Housing as Quality of Life: Dublin, 1798–1821

Abstract

As the eighteenth century drew to a close the political atmosphere across Ireland was tense; in the later decades people had seen the American colonies achieve independence in 1776, and they had seen the mixed results from France in 1789. For many people such themes were encouraging, but for many people, those living amidst the overcrowding, sickness, and ‘the lack of hygiene, uplifting political themes did not compensate for their appalling quality of life.

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Introduction

As the eighteenth century drew to a close the political atmosphere across Ireland was tense; in the later decades people had seen the American colonies achieve independence in 1776, and they had seen the mixed results from France in 1789. For many people such themes were encouraging, but for many people, those living amidst the overcrowding, sickness, and ‘the lack of hygiene, uplifting political themes did not compensate for their appalling quality of life.

Dublin was the political seat and entrepot for Ireland’s thirty-two counties, and it was the population center, although supplemented by regional sites such as Cork and, later, Belfast.

Dublin’s elite lived comparatively well, although not immune to the epidemics which culled their families as well as those of the poor. The Rev. James Whitelaw, rector of the Anglican parish of St. Catherine in southwest Dublin, lived amidst the disorders of his district. Dublin’s parishes had, long before, acquired municipal as well as religious obligations. Whitelaw saw that the scope of social problems extended throughout Dublin. In 1798 he initiated a survey of all of Dublin’s streets with two assistants whose work he checked for accuracy. Whitelaw undertook his work in an unusually hot summer, a period in which the noisome streets and ever-present effluents assailed them each day over five months beginning in May.

This essay abstracts what remained of Whitelaw’s work after his set of five hundred tables burned in the 1922 civil war. Fortunately, Whitelaw prepared an Epitome, as he named it, which yields data Fig. 1.1.

Fig. 1.1

Whitelaw’s Epitome

The Survey

Whitelaw’s Epitome yields information from which we can reconstruct an impression of the method and the results of the investigation. For the most part, Whitelaw and his assistants worked their way across the parishes day by day “with the sanction of Government”. Whitelaw reported only one instance of non-cooperation; it occurred when a butcher in Ormond market took offense at an inquiry and flung a handful of the less desirable portions of his merchandise at the inquirer. The basis for a general pattern of compliance lay in a rumor among the poor that Whitelaw’s survey was for their benefit, and would benefit them directly. In fact, such was the political atmosphere that repression rather than amelioration was the mood at Dublin Castle. Whitelaw’s opus was “nearly consigned to oblivion, “ as he put it, and was not turned into a published document, but was banished to government archives. The Lord Lieutenant confiscated Whitelaw’s product when it saw the light of day in 1805.

However, from the Epitome we can grasp the conditions of life in Dublin’s streets and alleys, and locales where taverns thought by Whitelaw to be, in general, repositories of subversive ideas and plots, abounded. A few years before Whitelaw’s inquiries James Napper Tandy had founded the Dublin branch of the United Irishmen. Dublin Castle under the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Hardwicke, saw the city as a reservoir of insurrection, and it was Whitelaw’s good fortune to be aided by the wholly false rumor of the period.

Table 1.1 presents a typical table from the Epitome listing the streets of St. Anne’s parish, its houses, and inhabitants by gender. There were 7,228 inhabitants in 1798 among whom there was a majority of females. The density of persons per house was 10.16 persons of all ages. Grafton Street had the most residents (N = 935), and Lime-Kiln-Yard had the least (N = 12). In his examination of St. Anne’s parish Whitelaw identified 711 houses many of which would have housed several families in space rented by the room. In addition, Whitelaw counted 36 buildings he listed as “Waste”, an undefined term, but suggesting an utterly destroyed structure. In that regard, there was a building occupied by several families whose entire front wall fell into the street; even so, the landlord came around on Saturday to collect the usual rent. Whitelaw’s “waste” category may have been less livable than the collapsed house he saw in School House Street.

Table 1.1 Epitome listing

Table 1.2 is an abstract and statistical summary of Whitelaw’s parish-by-parish information. It lists for each of twenty-one parishes the size of the population, acreage, density of residence by acreage and by house, and waste houses. Parishes are listed by location north or south of the river Liffey; most are to the south, and five parishes were established on the north side after ancient St. Michan’s became over-burdened. Whitelaw’s own St. Catherine’s was the largest in population, and the smallest was Christ Church, the home to the faculty at Trinity College. Acreage per parish was highly variable. St. Peter’s occupied 141 standard acres, and while Christ Church had only one acre. Density of population per acre was greatest in St. Michael’s, and least in two parishes, St. Peter’s and St. Anne’s. Density per building was highest in the parish of St. Luke, and least in St. George. Given the wastage implied in Whitelaw’s use of the term it seems likely that St. Michael’s was a poor environment, while St. Mary’s appears to have been least unfavorable for families, given the widespread overcrowding and appalling hygiene. Whitelaw noted that, Few capitals abound more with nuisances, unfavourable to health and comfort, than the poorer parts of Dublin.

Table 1.2 Dublin Parish populations and housing

Table 1.2 provides mean values for the five variables and so provides an estimate of the characteristics of a typical parish. There are separate mean values for the five variables for parishes north and south of the river. Also, there are grand means for all twenty-one parishes which provide an over-view for Dublin as a whole.

In Table 1.3 we come closer to the reality of life in Dublin’s streets, alleys, and lanes. For each building on four streets and one estate, this table gives the street number which might or might not have been the number actually on the door, and the state of repair. Gender, and social class, “Upper and Middle Class,” the “Servant class” and the “Lower Class” are categorized for each building. Amidst the ranks of the poor servants apparently held an anomalous position, being drawn from the ranks of the underprivileged but not quite lower class, in Whitelaw’s estimation. In the middle of the table is the property of the Earl of Roden; his three-story house was in good repair, and sheltered 16 persons—of whom twelve were servants mostly female for the four other residents.

Table 1.3 Dublin parish streets, alleys and lanes

In the four streets providing details are the names and occupations of the owners of houses. The most favored appears to be Thomas Walker LL.D., who maintained nine servants. Similar in apparent comfort was Edward Westby who occupied the prestigious position of Master in Chancery, and retained seven servants. There was little segregation by space; also on Aungier Street, and keeping no servants, were several people; they included the Haberdasher Elizabeth Nowlan and the hair-dresser L. Woffmgton. Close to Thomas Walker in Aungier Street were three attorneys—suggesting that one end of the street was more prestigious than the other. The dynamics of population size and density per acre are demonstrated in Fig. 1.2.

Fig. 1.2

Population size and density per acre by rank

On French Street the social level appears to have been more consistent with lawyers and Merchants residing across the length of the set of residences. A possible exception is the identity of the proprietor of No. 16, Mr. Thomas Byrne, listed as a Publican. His property was home to twelve “Lower class” individuals, suggesting a rental property occupied by the poor On Aungier Street three dwellings contained eighteen, eleven, and twelve persons. Elizabeth Nowlan, presumably, was the proprietor of one crowded dwelling, and not a resident. Stephen’s Green- West, and Mercer’s Street were frequented by lawyers and merchants although Thomas O’Neill at No. 57 Mercer’s Street kept a pub. Three residents employed 10–12 servants.

Dublin at the end of the eighteenth century was a troubled but no less dynamic city. Its teeming streets were full of life and, although noisome the city grew, and parishes contracted and expanded. About the time that Whitelaw fmished his monumental study the area was redefined into districts which facilitated better grasp of its quality and moods. One outcome of Whitelaw’s work was establishment of the population of Dublin in 1798. Unlike the common view that Dublin had 300,000 residents Whitelaw concluded that the population was 182,370 persons. Table 1.4 permits consideration of the dynamics alluded to earlier, presenting parish populations in 1798, and in the year of the first reasonably accurate census, 1821. The third column indicates that among 21 parishes eight on the south side of the river grew in population, while all five on the north side expanded. Whitelaw’s parish, St. Catherine’s, expanded by 6,108 souls. That number was exceeded by two north side parishes, St. Mary’s and St. Thomas’s. The greatest loss of population was in the parish of St. Anne, and the greatest trend was the growth of the parishes north of the Liffey. Across the quarter-century summarized in Table 1.4 it is evident that Dublin’s parishes expanded and contracted bringing vitality to north-side parishes and shrinkage to about half of the parishes on the south side of the river.

Table 1.4 Parish populations