Athy's civic affairs of the mid 19th century

In the years following the Great Famine, the meetings of Athy Town Commissioners were largely taken up with discussions on the sanitary condition of the town and the unrelated issues of vagrancy and prostitution. The Commissioners recognised what they described as ‘the right’ of householders ‘to clear before their doors prior to 10 o’clock each morning’. The apparent advantage for householders on the main streets was the collection of horse dung which could then be used in their back gardens. Street cleaners were not employed by the Town Commission and in December 1848 the Commissioner sought the agreement of the local Board of Guardians to allow workhouse inmates to be engaged (without pay) in keeping the streets clean. The Guardians did not agree, no doubt anxious to keep the able-bodied male inmates employed at stone breaking in the workhouse. The Town Commissioners advancing their desire to improve the sanitary conditions of the town agreed to employ ‘two scavengers’. Within a year of their appointment, one of the men was let off leaving the remaining man with the sole responsibility of sweeping the principal streets of Athy. Recognising the need to develop Athy as a market town, a role which had first emerged with the opening of the Canal in 1791, the Town Commissioners decided to establish a second weekly market. Saturday was appointed as the second market day in Athy and the initial market was held in the town square on the first Saturday in September 1853. The weekly markets and monthly fairs attracted buyers and sellers from afar and the local lodging houses were kept busy. So much so that the Town Commissioners appointed a registrar of licensed lodging houses and an Inspector of those same premises whose job was to visit every lodging house on a weekly basis. Those inspections prompted the Commissioners to withdraw lodging house Licences from John Laughlin, Pat McGrath and Pat Prendergast in December 1852. A further three Licence holders had their licences withdrawn in November 1854. The reasons for the licence cancellations were not recorded. In September 1856, the Town Fathers commended the conduct of the troops of the 16th Lancers then based in the Athy Cavalry Barracks under the command of Captain Patrick Agnew. However, the army presence in Athy created another problem for the Town Commissioners which in 1858 prompted the following notice to be posted throughout the town. ‘Caution to persons keeping any places of public resort within the town for the sale of refreshments of any kind who knowingly supplies any common prostitute or resorting therein to assemble and continue in his premises after this notice will be prosecuted according to the law. By Order Henry Sheil Town Clerk’. If the army presence in the town caused one problem, the local workhouse might have been viewed by the Town Commissioners as causing another problem which the Commissioners sought to address in September 1860. They ordered that the local magistrates be required to try and sentence any vagrants and beggars to fine and imprisonment ‘who shall be found standing in doors or loitering about as an obstruction to the public’. This so called ‘Order’ was apparently ignored causing the Town Clerk to issue another notice in January 1862. ‘Whereas it has been brought under the notice of the Commissioners, a nuisance is existing within the township viz vagrants constantly begging on the public streets and at private doors., I hereby direct that in all cases where the law is violated, same vagrants be summonsed before the Justice’. Six years later, the Town Commissioners still concerned about prostitution and vagrancy in the town were prompted to pass the resolution ‘that a man be appointed to take care, that all vagrants and beggars shall be kept out of the town and also prostitutes shall be brought before a Magistrate and at once be dealt with summarily’. At the same time, Pat Walker described in the Commissioners minute book as ‘the former scavenger’ agreed ‘to serve the Athy Town Commissioners in removing off the streets and when necessary bringing them before the Magistrates, all vagrants, beggars and prostitutes’. Ten months later Walker’s employment was continued for a further period for which he was paid six shillings a week for his beggar/prostitute duties and four shillings as the ‘town scavenger’. The good man was also supplied with a coat, trousers, waistcoat and hat. The departure of the army from the local barracks no doubt helped Pat Walker to devote more time to his street cleaning duties. The exact date of the army’s departure from Athy is not presently know but it was sometime between 1856 and 1884 on which latter date the former Barrack Street was renamed Woodstock Street. The Town Commissioners for so long concerned with vagrancy and prostitution in the town were the subject of much criticism by the local dispensary doctor Edward Ferris in September 1873. His report submitted to the local Government Board in Dublin claimed that ‘the dwellings of the labouring population of this town and still more the yards attached to them are for the most part in a very bad state. The local authority whose business is to have the state of things rectified are very inactive and remiss’. It would take another forty years before the Town Commissioners successors, Athy Urban District Council, provided the first public housing in Athy. Another 60 years were to pass before the Slum Clearance Programme of the 1930s saw the commencement of the process which led to the demolition of the slum dwellings mentioned in Dr. Ferris’s report.