/154/A/67, Tralee Board of Guardians minute book, ‘Letter from Department of Local Government to Tralee Poor Law Board’, 25 Mar. 1921. 74 KCL: BG/154/A/66, Tralee Board of Guardians minute book, 21 May 1920. 75 KCL: BG/154/A/67, Tralee Board of Guardians minute book, Tralee Workers’ Council to DÉLG, 27 Aug. 1921. 76 Daly, The Buffer State, p. 76; F. Clarke, ‘Brodrick, Albinia Lucy (Gobnaít Ní Bhruadair)’, DIB, Vol. I, pp. 855–6. 77 KCL: BG/154/A/67, Tralee Board of Guardians minute book, Sept. & Oct. 1921. 78 Daly, The Buffer State, p. 75. 79 Cork Weekly News, 3 Dec. 1921. 80 Borgonovo, The Dynamics of War; Borgonovo, The Battle for Cork: July– August 1922 (Cork: Mercier Press, 2011); Borgonovo, Spies, Informers and the ‘Anti-Sinn Fein Society’. 81 CCCA: BG/69/A/154, Cork Board of Guardians minute book, Nov. 1920– Jul. 1922, 19 Jan. 1921. 82 ‘Inspectors’ report of sworn inquiry into the Cork vice-guardians, 1923’, p. 2; Cork Examiner, 14 June 1920.



the poor law and the irish revolution 37

83 Cork Examiner, 13 Jan. 1922. 84 S. Lankford, The Hope and Sadness: Personal Recollections of Troubled Times in Ireland (Cork: Tower Books, 1980), p. 256. 85 Lucey and Crossman, ‘One huge abuse’. 86 ‘Copy of newspaper report of meeting of Cork Board of Guardians, 6 November 1920’, in Lankford, The Hope and Sadness, p. 257. 87 Higgins’ and Nolan’s involvement in republicanism dated back to the 1916 Rising; see Borgonovo, The Dynamics of War. 88 Borgonovo, The Dynamics of War, p. 257. 89 Lankford, The Hope and Sadness, pp. 250–6. 90 Ibid. p. 258. 91 Ibid. p. 261; Bureau of Military History Witness Statement 869, Comd’t P. J. Murphy, http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/reels/bmh/BMH. WS0869.pdf#page=1, p. 19 (accessed 2 September 2014). 92 Cork Examiner, 6 June 1923. 93 Cork Examiner, 8 June 1923. 94 NLI: MS 31,146 (1), Liam de Róiste Diary, 17 Sept. 1917. 95 F. McGarry, Eoin O’Duffy: A Self-made Hero (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 17. 96 ‘Inspectors’ report of sworn inquiry into the Cork vice-guardians, 1923’. 97 Ibid., p. 8. 98 Lankford, The Hope and Sadness, p. 60. 99 ‘Inspectors’ report of sworn inquiry into the Cork vice-guardians, 1923’, p. 8. 100 NAI: DÉLG, 6/43, Cork Poor Law Union, ‘Appointment of Matron’, 17 Nov. 1921. 101 M. Luddy, ‘“Angels of mercy”: nuns as workhouse nurses, 1861–1898’, in G. Jones and E. Malcolm (eds), Medicine, Disease and the State in Ireland, 1650–1940 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999), pp. 102–17. 102 NAI: DÉLG, 6/43, Cork Poor Law Union, Lankford to Department of Local Government, 22 Nov. 1921. 103 NAI: DÉLG, 6/43, Cork Poor Law Union, DÉLG to Cork Board of Guardians, 22 Sept. 1921. 104 Cork Poor Law Union, Interim Report on the Administration of Cork Workhouse (Dublin: printed by O’Loughlin, Murphy and Boland, 1921). 105 Ibid., p. 10. 106 Ibid., p. 7. 107 Ibid., pp. 8–10. 108 Ibid., p. 12 109 Cork Weekly News, 28 Feb. 1921. 110 CCCA: BG/69/A/154, Cork Board of Guardians minute book, 17 Aug. 1921. 111 Cork Examiner, 13 Jan. 1922. 112 Cork Examiner, 6 June 1923.

38

the end of the irish poor law?

113 For the increased professionalisation of local government services in a British context, see S. Ewen, ‘Central government and modernization of the British Fire Service, 1900–38’, Twentieth Century British History 14:4 (2003), 317–38. 114 J. J. Horgan, ‘City management in America’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 9:33 (1920), 41–56. 115 Potter, Municipal Revolution in Ireland, pp. 293–6. 116 O’Halpin, ‘The system of city and county management’, p. 36. 117 See evidence of Dr Joseph Smyth, LGB Medical Inspector; Poor Law Reform Commission (Ireland): Minutes of evidence taken before the ViceRegal Commission on Poor Law Reform in Ireland, vol. III, H.C. [Cd. 3204], 1906, p. 1. 118 Interim Report, p. 4. 119 Lankford, The Hope and Sadness, p. 264. 120 Interim Report, p. 4. 121 For ‘tramps’ and the poor law in the nineteenth century, see Crossman, Poverty and the Poor Law in Ireland, pp. 198–225. 122 CCCA: BG/69/G/31-2, Cork workhouse indoor registers, 1911. 123 Interim Report, p. 5. 124 Lankford, The Hope and Sadness, p. 265. 125 Crossman, Poverty and the Poor Law in Ireland, p. 217. 126 Cork Examiner, 8 June 1923. 127 Cork Examiner, 8 June 1923; Lankford, The Hope and Sadness, p. 264. 128 Lankford, The Hope and Sadness, p. 266. 129 ‘Inspectors’ report of sworn inquiry into the Cork vice-guardians, 1923’, p. 8. 130 Cork Examiner, 18 May 1922. 131 Cork Examiner, 16 Dec. 1921. 132 Ibid. 133 Lucey and Crossman, ‘One huge abuse’. 134 The ITGWU threatened to strike but the issue was put to arbitration under the Department of Labour; see NAI: DÉLG 6/43, minutes of Cork Board of Guardians, 17 Aug. 1921; Cork Weekly News, 17 Sept. 1921. The South Dublin Workhouse was the focus of similar labour disputes in the early 1910s; see L. Arrington, ‘Socialist republican discourse and the 1916 Easter Rising: the occupation of Jacob’s Biscuit Factory and the South Dublin Union explained’, Journal of British Studies, 53:4 (2014), 992–1010. 135 NAI: DÉLG, 6/43, minutes of Cork Board of Guardians, 17 Aug. 1921; Cork Weekly News, 17 Sept. 1921. 136 For Nason’s involvement in republican politics, see Borgonovo, The Dynamics of War, p. 165. 137 Cork Weekly News, 10 Dec. 1921. 138 Cork Weekly News, 7 Jan. 1922. 139 Ibid.



the poor law and the irish revolution 39

140 Cork Examiner, 13 Jan. 1922. 141 Cork Weekly News, 3 Sept. 1921. 142 Cork Examiner, 9 May 1922. 143 Ibid. 144 Cork Weekly News, 8 July 1921. 145 CCCA: BG/69/A/154, Cork Board of Guardians minute book, 13 May 1922. 146 Cork Weekly News, 8 July 1922. 147 Cork Weekly News, 17 June 1922. 148 Cork Examiner, 13 July 1921. 149 Puirséil, The Irish Labour Party, pp. 9–13. 150 Cork Examiner, 5 May 1923. 151 McGarry, ‘Southern Ireland, 1922–32’, p. 661. 152 Irish Independent, 10 Jan. 1923. Séamus Ua Murchadha was initially appointed an inspector on 2 January 1921; see Bureau of Military History, 1913–21, T. J. McArdle, p. 130. 153 Irish Independent, 10 Jan. 1923. 154 Cork Examiner, 30 May 1923. 155 ‘Inspectors’ report of sworn inquiry into the Cork vice-guardians, 1923’. 156 P. Hart, The IRA and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916–23 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 147. 157 For example, the leading Cork IRA volunteers Liam Deasy, Florrie O’Donoghue and Liam Lynch were employed respectively as a carpenter, draper’s shop assistant and hardware shop assistant; see Borgonovo, The Dynamics of War. See also D. Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, 1900–2000 (London: Profile Books, 2004), p. 198. 158 Hart, The IRA and its Enemies, pp. 295–6. 159 McGarry, Eoin O’Duffy, p. 344; R. V. Comerford, Ireland (London: Arnold, 2003), p. 114. 160 C. Nic Dháibhéid, ‘The Irish National Aid Association and the radicalisation of public opinion in Ireland, 1916–18’, Historical Journal, 55:3 (2012), 705–29; F. M. Carroll, ‘The American Committee for Relief in Ireland, 1920–22’, Irish Historical Studies, 23:89 (1982), 30–49. 161 J. Welshman, ‘The social history of social work: the issue of the “problem family”, 1940–70’, British Journal of Social Work, 29:3 (1999), 459. 162 J. Harris, ‘Between civic virtue and social Darwinism: the concept of the residuum’, in D. Englander and R. O’Day (eds), Retrieved Riches: Social Investigation in Britain, 1840–1914 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995), pp. 67–88. 163 S. Webb, ‘The end of the poor law’, Sociological Review, 2 (1909), 127–39. 164 A. J. Kidd, ‘The state and moral progress: the Webbs’ case for social reform c.1905 to 1940’, Twentieth Century British History, 7:2 (1996), 189–205; Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit, pp. 237–45; A. M. McBriar, An Edwardian Mixed Doubles: The Bosanquets versus The Webbs: A Study in

40

the end of the irish poor law?

British Social Policy, 1890–1929 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Similar concerns were evident in Germany; see Frohman, ‘The break-up of the poor laws’. 65 Foster, Vivid Faces, p. xvii. 1

2

From outdoor relief to home assistance

The central pillar of the poor law from its introduction in 1838 was the workhouse test. The able-bodied poor’s willingness to enter workhouses was proof of destitution and determined entitlement to assistance. Under the poor law reforms of the early 1920s the workhouse test was discarded and the able-bodied were largely removed from institutional provision.1 Former restrictions on outdoor relief, renamed as home assistance, were removed and the able-bodied were deemed eligible for relief in their homes for the first time. Domiciliary relief was theoretically extended to all recipients who could be relieved outside the former workhouses, now renamed county homes, and county and district hospitals. The DLGPH, which took over from Dublin Castle’s LGB, stipulated that institutional relief would only be granted when it was ‘impossible, impracticable or wasteful’ to give other assistance.2 The reforms attempted to reduce the number reliant on institutional relief and make home assistance the ‘normal method’ of relieving destitution.3 The removal of restrictions on outdoor relief was potentially socially radical. The abandonment of the workhouse test had the ability to ideologically transform the deterrent poor law to a more humanitarian system based on support for the poor. This chapter explores the development of home assistance, particularly concentrating on the ablebodied. It argues that despite the reform’s possibilities, harsh traditional deterrence-based attitudes pervaded poor relief policies. The chapter also highlights the fact that local home assistance regimes expanded and were at times shaped by social, economic and political pressures which forced more generous local policies. The nationalist rhetoric of the Free State ensured that the reforms were depicted as the removal of the ‘hated’ workhouse from Irish society.4 Notions of the deserving and undeserving poor, however, continued to permeate official attitudes. This was demonstrated in the DLGPH’s first report which stated that workhouses were associated with the Great Famine and were the sole refuge of ‘vagrants’ and what

42

the end of the irish poor law?

it termed the ‘physical wreckage of the population’. The report claimed that the former workhouses had an ‘enduring stigma’ for the ‘respectable poor’ who regarded the institutions with ‘abhorrence’. The DLGPH also maintained that the respectable classes were entitled to relief without having to associate with the ‘undesirable elements of humanity’.5 In turn, the DLGPH claimed that the removal of restrictions on outdoor relief allowed the ‘respectable poor’ to be relieved ‘in their own homes’.6 In the newly independent Ireland, welfare reform was greatly influenced by attitudes towards the deserving and undeserving poor which were tied to notions of respectability. The denigration of the undeserving poor, which had proved controversial in revolutionary Cork, remained evident in the ideology behind the Free State’s reform of the poor law. The rhetoric of poor law reform was infused with a sense of nationalism which criticised the former ‘British’ system and in particular the ‘degrading’ poor law. Such negative perceptions of Irish workhouses replicated wider attitudes towards the system, particularly among the respectable middle classes. These viewpoints ignored the post-Famine poor law’s capacity to grow and evolve into a more comprehensive and non-pauperising welfare system brought about by a combination of growing political, religious and social pressure and a consequence of wider developments in social thought and social structure.7 By 1914 the multifunctional workhouses were central to Irish welfare and in many locales provided the only form of public provision. Able-bodied indoor relief was largely restricted to ‘casual paupers’ and family separation in workhouses – one of the most criticised aspects of the poor law – was a rare event.8 The establishment of the Irish Free State did, however, bring about significant reform of the poor law system. As highlighted in chapter 1, this process was initiated during the Irish war of independence (1919–21) and continued after partition. Boards of guardians and poor law unions were disbanded and replaced by boards of health and public assistance that were sub-committees of county councils.9 In line with the 1906 Irish Poor Law Commission’s recommendations, county homes were established by each local authority for relief of the aged, infirm and chronic sick. In theory certain categories of inmates such as ‘harmless lunatics’, unmarried mothers and children were to be relieved in separate institutions or boarded out; in practice these also often ended up in county homes. County hospitals were solely to provide medical services. The previously semi-independent county infirmaries came under the control of the boards of health and public assistance. A network of district hospitals was also established on former workhouse sites for emergency and less serious medical cases.10 These reforms represented



from outdoor relief to home assistance 43

the first major attempt to break up the poor law in either Britain or Ireland, and predated the dismantlement of the English and Welsh Poor Law under the 1929 Local Government Act.11 In Northern Ireland the poor law was not fully formally disbanded until 1948.12 These reforms were couched in rhetoric that combined Irish nationalism with sympathy for the deserving poor. The DLGPH’s first report claimed that the measures remodelled ‘the system in accordance with Irish ideas’.13 The department stated that the reforms’ objective was to introduce a relief system which conformed to the people’s ‘wishes and sentiments’ and which would ‘efficiently and sympathetically’ meet the ‘needs of the poor’.14 The leading medical advisor in the department, Dr E. F. Stephenson, averred that the reforms’ primary aim was improved treatment for the poor.15 The new Free State’s attempt to provide assistance free of the pauperising experience of the poor law was reflective of wider attitudes towards welfare throughout Europe. In Britain, the labouring classes were increasingly viewed as an important national resource deserving of welfare dissociated from the stigmatising poor law. Reformers such as Beatrice and Sidney Webb articulated the need to break up the poor law.16 Similar objectives were behind German reforms in the 1910s and 1920s.17 The spread of social democracy and the labour movement also led to the realignment of the welfare debate.18 The right to non-stigmatising welfare and healthcare was viewed as an important aspect of citizenship in an ever increasing political community of everyday people brought about by franchise reform.19 The lexicon of the Free State’s poor law reform resonated with such transnational attempts to dilute nineteenth-century principles of deterrence that underpinned many poor relief systems. Under the previous poor law only certain groups were entitled to outdoor relief – relief in cash or kind as opposed to in workhouses – ­including the sick, disabled and widows with two or more legitimate children. The removal of restrictions on entitlement to the newly renamed home assistance led to the measure’s expansion, and expenditure grew from £112,245 in 1913 (exclusive of the Northern Irish six counties) to £372,654 in 1924/25.20 Conversely, the inmate population in former workhouses dropped from 26,791 on 31 March 1913 to 18,113 on 1 April 1925. Despite the decrease in inmates, the cost of indoor relief grew from £364,209 in 1913/14 to £364,722 in 1924/25.21 The DLGPH also reported that the number of outdoor relief recipients grew from 14,663 on 1 October 1913 to 21,650 on 31 March 1925.22 This growth was borne out by expenditure increases, although the DLGPH’s 1913 figure for outdoor relief contradicts the 35,544 outdoor relief recipients in March 1914 reported by the LGB.23 This discrepancy

44

the end of the irish poor law?

is difficult to explain and the 1913 statistics reported by the DLGPH that related to indoor, outdoor and medical relief, and workhouse inmates, corresponded with the LGB’s report. Generally, the reforms led to an assistance system which had a greater emphasis on home assistance and less reliance on institutional provision. The move away from indoor relief had been, however, evident since the latter nineteenth century. Outdoor relief had expanded from the 1860s and became popular during the Land War of the 1880s.24 Local authorities often favoured outdoor relief on economic and political grounds. Furthermore, the poor frequently framed applications to secure access and circumvent restrictions. Local boards often provided outdoor relief to the temporarily or seasonal unemployed to maintain local labour forces.25 The Edwardian era witnessed a drop in the workhouse population, which was due to a combination of boards of guardians’ relief policies and the introduction of other welfare measures including the old age pension.26 The placing of workhouse inmates on home assistance during the early 1920s was also motivated by the need to reduce expenditure, achieve ‘economies’ and rationalise administrative structures. Relief to the able-bodied: the end of the workhouse test? The expansion of home assistance was not met with universal approval in the new Free State. During parliamentary debates on the introduction of the 1923 Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Bill, concern over the measure was expressed. Darrell Figgis, TD (Member of Parliament) for Dublin County, called for an amendment that restricted eligibility to home assistance to occupiers of land of one acre or less. He argued that people should be able to earn a livelihood off any more land.27 He warned that there were relief recipients who were ‘not entitled to it’ and commented: ‘human nature permits [corruption] … to occur, and we have got to check it’.28 Traditional fears of welfare corruption, a cornerstone of poor law thinking, remained prevalent in the early 1920s.29 Figgis’s attempts to restrict home assistance were opposed by other members. Cathal O’Shannon – Labour TD, trade unionist, socialist and republican who assisted in the writing of the 1919 Democratic Programme – argued that no restrictions should be imposed and that ‘the right to relief’ was derived from claimants’ ‘destitute position’.30 Thomas Johnson, leader of the Labour Party, called not only for the removal of all restrictions, but also a systemic approach that prevented families from reaching the ‘utterly despondent, reckless, burned out stage’ which forced people to turn to public assistance.31



from outdoor relief to home assistance 45

Johnson’s comments were among the few that called for a solution to poverty rather than merely the relief of destitution. The Minister for Local Government, Ernest Blythe, defended the measure and stated that the abolition of workhouses necessitated the removal of restrictions to relief.32 Blythe was motivated by practical as much as ideological concerns. In Dublin city, the poor law and workhouse remained until 1929 and restrictions on outdoor relief were not removed. Blythe believed that there was no urgency to expand home assistance in Dublin because the workhouse continued to exist, indicating his willingness to support institutional relief in the city.33 Blythe was also wary of the relief of the able-bodied and believed that future legislation was needed ‘to prevent abuse’, including the introduction of work-tests.34 The Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act 1923 theoretically removed all previous restrictions on home assistance. Central government was concerned about the administration of home assistance. In April 1924 the DLGPH issued the County Board of Health (Assistance) Order which further outlined the new system. Home assistance was defined as relief given in money, food or ‘articles of absolute necessity’; it did not include dispensary, medical or surgical assistance or the burial costs of a poor person. Any poor person who was incapable of providing himself or his dependents with the ‘necessities of life’ was deemed to be entitled to relief.35 It was framed as a temporary measure, and recipients were not to receive relief for more than one month except in cases of physical or intellectual disability. Boards of health and public assistance had to ensure that such recipients were permanently disabled and cases were to be reviewed quarterly.36 These regulations were designed to prevent recipients from remaining on relief rolls for extended periods. The potentially radical nature of the extension of relief to the ablebodied was further dampened. Able-bodied recipients were to receive at least half of their relief in food and fuel or in ‘other articles of absolute necessity’, and not the full cash payments that other recipients were entitled to.37 Local boards were granted discretionary powers to require able-bodied relief recipients to perform suitable tasks as a condition of assistance, which effectively amounted to the establishment of worktests.38 Local boards could not help applicants in trades or provide them with the means of earning their own livelihood; the redeeming of tools in pawn shops or the purchasing of such items was specifically forbidden.39 Restrictions on cash payments to the able-bodied represented a continuation of the principles of deterrence which prevented the granting of outdoor relief to the able-bodied under the former poor law. This also indicated that the able-bodied were less eligible to relief.

46

the end of the irish poor law?

The ­­introduction of work-tests, albeit discretionary, replaced the workhouse test as a method of determining need, destitution and entitlement. Finally, the forbidding of relief from being utilised to provide tools for workmen further demonstrated that the measure was not designed to overcome poverty but merely relieve destitution. This was to ensure that relief did not undermine labour markets, another central tenet of poor law thinking. These stipulations demonstrated that many principles which underpinned the former poor law system remained. In the 1920s concern about the relief of the able-bodied continued and was particularly evident during the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, including the Insane Poor (hereafter 1927 Relief Commission) that was set up in 1925. The commission was established to devise ‘permanent legislation’ for the relief of the sick and destitute.40 The terms of reference called on the commission to inquire into five specific areas of which relief to the able-bodied was one; the other areas concentrated on the county schemes introduced under the Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act, the administration of relief to women and children including widows and unmarried mothers, care of ‘mentally defective persons’ and the chargeability of relief of persons normally resident in another district.41 In relation to home assistance, the commission was instructed to examine whether the laws and regulations provided ‘due provision’ for the relief of the sick and destitute poor in their homes. The terms also designated that the commission inquire into any ‘wasteful expenditure’ on the relief of healthy able-bodied, who were considered the ‘incorrigibly idle’.42 The commission took oral evidence during thirty-two public sittings between May 1925 and December 1926 and heard 180 witnesses.43 The investigation was in the tradition of the large commissions of inquiry into the poor laws held in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Commission members included Dr Thomas Hennessy, leading Irish medic and Cumann na nGaedheal TD; Major James Myles, an independent TD for Donegal who had previously fought in the British Army; and Jennie Wyse-Power, the feminist and independent senator. Other commissioners included John Keane, an Anglo-Irish senator who supported the Free State’s economic retrenchment policies, and who also criticised its censorship laws.44 Religious representatives on the commission included Monsignor Dunne, a Catholic cleric, and the Revd M. E. Murphy. Trade union and working-class interests were represented by Richard Corish, Labour TD for county Wexford.45 Sir Joseph Glynn, a social activist and president of the lay Catholic charity the St Vincent de Paul Society, who was closely involved with the Cumann na nGaedheal government, also sat on the commission.46 Patrick Sugrue, a DLGPH



from outdoor relief to home assistance 47

official who administered the dissolved Leitrim County Council, was another commissioner. The commission of inquiry’s chairman, Charles H. O’Connor, was a former member of the LGB. Throughout the 1927 Relief Commission hearings harsh attitudes towards what were termed the ‘work-shy’ and the ‘incorrigibly idle’ were widely aired. During one sitting Charles H. O’Connor outlined how the able-bodied could be divided into two groups and stated: ‘there was the able-bodied who are willing to work and who cannot get it and that there was the able-bodied known as the work-shy’.47 In the 1920s county and local authorities were dissolved by central government and placed in the hands of paid central government commissioners. These officials had some of the most dogmatic views. This was demonstrated by Seán O’Farrell – commissioner of the Cork North and Cork West local authorities after the elected boards of health and public assistance were dissolved – when he gave evidence in February 1926; previously O’Farrell was the commissioner for the Kerry local welfare authorities. From his experience he believed that the men who sought home assistance lived ‘a lazy life’. He claimed that such individuals regularly refused to take offered work and informed the commission: ‘if they were only put to a few hours at breaking stones it would be well worth while’.48 Similarly harsh attitudes were articulated by other local government officials who administered local welfare regimes. The secretary of the Kerry Board of Health and Public Assistance, Padraig C. O’Mahony, was critical of the extension of relief. O’Mahony had an extensive background in republicanism and joined the IRB in 1905. He acted as an organiser for them and was involved in the 1916 rising in county Waterford.49 During 1917–21 he was a leading organiser of the republican movement in the south of Ireland.50 In the early 1920s he was appointed as secretary to Kerry County Council and firmly supported the commissioner system that temporarily replaced the dissolved KBHPA. He represented the new class of Free State official who zealously set about reforming and economising local government. O’Mahony acknowledged that ‘commercial depression’ and ‘unemployment’ led to the growth in home assistance but claimed that it was difficult to segregate the ‘real from the fictitious’ applications for relief.51 Classic poor law concerns regarding the immoral effects of poor relief were evident in O’Mahony’s attitudes. He believed that relief provision often led to welfare dependency and complained that since independence many had ‘developed idleness and improvidence’ and commented that among ‘our people’ there was an ‘unfortunate tendency to relax when there [was] a possibility of gratuitous assistance’.52 He ­­promulgated

48

the end of the irish poor law?

principles of self-reliance and deterrence and argued that it had to be ‘rendered more difficult than easy’ to access assistance. He claimed that such restrictions would lead to a renewal of the ‘old energy’ which procured ‘employment and livelihoods’.53 O’Mahony asserted that the ablebodied should be provided with public works of a ‘beneficial nature’ and home assistance limited to the impotent poor.54 His perceptions of poverty and relief recipients were firmly based on ideas relating to the deserving and undeserving poor. In a letter to the local newspaper, The Kerryman, O’Mahony justified the Free State’s poor law reforms. He criticised the workhouses, which be believed herded the ‘decent poor’ with the ‘riff-raff and scum’. He claimed that under the new reforms ‘the deserving poor’ were treated ‘sympathetically and effectively’ and were protected from ‘unworthy elements’.55 Such attitudes mirrored those of the Cork vice-guardians during the revolutionary years and were somewhat derived from the moralistic underpinnings of Gaelic nationalism. For many Free State administrators, able-bodied male relief recipients were anathema to their ideals of self-reliance and the perceived social and cultural purity of Irish nationalist identity. Ironically, such rhetoric also resonated with British New Liberal social beliefs that identified an intractable and undeserving stratum and ‘residuum’ among the poor for whom all provision was in vain.56 During the 1927 Relief Commission measures based on deterrence and social exclusion, especially institutionalisation, were promoted for the able-bodied poor whose perceived immorality led to a burden on the community. Chairman O’Connor stated that many witnesses believed that the ‘work-shy’ should have been ‘locked up and made work’.57 The former clerk of the Baltinglass Poor Law Union, R. J. Dagg, called for the reintroduction of the older poor law practice of the public posting of the names of relief recipients.58 Dagg maintained that this kept in check abuses and allowed the ratepayers to monitor how public funds were ‘expended’.59 Similar policies were promoted by the commissioner in charge of the dissolved Cork Corporation and Board of Public Assistance, Philip Monahan.60 He believed that the reluctance of individuals to accept ‘gratuitous assistance’ vanished ‘very quickly’ without the ‘small deterrent’ of the public posting of relief recipients’ names.61 Dagg also suggested that the homeless and ‘incorrigible poor’ should be obliged to undertake enforced labour in farm colonies in the countryside and labour yards in the cities.62 Dagg believed that governments had the ‘moral right’ to detain such people and that enforced work had redemptive potential. In such labour colonies, according to Dagg, efforts would be made to morally reclaim individuals, and he cited cases where the ‘incorrigibly idle’ had made good.63 Monahan proposed similarly



from outdoor relief to home assistance 49

­­ stringent measures in a 1927 lecture entitled ‘State and Poverty’ given to the Cork Catholic Young Men’s Association and outlined that the state should have the power to institutionalise ‘chronic idlers’ and ‘inveterate drunkards’. Such institutionalisation, according to Monahan, would ‘reform’ and ‘build up [the] character and physique’ of the inmates.64 The 1927 Relief Commission discussed labour camps and more punitive types of relief systems with other witnesses. O’Farrell believed local district justices needed the power to commit men who spent their relief money on alcohol and did not support their families to ‘labour colonies or detention homes’.65 Kerry County Council’s secretary, O’Mahony, believed that cases of ‘mendicancy’ and ‘vagrancy’ should be dealt with ‘firmly’, with powers for their committal to ‘penitentiaries’.66 The promotion of labour camps and incarceration indicated that local government officials viewed many relief applicants as petty criminals who required punishment, supervision and deterrence – principles long identified in the moral regulation of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century institutions including prisons, asylums, hospitals and workhouses.67 Welfare programmes that incorporated detention and labour camps, common in some northern European countries, were mechanisms for marginalising the poor and deviant, which led to their exclusion from the community. These welfare schemes were disciplinary, repressive and potentially totalitarian in character.68 Paradoxically, these measures were enmeshed with a reformative approach which resonated with the moral reform movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Attempts at the break-up of poor law regimes in Britain and Germany, similar to Ireland, aimed to provide non-stigmatising public assistance to the respectable poor. Notions of self-responsibility for poverty had been somewhat replaced by understandings of wider social and environmental factors. Prevention and reformation replaced deterrence and punishment as guiding welfare principles in a new era of social citizenship. However, poor law reforms embodied in the campaigns of the Webbs in Britain and the Progressive movements in Germany and the USA were deeply preoccupied with sections of the poor who were deemed as having failed to live up to their social obligations. Coercive and institutional measures were viewed as a method of reforming such individuals.69 These ideas were evident in the attitudes of many local government reformers and officials in the early Free State. European examples of carceral regimes were discussed by the 1927 Relief Commission.70 This was demonstrated when Sir Joseph Glynn questioned the secretary of the DLGPH, Edward McCarron, who played a leading role in the reform of local government and poor relief. McCarron was a career civil servant who was previously an a­ uditor

50

the end of the irish poor law?

with the LGB.71 Glynn described the ‘Scandinavian model’ that divided the poor into three categories – the most deserving, the class not so deserving and those whose ‘downfall’ was their ‘own fault’ – and asked McCarron if the Irish poor could be placed in such categories.72 McCarron did subscribe to notions of the deserving and undeserving poor and that any system of public assistance should discriminate between the able-bodied and the impotent poor.73 However, McCarron was apprehensive of categorisation. He highlighted ‘considerable dangers’ in the past classification of outdoor relief recipients and stated: ‘it is rather a dangerous thing to take to sorting human beings into different categories’.74 During the exchange of evidence with McCarron, Glynn stated that he was not supportive of placing the ‘undeserving into penal colonies’ because such a system was ‘not reformative in its objects’.75 He criticised penal colonies which placed inmates ‘at very hard work’ and led to cases of practical ‘starvation’.76 McCarron was more favourable to the Danish system. He described how, in Denmark, only a ‘residue’ of ‘healthy and idle’ existed who were given every opportunity to ‘improve themselves’ before they were institutionalised.77 Monahan considered that the problem was somewhat pathological. He informed the 1927 Relief Commission that the ‘work-shy’ should be treated by an ‘experienced psychologist’ in an environment that was to be more of a ‘hospital’ than a ‘penal institution’. He believed that the work-shy suffered from a ‘disease’ and contended that they could be reformed; he stated: ‘I do not like to believe that nothing can be done to change his character’.78 Monahan’s view was reflective of the medicalisation of perceived deviant behaviour, poverty and social problems, which was most probably influenced by the spread of psychological ideals and the professionalisation of psychology in this period.79 Some of the 1927 Relief Commission members and witnesses challenged such harsh policies. As already demonstrated, Glynn disfavoured the punitive Danish system because it lacked reformative principles. Another commissioner, Sugrue, acknowledged the state’s moral right to detain criminals, but questioned the incarceration of ‘wanderers’ who had not committed any crime.80 The forced detention of the itinerant poor was never a feature of the New Poor Law where the workhouse was based on the premise of willingness to enter rather than incarceration. The failure of the widespread implementation of the 1898 Inebriates Act – by 1919 only one Irish inebriate reformatory existed – also demonstrated an unwillingness to establish reformative institutions for the ‘habitually drunk’.81 In its final report, the 1927 Relief Commission did not recommend the establishment of any new institutions to deal with the ‘work-shy’.



from outdoor relief to home assistance 51

Some academics have viewed the workhouses of the New English Poor Law as providing for the moral reformation of society through the centralised surveillance of social deviants.82 The Irish Poor Law has been viewed by some historians as a form of ‘colonial modernity’ for the Liberal Imperial state.83 In this approach, as the historian Peter Gray has described, post-1838 workhouses embodied the administrative surveillance, systematic state centralisation, rigid classification and moral regulation of the poor. Gray also stresses recent work which has focused on the system’s capacity to evolve into a more comprehensive and nonstigmatising system.84 The closure of Irish workhouses and removal of restrictions on outdoor relief undermined the state’s surveillance of poor relief recipients. To combat the threat of an unchecked relief system, the 1927 Relief Commission explored the German Elberfeld relief scheme prevalent since the 1850s. This system’s underlying principle was that ineffective and wasteful relief increased pauperism and rendered adequate assistance almost impossible.85 It was based on frequent visits to recipients’ homes by groups of volunteers who cooperated with government officials. The poor were under surveillance to ensure that they remained deserving of assistance. Ideologically, it represented an emphasis on personal rather than social factors in the identification and solving of poverty, which it aimed to root out by ‘working on the individual’.86 Visitors, almost uniformly middle class, judged the behaviour and needs of their ‘clients’, and could be counted on to instil proper values in the poor.87 Such activity became a characteristic of much German civic culture by the end of the nineteenth century.88 Support for the Elberfeld system was evident at the 1927 Relief Commission. Monahan believed that it was every citizen’s duty to do any ‘social service’ called for from them, and that ‘bodies of citizens’ should be trained in voluntary work in ‘helping the poor’.89 Monahan envisaged an educated citizenry who would frequently visit homes of poor relief recipients to ensure their deservingness and to check abuse. Chairman O’Connor asked Seán O’Farrell if he thought local authorities should appoint visitors to the homes of relief recipients to encourage them to rear their children on the ‘principle of humanity’. O’Farrell theoretically agreed with the measure but was apprehensive of the increased costs and the difficulty in getting ‘public men and women’ to undertake such voluntary work.90 The 1927 Relief Commission’s final report believed that home visits by voluntary workers assisted in the ‘moral uplifting of the poor’ and would remove the ‘cause of poverty’ in some cases.91 However, the commissioners were circumspect about the system’s suitability to Ireland. They believed that charitable workers should not run public assistance, which was to be administered on more

52

the end of the irish poor law?

stringent terms than charity. Fears were also expressed that cooperation between voluntary and public relief authorities could undermine charitable organisations: this was probably influenced by Joseph Glynn, the president of the St Vincent de Paul lay Catholic relief agency. It was recommended that the minister establish an experimental scheme on the lines of the Elberfeld system but not its widespread introduction; however, this experiment was never introduced.92 The 1927 Relief Commission did not call for new legislation and reported that the existing laws were sufficient to ‘prevent abuses and extravagances’.93 The commission did articulate the need for the effective administration of home assistance and frequent examination and supervision of poor relief cases. Under the former poor law, workhouses provided a ‘self-acting’ test that relieved guardians from the onerous task of judging the need and character of the applicant.94 The inquiry emphasised that with no ‘workhouse test’ to fall back on, each applicant’s case required ‘careful scrutiny’.95 As already noted, this relief was only granted on a temporary basis and able-bodied recipients were the subject of monthly reviews. Much emphasis was placed on the system’s administration by local boards and officials, and the DLGPH warned that ‘lax’ approaches would lead to a swelling of home assistance rolls.96 The system was administered by home assistance offices (HAO) – these replaced the poor law’s relieving officers – under the direction of a superintendent assistant officer (SAO) who oversaw relief in each local authority area. HAOs attended designated places in their district, often the dispensary house, and granted assistance and received applications for outdoor, medical and institutional relief. HAOs were pivotal to the decision on applicants’ eligibility. They had to visit each applicant’s home and make detailed inquiries into their health, ability to work and previous earnings and other means.97 Much responsibility was also placed on the shoulders of the SAOs, who were charged with being sympathetic to ‘poverty and affliction’ and advising HAOs and boards of health on ‘doubtful or difficult cases’. They also had to discern ‘fraud or deception’ and be acute to any ‘demoralising’ effect relief had on recipients.98 Boards of health and public assistance ultimately decided on all applications during their monthly meetings, although HAOs could grant temporary relief in emergency cases. HAOs were required to frequently examine the circumstances of relief recipients and make judgements on their character, willingness to work and deservingness. In turn, HAOs often had detailed and personalised knowledge of recipients’ lives. This was demonstrated in county Kerry in 1932 when an able-bodied male, W.B., had his relief discontinued. The HAO described how in the week the relief was cut off, W.B.



from outdoor relief to home assistance 53

purchased provisions at a grocery shop, paid rent and bought a quarter share of a Sweep (lottery) ticket. The HAO also reported that the county council, for which W.B. temporarily worked, complained that he did ‘not give an honest return’.99 The officer also added that W.B. gave ‘endless trouble’ and after frequent visits to his house he never saw evidence of ‘starvation’.100 The HAO had an extensive knowledge of the recipient’s personal activities, including what the relief was spent on. Officials considered characterological traits such as the applicant’s attitude when working and reports on home conditions when deciding on entitlement. Such detailed knowledge produced an almost impossible workload on the part of local officials. In countries that underwent industrialisation the movement of working classes across cities made it difficult for relief officials to maintain the knowledge of the poor on which visions of individualised relief were based.101 The ability of home assistance officials in Ireland to keep relief recipients under surveillance was often negated by over-burdening workloads and the large mountainous districts HAOs were often responsible for. These factors undermined the establishment of a system of rigorous and continuous examination. From workhouse to work-test During the 1927 Relief Commission various types of deterrent measures were aired. The commissioners recommended that the minister have the power to order the publication of the names of recipients in cases of abuse, but they did not promote other more punitive measures.102 A more popular measure among local and government officials was the use of a work-test to determine need and eligibility. A Catholic parish priest from the county Cork town of Kanturk, Fr Bowler, stated that relief for the able-bodied should be made ‘dependent on their willingness to work’.103 O’Farrell reaffirmed the necessity for the work-test and believed that if the able-bodied were not ‘made [to] work’ for relief no ‘satisfaction’ would ever be achieved.104 Work-tests were included in the 1924 Home Assistance Order and were favoured by the commissioners who believed that such schemes could be as effective a test of need as the workhouse was intended to be.105 By the mid-1920s work-tests were rarely enacted by boards of health and public assistance. In 1928 the DLGPH reported that local authorities had found it ‘difficult or impossible’ to get suitable work for able-bodied applicants who sought home assistance.106 When the first work-test scheme was introduced in Wexford in 1926, the DLGPH believed the scheme demonstrated how local authorities could find work for men who were undergoing periods of ‘enforced idleness’. The

54

the end of the irish poor law?

Wexford Board of Health and Public Assistance scheme required all able-bodied male recipients to undertake work clearing, levelling and laying out the grounds and approaches to the local authority hospital.107 Fifteen to twenty men were employed daily and the amount of assistance granted was proportional to the work undertaken. The scheme lasted throughout the year and £1,259 worth of relief was disbursed to a total of 221 recipients. The Wexford authority believed that the worktest ‘experiment’ was successful and helped to differentiate between the ‘deserving and undeserving’: potential abuse was checked and the worktest ensured that assistance was confined to those that ‘desired work’ and were destitute through the lack of it.108 Interference with labour markets had long been a concern, and poor relief systems were often designed to support rather than undermine labour-hire practices. The Wexford local authorities believed these dangers were overcome and work was offered which would not otherwise be undertaken and did not affect the local labour market.109 In 1930 the Wexford local authorities initiated a second scheme that involved labour in the grounds of the county sanatorium.110 Central government was favourable towards the Wexford measures. In December 1931 the DLGPH issued a circular to all local authorities entitled ‘Home Assistance: Work-test for Able-bodied Persons’ that outlined their powers to initiate work-tests to ‘eliminate undeserving cases’. The circular noted the ‘very satisfactory result’ of the Wexford experiment which counteracted the ‘demoralising effects of idleness’.111 By 1932 the DLGPH reported that nearly all county boards had introduced work-tests. Employment largely took the form of unskilled labour and involved the upkeep of hospital grounds and graveyards, and repairing roads. According to the DLGPH, these works did not lessen the amount of work available for ‘ordinary labour’.112 Ideologically the work-test was closely related to the principle of deterrence and notions regarding the deserving and undeserving poor. A general distrust of sections of the able-bodied poor was apparent in evidence given at the 1927 Relief Commission. However, some witnesses had a more sympathetic view towards the poor. Fr Bowler highlighted the ‘unemployment problem’ and that the poor were ‘helpless and in a bad way’. He complained that there was no HAO in the north-west Cork region of Kanturk, which was reliant on the SAO from Mallow town. According to Bowler the poor lacked knowledge on how to obtain home assistance in emergency cases. He opined that local committees, in cooperation with local charities, should be established to ease access to relief. This proposed localised relief organisation was reminiscent of the former boards of guardians system.113 These attitudes



from outdoor relief to home assistance 55

differed from the prevailing official consensus which sought to lessen local power and introduce increased deterrence policies. Competing attitudes towards the poor were demonstrated on other occasions. In a discussion on burial expenses for the poor, McCarron complained that in some places funerals were ‘very expensive’ and that it should be the responsibility of individuals – not the ratepayers – to ensure their own ‘decent burial’.114 Prompted by these comments Monahan remarked that ‘a pauper should be treated as a pauper’. In turn the chairman, O’Connor, reprimanded Monahan and stated: ‘I hope there is no such thing as pauper burials nowadays.’ Fr Bowler agreed with the chairman and stated: ‘I do not think it is fair of Mr Monahan to speak about the poor like that.’115 Other witnesses were also more sympathetic in their views towards the poor. Mrs Maria Lynch – a former Cork poor law guardian and secretary to the corporation’s Child Welfare Committee – criticised the low relief payments. She highlighted that the 4s allowed per head for a destitute man or woman was not enough to ‘keep them alive’ when the costs of rent and fuel were factored in, and stated: ‘one should not expect the poor to do the impossible’.116 Timothy Corcoran, chairman of the Cork Corporation’s Board of Public Health, believed that the relief of the unemployed was the responsibility of the state and not local authorities.117 Some of the commissioners also demonstrated less harsh views. Joseph Glynn was more sympathetic to the ‘tramp’ class who were denigrated by officials such as O’Mahony and O’Farrell. Glynn referred to his ‘personal knowledge’ of the St Vincent de Paul night shelter in Dublin’s Back Lane where he believed ‘80 or 90 per cent’ of the nightly lodgers were from the ‘decent working class’.118 A Cork county councillor, Barry, highlighted that workhouses were previously utilised on a short-term basis by migratory workers such as the ‘tinsmith class’ and those who sold ‘ornaments’. Barry believed that they were all ‘decent respectable people’ who could potentially be good citizens. He also believed that this class had felt the ‘loss’ of the workhouse.119 The rhetoric of ‘undesirables’ which was frequently articulated by government authorities and appeared in official publications was also challenged. In 1926 the secretary of Kerry County Council, O’Mahony, referred to the ‘scum’ and ‘riff-raff’ who had previously turned to workhouses in a newspaper article in The Kerryman.120 His comments were challenged in a subsequent letter published in the same newspaper from a Mrs Clare Bourke. She presumed that O’Mahony’s ‘riff-raff’ were the ‘homeless vagrants’ and ‘poor things’ who used to ‘shuffle up footsore and weary at nightfall to gates of the workhouse, sure of an ample supper and the luxury of a bed to put their aching bones’. She

56

the end of the irish poor law?

also wondered: ‘where do they face to now for a night’s shelter, these poor homeless ones?’121 Competing attitudes towards the poor were evident, and the harsh rhetoric of local government officials was at times disputed. Regional variations and home assistance in Cork and Kerry This chapter now turns to local home assistance welfare regimes and examines the case studies of Cork city and county Kerry. Nineteenthcentury poor relief was highly regionalised and was often determined by local politics, economy, wealth and religion.122 These regional differences continued to exist in the Free State. Home assistance remained funded from local rates, although by the 1920s taxation was set at county rather than poor law union level. In 1928 the DLGPH outlined that trends varied geographically because the amount of relief granted was at the discretion of each local authority. It believed that relief was determined as much by the nature of local administration as by need or poverty.123 Such local divergence in relief practices is demonstrated by an analysis of the numbers relieved by local authorities over a threeyear period, 1926–29. The national average of home assistance granted during this period was 20.4 persons per 1,000 of population. Ten local authorities granted relief to fewer than 15 per 1,000 of population, fourteen local boards relieved between 15 and 24 per 1,000 of population and eight boards of assistance had a rate of over 25 per 1,000 of population. Of the ten local authorities that granted the least amount of home assistance, five were in counties formerly designated as congested districts in 1909 (Donegal, Galway, Leitrim, Roscommon, Sligo).124 These were some of the poorest regions in the country, prompting the DLGPH to report: ‘so far as these counties are concerned it would be unsafe to assume that destitution was less prevalent than elsewhere’.125 These regions were characterised by emigration and a proportionally high elderly population in receipt of the OAP, as well as a landowning small-farmer class – often on uneconomic holdings – who were not traditional relief recipients. High rates of home assistance were evident in the more prosperous southern and eastern counties. These patterns replicated trends under the poor law where relief helped agricultural workers over the winter months and ensured that the labour force remained for the rest of the year.126 These counties also had a greater capacity to fund provision from local rates than the poorer western seaboard region. Figure 2.1 depicts the average expenditure by boards of health and public assistance on all forms of relief and the east–west divide. The high level of home assistance in counties such as Limerick,



from outdoor relief to home assistance 57

Tipperary South Riding, Waterford and Wexford demonstrates that the Free State’s reforms copper-fastened previous trends. Different local authority welfare regimes existed side by side, for example in Tipperary, where the South Riding had a relief rate of 26.6 per 1,000 of population, close to double the 13.5 rate of the North Riding. The County Kildare Board of Health and Public Assistance, one of the few local authorities controlled by the Labour Party, had the highest level of home assistance in Ireland at 52.9 per 1,000, which indicated that local politics was often important in local relief policies.127 The neighbouring county of Carlow had a rate of 19.7 per 1,000. Here much resentment existed among farmers and ratepayers, often at the mercy of market forces, towards the perceived extravagance of

Average expenditure per 1,000 of popula
on

£180–184 £185–317 £318–387 £388–449 £450–526

2.1  Average expenditure of each board of public assistance and health per 1,000 of population, 1926–29 Source: DLGPH Annual Reports, 1926/27 – 1928/29

58

the end of the irish poor law?

local government, which kept the rates low, and often led to parsimonious poor relief ­policies.128 These trends were evident in not just home ­assistance but across local authority relief provision. The reform of the Cork poor laws was not fully enacted until 1924 when the county was divided into three county districts or welfare administrations – north, south and west.129 The South Cork County District included the former poor law unions of Bandon, Cork, Kinsale, Macroom, Midleton and Youghal. In 1926 the district had a population of 217,888 of which 76,673 were in Cork County Borough. The members of the South Cork Board of Public Assistance were jointly appointed by Cork County Borough (five members) and the county council (fifteen members) which funded the district’s welfare provision.130 Most boards of health were appointed by county councils and were a county charge. South Cork was not designated a board of health because the county borough retained responsibility for public health services unlike in other regions in which public assistance and public health became the responsibility of one body. Cork city was the focus of extensive local government administrative reform. For much of the 1920s Cork Corporation was dissolved and the city was administered by a government commissioner. This was in keeping with the Free State’s reform of local government, inherited from the revolutionary years, which led to the encroachment of the central state over local authority power. This reform emphasised professional and bureaucratic management over traditions of local governance and combated perceived corruption, extravagance and waste. As highlighted in chapter 1, there was considerable support in Cork city for such reform within the revolutionary movement. Many figures in the city promoted similar measures, including the solicitor John J. Horgan. Horgan frequently wrote on local government reform and was greatly influenced by the Progressive movement in the USA, which led to the establishment of city managers in municipal government to combat corruption and extravagance.131 Horgan also established the Cork Progressive Association which was partially responsible for the dissolution of Cork Corporation in 1924.132 Cork was the first local authority to introduce a permanent city manager with the introduction of the Cork City Management Act, 1929. In turn, home assistance in 1920s Cork was administered within a wider climate of reform and retrenchment. As demonstrated in Figure 2.2, for much of the 1920s expenditure on home assistance in South Cork was higher than the national average. The board’s expenditure grew in 1925/26, 1926/27 and 1927/28 before a drop in 1929/30 and 1930/31; the cost remained at a similar figure for 1931/32. Thereafter rapid expansion occurred before it dropped in

from outdoor relief to home assistance 59

350 300 250 200

Ireland

150

Kerry

100

Cork South

50

19 2 19 2–2 2 3 19 3–2 2 4 19 4–2 2 5 19 5–2 2 6 19 7–2 2 8 19 8–2 2 9 19 9–3 3 0 19 0–3 31 1 19 –3 3 2 19 2–3 3 3 19 3–3 3 4 19 4–3 3 5 19 5–3 3 6 19 6–3 3 7 19 7–3 38 8 –3 9

0

2.2  Expenditure on home assistance per 1,000 of population in the Irish Free State and in the Kerry Board of Health and Assistance and South Cork Board of Public Assistance, 1922–39 Sources: Local Taxation Returns, 1922–39

the mid-to-late 1930s. The type of relief system in South Cork during the 1920s, especially the extent to which the able-bodied were relieved, is somewhat revealed from an analysis of home assistance registers for 1926. From a sample of 405 individuals out of a total of 1,497 cases who received home assistance in the first six months of 1926, 22.2 per cent (ninety) were designated as healthy able-bodied men.133 The vast majority of these men were unskilled labourers (eighty). Of the remaining ten, five had no occupational description, two were described as clerks, and there was an insurance agent, a postal worker and a brush maker. All were unemployed while in receipt of relief. Only two were insured under the National Insurance Acts but they were not in receipt of insurance benefits. In Cork city, home assistance was utilised to relieve the able-bodied unemployed who were ineligible to outdoor relief under the poor law. The relief of the unemployed, however, was not popular among Cork local government officials. In 1925 Philip Monahan warned ‘the ratepayers’ that an increase in relief to the unemployed would prevent any reduction in the rates and local taxation. Monahan believed that unemployment was a ‘national business’ and the responsibility of the ‘Labour Exchange’ and should not have been relieved by local authorities.134 In 1926 Home Assistance Officer Daniel Forrest reported that an increase

60

the end of the irish poor law?

in relief was the result of unemployment. He informed the SCBPA that many of the men had lost their jobs after being employed for years, and were ‘deserving’ of better treatment than to be ‘obliged to seek home assistance’.135 In 1927 Forrest blamed the increase in home assistance not just on unemployment but also high rents, low wages and the failure of employers to stamp social insurance cards.136 Local restrictions remained in place and unemployed men had to receive ‘weekly authorisations’ and were only granted relief in kind and not cash payments. These were harsher terms than envisioned by the 1924 Home Assistance Order, which allowed part-cash payments to able-bodied males. Some categories of the able-bodied were excluded from relief. In June 1925 the SAO reported that a ‘good many’ young single men and a ‘number of married men without families’ had sought home assistance.137 These individuals did not receive relief, and by the end of March 1926 the only able-bodied men on the home assistance rolls were married with children. All these able-bodied male recipients also had home addresses, and ‘tramps’ – a group who formerly received indoor relief under the poor law – were not relieved. The Cork local authority set its own terms of entitlement, and able-bodied male deservingness to relief was limited to married men with children. The 1927 Relief Commission found that some ‘casuals’ continued to be admitted to the city’s former workhouse although the able-bodied were ineligible for indoor relief in the Free State’s county homes.138 This practice was limited to Cork and no evidence of the ‘casual’ class was found in other county homes. ‘Casuals’ were often individuals who utilised the home for short-term relief, such as the elderly. One of the ‘most frequent visitors’ was an army pensioner and his wife and child. In this case it was reported that his ‘pension book’ was always ‘in pawn’, and that in the intervals of drawing the pension the family was ‘undoubtedly destitute’.139 After the matron noted that other army pensioners similarly utilised the home, the SCBPA ordered that admissions for such cases be refused in the future.140 The cost of the assistance placed stress on the local authority’s finances, which led to traditional rhetoric regarding the corrupt and immoral poor. In February 1927 Commissioner O’Farrell, chairman of the SCBPA, stated that some cases of home assistance had to be suspended due to the high cost. During the same board meeting women with children gathered outside the boardroom after being refused relief due to the lack of funds.141 Local officials were fearful that some recipients were not entitled to assistance. Forrest complained that many recipients were ‘not enamoured’ with the idea of work and sought charity from ‘every avenue’. Such individuals, according to Forrest, were ‘an



from outdoor relief to home assistance 61

absolute menace to the deserving poor’.142 He also suspected cases of fraud among casual labourers who simultaneously worked and received relief.143 Forrest did separate the deserving from the undeserving and stated that there were many men who were willing to work ‘but unable to obtain it’.144 O’Farrell questioned the degree to which some recipients were destitute and stated: ‘in many cases persons are drawing relief who are not so badly off as they would have us believe’.145 Local government officials brought legal proceedings against three individuals who illegally claimed relief. In one case a widow received £15 in home assistance but was also in receipt of a pension from the British Ministry of Pensions.146 Another woman received 12s per week in home assistance and an undeclared pension of £2. Legal proceedings were also brought against an able-bodied male home assistance recipient who was also employed as a casual worker. They were all convicted and given a onemonth jail sentence, although this was suspended on condition of good behaviour and that they returned the relief.147 However, these cases seemed to be exceptional in a system which relieved over a 1,000 individuals weekly. Home assistance policies in 1920s Cork were framed by poor economic circumstances and a local welfare regime which favoured economic retrenchment. Within such a climate, relief administrators frequently articulated the concerns of ratepayers. Harsh policies towards the poor were prevalent and traditional fears regarding the immoral and corrupt nature of relief recipients were aired. The attitudes evident during the 1927 Relief Commission were reflected in the everyday workings of the system in Cork city. Similar to the revolutionary period, attempts to reduce outdoor relief generated some controversy in Cork. In February 1929 the Cork Workers’ Council complained that ‘the poor were neglected’. John Good – the Cork Labourite who resisted the vice-guardians’ workhouse regime during the early 1920s – stated that the decreases were brought about by the wish to justify the Free State’s administrative reforms. He claimed that a ‘system of economy’ was adopted to demonstrate that the previous poor law was ‘extravagant’, but he believed the ‘economies practised’ in the early 1920s were now ‘coming home to roost’.148 Harsh attitudes towards the poor were far from dominant in Irish society and local authority welfare policies which denigrated the poor were often challenged. Local authority expenditure on home assistance dropped from £33,299 in 1927/28 to £26,691 by 1930/31.149 A Board of Public Works grant established relief works which helped to relieve unemployment in Cork.150 Unemployment insurance claimants dropped in the latter half of the 1920s, which the Department of Industry and Commerce believed

62

the end of the irish poor law?

indicated a genuine increase in employment.151 Economic historians have also noted some economic improvement between the mid-1920s and 1929.152 Cork city’s local economy also grew after the Ford car plant – opened in 1917 – expanded in the 1920s until it had over 7,000 employees.153 Such economic factors, combined with retrenchment policies and harsh attitudes towards the poor, led to reductions in home assistance. In county Kerry a contrasting experience existed from that in Cork city. Kerry County Council – including the board of health and public assistance – was dissolved in May 1923 and replaced by the paid commissioner Philip Monahan, who would later be appointed the commissioner of the Cork authorities.154 Financially, the county was in disarray, after the civil war and war of independence years had drastically impacted on the rates. During the financial year 1922/23 the board’s annual expenditure was £46,592, but only £32,200 was collected from the rates.155 A combination of the commissioner system and the dire financial circumstances led to intense retrenchment in the county’s poor relief expenditure. Before the KBHPA’s dissolution, the DLGPH wrote that the cost of home assistance in the county was ‘alarming’ and threatened the economic existence of the ratepayers.156 Complaints emerged after the local authority reduced home assistance. In May 1923 the Tralee Workers’ Council criticised the board for ‘creating hardship’ among old age pension recipients who were denied 5s of ‘extra relief’. The board justified the reductions and stated that relief had to be cut for want of funds.157 Other reductions in relief were common. In September 1922 a partly blind man from Glenbeigh had his relief reduced from 4s to 2s per week because of ‘shortness of funds’.158 In November 1923 his relief was fully discontinued although his circumstances had not changed. He lived on a small ten-acre farm that was owned by his mother, who received an old age pension. His brother, also with a sight impairment, lived on the farm. The reduction of relief in such cases was common. The appointment of the commissioner in 1923 ensured that retrenchment dominated the local authority’s home assistance policy. The cost of home assistance in the county was reduced from £10,162 in 1922/23 to £8,890 in 1923/24 and £8,065 in 1924/25. The following year, 1925/26, saw a slight increase to £8,987. These reductions lowered expenditure to pre-First World War levels: the 1913/14 cost for the six Kerry poor law unions was £8,589. This trend contrasted with the wider national picture where the cost of relief had almost tripled from £113,651 in 1914 to £295,259 in 1925/26. Seán O’Farrell later described how reductions were brought about in Kerry. He outlined



from outdoor relief to home assistance 63

that when he was initially appointed there were many long-term home assistance recipients whose circumstances had ‘improved materially’.159 After all cases were reinvestigated only those who were ‘mentally or physically’ incapacitated were granted permanent status.160 Cases of illness or unemployment were re-examined on a monthly basis to prevent ‘fraud’ and home assistance officers paid ‘surprise visits’ to their homes to ensure that ‘everything [was] in order’.161 The decrease in home assistance was not a result of less poverty or better economic conditions. If anything, poverty was on the increase in Kerry, and in October 1924 the SAO reported that there was a ‘good deal of distress and want’ in the county. This was due to unemployment, a poor potato crop and bad weather conditions that impeded turf collection and led to fuel shortages. O’Farrell acknowledged the existence of destitution and reported that all applicants would receive ‘careful consideration’. However, he called on charitable societies such as St Vincent de Paul to relieve those not entitled to home assistance. O’Farrell believed that there were individuals who possessed ‘certain visible means’ but were ‘undoubtedly in want’.162 Despite the Free State’s poor law reforms, there remained much ambiguity over the exact terms of entitlement. Previously, poor law emergency legislation was introduced during periodic outbreaks of distress that extended outdoor relief to small landholders who were otherwise not entitled to relief. In the 1920s small farmers faced similar problems. O’Farrell continued to place restrictions on their relief, although some emergency relief works were established. The outbreak of distress in many western seaboard areas was treated with suspicion by the Free State government: for example, Ernest Blythe advised the government to deny claims of famine conditions in mid-1920s Galway.163 In April 1926 the first county council elections in the Irish Free State were held. In Kerry the local authority replaced the commissioner system. A new board of health and assistance was appointed that was made up of ten elected councillors. Kate Breen, a republican with an anti-Treatyite political background, was elected as chairwoman. During the war of independence Breen was closely associated with Sinn Féin and was imprisoned in Cork. In the civil war she was imprisoned in Dublin’s Kilmainham Gaol. During the local elections she was elected under the Republican political designation and was soon to become an important member of the Fianna Fáil Party that was established in 1926.164 Mary O’Shea, an independent pro-Treatyite, was elected as vice-chairwoman. The 1926 local election was dominated by political representatives from civil war politics: twelve anti-Treatyite republicans, fourteen pro-Treatyite independents and seven Farmers’ Union

64

the end of the irish poor law?

representatives were elected. A single Labour councillor, Patrick Casey from Tralee town, won a seat.165 During the board’s initial meeting Jeremiah Sweeney – the former chairman of the Tralee Board of Guardians – stated that there would be ‘no politics’ in its proceedings; he also argued that the board needed to economise and reduce the high rates and taxation.166 Sweeney’s desire for a depoliticised relief system was helped by the appointment of the chairwoman and vice-chairwoman as anti- and pro-Treatyite supporters, respectively. His call for ‘economies’ was less successful, and the appointment of the board led to a growth in expenditure. The annual cost of home assistance jumped from £8,987 in 1925/26 to £14,269 in 1926/27 and £16,913 in 1928/29; by the end of the 1920s expenditure on home assistance in Kerry was slightly above the national average.167 The numbers in receipt of home assistance grew from 1,299 in 1925/26 to 3,239 in 1929/30.168 This represented a significant increase and indicated that popularly elected boards granted higher levels of relief than local authorities controlled by paid commissioners. The increases were not overly exceptional and during the financial year 1928/29 the Kerry board had the seventh highest rate of relief out of thirty-three local authorities. In 1930 Kerry County Council became embroiled in controversy over the growth in expenditure. A sworn inquiry was held which highlighted inconsistencies in the local government administration after the DLGPH’s auditor complained about the KBHPA’s expenditure. The inquiry reported that Kerry County Council failed to comply with regulations regarding road building. Similar charges were placed against the public health authorities over the purchase of a new building for the establishment of a sanatorium in Edenburn. The inquiry also criticised the failure to fully develop the county’s hospital and medical system. Although the board denied the charges, and no claims of corruption were made, the local authority was dissolved and replaced by a paid commissioner named Nicholas O’Dwyer.169 Originally from county Limerick, O’Dwyer was educated at St Coleman’s College (Fermoy) and studied engineering at University College Dublin. During the war of independence he was a member of the East Limerick IRA, although he soon left active service and became an engineering inspector in the revolutionary government. In 1922 he joined the staff of the new DLGPH and in 1928 became an Assistant Chief Inspector.170 O’Dwyer reduced home assistance expenditure from £16,204 in 1930/31 to £11,977 in 1931/32.171 The number of recipients dropped from 3,129 in January 1930 to 2,579 by the start of 1932.172 In June 1932 there were 2,461 home assistance recipients of whom only



from outdoor relief to home assistance 65

fifty-six were able-bodied – the remainder were the impotent poor of widows, children, the sick and the elderly who were previously entitled to outdoor relief under the poor law.173 The language of selfresponsibility again came to the fore, although the vast majority of recipients in Kerry were not able-bodied. In early 1932 the board’s secretary, O’Mahony, commented that the high cost of home assistance was not a ‘barometer’ of poverty or the county’s economic state but actually connoted ‘improvidence’.174 He also believed that able-bodied poverty resulted from the poor’s failure to make provision for loss of employment with the ‘inevitable’ result that they would fall back on the rates.175 A work scheme was introduced for the able-bodied which involved employment in the grounds of the county’s institutions as a condition for relief.176 As already highlighted, work schemes echoed the principles of deterrence and were designed to ‘test’ the eligibility of the able-bodied poor. The reduction of home assistance in Kerry contrasted with the national trend of growth throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s. Nationally the 1926/27 figure of 51,735 grew to 59,362 in 1929/30. By 1932/33 this had more than doubled to 126,035 and in 1933/34 139,277 were relieved. Various factors brought about this substantial increase. First, poor law reform was finally introduced in Dublin in 1929. Restrictions on outdoor relief to the able-bodied remained in the Dublin, Balrothery and Rathdown Poor Law Unions, which were excluded from early Free State reforms. The 1929 Dublin Poor Relief Act introduced home assistance for the able-bodied for the first time, although relief was denied to those not resident for at least two years and work-tests were also introduced.177 In turn, home assistance grew substantially in Dublin which inflated the national figure; in March 1930 the national total on home assistance had grown by 10,973, of which 8,616 were accounted for in Dublin.178 During this period, attitudes regarding the relief of unemployment underwent transformation and the emphasis on self-responsibility and deterrence in welfare policies was challenged. By the early 1930s the post-First World War slump in the world economy had morphed into an international economic depression and led to widespread unemployment throughout Western societies. The long-term nature of unemployment exhausted national and social insurance benefits and forced large numbers of unemployed able-bodied persons on to relief systems. Much social unrest ensued, including ‘hunger demonstrations’ in Britain. In 1932, the worst year of the depression, there was an unprecedented level of social protest organised by the communist-influenced National Unemployed Workers’ Movement. Violent clashes between police and

66

the end of the irish poor law?

unemployed demonstrators occurred throughout British cities. In turn, the concept of pauperism in Britain – a two-sided coin that matched aid with disapproval – was effectively killed off by evolving notions of entitlement and social justice.179 Social unrest also emerged across the Irish Sea. In Belfast – a city greatly affected by the economic downturn – riots broke out in October 1932 in protest against the outdoor relief policies of the Belfast Board of Guardians. In the Irish Free State agriculture remained steady and the economy, in marked contrast to much of Europe, grew in the period 1929–31. However, cheap imports did threaten employment and agriculture increasingly suffered from the competition of low-priced butter and bacon, while the traditional safety valve of emigration to North America was closed.180 Increased poverty and unemployment helped the rise of the Fianna Fáil Party, which was viewed as the party of the ‘plain people’ and contrasted with the governing Cumann na nGaedheal party, whose policies became associated with privilege and complacency.181 Social unrest over unemployment threatened to boil over in the Irish Free State. During the late 1920s demonstrations were held by the National Unemployed Association and there was unrest outside Dáil Éireann during the parliamentary debate on the Dublin Poor Relief Bill.182 By 1932 the economic depression was at its height and there were many long-term unemployed throughout Ireland. The Unemployed AbleBodied Men’s Association sprang up in Irish towns and in September 1932 it claimed to have over 35,000 members.183 In 1932 a Dublin demonstration of over 2,000 unemployed marched through the city and demanded the extension of the home assistance system. In turn, the newly appointed Fianna Fáil Minister of Local Government and Public Health, Seán T. O’Kelly, committed to the payment of relief in cash, the abolition of food tickets and the extension of assistance to single men.184 Home assistance demonstrations were not confined to Dublin. In November 1932 a ‘hunger march’ of over 1,000 demonstrated at a meeting of the Wexford Board of Health and Public Assistance. During the same week 200 marched on a meeting of the Roscommon board and over 100 men took part in another ‘hunger march’ in Donegal.185 In Louth demonstrators protested against work-tests for able-bodied men in receipt of home assistance.186 In Waterford protesters demanded that relief be granted in cash and that the practice of officials inquiring into the circumstances of applicants be stopped.187 Protests against the relief system were common throughout 1932. The work-test, relief-in-kind and the examination of applicants’ c­ ircumstances – measures influenced by the ideology of less eligibility and deterrence – were criticised by the protesters.



from outdoor relief to home assistance 67

In September 1932 a deputation from the Cork Unemployed AbleBodied Men’s Association informed the SCBPA that there were hundreds of unemployed whose situation had become desperate and who would be compelled to seek admission to the county home.188 At the following meeting the chairman informed another deputation that the board did not have enough resources to grant relief to all cases. The vice-chairman, who at this stage was Philip Monahan, stated that individuals could not rely on public assistance and would have to fall back on other sources of help that people resorted to when they got into trouble. He stated: ‘they must rely on their friends and relatives to help them out of their difficulties’. The unemployed deputation’s leader, O’Driscoll, threatened that the applicants would march into the ‘union’ (county home). The unemployed activists also challenged concepts of pauperism, and O’Driscoll claimed that they sought ‘social justice’ and that they were ‘entitled’ to protest as ‘citizens’.189 The following week a meeting was held between the Cork Unemployed Able-Bodied Men’s Association and government officials to discuss the ‘unemployment problem’ in the city. The leader of the unemployed organisation was T. J. O’Brien. He stated that he was a good Catholic and rejected ‘Bolshevist methods’, but ominously warned that he was not ‘responsible for what the unemployed might do’.190 Unemployment protests in Britain and Belfast had communist influences, although Irish communism in these years suffered from clerical hostility and contradictions with republicanism, and the Cork body rejected such politics.191 Notwithstanding the implicit threat of violence, a degree of social solidarity was evident and local government officials were amenable to relief measures. Monahan consented and agreed to increase home assistance. Monahan also favoured home assistance because money went directly to recipients’ homes, and he complained that much of the expenditure on public relief works went on materials and ultimately left the country. Furthermore, Monahan called for increased state responsibility with an extension of unemployment insurance.192 At the next SCBPA meeting Monahan further called for the expansion of home assistance. He stated: In the city men who had been in employment for a great number of years were coming in week after week for assistance which they had never occasion to look for before. These were cases which could not possibly be refused. There was no doubt the board would have to apply for a substantial overdraft.193

During the 1927 Relief Commission Monahan’s attitude towards the poor and poverty was deeply influenced by notions of self-­­responsibility

68

the end of the irish poor law?

Table 1 Home assistance per 1,000 of population in South Cork, Kerry and the Irish Free State

1931–32 1932–33 1933–34 1934–35 1935–36 1938–39

South Cork

Kerry

Irish Free State

18.9 38 49.8 22.8 20.4 21.7

17.3 23.9 33.1 20.9 20.4 20.5

30.5 42.4 46.9 28.4 27.8 27.3

Source: DLGPH Annual Reports, 1931/32–1938/39

and morality. Contrastingly, by 1932 he articulated the right of ­­assistance for the unemployed and recommended increased expenditure. Notions of citizenship, social justice and the state’s responsibility to the unemployed poor formed debate and discourse, and partly led to the dilution of former poor law principles. This was tied to wider political developments and the emergence of Fianna Fáil, whose successful 1932 election campaign was partly fought on the issue of employment. As demonstrated in Table 1, the growth of home assistance occurred throughout the state in those years. In South Cork the numbers relieved grew from 3,939 in 1931/32 to 7,923 in 1932/33 then to a record 10,379 – 21 per cent of the region’s population – in 1933/34. The number of able-bodied male recipients increased from 137 in 1931/32 to 1,420 in 1933/34. The number of dependent wives and children grew over the same timeframe from 956 to 5,283. Previous restrictions on home assistance were mostly removed and the number of recipients reached levels that had not been witnessed in the city since the 1880s. In county Kerry the number of home relief recipients remained low compared to national trends. In April 1932, soon after the election of the new Fianna Fáil-led government, Minister O’Kelly reinstated the elected Kerry local authority and removed the commissioner; the new government ‘at once’ reinstated elected officials in Galway and Mayo.194 In May the Kerry SAO, C. T. Kennedy, reported that applications for home assistance had increased three-fold. Kennedy believed that the able-bodied unemployed were practically destitute and that the ‘worktest scheme’ introduced by the commissioner demonstrated that the unemployed ‘were both able and anxious to work’.195 He called for the opening of relief works for the unemployed. By June 1932 conditions had worsened and the Tralee Workers’ Council wrote to the KBHPA demanding the commencement of construction work on the county



from outdoor relief to home assistance 69

hospital ‘to relieve unemployment’.196 The board resolved to initiate building as soon as possible. In Kerry the unemployment problem was partly relieved by such public building projects. The extension of Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes (see chapter 5) money to local authority hospitals led to a grant of £56,000 for the development of Kerry hospitals in 1932. This was augmented by loans of £23,600 raised by the local authority.197 The government also provided a £1,000,000 grant for countrywide public work – Kerry received £45,000 of this total.198 As in other parts of the country, unemployed men protested in the county. At the November quarterly Kerry County Council meeting, the public gallery was filled with unemployed workers who had a banner inscribed with the slogan: ‘Tralee Unemployed Demand Work or Maintenance’. The council acquiesced to demands from the Tralee Transport Workers’ Union and resolved to open relief works.199 The KBHPA did grant provisional home assistance to the Tralee unemployed until the relief works commenced.200 The KBHPA was responsive to the demands of the unemployed. During a meeting in November the secretary of the Tralee branch of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union requested the board to adopt a scale of relief for the unemployed. The Kerry board rescinded the stipulation that relief had to be granted half in kind and resolved that ‘all payments’ were to be made ‘in cash’.201 In turn, the DLGPH highlighted the regulations that governed relief to the able-bodied. The KBHPA also acted as an arbitrator in disputes between workers and employers. In November 1932 a deputation of workers from Listowel appeared before the board and claimed that a building contractor refused to pay them a ‘living wage’; the labourers demanded relief unless the board intervened in the dispute on their behalf.202 The board resolved that the chairman discuss the labour dispute with the parties concerned to come to an ‘amicable arrangement’.203 Arbitration in labour disputes and the granting of full cash relief payments to the ablebodied highlights the fact that locally elected welfare authorities often developed their own assistance policies. Home assistance remained lower in Kerry than in South Cork and than the national average, although the number of recipients did grow from 2,393 to 3,313 in the twelve months between November 1931 and 1932.204 By the end of 1932/33 the number of able-bodied men increased from forty-five in 1931/32 to 121, but this still remained below the national average.205 The opening of relief works in the county kept the home assistance rolls down. The SAO reported in December 1932 that there were 800 men employed on relief works compared to

70

the end of the irish poor law?

seventy the previous year.206 By March 1933 the SAO believed that, after tenders for a housing scheme in Tralee were set, there would be no able-bodied unemployed on home assistance.207 An increase in the number of permanently and temporarily disabled male home assistance recipients was evident – 460 in 1931/32 increased to 755 in 1933/34 before reducing to 478 in 1935/36.208 Such a trend was not apparent in South Cork and indicated that many in Kerry may have relied on sick certificates to gain relief, a traditional method for circumventing restrictions under the former poor law in the county.209 Long-held concerns prevailed about the amount of relief granted. In November 1933 the SAO acknowledged that a recent increase in the measure was ‘mainly due to the depressed economic state of the county’, yet he still believed that many recipients were not deserving of relief. He reported to the KBHPA that applications were received from people who were ‘by no means destitute’. He complained that ‘genuine recipients’ had their relief lowered to make ‘room for the borderline cases’ and suggested that in each district lists of relief recipients should be made ‘easily accessible to ratepayers’ for examination.210 Supervision and surveillance continued to be promulgated as methods to prevent the potential abuse of relief, although the poor economy prolonged the distress. Contrasting attitudes towards need, eligibility and the role of home assistance were evident among local government officials. In February 1933 the Kerry SAO Dr Shanahan believed that an ‘abnormal’ increase in home assistance had occurred in the Listowel district. Shanahan found ‘on investigation’ that the level of poverty, unemployment and general destitution did not warrant the ‘very high expenditure’.211 Shanahan’s findings were rejected by the local HAO, Walsh, who argued that the increase was due to a ‘great amount’ of unemployment and reported that many families lived in ‘appalling conditions’. Walsh informed the KBHPA that only £12 out of £55 granted in one week in December 1932 relieved the able-bodied and the remainder went on ordinary assistance for the long-term sick, elderly, widows and children.212 Walsh believed that the commissioner’s appointment in 1930 brought ‘drastic reductions’ in home assistance.213 Traditional fears of the corrupting influence of relief were challenged by some officials. From assistance to insurance Periodic outbreaks of mass unemployment and distress had marked much of the Irish economy and society, particularly along the western seaboard, throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Public relief works, outdoor relief and charity were ad hoc and localised ­­



from outdoor relief to home assistance 71

measures which were introduced to meet economic distress in this period.214 The 1911 National Insurance Act represented the establishment of national policies to deal with unemployment.215 National insurance was a major boon to the Irish urban working classes, although it was of limited benefit to domestic servants and the rural workforce. Unemployment was inquired into by the 1927 Committee on the Relief of Unemployment, which criticised relief works for being ‘demoralising and costly’. The commission considered that men employed on relief works were in a state of ‘semi-starvation’ and the schemes led to ‘nothing but unsatisfactory results’.216 The committee recommended job creation through housing schemes, public health works, school building and improvement works carried out by the Land Commission, and on ports, harbours and arterial drainage.217 Public works on such a scale were not forthcoming under the Cumann na nGaedheal government. The new 1932 Fianna Fáil-led government was elected on a social and economic programme and introduced new measures designed to meet unemployment. The 1933 Unemployment Assistance Act established a statutory right to relief for the unemployed. The system was completely removed from local authorities and run by the Department of Industry and Commerce.218 Standardised rates of assistance were set at a national level, which contrasted with the local and regional inconsistencies in home assistance. This effectively established a national system of assistance for the unemployed regardless of whether they were previously insured or not. Entitlement to unemployment assistance was means-tested, paid fully in cash and applicants were no longer subject to the pauperising supervision and surveillance of home assistance officers, and the able-bodied were not forced to undertake work-tests. Unemployment benefit payments, however, remained low and some able-bodied men remained reliant on home assistance. This replicated developments in Britain where the establishment of the centrally run Unemployment Assistance Board took over such duties from the local public assistance committees.219 The Fianna Fáil government introduced other measures such as the 1935 Widows’ and Orphans’ Pension which lessened reliance on home assistance.220 Other state benefits included the 1944 Children’s Allowance, 1948 Infectious Diseases (Maintenance) Allowance and 1954 Disabled Persons’ (Maintenance) Allowance. The relief system remained into the latter decades of the twentieth century and local authority administered home assistance continued to relieve large numbers of the sick, elderly, young and disabled. In 1965 30,198 were relieved in this manner. A 1970 study of home assistance published by Séamus Ó’Cinnéide was highly critical of the system and claimed that it was still run on poor law principles.221

72

the end of the irish poor law?

Conclusion The extension of home assistance to the able-bodied, necessitated by the closure of workhouses, represented a significant challenge for officials in the new Free State. However, a radical ideological departure from the poor law was not forthcoming. The establishment of the work-test echoed the desire to avoid the moral hazard of untested out-relief, which reflected New Poor Law ideology. Fear of relieving the undeserving poor, particularly the ‘idle’ and ‘tramp’ class, prompted much discussion on poverty and relief. Attitudes towards what were termed the ‘incorrigible idle’ were harsh and welfare measures for these groups were underpinned by principles of deterrence, punishment and reform. Such attitudes were not new and were formerly evident in the 1906 Irish Poor Law Commission. These were also related to the concept of a social residuum evident in New Liberal British social thought. Notions of the deserving and undeserving poor, evident throughout much of nineteenth-century Ireland, were central to early Free State welfare debates. Many of the local and central government officials who were involved in the revolutionary movement held the harshest attitudes. In a transnational context, the development of non-stigmatising welfare was part of emerging democratic societies and representative of governments’ greater responsibility to their citizens. Such citizenship rights were based on reciprocity and those who failed to live up to their perceived social obligations were often subject to punitive, and in some countries eugenic, welfare programmes. Formal eugenic policies were not introduced in Ireland but concerns over the ‘idle’ were heightened within the context of the Free State’s social, political and cultural ethos, which promoted the virtues of self-reliance, independence and national superiority.222 Reliance on poor relief, particularly by able-bodied males, flew in the face of such concepts. Stringent measures including labour and detention colonies were promoted but not introduced. Opposition to the incarceration of the poor, no matter how undeserving, was evident, while the prospect of the increased cost of a new institutional layer was unattractive in an era of economic retrenchment. When the boards of health and public assistance returned to local control, home assistance lists invariably rose. The rise of mass unemployment during an era of worldwide economic depression challenged concepts of the self-responsibility of the poor. Although the slump was not as bad in the Irish Free State as elsewhere, unemployed workers’ demonstrations at board meetings were common. It was in reaction to these international, national and local trends that the government established a nationalised assistance system for the able-bodied. This



from outdoor relief to home assistance 73

­­ represented the end of one the key responsibilities bestowed on local relief authorities since the 1838 Irish Poor Law. Groups who were outside the insurance system remained reliant on local authority public assistance and poor relief for much of the twentieth century. Notes 1 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, including the Insane Poor (Dublin: Stationery Office, Saorstát Éireann, 1927), p. 11. 2 DLGPH Annual Report, 1927–8, p. 85. 3 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 53. 4 The Department of Local Government and Public Health replaced the revolutionary Dáil Éireann Department of Local Government after the establishment of the Free State. 5 DLGPH Annual Report, 1922–5, p. 52. 6 Ibid., p. 54. 7 P. Gray, ‘Conceiving and constructing the Irish workhouse, 1836–54’, Irish Historical Studies, 38:149 (2012), 23. 8 Crossman, Poverty and the Poor Law in Ireland. 9 For an outline of the administrative reforms made by the new Free State government, see Daly, The Buffer State, pp. 116–24; Cousins, The Birth of Social Welfare in Ireland, pp. 29–44. 10 Chapter 5 examines the reform of the hospital system. See also Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 12; M. E. Daly, ‘“An atmosphere of sturdy independence”: the state and the Dublin hospitals in the 1930s’, in Jones and Malcolm (eds), Medicine, Disease and the State in Ireland, pp. 234–52. 11 Levene, ‘Between less eligibility and the NHS’, 323; V. Crossman, The Poor Law in Ireland, 1838–1948 (Dundalk: Studies in Irish Economic and Social History, 2006). 12 P. Martin, ‘Ending the pauper taint: medical benefit and welfare reform in Northern Ireland, 1921–39’, in Crossman and Gray (eds), Poverty and Welfare in Ireland, pp. 223–36. 13 DLGPH Annual Report, 1922–5, p. 16. 14 Ibid., p. 52. 15 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 2. 16 For an outline of the Webbs’ influence over British welfare debates, see A.  Brundage, The English Poor Laws, 1700–1930 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2002), pp. 136–9. The Webbs still maintained deterrencebased principles in relation to those considered the undeserving and immoral poor; see Kidd, ‘The state and moral progress’. 17 Frohman, ‘The break-up of the poor laws’, 982.

74

the end of the irish poor law?

18 Hong, Welfare, Modernity, and the Weimar State, pp. 44–75. 19 G. Finlayson, Citizen, State, and Social Welfare in Britain, 1830–1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 165–6. 20 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 54. The DLGPH issued its first report for the year 1924/25. 21 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 15. 22 Ibid., p. 15. 23 Annual Reports of the LGB for Ireland Annual Report for the year… 1915, H.C., 1914–16 [Cd. 8016], xxv.341, p. xix. This figure was for the last Saturday of the month. 24 Lucey, ‘Power, politics and the poor law’; Lucey and Crossman, ‘One huge abuse’. 25 Crossman, Poverty and the Poor Law in Ireland, pp. 63–100. 26 For the effect of the old age pension on poor relief statistics, see Ó Gráda, ‘The greatest blessing of all’, 147. 27 DÉD, vol. 2, 23 Feb. 1923. Darrell Figgis was a leading Sinn Féin figure throughout the 1910s and was elected as a pro-Treaty independent in 1921; he topped the Dublin County constituency and received 15,087 votes. For an outline of Figgis’s career, see W. Murphy, ‘Figgis, Darrell’, DIB, Vol. II, pp. 775–7. 28 DÉD, vol. 2, 23 Feb. 1923. 29 Fear of corruption in outdoor relief regimes was prevalent in New Poor Law thinking; this was particularly evident in the London-based Charity Organisation Society crusade against outdoor relief, which influenced central and local Irish poor law administration; see R. Humphreys, Poor Relief and Charity, 1869–1945: The London Charity Organisation Society (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001); Lucey and Crossman, ‘One huge abuse’, 1414–15. 30 DÉD, vol. 2, 23 Feb. 1923. For an outline of O’Shannon’s career, see, L. W. White, ‘O’Shannon, Cathal’, DIB, Vol. VII, pp. 934–7. 31 DÉD, vol. 2, 23 Feb. 1923. 32 Ibid. 33 DÉD, vol. 2, 9 Mar. 1923. 34 DÉD, vol. 2, 23 Feb. 1923. 35 Rules and Regulations for the Administration of Home Assistance entitled the County Boards of Health (Assistance) Order, 1924 (Dublin: Stationery Office, Saorstát Éireann, 1924), p. 2. 36 Ibid., p. 3. 37 Ibid., p. 3. 38 Ibid., p. 3. 39 Ibid., p. 3. 40 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. i. 41 Ibid., p. iii. 42 Ibid., p. iii.



from outdoor relief to home assistance 75

43 Ibid., p. 2. 44 W. Murphy and L. Ní Mhunghaile, ‘Power, Jennie Wyse’, DIB, Vol. IX, pp. 256–7; P. Maume, ‘Keane, Sir John’, DIB, Vol. V, pp. 26–7. 45 See P. J. Dempsey, ‘Corish, Richard’, DIB, Vol. II, pp. 853–4. Corish also had a background in local government and had sat as a member of Wexford County Council; he was president of the Council of Municipal Councils and a representative on the General Council of County Councils. 46 Originally from Gort, county Galway, Glynn attended Blackrock College in Dublin and trained as a barrister. For an outline of Glynn’s career, see D. Ferriter, ‘Glynn, Sir Joseph’, DIB, Vol. IV, pp. 111–12. 47 OL: Folder/02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Charles H. O’Connor, 26 Feb. 1926, p. 27–107. 48 OL: Folder/02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Seán O’Farrell, Commissioner of North Cork and West Cork Boards of Health, 11 Feb. 1926, p. 27–108. 49 Bureau of Military History, 1913–21, Witness Statement 118, Statement I of Patrick C. O’Mahony, Secretary, Kerry County Council, http:// www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/reels/bmh/BMH.WS0118.pdf#page=1 (accessed 4 September 2014). 50 Bureau of Military History, 1913–21, Witness Statement 745, Statement II Patrick C. O’Mahony, Secretary, Kerry County Council, http:// www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/reels/bmh/BMH.WS0745.pdf#page=1 (accessed 4 September 2014). 51 OL: Folder/03/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: P. C. O’Mahony, Secretary of Kerry County Council, 11 Feb. 1926, p. 28–67. 52 Ibid., p. 28–67. 53 Ibid., p. 28–67. 54 Ibid., p. 28–67. 55 Kerryman, 20 Mar. 1926. 56 G. Jones, ‘Eugenics and social policy between the wars’, Historical Journal, 25:3 (1982), 727; J. Welshman, Underclass: A History of the Excluded, 1880–2000 (London: Continuum, 2006). 57 OL: Folder/02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: O’Connor, 11 Feb. 1926, p. 27–107. 58 OL: Folder/02/0/001, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Dagg, 15 July 1925, p. 9–13. 59 Ibid., p. 9–41. 60 Philip Monahan was formerly the Mayor of Drogheda. In May 1923 Monahan was appointed as the commissioner to county Kerry after the local authorities. In October 1923 he was transferred to Cork where he was appointed commissioner of Cork Corporation. See A. Quinlivan, Philip Monahan: A Man Apart: the Life and Times of Ireland’s First Local Authority Manager (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2006), pp. 47–58.

76

the end of the irish poor law?

61 OL: Folder 01/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Monahan, 9 Feb. 1926, p. 26–93. 62 OL: Folder/02/0/001, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Dagg, 15 July 1925, p. 9–13. 63 Ibid., p. 9–42 64 Cork Examiner, 10 Feb. 1927. 65 OL: Folder 03/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: O’Farrell, 11 Feb. 1926, p. 28–97. 66 Ibid., p. 28–97. 67 F. Driver, Power and Pauperism: The Workhouse System, 1834–1884 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 10. 68 Frohman, Poor Relief and Welfare in Germany, p. 2. 69 Frohman, ‘The break-up of the poor laws’; Kidd, ‘The state and moral progress’; Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit, pp. 237–45. 70 Lucassen, ‘A brave new world’. For contemporary accounts of punitive ­­ ­­institutional relief for the able-bodied in Belgium and Austria, see E. Sellers, Foreign Solutions of Poor Law Problems (London: Horace Marshall & Sons, 1908). 71 For a brief outline of McCarron’s career, see P. Walsh, The Curious Case of the Mayo Librarian (Cork: Mercier Press, 2009), p. 45. 72 OL: Folder 06/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: E. P. McCarron, Secretary to DLGPH, 14 April 1926, p. 31–22. 73 Ibid., p. 31–22. 74 Ibid., p. 31–22. 75 OL: Folder 06/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Glynn, 14 April 1926, p. 31–22. 76 Ibid., p. 31–22. 77 OL: Folder 06/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: E. P. McCarron, Secretary to DLGPH, 14 April 1926, p. 31–22. 78 OL: Folder 01/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Philip Monahan, 9 Feb. 1926, p. 26–98. 79 See M. Thomson, The Problem of Mental Deficiency: Eugenics, Democracy and Social Policy in Britain, 1870–1959 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 80 OL: Folder 03/0/100A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Sugrue, 15 July 1925, p. 9–30. 81 E. Malcolm, ‘“Between habitual drunkards and alcoholics”: inebriate women and reformatories in Ireland, 1899–1919’, in M. H. Preston and M. Ó hÓgartaigh (eds), Gender and Medicine in Ireland, 1700–1950 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2012), pp. 108–22. See also C. Reidy, Criminal Irish Drunkards: The Inebriate Reformatory System, 1900–20 (Dublin: The History Press, 2014). 82 This has been viewed as representing ‘Foucauldian governmentality’; see Driver, Power and Pauperism.



from outdoor relief to home assistance 77

83 A. Clark, ‘Wild workhouse girls and the Liberal imperial state  in  mid-­­ nineteenth century Ireland’, Journal of Social History, 39:2 (2005), 389– 409. 84 Gray, ‘Conceiving and constructing the Irish workhouse’, 23 85 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 59. 86 G. Steinmetz, Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 158. 87 Steinmetz, Regulating the Social. 88 E. P. Hennock, The Origin of the Welfare State in England and Germany, 1850–1914: Social Policies Compared (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 57. 89 OL: Folder 01/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Monahan, 9 Feb. 1926, p. 26–93. 90 OL: Folder 02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Seán O’Farrell, 11 Feb. 1926, p. 27–111. 91 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 60. 92 Ibid., p. 60. 93 Ibid., p. 54. 94 Frohman, ‘The break-up of the poor laws’, 985. 95 DLGPH Annual Report, 1927–8, p. 86. 96 Ibid., p. 90. 97 Rules and Regulations for the Administration of Home Assistance. 98 DLGPH Annual Report, 1927–8, p. 87. 99 KCL: KBHPA/A/16, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 13 June 1932. 100 Ibid. 101 Frohman, Poor Relief and Welfare in Germany, p. 160. 102 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 60. 103 OL: Folder 03/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Fr Bowler, 11 Feb. 1926, p. 28–4. 104 OL: Folder 02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Seán O’Farrell, 11 Feb. 1926, p. 28–98. 105 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 54. 106 DLGPH Annual Report, 1927–8, p. 86 107 Ibid., p. 86. 108 Ibid., p. 87. 109 Ibid., p. 87. 110 DLGPH Annual Report, 1930–1, p. 123. 111 ‘Home assistance. Work-test for the able-bodied persons’, Circular 18 Dec. 1931, in DLGPH Annual Report, 1931–2, p. 275. 112 DLGPH Annual Report, 1931–2, p. 125. 113 OL: Folder 03/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Fr Bowler, 11 Feb. 1926, p. 28–48.

78

the end of the irish poor law?

114 OL: Folder 03/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: E. P. McCarron, 11 Feb. 1926, p. 28–52. 115 OL: Folder 03/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Fr Bowler, 11 Feb. 1926, p. 28–52. 116 OL: Folder 02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Maria Lynch, 15 July 1925, p. 27–76. 117 OL: Folder 02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Timothy Corcoran, 10 Feb. 1926, p. 27–76. 118 OL: Folder 02/0/001, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Sir Joseph Glynn, 14 or 15 July 1925, p. 9–42. 119 OL: Folder 01/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Philip Harold Barry, 9 Feb. 1926, p. 26–72. 120 Kerryman, 20 Mar. 1926. 121 Kerryman, 27 Mar. 1926. 122 For an outline of regional differences in poor law provision, see Laragy, ‘Poor relief in the South of Ireland, 1850–1921’; Lucey, ‘Poor Relief in the west of Ireland, 1861–1911’; Purdue, ‘Poor relief in the north of Ireland, 1850–1921’. 123 DLGPH Annual Report, 1927–8, p. 90. 124 For a list of the congested districts of Ireland, see C. Breathnach, The Congested Districts Board of Ireland, 1891–1923: Poverty and Development in the West of Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), pp. 183–4; T. W. Freeman, ‘The congested districts of western Ireland’, The Geographical Review, 33:1 (1943), 1–14. 125 DLGPH Annual Report, 1927–8, p. 90. 126 M. Cousins, Poor Relief in Ireland, 1851–1914 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011), p. 53 and ch 6. 127 Nelson, ‘Kildare County Council’, p. 187. 128 Donnelly, ‘Local government in county Carlow, 1800–1970’, p. 872. 129 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 28. 130 Ibid., p. 12. 131 Horgan, ‘City management in America’, 41–56; J. J. Horgan, ‘Local government developments at home and abroad’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 15:60 (1926), 529–41. 132 Potter, Municipal Revolution in Ireland, p. 295. 133 This sample cohort is taken from home assistance registers for two Cork districts: CCCA: SCBPA, Home Assistance Reports, 1/2 year ending March 1926, City District 1; CCCA: SCBPA, Home Assistance Reports, 1/2 year ending March 1926, South District. 134 CCCA: SCBPA, Minute Book, Board Meeting, 23 May 1925. 135 CCCA: SCBPA, Minute Book, Board Meeting, 10 Feb. 1927. 136 Cork Examiner, 25 Feb. 1927. 137 CCCA: SCBPA, Minute Book, Board Meeting, 10 June, 1925. 138 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 17.



from outdoor relief to home assistance 79

139 CCCA: SCBPA, Minute Book, Board Meeting, 12 Mar. 1930. 140 Ibid. 141 Cork Examiner, 25 Feb. 1927. 142 Ibid. 143 Ibid. 144 Ibid. 145 Ibid. 146 Cork Evening Echo, 31 Oct. 1927. 147 Cork Evening Echo, 1 Nov. 1927. 148 Cork Examiner, 26 Feb. 1927. 149 Local Taxation Returns, 1927/8; Local Taxation Returns, 1930/1. 150 Cork Evening Echo, 11 & 17 Nov. 1927. 151 Cousins, The Birth of Social Welfare in Ireland, p. 40. 152 C. Ó Gráda, A Rocky Road: The Irish Economy since the 1920s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 4. 153 Dwyer, ‘Abandoned by God and the Corporation’, 109; M. Nyhan, Are You Still Below? The Ford Marian Plant Cork, 1917–1984 (Cork: The Collins Press, 2007). 154 DLGPH Annual Report, 1922–5, p. 23. 155 Local Taxation Returns, 1922/3. 156 KCL: KBHPA/B/3, Correspondence: DLHPH to KBHPA, 3 Feb. 1923. 157 KCL: KBHPA/A/1, Minute Book, Board Meeting, 25 May 1923. 158 KCL: KBHPA/B/7, Correspondence: HAO Lynch to KBHPA, 25 Aug. 1925. 159 Kerryman, 17 Apr. 1926. 160 Ibid. 161 Ibid. 162 KCL: KBHPA/A/2, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 17 Oct. 1924. 163 T. O’Neill, ‘Minor famines and relief in county Galway, 1815–1925’, in G. Moran and R. Gillespie (eds), Galway: History & Society. Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin: Geography Publications, 1996), p. 477. 164 ‘Obituary of Kate Breen’, Irish Independence, 28 Dec. 1937. 165 Kerryman, 15 May 1926. 166 Kerryman, 22 May 1926. 167 Local Taxation Returns. 168 DLGPH Annual Report, 1925–7, p. 117; DLGPH Annual Report, 1929– 30, p. 241. 169 The Irish Independent, 5 Sept. 1930. 170 For a short biography of Nicholas O’Dwyer’s career and involvement in the war of independence, see ‘Nicholas O’Dwyer’, in Dictionary of Irish Architects, 1720–1940 http://dia.ie/architects/view/4137 (accessed 2 September 2014); Bureau of Military History, 1913–21, Witness Statement 680, Nicholas O’Dwyer, http://bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/reels/ bmh/BMH.WS0680.pdf#page=25 (accessed 2 September 2014).

80

the end of the irish poor law?

171 Local Taxation Returns. 172 Local Taxation Returns, 1930/1; Local Taxation Returns, 1931/2. 173 KCL: KBHPA/A/15, Minute Book: Board Meeting ‘Estimate and Demand, 1932–33: Secretary’s Statement’. 174 Ibid. 175 Ibid. 176 KCL: KBHPA/A/16, Minute Book: Board Meeting, ‘Extracts from DLGPH Inspector’s Report’, 17 Feb. 1932. 177 M. Cousins, ‘The politics of poor law reform in early twentieth century Dublin’ (2007), http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5535/ (accessed 2 September 2014); DLGPH Annual Report, 1929–30, p. 86. 178 DLGPH Annual Report, 1930–1, p. 90. 179 L. Hollen Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 328. 180 M. E. Daly, Social and Economic History of Ireland since 1800 (Dublin: Educational Co., 1981), p. 144; J. P. Neary and C. Ó Gráda, Protection, Economic War and Structural Change: The 1930s in Ireland (University College Dublin Working Paper, 1986), p. 7. 181 Ó Gráda, A Rocky Road, p. 5. 182 Irish Times, 1 Dec. 1927; Cousins, ‘The politics of poor law reform in early twentieth century Ireland’, p. 16. 183 Irish Times, 13 Sept. 1932. 184 Irish Times, 20 Oct. 1932. 185 Irish Times, 22 Nov. 1932. 186 Ibid. 187 Irish Times, 18 Oct. 1932. 188 Irish Times, 29 Sept. 1932. 189 Cork Evening Echo, 12 Oct. 1932. 190 Irish Times, 18 Oct. 1932. 191 For Irish communism, see O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland, p. 143. In September 1932 O’Driscoll – a leader of the Cork Unemployed AbleBodied Men’s Association – warned against ‘communistic’ organisers during a speech in Wexford; see Irish Times, 13 Sept. 1932. 192 Irish Times, 18 Oct. 1932. 193 Cork Evening Echo, 26 Oct. 1932. 194 Irish Times, 13 Apr. 1932. 195 KCL: KBHPA/A/15, Minute Book: Board Meeting, C. T. Kennedy ‘SAO Report’, 9 May 1932. 196 KCL: KBHPA/A/16, Minute Book: Board Meeting, Letter from Tralee Workers’ Council to Kerry Board, 11 July 1932. 197 Irish Times, 21 July 1932. 198 Irish Independent, 29 Oct. 1932. 199 Cork Evening Echo, 5 Nov. 1932. 200 KCL: KBHPA/A/16, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 28 Nov. 1932.



from outdoor relief to home assistance 81

201 KCL: KBHPA/A/16, Minute Book: Board Meeting, ‘SAO Report’, 14 Nov. 1932. 202 Ibid. 203 Ibid. 204 DLGPH Annual Report, 1931–2; DLGPH Annual Report, 1932–3. 205 KCL: KBHPA/A/16, Minute Book: Board Meeting, ‘SAO Report’, 17 Dec. 1932. 206 Ibid. 207 KCL: KBHPA/A/16, Minute Book: Board Meeting, ‘SAO Report’, 12 June 1933. 208 DLGPH Annual Reports, 1931–2, 1932–3 and 1935–6. 209 For able-bodied gaining outdoor relief in 1880s Kerry, see Lucey, ‘Power, politics and poor relief’. 210 KCL: KBHPA/A/17, Minute Book: Board Meeting, ‘SAO Report’, 13 Feb. 1933. 211 Ibid. 212 KCL: KBHPA/A/17, Minute Book: Board Meeting, ‘HAO Walsh Report’, 13 Feb. 1933. 213 Ibid. 214 Lucey, ‘Power, politics and poor relief’; Lucey and Crossman, ‘One huge abuse’. 215 J. Harris, Unemployment and Politics: A Study in English Social Policy, 1886–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 362. 216 Committee on the Relief of Unemployment, 1927 (Dublin: Stationery Office, Saorstát Éireann, 1928), p. 2. 217 Ibid., p. 2. 218 Cousins, The Birth of Social Welfare in Ireland, pp. 57–62. 219 S. Constantine, Unemployment in Britain between the Wars (Harlow: Longman, 1980), p. 72. 220 Lee, Ireland, 1912–85: Politics and Society, p. 195. 221 S. Ó Cinnéide, A Law for the Poor. A Study of Home Assistance in Ireland (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1970), p. 106. 222 For the influence of eugenics in Ireland, see G. Jones, ‘Eugenics in Ireland: the Belfast Eugenics Society, 1911–15’, Irish Historical Studies, 28:109 (1992), 81–95.

3

Single mothers and institutionalisation

This chapter examines the Irish Free State’s strategies to deal with unmarried mothers in the 1920s and 1930s. Prior to independence unmarried mothers and their children were often relieved in workhouses. In the reforms of the early 1920s a new network of county homes, county hospitals and district hospitals were established on the grounds of former workhouses. County and district hospitals solely provided acute medical attention, but the county homes were a continuation of the workhouses, and provided institutional relief for a range of categories of the ‘impotent poor’ including the elderly, long-term sick, mentally ill and intellectually disabled.1 Unmarried mothers and their children also continued to be relieved in these institutions. Other forms of institutional provision for unmarried mothers developed out of poor law reforms including mother and baby homes. This chapter concentrates on local authority institutional provision for unmarried mothers, with a specific focus on county homes and mother and baby homes. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries there has been much public debate in Irish society about the institutionalisation of women. An official investigation into Magdalene Laundries led to the 2013 McAleese Report and the Irish government’s formal apology to former residents of such institutions for the punitive regimes that they suffered. In summer 2014 mother and baby homes in twentieth-century Ireland became the source of much national and international controversy. This was brought about by media revelations of high infant mortality rates, unmarked graves and medical experiments on children in a number of institutions in independent Ireland. A government commission of inquiry to investigate these allegations was announced, which at the time of writing has just commenced its proceedings. These developments have ensured that the institutionalisation of unmarried mothers in twentieth-century Ireland remains very much to the fore in modern debates.2



single mothers and institutionalisation 83

County homes and mother and baby homes are viewed by the academic James M. Smith as part of an Irish ‘architecture of containment’ – including industrial and reformatory schools, mental asylums, orphanages and Magdalene Laundries – which ‘concealed citizens’ who were already marginalised by a number of interrelated social phenomena including poverty, illegitimacy, sexual abuse and infanticide.3 Echoing this approach, Ian O’Donnell and Eoin O’Sullivan – a criminologist and sociologist, respectively – view this wide range of institutions, including county homes and mother and baby homes, as ‘networks of control’ which were used to contain and discipline individuals who digressed from social norms; they term such institutionalisation ‘coercive confinement’.4 There remains a lack of historical work on mother and baby homes and county homes, although Magdalene Laundries have received greater scholarly attention.5 To date, historical examinations have concentrated on the place of unmarried mothers in Irish society, the emigration of unwed mothers – especially to England – and the related issues of infanticide and forced adoption practices.6 Studies of local authority welfare policies, however, have not been forthcoming although public assistance boards played a crucial role in relieving and institutionalising unmarried mothers. This chapter’s concentration on local authority institutional provision somewhat addresses this lacuna. The removal of unmarried mothers from the newly named county homes was a central objective of the early Free State poor law reforms. By the time of Irish independence, unmarried mothers had become representative of immorality, a symbol of unacceptable sexuality and a problem that had the potential to blight the reputation not only of the family but also the nation.7 There was widespread support for the removal of unmarried mothers and their illegitimate children from workhouses at the time the Irish Free State was formed. This was motivated by a wish to provide the deserving poor with institutional provision free from association with the ‘immoral’ poor, including unmarried mothers. As highlighted in chapter 1, Patrick Lankford’s running of the Cork poor law during the revolutionary years led to the establishment of the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork city. The home was run by the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary Catholic religious order, which originated from the archdiocese of Westminster. Lankford’s objective of improving the ‘moral tone’ of the workhouse included the placing of unmarried mothers in separate institutions under the care of religious orders.8 Bessborough was one of the first religiously run rate-aided mother and baby home in Ireland that specifically provided for unmarried mothers, although rescue homes including Magdalene

84

the end of the irish poor law?

Asylums provided for a range of marginalised women including lone mothers, and had existed since the eighteenth century.9 Lankford’s actions were representative of wider attitudes towards unmarried mothers evident in the Irish revolutionary movement which were inherited by the Irish Free State. The establishment of Bessborough was widely welcomed although other aspects of Lankford’s running of the Cork workhouse were heavily criticised. A 1923 local government inquiry into the Cork viceguardians’ administration of the poor law praised the measures they introduced to deal with unmarried mothers. The inspectors outlined the system initiated by Lankford; unmarried mothers who entered the workhouse before confinement were placed under the care of a nun in order to prevent them from abandoning hope, which was considered the cause of ‘subsequent relapses’. After giving birth, the women were sent to Bessborough which was described as ‘a special institute for girls with one child’. The inspectors were impressed with the efforts and noted that while the system for dealing with this ‘large and intricate problem’ was not complete, the Cork vice-guardians deserved praise for their efforts ‘to grapple with it’.10 Moralistic attitudes towards unmarried mothers and their children, which would become so evident in independent Ireland, were apparent in the actions of the revolutionary and early Free State local government administrators. The poor law reforms were formalised with the 1924 Cork Joint County Scheme Order. Bessborough was included as an auxiliary home of the South Cork Board of Public Assistance under the scheme. However, unlike the other local authority institutions included – the county home, two district hospitals and six cottage hospitals – Bessborough was under religious authority and not directly under the control of the SCBPA.11 By the mid-1920s the SCBPA had established one of the most extensive systems for dealing with unmarried mothers in the country. On 31 January 1926 the board paid a capitation fee of 3s per day for each mother and child to Bessborough for the accommodation of fifty-three women and fifty-two babies.12 The local authority had limited control or influence in the running of Bessborough, although it regularly sent and financially maintained women there. The SCBPA’s secretary, Daniel Egan, told the 1927 Relief Commission that ‘the bishop looks after the place very closely and takes a great interest in it’.13 Egan stated that he was aware that a ladies’ visiting committee was attached to the home, but he did not know the members personally and had no communication with it.14 The Cork officials were satisfied with the relationship with Bessborough despite the lack of local authority influence over the home’s affairs. Egan accentuated the financial benefits and stated: ‘it would have to be



single mothers and institutionalisation 85

borne in mind there are no establishment expenses; no staff maintained by us and that we barely pay the capitation grant’.15 The home had widespread support from elected officials in Cork. W. J. Broderick, a member of Cork County Council, informed the commission that the council believed the system was ‘a magnificent idea’.16 Seán O’Farrell considered that the home was ‘decidedly’ a success in dealing with the problem of unmarried mothers.17 The DLGPH also praised the home and in particular the work regime the women undertook. The women in Bessborough purportedly received ‘training’ in domestic work, cookery, needlework, laundry and dairy work, poultry keeping and gardening.18 The 1927 Relief Commission’s chairman, O’Connor, inquired if the women were kept ‘working hard’ and ‘employed’ full-time, to which Egan replied that they engaged in dairy and orchard work on the lands of Bessborough.19 Although there is limited evidence on conditions in mother and baby homes, what anecdotal evidence there is suggests that regimes were harsh: this is partly intimated by the comments of Egan and the commissioner which described extensive work practices in the Bessborough home. Similar to the Magdalene Laundries that the recent McAleese Report criticised for the harsh work conditions enforced on women, mother and baby homes had a redemptive purpose. For example, a leading Dublin poor law official, Séamus MacLysaght, informed the commission that it was the ‘duty’ of the religious orders in charge of such homes to make the women ‘mend their ways’.20 Hard labour was viewed as helping the women to become redeemed. The use of inmate labour was a feature of life throughout many ­­nineteenth- and twentieth-century institutions including lunatic asylums, workhouses, county homes and Magdalene Asylums. Inmate labour was often utilised in the county homes in Kerry and Cork and helped to keep down local taxation, which was to the benefit of ratepayers. The potential remuneration for female inmates in Bessborough was raised with the Cork local authorities during the 1927 Relief Commission. The commissioner queried whether a system should be established whereby the inmates would receive a ‘little trifle of earnings’ to ensure that they were not ‘penniless’ when they left the institution.21 Egan replied that the question of remuneration for inmate labour had yet to be dealt with; no subsequent evidence emerged to suggest that women were ever paid. Unmarried mothers were divided into two categories: ‘first offenders’ and ‘repeat offenders’. First offenders were often viewed as ‘almost innocent and hopeless cases’ who both the church and state believed could be ‘rescued’ from falling into a life of prostitution.22 The treatment of first offenders was to focus on ‘morale building’. Institutional treatment was to be partly punitive and based on ‘firmness and discipline’; ­­

86

the end of the irish poor law?

this approach was to be ‘blended’ with a degree of ‘individual charity’ and ‘sympathy’.23 Extensive evidence was heard during the 1927 Relief Commission that ‘first offenders’ had to be relieved separately from women with more than one illegitimate child due to the fear of moral contagion. Mother and baby homes were intended to provide for girls who had fallen ‘once’ and could be ‘rescued’. It was believed that the religious nature of these homes helped to morally and spiritually reform the institutionalised women. It was also contended that the secrecy which surrounded these institutions allowed for women on discharge to return to normal lives free from the stigma associated with single motherhood.24 Social and financial concerns also motivated the authorities. The DLGPH believed the homes helped these women to have a ‘useful’ and ‘respectable life’ after they were discharged.25 The economic motivations were further outlined in 1931 when the DLGPH reported that the establishment of specialised mother and baby homes was justified on the grounds of ‘economy’. The homes facilitated these women’s return to the ‘work-a-day’ world and prevented them from becoming a ‘permanent burden’ on the ratepayers.26 Women who had more than one illegitimate child, or ‘repeat offenders’, were viewed as the most problematic and subject to the harshest attitudes. Such women were identified as being highly immoral, often labelled as ‘mentally deficient’ and seen as the most likely to fall into prostitution. Local government officials in Cork and Kerry, who also articulated harsh attitudes towards the able-bodied poor, promulgated punitive treatment for lone mothers with multiple children. Seán O’Farrell promoted a ‘detention policy’ for these women and stated: ‘it would be much better for their own sake and for the sake of humanity to keep them in until such time as it might be considered advisable to let them out’.27 O’Farrell believed such women should be institutionalised for long periods and cited a number of cases who were ‘reformed’ after ‘ten-to-twelve years’.28 Philip Monahan approved of the notion, put to him by the chairman, that the authorities should have the power to ‘compulsorily lock up’ women who were considered to be a ‘source of danger’ not just to themselves but also ‘to the community’.29 Broderick also articulated a punitive approach and claimed that women who made ‘constant lapses’ were a danger to themselves and the ‘community’ and had to be put ‘under restraint’.30 These attitudes were also apparent in the evidence given by female officials including that of the commissioner of the Dublin Poor Law Union, Mrs Jane Power.31 This type of rhetoric was so prevalent that the 1927 Relief Commission recommended institutionalisation for the ‘more degraded cases’ who it believed had become ‘sources of evil, danger and expense to the community’.32



single mothers and institutionalisation 87

Detention and segregation were promoted as methods of containing the perceived threat of moral contagion. These measures also acted as a form of punishment.33 Incarceration was clearly viewed as the most suitable method of dealing with unmarried mothers, especially those denigrated as ‘repeat offenders’. The emergence of separation wards for prostitutes in mid-nineteenthcentury Irish workhouses demonstrated that segregation policies for ‘immoral’ women long existed within the poor law regime.34 However, prejudice towards ‘immoral’ women hardened during the 1920s in a wider climate of moral panic regarding Irish sexuality. As is well known, Catholic social thought influenced legislation and public pronouncements regulating the morals of the Irish Free State, leading to censorship and the banning of contraceptives. Restrictions on public dances and efforts to eradicate prostitution emerged, while fears over infanticide, vice and sexually transmitted disease heavily influenced attitudes towards Irish sexuality.35 Much of this outrage was directed at women perceived to have transgressed sexual moral codes, while men received less attention. The harsh rhetoric of the local government officials can be understood within this context. These attitudes also resonated with the moral underpinnings evidenced in the revolutionary and Free State reform of local government administration and the relief of the undeserving classes. Deeply entrenched social, gender and moral biases prevailed among the central and local government officials who undertook poor law reform. The 1927 Relief Commission also made recommendations on the length of stay of women in institutions, although no legislation existed to incarcerate women on moral grounds. The commission noted that there was ‘no power to detain a woman in any poor law institution’ even when it was ‘clearly necessary for her protection’. The commission recommended that first-time ‘offenders’ remain institutionalised for a year and second-time ‘offenders’ for two years, despite the lack of any legal powers for detention. In cases of women with more than two illegitimate children, the commissioners advised that local authorities, in consultation with the superior or matron of the home, retain them for as long ‘as they think fit’.36 In relation to discharges and further arrangements for illegitimate children, local authorities were to ‘act on the advice’ of the superior or matron of such homes.37 It was also recommended that ideally authorities would establish separate institutions for both categories of unmarried mothers, although it recognised that local bodies could not afford to take on such expense.38 The commissioners recommended that all unmarried mothers should be removed from county homes and placed in ‘separate institutions’ run

88

the end of the irish poor law?

by religious authorities. These new institutions were to be geographically located in proximity to the ‘larger county homes’ and remain an integral facet of the local authority welfare system.39 The 1927 Relief Commission ruled out the introduction of any statutory regulations or the establishment of a central authority. It was believed that local authorities should be allowed an ‘almost complete discretion’ in the matter of dealing with and paying for this class. It also promoted the use of ‘rescue societies and other voluntary agencies’. Central government promulgated harsh attitudes towards single motherhood, but it placed responsibility, and more importantly cost, in the hands of local government and voluntary organisations. Within Catholic circles, the commission’s recommendations were welcomed as potentially moulding the poor law into an increasingly Catholic form of social services. Fr Devane was an outspoken Catholic priest who wrote on the problem of unmarried mothers and gave evidence to both the 1927 Relief Commission and the 1930–31 Carrigan Committee. In the late 1920s moral panic concerning unmarried mothers ­­ and illegitimacy reached a high point and many clerics waged ‘war against moral degeneration’. Devane, as a Jesuit and also as a social reformer, was less conservative than many of his clerical counterparts, and advocated legal reform to raise the age of consent and challenged the state’s leniency towards the fathers of illegitimate children.40 While Devane was more enlightened than many within the church on social issues, he heralded the establishment of the Free State as an opportunity to further Catholic morality and social thinking.41 Commenting on the commission’s recommendations, Devane stated: ‘[the] poor law is exorcised of the paganism in which it was originally conceived, and poverty in this Catholic land, before long [will] be freed from the stigma of disgrace to which the destitute forced to seek public relief, have been too long condemned’.42 In relation to unmarried mothers, he subscribed to wider gender and class prejudices and complained of the ‘almost criminal’ circumstances of first-time unmarried mothers in county homes living side-by-side with the ‘degenerates’ and ‘depraved mothers’ of multiple illegitimate children. Devane stated that the establishment of religiously run mother and baby homes provided the church with ‘a unique opportunity’ to reclaim these ‘young girls’.43 Devane believed that the recommendations were conceived in a ‘truly Christian spirit’ and afforded ‘big possibilities’ for the application of ‘Christian principles’ to many different ‘social problems’.44 The establishment of religiously run mother and baby homes represented the influence of Catholic social teaching on welfare provision for single mothers.



single mothers and institutionalisation 89

The proposal to build separate institutions for ‘first’ and ‘second’ offenders in each county was ambitious and costly. Such a network of institutions did not emerge, but two new religiously controlled mother and baby homes were established. In 1931 the Sacred Heart congregation that ran the Bessborough Home in Cork opened the Seán Ross Home in Roscrea, Tipperary.45 The congregation established a third home in 1936, Manor Home, in Castlepollard, county Westmeath.46 This was to provide for unmarried mothers in the counties of northern Leinster and the Ulster counties of Monaghan and Cavan.47 These institutions expanded and received financial support from the DLGPH. In the late 1920s plans emerged for a maternity wing to be added to the Bessborough Home so that ‘young mothers’ could be received directly into the institution without having to remain in the county home during the ‘pre-natal period’.48 The home received a grant of £17,105 from the DLGPH for the erection of a forty-bed maternity hospital to allow ‘the sisters to carry on their work more effectively’.49 When the maternity wing was completed in 1934, the Hospitals Commission granted Bessborough a further £1,500 for equipment and furnishings.50 In 1935 the DLGPH approved a grant of £29,595 from the Hospitals Trust Fund for the Roscrea institution that led to an extension and the building of a children’s home.51 Local authorities also developed new processes for the admission of women into these mother and baby homes. The SCBPA devised a system whereby publicity for cases was avoided. Members of the board, dispensary medical officers and assistance officers were empowered to issue admission tickets and cases did not have to go to the board for approval and discussion.52 The Sacred Heart-run mother and baby homes catered for increasingly large numbers of unmarried mothers. At the end of 1928 sixty-five unmarried mothers were in Bessborough Home.53 By 31 March 1937, after the opening of Roscrea and Castlepollard, there were 375 women in the three Sacred Heart homes (see Table 2). By the 1930s local authority-aided accommodation for lone mothers was not confined to these institutions. Unmarried mothers and their children in the Dublin workhouse were transferred to Pelletstown Home, which was the former South Dublin workhouse school. The institution was run by the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul but was owned by the Dublin Poor Law Union.54 This was the largest mother and baby home in the country and admitted 166 women in 1938.55 Pelletstown Home was criticised by Catholic figures for its failure to grade cases on grounds that accorded ‘to age, degrees of guilt and social station’. One Catholic writer, Sagart, believed that the large numbers in Pelletstown led to the mixing of the various categories of

90

the end of the irish poor law?

Table 2 Unmarried mothers in the three Sacred Heart mother and baby homes on 31 March 1933–41

1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941

Bessborough

Roscrea

Castlepollard

Total

64 93 92 136 115 96 80 104 98

85 173 193 187 188 171 158 153 170

– – – –

149 266 285 323 375 350 316 358 349

72 83 78 101 81

Source: DLGPH Annual Reports, 1932/33–1940/41

lone mothers and stated: ‘there will be a strong tendency for the less guilty to sink to the level of the most-guilty’.56 In 1935 the Hospitals Commission – established in the early 1930s to administer the Irish Sweepstakes money – reported that it was not possible in Pelletstown to solely ‘cater for first pregnancies’, but attempts were made in the institution to separate the categories of unmarried mothers.57 Another mother and baby home existed in Tuam on the grounds of the former workhouse, which was established by the Galway Board of Health and Public Assistance and run by the Bon Secours Sisters.58 On 31 March 1938 this home provided for fifty-three mothers and 200 children.59 The buildings of the Tuam and Pelletstown homes were owned and funded by the boards of health and public assistance although they were run by religious orders. In this sense they differed from the Sacred Heart homes which were private institutions in receipt of local and central authority support. Other mother and baby homes existed such as the Protestant Bethany Home, although they were not as closely connected with local government. Some were established post-1940 including the Good Shepherd-run Ard Mhuire mother and baby home in Dunboyne, county Meath.60 In inter-war Ireland, infant mortality among illegitimate infants was notoriously high. As depicted in Figure 3.1, the infant mortality rate per 1,000 of births for this group was far greater than the death rate for all infants. Officially, this high death rate was a cause for concern and in 1927 the DLGPH believed that the rate was a ‘deplorable loss of life’. It highlighted that this was caused by a number of factors which included ‘constitutional and environmental disadvantage’ that ‘handicapped’ these infants.61 Few practical solutions to reduce the mortality rate were

single mothers and institutionalisation 91

400 350 300 250 200

IMR

150

IMR (Illegt)

100 50

49

47

19

19

43 45 19

19

39 41 19

19

35 37 19

19

31 33 19

19

27 29 19

19

19

19

23 25

0

3.1  Infant mortality rate and illegitimate infant mortality rate, 1923–50 Source: Statistics taken from L. Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child: Maternity and Child Welfare in Ireland, 1920s–1960s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 181

aired although officials did make the connection between the high infant mortality rate and children born outside wedlock.62 Unmarried mothers and illegitimate children were legally and religiously disadvantaged in Ireland. Welfare and public health measures were limited to institutionalisation, moral reform and the ‘hiding away’ of unmarried mothers. These women were excluded from the expansion of the welfare state and were not entitled to assistance under the 1933 Unemployment Assistance Act. The Catholic Church discriminated against illegitimate children who could not in later life receive holy orders.63 There also existed a general belief, substantiated by Catholic doctrine, that illegitimacy sullied the name of Irish motherhood and assistance to unmarried mothers slighted the married mother.64 The ‘problem’ of unmarried mothers and illegitimate children was viewed largely through the prism of moral panic. The 1931 Carrigan Report – established to investigate juvenile prostitution – focused excessively on illegitimacy, prostitution and immorality, but little reference was made to related social conditions and social problems.65 Legal and religious disadvantage combined with deeply unforgiving social and cultural attitudes towards illegitimacy helped to create the circumstances where extremely high rates of mortality among illegitimate children prevailed. Some efforts were made to tackle the major disadvantages these people faced. This was demonstrated in the passing of the 1930 Illegitimate

92

the end of the irish poor law?

Children (Affiliation Orders) Act – an attempt to facilitate unmarried mothers in suing the fathers of their infants for child maintenance – and the 1931 Legitimacy Act which dealt with legitimating children on the marriage of their parents.66 The 1934 Registration of Maternity Homes Act ensured that all homes for mothers had to be registered, undergo inspections and keep records in return for grant assistance. This was introduced with the reduction of the mortality of illegitimate children in mind.67 These measures were piecemeal and failed to challenge the identification of unmarried mothers and illegitimacy as a social problem derived from sexual immorality. The establishment of mother and baby homes was partly in response to high death rates among illegitimate children. In the mid-1930s the DLGPH reported that the establishment of homes for unmarried mothers allowed mothers to care for their infants during the initial months before the children were sent to ‘suitable foster parents’, and that this would help to reduce high mortality rates among illegitimate children.68 However, for the inter-war period mother and baby homes had much higher infant mortality rates than the rate among infants generally. These high death rates, and the burial practices relating to the infants’ remains, became the focus of the 2014 mother and baby home controversy. This received widespread international media coverage and dominated the political landscape in Ireland for a number of weeks. The initial debate focused on the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. This home, run by the Bon Secours Sisters, had 769 infant deaths for the period 1925– 61. The other homes also had high death rates. In 1939 the Bessborough Home, for example, had an infantile death rate of 47 ­­percent, Seán Ross Abbey in Roscrea had a death rate of 18 per cent while Manor House in Castlepollard had a rate of 7 per cent. Pelletstown and Tuam had rates of 23 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively. By comparison the mortality rate for the general infant population was 6.2 per cent and 19.3 per cent for so-called illegitimate infants.69 The high death rates point to serious questions regarding standards of care in these institutions. James Deeny – appointed Chief Medical Officer in the 1940s – highlighted how the lack of professional medical expertise led to high death rates in these homes. Deeny recollected that after being informed of high death rates in the Regina Coeli Hostel – a home for unmarried mothers run by the lay Catholic Legion of Mary – he inspected the home and identified failures to isolate women who potentially had infectious diseases. Deeny forced the founder of the home, Frank Duff, to establish a quarantine station despite initial protestations.70 For much of the 1920s and 1930s there was general unwillingness among public health officials to extensively question the high death



single mothers and institutionalisation 93

rates in homes. This was evidenced in Deeny’s autobiography, where he wrote that after his appointment in 1944 as Chief Medical Officer, the high death rate in Bessborough came to his attention. During an inspection of the home he found that there was a staphylococcus infection in the wards, despite the matron’s best attempts to hide the infants’ condition. In the face of extensive political pressure from the Catholic hierarchy, Deeny temporarily closed the home and replaced the matron and medical officer. Deeny believed that the authorities had become complacent over the years and come to accept the high mortality rates.71 The lack of professional medical practices and poor standards of care in these homes combined with local and central government public health officials’ failure to adequately carry out inspections ensured the high death rates carried on for much of the 1920s and 1930s. However, without full access to the records of these institutions it remains impossible to fully explore the causes of the high death rates in these homes. The Irish government’s statutory inquiry, established in July 2014, will examine this issue in great detail. Government support for mother and baby homes did not waver despite the DLGPH’s reports of high infant mortality rates. In 1932 the DLGPH reported that the homes undertook ‘useful and necessary work’ and that there was ‘ample evidence’ that the women profited from the ‘training’ they received.72 In 1935 the DLGPH believed that the institutions provided ‘satisfactory results’ and ‘very few girls’ were admitted into county homes pregnant for a second time.73 The DLGPH inspector, Miss Fitzgerald-Kenney, was particularly complimentary about the mother and baby homes. She believed that they provided women who were ‘tortured by a sense of shame’ with an institutional ‘loophole for escape’. She was ‘convinced’ they had done much to prevent infanticide.74 In the eyes of some government officials, these institutions protected women from a wider unforgiving moral climate. This approach somewhat differed from the religious-inspired focus on redemption, and was more sympathetic than the punitive measures articulated for ‘repeat offenders’. By the end of the 1930s expansion in mother and baby homes had been brought about. Such institutional provision was widely articulated in the early 1920s, particularly among Catholic social thinkers, leading to the recommendations of 1927 Relief Commission. The subsequent growth in religiously run institutions was encouraged by central government, which provided funding for the infrastructural development of these homes. Boards of health and public assistance entered into agreements with these religious authorities and paid capitation fees for the maintenance of unmarried mothers and their children. The

94

the end of the irish poor law?

­­ establishment of local authority institutions in each county for both first and multiple offenders envisaged by the 1927 Relief Commission did not, however, emerge. Religiously owned mother and baby homes provided local authorities with a cheaper alternative to the establishment of institutions directly under their control. Bessborough Mother and Baby Home and the Kerry Board of Health and Public Assistance The historian Lindsey Earner-Byrne has noted that the majority of mother and baby homes were largely autonomous, with limited government policy on their administration, and that no clear conclusions can be drawn regarding the policies of these homes or the actual periods of detention for most inmates.75 The closure of the archives of religious institutions has long been a hindrance to the historical study of not just mother and baby homes but also Magdalene Laundries in the twentieth century.76 The government inquiry into the Irish state’s involvement in Magdalene Laundries, leading to the 2013 McAleese Report, helped to shed light on such institutions.77 However, there remains a lack of empirical and historical studies on twentieth-century Magdalene Laundries. Furthermore, research on the mother and baby homes and county homes – both excluded from the McAleese Report – remains limited. Currently it is impossible to write a full academic history of religiously run mother and baby homes because of the lack of accessible records; however, insights are ascertainable from an analysis of the records of local authorities that sent women to these institutions. In county Kerry, no separate accommodation for unmarried mothers was established under the reformed poor law. The original county scheme allowed for the establishment of a mother and child home in Kenmare town. This failed to emerge and unmarried mothers who came under local authority provision were sent to the county home; in 1926 thirty-nine unmarried mothers were in the institution. By the mid-1920s the DLGPH was frequently directing the Kerry authorities to transfer suitable cases to Bessborough. In December 1926 the DLGPH inspector, Miss Fitzgerald-Kenney, suggested to a meeting of the KBHPA that all the ‘first offenders’ in the county home be sent to Bessborough. Fitzgerald-Kenney stated that the home provided women with a ‘chance of reclamation’, and not only looked after their welfare ‘spiritually’ but also provided them with ‘positions’ outside the institution when they were deemed ‘reliable’.78 She also informed the board that after the women were placed in work, they paid towards the maintenance of the child who remained in the institution.79



single mothers and institutionalisation 95

Some Kerry officials were sceptical about whether Bessborough would be utilised. Seán O’Farrell informed the 1927 Relief Commission that the majority of unmarried mothers in the Kerry County Home were not suitable because they had multiple illegitimate children. He highlighted the importance of institutional reputation and local knowledge. According to O’Farrell, Bessborough was ‘known’ in Cork where it had ‘acquired a certain reputation’, but there was limited knowledge of the home in Kerry, or awareness that the local authority was willing to send women there; as a result ‘girls of that class’ would not enter the county home as a means of getting into Bessborough. He believed that many first-time unmarried mothers were under the ‘control of their parents’ and ‘usually drift[ed] off to America’.80 Such comments indicate that, similar to pre-independence workhouses, county homes were utilised mostly by poorer women who were more knowledgeable of the poor law system.81 The removal of unmarried mothers from the county home ostensibly remained an objective of the local authority. Reacting to the 1927 Relief Commission’s recommendations, Kate Breen – the chairperson of the newly constituted KBHPA – informed the local newspapers that the board was ‘hammering out a scheme’ whereby unmarried mothers of ‘class I’ and more ‘persistent offenders’ would be ‘housed’ separately.82 Breen stated: ‘we are hoping that the county home will be ultimately used for the aged and infirm and chronic invalids’.83 By the early 1930s the KBHPA increasingly sent cases to Bessborough in Cork. These were often sent at the behest of the county home’s matron. In March 1931 the matron recommended the removal of two ‘suitable’ cases to Bessborough at the rate of 10s 6d per week.84 The KBHPA sanctioned the removal although with the stipulation that the women were ‘willing to go’; they both went.85 The local authority also maintained women in Bessborough who were not normally entitled to poor relief. In 1933 the SAO informed the KBHPA that the parents of a Bessborough inmate could financially contribute towards her maintenance.86 The board resolved to accept the cost despite the fact that its secretary complained that her circumstances did not ‘entitle her to free treatment’. This indicated that the local authority was willing to maintain women from better-off backgrounds in the institution. While unmarried mothers in county homes were invariably poor, more middle-class individuals were willing to turn to mother and baby homes. The DLGPH developed a policy of directing local authorities to transfer women in county homes to mother and baby homes. In December 1929 the DLGPH issued a circular to all local boards of health and public assistance, which requested information on unmarried mothers

96

the end of the irish poor law?

in county homes. Local authorities were later informed that the returns, which were to be submitted on a six-monthly basis, were very useful in making ‘improved arrangements’ for dealing with unmarried mothers and that it was ‘important’ for the minister to be kept accurately informed of the extent of the problem in each county.87 In turn, the DLGPH directed the Kerry authorities, and presumably other counties, to send unmarried mothers to Bessborough. In July 1930 the DLGPH wrote to the Kerry board: ‘the minister considers that it would be well if they [unmarried mothers] were transferred to the Sacred Heart Home, Bessborough where special arrangements have been made for dealing with such cases’.88 A number of months later, in October 1930, the department again wrote to the Kerry authorities inquiring what steps had been taken to send the women to Cork.89 In June 1930 the DLGPH queried whether two female inmates of the county home identified in the six-monthly return were suitable for transfer to Bessborough. The county home’s matron, Sister Conroy, replied that one woman had entered the mental hospital and the other had been discharged and resided with her father.90 Similarly, in June 1931 the DLGPH wrote to the KBHPA asking if another three inmates ‘would benefit from training in the Sacred Heart Home’.91 In this instance, the matron believed that two of the cases – one was considered ‘mentally deficient’ and the other ‘epileptic’ – were unsuitable.92 The DLGPH’s identification of women in county homes who it wanted sent to Bessborough was thorough and systematic. Despite the department’s efforts, the number of women sent from Kerry to Bessborough remained relatively small, and the majority of unmarried mothers in the county home were considered unsuitable for Bessborough. Another DLGPH inspector, Mrs Crofts, informed the KBHPA in October 1931 that if officials outside the county home  – clergymen, dispensary medical officers and assistance officers – were authorised to send suitable cases directly to Bessborough, a ‘gradual’ reduction in the numbers in the county home would occur.93 However, she advised that the majority of cases already in the county home should not be transferred to Bessborough except perhaps in ‘very rare cases’ when the child was not more than three months old; the recommendation to allow officials outside the county home to admit women was not introduced.94 In 1933 the DLGPH inspector reported overcrowding in the unmarried mothers’ quarters, which illustrated that the county home continued to relieve these women.95 Institutions that catered for unmarried mothers have been viewed as forms of coercive containment which incarcerated marginalised individuals.96 In particular, Magdalene Laundries are seen as ­­institutions of



single mothers and institutionalisation 97

confinement in independent Ireland; this is especially evident in widely held and popular modern-day understandings.97 The 2013 McAleese Report, which cites a figure of 10,012 women as having spent time in Magdalene Laundries between 1922 and 1996, points towards the complexities of these institutions. The report highlighted that the institutions were austere with a rigid and uncompromising regime of physically demanding work and prayer; the female inmates were heavily stigmatised and suffered loss of freedom and emotionally and psychologically traumatic experiences. The report also argued that the women did not suffer the sexual or violent abuse evident in industrial schools – these institutions for children were revealed as highly abusive by the 2009 Ryan Commission. The McAleese Report statistically analysed how women entered and their length of stay. From an analysis of 8,025 women whose route of entry to Magdalene Laundries was determined, the report stated that 26.5 per cent of women were directly referred from state bodies; these included the criminal justice system (8.1 per cent), industrial and reformatory schools (7.8 per cent), the health and social services sector including local health authorities (6.8 per cent) and mother and baby homes (3.9 per cent). Other routes of entry included voluntary admissions and referrals by family members, priests and committals from other Magdalene Laundries.98 The length of stay ranged from less than three months (35.6 per cent), three months to one year (25.3 per cent), one to five years (31.8 per cent) and over five years (7.2 per cent).99 The prominence of short stays and self-referrals has led to suggestions that the institutions partly acted as refuges for marginalised women in a continuation of their nineteenth-century role, when Magdalene Asylums were flexible institutions.100 Some academic historians have argued that the images generated by popular representations in film and documentaries could have a damaging effect on the academic and historical research of the subject.101 In a Northern Irish context, the architecture of containment thesis is not borne out in studies of some institutions for unmarried mothers, including a number of Protestant homes and the lay Catholic-run Mater Dei Hostel in Belfast.102 It should be noted – as highlighted by the McAleese Report – that more witness testimony is needed before any concrete conclusions can be made on women’s experiences of Magdalene Laundries. While women may have ‘voluntarily’ entered Magdalene Laundries, the wider social and moral climate acted as a form of coercion and provided these women with very limited options. The ‘regime’ of residential care these marginalised women experienced was harsh and archaic in twentieth-century terms. Also, much of the existing evidence suggests

98

the end of the irish poor law?

that women were held against their will, engaged in unpaid labour and lost whatever rights the law granted to them as citizens.103 The large number of personal accounts in Ireland’s modern-day media also lends support to the belief that these institutions had at best poor standards of care, and at worst were sites of systematic abuse. The failure of the religious orders to open records for bona fide historical research leads to further ­­ambiguity, and arguably encourages the perpetuation of overly negative representations of such institutions. The findings of the McAleese Report have also been criticised by survivor groups and advocacy organisations such as Justice for Magdalenes for, among other things, failing to provide a ‘prompt, thorough and independent investigation’.104 In July 2014 the United Nations Human Rights Committee criticised the Irish state’s response to allegations of institutional abuse of women and children.105 The place of these institutions in twentieth-century Ireland remains a complex and controversial topic in the twenty-first century. Not until records are made freely available to historians will more concrete historiographical conclusions be developed on the institutionalisation of women in Magdalene Laundries and mother and baby homes. However, the records on which this book is based do provide some insights into mother and baby homes. Central government authorities wanted women – in order to be redeemed – to remain in Bessborough for one to two years. The DLGPH inspector, Miss Fitzgerald-Kenney, believed that two years should be the maximum stay for women in mother and baby homes. Revealing the importance of their unpaid inmate labour, she stated that the girls did ‘excellent work inside’ and that their removal was keenly felt and a ‘sacrifice’ for the homes’ managers. The matron of Bessborough believed that the ‘very weak-willed’ had to remain in the home for a ‘long period’ to safeguard them from a ‘second lapse’.106 However, Fitzgerald-Kenney believed long-stay inmates became accustomed ‘to silence and to routine’ and subsequently found it difficult to adjust to ordinary life.107 Also mothers were at times kept until their child was old enough to be admitted into an orphanage or industrial school.108 Some women remained for much longer periods. In 1931 the KBHPA recalled a woman who had been maintained for the previous five years in Bessborough at a weekly cost of £1 1s to the local authority.109 On other occasions women seemed to wish to remain with their children. In February 1933 the KBHPA decided that it would be better if two unmarried mothers who had been in Bessborough for a ‘considerable time’ returned home.110 Although one of the women left Bessborough, the other refused. The matron of the Sacred Heart home wrote to the Kerry authorities stating:



single mothers and institutionalisation 99 When I received your letter I gave instructions to the sister in charge of the girls to get the two girls ready at once. After half an hour afterwards [the] sister came to me and said [unnamed woman] refused to dress. I at once interviewed her and advised her to return. It was all no use, she said she did not wish to return to Kerry or part with her child. I must say it is an extraordinary change in her. Had she received this information six months ago, she would have walked home [and] now she refuses to go even if any if her people come for her.111

The matron further stated that while they did their best for all the girls, the inmate could not be maintained free of charge and called on the Kerry board to continue payment: the board refused and discontinued its contribution towards the woman’s maintenance.112 The record does not state whether she left Bessborough, but this case reveals that women were at times unwilling to leave. The emotional stress of leaving her child undoubtedly informed her judgement, although her hesitancy to return to Kerry also suggests that the institution may have helped her to avoid stigmatisation. The unwillingness of the KBHPA to continue the financial maintenance indicated strains in the relationship between local government and religious authorities. Officials were also concerned that women stayed for too short a period in mother and baby homes. In 1934 the DLGPH complained that parents often did not allow women ‘to complete [their] training’ in mother and baby homes.113 In late 1932 the parents of an inmate in Bessborough sought her return to the family home. The Bessborough authorities believed that a longer stay in the home would be ‘beneficial and mean much to her future’.114 Parents did at times attempt to remove their daughters from institutions. The religious authorities did not have full control over the women’s stay in Bessborough. In 1933 the Kerry County Home’s matron reported to the KBHPA that the ‘friends’ of a woman in Bessborough were ‘anxious to have her returned home’. The Revd Mother in Bessborough stated that the 16-year-old and her 5-week-old child should remain for a term to ‘teach the girl to rear her child’, which would aid her future and prevent a ‘second lapse’.115 However, the KBHPA decided against the matron’s recommendations and approved the mother and child’s removal from the home to her ‘friends’. On this occasion unnamed ‘friends’ succeeded in getting the girl and her child’s removal despite the wishes of the religious authorities. Financial power was in the hands of the local authority and the termination of payment led to the removal of inmates from Bessborough. Local authorities often decided how long they were willing to maintain women in homes despite the 1927 Relief Commission’s recommendation that they should act on the advice of the ‘superior or matron’ of

100

the end of the irish poor law?

institutions regarding discharges.116 At times local authorities limited their commitment to unmarried mothers out of a desire to economise and to reduce the burden on the ratepayers.117 By the early 1930s the county Clare children’s home in Kilrush was closed after concerns over the institution’s drain on the rates.118 The dynamics that surrounded committal and removal were further revealed when a 19-year-old pregnant woman was admitted to the Kerry County Home and then transferred to the Cork Bessborough Home. Her committal was originally arranged by a local middle-class woman, M.G., who was approached by the pregnant woman’s mother for ‘help and advice’. M.G. initially wrote directly to the Revd Mother in Bessborough who advised her to get an admission note from the local authorities.119 The KBHPA said that the pregnant woman had to be first admitted to the county home after which her transfer to Bessborough would be arranged.120 Soon after her placement in Bessborough her father – a small farmer in poor circumstances – wrote to the secretary of the KBHPA seeking his daughter’s return. In turn the KBHPA’s secretary, O’Mahony, wrote to M.G. asking if the woman’s removal from Bessborough was in accordance with the desires of the persons who were responsible for ‘incurring expense’ to send her to the county home initially.121 M.G. replied that she ‘very strongly’ opposed the girl’s return. She believed that her parents lacked ‘the character to control her’ and that she was likely to again fall under the ‘evil influences’ which were instrumental in her ‘downfall’.122 M.G. also stated that she would be a bad example to her sisters and the neighbouring girls who would get the impression that ‘they may come and go as they please’ from Bessborough.123 Evidently, the pregnant woman was viewed as a danger to her local community and needed to be hidden away. Local decision-making was influenced by a range of factors including fear of relapse and contagion, and the perceived character of the parents. Class bias was also evident and the opinion of the ‘respectable’ woman was sought by the local government official over that of the financially poor parents of the pregnant women. The voice of the pregnant female was not heard in this case. Another example further illustrates that power over women’s confinement in mother and baby homes lay in the hands of the authorities. In 1932 a pregnant single woman was committed to Bessborough by the KBHPA. The father of the child-to-be agreed to pay a weekly maintenance of 7s 6d until the child was 16 under the Illegitimate Children (Affiliation Orders) Act, 1930.124 Subsequently, the father arrived at Bessborough with the intention of marrying the girl and taking her to London. The Revd Mother refused to sanction his request



single mothers and institutionalisation 101

because he had no money or work ‘to provide her with’.125 He was also denied a meeting with the mother-to-be; the Revd Mother stated: ‘the girl was not in a fit state of mind to see him. We have had a great deal of anxiety with her since she came [and] an interview under the circumstances would undo all we had done.’126 At one level this case points towards the carceral nature of the institution and the control and power the religious authorities had over the women in their care. However, the picture was complex, and the Revd Mother’s circumspection about the father’s financial ability illustrated some concern for the mother’s future welfare. It is evident from much of this evidence that the women had limited, if any, say on their confinement. Parents, central and local government officials and religious authorities determined if these women entered and their length of stay. It seems women had little ability to leave of their own free will and there were instances of women fleeing Bessborough. In 1932 a Bessborough inmate from Kerry who was receiving medical attention in Cork District Hospital fled and failed to return.127 There is limited evidence of the fate of the women who left the religiously run mother and baby homes. As displayed in Table 3, between 1935/36 and 1938/39 a total of 961 women were discharged from the three Sacred Heart mother and baby homes. The majority of the women, 531, were returned to their parents or relatives, 309 were sent to ­‘situations’ – a euphemism for employment – 24 were married and 85 were designated as ‘others’, in an indication that they may have been sent to institutions such as Magdalene Laundries or to different houses of the order in England; there were twelve maternal deaths. The destination of women after discharge also depended on the institution they were in, which points to a lack of conformity across the Sacred Heart homes. For Table 3 Destination of discharged unmarried mothers from the three Sacred Heart mother and baby homes, 1935/36–1938/39

Women returned to their   parents or relatives Women sent to situations/   employment Married Others Maternal deaths Total

Bessborough

Roscrea

Castlepollard

Total

108

286

137

531

148

80

81

309

8 43 3 310

11 33 4 414

5 9 5 237

24 85 12 961

Source: DLGPH Annual Reports, 1935/36–1938/39

102

the end of the irish poor law?

example, more women were likely to be sent to ‘situations’ than to their families from Bessborough than from Roscrea or Castlepollard. Some women were sent to different houses of the order in England. In 1932 the DLGPH reported that ten women had been placed in England from Bessborough, four of whom had subsequently left the Sisters and were reputedly ‘earning good wages’.128 These outcomes were considered successful and helped to justify the existence of the homes and their moral redemptive objectives. The DLGPH believed that the training the women received led to employment and that there was a sufficient demand from employers for maids from the homes.129 Women who were placed in a ‘situation’ were expected to make a financial contribution to the maintenance of their children. The amount depended on the woman’s wages and the general rule was that the women were allowed to retain £10 annually with the remainder going to the board of health.130 More positively, the finding of employment for women potentially allowed them to rebuild their lives free of the stigma associated with their ‘fall’, an objective which was promoted by many government officials including Miss Fitzgerald-Kenney. Interestingly, some women appear to have left the homes with their children. In 1935/36 119 women discharged from the three Sacred Heart homes were accompanied by their children, indicating that they returned home to their families.131 There is also evidence to suggest that some unmarried mothers and their children were supported outside institutions on home assistance. On 31 March 1936 918 illegitimate children and their mothers were relieved in this fashion by local authorities.132 Despite the highly moralistic, harsh and stigmatising attitudes regarding lone motherhood and illegitimacy, unmarried mothers sometimes managed to remain with their children and in receipt of non-­­institutional local authority assistance. However, the majority of women left the three Sacred Heart mother and baby homes – for example 188 in 1936 – without their children. The DLGPH reported that children were adopted from the Sacred Heart institutions although adoption was not legalised in Ireland until 1952, much later than the introduction of the measure in Britain in 1926 and in Northern Ireland in 1929. As shown in Table 4, in the period between 1934/35 and 1936/37 83 children were adopted from these homes.133 For the following three years – 1937/38 to 1939/40 – the department reported that 101 children were either adopted through societies or privately or sent to schools. Some women ended up back in the local authority system, although the DLGPH stressed the success of mother and baby homes. At times the women were deemed too unsuitable for the homes and returned



single mothers and institutionalisation 103 Table 4 Children discharged from the three Sacred Heart mother and baby homes, 1935/36–1938/39

Children discharged

Number

Children taken by parents Children boarded out by local authorities* Adopted through societies or privately, or sent to schools Died Total

393 147 101 206 847

*Forty of these children were boarded out by local authorities (for a detailed account of the boarding-out system, see chapter 4). Source: DLGPH Annual Reports, 1935/36–1938/39

to county homes. This was evident in 1927 when the officials in Bessborough refused to re-admit a 22-year-old woman who had previously spent two years in the institution. The sister in charge wrote to the South Cork Board of Public Assistance stating that the inmate had previously left because of her ‘temper’ and that during her stay her conduct was ‘very unsatisfactory’ and ‘insubordinate’ and they considered ‘her a very low type’. Bessborough’s Mother Superior informed the Cork board that she thought it ‘advisable not to admit her’.134 There were cases of women who became pregnant again who returned to the county homes. This was the situation in Kerry in 1934 when a woman who had previously spent five years in Bessborough ‘got into trouble again’ and re-entered the county home in Killarney.135 It is evident that the positive picture portrayed of the homes’ success in the official reports was far from accurate, although it is difficult to state how many women ‘relapsed’ or were returned to county homes. The voices of these institutionalised women are rarely heard in the records that this book is based on, resulting in limited insights into their personal attitudes and experiences. However, women’s movement and freedom was restricted in these mother and baby homes and discipline was strict. Recent testimony from a former midwife employed in Bessborough during the 1950s portrays a cruel and carceral daily regime which involved hard labour.136 As already highlighted in this chapter, the evidence of Egan at the 1927 Relief Commission alluded to an extensive labour regime, although the local authority records reveal little else regarding conditions. Greater insight, however, into the admission and removal of women from Bessborough has been demonstrated in this book. Despite official claims that women ‘voluntarily’ entered mother and baby homes, women often had limited input into decisionmaking processes. The official policy of local and central government

104

the end of the irish poor law?

was to transfer as many ‘suitable’ cases to mother and baby homes as possible in an attempt to free up county homes of unmarried mothers. Decisions on the placing and removal of women in Bessborough lay in the hands of the religious authorities, and especially the local government authorities which funded the women’s maintenance. At times, parents and ‘friends’ of the women could force a removal, although on other occasions the parents’ wishes, particularly if they were poor, were ignored. Lone mothers had limited impact on their committal to or removal from Bessborough. Unmarried mothers, repeat offenders and county homes Large numbers of unmarried mothers remained in county homes although mother and baby homes represented the state’s preferred type of provision. The 1927 Relief Commission reported that there were 1,020 unmarried mothers institutionalised nationally; 235 were in special institutions and the rest remained in county homes.137 Throughout the inter-war period 70 per cent of unmarried mothers still found their way to county homes, despite the official policy of placing them in mother and baby homes or other institutions.138 County homes continued to play the largest role in the institutionalisation of unmarried mothers throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s despite repeated calls for more ‘suitable’ accommodation.139 On 31 March 1938 841 unmarried mothers remained in county homes.140 As early as 1932 the DLGPH acknowledged the issue and reported that such cases remained an ‘intractable problem’.141 DLGPH officials also called on local authorities to commit women to Magdalene Laundries; this was the case in 1931 when the inspector, Crofts, recommended to the Kerry board that the matron ‘should try to influence the more frequent offenders to go into a Magdalene Asylum’.142 Local authorities in Cork and Kerry were slow to adopt such measures. Up to seven Magdalene Laundries in the Irish Free State acted as ‘extern’ institutions for local authorities, which could legally receive women from boards of health and public assistance: none of these were in either Kerry or Cork for the period of this study – the Cork Good Shepherd Convent at Sunday’s Well became an extern institution for the SCBPA in 1952.143 As outlined in the 2013 McAleese Report, the number of committals of unmarried mothers by local authorities into these institutions was much smaller than the numbers transferred to mother and baby homes. The McAleese Report identified a mere ten cases of committal of women from local authorities to Magdalene Laundries for the period 1922–70, although the report states that this is undoubtedly an underestimate.144



single mothers and institutionalisation 105

Welfare provision failed to provide single mothers with multiple children with any practical solutions beyond the county home.145 The inertia in policy contrasted with the frequent moral outcry concerning unmarried mothers. The continued maintenance of unmarried mothers in county homes was highly problematic for local administrators. In 1924 the Kerry County Home’s matron, Sister M. Gerrard Conroy, complained to the KBHPA that unmarried mothers were sent from throughout the county although the institution was solely to relieve the elderly and infirm poor.146 In September 1924 the matron refused to admit two pregnant unmarried women on the grounds that the district hospitals (formerly workhouses; see chapter 5) should provide ‘arrangements’ for all maternity cases. The DLGPH-appointed commissioner informed the matron that ‘she should not refuse admissions’.147 However, the matron’s protests were not lost, and in February 1926 the commissioner issued a circular to all medical officials and head nurses in the district hospitals that no maternity cases, ‘whether an expectant unmarried mother or otherwise’, were to be sent to the county home but had to be treated in their respective districts.148 The order had little effect, and in October 1926 the matron complained that the female wing of the home was congested and ‘expectant mothers’ continued to be sent to the home.149 In Kerry the county home was on the same site as the Killarney District Hospital leading to further complaints that the unmarried mothers were being relieved next to the ‘ordinary’ patients. In 1926 the hospital’s head nurse, Sister Dominic, wrote to the KBHPA asking if they considered it ‘fair or just’ that unmarried mothers were mixed with the married expectant mothers of ‘the decent poor and paying patients’. She complained: ‘to my mind this would give rise to very serious objections which may have grave results’.150 The board agreed and made arrangements for different maternity wards for married and unmarried women. This case highlighted the challenges that faced administrators in providing medical relief to those who were considered the respectable and unrespectable classes on what was effectively the same site. The Carrigan Committee of 1930–31 also reported complaints that married women received maternity treatment in the same wards as unmarried mothers.151 County homes are frequently included in the ‘architecture of containment’ thesis, although James M. Smith does state that they afforded women greater freedom.152 However, county homes differed from mother and baby homes and Magdalene Laundries. Virginia Crossman’s work on the pre-1920 Irish poor law demonstrates that single mothers could enter and leave workhouses of their own accord.153 Nineteenthcentury workhouse regimes could be punitive, disciplined and harsh, but

106

the end of the irish poor law?

these were very different from Magdalene Laundries, which required female inmates to give up their rights and their identity and were closer to the ‘total’ institutions identified in the influential work of Erving Goffman.154 County homes were large multifunctional welfare institutions where the strict silent regimes and restrictions on freedom of movement in Magdalene Laundries were not as evident. Nineteenth-century female workhouse inmates had some notions of rights and entitlements, which when transgressed could lead to official inquiries and in more extreme cases ‘workhouse riots’.155 It has been argued elsewhere that much of the debate on females in post-1922 institutions has focused on victimhood, which strips women of their agency and suggests that they were incapable of or unwilling to assert their power and individuality.156 Evidence from the Kerry County Home reveals that notions of victimhood were not always applicable to the women in these institutions. Riots were uncommon by the twentieth century, although occasionally there were official inquiries into infringements of the rights of females. In 1926 an inquiry was held in the Kerry County Home after a female inmate claimed that a clerk in the offices of the board was the father of her illegitimate child. The charges led to an official inquiry that heard testimonies from the woman and man involved, along with the matron and other officials in the institution. It transpired that the women were frequently given day passes to leave the home. Subsequently, the KBHPA instructed the matron to be more careful in issuing passes and recommended that unmarried mothers should not be allowed to leave temporarily ‘unless under proper supervision’.157 The regime in the Kerry County Home was less restrictive than in many other institutions. Another inquiry into a case of ‘immorality’ in the Kerry County Home in 1930 further demonstrated that women had some agency in these institutions and that their concerns were at times considered by officials. A married woman, M.F., an inmate of the county home, claimed that a male ward attendant was the father of one of her children. This case is evidence of the complexity of the personal lives of many in institutions. The woman had a total of four children, two illegitimate and another born after her marriage. She claimed that her fourth child was fathered by the attendant after an act of ‘immorality’ while she was an inmate in the county home.158 She had initially entered the institution in 1927, nine months after her marriage, and remained in the county home until June 1929. Under the poor law women at times used workhouses as a place of refuge: for example, in 1915 in Achill a Mrs Sweeny entered the workhouse with her children and refused to return to her husband who she feared.159 M.F. was officially admitted because of destitution and there was no evidence of domestic abuse,



single mothers and institutionalisation 107

although there could be myriad reasons why she sought entry after only nine months of marriage. During her time in the home, she claimed that she had a consensual sexual relationship with the attendant and stated: ‘I knew I was doing wrong in having misconduct. I have no complaint of the misconduct.’160 She described how she regularly got up at 6.45 a.m. to attend the district hospital where she worked as a ward maid. On her way to the hospital she claimed she met the attendant in the dining hall where ‘the misconduct took place’. The matron of the county home, Sister Conroy, also gave evidence. She described how ‘on rising’ in the morning unmarried mothers were supposed to ‘make their beds and tidy up generally’. The matron informed the inquiry that sometimes M.F.’s baby was brought by another girl to the nursery although the women usually took their children there. The matron stated that this was not ‘very irregular’ because the ‘girls helped one another’.161 She confirmed that M.F. and two other unmarried mothers worked in the district hospital although she also contended that it was unusual for her to go alone without being accompanied by a nun. She did not dispute M.F.’s claims and believed that it was ‘quite possible’ that she was alone with the attendant during the times stated. She also informed the inquiry that she and the other sisters did not come to the home until 8 a.m. after attending mass in the nearby Convent of Mercy. The matron was not in favour of unmarried mothers working in the district hospital and informed the inquiry: ‘it has been in force since amalgamation. I disapproved of this arrangement and on two occasions reported so to the board. No action was taken by the board… I consider it a system liable to abuse and I disapprove.’ The attendant, D.L., rejected the allegations and claimed he was innocent. The woman’s husband gave evidence that claimed he was the father of the child and that he regularly visited her in the county home where he had ‘intimacy’ and ‘marital relations’. He was unperturbed by his wife’s claims that the clerk was the father, and after finding out about the allegations he wrote to her: ‘just a few lines to let you know do not be troubled over this for I am as mad as ever about you, and I will take you out again when it is all over… Love I am praying to God to have you out again as I am mad about you.’162 After examining the evidence and Inspector Geraghty’s report, the DLGPH ruled that on the basis of the evidence, particularly that of the husband, the charge could not be proved.163 It found that unmarried mothers were unsupervised between 7–8 a.m. every morning and that this arrangement was unsatisfactory. The KBHPA was informed that the minister believed a ‘responsible officer’ should be placed on duty during those hours. The department also queried why M.F. was in the

108

the end of the irish poor law?

county home and her husband relieved of responsibility for her maintenance. The matron simply replied that she was admitted by the HAO on account of destitution and she did not provide any other explanation why the husband was not charged for her maintenance. It has been suggested that Irish historiography’s willingness to explore sexuality, particularly transgressions of sexual purity, may owe more than a little to ‘historical voyeurism’.164 However, exploring this particular case reveals an important point – that women were often active agents rather than victims controlled by religious and state authorities. Their sexual behaviour tells us that the confines of these institutions did not fully limit their freedom, which saw them engaged in consensual sexual activity. County homes were not as carceral as other institutions and female inmates had some flexibility in their everyday lives. Conditions in county homes were harsh although the disciplinary regimes were not as strict as in other institutions, including mother and baby homes and Magdalene Laundries. Many of the women undertook unpaid labour in county homes and other local authority institutions. This was evident in Kerry. As early as February 1924 the DLGPH informed the KBHPA that it did not consider it ‘desirable’ to employ unmarried mothers from the county home as ward maids in the Killarney District Hospital.165 However, such women continued to be employed in the district hospital and by 1930 the department again called on the Kerry board to stop the practice.166 In the county home the female inmates undertook extensive work. During the 1920s the institution had an average daily population of 400, many of whom were suffering from chronic geriatric and mental illness and disability, and in need of frequent care. In 1925 the medical officer in the home recommended that twenty-two of the unmarried mothers receive two extra eggs each in their daily diet because they were ‘required to perform work of an objectionable nature’.167 When the DLGPH further inquired, the matron replied and highlighted the harsh work regimes which these women suffered. She stated that there were no paid ward maids in the home and wrote that: the girls are engaged from twelve-to-fourteen hours each day in general cleaning of yards (male and females), the removal of lavatory utensils, cleaning of spittoons, laundry work, which is the heaviest. Imagine the daily wash after twenty-or-thirty incontinent patients. It is often so filthy and unhealthy that it is almost inhuman to expect it done without the help of the necessary laundry machinery.168

The matron further stated that six of the girls were placed on a special diet of milk and egg, because of what she described as their ‘threatened



single mothers and institutionalisation 109

physical breakdown’. Another four girls had to be removed to the fever hospital only to be readmitted to the home as ‘almost physical wrecks’.169 As a result, the matron believed the appointment of paid maids in the home had to be ‘seriously considered’.170 The matron’s forthrightness to the DLGPH was partly motivated by her wish to get full-time paid employees. The lack of paid wardens or other able-bodied inmates ensured that the home was reliant on the women’s labour. Economising local authorities did not want the cost of extra employees for labour which could be done by unmarried mothers for free. This contrasted with the commercial laundry work synonymous with Magdalene Laundries, which was partly designed to promote redemption through hard labour. Laundry work was a feature of other institutions for different reasons. In the Westmoreland Lock Hospital women received remuneration for such labour in an attempt to persuade them to remain longer for treatment.171 Unpaid labour was evident not only in the Kerry County Home but throughout similar institutions in independent Ireland. The 1939 Public Assistance Act reaffirmed that inmates of county homes could be required to work as a condition of their relief. As late as 1951 an interdepartmental government report on county homes highlighted that matrons often relied on unmarried mothers to do the menial work necessary for the running of these institutions.172 James Deeny noted that after his appointment as Chief Medical Officer he inspected county homes where he encountered unmarried mothers. He recounted how many of the women were elderly and had been in the institutions for thirty or forty years, having been disowned by their families. He outlined how some had spent a lifetime dressed in ‘workhouse garb’ and working without pay. Deeny described how the work could be dangerous and that women occasionally died after falling into large cauldrons that boiled hundreds of potatoes.173 There was little public discussion on conditions in the county homes although occasionally the treatment of inmates did enter the public domain. In October 1927 complaints came before the KBHPA regarding the county home. A Kerry county councillor, Patrick Casey, wrote to the KBHPA complaining about a ‘cruel and unchristian act’ committed against a ‘respectable woman’ who had entered the home. It was alleged that on entry Mrs O’B.’s hair was ‘bobbed’ by the matron despite her protests and appeals.174 Casey believed that the inmate was a ‘cultured lady’ but married to a ‘waster’.175 The matron, Sister Conroy, defended her actions and stated that on admission the woman and three children were ‘generally unclean’ and that their hair had to be cut ‘owing to the verminous condition of their heads’.176 The matron strongly contested

110

the end of the irish poor law?

Casey’s allegations of abuse and highlighted that the Sisters of Mercy had been attached to the institution for forty years and that this was the first time that ‘any action of theirs towards the poor under their care [had] been condemned or described as degraded, cruel or unchristian’.177 Although it is difficult to determine whether such actions were reflective of systematically abusive regimes, this case demonstrates that women were often subjected to harsh treatment in county homes. Also, the woman’s perceived respectability seemed to have played a part in the case coming to the attention of the authorities. In general, the voice of patients and inmates was rarely heard in the administration of the homes. Conclusion Policies towards unmarried mothers were not only couched in the dominant moralistic attitudes in Irish society towards sexuality and illegitimacy, but were influenced by the demarcation of the poor between the deserving and undeserving classes. While such attitudes were hardened by the increased influence of Catholicism in the Free State, they were also based on a social bias that held the poor responsible for their own poverty. These notions were consistent with other aspects of poor law reform, particularly in relation to the able-bodied, throughout the revolutionary years and the first decades of the Irish Free State. A combination of deeply entrenched social, gender and moral prejudices informed local authority welfare policy generally, particularly with regard to unmarried mothers. Despite promulgating many of these beliefs, central government failed to develop any integrated national policies or to financially support the network of local authority mother and baby homes envisaged by the 1927 Relief Commission. In turn, religiously run voluntary institutions such as Bessborough in Cork were developed. However, both central and local government were widely involved in the committal of women into the voluntary run mother and baby homes. The DLGPH systematically examined lists of unmarried mothers in the Kerry County Home, and most likely others, and identified suitable cases for transfer to Bessborough. In many cases of committal, the local authority acted under direct instruction from the DLGPH. The length of stay of women in mother and baby homes was often determined by local authorities and Bessborough was unable to maintain women without the capitation grant paid by the KBHPA. Bessborough Home effectively acted as a branch of local authority institutional welfare despite its voluntary status. It also appears that these institutions were carceral in nature; conditions were punitive and at times women were held against their will.



single mothers and institutionalisation 111

Also, decisions about entry and the length of stay of women in these institutions were made by local and central government officials, parents, religious authorities and even ‘respectable’ members of the wider community who saw such women as a threat to the moral fabric of localities. These institutions were part of the ‘architecture of containment’ identified by J. M. Smith, although their place in Irish society remains complex. Government officials and religious authorities claimed that the homes protected women from the harsh and unforgiving societal climate for unwed mothers and also provided them with training opportunities. County homes were more varied institutions. Previously, under the poor law, workhouses could act as a place of refuge and relief for unmarried mothers; female inmates also demonstrated a degree of agency in their engagement with the poor law, and indoor relief was never as strict, disciplined or regimented as in redemptive institutions such as Magdalene Asylums. By the 1920s, local and central government officials widely articulated the need to remove unmarried mothers from county homes to make them more appealing to the ‘respectable poor’. Paradoxically, local authorities remained reliant on the unpaid labour of these women for the maintenance of both county homes and, in the case of Kerry, the associated district hospital. Without other local authority institutions for women with multiple illegitimate children – considered beyond redemption – such cases remained in county homes. These women often had to endure tough working lives. County homes were somewhat more flexible than other institutions such as mother and baby homes. Female inmates demonstrated an ability to influence their lives within the walls of the institution, in a continuation of trends from the poor law period although they were stigmatised by an unforgiving social and moral climate. Notes 1 For a full discussion of the impact the reforms had on hospital services, see chapter 5. 2 See Report of the Inter-Department Group on Mother and Baby Homes, http:/dcya.gov.ie/documents/publications/20140716InterdepartReportM othBabyHomes.pdf; http://static.rasset.ie/documents/news/un-document. pdf (accessed 2 September 2014). 3 Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries, p. xiii. 4 O’Sullivan and O’Donnell, Coercive Confinement in Ireland, pp. x, 7. 5 For studies on Magdalene Asylums, see F. Finnegan, Do Penance or Perish: Magdalene Asylums in Ireland (Kilkenny: Congrave Press,

112

the end of the irish poor law?

2001); L. McCormick, Regulating Sexuality: Women in TwentiethCentury Northern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009); Luddy, Prostitution and Irish Society, ch. 3; C. Shepard, ‘The Legion  of  Mary,  unmarried mothers and the expansion of the welfare state in Northern Ireland, 1945–55’, in S. O. Connor and C. Shepard (eds), Women, Social  and Cultural Change in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009), pp. 124–47. 6 For works on unmarried mothers, see Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child; M. Luddy, ‘Moral rescue and unmarried mothers in Ireland in the 1920s’, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 30:6 (2001), 797–817; P. M. Garrett, ‘The abnormal flight: migration and repatriation of Irish unmarried mothers’, Social History, 25:3 (2000), 330–43; Garrett, Social Work and Irish People in Britain: Historical and Contemporary Responses to Irish Children and Families (Bristol: Policy Press, 2004); J. Redmond, ‘In the family way and away from the family: examining the evidence for Irish unmarried mothers in Britain, 1920s–40s’, in E. Farrell (ed.), ‘She Said She Was in the Family Way’: Pregnancy and Infancy in Modern Ireland (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012), pp. 163–85. For infanticide, see C. Rattigan, ‘What Else Could I Do?’ Single Motherhood and Infanticide, Ireland 1900–1950 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2012); E. Farrell, ‘A Most Diabolical Deed’: Infanticide and Irish Society, 1850– 1900 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). 7 Luddy, ‘Unmarried mothers in Ireland’, 110. 8 Cork Weekly Examiner, 21 July 1923. 9 Luddy, ‘Unmarried mothers in Ireland’, 112, 115. For the development of maternity services for married women, see C. Breathnach, ‘Medicalizing the female reproductive cycle in rural Ireland, 1926–56’, Historical Research, 85:230 (2012), 674–90. Magdalene Asylums continued to be perceived as a corrective to prostitution although their use changed in the twentieth century; see Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries, p. xviii. 10 ‘Inspectors’ report of sworn inquiry into the Cork vice-guardians, 1923’. 11 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 27. 12 OL: Folder 01/01/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Daniel Egan, Secretary of the South Cork Board of Assistance, 9 Feb. 1926, p. 26–69. 13 Ibid., p. 26–69. 14 Ibid., p. 26–69. 15 Ibid., p. 26–69. 16 OL: Folder 02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: W. J. Broderick, 10 Feb. 1926, p. 27–57. 17 OL: Folder 02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Seán O’Farrell, 10 Feb. 1926, p. 27–106. 18 DLGPH Annual Report, 1928–9, p. 113.



single mothers and institutionalisation 113

19 OL: Folder 02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Daniel Egan, 9 Feb. 1926, p. 26–68. 20 OL: Folder 02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Séamus MacLysaght, June 1925, p. 37. MacLysaght gave evidence relating to the Dublin Pelletstown Home, which was run by the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul. 21 OL: Folder 01/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Daniel Egan, 9 Feb. 1926, p. 26–68. 22 Luddy, ‘Unmarried mothers in Ireland’, 116. 23 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 68. 24 Luddy, ‘Unmarried mothers in Ireland’, 117. 25 DLGPH Annual Report, 1928–9, p. 113. 26 DLGPH Annual Report, 1930–1, p. 129. 27 OL: Folder 02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Seán O’Farrell, 11 Feb. 1926, p. 27–107. 28 Ibid., p. 27–79. 29 OL: Folder 01/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Monahan, 9 Feb. 1926, p. 26–84. 30 OL: Folder 02/0/0010BA, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Broderick, 10 Feb. 1926, p. 27–57. 31 OL: Folder 04/0/0010BA, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Mrs Power, 14 July 1925, p. 8–9. 32 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 68. 33 Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child, p. 189. 34 Crossman, Poverty and the Poor Law in Ireland, p. 197. 35 For a survey, see D. Ferriter, Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland (London: Profile Books, 2009), p. 102. 36 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 69. 37 Ibid., p. 69. 38 Ibid., p. 68. 39 Ibid., p. 69. 40 Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries, p. 11. 41 Ibid., p. 10. 42 Fr Devane, ‘The unmarried mother and the poor law commission’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 31 (1928), 580. 43 Ibid., 579. 44 Ibid., 580. 45 DLGPH Annual Report, 1931–2, p. 127. 46 DLGPH Annual Report, 1935–6, p. 161. 47 DLGPH Annual Report, 1931–2, p. 129. 48 DLGPH Annual Report, 1929–30, p. 92. 49 DLGPH Annual Report, 1933–4, p. 146.

114

the end of the irish poor law?

50 The Hospitals Commission. First General Report, 1933–4 (Dublin: Stationery Office, Saorstát Éireann, 1939). 51 DLGPH Annual Report, 1933–4, p. 146; The Hospitals Commission. First General Report, p. 54. 52 DLGPH Annual Report, 1930–1, p. 130. 53 DLGPH Annual Report, 1927–8, p, 113. 54 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, pp. 69, 89. 55 DLGPH Annual Report, 1937–8, p. 71. 56 Sagart, ‘How to deal with the unmarried mother’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 20 (1922), 148. 57 The Hospitals Commission. First General Report, 1933–34, p. 54. For an examination of the Irish Hospitals Commission and the Irish Sweepstakes, see chapter 5. 58 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 30. 59 DLGPH Annual Report, 1937–8, p. 71. 60 The Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation has ­­identified fourteen institutions that can be designated as mother and baby homes; see Commission of Investigation (Mother and Baby Homes and Certain Related Matters) Order 2015 (February 2015), p. 8, http://www.dcya. gov.ie/documents/mother_and_baby_homes/20150220MotherandBabyC ommissionSI57of2015.pdf (accessed 20 Feb. 2015). 61 DLGPH Annual Report, 1925–7, p. 110. 62 Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child, p. 178. 63 Ferriter, Occasions of Sin, p. 399. 64 Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child, p. 179. 65 Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, p. 321. 66 S. L. McAvoy, ‘Regulation of sexuality in the Irish Free State, 1929–35’, in Jones and Malcolm (eds), Medicine, Disease and the State in Ireland, p. 258. 67 Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child, p. 190. 68 DLGPH Annual Report, 1935–6, p. 87. 69 For an outline of death rates in mother and baby homes, see Department of Children and Youth Affairs, Report of the Inter-Departmental Group on Mother and Baby Homes (July, 2014), p. 15, http://dcya.gov.ie/documents/ publications/20140716InterdepartReportMothBabyHomes.pdf (accessed 2 September 2014). 70 J. Deeny, To Cure and to Care: Memoirs of a Chief Medical Officer (Dublin: The Glendale Press, 1989), p. 96. 71 Ibid., p. 85. 72 DLGPH Annual Report, 1931–2, p. 129. 73 DLGPH Annual Report, 1934–5, p. 179. 74 Ibid., p. 411. 75 Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child, p. 187.



single mothers and institutionalisation 115

76 Magdalene Laundries have been comprehensively examined for the nineteenth century; see Luddy, Prostitution and Irish Society, pp. 76–123; For a review of the recent historical and interdisciplinary literature on these institutions, see S. Riordan, ‘Review article: challenging bad nuns: Ireland’s Magdalene laundries’, The Irish Review, 42 (2010), 120–7. 77 Department of Justice and Equality, Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to Establish the Facts of State Involvement with the Magdalene Laundries [McAleese Report] (Dublin, 2013), http://justice.ie/en/JELR/ Pages/MagdaleneRpt2013 (accessed 2 September 2014). 78 KCL: KBHPA/A/4, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 8 Dec. 1926. 79 Ibid. 80 OL: Folder 02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Seán O’Farrell p. 28–87. 81 Luddy, ‘Moral rescue’, 799. 82 Cork Evening Echo, 6 Oct. 1927. 83 Ibid. 84 KCL: KBHPA/A/13, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 3 Mar. 1931. 85 KCL: KBHPA/A/13, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 18 Mar. 1931. 86 KCL: KBHPA/A/18, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 28 Aug. 1933. 87 KCL: KBHPA/B/32, Correspondence, DLGPH to KBHPA, 23 Jan. 1930. 88 KCL: KBHPA/B/32, Correspondence, DLGPH to KBHPA, 30 July 1930. 89 Ibid. 90 KCL: KBHPA/B/32, Correspondence, DLGPH to KBHPA, 25 June 1930; KBHPA to DLGPH, 26 June 1930. 91 KCL: KBHPA/A/13, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 18 Mar. 1931. 92 KCL: KBHPA/A/14, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 21 July 1931. 93 KCL: KBHPA/A/14, Minute Book: ‘Report by Mrs Crofts, DLGPH Inspector’, 15 Oct. 1931. 94 Ibid. 95 KCL: KBHPA/A/18, Minute Book: ‘Report by Mr S. Geraghty’, 13 Nov. 1933. 96 Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries, p. xiii; O’Sullivan and O’Donnell, Coercive Confinement in Ireland, p. 7. 97 Magdalene Laundries have been the focus of extensive popular and media attention in the form of investigative documentaries, film and art; see Luddy, Prostitution and Irish Society, p. 76. 98 McAleese Report; for an official state apology by An Taoiseach Enda Kenny, see DÉD, vol. 793, book 1, http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/ debates%20authoring/debateswebpack.nsf/(indexlookupdail)/20130219~ HH?opendocument#HH00200 (accessed 2 September 2014). 99 McAleese Report, ‘Executive summary’, p. xiii. 100 Jacinta Prunty, a professional historian and a Sister of the Holy Faith, has undertaken an analysis of registers for Dublin’s Sean MacDermott Street Magdalene Asylum and states that the median length of stay of women post-1922 was 3.6 weeks; see J. Prunty, ‘Where compassion went awry’,

116

the end of the irish poor law?

The Tablet: The International Catholic Weekly News, 16 Mar. 2013, http:// archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/16th-march-2013/20/where-­­compassionwent-awry-jacinta-prunty-irish-pr (accessed 2 September 2014). 101 L. McCormick, ‘Sinister sisters? The portrayal of Ireland’s Magdalene Asylums in popular culture’, Cultural and Social History, 2:3 (2005), 373. 102 McCormick, Regulating Sexuality; Shepard, ‘The Legion of Mary’, pp. 124–47. 103 Luddy, Prostitution and Irish Society, p. 122. 104 See James M. Smith, ‘Inquiry needed to compel congregations to reveal truth about treatment of Magdalenes’, Irish Times, 24 July 2013. 105 ‘Human Rights Committee: Concluding observations on the fourth p ­­ eriodic report of Ireland’, http://static.rasset.ie/documents/news/un-­­document.pdf, p. 4. 106 DLGPH Annual Report, 1930–1, p. 130. 107 DLGPH Annual Report, 1934–5, p. 411. 108 Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child, p. 189. 109 KCL: KBHPA/A/13, Minute Book: Matron’s Office to KBHPH, 3 Mar. 1931. 110 KCL: KBHPA/A/17, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 3 Feb. 1933. 111 KCL: KBHPA/B/51, Correspondence: Bessborough Sacred Heart Home & Hospital to KBHPA, 13 Feb. 1933. 112 Ibid. 113 DLGPH Annual Report, 1933–4, p. 146. 114 KCL: KBHPA/B43, Correspondence Book, 1932: Bessborough Sacred Heart Home & Hospital to KBHPA, 30 Nov. 1932. 115 KCL: KBHPA/A/18, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 10 July 1933. 116 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 69. 117 Luddy, ‘Unmarried mothers in Ireland’, 114. 118 This was on the site of a former workhouse, which was transformed into an institution for unmarried mothers and their children under the County Scheme 1923. By 1932 the DLGPH no longer listed it as a local authority institution; see Luddy, ‘Unmarried mothers in Ireland’, p. 114; Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 24; DLGPH Annual Report, 1929–30, p. 91; DLGPH Annual Report, 1931–2, p. 127. 119 KCL: KBHPA/B/51, Correspondence: M.G. to O’Mahony, 30 Jan. 1933. 120 KCL: KBHPA/B/51, Correspondence: O’Mahony to M.G., 1 Feb. 1933. 121 KCL: KBHPA/B/51, Correspondence: O’Mahony to M.G., 26 Apr. 1933. 122 KCL: KBHPA/B/51, Correspondence: M.G. to O’Mahony, 29 Apr. 1933. 123 Ibid. 124 KCL: KBHPA/B/43, Correspondence: ‘Case under Illegitimate Children (Affiliation Orders) Act, 1930’, 10 Nov. 1932. 125 KCL: KBHPA/B/43, Correspondence: Revd Mother, Sacred Heart, Bessborough to KBHPA, 30 Nov. 1932.



single mothers and institutionalisation 117

126 Ibid. 127 KCL: KBHPA/B/43, Correspondence: DLGPH to KBHPA, 6 Feb. 1932. 128 DLGPH Annual Report, 1932–3, p. 130. 129 DLGPH Annual Report, 1937–8, p. 97. 130 DLGPH Annual Report, 1934–5, p. 179. 131 DLGPH Annual Report, 1935–6, p. 178. 132 Ibid., p. 382. 133 DLGPH Annual Reports, 1934–5 to 1936–7. 134 CCCA: SCBPA, Minute Book, 13 Aug. 1927. 135 KCL: KBHPA/B/54, Correspondence: DLGPH to KBHPA, 17 Oct. 1934. 136 J. Goulding, The Light in the Window (Dublin: Poolbeg Press, 1998). 137 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 151. 138 Luddy, ‘Unmarried mothers in Ireland’, 115. 139 Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child, p. 183. 140 DLGPH Annual Report, 1937–8, p. 71. 141 DLGPH Annual Report, 1931–2, p. 128. 142 KCL: KBHPA/A/14, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 21 July 1931. 143 McAleese Report, p. 451. 144 The report also cites 135 referrals by local authorities to mother and baby homes, which seems a significant under-representation considering that the Sacred Heart homes housed extensive numbers of local authority cases; McAleese Report, p. 470. 145 Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child, p. 178. 146 KCL: KBHPA/A/2, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 22 Apr. 1924. 147 KCL: KBHPA/A/2, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 21 Sept. 1924. 148 KCL: KBHPA/A/4, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 15 Feb. 1926. 149 KCL: KBHPA/A/4, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 27 Oct. 1926. 150 KCL: KBHPA/A/4, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 15 June 1926. 151 McAvoy, ‘The regulation of sexuality’. 152 Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries, p. 53. 153 Crossman, Poverty and the Poor Law in Ireland, p. 196 154 V. Crossman, ‘Viewing women, family and sexuality through the prism of the Irish Poor Laws’, Women’s History Review, 15:4 (2006), 547; E. Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991). 155 Crossman, ‘Viewing women, family and sexuality’, 548; Crossman, ‘The New Ross Workhouse riot of 1887: nationalism, class and the Irish Poor Laws’, Past & Present, 179:1 (2003), 135–58; Clark, ‘Wild workhouse girls’. 156 Maguire, Precarious Childhood, p. 11. 157 KCL: KBHPA/A/16, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 23 Aug. 1932. 158 Nineteenth-century workhouses were also sites of illicit sexual encounters; see E. Farrell, ‘“A very immoral establishment”: the crime of infanticide and class status in Ireland, 1850–1900’, in E. Farrell (ed.), ‘She Said

118

the end of the irish poor law?

She Was in the Family Way’: Pregnancy and Infancy in Modern Ireland (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012), pp. 205–22. 159 V. Crossman, ‘“Cribbed, contained, and confined”: the care of children under the Irish Poor Law, 1850–1920’, Éire-Ireland, 44:1&2 (2009), 59. 160 KCL: KBHPA/B/32, Correspondence 1930: ‘Inquiry in alleged occurrences of immorality in the County Home: Copy of evidence of Mrs K’. 161 KCL: KBHPA/B/32, Correspondence 1930: ‘Inquiry in alleged occurrences of immorality in the County Home: Copy of evidence of Matron’. 162 KCL: KBHPA/B/32, Correspondence 1930: ‘Inquiry in alleged occurrences of immorality in the County Home: Copy of letter from J.F to M.F’. 163 KCL: KBHPA/B/32, Correspondence: DLGPH to KBHPA, 5 May 1930. 164 Riordan, ‘Review article: challenging bad nuns’, 127. 165 KCL: KBHPA/A/2, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 21 Feb. 1924. 166 KCL: KBHPA/B/32, Correspondence: DLGPH to KBHPA, 26 June 1930. 167 KCL: KBHPA/A/3, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 21 Sept. 1925. 168 KCL: KBHPA/A/3, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 28 Oct. 1925. 169 Ibid. 170 Ibid. 171 S. Riordan, ‘In search of a broadminded saint: the Westmorland Lock Hospital in the twentieth century’, Irish Economic and Social History, 39 (2012), 76. 172 Report of the Interdepartmental Committee Appointed to Examine the Question of the Reconstruction and Replacement of County Homes (1951), Department of Taoiseach Files, NAI, qtd in Luddy, ‘Unmarried mothers in Ireland’, 115. 173 Deeny, To Cure and to Care, p. 148. 174 Kerryman, 29 Oct. 1927. 175 Ibid. 176 Ibid. 177 Ibid.

4

Child welfare and local authorities

By the early twentieth century it was widely recognised that workhouses were unsuitable institutions for children. However, many continued to be relieved in workhouses and by the early 1920s renewed efforts were being made to remove children from the newly named county homes. This chapter examines the relationship between local boards of health and public assistance and industrial schools. Furthermore it explores the boarding-out system and highlights that this provision was at times preferred to institutionalisation. This chapter’s focus is largely on the KBHPA and provides a case study of local authority child welfare ­­policies. Women, children and home assistance The early Free State poor law reforms extended women’s entitlement to relief. Under the pre-1921 system, able-bodied single women, widows with one child, deserted wives and women whose husbands were in jail or in asylums were not eligible for outdoor relief.1 These restrictions were removed under the 1923 Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act, and entitlement to home assistance was notionally based on need, regardless of sex or marital status. This extension brought women and children into the home assistance system who were formerly only entitled to indoor workhouse relief. This was demonstrated in 1927: 6,924 widows were home assistance recipients, of whom 3,528 had no children and 632 had a single child.2 As highlighted in chapter 2, women and children were more likely to receive home assistance than men. They were viewed as more deserving, and the workforce’s gendered nature cut many women off from the male-orientated social insurance system.3 This gender imbalance was demonstrated in 1931/32 when the DLGPH published the categories of home assistance recipients: 27,895 adult females received home assistance in this year compared to 18,100 males; 11,109 of this

120

the end of the irish poor law?

female cohort were dependent on their husbands, while the remaining 16,786 received relief independently, and were most probably widowed, although single, abandoned and unmarried mothers were also relieved. Of this group, 9,649 were permanently disabled, 1,364 were temporarily disabled and 5,439 were able-bodied.4 The number of children relieved by home assistance reached a high of 16,199 in 1934 before dropping to a low of 7,515 in 1939.5 This decrease was brought about by the introduction of Unemployment Assistance and the widows’ and orphans’ pension. Home assistance also relieved unmarried mothers and their children – the number of illegitimate children relieved by home assistance grew from 499 in 1932 to 1,500 in 1945.6 Throughout the 1920s, widows and their children were considered the most deserving of the poor for whom home assistance, still associated with the ignominy of the poor law by many, was viewed as unsuitable. The 1927 Relief Commission criticised the low level of relief payments for widows. It also argued that home assistance impinged on the ‘self-respect’ of women who were reduced to destitution as a result of the death of their husband. The commission complained that widows had to endure a weekly ‘parade’ of their poverty in the HAO’s offices.7 The commission reported that widows should be granted state pensions and fully removed from the relief system. The commissioners also recommended the introduction of a contributory widows’ pension scheme similar to the provision introduced in Britain and Northern Ireland during the mid-1920s. If the government could not introduce such insurance-type schemes, the commission recommended that local authorities should receive a state grant that met half the cost of relief for ‘necessitous widows with children’.8 The widows’ and orphans’ pension was not introduced until 1935 and state grants to subsidise local authority costs did not emerge.9 For much of the 1920s and 1930s poor widows remained reliant on home assistance, which remained stigmatising as well as the payments being low. In general, however, an increase in the number of children relieved in poor circumstances by home assistance was recorded, which demonstrated that the new relief system did provide for more families. Local authority child welfare in the new Free State Boarding-out was initially introduced in Ireland under the Irish Poor Law Amendment Act (1862) to provide an alternative to the workhouse for young inmates. This system allowed boards of guardians to maintain children in family and domestic settings in what amounted to an early foster service. Further legislation in 1869 and under the Pauper Children



child welfare and local authorities 121

(Ireland) Act (1898) extended the measure to children up to the age of 15. For much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries local boards of guardians preferred institutional relief to boarding-out for workhouse children. Under the early Free State reforms the measure was further extended and children no longer had to be inmates to be boarded out; this theoretically helped children to avoid the stigma of the county home. Local authorities could directly board out orphaned or deserted children, although permission had to be granted by the DLGPH to board out other categories including illegitimate children and those from destitute families.10 Despite these reforms the measure failed to prove popular in the early Free State and the number of boarded-out children decreased from 2,226 on 1 October 1913 to 1,907 on 31 March 1925.11 This contrasted with the overall trend in outdoor relief/home assistance which witnessed a significant increase in the same period (see chapter 2). By 31 March 1931 2,826 children were in local authority institutions. Of this cohort, the DLGPH reported that 1,219 were sick, accident or bodily harm cases and were most probably hospital patients. A further twenty-six were considered intellectually disabled. The remaining 1,581 children in local authority institutions were not sick or disabled, but were likely to have been institutionalised as a result of poverty, illegitimacy, desertion or orphandom.12 Throughout the 1930s a steady decrease of such children in county homes occurred and by 1940 the number had reduced to 1,076.13 During the same period the number of boarded-out children increased from 1,906 in 1926 to 2,349 in 1939. This points to the transfer – albeit slow and gradual – of children from county homes to boarding-out situations. Many children, particularly those who were illegitimate, remained in county homes although the removal of children from these institutions was a key objective of the Free State poor law reforms. By 1927 there were fifty-five children resident in the South Cork County Home despite the fact that the original Cork county scheme did not provide for child welfare in the institution. Many of the children were of school age but they did not receive any education.14 In the South Tipperary County Home in Cashel there were children of various ages including seven boys who attended school outside the home. Revelations that the boys mixed with older male inmates in a ‘small cramped room’ prompted the 1927 Relief Commission to complain that the home was in a perilous condition and ‘altogether unsuitable for boys’.15 In Kerry a separate school was originally planned but this never materialised.16 In county Clare, the establishment of the Kilrush Mother and Baby Home was an attempt to provide specialist local authority provision for unmarried mothers and their children. This home suffered from poor conditions,

122

the end of the irish poor law?

and the 1927 Relief Commission complained that it lacked a water supply and had ‘no proper’ kitchen, refectory, bathing or sanitary facilities. There were 105 children in the Sister of Mercy-run home of whom fifty-seven were over two years of age. Thirty-seven children attended school outside the home.17 In Galway, the Bon Secours-run Tuam Mother and Baby Home was another example of a local authority institution that provided separate accommodation for unmarried mothers and children. As with the Kilrush home, the 1927 Relief Commission complained that the home suffered from ‘dilapidation and decay’ which undermined its ‘usefulness’.18 As outlined in chapter 3, these homes had extremely high infant mortality rates. In some county schemes institutional relief for children in county homes was allowed. The Meath County Home in Trim relieved children from the ages of 3 to 15 although the 1927 Relief Commission described it as a ‘gloomy depressing institution’ that had only reconfigured for the ‘worse’ since its workhouse days.19 The continued relief of children in county homes represented a failure of the poor law reforms. Many of the initial county schemes did not countenance child welfare in these institutions where conditions were far from ideal. Some children’s homes were established in former workhouses; however, these were mostly for unmarried mothers and illegitimate children, and local authorities failed to invest the necessary funds to upgrade the often run-down institutions. Institutional welfare versus boarding-out From the mid-nineteenth century child welfare debates centred on the alternative merits of placing children in institutions or domestic settings. As already noted, boarding out was not initially popular under the poor law. Officials were fearful of what might be found in many Irish homes, and it was widely articulated that pauper children were more likely to be inculcated in good habits and Christian values in the workhouse than in the homes of the poor.20 Local authorities were often unwilling to extend what was seen as a form of outdoor relief. The suitability of many potential boarding-out parents was also questioned. On the other hand, the virtues of bringing up children in a family setting were articulated by reformers, philanthropists and some local and central government officials.21 The Irish Free State inherited the structure and administration of boarding-out from the poor law. Two national inspectors oversaw the system’s implementation, and boards of health and public assistance, which took on the boards of guardians’ role, were responsible for its



child welfare and local authorities 123

local administration. Child welfare policy in the Irish Free State is largely viewed as favouring the institutionalisation of children, although debates on the suitability of institutional welfare over boarding-out continued in the 1920s and 1930s.22 As early as 1922 Ernest Blythe, the Minister of Local Government and Public Health, commented in Dáil Éireann on the boarding-out versus industrial school debate. With reference to regional discrepancies, he described the boarding-out system as ‘exceedingly successful’ in some counties but added that in other areas industrial schools were favoured by local authorities.23 Blythe did not indicate a preference for either provision, although he did state that the more punitive reformatory system was not appropriate for destitute children. More vocal support for boarding-out was evident from other sources. In 1923 the feminist and nationalist senator Jennie Wyse Power described domestic child care as the most ‘natural thing’ and believed that few family homes had as bad an influence on a child as a ‘big institution’.24 Many DLGPH officials also favoured boarding-out. In 1924 the DLGPH wrote to the KBHPA calling for children in the county home to be boarded out. The government department opined that the successful upbringing of these children was best achieved in the families of the ‘respectable poor’.25 The 1927 Relief Commission reignited the debate about institutional care over boarding-out for destitute children. In July 1925 some female witnesses heavily criticised industrial schools. Mrs Power, a commissioner for the poor laws in Dublin, stated that the ‘rearing’ of children in industrials schools was not conducive to producing the best kind of citizen. She believed that such children benefited more from being boarded out in ‘decent homes’ in the countryside even if the foster-parents were poor.26 Miss M. J. Cruice – a founder and secretary of the private Dublin Catholic mother and baby home named St Patrick’s Guild – gave similar evidence. She claimed that children received inadequate training in industrial schools: ‘[Industrial schooling] is too automatic; there is too much system, and the children are not prepared for the world. The great thing against the industrial schools is that the heart is not cultivated in their young children.’27 Other witnesses including Miss Lister, the DLGPH’s boarding-out inspector, also criticised industrial schools and promoted boarding-out. The second departmental inspector for boarding-out, Miss FitzgeraldKenney, believed that the removal of children from families should be the last resort and that the potential consequences for the child’s future had to be first fully considered. She also rejected the premise that the economic condition of a family should lead to institutionalisation and stated: ‘poverty alone should never be permitted to sever families’.28 An

124

the end of the irish poor law?

erstwhile poor law guardian from Cork, Maria Lynch, also promoted foster-parents, who she believed were nearly as good as birth mothers in rearing children.29 Such public criticism of industrial schools unsurprisingly provoked a bellicose response from their supporters. A meeting of the managers of female industrial schools claimed that the statements made at the inquiry were ‘wild’ and ‘unfounded’.30 A former industrial school inmate named Bridget Crosbie praised her treatment in a letter to the Irish Times. She described herself as ‘an industrial school girl’ who had left the institution six years earlier. Crosbie outlined how she had recently returned to the school after becoming ill and that the nuns had sought medical treatment for her. She also claimed that many of the former residents were ‘doing well’ and that they looked upon the school as a ‘good home’.31 In light of the criticisms, the Relief Commission allowed evidence from some managers of industrial schools and also visited a number of institutions.32 The managers of the Artane and Clonmel Industrial Schools gave evidence and heavily condemned boarding-out. Brother O’Ryan, the manager of the Artane Industrial School in Dublin and secretary of the Industrial Schools Association, ardently supported institutionalisation over boarding-out. He argued that families who took boarded-out children lacked ‘philanthropy’ and were only motivated by ‘pecuniary profit’.33 O’Ryan believed that boarded-out children, particularly those who were illegitimate, were stigmatised and ‘shunned and despised’ in schools and localities. He also averred that boarded-out children were often used as ‘drudges’ on farms and were frequently kept from school to mind the house or drive the creamery cart.34 O’Ryan believed life opportunities for boarded-out children were limited and he questioned: ‘are they all to gravitate to swell the farm labour market, and is there to be no hope for them to rise above a life of drudgery, no matter what their antecedents or their talents?’35 O’Ryan argued that industrial schools provided children with opportunities to prosper later in life. He stated that children in these institutions did not suffer from the stigmatisation or discrimination that boarded-out children were subjected to in society. The training that children received in trades, according to O’Ryan, enabled them ‘to enter life self-supporting, self-reliant, and self-respecting’. Furthermore, he believed that many former industrial school children went on to have ‘successful’ careers not just in trades but also in commerce and even professional life.36 Advocating traditional child protection ideas, O’Ryan claimed that it was the state’s responsibility to undertake the upbringing of destitute and neglected children and to provide them with the opportunities to make the most of their strengths and abilities, which allowed



child welfare and local authorities 125

for their useful membership of the community.37 The justification for industrial schools was couched in notions of citizenship which gave governments greater responsibility to meet the needs of their citizens. Such state intervention was a preventative measure and would provide children with opportunities in later life which their family circumstances or boarding-out did not offer. O’Ryan’s lexicon of ‘opportunity’ also resonated with the ‘regeneration of the nation’ ideology prominent in interwar welfare debates in Britain and internationally, which attempted to improve populations for the benefit of the wider community.38 O’Ryan’s accentuation of the positive features of industrial schools was misplaced. The 1936 Commission of Inquiry into the Reformatory and Industrial School System (Cussen Report) criticised the educational standard in the Artane home. It also expressed dissatisfaction with the supervision and after-care of children who left the industrial schools run by the Christian Brothers.39 Unsurprisingly, O’Ryan failed to address the issue of institutional abuse – both sexual and physical – which the 2009 Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Ryan Report) identified in the industrial school system generally and in Artane in particular.40 The accounts of former residents’ experiences, including that of Peter Tyrrell who was in Letterfrack Industrial School during the 1920s and 1930s, depict the system’s abusive and punitive regimes.41 O’Ryan articulated the belief that institutional child welfare was more morally favourable than many domestic environments. He informed the commission that children should be sent away from the ‘parental influence’ if the ‘salvation’ of the child was necessary.42 O’Ryan also believed that in many cases children whose father had died should be institutionalised. The commissioner Glynn put it to O’Ryan that the ‘decent class’ of widowed mother who financially struggled should be maintained with enough means to look after her children. O’Ryan contended that many of these widows subsequently became alcoholics. The families of the majority of children in Artane, according to O’Ryan, were unable to ‘safeguard’ or ‘bring them up properly’. These parents were deemed ‘unfit’, ‘fond of drink’ and not ‘the proper guardians’ of their children.43 The death of a parent and poverty were seen as manifesting ‘immoral’ circumstances which threatened children. Similarly, boarding-out was criticised for stigmatising children, while the lack of after-care opportunities and the financial motivations of foster-parents were highlighted. The institutionalisation of children in industrial schools was couched in the rhetoric of child protection. Much of this emanated from later ­nineteenth-century concerns over child neglect, which brought about the establishment of the NSPCC in 1884 and subsequent child protection ­­

126

the end of the irish poor law?

legislation including the 1907 Probation of Offenders Act and the 1908 Children’s Act.44 By 1920 in Britain there was a groundswell of opinion against industrial schools among penologists, judicial figures and reformers, and committals fell, leading to the closure of some institutions.45 Industrial schools continued to receive much support in Ireland. The 1927 Relief Commission commended the ‘excellent’ management of industrial schools and believed that every effort to provide pupils with a ‘life of self-dependence’ was made.46 The commission failed to favour institutionalisation or boarding-out and recommended the continuation of both measures. It merely stated that neither measure could be condemned because of ‘occasional failures’ and that there was ‘good’ in both systems. Child protection and reform were invariably targeted at the poorest sections of the working classes, often families who most conspicuously failed to live ‘respectable’ lives in Britain and Ireland.47 The historian Sarah-Anne Buckley has highlighted how poorer children were committed to punitive institutions including industrial schools, reformatories and borstals through processes in which NSPCC workers, teachers, social workers and doctors were complicit.48 The proponents of industrial schools failed to promote other forms of assistance including extended family and child support. Such an emphasis on children at risk rather than family support remained a significant problem in social work throughout the twentieth century.49 The state had an extensive role in the committal and financial maintenance of children in industrial schools, as well as regulatory roles, although the institutions were largely run by religious authorities. Industrial schools were under the remit of the Department of Education while the courts system, which committed many children, was under the Department of Justice. The third arm of state involvement, and the focus of this study, was the DLGPH and local boards of health and public assistance. Local authorities could maintain children in certified industrial schools and until 1939 had the right to inspect children under such care.50 In 1914 local boards of guardians maintained a mere 100 children in industrial schools. The growth in the industrial school population after the establishment of the Free State was partly driven by local authority committal of children to these institutions.51 Historians view this as representative of the state’s preference for institutionalisation combined with local authority unwillingness to commit resources and energy in maintaining boarded-out children in domestic environments.52 The remainder of this chapter examines the child welfare policies enacted by the KBHPA. It provides an in-depth case study of local



child welfare and local authorities 127

authority child welfare policies which is currently lacking in the wider historiography. Institutional local authority child welfare The Kerry case demonstrates that the practice of placing children from county homes in industrial schools was prominent during the early Free State. Industrial schools, mostly under the control of Catholic religious authorities, solicited children from local authorities during a period of workhouse amalgamation and reform. In 1922 the Cork local authorities were informed by the Department of Education that industrial schools were willing to take children.53 In June 1923 St Vincent’s Industrial School in Dublin wrote to the KBHPA seeking children for committal. In turn, the Kerry authorities ordered the transfer of some county home children to the institution.54 In November 1923 the KBHPA sent seventeen children to industrial schools.55 In March 1924 a further twelve children were sent by the Kerry authorities to industrial schools in Killarney and Passage West in Cork.56 The annual number of committals of children to Kerry’s industrial schools grew from twenty in 1920 to sixty-six in 1921 and reduced to thirty-eight in 1922. In 1923 forty-six children were committed to four industrial schools in Kerry. Nationally, 1923 witnessed a significant increase when 1,068 were committed compared to 820 in 1922, 808 in 1921 and 763 in 1920 This suggests that, countrywide, workhouse children were transferred to industrial schools under the poor law reforms of the early 1920s.57 Ambiguity surrounded the removal of children from county homes to industrial schools. In 1926 the DLGPH wrote to the KBHPA seeking the names and committal orders of all the children sent from the Kerry County Home to industrial schools since 1922. While the Kerry authorities provided details of twelve children sent between April 1925 and February 1926, it could not account for the earlier period, although the board’s secretary acknowledged that children had been transferred.58 The number sent to the Killarney Industrial School was finally ascertained from the industrial school authorities and not the KBHPA. Between 1922 and 1926 twenty-two females and five males were transferred from the county home to the Killarney Industrial School.59 Details of children sent to other industrial schools did not emerge. Such confusion over committal processes was not confined to Kerry. As late as 1935 the boarding-out inspector, Fitzgerald-Kenney, believed that such institutionalisation was the only ‘explanation’ that could be given for the ‘whereabouts’ of the older children who were formerly dependent on the poor law.60 Such opaqueness was partly due to the chaos

128

the end of the irish poor law?

and confusion of the revolutionary period when the judicial system had largely broken down. This was alluded to by Ernest Blythe in a 1923 Seanad (Senate) debate when he commented that many children were sent to industrial schools without being committed by magistrates, the usual method of committal.61 Without court orders the legality of some committals may have been questionable. The Pauper Children (Ireland) Act 1898 permitted local boards of guardians to send orphaned and deserted workhouse children to certified industrial schools. In other cases, parental consent or a court order under the 1908 Children’s Act was needed for a committal. It is entirely possible that the confusion in Kerry resulted from the failure of the local government authorities to undertake the correct procedures. During the mid-1920s children continued to be transferred from the Kerry County Home to industrial schools. For the twelve months ending 31 March 1926 eleven children were committed to industrial schools from the county home. The age breakdown of this cohort was as follows: one 13-year-old, one 12-year-old, seven 5-year-olds and two 4-year-olds.62 In July the KBHPA paid capitation fees for thirty children who were originally resident in the county home for five different industrial schools. However, the KBHPA maintained more children in the county home and in July 1926 sixty-three children were in this institution. Of this cohort five were aged between 10 and 15 years, twenty-four between 4 and 9 years, twenty-three between 1 and 3 years and there were eleven infants under 12 months. The majority – thirtysix – were the illegitimate children of unmarried mothers resident in the home, eleven were orphaned or deserted, and nine were destitute legitimate children.63 The large number of children under 4 years of age (thirty-one) was reflective of the practice of keeping unmarried mothers with their children for up to three years in the Kerry County Home.64 In 1926 the local authority also maintained fourteen children in the Glin District School in county Limerick. Glin was a former workhouse that maintained and educated children from Limerick and North Kerry and was established in the 1890s by the LGB at the behest of the Catholic bishop – E. T. O’Dwyer – of Limerick.65 In 1928 the Catholic Christian Brothers-run St Joseph’s Industrial School was transferred from Limerick city to this site. All of the transferred children, bar a single one-year-old, were aged between 11 and 14 – they were either orphaned or deserted and no illegitimate child was maintained in the school.66 The 2009 Ryan Commission heavily criticised conditions in this industrial school in the twentieth century and identified a severe regime of corporal punishment and major deficiencies in care facilities. The children were also under threat of sexual abuse from a number



child welfare and local authorities 129

of Christian Brothers.67 In 1926 the KBHPA maintained 107 children in institutions including the county home, Glin District School and industrial schools. The majority of children were in the county home. It should be noted that more children were institutionalised in industrial schools – for example 317 in 1923 – in county Kerry. The majority of these children were committed by other processes which did not involve the KBHPA. It has been contended that twentieth-century Irish social policy destroyed family life that failed to conform to middle-class norms and expectations. The constitutional and custodial rights of poor parents were regularly trampled on with impunity when thousands of children were removed from their homes on the grounds of poverty, neglect and illegitimacy.68 This was particularly evident in the industrial school system, which was upheld every day by an army of NSPCC inspectors and district court justices who sat in judgement on poor families and institutionalised children whose parents did not fit the mould of appropriate and respectable parenthood.69 Local authority public assistance was different from the industrial schools system, although similar harsh attitudes were evident among local and central government officials towards those classified as the immoral poor. In August 1931 the DLGPH inspector, Crofts, examined the county home and reported that seven widows or married women deserted by their husbands were in the institution. According to Crofts, many of these women had children in industrial schools and the county home and were not of ‘good moral character’. Crofts recommended that the children in the county home should be sent to industrial schools ‘as soon as possible’.70 The policy was to separate children in such circumstances from their immoral mothers. Provision such as home assistance which could have kept families together was often denied to those considered as having failed to live up to middle-class values. Social bias was prominent among NSPCC inspectors who often described the poor who came under their notice as ‘lazy’ and ‘useless’.71 Similar attitudes were prevalent among local authority welfare officials in Kerry. In May 1936 a married father of fifteen children with a small agricultural holding of five acres applied to the KBHPA for an increase in his weekly home assistance payment of 6s 6d. The SAO – William Hill – reported that the board should not entertain an application because the father was ‘too lazy’ and the family lived in ‘wretched’ conditions.72 Perceptions of the father’s working life and the family’s living conditions coloured the official’s judgement despite their obvious poverty. Such moralistic attitudes often prevented authorities from providing greater family support, which could in turn lead to the institutionalisation of children.

130

the end of the irish poor law?

The children of the deserving poor were also often institutionalised. In 1934 a Kerry HAO recommended the removal of a child from a family. The girl was described as ‘healthy and natural’ but with no application for study, and with a tendency to ‘wander from home’. Her father had a debilitating spine injury, and the HAO believed that the parents were incapable of caring for the girl’s future welfare and recommended her committal to an ‘industrial school or some home’.73 While the board passed the matter on to the NSPCC, in this case poverty and the parent’s disability initiated the process of institutionalisation of a child perceived as potentially problematic; moralistic attitudes towards the parents did not feature. In other cases, parents influenced the type of welfare provision received by their children. In 1935 a Tralee widower opposed the planned boarding-out of his daughter with his mother-in-law, as he believed that the industrial school was preferable. In turn, the KBHPA rescinded a previous resolution to board out the girl and instead committed her to the Tralee Industrial School with the aid of a local NSPCC inspector named J. J. Scott.74 In November 1934 a child was removed from the county home by her mother who refused to agree to the local authority’s plans to board her out. By January 1935 this child was in an industrial school, which may have been the mother’s preferred option; however, the KBHPA eventually ordered the girl to be boarded out from the industrial school.75 Parents attempted to influence, sometimes successfully, local authority decision-making and occasionally favoured institutionalisation over boarding-out, although it is impossible to determine the motivations of parents in many cases. Distressed parents in perilous and desperate circumstances also sought to give up their children. Parental committal of children to institutions was often brought about by familial crisis. This was demonstrated in 1926 when the case of an unemployed widower came before the KBHPA. Four of the widower’s seven children had already been committed to industrial schools in Killarney and Tralee by an NSPCC inspector named Daly. The KBHPA’s secretary, O’Mahony, was concerned that the children would be left unattended if the father gained employment and recommended that they should be sent to ‘some home’.76 However, Daly believed that the father was intentionally attempting to ‘get rid of his children’. He commented: ‘I will not nor would I be allowed to break-up his home’. He opined that the father could easily have got his wife’s relatives to look after the children and stated: ‘whilst he is working he is bound to care for them properly like hundreds of people who are similarly circumstanced’.77 Eight months later in August 1926, Daly reiterated the father’s chicanery and claimed



child welfare and local authorities 131

that he was doing his ‘upmost’ to institutionalise the children.78 In this particular case, the local authorities and the NSPCC resisted the committal of all the children to an industrial school or the county home. This case highlights the general lack of welfare provision, and the only alternative to institutionalisation cited by the officials was for the father to turn to familial support. These cases also indicate that home assistance officials and local authorities often worked in tandem with the voluntary NSPCC whose primary remit was child protection, and which was central to the institutionalisation of children into industrial schools. It has been argued that welfare policies were disadvantageous to lone fathers who were viewed as being incapable of caring for their children properly. It was also believed that lone fathers should not have sole responsibility for their daughters.79 In the case just outlined, the local authority was unwilling to grant home assistance to the father. However, concerns regarding the children centred on their care while the father was working rather than moralistic attitudes towards lone male parenthood. In another case a poor labourer’s two children were admitted to the county home after the mother died during childbirth. The HAO informed the KBHPA that the man had to ‘take care of’ five children between the ages of 4 and 11.80 The children’s admission was a form of relief for a family struggling after the mother’s death. The remaining children stayed with the father, indicating that concerns over lone fatherhood did not feature in this case. Local policy was often determined by a need to relieve distressed families, often as cheaply as possible, as opposed to measures designed for the reformation of families perceived as ‘unsuitable’. The lack of a female presence in a home did lead to the institutionalisation of children in other cases. In 1934 SAO Shanahan wrote to the KBHPA concerning a report he had received from the NSPCC inspector, Scott, regarding the condition of a family home in Castleisland town. On inspection it was found that two children were in the home – one was suffering from ‘infantile paralysis’ or polio and the other was deemed intellectually disabled or ‘an idiot’. There was no female to look after the welfare of these children after the mother had died and the eldest daughter had left the home upon marriage.81 The father, a stonemason, willingly had the children removed to the county home and the board recommended that he make a financial contribution towards their relief.82 In this instance, some concern was aired that there was no female presence in the home. The institutionalisation of the children, however, was brought about by the lack of any real welfare alternative for the care of disabled children as opposed to moralistic concerns over single parenthood.

132

the end of the irish poor law?

Institutionalisation of children was also utilised by distressed parents as a form of temporary relief during periods of familial crisis. In February 1935 two children were admitted to the county home after their mother was hospitalised; it was agreed that the children would be discharged when the mother returned home. These children lived in destitute conditions and the house was reportedly a ‘mud cabin’ that was deemed ‘unfit for human habitation’. The beds in the house were made of ‘twigs and straw’ and bags stitched together were used as bed coverings. The HAO recommended bed clothing in the short term and the building of a labourer’s cottage for the family in the long term.83 Despite the family’s obvious poverty, the long-term removal of the children from the family home was not mooted, indicating that destitution alone did not always lead to institutionalisation. The institutionalisation of children by local boards of health and public assistance was underpinned by a range of complex dynamics. Moralistic attitudes, which undermined the rights of poor parents and single mothers who failed to conform to wider societal values, were evident in the decision-making of HAOs and local boards. Local government child welfare played a role in the ‘nation’s architecture of containment’ outlined by academics including James M. Smith and others.84 This was made up of a punitive network of welfare institutions, which were primarily concerned with the incarceration and moral reform of those who transgressed social mores. However, social control was not the only factor in the institutionalisation of children. County homes were at times utilised as a means of relieving destitute and poverty-stricken families, particularly on occasions such as a parent’s death or incapacitation. The lack of other forms of family welfare support – ­children’s allowance was not introduced until 1944 – led to the institutionalisation of children in both industrial schools and county homes.85 This mirrored earlier relief trends under the poor law: by the early twentieth century the break-up of nuclear families was the most common reason for family groups to enter workhouses.86 Local authority child welfare policy and non-institutional relief Local authorities often favoured other types of welfare over institutionalisation. In 1936 an SAO visited the house of a man in the county Kerry town of Castleisland on the recommendation of the NSPCC inspector and the Revd Mother of the local Catholic presentation convent. The SAO reported that the man had eleven children under 15 years of age. He stated that the living conditions were ‘really bad’ and that two children slept on a mattress on the kitchen floor and two others in boxes



child welfare and local authorities 133

‘shaped like cradles’. The SAO recommended that the father be granted 5s a week to rent a better house, and that the family should be provided with a cottage under a new housing scheme in the town. Without this assistance the official believed that the children’s ‘health’ was in danger.87 In this case the break-up and institutionalisation of the family was not mooted and increased welfare was the preferred option. Intransigence, defeatism and an unwillingness to commit to more bureaucracy by local government officials have been seen as factors that undermined the extension of boarding-out in independent Ireland.88 This was alluded to in the DLGPH boarding-out inspectors’ annual reports. In 1933 Inspector Fitzgerald-Kenney noted that institutionalisation was easily resorted to when a family was perceived to have had become ‘submerged’ with poverty.89 This was evident under the former poor law when many local guardians, supported by ratepayers, were simply not prepared to devote either the necessary time or resources to provide specialist services for children.90 As already highlighted, the modest growth in the number of boarded-out children demonstrates the overall failure of local authorities to fully adopt the system in the 1920s and 1930s. Its cost more than doubled from £18,621 in 1914 to £39,122 in 1939. This, however, represented an increase in the payments although the actual number of children boarded out did not grow at a similar rate. This growth in costs was most rapid in the early years of the Free State when countrywide expenditure rose from £16,946 in 1922/23 to £26,293 in 1925/26.91 Statistics for South Cork are only available from 1924/25, although from that year onwards a gradual increase did occur which was in keeping with the national trend. During 1924/25 in county Kerry only £500 was spent on boarding-out; by 1938/39 this had increased over three-fold to £1,852. This represented a growth in Kerry from significantly below the national rate per 1,000 of population in 1924/25 to slightly above the rate by the mid-to-late 1930s (see Figure 4.1). The expansion in county Kerry’s boarding-out system was partly brought about by pressure from central government. The DLGPH frequently examined lists of children in the county home and identified cases for boarding-out.92 However, the process was beset with difficulties. In December 1933 the DLGPH questioned the KBHPA on the status of forty-five children in the Kerry County Home. The local authority reported that seven of the children were unsuitable for boarding-out because they had tuberculosis; several unsuccessful efforts were made to board out the remaining children who were aged 2 years and under.93 In turn, the DLGPH informed the board that it should advertise for fosterparents for children eligible for boarding-out in the county home.94 Advertising for the boarding-out of children often garnered a limited

134

the end of the irish poor law?

16.00 14.00 12.00 10.00 8.00

Kerry

6.00

Cork

4.00

Na onal

2.00

19

24 19 –25 25 19 –26 27 19 –28 28 19 –29 29 19 –30 30 19 –31 31 19 –32 32 19 –33 33 19 –34 34 19 –35 35 19 –36 36 19 –37 37 19 –38 38 –3 9

0.00

4.1  Expenditure on boarded-out children in Kerry, South Cork and the Irish Free State per 1,000 of population, 1924–39 Source: Local Taxation Returns

response. The KBHPA had previously advertised in 1923 for potential foster-parents to take boarded-out children, but no applications were received.95 The lack of appropriate families to take boarded-out children undermined the system’s progress. This was compounded by restrictions on the types of homes which children were permitted to be boarded out in. Elderly couples were seen as improper boarding-out parents because of the lack of potential support for the children after they died. Single women who wanted ‘company’ were not encouraged to take children. It was believed that older women often died before the children were able to fend for themselves, while younger single females were likely to make boys and girls into servants to attend to ‘their personal needs’.96 DLGPH officials argued that careful consideration in finding proper boardingout parents had to be undertaken and reported: One of the chief objects in good supervision is the development and training of the child, with the purpose always in view of binding him so closely to the family life of the home in which he is placed that gradually this influence becomes his directing guide during life.97

Evidently parents were to imbue in children a set of moral beliefs which were invariably tied to middle-class values. This resonated with the system under the poor law in which boarding-out afforded the ­­opportunity to disseminate middle-class beliefs, a method of supervising ­­



child welfare and local authorities 135

housekeeping practices, and a means of promoting domestic virtues which allowed for the setting of basic living standards for the poor.98 Foster-parents were required to live in a rural setting, have a healthy dwelling with wholesome water and a school in close proximity. The restrictions on the types of families that children could be boarded out to hindered expansion of provision. This was evident in 1931 when the DLGPH refused to sanction boarding-out to a childless married couple. The department informed the Kerry authority that it was not prepared to sanction the boarding-out of young children to homes where there were no other children for ‘companionship’ and that another home should be found.99 The KBHPA’s secretary, O’Mahony, disagreed with the department, stating that he had personally requested that the woman take the boy and that she would make a ‘very suitable foster-parent’. He acknowledged the advantages of placing boarded-out children in families with other children, but also believed that in nearly all such cases potential foster-children were sought by families for monetary gain. In contrast, he believed that foster-parents without any children were always anxious to ‘adopt’ and look after the child’s future interests when payment ceased. O’Mahony complained that the regulations undermined the system. He stated: ‘owing to the large number of children available for boarding-out, the procuring of suitable homes is becoming a difficult matter, and now that the Minister has objected to boarding-out in homes where are no other children, progress will be slower.’100 Local officials did not always abide by restrictions and children were often boarded out in homes that did not meet the desired standards. This was demonstrated in June 1933 when the department inspector, Fitzgerald-Kenney, complained of the condition of two boarded-out children in the county Kerry region of Kilcummin. She informed the DLGPH that the ‘ordinary local cottage’ was in an insanitary condition and that the bedroom floor was damp. She believed there was ‘little comfort’ in the one-bedroom house, although she did acknowledge that it was clean and the children were washed. Fitzgerald-Kenney was also concerned about the physical condition of one of the children who was reportedly ‘very thin’ and not a ‘strong child’. She also believed that the childless and elderly foster-mother was not sufficiently experienced to care for such ‘young children’. She did state that the other child was healthy and was ‘attached’ to her boarding-out mother.101 The KBHPA sought the opinion of the local dispensary doctor who stated that the girl was probably suffering from post-influenza debility. The doctor believed that the child was ‘not listless’ and had ‘normal’ mental facilities ­­ although she may have been ‘shy’ or ‘depressed’. He also believed that

136

the end of the irish poor law?

she was ‘getting as much and indeed probably more care’ than the average child in the district got from their parents.102 The doctor did confirm that the bedroom had a mud floor but argued that 90 per cent of the homes in the vicinity had such conditions. The SAO endorsed the doctor’s views and recommended the continued boarding-out of the child in the home. This example demonstrates the limitations of the regulations and ideals regarding boarding-out. The DLGPH inspector’s concerns centred on the elderly foster-parent, the poor sanitary condition of the home and the fact that one of the children was ill. These objections were overturned by the local officials who were swayed by the realities of poverty in everyday houses, the lack of other welfare provision and the apparent contentment of at least one of the boarded-out children in the home. Decision-making often involved input from various medical, local and central officials, indicating that at times the process could be thorough and that local authorities consulted all available expertise. Boarding-out was also hindered by the suitability of potential fosterparents’ homes and the local reputation of the family. In October 1934 six siblings whose father had died and whose mother was imprisoned were admitted to the Kerry County Home. The DLGPH directed the local authority to board out the children, preferably with relatives.103 The SAO visited the children’s wider family, but only two aunts were willing to take them. One aunt had a ‘very nice home’ and was able to take two of the children, but the second aunt was deemed unfit due to her home’s ‘general appearance’. The SAO feared that no other person would take the children because of their ‘family history’. The local Catholic priest refused to sign the necessary forms to board the remaining five children out with the ‘unsuitable’ aunt and called for their committal to industrial schools.104 The KBHPA recommended that two children be boarded out with the favourable aunt and the rest be sent to industrial schools. Evidently both the religious and local authorities considered the second aunt’s family to be immoral and preferred institutionalisation in such circumstances. Also, the mother’s imprisonment appeared to impact on the children’s reputation locally, which also undermined the local authority’s ability to find boarding-out parents. Despite these problems, the system – as demonstrated in Table 5 – had become the KBHPA’s main form of child welfare by the early 1930s. In March 1925 the KBHPA relieved 153 children of whom only thirty-five were boarded out; sixty were in the county home while the remaining fifty-eight were in other institutions, primarily industrial schools. By 1932 148 children were relieved by the local authority of which the majority – eight-seven – were boarded out, forty-five were in the county home and a mere fifteen were in other institutions. The



child welfare and local authorities 137 Table 5 Children maintained by the Kerry Board of Health and Public Assistance, 1925–32

Total number of children assisted   on 31 March annually Boarded out Hired out In county home In other institutions Illegitimate children

1925

1927

1930

1932

153

151

173

148

35 0 60 58 55

44 2 76 29 58

84 0 52 37 44

87 1 45 15 41

Source: KCL: KBHPA/B/42, Statistical Returns: Organisation Services & Finance, Years ending March 1923–March 1932

use of this measure continued to increase in the 1930s and by March 1936 the KBHPA was boarding out 128 children. Nationally public assistance authorities were slower to relieve children via boarding-out. In 1930 a total of 4,271 children were maintained by local authorities: 1,960 were boarded out, 1,786 were in local authority institutions including county homes and children’s homes, and 413 were maintained in ‘other institutions’, which included industrial schools.105 It is also important to note that more children ended up in industrial schools and reformatories – for example 4,960 in 1923 – generally, although the majority of these cases were committed by the NSPCC and the court system.106 This case study of the KBHPA policies, however, demonstrates that conflicting attitudes towards child welfare were evident among local public assistance authorities. In Kerry a preference for boarding-out was demonstrated by the mid-1930s, which was brought about by a combination of pressure from the DLGPH and the efforts of local officials. The DLGPH also promoted a policy of boarding children out with relatives where possible. This was viewed as being in the best interests of the children and wider family. Fitzgerald-Kenney argued that one of the ‘chief objectives’ of the boarding-out system was to keep ‘families together’. In 1935 she called on local boards of health and public assistance to board out children in county homes with their mothers’ families.107 Many children, particularly in cases of parental bereavement, were boarded out with relatives. This was demonstrated in May 1930 when the acting SAO, Dr Shanahan, recommended that the uncle of a disabled child – the mother had emigrated with her two other children to the United States – receive a boarding-out allowance. The SAO later reported that the home’s conditions were ‘all that could be desired’

138

the end of the irish poor law?

and that the child’s appearance ‘showed the utmost attention of kindhearted foster-parents’.108 The uncle was married with one child and had a farm of thirty acres, indicating a degree of social respectability. His aged mother also lived in the house. In the eyes of officialdom, this landowning nuclear and farming family provided the ideal circumstances for the boarding-out of children. The SAO stated that without the boarding-out allowance the child would be transferred to the county home and ‘lose all connection and communication with her relatives’.109 In this case, the local officials demonstrated concern for the child’s emotional well-being. The decision-making was also informed by an unwillingness to institutionalise the child and a desire for her to remain within the wider family. Cases such as this demonstrate that local public assistance authorities could adopt more progressive policies than merely institutionalising children as a form of social control. However, the uncle’s respectability also played a role and as already demonstrated local officials were unwilling to board out children in the homes of relatives considered immoral. The rights of the biological parents were often not considered. This was evident in 1935 when the KBHPA boarded out a child to her aunt’s family. The SAO reported that the aunt’s husband was a carpenter ‘in fairly good circumstances’ and was willing to give the child a trade. The biological mother was in the county home where she had another ‘illegitimate’ child and was not deemed a ‘suitable person to have the custody’ of her daughter.110 The maintenance of this unmarried mother with her two illegitimate children outside the county home was never considered. The mother’s perceived immorality contrasted drastically with her sister’s assumed respectability, good home life, and the opportunity for the child to receive a trade. The same social and gender prejudices as those that underpinned the industrial school system were evident in the KBHPA boarding-out policies. Entitlement to boarding-out allowances, similar to home assistance, was often vague and open to interpretation by both recipients and local authorities. This was demonstrated in 1929 and 1930 when a man, M.D., took over his sister’s small farm of thirteen acres after her committal to a mental hospital following her husband’s death. He had previously been a labourer with a yearly wage of £30, but claimed that he was compelled to leave this employment to look after his sister’s children.111 He committed two of these children to the county home, although he stated that he had made the ‘best arrangements possible’ for the family. One child returned to the family home after the HAO granted a ­boarding-out allowance of 5s per week and a £2 clothing annual ­­allowance. In August 1929 this payment was suspended on the grounds



child welfare and local authorities 139

that the ‘little holding was stocked’ with farm animals.112 In January 1930 M.D. applied for the allowance to be reinstated on the grounds that he could not maintain the boy and would be compelled to send him ‘back to the house’. Without the boarding-out allowance, he could not keep and ‘educate the boy’.113 According to the HAO the allowance was initially cut off by the KBHPA because one board member, acting on local information, believed that there was more animal stock on the farm – an indicator of financial stability – than M.D. admitted. The board believed that it would be ‘no harm’ to try and make M.D. pay for the child’s maintenance.114 This case demonstrates that boarding-out remained the KBHPA’s favoured method of relief of children in such circumstances; however, the uncle’s taking over of the family farm and suspected financial capacity to independently maintain the children undermined his entitlement. His threat to have his nephew re-committed to the county home demonstrates that recipients often had a degree of influence in decision-making. Threats of committal to the county home were common in other applications for b ­ oarding-out allowances by relatives of children. Contrasting notions of need and entitlement between local officials and recipients were i­mportant dynamics which often shaped accessibility to relief. Boarding-out also appeared to maintain wider networks of family support and welfare. This was evident in a Kerry case in 1932 when an illegitimate child was boarded out to a relative. The biological mother was casually employed by farmers and when unemployed stayed with her relatives. After the birth of her child she was in residence with her relatives but soon ‘disappeared’. Subsequently the relatives threatened to commit the deserted child to the county home unless a boarding-out allowance was granted, although the record does not state the outcome.115 It would seem that boarding-out allowances were sometimes utilised to maintain complex family arrangements and allowed illegitimate children to remain within extended families. Women were forced into drastic decisions such as desertion in response to attitudes towards illegitimate children in Ireland. At another level, agency was at times demonstrated by women and families in gaining access to boarding-out and avoiding the institutionalisation of children, in some cases. A major criticism of boarding-out was that payments stopped as soon as children reached the age of 15, leaving the families with no welfare to maintain the adolescent’s education and training. The DLGPH, however, believed that many children stayed with families or were taken into the families of relatives after coming of age. According to Inspector Fitzgerald-Kenney, in 1933/34 57 per cent of boarded-out children were ‘adopted’ into families after reaching the age of 15. She believed that

140

the end of the irish poor law?

such children were provided with ‘secure homes’ and the ‘companionship and influence of real parents to guide them’ into adulthood.116 At times in county Kerry the local and central authorities were willing to extend boarding-out allowances in exceptional circumstances beyond the age of 15. This was demonstrated in 1936 when an application was made for the extension of the allowance for a former boarded-out child to attend technical school for two years. The boy continued to reside with his foster-parents and was described by the HAO as ‘exceptionally good and clever’.117 His teacher identified his precocious reading ability as that of a 20-year-old, and recommended that he be sent to technical school. The teacher believed that he would be ‘readily absorbed’ into the school and would subsequently become ‘a useful member of society’. The HAO stated that it would be a ‘pity’ to put him to work as a labourer. The DLGPH partly agreed and extended the boarding-out allowance until the child was 16.118 While this case was exceptional, it did highlight that at times the authorities were willing to support children beyond the cut-off age for relief, although other evidence demonstrates that extensions in relief were often denied.119 It is impossible to know what happened to the vast majority of the children who were boarded out and how their lives developed. Allegations that boarded-out children suffered from physically abusive situations have surfaced.120 In the records that form the basis of this study the voices of the boarded-out children are not heard. However, it appears that many became unskilled labourers or domestic servants, often in the service of the families that they were boarded out in. At times children who became servants were far from happy in their employment. This was demonstrated in 1930 in Kerry when a boarded-out child came of age and went into the service of her former foster-parents. After fourteen months the girl left the employment and later claimed she had not received full payment for her services and sent the family a ‘bill suing for wages due’.121 The girl left Kerry for Dublin before eventually ending up in the Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry in Waterford. Many boarded-out children faced a precarious future with limited opportunities in ­independent Ireland. Conclusion Questions are often raised about the extent to which the concept of child welfare has been used by certain groups, including governments, to pursue their own social, economic and political ends.122 The prominence of institutionalisation in child welfare in independent Ireland has been viewed in the recent historiography as a means of enforcing middle-



child welfare and local authorities 141

class values on the poor and punishing those who failed to lived up to the moral and social mores of the time. This was particularly evident in the activities of the NSPCC which had little sympathy for impoverished groups, particularly widowers and single mothers who were considered ‘morally’ inappropriate parents. Such social control was evident in the child welfare policies implemented by the Kerry local authority. Bias against the undeserving poor, unmarried mothers and lone fathers was prevalent in the attitudes of local and central government officials. Local authority child welfare often led to institutionalisation in industrial schools. The local authorities played a role in what Smith et al. have termed the ‘nation’s architecture of confinement’: the institutionalisation of large numbers of ‘deviants’ in places such as industrial schools, Magdalene Laundries and mental hospitals. Local child welfare policies were, however, influenced by a range of other dynamics. Evidently, there was much support for the use of boarding-out over industrial schools nationally and within central government. By the early-to-mid-1930s the KBHPA boarded out more children than it institutionalised. In the historiography, local authorities have been criticised for their failure to invest effort and energy into boarding-out and for resorting to the more convenient industrial school system. This was evident in the early 1920s when a degree of chaos surrounded the closure of workhouses, and an increase in children committed to industrial schools was witnessed; however, it does not ring true for many of the Free State years in Kerry. At times officials were willing to circumvent regulations regarding notions of ideal family conditions – largely representative of middle-class values – to ensure children were boarded out. Boarded-out children were often placed with relatives including aunts, uncles and grandparents. In such circumstances the measure appeared to support existing familial welfare structures and helped children to remain within their wider families, if not with their parents. Illegitimacy was a central reason for children becoming reliant on local authority assistance. However, other circumstances often forced the abandonment, desertion or giving up of children, including the death of a parent, disability and poverty, which could lead to a child ending up in local authority care. In many of these cases, the actions of local authorities were not necessarily imbued with the objective of moral reform or social control. While social and gender prejudice was prevalent, poverty and destitution of families and the lack of more substantial welfare provision were often key determinants in decision-making. Gaps in family support were not confined to Ireland, and pre-universal welfare states generally excluded groups from insurance-based systems, especially women and

142

the end of the irish poor law?

children, who often became reliant on poor relief and charitable provisions. The breakdown of nuclear families could lead to family breakups in a transnational welfare landscape where provision such as state childcare was limited. As one social historian of inter-war Britain notes, working- and middle-class families were routinely split up at times of economic difficulty, and children dispersed to relations, neighbours and institutions.123 These findings do not dispute the centrality of the punitive industrial schools in Ireland’s child welfare landscape. More children remained institutionalised than boarded-out in Ireland. However, children who came to the attention of some local public assistance authorities such as the KBHPA were likely to be boarded out. Child welfare was a contested terrain where national and local policy was determined by a range of often competing social, economic, religious and cultural dynamics. Such complexities are central to understanding child welfare in early-to-mid twentieth-century Ireland. Notes 1 Crossman, ‘Viewing women, family and sexuality’, 542. 2 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 56. 3 Steinmetz, Regulating the Social, p. 163. 4 DLGPH Annual Report, 1931–2. 5 Maguire, Precarious Childhood, p. 51. 6 Ibid., p. 51. 7 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 57; L. Earner-Byrne, ‘“Parading their poverty”’: widows in twentiethcentury Ireland’, in B. Farago and M. Sullivan (eds), Facing the Other: Interdisciplinary Studies on Race, Class and Gender in Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008), pp. 32–46. 8 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 58. 9 Cousins, The Birth of Social Welfare in Ireland, pp. 74–8. 10 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 14. 11 Ibid., p. 15. 12 DLGPH Annual Report, 1931–2, p. 125. 13 DLGPH Annual Report, 1940–1. 14 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 27. 15 Ibid., p. 42. 16 Ibid., p. 17. 17 Ibid., p. 24. 18 Ibid., p. 30.



child welfare and local authorities 143

19 Ibid., p. 39. 20 Crossman, ‘Cribbed, contained and confined’, 47 21 For children, the poor law and the boarding-out system in the nineteenth  and early twentieth centuries, see Crossman, ‘Cribbed, contained  and confined’; A. Clark ‘Orphans and the poor law: rage against the machine’, in Crossman and Gray (eds), Poverty and Welfare in Ireland,  pp. 97–114; C. Skehill, ‘The origins of child welfare under the  poor law and  the emergence of the institutional versus family care debate’, in Crossman and Gray (eds), Poverty and Welfare in Ireland, pp. 115–28. 22 For the origins of industrial schools in Ireland, see J. Barnes, Irish Industrial Schools, 1868–1908: Origins and Development (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1989). 23 DÉD, vol. 1, 28 Nov. 1922. 24 DÉD, vol. 1, 15 Mar. 1923. 25 KCL: KBHPA/B/6, Correspondence: E.P. McCarron, Sec. of the DLGPH: Circular to Boards of Health and Public Assistance, 2 Sept. 1924. 26 Irish Times, 17 July 1925. 27 Ibid. 28 DLGPH Annual Report, 1933–4, p. 387. 29 Irish Times, 17 July 1925; OL: Folder/02/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Maria Lynch, 10 Feb. 1926, p. 27–76. 30 Irish Times, 30 July 1925. 31 Irish Times, 17 July 1925. 32 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 71. 33 OL: Folder, 09/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Brother O’Ryan, Manager of Artane Industrial School, 22 Sept. 1925, p. 12–1. 34 Ibid., p. 12–6. 35 Ibid., p. 12–8 36 Ibid., p. 12–9 37 Ibid., p. 12–6 38 For ‘regeneration of the nation’ policies in France, see D. Lackerstein, National Regeneration in Vichy France: Ideas and Policies, 1930–44 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), p. 225. 39 Commission of Inquiry into the Reformatory and Industrial School System 1934–36 (Dublin: Stationery Office, Saorstát Éireann, 1936). 40 This inquiry found cases of physical and sexual abuse in this industrial school dating back to the 1930s; see The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, vol. I, ‘Chapter 7: Artane’, http://www.childabusecommission.com/ rpt/01-07.php (accessed 2 September 2014). 41 P. Tyrrell, Founded on Fear: Letterfrack Industrial School, War and Exile, ed. D. Whelan (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006). 42 OL: Folder, 09/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission:

144

the end of the irish poor law?

Brother O’Ryan, 22 Sept. 1925, p. 12–1. O’Ryan frequently publicly defended the industrial school system from criticism; see Irish Times, 26 June 1925. 43 OL: Folder, 09/0/00103A, minutes of evidence of 1927 Relief Commission: Brother O’Ryan, 22 Sept. 1925, p. 12–6. 44 For the NSPCC, see Buckley, The Cruelty Man; M. Luddy, ‘The early years of the NSPCC in Ireland’, Éire-Ireland, 44:1 (2009), 62–90. 45 M. Raftery and E. O’Sullivan, Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland’s Industrial Schools (Dublin: New Island Books, 1999), p. 70; H.  Hendrick, Child Welfare: Historical Dimensions, Contemporary Debates (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2003), p. 122. 46 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p. 71. 47 Hendrick, Child Welfare, p. 123; Maguire, Precarious Childhood, p. 40. 48 Buckley, The Cruelty Man, pp. 112–14. 49 C. Skehill, ‘Child protection and welfare social work in the Republic of  Ireland: continuities and discontinuities between the past and present’, in N. Kearney and C. Skehill (eds), Social Work in Ireland: Historical Perspectives (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2005), p. 127. 50 Skehill, ‘The origins of child welfare’, p. 122. 51 Ibid., p. 122. 52 Buckley, The Cruelty Man, pp. 15, 121; Skehill, ‘The origins of child welfare’, p. 122; Maguire, Precarious Childhood, p. 59. 53 Skehill, ‘The origins of child welfare’, p. 122. 54 KCL: KBHPA/A/1, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 7 July 1923. 55 KCL: KBHPA/A/1, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 10 Dec. 1923. 56 KCL: KBHPA/B/11, Correspondence: KBHPA to DLGPH, 16 July 1926. 57 Report of the Inspector Appointed to visit the Reformatory and Industrial Schools of Ireland, 1922–26 (Dublin: Stationery Office, Saorstát Éireann, 1926). 58 KCL: KBHPA/B/11, Correspondence: KBHPA to DLGPH, 16 July 1925. 59 KCL: KBHPA/B/11, Correspondence: ‘List of names of children committed from the County Home to Killarney Industrial School from Feb. 1922 to July 1926’, 1926. 60 DLGPH Annual Report, 1934–5, p. 403. 61 Seanad Éireann Debates, vol. 1, 15 Mar. 1923. 62 KCL: KBHPA/B/11, Correspondence: ‘Return of children who were in the County Home, Killarney during the year ended 5 Mar. 1926 and were committed to industrial schools’, 1926. 63 KCL: KBHPA/B/11, Correspondence: ‘Return of the number of children in the county institutions showing their names, ages, state of health and the present whereabouts of their parents (1) County Home Killarney’, 1926. 64 Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, p.  31.



child welfare and local authorities 145

65 Initially provided for Listowel Poor Law Union in Kerry and five poor law unions in Limerick. The other district school was in Trim. The Glin District School was jointly run by the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy; see Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, pp. 4, 7, 70; Crossman, ‘Cribbed, contained and confined’, 42. 66 KCL: KBHPA/B/11, Correspondence: ‘Return of the number of children in the county institutions showing their names, ages, state of health and the present whereabouts of their parents (2) Glin District School’, 1926. 67 The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, vol. I, ‘Chapter 11: StJoseph’s Industrial School, Glin, County Limerick’, http://www.­­ childabusecommission.com/rpt/01-11.php (accessed 1 Feb. 2014). A recent account by a former inmate of Glin also depicts the conditions in the Glin Industrial School; see T. Wall, The Boy from Glin Industrial School (2013). 68 Maguire, Precarious Childhood, p. 4. 69 Ibid., p. 10; For the role of the NSPCC, see Buckley, The Cruelty Man. 70 KCL: KBHPA/B/37, Correspondence: ‘Copy of report from Inspector Mrs Crofts regarding unmarried mothers and children in the County Home, Killarney’, DLGPH to KBHPA, 22 Aug. 1931. 71 Maguire, Precarious Childhood, p. 54. 72 KCL: KBHPA/A/26, Minute Book: William Hill SAO Report, 14 May 1936. 73 KCL: KBHPA/A/20, Minute Book: Board Meeting, ‘Committal of N.G.’, 10 Aug. 1934. 74 KCL: KBHPA/A/21, Minute Book: Board Meeting, ‘Proposal to board-out M.R.’, 14 Feb. 1935. 75 KCL: KBHPA/A//21, Minute Book: Board Meeting, ‘Case of K.G.’, 10 Jan. 1935. 76 KCL: KBHPA/B/14, Correspondence: O’Mahony to KBHPA, 21 Jan. 1926. 77 KCL: KBHPA/B/14, Correspondence: Daly NSPCC Inspector, Tralee to KBHPA, 23 Jan. 1926. 78 KCL: KBHPA/B/14, Correspondence: Daly NSPCC Inspector, Tralee to KBHPA, Aug. 1926. 79 Maguire, Precarious Childhood, p. 4. 80 KCL: KBHPA/A/6, Minute Book: Board Meeting, J. Walsh HAO to KBHPA, 14 Oct. 1927. 81 KCL: KBHPA/B/60, Correspondence: Shanahan SAO to KBHPA, ‘Home assistance and boarded-out children’, 13 Oct. 1934. 82 KCL: KBHPA/B/60, Correspondence: NSPCC Inspector Scott to KBHPA, ‘Home assistance and boarded-out children’, 30 Nov. 1934. 83 KCL: KBHPA/A/21, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 27 Feb. 1935. 84 See generally, Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries; O’Sullivan and O’Donnell, Coercive Confinement in Ireland. 85 For the introduction of children’s or family allowance, see Cousins, The

146

the end of the irish poor law?

Birth of Social Welfare in Ireland, pp. 105–28; Cousins, ‘The introduction of children’s allowances in Ireland, 1939–44’, Irish Economic and Social History, 16 (1999), 35–53. 86 Cousins, Poor Relief in Ireland, pp. 78–9; Crossman has demonstrated that the traditional perception of two-parent families entering workhouses and subsequently being separated was a rare event by the late nineteenth century; Crossman, Poverty and the Poor Law in Ireland, pp. 131–8. 87 KCL: KBHPA/A/23, Minute Book: Board Meeting, ‘SAO Report on living conditions of J. C.’, 14 May 1936. 88 Maguire, Precarious Childhood, pp. 59–60; Skehill, ‘The origins of child welfare’, p. 122. 89 DLGPH Annual Report, 1932–3, p. 318. 90 Crossman, ‘Cribbed, contained and confined’, 59. 91 Local Taxation Returns. 92 For example, see KCL: KBHPA/B/13, Correspondence: DLGPH to KBHPA, 23 July 1926; KCL: KBHPA/B/32, Correspondence: DLGPH to KBHPA, 17 July 1930. 93 KCL: KBHPA/B/51, Correspondence: KBHPA to DLGPH, ’Children in county home’, 22 Dec. 1933. 94 KCL: KBHPA/B/51, Correspondence: DLGPH to KCL, ‘Children in county home’, 6 Jan. 1934. 95 KCL: KBHPA/A/3, Minute Book: Matron to KBHPA, 14 Dec. 1925. 96 DLGPH Annual Report, 1934–5, p. 402. 97 Ibid., p. 402 98 Crossman, ‘Cribbed, contained and confined’, 51. 99 KCL: KBHPA/A/4, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 17 Nov. 1931. 100 Ibid. 101 KCL: KBHPA/A/1, Minute Book: ‘Copy of report of Inspector FitzgeraldKenney on M.C.’, 13 June 1933. 102 KCL: KBHPA/A/17, Minute Book: ‘Copy of report of Dr P Collins, Medical Officer on M.C.’, 13 June 1933. 103 KCL: KBHPA/A/20, Minute Book: DLGPH to KBHPA ‘C. family’, 13 Oct. 1934. 104 KCL: KBHPA/A/20, Minute Book: ‘Dr Shanahan, SAO Report on C. family’, 11 Oct. 1934. 105 DLGPH Annual Report, 1929–30, p. 248. 106 Report of the Inspector appointed to visit the Reformatory and Industrial Schools in Ireland, year ending 1923 (Dublin: Stationery Office, Saorstát Éireann, 1923). 107 DLGPH Annual Report, 1934–5, p. 403. 108 KCL: KBHPA/B/32, Correspondence: ‘SAO Denis Shanahan, Case of Boarded-out child B.W’, 10 May 1930. 109 Ibid. 110 KCL: KBHPA/A/22, Meeting: SAO Shanahan Report on P.K., 22 Nov. 1935.



child welfare and local authorities 147

111 KCL: KBHPA/B/23, Correspondence: M.D. to KBHPA, 16 Jan. 1930. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid. 114 KCL: KBHPA/B/32, Correspondence: SAO Mahony to KBHPA, 23 Jan. 1930. 115 KCL: KBHPA/A/13, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 9 May 1932. 116 DLGPH Annual Report, 1933–4, p. 317. 117 KCL: KBHPA/A/24, Minute Book: Board Meeting, 26 May 1936. 118 Ibid. 119 Maguire, Precarious Childhood, p. 67. 120 See ‘Plea to include “boarded out” in mother and baby inquiry’, Irish Times, 30 June 2014. 121 KCL: KBHPA/B/32, Correspondence: SAO Shanahan to KBHPA, 29 Apr. 1930. 122 Hendrick, Child Welfare, p. vii. 123 M. Pugh, We Danced all Night: A Social History of Britain between the Wars (London: Vintage, 2009), p. 196.

5

From workhouses to hospitals

This chapter examines the role of the poor law in the delivery of healthcare and particularly hospital provision. It outlines how medical relief had become one of the primary functions of Irish workhouses by 1920. Furthermore, it explores attempts made during the early years of the Irish Free State to fully separate medical assistance from poor relief through case studies of Cork city and county Kerry. The relationship between local authority healthcare and the more prestigious voluntary sector is also examined. This chapter also concentrates on the terms of entitlement to healthcare and fee payment, and how this contrasted between the voluntary and local authority hospitals. The final section of the chapter explores the impact of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes funding on the local hospital system and plans for the regionalisation of medical services. Medical provision pre-1920 Irish medical provision was transformed under the 1862 Poor Law Amendment Act which opened Irish workhouse infirmaries to the general sick poor so that they were no longer confined to the destitute classes.1 The Act established a hospital service for the poor law dispensary system that was set up in 1851 and provided outdoor medical relief to the Irish poor.2 The network of over 150 workhouses ensured that poor law infirmaries far exceeded other types of hospitals, mainly county/city infirmaries and voluntary hospitals. This was demonstrated by the evidence provided to the 1906 Irish Poor Law Commission. Between December 1904 and November 1905 workhouse infirmaries admitted a total of 79,800 patients. Of this figure, 33,836 cases were considered acute, 21,427 chronic and 2,366 received midwifery attention. Surgical attention was needed in 22,178 cases.3 6,446 cases were tuberculosis or phthisis patients and another 5,635 received treatment for infectious diseases in fever wards.4 This total greatly exceeded the



from workhouses to hospitals 149

number who received medical attention in the county/city infirmaries, which were the second most prominent type of Irish hospital. During 1905 county/city infirmaries treated 15,489 medical cases of which the vast majority were acute, with a mere 917 chronic patients.5 Prior to independence thirty-four county/city infirmaries and fourteen county fever hospitals existed in Ireland. They were run by independent boards of management whose membership included representatives from the county or borough council which partly funded them, and leading local figures such as the religious hierarchy and charitable subscribers. By the early twentieth century workhouses were central to the Irish poor’s healthcare and provided many of the acute, chronic and surgical medical services in local communities. Healthcare under the poor law in Ireland was traditionally viewed unfavourably, although advances were evident in the standards of care in many workhouse infirmary wards during the post-Famine era. The controversial issue of untrained pauper and inmate nursing had begun to be addressed in 1897 after the LGB issued an order forbidding the practice.6 By 1912 it was reported that 253 trained nurses and 361 religious sisters were engaged in workhouse nursing.7 Some workhouses in large urban areas such as Belfast and Waterford emerged as centres for nurse training.8 By the 1910s the union infirmaries in Belfast, Cork and Galway also provided clinical training for student doctors.9 Such clinical instruction provided vital additional income from trainees’ fees. Involvement in medical education also led to a deeper relationship between the poor law and the medical profession, a trend mostly associated with the more prestigious voluntary sector.10 Local provision varied greatly and standards often depended on expenditure by boards of guardians. The 1898 Local Government (Ireland) Act provided poor law boards with central government loans for improvements to workhouse buildings. Local investment often determined the popularity of infirmaries within communities. The Kinsale infirmary in county Cork was considered popular after the local guardians upgraded it in the early 1900s.11 Other poor law boards, such as Westport in the county of Mayo, failed to invest and by the 1900s many workhouse infirmaries were close to dilapidation.12 The 1898 Act also provided for the conversion of workhouses into district hospitals under the management of boards of governors, which effectively allowed for a separation of medical relief from the poor law. The legislation’s permissiveness, however, ensured its impact was negligible and by 1919 only a single union – Castlecomer in county Kilkenny – had introduced the measure.13 Similar to British circumstances, medical services for the poor were ad hoc and variable in coverage and quality.14

150

the end of the irish poor law?

The biggest criticism of poor law hospital provision was the mixed workhouse and infirmary model of institution. Ideologically the workhouse system was originally based on the principle of deterrence and conditions were somewhat harsh, so that only the truly desperate would seek relief. In theory the sick poor were not subject to such principles, but in practice they had to pass the workhouse gates and often underwent stigmatising and pauperising experiences, which included the wearing of pauper uniforms and living under disciplined regimes.15 Similar to England, funding for poor law infirmaries was undifferentiated from the rest of workhouse expenditure and no specific income was set aside to support the workhouse sick or to fund the workhouse hospital as a separate service.16 The more workhouse infirmaries were viewed as institutions for the sick, elderly and infirm, the harder it was to justify principles of deterrence; poor law hospital services, however, remained associated with pauperism and poverty.17 The separation of medical and ordinary relief under the mixed workhouse system was a central aim of early twentieth-century reformers. Such measures were recommended by both the 1906 Irish Poor Law Commission and the UK-wide Royal Commission on the Poor Law and Relief of Distress, which reported in 1909.18 These recommendations were not implemented although the Liberal welfare reforms of the era – most notably the 1908 Old Age Pension Act and 1911 National Insurance Act – altered workhouses in Ireland. As demonstrated in Table 6, between 1909 and 1920 the number of daily inmates dropped from 44,027 to 25,531. The category of aged and infirm, the second largest cohort in Irish workhouses, witnessed the largest decrease. This was partly brought about by the removal of the pauper disqualification from the old age pension in 1909, which the LGB believed had a ‘very marked effect on poor relief statistics’.19 The 1909 figure of 14,427 aged and infirm decreased to 5,825 in 1920. The leading Irish economic historian Cormac Ó Gráda has argued that the impact of the pension on workhouse admissions was of paramount importance.20 Welfare measures introduced during the First World War, including the separation and dependents’ allowances, also lessened reliance on poor relief. Similarly, the wartime migration of labourers to Britain led to the opening of employment opportunities at home for the ‘less fit’.21 The number of sick inmates also decreased – albeit at a much lower rate than the aged and infirm – from 15,602 to 13,205. By 1920 51.3 per cent of inmates were categorised as sick compared to 35.4 per cent in 1909. Medical provision had emerged as the primary function of Irish workhouses. The 1911 National Insurance Act was only partly introduced in Ireland. Under the Irish legislation insured workers were entitled to

from workhouses to hospitals 151



Table 6 Categories of inmates in Irish workhouses on 31 March 1909–20

Sick Aged and infirm Children Lunatics, idiots   and epileptics Mothers having  infants All other classes Total

1909

1911

1914

1918

1919

1920

15,602 14,427 5,521 2,473

15,030 11,291 5,213 2,230

14,993 10,002 4,601 2,110

12,721 7,015 3,270 1,720

13,287 5,804 2,920 1,359

13,105 5,825 2,844 1,331

749

691

570

413

353

435

5,255 44,027

4,516 38,971

3,942 36,218

2,383 27,522

2,027 25,750

1,991 25,531

Source: These statistics are derived from the Local Government Board Annual Reports

cash benefits payable during sickness and a specific benefit for sanatorium treatment for tuberculosis sufferers. As in Britain, general hospital attendance was not included for the insured. Other restrictions on Irish insurance schemes existed. The prevalence of the dispensary system and opposition from the Irish Parliamentary Party and Catholic Church towards increased taxation prevented the introduction of the legislation in its entirety in Ireland.22 British medical benefits which included access to panels of doctors and medicines for the insured were not extended to the Irish, and the sick remained reliant on dispensary doctors or private practitioners for medical attention outside hospitals.23 National insurance schemes were not expanded during the early years of the Irish Free State although there was a general wish to move away from medical relief. A 1925 government inquiry into the existing insurance schemes recommended the introduction of medical benefits for contributors. Such measures were not introduced in Ireland until 1942.24 Friendly societies could provide medical benefits and insurance for hospital attendance on a voluntary basis. In practice this measure was limited and in 1927 a mere £32,135 out of a total expenditure of £628,498 on national insurance went on non-cash payments that included hospital benefits.25 Insurance payments for sickness, disability and maternity cases made up the vast majority of health-related expenditure under national insurance legislation in Ireland. The lack of extended medical benefits in the Irish Free State contrasted with the French experience with the 1928 health insurance law that covered up to a third of the French population with hospital and sickness insurance, and in Northern Ireland where medical benefits for insured workers were introduced in 1930.26 In independent Ireland the link between insurance and health services was weak, and mutualism, in contrast to

152

the end of the irish poor law?

Britain, was not a major feature of Irish healthcare or hospital practices.27 Irish public healthcare remained based on a relief-type system. Revolutionary and Free State reforms Under the revolutionary and Free State reforms a network of county and district hospitals was established. In county Kerry the new medical services consisted of the county hospital in the largest town, Tralee. District hospitals were established solely for non-surgical and shortterm medical cases in the towns of Dingle, Kenmare, Listowel and Caherciveen, all in the buildings of former workhouses. The district hospital in Killarney was also on the site of the county home that acted as a centralised institution for ordinary relief cases.28 There was not a large enough middle class to sustain any general or specialist voluntary hospitals in Kerry, although one small cottage voluntary hospital existed on Valentia Island. Larger voluntary hospitals were located in the neighbouring cities of Limerick and Cork, and the sick from Kerry, particularly those who could afford it, often attended these hospitals. Cork city had a well-established voluntary hospital sector. Specialist institutions included a maternity and lying-in hospital, an eye, ear and throat hospital, and a fever and recovery hospital. General voluntary hospitals in the city included the Mercy – run by the Catholic religious Mercy Order – and the Victoria Hospital whose origins lay in the Protestant philanthropic tradition. Other general hospitals included the North Charitable Infirmary and the South Charitable Infirmary, which were semi-voluntary and received an annual grant from local government. Most of the income of these hospitals came from private sources and they remained independently controlled. The total number of voluntary hospital beds in the city was close to 800.29 The former workhouse, renamed the Cork District Hospital and County Home (CDHCH), was the city’s largest hospital and had 800–900 sick beds.30 Only an estimated 150 beds were designated for the acute sick and the remainder were for long-term and chronic patients.31 The institution also acted as the county home and provided for 400 individuals in receipt of ‘ordinary’ relief. The CDHCH was one of the largest and most important institutions in the country and provided medical and poor relief to a daily average of 1,200 inmates/patients.32 The centrality of the institution to the life-cycles of the sick poor was demonstrated in 1926 when 18.5 per cent of all deaths in Cork city were recorded in the institution. At a national level the rate of all deaths in former workhouse hospitals was 14.6 per cent.33 In both county Kerry and Cork city the reformed poor law was the largest provider of hospital provision.



from workhouses to hospitals 153

The abolition of boards of guardians in the early 1920s represented a significant break from the poor law. The newly established boards of health and public assistance were subsidiaries of county councils and county boroughs that were formed in 1898 and did not suffer from any association with the poor law. The transfer of responsibilities might seem only of minor terminological importance but, as highlighted in England and Wales under the 1929 Local Government Act that disbanded poor law boards, it had the potential to carry great symbolic significance.34 Theoretically access to local authority welfare/healthcare was no longer based on principles of deterrence which had underpinned the former poor law. During the early 1920s county schemes reorganised hospital services throughout the Free State in what were the first major reforms of the health services since 1869. As already highlighted, the Kerry scheme planned for a county hospital and a number of district hospitals. The county infirmary and county fever hospitals located in Tralee and Killarney, respectively – formerly semi-voluntary institutions funded partly by county councils and partly by subscriptions – came fully under the control of local authorities. Their joint committees of management were disbanded and the institutions became integrated into the public assistance hospital system.35 These arrangements, perhaps unsurprisingly considering the often intractable nature of local politics, met with significant difficulties in Kerry. In 1927 the Relief Commission reported that the county hospital was located on three separate sites in Tralee town. The former county infirmary continued to act as the surgical hospital and non-surgical medical cases were provided for in the former workhouse. Fever cases were dealt with separately in the workhouse. The 1927 Relief Commissioners believed that this was the worst accommodation ‘styled a county hospital’ that they had inspected. They recommended the establishment of a single county hospital that would provide surgical, medical and fever services on one site.36 The amalgamation of hospital services, formerly run separately by boards of guardians and committees of management, proved problematic. Reform was further complicated by Catholic religious orders which provided the nursing in many workhouse infirmaries.37 Nursing sisters were under the aegis of the Catholic Church and local bishops. These ecclesiastical powers added another layer to the administration of local authority healthcare. Administrative progress was also hindered by the existence of different religious orders in local hospitals. The Sisters of Mercy was the largest nursing religious order and ran nursing services in numerous Kerry hospitals, including the former Tralee workhouse. A separate order, the Bon Secours Sisters, was responsible for nursing in

154

the end of the irish poor law?

the surgical hospital that was formerly the county infirmary. The Bon Secours also established fully private hospitals in Cork in 1915 and in Tralee in 1921.38 Throughout 1924 Seán O’Farrell – the commissioner who administered local government in Kerry while the local authority was dissolved – and the DLGPH attempted to reorganise the staffing of the county’s hospitals. The county infirmary’s nursing staff – the Bon Secours nursing order – was far more qualified than their Sister of Mercy counterparts in the workhouse hospital. The Bon Secours head nurse, Sr Theodora O’Mahony, held nursing qualifications from Dublin’s St Vincent’s Hospital. One nursing sister, Sr Archer, had trained in the Catholic St John & St Elizabeth’s Hospital in London; another, Sr Lea Gilshenan, had graduated from the Mercy Hospital Cork, and held a medical certificate and qualification from the LGB. Sr Emanuel Clery had graduated from the Clinic Valpo Rue de la Chaise in Paris after completing four years’ training, and Sr Dominic Brady had received training in medical and surgical nursing in the Belfast Infirmary and Fever Hospitals.39 These nursing sisters had an impressive range of expertise from leading medical institutions in Ireland, London and Paris. This contrasted with the limited professional qualifications of the Mercy Sisters in the former Tralee workhouse. The Kerry authorities informed the DLGPH that many of the Mercy Sisters held no certificates and that their nursing experience was limited to the county’s workhouse infirmaries.40 The difference in qualifications was striking, and the commissioner informed the DLGPH that the choice was between ‘partially’ and ‘untrained’ nuns in the ‘union’ hospital or a ‘fully qualified’ and ‘experienced’ staff which had the public’s ‘fullest confidence’.41 Other problems relating to staffing arose. O’Farrell wrote to the Catholic Bishop of Kerry, Revd O’Sullivan, and proposed new staffing arrangements. These included the transfer of the county home’s matron to the Tralee hospital. She was considered the only nun in the local authority’s employment with the ‘requisite qualifications’ to undertake the position.42 The bishop refused to sanction the transfer and informed the KBHPA that only a nun from the Tralee Mercy convent could be appointed. He stated that an outside appointment would create an ‘impossible situation’, and although both the Killarney and Tralee orders were Mercy Sisters, there was no ‘connection between them’ and nuns could not be transferred from their ‘community’.43 The reform of the local authority hospital services was greatly hindered by the intractability of religious authorities towards the reorganisation of nursing religious staff. The Free State authorities further clashed with the religious orders over the nursing sisters’ training. In 1926, for example, the DLGPH



from workhouses to hospitals 155

stopped the payment of some temporary nursing sisters’ salaries because they did not have the necessary qualifications.44 Tensions mounted over the nursing arrangements in the planned hospital. In 1928 the newly appointed Bishop of Kerry, Michael O’Brien, wrote to the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, General Richard Mulcahy, complaining of the KBHPA’s actions towards the sisters. He claimed that it was his ‘duty’ to protect the nuns from the local authority’s harassment and ‘petty persecution’.45 In 1930 the bishop became involved in another public dispute with the county’s local authority and medical officials. After a KBHPA meeting the bishop wrote to the local press and stated that the county surgeon, Dr Shanahan, had made a ‘most unjust attack’ on the Tralee Mercy Sisters. Shanahan had reportedly stated that the Mercy staff was ‘not within twenty-five per cent of his [Bon Secours] staff’. The bishop also ‘strongly deprecated’ the setting of one religious community against another, which he believed was ‘mischievous and harmful to religion’.46 The wishes of the ecclesiastical authority were eventually acceded to and an existing Mercy Sister in the hospital, recommended by the bishop, was appointed as matron. The Bon Secours Sisters eventually left the local authority system and the order concentrated on running its private hospital. Overall the case highlighted tensions between the governmental and religious authorities. These nursing orders, although in receipt of wages from local rates, often abided by their own regulations and could rely on the power and influence of the Catholic religious hierarchy to protect their interests. Late nineteenth-century nursing poor law reform focused on the eradication of inmate and ‘pauper’ nursing, and the emergence of religious orders in workhouse infirmary wards was broadly welcomed. The presence of religious orders in these wards helped to de-stigmatise poor law medicine. The nursing religious sisters were also credited with increasing the standard of care in workhouses, especially in rural regions where local authorities had limited resources. Many of the nuns, however, were poorly trained and this was painfully evident in Kerry when attempts at reform were introduced in the 1920s. The Bon Secours Sisters’ cosmopolitan and professional background drastically contrasted with the local Mercy nuns who had limited experience outside the county’s workhouse infirmaries. Attempts to reorganise staffing in Kerry brought to the fore complexities inherent in the relationship between medical officials, government bodies and religious authorities at a local level. Relations between the local state and the religious authorities were acrimonious, although the establishment of the Free State is viewed as heralding the merging of the Catholic Church and state. These tensions hindered the reconfiguration of the

156

the end of the irish poor law?

new ­­hospital services. Ultimately the religious authorities overcame the wishes of the local government reformers, indicating that they were central actors in shaping the Free State’s local authority hospital policies. By 1930 the proposed amalgamation of the Kerry medical and surgical hospitals into a centralised hospital had yet to emerge. Other factors disrupted the process besides the choice of nursing sisters. Local and central government officials were undecided on whether the new hospital should be located at the former workhouse, county infirmary or county fever hospital.47 The Free State’s precarious financial position meant that limited central government expenditure was available. The war of independence and civil war also left local government bodies in financial crisis and undermined their ability to raise finance.48 As outlined in Figure 5.1, during the financial year 1922/23 local authorities in the Free State expended £28,569 from loan and capital accounts  – an indication of investment in infrastructure and buildings – which dropped to a mere £6,009 in 1925/26. Capital expenditure rose in the late 1920s from £32,085 in 1927/28 to £41,417 in 1930/31. The investment, however, needed to develop the local hospital system envisaged at independence was not forthcoming in a decade marked by a struggling ­­

500,000 450,000 400,000 350,000 300,000 250,000 200,000 150,000 100,000 50,000

19 2 19 2–2 2 3 19 3–2 2 4 19 4–2 2 5 19 5–2 2 6 19 7–2 2 8 19 8–2 2 9 19 9–3 3 0 19 0–3 3 1 19 1–3 3 2 19 2–3 3 3 19 3–3 3 4 19 4–3 3 5 19 5–3 3 6 19 6–3 3 7 19 7–3 38 8 –3 9

0

5.1  Local authority expenditure from capital and loan accounts, 1922/23–1938/39 Source: Local Taxation Returns

from workhouses to hospitals 157



ratepaying public and a central government committed to fiscal conservatism. The lack of investment ensured that many county and district hospitals, originally nineteenth-century structures, were decrepit. In 1927 the KBHPA’s chairperson, Kate Breen, described the former Tralee workhouse as the most ‘struggling and miserable place’ she had ever seen.49 Similar conditions existed in other parts of the country. The 1927 Relief Commission believed that the Waterford County Hospital was a ‘cheerless environment of old dilapidated structures’, and that the Roscommon County Hospital could not be ‘deemed a suitable place for the treatment for the sick’.50 In other areas conditions were somewhat better and county hospitals in Galway, Meath and Wexford were highlighted for praise in the 1927 report. Local and regional variation marked the standard of rate-aided medical care in a continuation of patterns from the poor law. A major objective of the poor law medical reforms was to separate hospital services from the relief of poverty. The composition of inmates in public hospitals was altered after the able-bodied were removed from local authority institutional provision. Table 7 compares the length of stay of inmates in the CDHCH in 1911 and 1926. In 1911 20 per cent of all inmates stayed for twenty-four hours compared to fewer than 9 per cent in 1926. This indicates that the ‘casual pauper’ class who had utilised workhouses on a short-term basis were not as evident in the new county homes. By 1926 inmates were more likely to remain for a period lasting between two and thirty days and one and six months than in 1911; the proportion of inmates who stayed beyond twelve months was less than in 1911. These trends indicate changes in the role of the institution: the higher proportion of medium-term patients suggests that it catered for more curable and acute medical patients and fewer longerterm elderly and chronic inmates. Under the reforms, the CDHCH became a centralised hospital for the South Cork district and received serious acute patients from the six former workhouse infirmaries­– renamed district hospitals – in the region. This was highlighted by a Table 7 Length of stay of inmates/patients in the Cork workhouse in 1911 and Cork District Hospital and County Home in 1926

1911 1926

1 Day

2