Century Ireland Research Articles

Infant Mortality in Mother and Baby Homes in 20th Century Ireland

During the first half of the 20th century, infant mortality in the general population fell by more than 50% in higher income countries. Despite accounting for a disproportionately high share of deaths in these countries during this period, few quantitative studies have examined the experiences of infants who were born or raised in an institutional context. In this paper, we quantify mortality rates in Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland, institutions that were aimed primarily at unmarried mothers and their infants. Using information on over 40,000 infants born in the 6 largest of these insitutions in Ireland, we assess how this risk of mortality changed over the course of the 20th century relative to the general population, and assess variation in death rates by observed characteristics. The mortality penalty for these institutions was greatly elevated, reaching four times the national mortality rate in the 1930s and 1940s. By comparing the outcomes of infants from the Mother and Baby Homes with the rest of the population using large-scale quantitative data, this study documents the scale of the disadvantage faced by marginalised communities born outside public hospital systems, and highlights the potential role of nutrition-related causes in these disparities.

“Acting on apartheid in a way that is consonant with the Irish people’s love of freedom”: anti-apartheid activism in Ireland, 1959–1994

ABSTRACT This article seeks to provide a broad overview of anti-apartheid activism in Ireland, in doing so, demonstrating that anti-apartheid activists in Ireland forged a distinct identity grounded in Ireland’s anti-colonial history as well their alignment with the African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party (SACP). Focusing on the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement (IAAM) it highlands the role played by its most prominent figure, the exiled South African academic and senior ANC/SACP member Kader Asmal. Securing a national profile through the mass protest campaign against the 1969–70 Springbok rugby tour, the IAAM portrayed itself as above domestic politics. Nonetheless, efforts to force the disaffiliation of the Provisional Sinn Féin in the early 1980s proved the impossibility of entirely avoiding entanglement in the domestic political climate. The IAAM was also criticised by the women who led the 1984–87 strike against South African goods at Dunnes’ Stores, who saw it as dependent on middle-class support and reluctant to enter the industrial sphere. Drawing on engagement with the IAAM’s internal archive, the article contributes towards filling a substantial gap in the scholarship of anti-apartheid activism globally, as well the study of left-wing activism and trade unionism in late 20th century Ireland.

The Development of Mutual Aid Tontines in Nineteenth Century Ireland

A tontine is a shared fund in which surviving investors benefit financially from the deaths of other members. Since the mid-seventeenth century it has been used variously across Europe as a tool to raise state revenue, as a private investment tool, and as a method to raise capital for building projects. In nineteenth-century Ireland, the tontine developed to include a mutual aid scheme directed at the country's working classes and poor. This form of tontine existed within a wider sphere of microcredit and microfinance instruments – including loan funds, pawnbrokers and Mont de Piété banks - directed at Ireland's poorer classes. These provided services to a section of Irish society neglected by the country's banks and other financial institutions. The mutual aid tontine was therefore very much an indigenous financial instrument developed for the needs of Irish society. Like the Irish themselves it travelled. The scheme also proved to be popular in England during the nineteenth century, predominantly in areas of high Irish immigration. This article argues that this was as a direct result of the transplantation of Irish communities and support structures into England.

‘Liverpool daft’: the growth of British football clubs’ supporters’ clubs in the late twentieth century in Ireland - a history

ABSTRACT This article examines the development of British football clubs’ supporters’ clubs in Ireland. While it has been previously established that this interest was at times linked to domestic and European success, and the fielding of Irish players, this article examines how these supporters’ clubs facilitated travel to and from matches and how British clubs in turn nurtured this interest. How Irish supporters experienced major stadium disasters at Ibrox in 1971, Heysel in 1985 and Hillsborough in 1989 is examined. How these tragedies were marked in Ireland will also be assessed. At times, crowd safety issues involving British clubs’ supporters in Ireland were also noticeable, and how these were dealt with by Irish authorities will also be discussed. By the 1990s, a wider range of British supporters’ clubs were available to those in Ireland, although interest in Liverpool, Manchester United and Glasgow Celtic still remained highest in the early twenty-first century.

The Descent of Ireland’s ‘Fallen Women:’ The Relationship Between the Catholic Church, Irish Nationalism, and the Control of Women’s Reproduction through Mother and Baby Homes and Magdalen Laundries

In recent decades, Ireland has grappled with its relationship with the Catholic Church, which has long exerted social, political, and moral authority over the young nation. Scandals of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse at the hands of clergy have surfaced, distorting the Church's legacy in Ireland. Mother and baby homes and Magdalen laundries are just two of the many institutions operated by Church officials where individuals endured severe abuse at the hands of religious orders. Mother and baby homes and Magdalen Laundries serve as a yet another historical manifestation of authorities' control of women's reproductive behavior. These two institutions penalized illegitimate births by incarcerating thousands of young women – some pregnant, some not – throughout the 20th century in Ireland. This paper analyzes how the historical framework under which these systems developed, as well as the relationship between the Church's control of women's reproductive behavior and national identity in post-Independence Ireland. 

Connecting with the Diaspora and Promoting Economic Development: Two Sides of the Same Coin in 21st Century Ireland?

Connecting with the Diaspora and Promoting Economic Development: Two Sides of the Same Coin in 21st Century Ireland?

The Catholic Church and investor capitalism in late-nineteenth century Ireland

ABSTRACT The Catholic Church embarked upon an ambitious project of property development in the nineteenth century that transformed the Irish built environment and landscape. People responded energetically to fundraising drives for churches, convents, monasteries and welfare-focused institutions. The acquisition of significant property and substantial capital by the Irish Catholic Church was a major source of its power, which continued into independent Ireland. Much of this wealth came to the Catholic Church through bequests, donations, and returns on investment, which were managed by the relevant dioceses and orders. This article focuses on the episcopacy of Archbishop William Walsh of Dublin during the 1880s and 1890s to understand the way in which the management of the archdiocese of Dublin’s financial resources shaped the social, economic, and political development of Ireland’s capital city. By focusing on the management of one of the most significant bequests under Walsh’s supervision – the Egan Bequest – a complex story of religion, investment and infrastructure building is revealed. This activity helped produce a model of investor capitalism that shaped Dublin in ways that remain contested to this day.

‘Came to her dressed in mans cloaths’: transgender histories and queer approaches to the family in eighteenth-century Ireland

ABSTRACT This article engages with queer and trans scholarship to produce a methodological think-piece on how to queer the Irish family. It draws on a case study of alleged crossdressing and attempted intimacy that was recorded in the Kirk Session (church court) minute book of the Irish Presbyterian congregation of Templepatrick, County Antrim. In March 1706, a woman named Margaret McCal appeared before Templepatrick Kirk Session and lodged a complaint against a fellow church member. Margaret alleged that an individual known to her as Elizabeth McIlroy had approached her ‘Dressed in mans cloaths’, called themselves ‘David Campbell’ and ‘pretend[ed] courtship to her’. How do we understand this case? What can Margaret’s story tell us about gender, sex, and relationships in eighteenth century Ireland? Moving beyond a reading of the Templepatrick case as a simple instance of crossdressing, this article opens up new discursive pathways in histories of gender and the Irish family by situating it within a trans historical framework. In response to the calls of trans and queer scholars to ‘denaturalise the cisgender turn’, the article begins by interrogating the Presbyterian archive as a cisnormative and heteronormative construction. Next, it offers a trans reading of the case and situates David Campbell, not simply as a woman dressed in men’s clothing but as an individual who moved through the world at particular points in time as a man. Finally, the article ends by queering our understanding of female desire by unsettling the relationship between sex and gender in the pursuit of its fulfilment. Albeit based on one case-study, the story of David and Margaret captures an extraordinary – yet, as I will argue, very ordinary, intimate encounter that has important implications for our understanding of the family in Ireland.

'The mystery of Dublin': Corporate profit-shifting and housing crisis in twentyfirst century Ireland

'The mystery of Dublin': Corporate profit-shifting and housing crisis in twentyfirst century Ireland

Megtartó hagyomány vagy a kirekesztés eszköze?

Gypsies, Roma and Travelers are often classified under the term “Roma” in Europe and under the acronym “GRT” in Great Britain. These communities and other nomadic groups, such as Scottish and English travellers, the so-called “show people” (traveling entertainers) and new travellers share many common characteristics: the importance of family and/or social networks; nomadic lifestyles, propensity for self-employment, disadvantage and the worst health outcomes in the UK. Irish Travellers are traditionally a nomadic people group in Ireland, but have a distinct identity, heritage and culture from mainstream society. The presence of Irish travellers can be traced back to 12th century Ireland. The community has been recognized as an ethnic minority in Ireland. They are not related to the Roma either in origin or in their history, but the similarity of their way of life is often a basis for the “conflation” of the two groups, and their mostly identical discrimination. Travelers provide a particularly interesting surface for examination because they do not differ markedly from the Irish majority population in appearance, so they could easily blend in to make it easier to assert themselves. However, the traditions that ensure community cohesion and identity at the same time prevent assimilation. The paper is about such a tradition that simultaneously provides identity and causes exclusion: women’s hairstyle.

Social housing and the spread of population: Evidence from twentieth century Ireland

How does housing policy influence the long-run distribution of population? We examine the impact on long-term population dynamics of the world’s first large-scale rural public housing scheme, specifically the case of Ireland’s Labourers Acts. We link detailed data on the location of over 45,000 heavily subsidized cottages for agricultural laborers built 1883–1915 in over 200 districts to decennial Censuses between 1841 and 2002. We examine how the density of this social housing affected subsequent population change and find significant persistence in the effect of this treatment on the population. These findings are from specifications that include other factors plausibly related to future population growth, including initial housing stock, land values and population density, as well as distance to urban centres. A causal interpretation is supported by an assessment of pre-trends, by no effect of cottages authorized but not built and by an IV approach that exploits a 1906 limit on legal costs. We also highlight the role of agglomeration in amplifying the impact of the initial investment. Mediation analysis suggests that schooling was a key factor, with districts receiving more cottages less likely to lose primary schools, thus further influencing population growth.

Translating Gendered Paralysis in Dubliners: A Reflective Retranslation of James Joyce's ‘A Painful Case’ through a Feminist Translation Approach

ABSTRACT While current Chinese translations of James Joyce's Dubliners are acclaimed, demonstrating a commendable effort to make this classic of English language world literature accessible to Chinese readers, the book's depiction of the way femininity, masculinity and broader society in early twentieth century Ireland are ‘paralysed’ could be further emphasised for young Chinese readers through specific translation strategies. This exegetical paper offers a reflective analysis based on a comparison between our feminist retranslation of one of the short stories in Dubliners, ‘A Painful Case’, and two of its existing translations. In doing so, this essay aims to demonstrate how specific translation strategies can encourage a more critical gender and cultural consciousness in a younger generation of Chinese readers, and sheds light on the benefits of applying feminist translation methods to the retranslation of a classic naturalistic short story by a male writer. This article also makes a fresh and distinctive contribution to the scholarship of Chinese studies of Joyce and the translation of his work, through the lens of gender and culture.

Stranger to Herself’: The Pedagogical Presence of the Other in Paula Meehan’s Poetry

In this age of globalization, interracial and cross-cultural encounters have become common aspects of everyday life. This paper aims to examine how Irish writer Paula Meehan engages in this global discourse of interculturality by articulating aspects of cross-cultural and inter-ethnical exchange. I subsequently link Meehan’s openness to cultural diversity and her alertness to the voices of the marginalised to the context of 21st century Ireland. The first section discusses Meehan’s subversive representations of the ‘internal’ Others of Irish society. Her depictions of otherness challenge the often rigid boundaries which define national and ethnic identities and open a liberating place which successfully accommodates diversity. The second section focuses on Meehan’s attempt to move away from the ethos of individual egotism which marks contemporary life. In particular, she advocates a model to confront the experiences of ‘foreigners’ based on the self-exploration of one’s own subconscious. In line with Kristeva’s argument, Meehan implies that discovering the ‘stranger’ hidden in oneself is an essential prerequisite to accept, in an unconditional and genuine way, the presence of external ‘Others’ in Irish society. While this can easily be dismissed as an abstract utopia, Meehan’s ideal becomes ethically and politically relevant in the contemporary context of a multi-cultural society open to large-scale immigration.

‘The mystery of Dublin’: Corporate profit-shifting and housing crisis in twenty-first century Ireland

Ireland’s economy is currently characterized by two phenomena: a highly globalized growth regime predicated on multinational corporate profit-shifting, and a domestic economy (concentrated in the capital, Dublin) experiencing severe housing crisis. This paper links these two phenomena together, and argues that they be considered as evidence of the emergence of a new accumulation regime, in which a specific mode of integration within the global economy both favours the emergence of, and embeds, particular patterns of domestic rent exploitation. To demonstrate this the paper combines a new synthesis of French régulation theory, as modified to account for transnational dynamics, with an updated reading of Gramsci’s analysis of (pre-Fordist) rent exploitation, applying this framework to redefine Ireland’s growth model as an emerging transnational accumulation regime of rentier character.

Touching stories: Why birthplace narratives matter

We have lost touch with birthplace. During the twentieth century in Ireland, childbirth was uprooted from local environments and relocated within hospital-based settings. This process contributed to a loss of touch with birthplace – a process worsened during COVID-19. There have been no maternity services for over 30 years in County Clare, a region in the west of Ireland where I conducted a series of interviews with people reflecting on their experiences of birth. These multigenerational birthplace stories inform the content and direction of the creative component of this research. As part of this research, a series of artworks is currently being made in relation to these birthplace stories, some of which are shared in this article. This research project is theoretically and methodologically rooted in critical post-humanism, in particular the work of feminist new materialists. A speculative ethics of birthplace care underpins the research and drives the development of an ethos of care that considers the entwinement of birthing bodies, matter and place.

The discursive construction of gender and agency in the linguistic landscape of Ireland’s 2018 abortion referendum campaign

ABSTRACT In a 2018 referendum, the Irish electorate voted in favour of repealing Ireland's quasi-total legal ban on abortion. The referendum campaign saw important public discussions regarding gender roles in twenty-first century Ireland. While the constitutional ban on abortion was condemned by abortion rights advocates for marginalising women's agency, the legislation which replaced it has not escaped criticism either. Therefore, questions surrounding the conceptualisation of women's agency in the 2018 referendum are still relevant today. Adopting a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach, this paper analyses signage from the weeks before the vote to examine the discursive construction of women's agency in the linguistic landscape of the referendum campaign. I argue that many mainstream campaign organisations – including those arguing for liberalisation of abortion laws – were complicit in the discursive diminishment of women's agency, suggesting that the campaign did not necessarily challenge prevailing ideologies of gender and agency.

“It Was a Smoke Dream”: Affective Aesthetics in Women’s Literature of the Irish Civil War

The formal, ideological, and narrative elements constituting the aesthetics of hope and disappointment in women’s writing of the Irish revolution offer new insights into the gendered experience of conflict. By arguing that women’s writing in this period complicates and expands existing classifications of conflict literature, this paper proposes to trace a network of alternative connection, built out of subjective gendered experiences of political and social upheaval. Drawing on theories of affect and emotion with reference to Rosamond Jacob’s The Troubled House (1938), Margaret Barrington’s My Cousin Justin (1939) and Dorothy Macardle’s The Uninvited (1942), this article suggests that appraisal of textual interconnection can thicken our understanding of the conceptual tools engaged by women writers to record, relay, and refract the personal and political implications of early-twentieth century Ireland.

Alice Mauger, The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth Century Ireland: Public Voluntary and Private Asylum Care

Alice Mauger, <i>The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth Century Ireland: Public Voluntary and Private Asylum Care</i>

Two hostile bishops? A reexamination of the relationship between Peter Browne and George Berkeley beyond their alleged controversy

ABSTRACT For decades scholars have argued that there was a heated argumentative exchange between the bishop of Cork and Ross, Peter Browne, and the bishop of Cloyne, George Berkeley. Thus, they have unduly reduced Browne to a mere adversary of Berkeley. They also thereby distorted the perception of the Irish intellectual milieu in the seventeenth / eighteenth century and the way its participants influenced one another. Contrary to this controversy-reading I establish how ill-supported the prevailing narrative of the relationship between the bishops of Cork and Cloyne is. This, in turn, allows me to demonstrate that the discussion about the problem of divine analogy in seventeenth / eighteenth century Ireland was embedded in a larger context, which has hitherto been too little appreciated. I will illustrate this point by demonstrating that the two bishops not only reacted to William King's solution to the problem of divine analogy, but that they did so by accepting his ‘resemblance-requirement'. That is, King’s notion that divine representation requires resemblance. This indicates how the discussion about the problem of divine analogy in seventeenth / eighteenth century Ireland was influenced by the way these churchmen thought about the relation of resemblance, representation, and knowledge more generally.

THE TRIUMPH OF WOMAN OVER PREDICAMENT IN SEAN O’CASEY’S JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK: A FEMINIST READING

This paper deals with the predicament of women in the narrow-minded Irish society of earlier twentieth century Ireland, the researcher in this paper sheds light on the oppression of women, their sufferings, the malfunctioned society and the mistaken views about the woman. Moreover, the researcher delineates women’s issues in the work environment, exploitation and other domestic pressures and concludes that women can succeed and achieve victory by being unconventional. The play that the researcher has selected for this paper is Juno and the Paycock by Sean O’Casey, the play that offers the best revolutionary examples of the female characters Juno and her daughter Mary. The paper uses feminist criticism for the analysis.