Battle Plans and Battlegrounds

Abstract

The Dublin city slums during the mid- to late-nineteenth century were one of the major theatres of operation for protestant evangelical mission societies whose activities were to engender fierce opposition from Roman Catholic activists.1 The most energetic and well-funded protestant evangelical mission was the Society for Irish Church Missions (ICM), founded in England in 1847 by Alexander Dallas. The appearance of the ICM provoked the formation of a number of Catholic anti-proselytising societies under the control of the lay activist Margaret Aylward (1810–1889), head of the ‘Anti-proselytising section’ of the Ladies’ Association of Charity for the Relief of the Sick Poor in their Homes (1851), and later founder of St Brigid’s Orphanage (1856), St. Brigid’s Catholic Schools for the Poor (1861), and the Sisters of the Holy Faith (1865).2 Paul Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin from 1852 to 1879 and a close supporter of Alyward, lead the Catholic counter charge. The terms ‘battle plans’ and ‘battlegrounds’ used in the title of this chapter are not at all an overstatement; though relatively little blood was spilt, the language and tactics of war were employed by both sides as they operated their own intelligence networks, picketed each other’s schools, ensured partisan media coverage, thwarted each other’s fund-raising, and took advantage of, if they did not actually orchestrate, street riots.3KeywordsAnnual ReportAbundant FruitMission SchoolMission WorkCatholic FaithThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.