The first Irish census was taken in 1821, and thereafter censuses were taken at ten-yearly intervals until 1911. The only census records to survive in their entirety are those for 1901 and 1911. The records for 1821–51 were lost in the destruction of the Public Record Office at the beginning of the Civil War in … Read more
The census records for 1901 and 1911 have been by far our most popular sources, accounting for 40 per cent of productions to readers. They were the obvious choice for digitisation when we contemplated making some of our holdings available on the internet. Irish census records differ from those of other countries in that the … Read more
The infamous Mrs Mack, who appears in the ‘Nighttown’ episode of Ulysses, kept a brothel at 85 Lower Tyrone Street in the heart of the red-light (Monto) district of Dublin. She was so well known that the area was often referred to as ‘Macktown’. The 1901 census records that Mack had five ‘lodgers’, ranging in … Read more
As the nineteenth century progressed, prostitution in Dublin became more geographically confined. After the 1870s women began to move into cheaper accommodations available in the Lower Mecklenburgh Street area. The evidence of the Revd Robert Conlan to a commission on housing in 1885 revealed that brothels were extending into the district. He observed that some … Read more
Thousands of women working as prostitutes roamed the streets of the towns and cities of Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While there was a common belief that prostitution was an inevitable feature of life, especially where military garrisons existed, as long as prostitutes remained out of the public eye they were tolerated. … Read more