Working Class Heroines

The Extraordinary Women of Dublin's Tenements

Kevin C. Kearns

• Publisher: Gill Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780717162703
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historiografía

In Working Class Heroines acclaimed historian Kevin C. Kearns brings us the voices of the forgotten women of Dublin's tenements. If it weren't for his work the lives of these everyday heroines would be lost forever. Based on 30 years of research spent interviewing and recording the life stories of the working-class women of Dublin, it covers the squalid tenement days of the early 1900s, through the mid-century decades of 'slumland' block flats, and into the 1970s when deadly drugs infiltrated poor neighbourhoods, terrifying mothers and stealing away their children. What emerges is an intimate and poignant celebration of the mammies and grannies who held the fabric of family life in an environment of hardship and, often, cruelty.Through vivid tales of how they coped with grinding poverty, huge families, pitiless landlords, the oppressive Church, dictatorial priests, feckless and often abusive husbands, these remarkable women shine with astonishing dignity, wit, pride and a resilient spirit, despite their struggles. Working Class Heroines gives voice and pays tribute to the long silent, unsung heroines who were the indispensable caretakers of both family and community, and remains one of the most important Irish feminist documents of our times."The ordinary woman has long been absent from our national narrative. I think we should be grateful that Working Class Heroines exists, and we can benefit now from listening to these voices.' Ellen Coyne, The Sunday Times

SECTION 1

CHAPTER ONE

Tending to Home and Family

“Mothers were the mainstay of the family, the anchor. The father took a secondary role, he kind of stepped aside. Mothers took the brunt of everything, they held families together. And the children had to come first.”

(Mick O’Brien, 68)

“Mothers, they never really had a life themselves. Food on the table and clothes for their children … didn’t do anything for themselves. Their whole life was their children.”

(Bernie Pierce, 43)

“With a bit of maturity, you look back and say, ‘Good God, the sacrifices they made for us!’”

(Matt Larkin, 70)

It was their highest calling in life. Their very raison d’être. Tending to home and family. Consuming all human energy and emotion. Carried out in a deprived and distressful urban environment. For the inner-city was never an easy or wholesome place in which to “keep house” and rear a family. Whether in a decrepit 1920s’ tenement room or spartan blocky flat of the 1970s — it was always a struggle.

A fundamental tenet of history is that no human event or condition can be adequately comprehended without knowledge of the locale in which it occurs. Hence, one cannot understand, or appreciate, the nature of an inner-city mother’s life without keeping constantly in mind the physical and housing surroundings in which she existed. A milieu strikingly different from that of mothers elsewhere in Dublin.

Poor and inadequate housing plagued the city’s core for centuries. During most of the 1900s, housing for the lower-income, working-class families was inferior in construction, space, amenities and general living conditions. The scandal of bad housing for the masses was cause for great shame among the city’s authorities because it was so conspicuous an urban blight and social injustice. Actually, the term “dwelling” was more appropriate than “house”. They ranged from wretched tenement rooms to flimsy flats to brick working-men’s abodes. Dotting back lanes, alleys and mews were assorted other habitations such as stone cottages and carriage houses where countless more families huddled in antiquated conditions. Some still had outdoor privies in the eighties. Most dwellings were small, cramped and lacking in decent water, lavatory and heating facilities. Families normally had only one or two rooms in which to play out all human domestic activities in their lives. Privacy was unknown.

Dublin’s notorious tenements and the lives of those forced to reside in them are documented in Dublin Tenement Life and other works.¹ Throughout the first half of the century, one-third of the city’s population subsisted in them. Conditions were appallingly primitive, families of ten to twenty crammed like cockroaches into one and two rooms. In the absence of toilets, running water, proper heating and furnishings, the inhabitants had to rely upon water vats, slop buckets, open fires and straw mattresses on the floor. Many such hovels were called “pigsties” and declared “unfit for habitation”. Yet, some continued to be inhabited — out of dire housing necessity — all the way into the 1980s.

Efforts to move families out of the dangerous tenements into new flats began in the first decade of the century when the Corporation Buildings were constructed. It is interesting to note that these were referred to at the time as “municipal tenements”. And, indeed, there was often scant difference in actual living conditions between the old Georgian tenements and the newly-built flats. Though most flats had some indoor running water and toilet facilities, they were depressingly cell-like in design. They could feel more claustrophobic than the high-ceilinged tenement rooms with large windows.

From the forties to the sixties, tenements were largely demolished as new blocks of flats mushroomed across the cityscape. Most were architectural monstrosities devoid of any pleasing aesthetics. To many, they were visually akin to crude military barracks — or concentration camps. Mazes better fit for rats. Typically of poor materials, shoddy construction and sparse amenities. In truth, many were not far removed from the discomforts and primitivity of the old arthritic tenements, as verified by Sadie Grace’s description of the flat in which she was reared during the “progressive” 1960s:

“Just one room, then a small scullery and a toilet. No bathroom. One room for sleeping, for everything. No privacy, just a double bed and night mattresses pulled out. No bath, we had a big enamel vat and everybody’d have a bath. A fireplace … coal and we used turf.”

The city’s sprawling, flatland life was often not that different from the tenement world a half century earlier.

Dublin Corporation authorities, of course, lauded the “luxury” of piped water and toilets. But those who lived in the flats knew the folly of any claims of luxury. Utilities regularly malfunctioned and the Corporation and private landlords were famously negligent about maintenance. Structures quickly showed deterioration due to poor materials and workmanship. Hallways, staircases, courtyards were soon despoiled by litter, vandalism, graffiti, urination. From the outset, most residents took little pride in their flat and were not motivated toward communal upkeep of the block. The term “slum”, so long applied to squalid tenements, soon became affixed to new flat blocks. Along with “ghetto” and “dumping ground”. Some, of course, were markedly better than others. But in terms of the quality of life in the flats — especially as compared with that of suburban homes — it was a bleak and difficult existence.

Mothers found that when they were moved from a tenement room to a flat they still had to contend with the same hardships — large family, cramped quarters, poverty, stress. Blain makes it quite clear that families transplanted during the fifties and sixties from brittle tenements to sterile flats were still struggling to subsist:²

“With so many families living hand-to-mouth in the flats, it’s a wonder any of them survived the times.”

Through their automobile windows, Dubliners of means driving past the barren flatlands scanned them, tending to shake their heads slowly, in disbelief or sympathy. Perhaps both. The interior scene would likely have alarmed them more. Few middle-class mums ever set foot inside a flat in Oliver Bond blocks or on Dominick Street. Had they done so, their reaction would doubtless have been similar to that of a visiting priest — in the 1970s:³

“Huge overcrowding … one room and four kids, two rooms and twelve. Mother having a baby and then pregnant again within weeks … overcrowding, smells, poverty. I’m talking about the flats!”

A decade later, some inner-city mothers still endured such privation and pressure in pockets on both the northside and southside. The Buckingham Street flats stood out as a pathetic example:⁴

“These blocks of flats on Buckingham Street are privately owned … in 1987 some 28 families lived there. Three toilets served each group of five flats; there was one sink per landing, one bathroom per block. There was no hot water in the flats … no lighting on the stairs. There were rats.”

The Fire Brigade declared the flats a fire hazard and the Eastern Health Board deemed them “unfit for human habitation”.⁵ Surely, few suburbanites could have imagined that any Dublin mother had to struggle to rear her family under such horrendous circumstances in the modern age.

Scattered across the centre of the city were also thousands of small, brick working-men’s houses (such as those still found along Rutland Street) and artisans’ dwellings, most built between the 1860s and 1880s. They were generally better constructed, equipped and more liveable than tenements or flats. Nonetheless, for the average mother with a large family trying to make ends meet, life here was by no means easy. Tony Morris was born and reared in the fifties in an artisans’ dwelling on Malachi Road, just above Arbour Hill, “seven of us reared in two bedrooms, four of us slept in the one bed … and there was thirteen children in the family two doors from us. It was rough.”

Finbarr Flood, who rose to the position of Managing Director of Guinness’s, grew up a stone’s toss away in Rosse Street cottages, and later on Oxmantown Road. Because his father worked at the brewery, “we were never in danger of starving,” but most definitely “you were struggling” from week to week to get by.⁶ The dwellings were humble and mothers frugal. Even as a young lad, he was struck by the juxtaposition only a few paces away on the North Circular Road where there lived “a different bracket of people … you kept away from there.” A world where mothers had big, stately homes, gardens, maids, handsome furnishings and elegant dress. At night one could peer in through the large windows and see gleaming chandeliers, sparkling crystal, and fashionably attired figures moving about slowly, properly. Genteel society, just across the road. It was enough to raise questions in a child’s mind. But mammies had gentle ways of letting their young ones know where they belonged — and where they didn’t. “City kids” learned early to know their place, their element.

Wherever she lived, most every Ma had her own horde — and handful. For one of the most distinguishing traits of inner-city mothers was their prolific childbearing. Usually due to maternal duty, rather than personal choice. Streets teemed with children playing, hollering, engaging in devilment of every sort. Their laughter resonated happily through the corridors of the city. When they straggled home depleted from their frolicking, the Ma was always there to give them a feed, scrub them, patch up their scrapes. Console them if need be.

During the first half of the century, the average number of children per family ranged from about seven to fourteen. “Six or seven would be looked on as a rather small family,” remembers Shaw. Some mothers brought enough children into the world to field their own athletic team. As many as twenty. Even 24. When outsiders got a glimpse into the small home quarters they could be astonished at what met their eye. “Eighteen or nineteen children in a family”, discovered Father Reidy. Never had he seen such a sight among the upper classes. From the 1950s through the 1970s, average figures declined to around six to eight children — still about double the number in suburban families.

Tending to household chores, while caring for the needs of their brood, took every waking minute of the day. Well into the second half of the century, most tasks required strenuous manual effort: cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing — all carried out with cumbersome implements. They lagged well behind middle-class mothers in obtaining work-saving appliances such as clothes washers and dryers, electric vacuum cleaners and irons, refrigerators, ranges and cooking devices. They relied upon washing boards, heavy hand irons, scrub brushes and brooms. Modern electricity, heating and plumbing were unknown to many until the fifties and sixties. Even into the eighties. And since the Corporation and private landlords were habitually negligent in providing proper maintenance, it was often left to mothers to try and make home repairs, clean stairwells and shared toilets. As a young girl growing up in the Corporation Building flats in the 1950s, Betty Mulgrew sympathised with the harried mothers, “the housework, cooking, cleaning, washing — it was never done!” A monotonous, endless cycle. Depressing to see, even as a child.

Nothing was more gruelling than washing and ironing clothes and bedding for a large family. A good Ma took monumental pride in cleanliness. For many, it was a sort of religion. Their surroundings may have been grubby, but children would be turned out in clean duds. Perhaps frayed and patched. Even ill-fitting. But clean. And their hung white sheets put the seagulls to shame. Mondays were normally washday. Sometimes two weekly washings were required. They could undertake the task in their cramped quarters, which meant heating buckets of water for the vat, thrashing away with a washing board fit for an antique shop, and then heaving heavy irons. Since many women were hampered by a bad back and arthritis from a young age, it was doubly difficult. On washday, young Mick Quinn, 72, grimaced watching his mother bent over for hours, her arms constantly in strained motion, “she had a tin vat and a scrubbing board. By God, the sweat would be pouring out of her.”

When they could afford it, they would stuff the wash into a rickety pram and push it through the streets to the Tara Street or Iveagh washhouse. Washhouses provided hot water and wringers. Nonetheless, it was still strenuous, and the stifling heat and steam sometimes overcame women. But always enjoyed was the companionship of womenfolk. In the 1960s when Dublin streets were becoming clogged with cars freshly purchased by the prospering classes, Mulgrew’s mother still relied on the old push-pram system, heading off every Monday with a few pals and flock of children tagging behind:

“Wash all tied up in a sheet and put in the pram and wheel it over to Tara Street. A load of mothers would kind of saunter over, and we’d all trot behind. Oh, they used to sweat in there, especially in summer.”

They might have set out in good spirits, relishing the socialisation, but inevitably dragged home exhausted. To face cleaning, dinner preparation and other tasks.

Their daily schedule would have been unfathomable to mothers nestled beyond the canals. Invariably, they were the first to rise and last to retire. Typically up around six, start the fire, draw water for tea, prepare breakfast. Get the husband and children up and out as necessary. Begin housework, mind young ones, do the shopping, perhaps deal with landlord or pawnbroker. Contend with special needs of husband and children that pop up each day. Prepare dinner and do the dishes. Spend the last waking hours sewing clothes or patching — for which she could at least finally sit down. At day’s end, mothers were sapped.

Typically, they retired between eleven and one, welcoming the rest as much as the sleep. Hoping, of course, that one of the children didn’t beckon or get a bad tummy during the night (curiously, it seldom seemed to stir the Da’s slumber). Or that neighbours wouldn’t erupt in a row that disturbed everyone around. Many mothers managed to get by on only a few precious hours of sleep per night. All their life. Bill Cullen’s Ma, contending with thirteen children, regularly got only half a normal night’s sleep:

“The Ma worked tirelessly to make the money needed for food, clothes and all the outgoings of a large family. She barely slept four hours a day, working long into the night knitting, darning and mending the clothes. She dedicated her life, every waking hour, to her family.”

Two contrasting descriptions of daily life for mothers in different social-economic classes in Dublin during the thirties and forties are illuminating in both perspective and detail. Paddy Hughes, 73, of Coleraine Street on the northside encapsulates his mother’s life of tending to home and family:

“Oh, she had very much hardship. Every day was the same. Up at six in the morning, washing i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraphs
• Contents
• Author’s Retrospect
• Introduction
• Section 1
•    Chapter 2: Making Ends Meet
•    Chapter 3: “You Must Have Your Roof”
•    Chapter 4: “Bejaysus, They Had Pride”
• Section 2
•    Chapter 6: “You Made Your Bed, You Lie In It”
•    Chapter 7: “Babies by the Bundle”
• Section 3
•    Chapter 9: “Little Mothers”
•    Chapter 10: Grannies — The Grandest Mothers
•    Chapter 11: “Mother Church!”
• Section 4
•    Chapter 13: A Ma Made Christmas
• Section 5
•    Chapter 15: Drugs — A Mother's Dread
•    Chapter 16: Solace for the Worn and Weary
• Section 6
• Section 7
• The Song of the Old Mother
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Illustrations
• Copyright
• About the Author
• About Gill Books