Edgar F Keatinge continues his reminiscences of south Dublin around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (see previous post “Great Days in Rathmines”).

I always connect Mount Pleasant Avenue with a tall black-shawled woman who walked rapidly along the sidewalk with her basket on her head calling
“Ye-oung wather grass! Ye-oung wather grass!”
She had a curious break in her voice, amounting almost to a yodel, which fascinated me, and always used the old form rather than the more modern “Water-Cress.”
A most appealing person, whom I remember very clearly, was a pale-faced, sorrowful looking woman who wore an all-enveloping grey shawl drawn up over her head, surmounted by a rope of hay on which she carried her basket which, strangely to me, always seemed so secure there. She always seemed to me to glide rather than walk, and she had that peculiarly graceful carriage which is common to nearly all women who carry loads on their heads. She sold herrings and her call was very forthright and straightforward –
“Dublin Bay Herrin’s! Dublin Bay Herrin’s!
And then a long-drawn out
“Dub-lin-nn Ba-a-ay her-r-r-in’s!”
In a very conversational tone she would address the ladies who stood at their doorstep, or open windows, “Want herrin’s, lady?” She never employed any qualifying adjective, no “fine,” no “fresh”, just “Dublin Bay herrin’s,” as though she realised that all one could ask of any herring was that it should emanate from that beautiful Bay of Dublin: and this was, indeed, praise.
I must now tell you of one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. There was a venerable man – or so he seemed to an eight-years-old – who always wore a cream-coloured waterproof coat, very long, rain or shine. He also carried his wares on his head, and it was a wonderful sight to see a large white delf dish, piled high with honey, in this seemingly precarious position, and to speculate, as I often did, on what would happen if some day this should fall – the very idea was almost too much to bear thinking about. His call was always the same – and always in a rather deep tone ‑
“Honeycomb! Honeycomb!”
Well, I regret to have to confess that I and my playmates often teased this poor man by imitating his cry, and also by commenting adversely on a curious growth which he had on the end of his nose, over-hanging his upper lip. In a word, we nicknamed him “Old Nose-bag,” and we often pranced about near him calling out “Honeycomb,” and “Nosebag,” knowing that he could do nothing about it by reason of the valuable golden cargo on his head, until the poor man was absolutely frantic.
Well, one fine day, in Leinster Square, we were engaged in this entrancing sport, and we cannot have observed that his dish was empty, because all at once he laid it down and gave chase to his tormentors – to me! ‑ I ran – fear lent me wings; he ran ‑ rage gave him speed – and soon I saw I was being chased into a complete cul-de-sac, Prince Arthur Terrace. There is, at the end of this, a high wall dividing the public terrace from the private garden of a Mr. Duggan who at the time lived there. We regarded him as an ogre and frequently called him so, because he always adopted a very threatening tone whenever he saw us standing on this wall, which I think we often did. He took a very poor view of us.
But I had no time to think of that now. I was being pursued by a madman who was gaining on me at every step and who, as he ran, swore the most awful vengeance upon me. He would cut me open with his honey-knife – he would fry me alive – he would sting me to death with his bees – but, the most awful threat of all – he would cram my mouth full of slugs and snails! He could not have thought of anything which would have appalled me more!
Now he thought he had me in his grasp, because we were faced with this blank wall – I thought so too; there was no escape, and then happened a very extraordinary thing. Maddened by fear, loathing and disgust, I simply leaped and scrambled up on to this wall, a good six feet high, and over into the ogre’s garden on the other side, and so escaped into Wynnefield Road. Baffled, foiled and raging, my pursuer retraced his steps to where he had left his dish and knife, and wended his way home.
Many a time since, my brother – four years my senior ‑ and I have tried to emulate this feat, but never again could we scramble to the top of this wall, and never again did we tease poor “Mr. Nosebag” – and when we heard his cry drawing near – “Honeycomb! honeycomb!” we slunk away, ashamed.

Some important works of Irish literature from the early twentieth century give the impression of Dublin as a fairly grim place. But of course, even if this was the majority experience, it can’t have been like that for everyone. For some, Dublin around the turn of the century was quite blissful.  At a meeting of the Old Dublin Society in 1947 Edgar F Keatinge gave his memories of life as an eight-year-old in the Rathmines area around 1900.

The young Edgar was quite untroubled by the political questions of the time but found endless excitement in the world of horses, particularly fast horses, and in the uniforms and ceremonies of the military.  The horse-drawn fire brigade was particularly memorable:

There is always a thrill about a fire brigade engine dashing by, but to my mind the modern motor-engine cannot compare with the galloping horses and the clanging bell of 50 years ago; and to watch the driver being firmly held by the belt by two of his comrades to prevent his being dragged from his seat by the straining horses, was a sight to be remembered.

Edgar was in no doubt of his preference for the horse over the motor car:

Beautiful horses often a pair, drawing the … smart brougham … in which ladies were driven on shopping and calling expeditions, were certainly more romantic and colourful, though perhaps less speedy, than the modern motor … I remember a certain Doctor Haden who practised from Castlewood Avenue Rathmines and numbered many of the residents of Palmerston Road and its neighbourhood amongst his patients, he drove a very smart outside car and fast horse, complete with groom in livery, cockaded hat and high boots. Arrayed in a tall silk hat, frock coat, striped trousers and yellow gloves, he always managed to drive down Palmerston Park and Palmerston Road at the precise time when these roads were full of people from Holy Trinity Church, Belgrave Road walking home to their Sunday dinners. And he would bow and raise his hat to everyone, almost like royalty.

And there were others:

Do you recall Mr. Lambert the well known “Vet” of 50 years ago driving a very high gig with enormous wheels enamelled a bright yellow- and always something very sporty, very high stepping and very speedy between the shafts … when Mr and Mrs. Lambert were bowling along Rathmines road I can assure you that every eye was turned in their direction.

Officers added their own splash of colour:

At about that time, the regiments of 5th royal Irish lancers and the 7th dragoon guards were stationed in Dublin and many, I should say most, of the officers were very wealthy men and used to vie with each other in producing and personally driving the smartest or most striking coaches procurable. These were generally employed in driving to race meeting and pic-nics and I well remember watching these very exotic coaches as they dashed by filled with gaily dressed officers and their colourful lady friends.

The soldiers from Portobello barracks were a permanent feature of Edgar’s life:

The various troops in Dublin formed a very colourful addition to the light and movement of the street; there seemed to always be old regiments going away and new ones coming in, with a vast amount of playing of bands, both infantry and cavalry. This was, of course, in pre-Khaki days, when the red coats and picturesque uniforms were still worn for every day parade. We children used to haunt the barracks at Portobello; as the barrack yard stretched from Portobello bridge up to Grosvenor Square, very close to our home, we became quite expert in the names and characteristics of the regiments quartered there. We could for instance knowingly distinguish the quick step of the rifle brigade from the more measured tread of the Surreys … a great thrill was the cavalry regiment and our joy was complete when the mounted bands struck up. The drummers were the most striking feature, and the great kettle-drums slung on each side of the beautiful horses, often with a leopard skin thrown over the horse made a brilliant show. The leopard, and perhaps tiger skins were frequently worn by the big drummer in the infantry regiments, and another very appealing site to us was the mascot goat of the Welsh Fusiliers, and the great wolf hound of the Faugh-a-ballaghs. We frequently went down to the bank of Ireland, College Green to watch the ten a.m ceremony of changing the guard, another very colourful incident in the life of Dublin.

Thrills and excitement were not entirely confined to the children of prosperous Rathmines families. Indeed in some cases poor children seemed to have more fun:

… in those days there was much more of a hill leading up to Portobello bridge and it was a fascinating sight for me to watch the Hitch-boys as they stood waiting with an extra hitch horse or “cock” horse ready to hitch to the next tram and help the other two horses to pull their load over the hill. My earliest memory was that these boys were in the habit of riding their horse ‑ postilian fashion ‑ in front of the regular horses … how I longed to be one of those boys.

In George Denis Zimmermann’s anthology Songs of Irish Rebellion, Political Street Ballads and Rebel Songs 1780-1900, the author notes that popular songs present a running commentary on political life as seen from below. This is undoubtedly the case and indeed street songs offer one of the few windows opening onto popular culture in nineteenth century and Victorian Dublin. As late as 1900 performers were regularly heard on Camden Street, Patrick Street, Francis Street and in other areas where the poor lived or gathered. Many observers through the nineteenth century commented on the ragged crowds that followed Dublin’s street singers, hanging on their words. Examples of political ballad singers were noted in the 1920s but the practice does not appear to have survived for long under the new political dispensation.

Zimmermann’s collection is fascinating, revealing a great deal and allowing us, among other things, to confirm that popular political attitudes were pretty much in harmony with those of the more respectable leadership of the Irish Parliamentary Party. (This was also the case on the Orange side.) Parnell was believed capable of great things and in him people saw a popular hero comparable in stature to O’Connell or Napoleon; like the earlier giants he was understood as one who could bring substantial victories.

Viva la for gallant Parnell, viva la for all his band,
Onward driving foes and landlord reptiles from his native land.

O’Connell and Parnell were closely linked in the popular mind:

Go search the world o’er and o’er, there’s none has fought so well
To right the cause of Ireland as O’Connell and Parnell.

Interestingly, the moral force/physical force dilemma which weaves its way through two centuries of Irish history finds echoes in these humble ballads. If across the social spectrum there was support for Parnell’s constitutional nationalist methods, there was also a latent if varying sympathy for those who believed in violent methods. Historical heroes in arms were championed enthusiastically in both street songs and around drawing room pianos, but the situation was less straightforward when it came to contemporary violent actions.

When Chief Secretary Cavendish and his under secretary, Burke, were stabbed to death in the Phoenix Park in 1882 by Fenian Invincibles, very few were prepared to say publicly that the killings were justified. One song spoke of “this cruel and wicked dreadful deed”. The reticence was largely because the Invincibles’ tactics were at odds with those of Parnell and the feeling was that this rash act would endanger the passage of Home Rule.  But, as time passed and those involved faced trial and the testimony of informers, Dublin street ballads began to express sympathy, denouncing the main informer and former Invincible James Carey:

So now to conclude and finish my song
Let no man in Ireland say anything wrong
Against the poor men who have to be tried
On the evidence of Carey, an informer double-dyed.

The reckless assertion of a lone individual or group against a state, perceived to be cruel and unjust, clearly appealed psychologically to the feelings of the city’s poor. Tim Kelly was one of those hanged for the Phoenix Park killings, an event remembered in one ballad that focused on Kelly’s mother:

It was in Kilmainham prison the Invincibles were hung.
Mrs Kelly she stood there, all in mourning for her son,
She threw back her shawl and said to all “though he fills a lime-pit grave,
My son was no informer, and he died a Fenian blade”.

Such songs embodied a popular assertion of the moral validity of direct action but also recognition of its political futility. In practice both rich and poor avoided political violence. John Mitchell pointed out that singing was no substitute for action. O’Donovan Rossa made a similar point a generation later, ironically perhaps, as he himself featured in many street songs. In Joyce’s “Araby” street singers are heard in the background:

On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’ cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O’Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land.

James Fitzharris, known as Skin the Goat, was the cabman who drove the Invincibles to the Phoenix Park. He became a popular hero following a defiant performance in court and a refusal to identify his passengers, for which he served fifteen years penal servitude. Following his release he toured the US as a hero and returned to Dublin, living in the city until 1910, when he died in the South Union Workhouse.

One comic street ballad featured Fitzharris’s curse on the informer Carey ‑ Carey also being the one who had sworn Skin the Goat into the Invincibles:

May every buck flea from here to Bray
Jump through the bed he lies on
And by some mistake may he shortly take
A flowing pint of poison.

Carey was given the alias of Power by the authorities and spirited out of the country. On a ship headed to Cape Town he became friendly with a Donegal bricklayer named Patrick O’Donnell. Later, when they both transferred to the Melrose and were bound for Durban, O’Donnell became aware of Carey’s true identity. Using a gun he had with him in his luggage he shot Carey dead. O’Donnell himself was returned to London for trial and was hanged in Newgate. He duly became a street ballad hero:

My name it is Patrick O’Donnell, I was born in Donegal,
I am, you all know, a deadly foe to traitors one and all.
For the shooting of James Carey, I was tried in London town,
And on some fatal scaffold my life I must bail down.

The sympathy was not confined to the poor. Katharine Tynan, the prolific novelist and friend of WB Yeats, reported in a memoir that the general opinion was that O’Donnell had performed a righteous deed. Zimmermann quotes her as saying: “We all hoped and prayed O’Donnell would not suffer for his act.”

The world of Ulysses, the great chronicle of Edwardian Dublin and more, is steeped in awareness of the Invincibles and their fate. Stephen and Bloom are quite different in temperament but both are essentially loyal Parnellites and thus keep a respectable political distance from violent politics. But beyond the political and moral distance, the emotional distance is narrower. At All Hallows church Bloom reflects on Carey: “That fellow that turned queen’s evidence on the invincibles he used to receive the, Carey was his name, communion every morning. This very church … And plotting that murder all the time.”

Dublin was fascinated by the mechanics of power: Queens evidence, informers, coercion, the multi-layered paraphernalia of the state as it was politically deployed in Ireland. There are many references to such minutiae in Joyce’s masterpiece and, of course, the fascination extended to those who challenged the state, if it did not actually derive from that source.

In Ulysses street hawkers sell commemorative postcards of the Phoenix Park murders. The emotional appeal of the episode, suggesting as it did instant means of political gratification, means which stood in stark contrast to the painfully slow and endlessly failing peaceful politics that society as a whole endorsed, is not difficult to discern. It is certain the killings both in the Phoenix Park and those in Kilmainham, together with minutiae such as the route the Invincibles took to the park, which Bloom himself mulls over, were widely discussed in Dublin.

Skin the Goat himself turns up in the Eumaeus episode of the novel, where he is found running the cabman’s shelter adjacent to Butt Bridge. The bridge was named after Isaac Butt Parnell’s moderate predecessor of whom, on the streets of Dublin, it was sung:

Then hurrah for noble Isaac Butt, that hero true and brave
He’ll work for Ireland’s freedom and his country won’t deceive.

In bringing Isaac Butt and Skin the Goat together in the same corner of Dublin, Joyce juxtaposes the two extremes of nationalist politics, both of which were sung on the city’s streets. Once again Joyce had the measure of things as it seems that Dublin’s political heart rested in the narrow space between Butt Bridge and the Cabman’s Shelter.

The respectable classes of Dublin city have long expressed concern over the prevalence of alms-seekers, vagabonds and especially that creature most offensive to moral propriety: the sturdy beggar. It is a thread of outrage which transcends both religious affiliation and social class, uniting countless Dubliners over the centuries.

While approaches to the problem have varied through the years there have always been advocates of a “no nonsense” approach. Owing to the absence of much in the way of legal restraint, at least when it came to management of the underclass, things were easier in the late eighteenth century for those who desired to sort the problem “once and for all” and it was possible to take the type of “firm action” which today can only be dreamed of.

In order to clean up the streets the burghers of that time purchased an old malt house in Channel Row and had it converted into a House of Industry, where unwelcome and unsightly people were to be interned and, in the interests of their moral development, set to useful labour.

It seems however the beneficiaries of this enlightened scheme failed to appreciate its practical and moral advantages. Indeed, the general unwillingness of the inmates to accept the new order caused the unfortunate governors no end of problems. Early one morning in 1786 it was discovered that some forty “strolling women”, whom the police had collected from the streets and delivered to the institution the previous night, had disappeared, having exerted themselves during the night by driving a hole in the side of the building, through which they then departed

As if the beggars themselves were not difficulty enough, some of those charged with running the institution were on the lax side themselves, to the great irritation of the governors, who were obliged to employ people for the day-to-day management of their charges. In response to one flagrant violation of the rules by a porter, it was ordered that he “be placed in the public hall at the hour of 12 o’clock with his crime in writing on his breast, and chained by the leg … as a punishment for drunkenness and taking a bribe at the door to let the poor elope”.

Those who remained within also caused some problems, owing to their tendency to remove for personal use all forms of portable property. Clothing and provisions disappeared constantly and even the bibles, made available for moral improvement, had to be chained down. On one occasion the corpse of a man who died disappeared, presumed stolen.

As one might expect, the governors took a dim view of any violation of God and man’s law pertaining to private property. Two women who were found to have stolen seven noggins and two trenchers were ordered to be chained, set to beat hemp, and fed on bread and water for seven days. Two boys who were sent for oil but sold some of it and falsified the dockets were punished with twenty-four lashes each on the naked back. In this case the watchful governors formed the view that the lashes were applied with insufficient enthusiasm and the next week the beadles involved were fined a week’s pay for the lax manner in which the strokes were applied.

Despite such exemplary punishments the problem of theft persisted and at a later meeting of the governors, it was noted:

It having appeared by the evidence of Mr O’Brien, Master of the Works that Sarah N- … had stolen several articles the property of the corporation and several others the property of children of the Aslyum: Ordered; that the said Sarah N- … be confined in a dark room till tomorrow at 2 o’clock when she shall receive on her bare back one dozen lashes with a cat; that the Master of the Hospital, the Master of the Works and all the beadles do attend.

And so life in this worthy Dublin institution continued. The wonder is, given that such firm measures were taken during this golden age of no nonsense, that beggaring, vagrancy and poverty itself were not permanently eliminated from the city.

One occasionally sees in Dublin an immigrant woman balancing a considerable load on her head. This is an effective method of bearing weight and was common among working women in pre-Famine Dublin. Apparently, for loads of up to 20 per cent of body weight, there is no additional expenditure of energy.

The elimination of rough ground and narrow alleys in the poorer areas of Dublin in the later nineteenth century allowed for the emergence to dominance of the handcart and the gradual decline of the old custom; bakers’ trays, still frequently carried on the head, are a rare survival of what was once a ubiquitous form of portage in the city.

The practice, of course, is still widespread in many parts of Africa. Interestingly African modes of infant-carrying have been adopted by some of Dublin’s more advanced mothers, so perhaps it would not be so surprising if head-carrying were to take off as an alternative fashion. Potential practitioners, however, ought to be aware that burdens should best be kept light, initially at least, as studies have shown that a particular style of gait is required and that this only comes with practice; indeed it is best learned from childhood. It seems that head-carrying, when pursued by non-acclimatised westerners, can give rise to acute pain in the neck region.

An episode of sexual harassment I witnessed recently on Wicklow Street brought to mind a similar incident which was reported in The Dublin Evening Post in 1828 and which involved a woman who was carrying goods on her head.

The young woman in question was making her way down a street in the Liberties ‑ I think it was Carman’s Hall ‑ supporting a tub of offal on her head. The tub was of such a size that she used both raised arms to ensure it remained balanced. At the same time a number of young men in good spirits and from a more prosperous social stratum were making their way towards her. One of them took advantage of her situation to fondle her breasts, which naturally displeased the woman; indeed she was so displeased she sacrificed the value of her load and tipped it over the young gentleman. He was in turn greatly upset, not least because his friends found the turn of events hugely amusing. Somewhat venomously, he insisted on having the girl arrested and brought before the police court and charged with assault. Evidently he believed – and it must be said with some cause ‑ that the law could be used by the well-off to impose upon the poor. In this case however it was not to be; indeed the magistrate found that the girl had acted reasonably, to the great pleasure of all in the court and to the further humiliation of the young buck.

The Wicklow Street incident had some similarities. A group of Dublin “lads” (average age forty) was sauntering past the International Bar in cock-of-the-walk manner, passing remarks right and left as they progressed. Their comments upset an alms-seeker who was one of that subset which signals homelessness by wearing a sleeping bag as a cape. The manner of these mendicants is often insistent but rarely aggressive and it was therefore surprising to hear him shout insults after the ambling gallants, who laughed loudly, clearly finding his discomfort great gas altogether. As they drew alongside Cornucopia, a woman around thirty years of age passed them, having been obliged to walk on the street to do so; she elicited the loud cry in a pretend American accent “Go on baybee! Shake it.”

Surprisingly, the woman spun on her heel and went for the one who addressed her; she then drew back and let fly with the plentiful contents of a paper cup she was carrying drenching the culprit and his friends and very much taking the wind out of their sails, an outcome not hidden by their desultory attempts at laughter and muttered claim that the woman was “mad”. Those on the street who witnessed the incident seemed pleased and there was a short outbreak of nodding accompanied by little noises conveying approval.

But as is often the case in events of this sort, there was some collateral damage. Examining the wet patch on the sleeve of my coat later, I was able to determine that the liquid was a herbal tea. Mindful of the Carman’s Hall incident, I reflected that it could have been worse.

It has sometimes been claimed that in the Cyclops episode of Ulysses the Citizen abuses JP Nannetti, a man of Italian origin who was lord mayor of Dublin 1904-06, a trade unionist and also Irish Party MP for College Green.

Hairy Iopas, says the Citizen, that exploded volcano, the darling of all countries and the idol of his own.

However, it seems pretty certain that the abuse was directed at the long-haired William Field MP. In a sense this is a pity as there would have had a political resonance had it been directed at Nannetti.

The Citizen was a caricature of Michael Cusack, one of the founders of the GAA, it being Cusack’s habit to address those he met with the greeting “Citizen!” Whatever about anything else both men had a short fuse and were “difficult”.

The GAA reflected the late nineteenth century split between constitutional and physical force nationalists. In the early days of the asssociation, the IRB tendency was quite powerful and had the focus and the commitment, if not quite the numbers. In a desire to maintain control, the central executive arranged for the executive to hold extensive powers, including the right to appoint a handicapper for all events, even if a local club had a qualified handicapper available. Some apolitical members found this rule bizarre; other more savvy types knew it was about power.

The humble, not to say lowly, Dublin Grocers’ Assistants Athletic Club came up against this rule in 1887 and were due to be expelled for non-compliance. However others joined in the dispute and a trial of strength followed, revealing some interesting town versus country and class tensions in addition to laying bare the overarching physical force versus constitutional methods division.

The grocers’ curates were mystified as to why they should be required to have a handicapper from Limerick when they had a perfectly good one within their own club. The Dublin County Board of the GAA backed the curates and sent a number of outraged letters to the executive arguing that “Such vexatious and tyrannical readings of the rules as the central have adopted … will do more harm to the GAA than all the Coercion Acts could possibly do.” They also argued that they were better positioned to judge on the matter than “gentlemen, no matter how estimable, from remote districts like Aherlow, Athenry, Castleconnell, Adare, Nenagh or Ballylanders”. The word bog was not used in official correspondence but one suspects it may have been employed in private deliberations.

When the Dublin County Executive met, a Mr Fitzpatrick addressed the meeting saying he represented a club “composed of workingmen and he knew the difference between them and counter-jumpers” which may have reflected a view that the IRB types were guilty of anti-working class and anti-urban prejudice. Counter-jumpers is a term no longer heard but it was once common and appears in Joyce’s work. In rough terms it means those who would look down on others as socially inferior but who started out in relatively humble circumstances themselves.

If the IRB had a conspiratorial advantage, the constitutional nationalists had the numbers and, in part through the intercession of Archbishop Croke ‑ himself a constitutional nationalist ‑ the matter was eventually settled in favour of looser control from the centre. But some blood was spilt along the way.

JK Bracken – vice-president of the GAA national executive and a member of the IRB, had, it was claimed, the previous year agreed to recommend to the executive that the offensive rule regarding central control of handicapping should be relaxed. When the heat increased Bracken found it prudent to deny he’d made such an undertaking and wrote an angry letter along those lines to the Freeman’s Journal. The Freeman, despite having a number of IRB men on its editorial staff, was strongly constitutional in its nationalist politics. Nanetti, an official of the newspaper’s own club, wrote in to deny Bracken’s account and to insist that he had in fact made the undertaking. Others also wrote to this effect.

Nannetti was an ardent Parnellite and constitutional nationalist who would have been despised by the extreme IRB element, which accused the Irish Parliamentary Party of struggling for the right to pay Britain’s national debt. Nannetti also appears in Ulysses as the printer foreman in the Freeman and as Bloom’s boss. (Joyce took some liberties with the timeline.)

Michael Cusack was decidedly on the far national wing of the GAA and would not have had much time for Nannetti. (Cusack, who was prone to disputation had, at the time of this dispute, actually fallen out with the GAA and resigned from the organisation setting up a paper, The Celtic Times, which criticised its leadership.) Had the Citizen denounced Nannetti it would have reflected a real political division.

Bracken, originally a stonemason from Tipperary, perhaps unfortunately does not appear in Ulysses. His son Brendan Bracken became involved in magazine publishing in Britain. He was the founder of the modern Financial Times and his job in the early days was, like that of Leopold Bloom, selling newspaper advertising. He successfully hid his Irish origins and went on to become First Viscount Bracken and Winston Churchill’s Minister of Information from 1941-45. In the 1950s he fiercely opposed the policy of withdrawal from Empire. Interestingly, George Orwell, whose Nineteen Eighty-Four featured a severely skewed “Ministry of Truth” based at least partly on the Ministry of Information, worked for the BBC during the war, when Bracken was his ultimate superior. He was not liked by Orwell or indeed by most of his civil servants, who cheered when news of his defeat in the 1945 general election came through.

In 1828 Prince Hermann Ludwig Heinrich Von Puckler began a tour of Ireland. Eoin Bourke, in his recent account of German travel narratives of Ireland (Poor Green Erin), explains that the prince’s chief purpose was to find an Irish heiress whom he could marry in order to relieve his financial embarrassments. To facilitate this, he had divorced his wife before leaving Germany – with her agreement it must be said. If he had a particular interest in wealthy eligible Irish women he also observed and recorded his general experience, providing fascinating vignettes of the Dublin poor:

Today I rode out … to visit the Donnybrook Fair, which is considered to be a kind of folk festival … The wretchedness, the dirt and the tumult was everywhere as intense as the joy and merriment with which the cheapest pleasures were indulged. I saw food and drink being blissfully devoured in a way that forced me to divert my gaze, to keep my feelings of nausea under control. The heat and the dust, the jostling and the stench, it must be said, made a longer sojourn almost unendurable. This however, did not bother the natives in the least. Several hundred tents had been pitched, all of them as tattered as most of the visitors, and instead of with flags, they were decked out with mere coloured rags. Some contented themselves with a bare cross, or a hoop; someone had even hung out a dead and half putrified cat as their insignia! Between the tents the lowest sort of buffoons plied their hard-earned trade, dancing and grimacing in the dreadful heat to the point of exhaustion. A third of the public lay or staggered about drunkenly, the others ate, screamed or fought. The women often rode around two or three on a donkey, made their way with difficulty through the crowd while happily smoking cigars and provoking their lovers.

As he was leaving the fair the prince found he was taking the same path as a highly “inebriated couple” who treated each other

with great tenderness and courtesy, the male partner manifesting quite a degree of chivalry. Nothing could be more gallant … than his repeated attempts to prevent his lady love from falling, although he himself had no little difficulty preserving his own balance … To do justice to truth I have to testify that not a trace of English brutality was to be found in their behaviour. They were more like the French, showed just as much joviality but more humour and good-naturedness, two truly national characteristics of the Irish that were always enhanced by poteen (the best of brandies but illegally produced). Don’t reprimand me for the vulgar images that I have presented to you. They are closer to nature than the gilded wax dolls of our salons.

Though he was not unsympathetic, the ragged poor in party mood were clearly something of a shock to the visiting Prussian. But perhaps Dublin’s “gilded wax dolls” also surprised him. One account from the late eighteenth century reveals that the fashionable element could on occasion let their guard down and adopt something of the spirit of Donnybrook: “The King’s birthday was invariably celebrated with a special ball, on one occasion it being remarked that the attack on the supper room was appalling, the squealing and shrieking women being stripped of their lapels, hustled and squeezed in the struggle. Poor Lady Santry being left more dead than alive.”

Prince Hermann sadly left Ireland without having found a suitable heiress.

Back in the 1960s, I remember witnessing an interesting scene on O’Connell Bridge. A boy around my own age was selling pears from a pram with a breadboard laid across it. He had around twenty-five pears set out in rows and was stationed on the bridge with his back to the river just at the corner of Aston Quay. A tough-looking young fellow, around the same age, came along and engaged him in conversation. There was something a little odd about the friendliness of this new arrival. They seemed to know each other slightly; possibly they were schoolfellows or lived near each other. For all that the pear-seller was uneasy; he seemed puzzled that this fellow was engaging with him in a friendly and interested way and I suspected they moved in quite different circles, whether in school or elsewhere.

The young trader, I felt, was anxious for his interlocutor to move on. But there was no sign of that happening and the reason soon became apparent. He had a hidden accomplice who had climbed over the balustrade on the quay and, obscured by the corner obelisk, was making his way along a narrow ledge towards the back of the pear-seller. As the earnest chat continued, the accomplice stretched his arm between two balusters and removed four pears. Once the pear thief was safely back on Aston Quay the conversation with the fruit vendor came to an abrupt end leaving the young trader mystified and sadly unaware that later he would have to explain the discrepancy in his accounts to his Ma, who may or may not have taken an understanding attitude. (To settle a moral point, I could, of course, have warned the trader and might well have done so had I been on my bike. But as I was on foot I thought the better of it.)

Most of the problems experienced over the years by casual traders in Dublin have originated with the city authorities rather than opportunistic thieves. In 1921, when you might think they’d have had better things to worry about, the city magistrates wished to have casual traders removed from the streets and set up in the Iveagh Market on Francis Street. Those who made this suggestion failed to comprehend the basic economics of casual trading and in particular the importance of mobility. Casual traders need to go where people are, to theatre and cinema queues, to parades or wherever people gather. That is basic. If you have a permanent pitch you are not a casual trader and occupy an altogether different economic niche.

In the 1960s and 1970s, on Sundays when Rovers were playing, it was common to see trading women bent over Silver Cross prams or their predecessors ‑ the more cumbersome but very capacious classic three-wheelers supporting a giant wickerwork frame ‑ laden with fruit and sweets on Sandford Road in Ranelagh as they hurried towards the Rovers ground in Milltown, with assisting children trotting beside them. Interestingly, the Milltown officials allowed the women to work the terraces within the grounds; they were not allowed past the gate at Lansdowne Road.

As one might suspect it is not part of the traditions or culture of Dublin’s casual traders to concern themselves with such things as licences. This is for two economically sound reasons, first licences cost money, initially perhaps not much, but once registered other means of extracting fees can follow. This settled expense would not be compatible with the occasional and seasonal nature of casual trading. The second and more significant reason the traders have opposed registration is because the authorities can then insist on a fixed location, preventing a trader wheeling her pram onto say Henry Street during the Christmas period. If you are not registered you remain anonymous and can wheel out your pram wherever you want. Or at least that used to be the case.

As part of what seems to be an established hostility towards Dublin’s inner city community, its autonomous business activity has long been under attack. And when you attack any community’s economy you weaken that community. Many employment sources in the inner city have been allowed to melt away. It is surely no accident that the old inner city population has fallen greatly and that its dysfunctional elements have become much more dominant, yielding a range of intractable social problems that look set to mark the city for some time. (The temporary removal of the city’s methadone addicts and alcoholics during the recent Notre Dame vs Navy American football match, though “successful”, does not offer a model for dealing with such deep-seated social problems ‑ or at least one hopes it doesn’t.)

The 1980s saw the last, and ultimately successful, action against the city’s casual traders on the part of the authorities. During a period of high unemployment, with approximately 50,000 people leaving the country every year, the authorities saw fit to release “snatch squads” around Henry Street and Moore Street to apprehend unlicensed traders and impound their goods. It has to be said that the pram women rose to the potential drama of the situation and high-speed pram chases became a feature of the area, with other traders and members of the public frequently managing to get accidentally in the way of the pursuers.

Barry Kennerk’s new book on Moore Street is very good on this period telling us that “in 1984 600 prosecutions were brought against trading women”. The redoubtable Tony Gregory became involved on the side of the women, advancing the apparently outrageous argument that they had a constitutional right to earn a living and to rear their families. Gregory was arrested and jailed following a protest outside the GPO which was baton-charged. Undaunted, the women took their prams and placards and gathered outside Mountjoy, where they conducted a noisy and colourful protest, their anthem being “Stand by your Pram”. Gregory did not remain in prison for long but many of Dublin’s long established casual traders disappeared forever. As a sop, some new permanent pitches, including a few on O’Connell Bridge, were authorised. The economics of the permanent pitch, however, do not allow for such simple and useful services as offering passing citizens the opportunity of enjoying a pear, preferably purchased.

For more about the history of street trading in Dublin read Moore Street, The Story of Dublin’s Market District, by Barry Kennerk

Richard Twiss’s Irish travelogue contained many criticisms of Dublin and the country in general, which together caused outrage in the late eighteenth century and led to outpourings of hostility from the Dublin press. An unprecedented mood of national unity took root as the scribes of the city rushed to defend the honour of Ireland’s poor, who had been among those targeted by the traveller. One enraged individual with extensive property in Connacht was said to have tracked down Mr Twiss to a London coffee house and publicly beaten him because of his characterisation of that province as “savage” and his allegation that the legs of the peasant women there were on the “thick” side.

Rent extractors rushing to defend their tenants is not an everyday event and it was all the more unusual as, throughout the preceding decades of the eighteenth century, ascendancy commentators had not hesitated to criticise the peasantry in highly unsympathetic language, generally attributing their grinding poverty to their own moral and behavioural shortcomings and arguing that such problems would be quickly overcome if the advice issued by their betters was followed.

Richard Twiss’s error – if error it can be called since he seems to have enjoyed the whole business and benefited from it ‑ was to extend his criticism beyond the poor to an establishment which was growing in its own sense of importance and achievement, reflected in the magnificent buildings with which it was filling the second city of the empire. Visitors generally enthused about these buildings but Twiss did not, adding for good measure that neither of Dublin’s cathedrals “are remarkable for their architecture”. Most visitors admired Dublin Bay and it was frequently compared to the Bay of Naples. The niggardly Mr Twiss commented merely that it was “inferior”.

Twiss saw Dublin as deficient in both culture and commerce. He also attacked the Dublin press, saying it used cheap brown paper, adding that the newspapers were “curiosities by reason of their style and spelling”. It was a cocktail of criticism calculated to irritate and provoke a response.

The Dublin Jewish poet William Preston, who was a founder of the Royal Irish Academy and an early supporter of Catholic Emancipation, wrote a satirical response in verse. Apparently he informed Twiss of his intention; the latter remarked: “The little Jew poet told me lately he intended to write a Heroic Epistle to me, I told him he was very welcome if he thought it might bring him into notice.”

Preston was just one of a large number who were moved to target Twiss, whose criticisms of architecture, landscape, commerce and cultural life often involved a personal note. He found the habits of the property-owning Irish unattractive: they were prone to excessive eating and drinking and had a regrettable attachment to “lavish hospitality”, a practice he attributed to the influence of the “old Irish”, an element he saw as retarding the advance of civilisation in Ireland. He was also generally uncomplimentary towards Irish women of rank. According to Richard and Maria Edgeworth, Twiss remarked that if you looked at an Irish lady she invariably responded “port if you please”. He also found fault with the Protestant elite for having adopted the potato as a staple; it was served as an accompaniment with all meals, he complained.

All in all he was saying there wasn’t much to choose between the colony and the natives and that the ascendancy was letting down the cause of civilisation. It was not calculated to please. The Dublin newspaper, pamphlet and ephemera press reacted with outrage and set about attacking Twiss with passion, venom and wit. As the eighteenth century was nothing if not scatological it was not long before it was noted that Mr T’s name rhymed with piss.

Anne Whaley ‑ later Lady Clare ‑ was one of many who wrote an anti-Twiss squib which made use of the rhyme:

Here you may behold a liar
Well deserving of hell-fire:
Every one who likes may p—
Upon the learned Doctor T—-

The future Lady Clare was referring to the many chamber pots manufactured during the anti Twiss fervour and which featured a likeness of him on the inside. One visitor to Ireland some years later wrote that he was frequently presented “with a picture of the late tourist at the bottom of the chamber pots, with his mouth and eyes open ready to receive the libation” and as late as 1811 a dictionary of the “vulgar tongue” gave Twiss as a slang term for chamber pot.

Unsurprisingly, the mood of national unity proved temporary. Lady Clare’s husband, Lord Chancellor John Fitzgibbon, took strong action against those from within the establishment who sided with the popular cause in 1798. Students in Trinity College were individually interrogated by Fitzgibbon and those suspected of sympathy with the rebels were thrown out. Thomas Moore, the Bard of Erin, whose family ran a modest grocery shop on Aungier Street, was one who was questioned. Although he was an active literary supporter of the rebels he managed to evade sanction, to the great relief of his mother, who had devoted much of her life to choreographing her son’s social advancement and who, though nationalist in sentiment herself, preferred her son not to take political risks.

For more about Richard Twiss, read Martyn Powell’s Piss-pots, printers and public opinion in eighteenth-century Dublin.

Nassau Street is named after William of Orange, ruler of Nassau. Previously it was called St Patrick’s Well Lane, after a much-used well located under the wall of Trinity in what is now the Provost’s Garden. Indeed, what could be the old well can still be seen from the Nassau Street entrance to Trinity. The original name is retained in the Irish name of the street, Sráid Thobar Phádraig.

In earlier times the well was an important source of fresh water in the area, the salty Liffey not being of much use in this regard. Dublin lore records that the ground was struck by the saint, to whom the locals had explained their problem, and that fresh water flowed from the spot thereafter. It became a holy well because of the association with Patrick and apparently crowds would come to drink its waters on St Patrick’s Day. According to an article published in Trinity News in 2009, one dismissive English visitor commented on local enthusiasm for the waters on that feast: “The water is more holy than it is all the year after, or else the inhabitants of Dublin are more foolish upon this day than they be all the year after … thither they will run by heaps, men, women and children, and there, first performing certain superstitious ceremonies, they drink of the water.”

References to the well are recorded in a twelfth century Latin manuscript that has survived. There have been suggestions that the Anglo Norman ecclesiastical elite was less than enthusiastic about St Patrick and that the locals’ enthusiasm had a political dimension. One commentator in the mid-twentieth century remarked: “From various accounts it may be gathered that the Dublin people ran stark mad keeping up the revelry for nine days, getting water from the well, washing in it and using it as if it were to produce miraculous effects of some sort on either their souls, minds or bodies.”

In 1729 it dried up temporarily, an event which was the subject of a verse from Dean Swift: “On the sudden drying up of St Patrick’s Well, near Trinity College, Dublin”. Whether as a result of Swift’s poem or not the corporation cleaned and restored the well.

At the time of the eighteenth century expansion of the city, the stream that ran down towards the river along the path of Dawson Street from the marshy ground around the area which is now St Stephen’s Green was culverted. Dawson Street itself was set out at this time and many prominent figures associated with the parliament lived there, which is why it has such nice big houses.

Morrison’s hotel, a highly fashionable spot in Regency and Victorian Dublin, stood almost opposite the Provost’s Garden. The Geraldine or possibly the Fitzgerald arms are said to have hung above the door. The door of Morrison Chambers ‑ built on the site in 1905‑ now serves as the entrance to a Costa Coffee premises. Above the Costa door are the coats of arms of the four provinces carved in limestone. Unlike Morrison’s, the present occupants probably do not draw their water from St Patrick’s Well, their skinny lattes sadly untouched by the holy waters.

Charles Stewart Parnell based himself in and did much of his political business from Morrison’s when he was in Dublin and it was there he was arrested in 1881. That event, of course, was to turn out to be just a mild misfortune compated to the bad luck he was later to encounter.

A little further up from Morrison’s some others had a superior experience of political martyrdom. Macken’s hotel, which stood on the corner of Dawson Lane, was the ticket agent for the many packets which sailed from Howth to Holyhead before Dun Laoghaire was chosen as the main point of departure. In 1798, after the battle of Ballinamuck, General Humbert and his French officers were housed in Macken’s while on bail. The Irish involved in the battle, of course, met a different fate. It has been said that when the French officers left they presented some swords to the proprietor who with commendable thrift had them remodelled for use as carvers in the dining room. Less imaginative types would have simply put them above the mantlepiece.

Further up again, Lord Newton Butler. who lived opposite St Ann’s church, bequeathed a sum of money for the purchase of bread for the poor which was first to be displayed in St Ann’s and then distributed to the needy. The stipulation that it be displayed may have involved the sin of pride, which we must hope was cancelled out by the underlying act of charity. The practice continued at least until the mid-twentieth century, by which time inflation had reduced the amount of bread which could be purchased. I am not sure if it continues today; if it does the deacon at St Ann’s could easily get his hands on a few sliced pans at a reasonable price in the Spar opposite the Provost’s garden. How acceptable they would be to the poor who now collect alms in paper cups along Nassau Street is less certain.

Just beyond St Ann’s is the Royal Irish Academy, originally Northland House and once the residence of Thomas Knox, whose son was a close friend of Wolf Tone. Later it became the Reform Club. In 1855 the late Thomas Moore’s wife donated the poet’s library to the academy. Moore’s sister was apparently a good friend of the Protestant ideologue Mortimer O’Sullivan who often dined in a house opposite with a group which included Father Thomas Maguire, the Catholic theological champion who would engage in marathon public debates on the relative merits of Roman versus Reformation Christianity. Apparently Maguire and O’Sullivan got on very well socially. Maguire once debated in public for nine days on the trot with the Reverend Tresham Gregg, founder of the Protestant Operatives Society which was based in the liberties. The well attended debate took place in the Rotunda Assembly Rooms, later the Ambassador cinema and more recently home to the Human Body exhibition. Both sides, as one might expect, claimed incontestable victory. Gregg was a fundamentalist monomaniac, which would probably have excluded him from the dining group on Dawson Street. If that didn’t do it his humble origins surely would have.

A few doors away stood the Hibernian Hotel, which in the nineteenth century was the Dublin base of the Bianconi coaches. Fifteen coaches left daily for country destinations with the average price of a penny-farthing per mile. Bianconi, who came to Dublin as an imigrant plasterworker, become very wealthy, his cheap coaches being enormously popular. His business was a sort of Ryanair of its time. One German visitor commented that Bianconi’s success, which was owing to his reasonable prices, had made him very wealthy, “ … and yet his well earned fortune is not the slightest object of envy, particularly as he is extraordinarily charitable towards the poor and carries out his entire travel system at such a cheap price … almost half of what one pays on the frequently very slow and mediocre Irish stage- coaches.”

Read the Dublin Review of Books on Mortimer O’Sullivan and Thomas Moore.

02/11/12