Vol. 1. No.3 SEPTEMBER, 1938.
ByThomas King Moylan

DUBLIN'S DEBT TO THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY
Having got the beggars and strolling women within their converted malt-house in Channel Row, the Governors of the House of Industry had a job to keep them there, even though portion of the establishment was set apart as a bridewell. Thus we find an
entry:
“Ordered that Matthew C-, late porter to the House, be placed in the public hall at the hour of 12 o'clock each day with his crime in writing on his breast; and chained by the leg and there to remain until one o’clock during the pleasure of the Board as a punishment for drunkenness and taking a bribe at the door to let the poor elope.”

Again, one fine day in 1786 it was found that 40 strolling women committed by the Commissioner of Police had bored a hole through the Bridewell wall and vanished as completely, if not so fragrantly, as the morning mists in May.

The difficulty in holding on to their unwilling guests was equalled only by the difficulty the Governors had in retaining their other property. Anything movable was in danger of thieving hands - even the Bible had to be chained down. Wooden trenchers, clothing, thread and provisions disappeared and were but minor thefts compared with the crowning feat of the theft of the corpse of a man who had died, as the records bluntly put it, "of the putrid disease." Not that the Governors ignored these breaches of the rules; they took such steps that one marvels any inmate dared to thieve. They began by ordering two women who had stolen 7 noggins and 4 trenchers to be chained, set to beat hemp, fed on bread and water for seven days, to be brought into the hall at breakfast and dinner each day and set in a conspicuous place, with a label on their backs bearing the word THIEF in large letters. The other inmates were amused, it caused a pleasant little diversion, but it did not stop thieving. Later, two boys sent out for oil sold some of it and falsified the dockets. They were rewarded with 24 lashes on the naked back, but the beadles were soft-hearted and soft-handed, for at the next Board-meeting they were fined a week’s pay for the lax manner in which they inflicted the punishment. Two months later we read that
“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 Asylum ; 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 of the six Governors responsible for this order, three were clergymen and one was a surgeon. And so on this December day of 1797, a poor, homeless vagabond is hauled out of her dark cell, her body numb with the cold of the long winter night, her eyes blinking in the pale watery sunshine. Furtive glances follow her from the windows about the gloomy courtyard as she stumbles to the corer where the whipping post stands. Her coarse woollen gown and brown linen shift are stripped down about her waist, her body exposed to the cold air and the colder looks of the unfriendly eyes about her. Her hands are fastened to the whipping post high above her head. With a hiss and a whine, impelled by a muscular arm, the cat descends again and again, to engrave on her back in twelve savage, ragged lines, the precept : "Thou shalt not steal" While the Master of the Hospital, and the Master of the Works and all the Beadles do attend to bear witness that the wielder of the cat has bit deeply enough into the soft flesh of a woman to save his week’s wages. His six and six-pence is safe from confiscation this time.

But it is all no use. A few months later the comer is again occupied, this time by a nurse-tender of the lunatic department who receives a dozen lashes for stealing clothes and blankets; a fortnight later it is another woman undergoing 24 lashes for theft of three shirts, and again another still receiving the same punishment for appropriating three shillings worth of worsted. Sturdy Beggars! They must have been made of steel.

One of the earliest resolutions of the Governors of the House of Industry was that the industrious poor in their charge should be as well fed but not better than the labouring class outside, and they sent to the Edinborough Workhouse for a copy of the dietary. If it reflects the food of the labouring class at the end of the eighteenth century it is an interesting light on the standard of living at the time. Breakfast and supper consisted of pottage or hasty pudding made of oatmeal and each person received half an English pint of beer with it. Dinner on five days of week was bread and broth made without flesh, but with barley and greens. On the other two days the dinner was bread and beer-a pint of beer to old persons, half a pint to children, a large loaf of bread for the old and a small loaf for the young. The dietary concluded : “5/4 Bolls of malt are brew’d each week into ale for the use of the house; each boll makes 36 Scots gallons 34 English gallons.” In 1786 this dietary was much improved and no doubt is the “too profuse” diet deplored by Whitelaw as attracting to the House persons who might earn a less lavish subsistence outside.

In addition to feeding their inmates the Governors, in times of stress, established soup kitchens at the behest of the Government. In January, 1776, owing to prevalent distress, every needy person got 1 lb. bread “an herring” and a pint of beer on production from their Parish of a certificate that they were in danger of perishing for want of food-a “means test” startling in its stark simplicity. Again in January, 1784, the same relief was given, the number so fed each day outside the House varying from 3,000 to 5,000 for over a month. To that expenditure the gentlemen of Daly’s Club subscribed l00 guineas. In the first six months of 1801, 809,592 persons were relieved at the public kitchens. The soup given out was made entirely without meat, and the following is the list of the ingredients of what was called “Fasting Soup”: For 600 persons-4 stone rice, 3 ½ stone Indian meal, 1 ½ stone barley or rye meal, 3 stone peas, 5 doz. Cabbages, 6 bunches Celery, 6 bundles leeks, 1 ½ . Guiana pepper, and 28 lbs salt.

Some of the prices of food and other commodities (about 1787) may be of interest. Beef was generally about 2 ½ d. per lb. and mutton 3d.; potatoes, 2s. per cwt. ; butter, £2 per cwt. ; oatmeal, £13.12s. per ton. Coals, which came from Ballycastle, were round 20s. per ton, freight included; beer, known as “small beer,” 11s. to 15s. per barrel; candles, 6s. per dozen lbs., and Soap, surprisingly, about double the price it is to-day. Bread baked in the House cost 7d. and a small fraction per loaf of 4 ½ lbs ; the price outside, by Lord Mayor's assize, was over 9 ½ d. Milk was 3 ½ d. per gallon, at which price it must have been open to suspicion, for on one occasion the Governors advertised that their contract milk was to be delivered in the cow which made it, the milking being done at the House!

When the duty devolved on the Corporation for the Relief of the Poor, of looking after disabled poor men and women, they were totally unprovided with any means of treating the sick and infirm. The offers of voluntary medical and surgical servicesby Dr. Rainey, Mr. Dean Swift and Surgeon Henthorn were followed by others, but the accommodation in the old malt-house was of a primitiveness that baffled the professional care so freely bestowed. In the midst of this primitiveness, it astonishes one to find the Governors so far back as 1783, ordering Dr. Scott to procure an electrical machine for the use of the Infirmary. Possibly it was some early appliance of Galvani's. In 1787 the Governors considered the question of new accommodation to provide for 2,000 inmates, with working apartments, bridewells for the refractory, stores, water reservoir, two spacious baths and two dining halls which could also serve as chapels;. Together with an infirmary for 100 men and 200 women patients. The old house was ruinous and verminous, and in the following year, 1788, there was an outbreak of “gaol fever,” in which the deaths during three months averaged 30 per week. The dead were buried in the north-east Corner of Bully’s Acre, Kilmainham, and there were many complaints from the Governor of the Royal Hospital as to the negligent manner in which the remains were interred.
As an inducement to better work an honorarium of twopence each was then allowed to the men who dug the graves. The old malt house now was not only a danger to the health of the inmates, but the medical officers reported that it was a danger to human
life, owing to the possibility of its collapsing, so in September, 1791, the foundation stone of the new House of Industry was laid on an adjoining plot by the Right Hon. Thomas Connolly. When the Poor Relief Act came into operation in the year 1838,
this building passed into the hands of the Poor Law Commissioners, and has since been known to thousands as the North Dublin Union Workhouse. It was in the courtyard of that building that the floggings already described took place.

In 1798 a petition from the Governors to the Irish House of Commons stated that it would be necessary to build a proper infirmary, which began to take shape in 1803, and was named the Hardwicke Hospital. Further hospital acommodation being needed, the Governors, in 1810, took over the convent which had been erected for the Benedictine Nuns in Channel Row, facing Red Cow Lane, in 1688, and which was subsequently in the possession of Dominican Nuns (now of Cabra) who largely rebuilt it. The old Convent became the Richmond Surgical Hospital. It was later superseded by the present red brick structure but still remains the Accident Department of that hospital. In 1814 further ground to the south of the new House of Industry was purchased and the Whitworth Medical Hospital was built. The Tudor Dispensary adjoining was opened in 1820.

When the Corporation for the Relief of the Poor began their labours in 1773, one of their earliest resolutions was that no restraint was to be placed on any inmate of the House in the discharge of his religious duties. Unhappily this tolerant frame of mind did not last long, for a year after the resolution the redoubtable Mr. Houghton was requested to take steps to disburthen the House of children of the Popish religion, and at a later date all Protestant masters and mistresses taking children as apprentices were
to be allowed a sum of £2 for each child so taken. The failure of the same policy in the case of the Foundling Hospital had not yet taught the futility of this kind of religious activity. It must have been a failure in the House of Industry also, because by 1802 the number of children was so great that steps were taken to erect a building to house one thousand children, and this was ready in 1806 and was styled the Bedford Asylum for Children. Spinning, weaving and kindred work was carried on under the supervision of a Master of Works who received no fixed wages but was remunerated by a commission of 25 per cent. of the profits of the work. It was a system open to grave abuse.

When the Act of 11 & 12 Geo. III c. 30 recited that it was “necessary to give countenance and assistance to those poor who shall be found disabled by old age and infirmities,” and that “it was just to call upon the humane and fortunate to contribute to the support of real objects of charity,” it had in mind mainly the man and woman who begged from necessity, enforced by advancing years and bodily ills. But there was another object of charity, an even greater one, the unfortunate whose mental
infirmities precluded all possibility of earning a livelihood. The treatment of the insane in all countries up to the commencement of the nineteenth century was appallingly callous and inhuman. No full or accurate record can be given because so little did they matter that details are scanty but enough is known to indicate that the whole truth would be so revolting as to be unbearable. Up to the close of the seventeenth century gaol was the ordinary lot of the lunatic. The old House of St. John may have housed a few of the milder type in Dublin, but generally the gaols and houses of correction were the only repositories of the unfortunate trying to steer his way through life without a compass.