Well the summer is definitely over, and we are back in the swing things here in the Belfast Poverty and Public Health/AHRC project. Some of us are teaching and some of us are getting a break from teaching to focus on the project so much work being done.

We are planning our summative conference for Spring next year and will have further details on that in the near future. It will be a collaborative event that will bring in an exhibition element as well as a straight conference so looking forward to cutting our teeth on a new type of output!

(Photo of the Children’s Dormitory at the Carrickmacross Workhouse, original photographs can be viewed at their website photo gallery)

In other workhouse-related news, we thought we would bring you some details of a recently refurbished workhouse just south of the border – Carrickmacross. Local community groups have been working away to recover this example of Monaghan’s architectural and social heritage and they have a number of events coming up, including a textile art exhibit on 24th October and a public lecture by Prof Mary Daly formerly of UCD. For further details see their Workhouse facebook page or their website.

If any of you watched ‘The West Wing’ you will have learned that in his White House Andrew Jackson, the 7th U.S. President, had a ‘big block of cheese’ for any and all who were in need. In the fictional show, President Jed Bartlett continued that tradition by ensuring that there was a day set aside every so often for senior staffers to listen to interest groups who would not ordinarily be able to reach the ear of the president. And current U.S. president Barack Obama hosted his own ‘Big Block of Cheese Day’ this year, on January 29 last. According to the White House Blog, ‘On February 22, 1837, President Jackson hosted an open house featuring a 1,400-pound block of cheese that sat in the main foyer of the White House.’ The social media event which Obama hosted earlier this year was testament to the importance of historical and popular cultural references for politicians trying to reach out to a diverse and distracted citizenry. See more on President Obama’s Cheese Day here.

But what could this possibly have to do with Belfast, poverty and 1914 you might ask? Well, despite the fact that cheese has become a metaphor for public engagement for U.S. politicians, it is also a highly transportable, affordable and nutritious foodstuff. The extent of the cheese and butter trade in Ireland was a concern for the Commissioners charged with inquiring into the relief of the poor in the 1830s and its absence in many areas was noted. It was a regular part of workhouse diets throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries according to Peter Higginbotham’s website www.workhouses.org.

A document held in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland details the activities of the Londonderry Committee for the Relief of War Distress between 1914 and 1915. It noted in November 1914 that ‘the Government of Quebec had generously presented a number of cheese for distribution amongst persons in distress in the United Kingdom. That 2500 cheese of 80lbs. each had been assigned for distribution amongst distressed persons in Ireland and that 1300 would shortly arrive in Dublin.’[1] Local committees in areas where distress had arisen were instructed to apply for an allotment of cheeses ‘to be cut up and distributed amongst distressed’.

This charity from Canada, then part of the British Empire, is perhaps even more surprising given that Canada was not removed from the conflict as U.S.A. was in 1914. Canadian men and women (approximately 600,000 between 1914-18) were themselves joining the war effort. (See Library and Archives Canada for more details)

But the gifts of cheese continued. In 1916 the Local Government Board of Ireland’s annual report noted that,  ‘in the West, a period of scarcity prevailed during the months preceding the harvest, but any hardship that resulted was to a large extent met by a liberal distribution of the Canadian gift flour and cheeses. These gifts, distributed through us, were the greatest boon to the poor, who suffered from the enormous increase in the price of foodstuffs and whose usual credit with shopkeepers during the most trying months of the year was seriously restricted.’[2]

The distress created by the outbreak of war in Ireland, and throughout much of Europe, was dealt with by numerous organisations, including churches, local authorities, charities and private individuals. As well as assisting the local poor, they also tried to cater for Belgian refugees that were starting to leave there in their thousands. The local committee for the Ballykelly Dispensary District in County Londonderry (as it was referred to at the time) offered to house the refugees in Limavady Workhouse. A number of Belgians were eventually housed in Dunshaughlin Workhouse in Co. Meath.

After this little spurt of public engagement, via social media, this hungry historian is off in search of her own block of cheese, hopefully encased in lovely crusty fresh bread!

By Sean Lucey

The recent controversy regarding the Tuam Mother and Baby Home has brought into sharp focus twentieth century Irish social history, and the need for social historians to inform current social affairs debates. Mother and Baby Homes were established during the foundation of the Free State as a means of removing ‘unmarried mothers’ and their children from the former workhouses. This was part of attempts to reform the workhouse and poor law system during revolutionary and early independent Ireland. It was believed that the removal of unmarried mothers and illegitimate children would help to erode the stigma associated with workhouses, and help to make the newly renamed county homes and county and district hospitals more appealing to what were considered the ‘deserving’ classes: for these reforms from a medical perspective see my recent Medical History article (here)

Mother and baby homes were established at the behest of central and local government authorities, and many women and their children were financially maintained in these institutions by the local authorities and ratepayers. In turn, there remains much information deposited in local and central archives relating to the nexus of central government, local government and religious authorities which were involved in the institutionalisation of these women. I’ve highlighted the potential of this material in a number of recent articles in national Irish newspapers. My piece in the Irish Times (here) provided a case study of the committal of a nineteen year old woman in 1933 into the Bessborough Home – a mother and baby home established in 1922 – which revealed that along with the influence of religious authorities, deeply entrenched social, gender and moral prejudices prevailed among officials and many within society, particularly those considered respectable, helped to create the wider societal and cultural environment in which these institutions existed. A further article published in the Irish Examiner (here) outlines the fact that there remains some difficulty regarding this material and much local and central authority archives remain un-archived and inaccessible.  In these pieces I’ve also argued that any potential inquiry which is held has to be as comprehensive as possible and include a wider institutional scope than just mother and baby homes: it should also include, for example, county homes which housed seventy percent of institutionalized unmarried mothers maintained by the state.

While some of the research material remains inaccessible, a certain amount is available to historians and forms the basis for my forthcoming book with Manchester University Press. There are gaps in our knowledge of many aspects of Irish social history, and this current public debate demonstrates the importance of substantial historical analysis and understanding of this key aspect of twentieth-century Irish social history. To hear more about the research and its relevance to the current debate listen to BBC Radio Ulster’s ‘Good Morning Ulster’ (item starts at 02.18) and NewsTalk’s ‘The Right Hook’ with Shane Coleman (item starts at 17.30).

by Georgina Laragy

Yesterday an article by the project’s Sean Lucey noted that condemnation of unmarried mothers in twentieth century Ireland was not confined to members of the Catholic clergy, but was widespread within Irish society. The establishment of a Babies Home in Fitzroy House, University Avenue (now Duke’s Hotel) in Belfast in 1912 reveals further examples of middle-class condemnation of illegitimacy.

Newspaper clippings relating to the Ulster Children’s Aid Society (U.C.A.S. – established in 1910 to assist poor, delinquent and neglected children in Belfast) can be found in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. The society, modeled on a similar society established in London and New York in the mid-nineteenth century, became active in various schemes to improve the lives of poor children: dental clinics, newsboys clubs, school inspections and the babies home on Fitzroy Avenue were all instituted in the first two years of the society. It was also instrumental in channeling Belfast children into industrial schools, believing that it was a much better alternative to the much-maligned workhouse. Frequent newspaper articles in the Belfast Newsletter and Northern Whig contain their criticism of the Belfast Corporation who, U.C.A.S. argued, reneged on their duty to financially support poor children in these industrial schools.

In creating a Babies Home, U.C.A.S. attempted to provide healthy and dedicated care for young babies, both legitimate and illegitimate, whose mothers’ were unable to care for them. This was an attempt to fight the infant mortality rate in Belfast which was then ‘exceptionally high’. Lady Dufferin commented at the opening of the Babies’ Home in March 1912, that ‘while there were many institutions ready to take the older children, there was none except the workhouse open to the child of tender years. That home [U.C.A.S. on University Avenue] had two objects. The first was to save infant life. The second was to train nurses in the management of children committed to their care.’ (Evening Telegraph, 8 March 1912)

There were many ladies of the middle- and upper-classes involved in this project. However, it was not welcomed by everyone. Letters written to the Northern Whig and Belfast Newsletter (8 February 1912 and 9 February 1912 respectively) a month before the opening demonstrate the extent to which locals opposed, albeit unsuccessfully, the creation of the Home. Mr McC., who lived not far from the home, noted that although he did not want to ‘deprecate the good work the society may be doing’ wished that the ‘object with which Fitzroy House, University Street, has been rented should be more fully stated. This is one of the finest private residences in the city, next to a ladies’ boarding and day school, and in the vicinity of a large number of costly residences paying a very large amount of taxes. The report states that it is intended to provide accommodation for fifty babies, but does not say, as the society’s extended report does, that these will be largely, if not altogether, illegitimate…’ The writer added that ‘the place for such a purpose is very ill-chosen and will injure property and annoy the residents of the district, and this part of the society’s work could very well have been left out.’ In a final flurry of indignation he asked that ‘the Ladies’ Illegitimate Children’s Committee…. Each ask themselves how they would like fifty illegitimate children next their homes, and if they do to others as they would wish others to do to them I can confidently rely on their answer.’  (Northern Whig, 8 February 1912)

A letter in support of Mr McC.’s sentiments appeared the following day in the Northern Whig (9 February 1912) calling the scheme and Babies’ Home ‘little short of an outrage upon a respectable residential community’. He felt surely that another property could have been easily secured for what he described as a ‘most laudable purpose, and for many reasons more suitable in the outskirts of the city, away from private residences, schools etc.’

This attempt to physically and socially ostracize illegitimate children was based on numerous factors, demonstrated here in the concerns of, and for, the ‘owners of property in Botanic Avenue, University Street, and immediate neighborhood’. They believed that the value of their property would be diminished by the presence of a Babies’ Home, a suggestion that wider middle- and upper-class communities beyond the immediate vicinity would also agree that such an institution was not to be welcomed in a wealthy neighborhood.  Such children, imperiled by poverty, ill-health and a lack of welfare provision beyond the workhouse, represented a danger to property, moral health and the financial well-being in the eyes of some ratepayers in Edwardian Belfast.

This weekend was spent at a conference in the Irish Workhouse Centre which is located in the old Portumna workhouse in Co Galway. The voluntary committee who have restored and conserved many of the buildings in the complex held the first ‘Irish Workhouse Conference – Past and Present’ bringing together historians (such as Larry Geary, Gerard Moran, myself, and Sean Lucey), emigrants (Bill Marwick, whose ancestor departed from a Galway workhouse to Australia in the 19^th century) and an osteoarchaeologist – Dr Linda G. Lynch who has worked on the bones recovered in various workhouse burial grounds around the country, including Manorhamilton in Co Leitrim.

Drs Geary and Moran spoke about aspects of the workhouse that are sometimes underplayed in the popular perception of the institutions; Gerry Moran gave a fascinating account of ‘Riots and insubordination in the workhouses during the Great Famine’, and Larry Geary spoke about his work on the provision of health care under the Irish Poor Law.

Myself (Georgina Laragy) and Sean Lucey spoke about the research we have been involved in since 2007 at Oxford Brookes and here at Queen’s University, Belfast. I provided an overview of regional patterns of indoor and outdoor relief, using maps available here, and explored the regional distinctions that led to experiences of poverty in nineteenth century Ireland. Sean Lucey spoke about the reform of the poor law system under the Irish Free State after 1920, and the continuation of the system in the six counties of the newly-created Northern Ireland until after the Second World War.

Click on picture to the left for Georgina Laragy’s powerpoint

Peter Higginbotham, author of the fantastic resource on workhouses across the British Isles (www.workhouses.org) also provided information on the workhouses of Ireland and Scotland. He had visited Portumna more than a decade ago, taking the image below which showed how dilapidated and derelict the building, dating from the early 1850s, had become.

© Peter Higginbotham, www.workhouses.org

Most spectacular however, was the contribution by the voluntary committee of the Portumna workhouse to the conservation and preservation of the buildings themselves. This was outlined by Mairín Doddy (Conservation Office for Galway County Council) and Ursula Marmion (IRD manager and co-ordinator of the Irish Workhouse Centre) who guided the large audience through the wonderful work that has been completed over the past ten years to conserve the building using the highest international standards of conservation. This involved getting cattle out, removing ivy (which you can see in the photo above) and re-roofing to prevent water getting in and destroying what remained. Their presentations were supplemented by very informative tour guides who brought groups of us through the dormitories, laundry, reception area, yards etc., each at different stages of conservation.

In addition to the sterling work of the Irish Workhouse Centre we were treated to information about the state of a number of surviving workhouses from all around the island and the conservation work and community initiatives that are based around these once-dreaded buildings.

Some workhouses, such as Callan in Co. Kilkenny, Birr in Co Offaly and Kilmacthomas in Co Waterford are in private hands and their owners spoke about the work on-going to conserve and use these beautiful buildings as community resources. The workhouse in Limavady in Co Derry is a fully operational health and social services centre that caters for a population similar to those who would have been institutionalised there in the 19^th century, but under a new dispensation that provides dignity and a degree of independent living to those who live on the grounds. It also hosts offices, a museum and arts/cultural events. Carrickmacross and Bawnboy workhouses in the border counties of Monaghan and Cavan have also benefitted from community initiatives that have seen them restored to a very high standard with more work planned for the future. The Donaghmore workhouse, like the Irish Workhouse Centre in Portumna, hosts a museum that details the history of the workhouse itself, the Great Famine and rural life in the area, including an exhibition of agricultural implements and tools.

All in all, the conference was a wonderful success on the part of Ursula Marmion and the committee down at Portumna. But it also allowed this time-traveller to walk around the buildings, see the wooden platforms where paupers slept, the ventilation holes to circulate air and keep them healthy, the cells for refractory inmates and the laundry room where their uniforms, ticking etc., were washed and dried. It provided a tangible element to the research that we are doing here at Queen’s, a ‘site of memory’ for travelling back in time as we imagine what life would have been like for those who worked and lived there.

(All images bar one by Peter Higginbotham were taken by © Georgina Laragy 2014)

In the workhouse yard

On the stone stairway in the female side of the building

Female dormitory, Portumna workhouse

Ventilation holes over the doorway into the female wards © Georgina Laragy 2014

Dilapidated cells for refractory inmates

The School of History and Anthropology, in conjunction with the Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities, is hosting a conference in Clifton House, Belfast, 11-12 April 2014 entitled ‘Poverty and Famine in Ireland: The Great Famine, its contexts and legacy’. The programme can be found below. It is open to any and all who would like to attend though for reasons of space and catering it is limited to approx. 50-60 attendees. If you would like to attend please contact Georgina Laragy by email g.laragy@qub.ac.uk as soon as you decide. Admission is free and all are welcome. The conference will hear from some of the leading researchers in the field and it should be a excellent event.

Poverty and Famine in Ireland: The Great Famine, its contexts and legacy

11-12 April 2014, Clifton House, North Queen Street, Belfast

Friday 11 April

12.30-1.45 Private lunch for research partners

2                Welcome

2.15-3       Session 1: Niall Ó Ciosain (NUIG), ‘Irish poverty in the Poor Inquiry and Nicholls Reports’

3-4            Session 2: Robyn Atcheson and Peter Gray (QUB), Epidemics and Fever Hospitals in pre-Famine Belfast and during the Great Famine

4-4.30       Coffee

4.30-5.30  Session 3 Olwen Purdue and Georgina Laragy (QUB), Poverty and welfare in post-Famine Belfast

5.30-6.30  Private Advisory Board meeting

7              Private Dinner

Saturday 12 April

9.30-10.30      Session 4: Eoin McLaughlin (Edinburgh) and Chris Colvin (QUB), Evidence for Famine Nutrition from the Irish Prison Registers

10.30-11         Coffee

11-12              Session 5: Ciaran Reilly (NUIM), ‘Culpability and the Great Famine: What the Strokestown archive reveals’

12-1                Session 6: Andy Newby (Helsinki), ‘”Regarded in a Different Light”? Imperial Relations and Famine Relief in Finland, 1867-8’.

1-2 Lunch

2-3                    Session 7: Marguerite Corporaal, Chris Cusack and Lindsay Jannsen (Nijmegen), ‘”At the verge of ruin”: Poverty and Feudalism in Famine Fiction’

3-4                    Session 8: Emily Mark-Fitzgerald (UCD), ‘Representations of poverty in Irish Famine memorials’

4 Close

By Robyn Atcheson

As a fan of all things related to the classic Victorian detective, a seemingly mundane note in the minute books of the Belfast Board of Guardians caught my attention a few weeks ago.

On 29 August 1843, the Guardians noted that 7s. 6d. was to be paid to a Patrick Sherlock ‘for the apprehension of William Smith who absconded with Union clothing’.[1]

Belfast’s own Patrick Sherlock therefore interacted with the poor as did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective several decades later.  While the canon of Sherlock Holmes stories displays a rather genteel, and certainly gentlemanly, image of Victorian London, there are several references to the other side of urban life in the nineteenth century.  Holmes and Watson enjoy the benefits of wealth and status from their rooms in Baker Street but certain stories illuminate the darker, poorer side of life in London.  The Baker Street Irregulars, street urchins employed by Holmes to carry messages or uncover clues, are present in the very first Sherlock Holmes story ‘A Study in Scarlet’ and even have a chapter named after them in another novel ‘The Sign of the Four’.  The BBC’s modern adaptation, starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the infamous deerstalker, has recreated this scheme with the use of Sherlock’s ‘homeless network’ who aid him in many of his cases.

One Holmes story in particular highlights poverty in nineteenth-century London and provides an interesting contemporary fictional perspective on the matter.

‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ is a short story contained in the volume The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, first published in The Strand magazine in 1891.  A visit from a friend on behalf of her opium-addicted husband persuades Dr Watson to venture to an opium den of disrepute near the docks in search of the addict Isa Whitney. After locating Whitney relatively quickly, Watson is about to leave when an old, wrinkled man stops him, revealing himself to be none other than Holmes in disguise.  (This opening sequence was recently referenced in the BBC’s ‘His Last Vow’ episode.) In the original story Holmes informs Watson that he is working on the case of Neville St Clair, a wealthy gentleman from Kent who had mysteriously disappeared.  St Clair, thirty-seven years of age with a wife and two children ‘had no occupation, but was interested in several companies and went into town as a rule in the morning, returning by the 5.14 from Cannon Street every night.’  Mrs St Clair took an unexpected trip to London and was shocked to see her husband’s face, crying in anguish, in the second-floor window above the opium den.  On investigation, police discovered that the room was used by a cripple, a professional beggar.  St Clair’s clothes were found in the room, as well as ‘traces of blood … seen upon the windowsill’; his coat washed ashore the next day with 421 pennies and 270 halfpennies in the pockets.  Holmes believes St Clair to have been murdered and the beggar, Hugh Boone, was arrested.

Holmes describes the suspect to his companion: ‘His appearance, you see, is so remarkable that no one can pass him without observing him.  A shock of orange hair, a pale face disfigured by a horrible scar, which, by its contraction, has turned up the outer edge of his upper lip, a bulldog chin and a pair of very penetrating dark eyes, which present a singular contrast to the colour of his hair, all mark him out from amid the common crowd of mendicants and so, too, does his wit, for he is ever ready with a reply to any piece of chaff which may be thrown at him by the passers-by.’

The seemingly simple case is complicated further when Holmes and Watson call on Mrs St Clair in Kent to discover that she has received a letter, undeniably from her husband.  While Watson sleeps, Holmes ponders the problem with his pipe, eventually wakening Watson early the next morning to reveal the solution.  Returning to London, Holmes visits the beggar Boone in his cell in Bow Street and while Boone sleeps, washes his face until his image turned from that of a beggar to that of Mr Neville St Clair.

St Clair admits to Holmes that his ‘job’ in the city was begging.  As a young man reporting for an evening paper, St Clair had once acted as a beggar for an article, using the secrets of make-up he had learned from an interest in acting.  Shocked at how much money he was able to make, St Clair returned to the scheme when he needed to pay off a debt and then decided to quit his job as a reporter, describing the decision as ‘a long fight between my pride and the money’.

‘I do not mean that any beggar in the streets of London could earn £700 a year – which is less than my average takings – but I had exceptional advantages in my power of making up, and also in a facility of repartee, which improved by practice and made me quite a recognised character in the City.  All day a stream of pennies, varied by silver, poured in upon me, and it was a very bad day in which I failed to take two pounds.’

The remarkable tale of the man with the twisted lip is an interesting glimpse into perceptions of poverty in Victorian London.  While marvelling at the explanation, neither Watson as narrator nor any other character present, questions its validity.  Are we, the twenty-first century reader, then meant to infer that it was possible for a beggar to make this amount of money in 1890s London?

Regardless of the amount made by such endeavours, the general attitude towards begging is clear.  After hearing St Clair’s explanation, Holmes asks how he had avoided prosecution for begging to which St Clair replies that he was prosecuted ‘many times; but what was a fine to me?’  Not only was begging illegal under the Vagrancy Act of 1824 but it was considered a disgraceful act, publicly parading poverty on the street.  Even St Clair himself is embarrassed by his occupation, clearly desperate to hide the truth from his family; ‘I would have endured imprisonment, ay, even execution, rather than have left my miserable secret as a family blot to my children.’  ‘God help me, I would not have them ashamed of their father.  My God! What an exposure! What can I do?’   This shame, so feared by St Clair, was, however, nothing compared to the shame and fear of poverty itself.  The author, Conan Doyle, could relate to the fear of poverty.  His father, Charles Doyle, was an alcoholic and ended up in an asylum, throwing his family into periods of poverty while Arthur was a child.

A final interesting point to take away from Holmes’s encounter with poverty in this tale is that Neville St Clair lived this double life for years without being discovered.  The dichotomy between rich and poor was, and arguably remains, a huge societal gap.  How St Clair flitted between one and the other is definitely an interesting statement on the superficial aspects of poverty; his clothes, hair, make up and mannerisms that enabled others to classify him as either ‘rich’ or ‘poor’.  For as Benjamin Disraeli stated in ‘Sybil’ in 1845:

‘Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by different breeding, are fed by different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws … THE RICH AND THE POOR.’

If anyone is in London this week you might be interested in hearing Dr Sean Lucey speaking about his research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on Thursday 23 January. The title of the paper is ‘‘It’s a truism that public health is a purchasable commodity: municipal healthcare in inter-war Belfast’.

Municipal medicine and public health has been seen as a failure in Belfast and Northern Ireland/ North of Ireland prior to the introduction of the National Health Service. The recent British historiography on the performance of public health providers, particularly in the municipal sectors, has challenged similar negative understandings. This paper argues that a more positive picture is applicable to Belfast. It demonstrates that although Belfast was one of the unhealthiest cities in the United Kingdom, attempts were initiated to expand municipal personal health services. Concentrating on maternity and child welfare provision; controversial due to the city’s high infant and maternal mortality rates; the paper highlights how Belfast’s voluntary hospital sector and the continued existence of the poor law undermined municipal expansion. These two sectors expanded demonstrating that while municipal medicine remained modest, other fields were more dynamic indicating the existence of a strong mixed economy of healthcare.

Thursday, 23rd January 2014, 12.45 pm – 2.00 pm
Venue: LG7, Keppel Street Building

Further details on the venue and Centre for History in Public Health in London click here.

Our Research Fellow Dr Sean Lucey spoke to journalist David Lynch about the parallels between health care provision for mothers and children in 1950s Ireland and today. He also makes reference to the situation in Belfast at that time. “Belfast’s medical leaders such as RJ Johnstone in the 1930s – MP in the Northern Irish parliament and a professor in Queen’s medical school – resisted attempts at expanded local authority in maternity and child welfare. This was largely out of a desire to protect the expanding voluntary hospital sector, which included the opening of the new Royal Maternity Hospital in 1933.” Click here to read about ‘The divisive legacy of free healthcare in Ireland’ from the Medical Independent.