Poverty and the Poor Law in Ireland 1850-1914

Crossman, Virginia

doi:10.5949/liverpool/9781846319419.001.0001

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…58 Crossman has emphasised the reluctance of families to enter the workhousesuch an action being seen within the Catholic culture as an admission of failure but also of unworthiness, while the industrial schools under the control of the religious orders offered an alternative solution. 59 Such a solution however was often a substitution for adequate financial assistance and could result in the long-term splitting up of families and the institutionalisation of children.…”

Section: Parental Death and Desertionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Clothing was a critical indicator of poverty and judgements based on appearance and how children were dressed played a vital role in determining the need for their relief. 81 Also, the introduction of compulsory schooling in 1892 meant that children who did not attend would come to the attention of the public and could be viewed as objects of neglect. 82 There was an expectation in society that widowed men would be unable to mind children and if they were employed would not be available to care for young children.…”

Section: Parental Death and Desertionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘It Gives Great Relief to My Mind’ – Family Involvement at Children's Committal to the Sister of Mercy run Irish Industrial Schools, 1868–1936

O’Brien

2023

Journal of Family History

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This paper uses convent archive sources from five Irish Sisters of Mercy run industrial schools to examine the role of children's families at committal to the schools and explore how the sociocultural climate of Ireland at the time formed this experience. Such an analysis sheds light on the system's operation ‘from below’ and the variety of reasons, motivations, and emotions surrounding the committal process. It reveals the complicated nature of familial relations and facilitates a greater understanding of the behaviours, responses and protocols that arose from poverty and dependency. In doing so, it also progresses understandings of the power of those in control to influence such decisions as well as families' attempts to use the system as a strategy for survival.

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Section: Parental Death and Desertionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Parental Death and Desertionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘It Gives Great Relief to My Mind’ – Family Involvement at Children's Committal to the Sister of Mercy run Irish Industrial Schools, 1868–1936

O’Brien

2023

Journal of Family History

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“…22 As Virginia Crossman has demonstrated in her most recent work on the Poor Law in Ireland, statutory welfare in the form of the workhouse remained a key strand in this economy throughout much of the nineteenth century, with a wide range of different sections of the poor using the institution in different ways to meet different needs. 23 Up until the beginning of the century, welfare in Ireland, as in many parts of Europe, was very much on an ad hoc basis, provided mainly by religious orders, civic institutions or individual charity. In England, for example, a system of poor laws had been in existence since the sixteenth century, the exact nature and application of these varying from one parish to another.…”

Section: Landscape Of Welfarementioning

confidence: 99%

Surviving the industrial city: the female poor and the workhouse in late nineteenth-century Belfast

Purdue¹

2016

Urban History

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In common with many British cities, but unlike the rest of Ireland, late nineteenth-century Belfast experienced rapid industrialization and physical expansion. Women formed a significant proportion of the city's workforce, attracted by the employment opportunities represented in the burgeoning textile industry.Many of them were economically vulnerable, however, and could find themselves destitute for a number of reasons. This article sets Belfast's Poor Law workhouse in the landscape of welfare in the city, exploring how its use reflected the development of the city and the ways in which the female poor engaged with it in order to survive.In May 2010, a life-sized cast bronze statue of a young female millworker was unveiled on the corner of Cambrai Street and Crumlin Road in north Belfast. The statue, affectionately known as 'Millie', was deliberately located just off the Crumlin Road in what was one of the poorest parts of the city next to the Brookfield Mill and close to where three other major spinning mills once stood, and has been billed as a 'celebration of the contribution that Belfast's female mill-workers made to the city's success'. 1 Several years earlier, a statute of two bronze female figures, Monument to the Unknown Female Worker, was erected in Belfast city centre as a tribute to the city's poorest workers, those women whose grinding labour had contributed so much to the city's economic prosperity but yet had been forced to draw on a range of strategies in order to survive. 2 2 Each of these pieces of public art stands as a permanent reminder of the reality of the economic precariousness, poverty and destitution faced by the tens of thousands of women who flocked to Belfast in search of work during the late nineteenth century. Most found employment in the city's linen mills; others resorted to a wide variety of strategies for survival. All were vulnerable to poverty, sickness and destitution, many struggled and sometimes failed to achieve economic independence and often existed on the margins of society. Even for those in employment, there was no guarantee that work would continue to be available and often no economic safety net if it did not. The development of welfare in the city was, therefore, of crucial importance to those who sought relief, in some cases, providing short-term shelter in a crisis, in others, providing a more long-term solution. While, in common with most Irish and British cities, philanthropic organizations proliferated throughout the nineteenth century, the landscape of welfare provision was dominated by the workhouse set up under the Irish Poor Law of 1838. In a city facing the social challenges presented by rapid industrialization and inward migration, overlaid with communal tensions and sectarian division, the provision of welfare presented particular challenges. This article will examine the ways in which the particular growth of Belfast contributed to social problems and shaped its welfare provision before going on to explore the importance of the workhouse fo...

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“…Virginia Crossman, in her work on poverty and the Poor Law in nineteenth-century Ireland, argues that 'the ideological roots of these debates lay as much in class and religion as in politics and ethnicity. '29 Her study of the Poor Law in Ireland, while focused on 'the system', succeeds in providing a sense of how the poor interacted with and experienced statutory relief. She convincingly demonstrates that 'the concept of the deserving and undeserving poor became deeply rooted in Irish popular culture.…”

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confidence: 99%

Introduction

Earner-Byrne¹

2017

Letters of the Catholic Poor

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Poverty and the Poor Law in Ireland 1850-1914

Cited by 8 publications

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‘It Gives Great Relief to My Mind’ – Family Involvement at Children's Committal to the Sister of Mercy run Irish Industrial Schools, 1868–1936

‘It Gives Great Relief to My Mind’ – Family Involvement at Children's Committal to the Sister of Mercy run Irish Industrial Schools, 1868–1936

Surviving the industrial city: the female poor and the workhouse in late nineteenth-century Belfast

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