Dirt and decay the typical face of capital in 1911
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DUBLIN in 1911 was a "mass of contradictions", as both the second city of the British Empire and the first city of nationalist Ireland.
It included extraordinary class and culture divisions.
The year of the Census just preceded a decade of great change, with the 1913 Lockout, World War I, the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence all just years ahead, events which changed politics, society and commerce forever.
In contrast to modern times, there was virtually no evidence of economic growth in Dublin. Many traditional industries struggled to survive. often in the face of industrial disputes.
In 1911, Dublin had the worst housing conditions of any city in the United Kingdom, with slums which extended beyond the back streets and impoverished ghettos and into previously fashionable Georgian streets and squares.
"Tenements in inner-city Dublin were filthy, overcrowded, disease-ridden, teeming with malnourished children and very much at odds with the elite world of colonial and middle-class Dublin", the website declares.
Henrietta Street, which epitomised the decay, had been home to generations of lawyers, but by 1911, an astonishing 835 people lived in 15 houses. Members of 19 different families lived in number 7.
Among the 104 people in the house were charwomen, servants, labourers, porters, messengers, painters, carpenters, pensioners, a postman, a tailor, and a class of schoolchildren. Out the back were a stable and a piggery.
Crime tended to be petty theft rather than violence. And not unlike today, the city was notable for public drunkenness and disorder. In 1910 there were 2,462 charges of drunkenness in the Dublin Metropolitan police district, while a total of 3,758 people were drunk when taken into custody.
Despite widespread poverty and unemployment, Dublin's pubs, many of them owned by country people, were thriving and the focal point of popular culture, although women were generally excluded.
The city was 83pc Catholic, 13pc Church of Ireland, 2pc Presbyterian and Methodist and 2pc others, including a growing Jewish presence.
- Grainne Cunningham
