Snapshot of the early years of independence

Kate Pendred

A fascinating insight into everyday life in the fledgling independent Irish Free State was provided by Gregory Walls of Trinity College, Dublin, at a lecture in Mullingar last Wednesday evening, September 23. The social historian and PhD student fleshed out the recently released statistics contained in the 700,000 census returns for 1926, giving an insight into how people lived and worked.

Titled ‘1926 Census: Everyday Life in Independent Ireland’, the event was hosted by the Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society to open their new lecture season.

Among the large crowd gathered in the Greville Arms Hotel for the talk was Michael Walls of Ardmore Road, Mullingar, cousin of Gregory Walls. Also present was Pauline Murray from Athlone, living in Maynooth. She found it “amusing” to see the census form returned by her grandfather, William Joseph Fox from Milltownpass, featured on a slide shown at the lecture.

Mr Walls said the legacy of the revolution is in the names of young children: there were 31 Patrick Pearses under the age of 10, four Michael Collinses and four Roger Casements, in the 1926 census.

In Milltownpass, the Fox sisters, five-year-old Etna Countess Markiovitch Fox and two-year-old Nuala Mary MacSweeney Fox, were also Christened in the revolutionary fashion.

Ms Murray said her grandfather had been “very republican”, although her mother, Nuala Mary McSweeney Fox, who retained her full title for her lifetime, was not.

Finding people in the census can be fun, Mr Walls said. “Each census form provides a window into the reality of people’s lives. It is often in the margins that we find the most interesting cases, and people did write additional comments,” he said.

Almost 5,000 people were enumerated in various institutions in Westmeath, more than 1,000 for in military barracks and 1,200 or so in district or mental hospitals.

The Greville Arms, where the lecture was held, had 23 rooms, but just four of the 11 people enumerated on census night were visiting guests. The proprietors, Patrick and Bridget Hand, were enumerated with their staff: 51-year-old Philip Wienman from France, waiter, general servants Patrick Manning (16) from Mullingar and John Fowley (15) from Sligo, 20-year-old cook Marcella Garland from Meath, and a maid named Mary Anne McGinn from Monaghan. Of the four guests, one was an Irish auctioneer and the others were French.

Mullingar Mental Hospital had 470 men and 545 women, staff and ‘inmates’. All were named in full, and their birthplaces and occupations were recorded, erroneously as they were subsequently crossed out, Mr Walls explained.

For the first time, the census in Ireland could be completed in either Irish or English, and 18.3 percent was recorded as Irish-speaking, though fewer than 1 percent of forms were filled out in Irish.

While overcrowding was a serious issue across the state and many of the people lived in poor conditions, some did not. The eighth Earl of Granard at Castleforbes Demesne in Longford, recorded 40 people present on census night, residing across 51 rooms on the 1,618 statute-acre estate.

Similar grandeur was recorded just west of Castlepollard, at Tullynally House, or Pakenhamhall, as it was officially enumerated. Earl of Longford, Edward Arthur Henry Pakenham (23), was the head of a 50-room household that contained 15 people on census night. Among those present were three visitors from England and 10 household servants, including a housekeeper, three housemaids, a kitchen maid, a scullery maid, a footman, a hall boy, a groom and a butler, Mr Walls said.

On Lough Ree, on Hare Island, Moydrum, Athlone, Thomas and William Duffy were among seven residents on census night. They were caretakers of Lord Castlemaine’s 110-acre estate, and had their own combined 21 acres of farmland on the estate.

In contrast, on Henrietta Street, Dublin, a total of 715 people (126 families) inhabited 171 rooms in just 11 buildings. Henrietta Street was one of the most overcrowded streets in Europe.

The 1926 census, for the first time, collected information about employees and employers. Agriculture was the largest sector of the Irish economy, employing 51.3% of workers. Many worked on the transport network. Mr Walls pointed out that seven women were employed by and enumerated at the Great Southern Railway’s Refreshment Rooms, at Mullingar Railway Station. Josephine Duignan was manageress to bar attendants Nora Walsh, May Dolan, Nora and Eileen Egan, May Carmody, and general domestic servant May Dempsey.

Mr Walls remarked that the introduction of the Old Age Pension in 1908 led to all sorts of “weird and wonderful mysteries of age” when compared across censuses. A Laois woman’s age was recorded as 111. A quick glance at the previous census reveals that she was 70 in 1901 and 86 in 1911.

Myles Cosgrave, chairperson of the Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society, spoke about a female he discovered who was a few years older than her husband, but the age difference had diminished between 1911 and 1926.

One man who does not appear to have been in Ireland on census night 1926 was “perhaps the most famous Irishman at the time, tenor Count John McCormack” from Athlone. Many other famous names in Ireland’s cultural scene appear, like William Butler Yeats, and artists Sean Keating and Lilian Davidson, who competed in the painting competition at the 1928 Summer Olympic Games in Amsterdam, Mr Walls reported.

“Theatrical performances were a prominent feature of Irish cultural life in the 1920s,” Mr Walls said. In February 1926 Sean O’Casey’s ‘The Plough and the Stars’ was staged at the Abbey Theatre for the first time, resulting in a riot. During census week, the Abbey staged performances of Brinsley MacNamara’s matchmaking comedy ‘Look at the Heffernans’.

The stars of Athlone Town’s famous FAI cup winning team from 1924 are there to be found too. The two scorers in that final, Francis Ghent, then 29, was enumerated at home at St Mary’s Place, a warehouse clerk in the Athlone Woollen Mills, and match-winner Norman Lyster, then 32, was recorded as a timber and coal merchant, also living at home, on 12 King Street. As their occupations and family circumstances suggest, everyday life simply went on, Mr Walls observed.

He told the gathering that Census 1926 is stored in 1,299 boxes, containing some 700,000 return sheets, laced together in 2,496 canvas volumes. Each form was conserved, catalogued, digitised and made searchable online by the National Archives staff.

The first full Irish census was held in 1821 and a census was taken every 10 years between 1821 and 1911. Due to the War of Independence in 1919–21, the census scheduled for 1921 was postponed. The period 1911-26 contained the Irish revolution, WWI and the Spanish ‘flu pandemic, and Mr Walls remarked that those events shaped the Ireland that emerged in the 1920s.

Approximately 2,000 gardaí acted as enumerators and, over a six-week period, they delivered and collected the census forms. Mr Walls said enumerators sometimes altered the completed forms, if they knew that incorrect information was being provided.

The 1926 census showed a 5.3% drop in population from 1911 for the 26 counties. Mr Walls said the population had been declining since the Great Famine of the 1840s. Emigration had been an issue for generations and in 1926 alone 26,367 people were recorded as emigrating to the US.

The population of Westmeath in 1926 was 56,894, 53% male and 47% female. Mr Walls said migration from rural to urban areas was an ongoing feature of Irish life. The largest areas in Westmeath were Athlone, urban and rural, at 8,161 people, ahead of Mullingar at 7,400 people.

The number of unmarried women of all ages in Ireland was about 50% higher than the equivalent proportion in England and Wales, and almost triple that of the United States.

“A census form can offer a glimpse of the world that existed a century ago,” Mr Walls concluded.

Ruth Illingworth, historian, thanked Mr Walls for “a fascinating talk”. She said the release of the 1926 census caused great excitement and knew of people staying up the night to view the documents. She applauded the National Archives staff for the incredible work they put into collating the findings.

Another local historian, Seamus O’Brien of WAHS, thanked Gregory for “putting flesh on the bones of the statistics”.

He took the opportunity to plug upcoming local history workshops on October 3 and 10, in the Greville Arms Hotel (see panel).