Darkest Dublin: The story of the Church Street disaster and a pictorial account of the slums of Dublin in 1913

Darkest Dublin is a pictorial account of Dublin’s slums in 1913 as documented by John Cooke, who presented his findings and photographs to the Dublin Housing Inquiry on 24 November 1913, the day before the inauguration of the Irish Volunteers at the Rotunda. Cooke’s photographs provide a horribly vivid visual account of the slum conditions at that time. They present a rare surviving portrait of that side of the face of Dublin generally left in the shade by photographers at that time. They essentially provide a snapshot of the conditions that prevailed in the city at a particular moment in time. They are unique in more ways than one, however, not least in the fact that they form a clearly defined collection of photographs dealing with a well-defined subject-matter. The narrative of the Darkest Dublin story is essentially told by the photographs themselves. To this pictorial record, however, the Darkest Dublin story adds the largely forgotten events of the Church Street disaster, which provided the catalyst for a series of events that culminated in the Dublin Housing Inquiry. It was with this Inquiry in mind that the Darkest Dublin photographs were taken.

Christiaan Corlett is author of Antiquities of old Rathdown: the archaeology of south County Dublin and north County Wicklow, Antiquities of West Mayo; he has also edited he Liam Price notebooks: the placenames, antiquities and topography of County Wicklow.

Published by Wordwell in association with the Royal Society of Antiquaries.