Local historian contributes major volume to Maynooth Local History Series

The latest book from a Moyvore historian was launched in Maynooth University on Monday. Dr Ciarán McCabe of Templepatrick, Moyvore, is the author of Pre-Famine Fever Epidemics: A Case Study of the Cork Street Fever Hospital, Dublin, published by Four Courts Press in its Maynooth Local History Series.

The volume was one of six new additions to the series launched at the event in Pugin Hall, Maynooth University.

“The book looks at how the Cork Street Fever Hospital in Dublin was established in the early 19th century and responded to two particularly devastating typhus fever epidemics: those of 1817-19 and 1826-7,” said Dr McCabe.

“The hospital opened for the admission of patients in 1804 and initially catered for the sick poor of Dublin city, especially in the south-western quarter best known as the Liberties.

“In that area were living a large number of skilled tradesmen, or artisans, especially in the textiles industry, and an economic downturn in the mid-1820s devastated their industry.

“This economic crisis coincided with a fever epidemic, which resulted in a greater mortality rate than usual.”

The Cork Street Fever Hospital was innovative in the early 19th century in its design and treatment methods. “The design and location of the hospital, which we must remember, was rare at that time in being a new, purpose-built hospital, were influenced by developments in what we can call the ‘fever hospital movement’ that flourished throughout Ireland and Britain in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The Dublin physicians corresponded with, and read the works of, fever doctors in Manchester and Liverpool, and applied their advice to the Cork Street institution.”

Dr McCabe explained that typhus had long been endemic among the Irish poor but occasional epidemics did break out. A particularly devastating outbreak occurred in the mid to late-1810s, when a Europe-wide demographic crisis – which saw inclement weather conditions leading to harvest failures and numerous reports of throngs of disease-ridden vagrant beggars throughout Europe – impacted on all aspects of life in Ireland.

The Cork Street Fever Hospital was to the fore in the response of the medical establishment to the epidemic.

“The book uses a wide range of primary sources, most usefully the manuscript minute books of the managing committee, but also the published annual reports, parliamentary papers and newspaper accounts, to analyse how the hospital’s governors and medical staff (especially the physicians) responded to the crisis,” says Dr McCabe.

A particular feature of the book is its discussion, where possible, of the experiences of patients in the hospital: “This is difficult, as we do not have patients’ records or registers for the early history of the hospital, but in the records, there are glimpses of what scholars term the ‘patient’s narrative’, Dr McCabe explains.

The Cork Street institution closed as a fever hospital in the 1950s, on the establishment of Cherry Orchard Hospital in west County Dublin.

The records of the Cork Street Fever Hospital, once held at Cherry Orchard, are now in the custody of the Royal College of Physicians Heritage Centre on Kildare Street, Dublin, he said.

Dr McCabe teaches in the Department of History at the University of Galway, having previously taught at Queen’s University, Belfast and several Irish universities.

He has published extensively on aspects of modern Irish history, including the award-winning Begging, charity and religion in pre-Famine Ireland (Liverpool University Press, 2018).

Dr McCabe is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and secretary of the Economic and Social History Society of Ireland. Locally, he is a member of the Templepatrick Historic Graveyard Committee (which is currently undertaking the cleaning up and maintaining of Templepatrick graveyard in Moyvore) and also serves as the fixtures secretary of the Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society.

The Maynooth Local History Series has, for the last 30years, disseminated widely the most up-to-date and scholarly rigorous local history.

Established in 1995 by the late Professor Raymond Gillespie, the series is now edited by Dr Michael Potterton of Maynooth University.

Westmeath’s history is well represented in the series, which includes the following volumes: Seamus O’Brien, Famine and community in Mullingar Poor Law Union, 1845-49 (1999); Rory Masterson, Medieval Fore, County Westmeath (2014); Denis Casey, The Nugents of Westmeath and Queen Elizabeth’s Irish primer (2016); Michael Nolan, The Parnell split in Westmeath: the bishop and the newspaper editor (2018); Tadhg O’Keeffe, Tristernagh Priory, County Westmeath: Colonial monasticism in medieval Ireland (2018); Tom Hunt, Peadar Cowan (1903-62): Westmeath GAA administrator and political maverick (2021); and Sean Byrne, Poverty in pre-Famine Westmeath: the findings of the Poor Commission of 1833 (2023).