A glory and a wonder

I recently finished digitising the 1899 Dublin Municipal voters’ lists (the fruits are live on the Dublin City Library and Archive site). This was the ninth year I’ve done, with 1908 to 1915 already live. Believe me, it doesn’t get easier.

These are the gnarliest of gnarly records: four categories of voter, each listed separately in a different format in fifteen voting wards, with an supplementary list in three of the four categories, also separate inside the wards. So 4 * 15 + (3 * 15) for a grand total of 105 individual sub-lists. And of course the wards cut across streets and the voting categories cut across households. Capel Street, for example, is partly in three different wards, Inns Quay, North City and Rotunda. So to get a complete listing of voters in that street, in the printed original you’d have to look at 21 separate sub-lists, seven for each ward. There are no indexes.

Israel Shumlovitz, a lodger in his father’s house in Portobello. And hence a voter.

In other words, the printed originals are virtually unusable.

Digitising them involved disassembling the 105 sub-lists and then re-weaving them into a database searchable by name and street, a slow and cumbersome process. But with the reconstruction complete, the records become extraordinarily accessible.

The right to vote was gradually expanded in the UK in the late nineteenth century , in particular with the creation of an entirely new class of voter, the “inhabitant householder”. This person qualified simply by being the head of a household with a stable address in a property valued more that £4 annually. The designers of the system probably thought the £4 valuation would exclude Paddy Stink and Mickey Muck.  They’d never walked past the reeking tenements of Gardiner Street, with its hundreds of decaying Georgian houses, each valued well over £4 and each holding more than a dozen households. Paddy and Mickey got the vote.

They were part of the vast standing army of Dublin’s crushingly poor manual workers, clinging precariously to casual dock-work, street-selling fruit or flowers, driving delivery carts.

The great circle of Dublin tenements

And here they are in these lists as in no other record of the time, living in the great belt of city-centre slums that arced around from East Wall, Monto and Summerhill through North King Street, over to the Liberties and down through York Street to the Quays: household by household, room by room, year after year. Joyce’s Dublin emerges vividly, stinking, dingy and overcrowded to a degree that is impossible to imagine now. The genesis of Dubliners and Ulysses becomes much clearer when you grasp the terrible, inescapable intimacy enforced by these teeming streets.

After doing nine of the things, some other aspects are clearer. The numbers recorded are very consistent, hovering around 45,000 voters for the entire period between 1899 and 1915.  Of the four categories, one comprised more than 90% of all listings over the whole period, the inhabitant householders. The Mucks and the Stinks had a majority. The supplementary lists, naming those entitled to vote only in local elections, include large numbers of women, the first stirrings of female suffrage. While very useful in giving a time-lapse view of Dublin over almost twenty years, the lists are definitely not a full census. There were 331 voters listed in Capel Street in 1899, but 1605 inhabitants in 1901.

And no matter how many volumes I cover, each one turns up a consistent 500 or so surnames never encountered before. Put that in your statistical model and smoke it.

Everything you could want to know on the background to the lists is here.

DCLA have eight remaining volumes, 1900 to 1907. They need rebinding and conservation, but the plan is to digitise one a year, as budgets allow. The full set will be a glory and a wonder.

13 thoughts on “A glory and a wonder”

  1. A friend asked me this week to find his great grandfather in the Census. His name on the headstone Patrick Cheator. Thanks to 1899 voters list I found him in Spitalfields as Patrick Chaytor. On later voting registers he is recorded as Cheater as he is on the Census. His only child Alice born in the Coombe 1899 is registered as Chedder. Any of the previous generation that I found so far are Chaytor. How is that for variety!

  2. You make me wonder about the homeless in my state of California, if they get to vote. Jesus Christ said the poor will always be with us. All these programs to help and nothing changes. It is very sad to hear about Dublin’s past. I like to paint a sweet picture of my ancestors.

  3. This article in and of itself was an eye-opener to read. If any of my family were in Dublin at the time, I have no doubt that society would have considered them among the “mucks” and the “stink.” The story of the Irish is one of tenacity in the face of such adversity.
    Sign me an appreciative reader from the US, and proud American-Irish grand-daughter of my Irish born grandparents.

  4. It is a chore but a very valuable exercise to bring this material online. Eventually it will all be done! One query, however, is the boundary of Dublin at that time. I see, for example, that Ailesbury Road in Dublin 4 is missing?

    1. The city boundaries were the two canals, the Royal and the Grand, so much smaller than today. For 1913 and 1914 some lists appear for areas outside that area, Clontarf, Rathmines, Ringsend … But the large majority of records are for the old Dublin Corporation area between the canals,

  5. John, I can’t thank you enough for tackling this incredible task! My great grandfather 4 x had already left Ireland prior to these voting records, but there were plenty of other relatives still there. Every bit of history that can be gathered is important. Those of us seeking answers and documentation are certainly glad you’re doing this. Thanks again! Chere’

  6. John,
    I think the work you have done and continue to do is a great gift to all of us! The fact that you have maintained a wonderful sense of humor while doing this work is amazing.

    Thank you, Jack

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