This blog comes to you from the city of Belfast; specifically from historians at Queen’s University working on the AHRC-funded project ‘Welfare and public health in Belfast and its region, 1800-1973’. Every few weeks you will find here a piece of writing derived from our on-going historical research.  These musings will come both from the team (Prof. Peter Gray, Dr Olwen Purdue, Dr Georgina Laragy, Dr Sean Lucey and Robyn Atcheson), as well as interested parties working on similar aspects of historical inquiry. We invite contributions from you now, and you can contact us through the blog or through our QUB departmental website.

As historians we are interested in the plight of the poor and the sick from the cradle to the grave. During the period covered by the project, Belfast expanded from a burgeoning town into a city (1888) thanks to a population explosion that challenged the pattern of much of post-Famine Ireland. The passage of the Government of Ireland Act in 1920 led to the creation of Belfast as the capital city of this newly created state and in this regard we can view the city as part of the wider geo-political transformations of post-WW1 Europe. The inter-war period, like much of the rest of Western Europe, was a difficult time for ordinary citizens and politicians alike. Important during the Second World War, Belfast and Northern Ireland became side-lined within the United Kingdom until the bubbling sectarian under-currents exploded into the public and political consciousness in 1969.

The research emanating from this project will examine continuity and change in Belfast during this period in the context of local, regional, national and international developments in welfare and public health provision.

For now though, please be patient, and keep an eye on us as we rummage among the dusty pages of the past to bring you glimpses of individuals who walked the streets of Belfast; those who needed relief in times of sickness and destitution and as well as those who came to their aid.