The end of the Irish Poor Law?

Welfare and healthcare reform in revolutionary and independent Ireland

Donnacha Lucey

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781784996116
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

This book examines Irish Poor Law reform during the years of the Irish revolution and Irish Free State. This work is a significant addition to the growing historiography of the twentieth century which moves beyond political history, and demonstrates that concepts of respectability, social class and gender are central dynamics in Irish society. This book provides the first major study of local welfare practices and exploration of policies, attitudes and the poor. This monograph examines local public assistance regimes, institutional and child welfare, and hospital care. It charts the transformation of workhouses into a network of local authority welfare and healthcare institutions including county homes, county hospitals, and mother and baby homes. The book's exploration of welfare and healthcare during revolutionary and independent Ireland provides fresh and original insights into this critical juncture in Irish history. The book will appeal to Irish historians and those with interests in welfare, the Poor Law and the social history of medicine and institutions.

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 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 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 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. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The poor law and the Irish revolution: the case of the Cork workhouse
• 2 From outdoor relief to home assistance
• 3 Single mothers and institutionalisation
• 4 Child welfare and local authorities
• 5 From workhouses to hospitals
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index