I have just finished reading a book which had an unexpected but
telling effect on what I had thought were my previously well informed views on
poverty. I have written in the past of
the Slum Clearance Programmes of the 1930s and how the young men from Athy
broken down by unemployment and unhealthy living conditions enlisted in their
hundreds in 1914 to escape the daily grind of poverty. It is only when I read the recently published
book on Dublin Tenements by Terry Fagan, whose mother was the last corporation
tenant to leave the tenements of Foley Street that I began to understand the
real meaning of poverty.
‘Dublin Tenements’ published by the Dublin inner city folklore project consists of
former tenement tenants recounting their memories of life in the tenements of
our principal city. Reading the accounts
of life in the Dublin tenements we are reminded that the housing enquiry
established by the Local Government Board which reported in 1914 concluded that
over 75% of tenement families lived in single room accommodation. The same report indicated that three out of
every ten individuals in Dublin lived in tenements.
The measured statements of official reports don’t however give us an
insight into the real meaning of poverty.
It was only when I read the accounts in ‘Dublin Tenements’ that I began to understand the extent and nature
of poverty as it affected families on this island in years past.
‘We had a large
family and there was no electricity or gas in the room. The rooms were so small that you could only
fit one bed in them. My sister slept in
the bed with my mother and my father. My
brothers and me had to sleep on the floor.
We had a blanket to cover us and on top of that we had old coats to keep
us warm. I also remember that we had to
put down a coat on the floor at the bottom of the hall door in the night time
to stop the breeze coming under.’
Those were the words of Billy Kearns born in 1925 who lived in Corporation
Buildings. Maggie Hanlon who was born in
1924 in Elliott Place later moved with her parents to Railway Street and it was
there that she lived when she got married.
She reared six children in one room and recalled:- ‘We had
two beds. The six children slept in one
bed three girls up the top and the three boys down the bottom and myself and my
husband in the other bed .....The children slept with a sheet over them and on
top of that were old coats to keep them warm because the room was freezing
cold.’
Overcrowding and poor living conditions created the ideal conditions
for the spread of T.B. Bridie Kelly,
born 1929, remembered how ‘tuberculosis
was everywhere ..... if a child died at home the child would be waked on a
table in the room. There would be a
collection made to buy a little coffin.
The child would be put into the little coffin and kept in the room for
two days and two nights. They never went
to the Church because they were not allowed to, whether they were baptised or
not.’
Tenement families had little money and barely enough food to
survive. Accounts of children with
pinched faces and pale appearances facing into school without breakfast is a
common feature of stories included in the book.
George Reilly, born in 1920 in Sean McDermott Street recalled how ‘the poor looked after the poor with the
help of the nuns. You shared your food
with your neighbour ..... the slaughter houses in Moore Street used to
sometimes give out the cows head and sheep’s head to the poor who came begging
..... I always remember the soup off the sheep’s head was lovely when it was
boiled for hours in the pot.’
The poverty of the tenement era is not to be found today, even if in
the present recessionary times there are families under severe financial
strain. I was reminded of the
differences between the present and the recent past on reading a piece by my
brother George in a recently published book of reminiscences by pupils and
teachers of Dromard in north County Longford.
George was appointed principal of Moyne National School in 1961. Each of the small classrooms in that school was
heated by an open fire which were lit by the principal each morning. George recalled ‘there were no firelighters in those days. My fire lighter was Benny Duffy who lived
down the road. Benny was despatched home
with a bucket containing a few dry sods of turf. He arrived back with a few fiery sods in the
same bucket. When the first fire was up
and running the other fires were lit.’
He also went on to recall how ‘the
blackboard in my room was over the fireplace – a square of floor lino painted
black.’
Conditions in that country school just 50 years ago were primitive
compared to what we know of schools today.
However, it was the brutally primitive conditions once found in the
Dublin tenements which brought home to me the reality of poverty in the days
preceding the Great Lockout.
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