Republished here as a downloadable digital file is the 7th Annual Report of the Commissioners for Administering the Laws for Relief of the Poor in Ireland with Appendices, 1854, as it was presented to both Houses of Parliament.
As one might expect from Victorian Official Publications, the Annual Reports are replete with statistical information presented in both printed and tabular formats. Each Annual Report is introduced by the Commissioners breviate of the Annual Report in question and are addressed to His Excellency, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. These invariably include tables of the total number of individuals who received indoor and outdoor relief in each of the twelve months over the previous year, tables of morbidity and sickness of inmates, expenditure and wages. The majority of the Annual Reports, however, are made-up of the numerous appendices that are contained within each; these are divided into two main categories: Appendix A 'Circulars of Instruction Issued by the Commissioners and Correspondence to and from the Commissioners' and Appendix B 'Tables.
The Annual Report for 1854 contains some 99 pages of printed text and is dominated by the accounts and expenditure of the various Poor Law Unions in Ireland and the average weekly cost accrued to each of the Unions by every inmate, classification of the inmates and emigration assisted or otherwise indicting Union or origin and destination.
These Reports are a must for any social or local historian providing as they do a multitude of statistical detail on the administration of the Poor Laws and the poor themselves, a great deal of which is presented in the form of correspondence and personal testimony.
This title is a DOWNLOAD title only. Consequently there is no postage charge. Just follow the LINK ON THE RECEIPT after you have completed payment to get the file. You will have 24 hours to download this item.
Republished here as a downloadable digital file is the 10th Annual Report of the Commissioners for Administering the Laws for Relief of the Poor in Ireland with Appendices, 1857, as it was presented to both Houses of Parliament.
The Annual Report for 1857 contains 134 printed pages and this follows the format of the 1854 Report, but includes correspondence resulting from the amalgamation and dissolution of a number of Union and Reports from Inspectors on the Operation of the School Districts Order.
These are a must for any social or local historian providing as they do a multitude of statistical detail on the administration of the Poor Laws and the poor themselves, a great deal of which is presented in the form of correspondence and personal testimony.
Republished here as a downloadable digital file is the 11th Annual Report of the Commissioners for Administering the Laws for Relief of the Poor in Ireland with Appendices, 1858, as it was presented to both Houses of Parliament.
The Annual Report for 1858 witnessed a huge increase in the amount of information presented by the Commissioners and this Annual report contains more than 260 pages. The Majority of this Report is taken up by incoming and outgoing Letters and Instructions, Minutes, etc., from the Board of Guardians of many of the country's Poor Law Unions to the Commissioners regarding the instigation of the 'Removal of Poor People from England and Scotland to Ireland' and includes some 266 items of communication on this subject. Most take the form of depositions taken by the Boards of Guardians concerning individuals of Irish origin wishing to return to Ireland. Most of the cases involved paupers who on their return would require the assistance of the Union from which they originated.
Republished here as a downloadable digital file is the 14th Annual Report of the Commissioners for Administering the Laws for Relief of the Poor in Ireland with Appendices, 1861, as it was presented to both Houses of Parliament.
The 14th annual report, that for 1861, contains some 230 printed pages. The most striking edition to this Report are the communications to and from the Commissioners and the Board of Guardians for the Erris Union concerning the distress experienced in the district in 1860 resulting from the loss of half of the oat crop and three-quarters of the potato crop from damage caused by a violent wind storm. These reports consist of some 48 separate items spelling out the dire situation faced by the inhabitants of the area and the requests of the Guardians to increase the Poor Rate to meet the dramatic increase in pauper inmates.
Published in London in 1837 by J. Hatchard & Son, John Revans' Evils of the State of Ireland; their Causes and Remedy - A Poor Law, a publication that witnesses a second edition, before the eventual passing of the 1838 Poor Law Act and its implementation in Ireland. Containing some 153 printed pages and republished here on fully-searchable CD-Rom, Evils of the State of Ireland represented one of the more benign paths of social policy that could have been adopted by the British Government and implemented in Ireland.
Prior to the eventual formulation and implementation of the Poor Law Act several commissions had been established to look into the causes and possibly remedies of poverty. One of these commissions was conducted in Ireland by the Archbishop of Dublin, Richard Whately, a well known exponent of transportation to the colonies. Although Whately's conclusions were not adopted - the result would have been no workhouses in Ireland and no Poor Law - the estranged Secretary of the Whately Commission, John Revans, with the support of Dublin administrators, undertook his own review and presented his evidence in this publication.
Similar to the Belgium model of poor relief, Revans concluded that Ireland must have compulsory provision for the able-bodied destitute and that the fundamental cause of poverty as well as malaise and disorder in Ireland lay with the extortionate rents levied by landlords. Revans also saw widespread reliance on conacre lettings as root cause of poverty, which drove many women and children to vagrancy and men to beggary and theft in the hunger months of the summer. Revans concluded that only by the lowering of rents and the introduction of at least a subsistence wage for labouring families poverty would remain endemic and reliance on potatoes would continue to cause rural unrest in the summer time. Needless to say, Revans' proposals, which were viewed as extremely radical for the time, were not adopted, some might say with the inevitable consequences of famine. However, Revans' ideas did influence the likes of Thaddeus O'Malley, and through him the Catholic clerical group that continued to pursue the idea of an extended and more equitable poor law during and after the Great Famine.
The Evils of the State of Ireland is replete with anecdotal evidence from Revans' Commission and Respondents as to the causes and possible cures for poverty in Ireland, from which Revans' draws his own conclusions and offers his own solution at each juncture. Republished her on fully-searchable CD-Rom Revans' Evils of the State of Ireland offers a benign solution to the causes and consequence of poverty in Ireland just prior to the adoption of the Poor Law Act and the social upheaval caused by the onset of Famine in 1845.
Republished here is the Report by the Select Committee on Pawnbroking in Ireland; Together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index, which was first published in Dublin by Alexander Thom in 1838. The inquiry into pawnbroking in Ireland came out of concerns being aired in the national press that pawnbrokers in general were charging extortionate and illegal rates of interest for monies lent by them on amounts of two shillings and less and this had brought the entire trade into disrepute. However, it was also acknowledged that the pawnbrokers of Ireland, especially those in Dublin, were also being extorted by the very body that was supposedly set-up to regulate and protect their interests: the Marshal of Dublin.
In light of this situation a select committee was established to examine the pawnbroking industry in Ireland as follows: The Select Committee appointed to inquire into the laws and regulations which affect the Trade of Pawnbroking in Ireland, and their practical operation; and to Report to The House whether any and what alterations may be advantageously adopted therein; and to whom several petitions were referred; and who were empowered to report the minutes of evidence taken before them to The House, have considered the matters to them referred. The Committee's Report extends to some thirty pages detailing the shortcomings and making ten recommendations to pass into law; while recognising that even if all of its recommendations were adopted there would be many in Ireland who would feel that the committee had fallen far short of resolving the issues of pawnbroking in Ireland it was hoped that at the very least all questionable transactions would in future be traceable.
In order to come to its conclusions and formulate its report the Select Committee on Pawnbroking in Ireland from took evidence over a period of two weeks from twenty-one witnesses across Ireland, many of who were pawnbrokers. The minutes of evidence, which were appear to be verbatim questions and answers, taken by the Committee from the witnesses, constitutes the majority of the Report, which is included by several appendices. The first of these is the petition of Matthew Barrington, Esq., who referred to the recently established Monts de Piété in Limerick City, which appeared to have quickly successfully regulated pawning in the city while at the same time making the system more equitable to both the pawnbroker and the client. The second is a very useful list of registered pawnbrokers in Ireland as of December 1837.
Republished here on full-searchable CD-Rom the 242 printed pages of the Report of the Select Committee of Pawnbroking in Ireland makes for a fascinating account of an industry that has often operated in the shadows.
Containing some 670 pages, the Cost of Living of the Working Classes is the Report of the first phase of results of a British Parliamentary Enquiry conducted by the Board of Trade into the conditions of the working classes throughout Britain and Ireland. Data presented in the report dates from enquiries made in October 1905 and the findings were presented to both the House of Commons and Lords in 1907. The full title of the Report provides a clear indication into the nature of the Parliamentary Enquiry: Cost of Living of the Working Classes. Report of an Enquiry by the Board of Trade into Working Class Rents, Housing and Retail Prices, together with the Standard Rates of Wages Prevailing in Certain Occupations in the Principal Industrial Towns of the United Kingdom.
The introductory memorandum to the Report reported that the comparative level of rents of working-class dwellings, of the prices commonly paid by the working classes for meat and other food commodities and fuel as well as wages paid were investigated in a total of 94 industrial towns: 77 in England and Wales, 11 in Scotland and 6 in Ireland. In the majority of cities the wages for the following trades were provided: all components of the building, engineering and printing trades and in most instances a category labelled 'transport', which included the weekly wage for both the skilled and unskilled in each category. Where a specific trade or industry was prevalent in a town, for example the linen trade in Belfast, figures statistics were included for sub-categories of that trade.
Ten percent, or some 60 pages of the Report are given over to Ireland. In Dublin the Enquiry examined the relative wages for the building, engineering, printing, furnishing and transport trades and reported on the average weekly wages to be found in all categories for these industries, which ranged from 19 shillings to just under £2 a week. As for the housing stock inhabited by the majority of these working class people, the Report noted that much was made of of houses that had originally been built for the well-to-do, but now accommodate five or more families, most deficient in basic sanitation and the majority in a dilapidated condition or out of repair. The average rents paid for these tenements were between 2 and 3 shillings a week for a single room, rising to 6 to 8 shillings for four rooms or more. The Report concluded that Dublin exhibited the greatest level of overcrowding and most unsatisfactory housing conditions in the United Kingdom. The Enquiry also investigated and reported on the average prices of all the staples of living - except clothing - necessary for the working class family; these included all basic food stuffs, eggs, bread, meat, sugar, tea and methods of heating including the prices of coal and paraffin.
The Report into the Cost of Living of the Working Classes intimated that comparative enquiries were then being undertaken in France and Germany, which would of made for the most extensive enquiry into conditions of the working class ever undertaken. As it stands the report into the Cost of Living of the Working Classes is an invaluable social document produced when the conditions of the working classes throughout Europe were to change forever due to the impact of World War One. Republished here on fully-searchable CD-Rom, the Cost of Living of the Working Classes will make a valuable addition to the social and family historian alike.
This small publication is taken from a Return made to the House of Commons in July 1854 and is a report on the all of the deserted children taken into the care of the Dublin Metropolitan Police Force in the years ending 30th June 1850 to 1854.
The Return accounts for about 500 children taken into the care Dublin Metropolitan Police Force and provides the following details on each child under eleven headings: where known the child's name. In most cases the child's name was not known, but in a number of cases children's names have been inserted and in a few cases this includes siblings. age: in most cases the children taken into the care of the police were only days old or at most months. However, in a number of cases, for example that of Eliza Bennett in January 1854, the child was 8 years of age. Sex: male or female. Place or location where found: in the majority of cases a street number is given and in only a minority of cases was the location of the deserted child a church. The date the overseers took charge of the child: as the date of discovery of the deserted child was not recorded in the Report, it is not clear how long the deserted children stayed in police care. The sums agreed to be paid for the nursing of the child: these were negligible. In most cases no monies were agreed to be given over for the nurse care of the deserted children as these were taken into the care of the parish. Those children for which monies were given over were those where the parish refused to take the child. Names given to children if baptized while in the care of the police: these were the unnamed children that stayed under the charge of the police where the parish had refused to provide for their maintenance, once again, a minority of the total number of children. Religious denomination of the Minister who baptized the children that remained in police care: in only one case was the child not received into the Roman Catholic faith. Remarks: this is perhaps the most telling and informative section of the Report. The remarks tend to note the eventual fate of the child. In most cases the deserted children were either taken into the care of the parish or received into the Union Workhouse system. However, this was not always the case. For example, a nine-month old female child found deserted at Roundtown was given-up to her mother who was promptly arrested, presumably for the desertion of her child! Or the case of an eight-day old child found deserted on Farrell's Lane and baptized according to a note pinned to his clothes. Overall, a minority of the deserted children were repatriated with their mother's, all of who were arrested and a very small number were either adopted or taken on by private individuals. The majority of the children were, however, either taken on by the overseers, received into the Union Workhouses or in about 20% cases died within days of being taken into care.
The Report on Deserted Children provides a unique snapshot into the social conditions of Dublin for a five-year period and provides a graphic picture as to the fate of deserted children in Dublin for the periods 1850-54.
This title is a DOWNLOAD title only. Conseqeuntly there is no postage charge. Just follow the link on the receipt after you have completed payment to get the file. You will have 24 hours to download this item.
The Royal Commission on Labour: The Agricultural Labourer, was published in 1893 after evidence from the Report was presented to both Houses of Parliament. The range, depth and scope of the inquiry, meant that the report's findings and conclusions were the most comprehensive ever conducted into the conditions of the agricultural labourer in Ireland.
The information presented in the 496 page Reports was taken from the Commission's Surveys of 30 Poor Law Unions, namely:
Vol. 1: Cookstown, Ballyshannon, Ardee, Downpatrick, Clones, Letterkenny, Limavady, Ballymena, Castleblayney, Dromore West and Ballymahon
Vol. 2: Kenmare, Kanturk, Nass, Ennistymon, Cashel, Wexford, Lismore, Thomastown, Kilmallock, Mountmellick and Carlow
Vol. 3: Loughrea, Roscrea, Balrothery and Bailieborough
Vol. 4: Wesport, Castlereagh, Skibbereen and Delvin
As a conseqeunce it covers almost every county and region in Ireland, and constitutes one of the most detailed investigations into the conditions of agricultural labourer in Ireland ever undertaken. The evidence presented in the Reports derived from a plethora of sources, which give both this and the Commission's conclusions great validity. Amongst the sources from which evidence was garnered were secretaries of local labour leagues, land agents and landlords, independent witnesses, Poor Law Union Guardians, parish priests as well as personal interviews by the Commissioner and his agents. These interviews included visiting labourers' cottages in each of the subdistricts of the unions surveyed and much of the firsthand evidence gathered revealed the depressing conditions experienced by the rural and urban labourer alike.
In short, the Commission probed into every conceivable aspect of labourer's lives and probably extended its scope beyond its original remit by inquiring into the conditions and circumstances of town labourers, miners and women labourers both town and country. Taken as a whole the 1893 Royal Commission on Labour provides provides some of the best social, economic and historical data available for the labouring classes of Ireland towards the end of the 19th century and will be a useful for academics and those simply interested in the socio-economic conditions experienced by much of the population of Ireland in the 1890s.
The 496-pages is republished here in fully-searchable CD-Rom format is a must for anyone interested in the conditions of Irish agricultural and town labourers at the turn of the 19th century. Each individual volume is also published seperately (thereby reducing the cost) and can be found on the appropriate county page.
This publication details those eligible to vote in Ireland after the electorate had been greatly increased following the Great Reform Act of 1832. With over 70,000 names, with details of occupations, addresses and entitlement criteria to vote, this publication is one of the great untapped resources for the study of the Irish electorate in the 1830s.
The Select Committee that Reported on electorate also sat and took evidence in the aftermath of Daniel O'Connell's election to Parliament when there had been widespread accusations of corruption and illegal voting, especially against the Liberal Candidates.
While this publication does not reproduce the minutes of evidence given to the Select Committee on Fictitious Votes it does reproduce the voluminous Appendices and Indexes, which encompass some 900 pages. The usefulness and interest of these lists is manifold as is the plethora of other inaccessible material held in the reports of numerous Select Committees since 1801. In this instance the Commissioners of Police and Magistrates throughout Ireland were charged with the task of creating what amounted to an electoral register for those entitled to vote in Ireland between 1832 and 1837 under the terms of the Reform Act.
In the instance of Ireland the electorate consisted of £10 freeholders and leaseholders, £20 leaseholders and freeholders, £50 freeholders and those in Corporation Towns, Cities and Boroughs afforded the right to vote as freemen of paid-up members of one of the trades guilds.
The usefulness of the lists of the electorate, especially for the Corporation and other towns and cities in Ireland, returning Members of Parliament, cannot be over-emphasised. Only a handful of postal and/or street directories are extant for the majority of the towns and villages of Ireland. Whereas the major urban centres of Dublin and Belfast fair a great deal better, the list of voters provided by the Select Committee greatly adds to the available material on urban residents currently available. The voting lists provide the names of all those eligible to vote in rural districts of 32 counties of Ireland and also provides the names, addresses and voting qualifications for those residing in the borough towns of Ireland such as Sligo, Clonmel, Cashel, Dungannon, Lisburn, Enniskillen, which returned Members of Parliament.
However, the most voluminous portions of the Lists provided by the Select Committee on Fictitious Votes details the electorate of the City of Dublin. These lists, in the main, span the periods 1832-37 and provides, street-by-street, the names, addresses and voting qualifications of Dublin's electorate. This is perhaps the most comprehensive and useful list of Dublin's residents prior to the first complete surviving Population Census for the City (1901).
The Select Committee on Fictitious Votes also provides the names of all persons eligible to vote by dint of their membership of one of the trades guilds or as a freeman of the City. This list, in essence, names all the various guild members and freemen residing in the city in 1832 and in the case of the trades guilds, which include doctors, merchants and smiths, etc., the name of the father or name of the master craftsman of each, is also provided.
The Select Committee on Fictitious Votes is concluded by a list of individuals who were brought to the attention of the Select Committee as fictitious voters, which includes the evidence brought against them, together with a breviate of the Select Committee as to the outcomes of their findings, which in some cases resulted in individuals being struck from the Electoral Register. In other cases those gathering evidence for the committee applauded landlords and land owners for increasing the electorate amongst the tenantry of their property.
This republication of the Reports from the Select Committee on the Fictitious Votes, Ireland; with the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix, first published in 1837 and 1838 is presented here in CD-Rom format and is fully searchable.
Note: There are five pages missing from this set which we are currently trying to find replacements for. These will be provided to any customers free of charge when these have been found.
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