The hours of trading were set as strictly as those for public houses. The summer licensing season ran from 1 April to 30 September, and the winter season from 1 October until 31 March. In the summer, girls could trade outside school hours only until 8 p.m. or until 7 p.m. in winter; boys were allowed to trade until 9 p.m. in summer or 8 p.m. in winter. The aim was to protect youngsters as much from exploitative parents as from members of the public or from employers.
A report published by the Irish Times in the debate before the introduction of the by-laws described the problems and also the outlook of those trying to grapple with the crisis of child poverty in a city where many citizens saw nothing wrong with barefoot or half-naked children of all ages wandering the streets and where the physical and sexual abuse of poor waifs was hardly thought worthy of public debate. Any blame attaching to such problems was generally thought to rest with the parents, insofar as it was considered at all by the comfortable classes.
The anonymous correspondent, who obviously had close contacts with such bodies as the NSPCC and the Dublin Advisory Committee for Juvenile Employment, pointed out to readers that the employment of children was ‘precarious’ and that experience confirmed a tendency by employers ‘to keep wages down to the lowest possible subsistence level.’
The deleterious influences of the slums, combined with wretched housing accommodation, prevent the proper and effective training of children, and seriously lessen the feeling of parental responsibility … And the living conditions under which the boys and girls grow up leave an indelible influence on the life and character of the future men and women. To this upbringing may be ascribed those characteristics peculiar to the working classes of Dublin, which are evidenced in their free-and-easy habits.
There were
boys and girls of school going age who, with a persistence worthy of a better cause, solicit alms from all and sundry; there are girls from fourteen to twenty, who cling to the streets with the tenacity of the Arab to the desert; and strong healthy young men, with raucous voices, who flaunt their wares in the faces of passers by; but have not done and probably never will do a regular week’s work in their lives. Then, in the back mean streets and slum areas are to be seen all the appanages of poverty, drunkenness and wretchedness envisaged in slatternly women, indescribably dirty rooms, ill nourished and anaemic children.
Given the attitude displayed by this well-informed and clearly influential commentator, it is hardly surprising that the onus of ensuring that children complied with the legislation was placed completely on parents. As there were no fixed rates of pay or conditions of employment for these youngsters, it would of course have been difficult to penalise employers.
Perhaps it was just as well, because, as table 15 shows, there was poor enforcement of most of the laws for protecting adult workers. A much more rigorous approach was adopted towards children and their parents. In 90 per cent of cases it was the mother who attended court and paid the fine for the errant child offender.
Table 15
Prosecutions under employment laws, 1914–19
The end of the war brought cuts in the few social supports that had been introduced for the civilian population. This began before the end of 1918 as part of the exchequer’s new policy of retrenchment to restore the health of the public finances. Among the first casualties were communal kitchens, including those for ‘necessitous school children.’ Ironically, the funding was being cut just as demand was increasing because of ‘the increasing difficulty of procuring nourishing meals in the homes of the poor,’ as Father George Turley of the Lourdes House communal kitchen in Upper Rutland Street reported.
Since April 1918 this kitchen had been feeding nine hundred children daily, at a cost of about 2d a day. Even when in funds the project found it hard to feed eight hundred comfortably. This project was one of many, mostly organised by religious, to supplement the work of the corporation’s School Meals Committee, which fed almost ten thousand children during term time. ‘To cease supplying these warm meals to the poor children during this cold and wet weather would cause much suffering,’ Father Turley wrote to the Irish Independent. ‘The Committee therefore appeals with confidence to the charitable public to assist them in carrying on the work while the Corporation grant is stopped.’ He hoped that with Christmas less than a week away ‘those in more comfortable circumstances’ who were ‘filled with thoughts of happiness and good cheer’ would respond generously.32
Funding for communal kitchens catering for adults was hit even earlier. When the kitchen at Eden Quay closed because of the ‘withdrawal of public grants,’ the committee thanked the many generous subscribers, ‘particularly the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, but for the use of whose premises the step would have to be taken sooner and the Plotholders’ Union,’ which had supplied provisions.33
Poverty was not confined to children, or to families. Dublin and the south of Ireland had an exceptionally high level of pauperism in the early twentieth century compared with Belfast or with British cities. After the initial disruption of the war caused a momentary surge in the number of paupers throughout the United Kingdom to 650,737 by August 1915, or 41,261 more than a year earlier, the number fell steadily after the establishment of the Committee on the Prevention and Relief of Distress and of the National Relief Fund to assist local authorities.
In Dublin hardly any progress was made. In January 1915 there were 5,583 people dependent on indoor relief and another 5,125 dependent on outdoor relief—11,062 altogether, or 272 per 10,000 of population, compared with 3,981 in Belfast, or 95 per 10,000. The total figure for the United Kingdom was 347,281, or 191 per 10,000. By December 1918 there were still 10,832 people in Dublin dependent on relief (261 per 10,000), compared with 2,988 in Belfast (69 per 10,000) and a total in the United Kingdom of 232,416 (125 per 10,000). Nor was the Easter Rising a major aggravating factor: the damage and social disruption caused by the fighting added less than 300 to the number seeking relief in Dublin.
In Britain the advent of peace was more calamitous than war. The rate of pauperism rose with unemployment, which was only 0.81 per cent in 1917 but grew to 2.54 per cent in December 1918 and reached 6.71 per cent by January 1919.34 Just as Dublin benefited relatively little from war industries, so it was not as severely affected by the return to a peace economy. By November 1919 the number of destitute citizens had risen only to 11,006, or 263 per 10,000 of population. Belfast’s higher level of integration in the British war machine was demonstrated by an increase in the rate of those dependent on relief to 89 per 10,000, almost as high as at the beginning of the war.
However, in Britain the social and employment initiatives adopted in wartime paid off to some extent. The United Kingdom average rate of pauperism rose only to 130 per 10,000 by November 1919, still much lower than the figure of 191 in early 1915.
Dublin was not unique in its failure to tackle pauperism: the other southern cities, Cork, Waterford and Limerick, performed equally poorly.35 They too lacked the expertise, financial resources, municipal infrastructure and political leadership at the local level to tackle basic social problems. This was part of the socially bankrupt legacy of the home rule movement. Rural radicals, such as Redmond’s chief lieutenant, John Dillon, never came to terms with urban problems.
The extension to Ireland of social reform schemes introduced in British towns and cities was resisted by the Irish Party, in deference to the ratepayer, and as a result Dublin was still dependent on the old Poor Law system. It was only when the British government was willing to provide central funding for relief, health care and old-age pensions that the majority of city authorities were willing to go along with such initiatives. Slum clearance was also predicated on London’s largesse, and with the war having first call on limited resources this urgent problem continued to fester.
The one bright spot was the old-age pension. The lack of adequate records meant that many Irish people applying for a pension received the benefit of the doubt. In 1912
, of the 942,000 pensioners in the United kingdom 205,000 were in Ireland.
However, outdoor relief continued to be a feature of life in the city. The fact that it was open to abuse and was highly politicised only made corporation members all the more determined to defend the system. The councillor who could be an ardent defender of the ratepayer at corporation meetings could be an equally passionate defender of the poor when lobbying for a claimant as a member of the Board of Guardians of the North or South Dublin Union. He saw no more contradiction between these two roles than a barrister did when switching from a defending to a prosecuting brief.
Relieving officers were appointed by the Boards of Guardians, just as the rate collectors were appointed by the councillors, politicising what should have been important offices whose holders had wide-ranging discretionary powers and who should have been independent of interference. The intense level of clientelism that the local government and Poor Law systems bred had totally corrupted the dominant nationalist clique on the corporation over the years, so that it was held in increasing contempt not only by social reformers and the British administration but by the citizens it was supposed to serve.
Perhaps the most unfortunate victims of the system were young children and workhouse inmates with intellectual or physical disabilities. The Irish Party had opposed the extension of the relevant British legislation for reforming the health and social services, on the usual grounds that it was unfair to the Irish ratepayer.
In January 1914 the Minister of Local Government, John Burns, finally lost patience and ordered the transfer of all children over three years of age from the Irish workhouse system to foster homes where available, or to more suitable institutional care. The timing was regrettable, as the Home Office, which oversaw an extensive system of child-centred reform in the United Kingdom, lost its remit for the 26 Counties in 1922. Thousands of Irish children would be consigned to the tender mercies of the religious orders and the industrial school system, at minimal cost to the newly established Free State. The victims included children in trouble with the law, who would be dealt with through the Probation of Offenders Act in Britain. The continuation of the discredited capitation system in the Free State provided a powerful financial incentive for a parsimonious state and for religious orders hungry for funds. By 1924 industrial schools would be accommodating more children than their counterparts in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined. Other vulnerable groups would also experience tortuous escape routes from the workhouse system, such as those covered by the Blind Persons Act (1920), one of the last pieces of progressive British legislation to be passed before the Treaty settlement.36
Dublin did at least have a mental asylum in the Richmond Asylum at Grangegorman, which had increased its capacity in 1912, although it still proved inadequate to meet demand in the war years. While the Richmond admitted 58 patients from the South Dublin Union in 1913, the number of mental patients in the South Dublin Union itself rose from 198 to 202, and there was similar pressure on space in the North Dublin Union. The Richmond was only supposed to take patients who were certified as dangerous, but the North Dublin Union used it as a dumping ground for old, senile and bedridden inmates. The inadequate training of the staff meant that they were often little more than guards and work supervisors. Occasional incidents of brutality were reported, but neither patients nor staff were inclined to inform on the perpetrators. In one of the few incidents that were investigated a patient complained that he had been punched on the jaw by an attendant after he refused to clean spittoons. The attendant denied the allegation and said that the patient had attacked him and was ‘a very low class of man, he was a corner boy and often in jail.’ In another incident a patient was allegedly beaten for refusing to get out of bed and help move a coffin. No member of the staff was dismissed as a result of these incidents, which, ironically, fuelled the popular image of the asylum as a dangerous place to work because of the violent nature of the patients.
The informal agreement between rebels and military to treat the Grangegorman complex as neutral ground had spared it the destruction visited on the rest of the north inner city. As a result, a few weeks after the rising a section of the institution was converted into a war hospital for soldiers suffering from shell shock and other psychiatric disorders. The military agreed to pay 21s 6d per bed per week, providing a profit of 8s 2d a week on each of the thirty-two beds involved. The money was useful in bridging the growing gap between the capitation grant of 4s per patient per week, which had remained unchanged since before the war, and the rapidly rising cost of food, coal, drugs and clothing for patients.
The Dublin Citizens’ Association was constantly questioning the expenditure of ratepayers’ money on the Richmond. The failure of wages to keep up with the cost of living greatly exercised the staff, who attended a meeting in the Trades Hall with staff members from other hospitals to form the Irish Asylum Workers’ Union. This would lay the basis for a wave of industrial action in psychiatric hospitals once the Great War ended.37
Meanwhile the military hospital had played an important role in breaking down popular prejudices against psychiatric illness, with the military patients accepted as ‘brave soldiers who have risked their lives and sacrificed their health in their country’s service.’ The introduction of a more therapeutic regime and the involvement of voluntary bodies, such as the Royal Irish Automobile Club and the Red Cross Society, in the soldiers’ recovery were harbingers of a more benign future. Of the 362 soldiers admitted to the facility before it closed in December 1919 more than half were treated successfully for their condition. However, a quarter of the patients were described as ‘of low mentality for whom treatment could do little.’ It is not clear what their fate was after the hospital closed.
Many members of the hospital’s staff were glad to see the back of the soldiers; some had refused to have anything to do with them or with the Red Cross Society. Donations to the latter organisation were now seen very much as a political act. In vain did the Irish Times try to upbraid readers by pointing out that in late 1917 Ulster had collected £27,750 for the Red Cross Society, while Munster, Leinster and Connacht between them had managed only £21,340 4s 8d. The paper cited a message from the commander of British forces in France, Sir Douglas Haig, that asked: ‘Are you amongst those who are remembering the men who are now GIVING MOST, DARING MOST, ENDURING MOST?’ The provocative style of the notice, like that of much of the recruitment literature in Ireland, may well have been counterproductive, in that it crystallised the question of where the reader’s commitment lay. Indeed the phrase ‘enduring most’ would be adopted by one of the nascent Irish Republic’s future heroes, Terence MacSwiney, in his Principles of Freedom as part of a strategy for resistance to the very forces whose welfare the Red Cross Society held so dear.38
On a lighter note, one unsung saga of the war that would be resolved only after its close was the battle of the bands. Public concerts in the city’s parks and open spaces had been subsidised by the corporation’s Public Health Committee for several years before 1914. Some concert venues, such as Fairview Park, fell victim to allotment fever, but the concerts remained popular. Brass bands were paid 4 guineas (£4 4s) and flute and drum bands 3 guineas (£3 3s) for each performance. However, in 1915 there were complaints ‘that some of the bands were not bona fide bands, or not proficient, or consisted of an insufficient number of performers.’ It was also alleged that one band ‘was receiving engagements under two names.’ The committee therefore decided to invite the Feis Ceoil Association to hold a qualifying competition, and only those bands that secured a mark of 70 per cent or more would be allowed to perform.
The choice of the Feis Ceoil Association did not please everyone. It was less than twenty years old—much younger than some of the bands it was judging—and critics felt its emphasis on traditional music meant that it lacked empathy with the performers. In May 1919 the Irish National Fife and Drum Band Association lodged a complaint with the corporation that
only one of its members—the O’Connell Flute and Drum Band—had qualified. It said the judges had failed to take account of the absence of many of its most experienced musicians, who were serving in the British army. These men would be returning shortly, only to find they would be denied the right to perform before their fellow-citizens.
The Public Health Committee decided to add St Kevin’s Band, the City of Dublin Band and the United Builders’ Labourers’ Band, all of which had close associations with the corporation, to the list. However, this failed to appease everyone, and in June 1919 the secretary of the Irish Municipal Employees’ Trade Union Band put the corporation on formal notice that the city would be sued for breach of contract, as well as the costs incurred by participating in the Feis Ceoil competition and the loss of earnings for band members, if it was not allowed to perform. Within a fortnight of receiving the union’s letter the corporation set down new criteria, and the approved list of bands was expanded to include the complainants. It was also agreed to increase the payment for concerts to five guineas (£5 5s) for a brass band and four guineas (£4 4s) for flute and drum bands.39 At least one conflict in the city had ended harmoniously.
Less fortunate were many of the inmates of the Royal Dublin Zoological Society’s gardens in the Phoenix Park. Established in 1831, Dublin Zoo had been one of the cultural gems of the capital as well as providing a venue for an educational day out for citizens. It was hard hit by the war. As early as September 1914 gate receipts fell by 60 per cent, and Lieutenant-General Shaw appealed to the public for windfall apples, pears and plums that had no market value, as well as cauliflowers that had bolted, old turnips and peas. The zoo even offered to send out carts to collect produce.
A City in Wartime Page 38