Come Here To Me!

It’s likely many of you have lost hours of your lives to the 1901 and 1911 census returns. Both digitised and freely available online, they are a great insight into life in Dublin over a century ago. We’ve looked at them in some detail on the site, for example exploring foreign nationals in the 1911 census, and unusual religions.

For those interested in the population of Dublin historically however, there were surveys carried out long prior to the two census’ online today. One such brilliant source is ‘Whitelaw’s Survey’ from 1798. The story of that undertaking is caught up in the political violence of the time. Some of this amazing survey is available to read online today, and it is linked to later in this piece.

1798 has entered Irish history and consciousness as being synonymous with revolutionary agitation and the cause of the Society of United Irishmen. Backed military by France, 1798 saw attempts at revolution in the Irish countryside, spearheaded by a revolutionary organisation which included Protestants, Presbyterians and Catholics in leadership positions. In the tradition of Irish rebellions is was both romantic and brief, though the 1798 rebellion did lead to an intense security crackdown from those in authority. As a security measure, the Lord Mayor of Dublin issued an order to the populace of the city, that they would affix a list of inhabitants for each home to the front of their dwellings.

The problem, naturally, was that huge chunks of the population were still illiterate. This led to the task of collecting the details of the inhabitants of Dublin being given to an individual, in the form of the Rev. James Whitelaw. What he carried out would come to be known as ‘Whitelaw’s Survey’. Good information on Whitelaw himself comes from A Compendium of Irish Biography, published in 1878:

Whitelaw, James, Rev., author and philanthropist, was born in the County of Leitrim, about 1749. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin (where he took his degree of B.A. in 1771), and entered the Church. The living of St. James’s, in the Liberties of Dublin, and afterwards the vicarage of St. Catherine’s in the same locality, were conferred upon him. He laboured indefatigably among the poor, establishing schools, industrial institutions, and loan funds.

Owing to the lack of education among sections of the population, Whitelaw himself explained that:

…my assistants and I, undeterred by the dread of infectious diseases, undismayed by degrees of filth, stench and darkness inconceivable, by those who have not experienced them, explored, in the burning months of the summer of 1798, every room o these wretched habitations, from the cellar to the garret, and on the spot ascertained their population.

Dublin in 1798. Via the excellent resource http://dublin1798.com/

There has been some examination of Whitelaw’s work in recent times. Tommy Graham, editor of History Ireland magazine, examined some of Whitelaw’s findings in a 1994 edition of the popular magazine. Graham has noted the sheer level of detail in Whitelaw’s findings, in particular on the subject of population density. Whitelaw’s findings indicated that the real centres of poverty where in the west of the city, within its ancient heart. As Graham noted:

Whitelaw was particularly concerned with the density of population not only to highlight the extent of the poorer districts but also to derive mathematical rules of thumb which could be applied to calculate the populations of other comparable European cities. His calculation of population density applied to buildings only and he outlined precise geometric procedures for the exclusion of open spaces such as Stephen’s Green, for example. The parishes within the old walled city were much more densely populated than the newer up-market suburbs, ranging from a claustrophobic 439 persons per acre in St Michael’s (opposite Christchurch) to a more comfortable 87 per acre in St Thomas’ (Sackville Street/Gardiner Street area) (By way of comparison, the population density of Dublin in 1981 [according to the Central Statistics Office] was only 20 persons per acre [approximately], but calculated over the whole city, open spaces included.) Whitelaw contended that, provided accurate maps were available, the populations of other cities could be geometrically determined by extrapolating from the actual Dublin experience.

Whitelaw himself was shocked by the levels of poverty in the city, noting that:

I have frequently surprised from ten to 16 persons, of all ages and sexes, in a room, not 15 feet square, stretched on a wad of filthy straw, swarming with vermin, and without any covering, save the wretched rags that constituted their wearing apparel. Under such circumstances, it is not extraordinary, that I should have frequently found from 30 to 50 individuals in a house.

Some of his findings were published in 1805,as An essay on the population of Dublin being the result of an actual survey taken in 1798, with great care and precision, and arranged in a manner entirely new. Today, this work is freely available to be read online. Observe the level of detail present in the work. Here is an entry for York Street, notice that Whitelaw has noted the number of the house, the number upon the door, the state of repair, how many stories high the home was, the social class of the inhabitants, their names and their occupations.

An excerpt for the work.

Tragically, the 1805 published work was only the tip of the iceberg of Whitelaw’s research. His research on York Street and the Poddle is thankfully in the public domain today, and some other research of Whitelaw’s was summarised in the Georgian Society Records, but the vast bulk of it is now beyond the researcher. Like so much priceless Irish archival material, it was a victim of the Irish Civil War. The Public Records Office within the Four Courts complex was lost to the destruction of the conflict between republicans and Free State forces, with a debate still raging to this day over where the blame should rest! Whitelaw, who had attempted to highlight the obscene poverty in the city, ultimately lost his life by coming into contact with it. As the above biographical entry notes:

He was constant in his ministrations at Cork Street Fever Hospital, where on one day he administered the sacrament separately to six patients in the last stages of malignant fever. The result was that he caught the disease himself, and died, 4th February 1813, aged 64.

The Public Records Office within the Four Courts. (Image: National Archives of Ireland)