Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-28T23:29:22.731Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2016

OLWEN PURDUE
OLWEN PURDUE*
Affiliation:
School of History and Anthropology, Queen's University Belfast, 15 University Square, Belfast BT7 1NN, N. Ireland
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , February 2017 , pp. 69 - 90
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Belfast Telegraph, 26 May 2010.

2 ‘“Monument to the unknown female worker” by Louise Walsh’, About the Art, Arts Council of Northern Ireland website, www.artscouncil-ni.org/publicart/tour/tour8.htm, accessed 16 Jul. 2013.

3 Hepburn, A.C., Catholic Belfast and Nationalist Ireland in the Era of Joe Devin 1871–1934 (Oxford, 2008), 8 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Kennedy, L. and Ollerenshaw, P. (eds.), An Economic History of Ulster (Manchester, 1985)Google Scholar.

5 L. Clarkson, ‘Population change and urbanisation 1821–1911’, in Kennedy and Ollerenshaw (eds.), An Economic History of Ulster, 137–9.

6 Royle, S.A., ‘Workshop of the empire 1820–1914’, in Connolly, S.J. (ed.), Belfast 400: People, Place and History (Liverpool, 2012)Google Scholar.

7 Armstrong, D.L., ‘Social and economic conditions in the Belfast linen industry 1850–1900’, Irish Historical Studies, 7 (1951), 237 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Aiken, E.J. and Royle, S.A., ‘Markets and messages: Linenopolis meets the world’, in Purdue, O. (ed.), Belfast: The Emerging City 1850–1914 (Dublin, 2012)Google Scholar.

9 Hepburn, Catholic Belfast, 9.

10 Budge, I. and O'Leary, C., Belfast: Approach to Crisis: A Study of Belfast Politics 1613–1970 (London, 1973)Google Scholar.

11 Census of Ireland, 1881, Pt. I. Area, Houses, and Population: Also the Ages, Civil or Conjugal Condition, Occupations, Birthplaces, Religion, and Education of the People. Vol. III, Province of Ulster (Dublin, 1882).

12 Census of Ireland, 1891, Pt. I. Area, Houses, and Population: Also the Ages, Civil or Conjugal Condition, Occupations, Birthplaces, Religion, and Education of the People. Vol. III, Province of Ulster (Dublin, 1892).

13 Census of Ireland, 1901. Part II. General Report with Illustrative Maps and Diagrams, Tables, and Appendix, HC 1902 [Cd 1190].

14 Daly, M.E., A Social and Economic History of Ireland since 1800 (Dublin, 1981), 105–7Google Scholar.

15 Connolly, J., Manifesto of Irish Textile Workers' Union, 1913 (Belfast, 1913)Google Scholar.

16 Household abstracts, Census of Ireland, 1901.

17 Census of Ireland, 1891, Pt. I. Area, Houses, and Population: Also the Ages, Civil or Conjugal Condition, Occupations, Birthplaces, Religion, and Education of the People. Vol. III, Province of Ulster, HC 1902 [Cd 1123].

18 Morris, R.J., ‘Urban Ulster since 1600’, in Kennedy, L. and Ollerenshaw, P. (eds.), Ulster since 1600: Politics, Economy, and Society (Oxford, 2013), 129 Google Scholar.

19 Hepburn, Catholic Belfast, 19–20.

20 Diary of Rev. Anthony McIntyre, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), D/1558/2/3.

21 Hufton, O., The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France 1750–1789 (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar.

22 See for example Hollen Lees, L., The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People 1700–1948 (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar; King, S. and Tompkins, A. (eds.), The Poor in England: An Economy of Makeshifts (Manchester, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Green, D., ‘Pauper protests: power and resistance in early nineteenth-century London workhouses’, Social History, 31 (2006), 137–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, S., Poverty, Gender and Lifecycle under the English Poor Law 1760–1834 (Woodbridge, 2011)Google Scholar; McCormick, L., Regulating Sexuality: Women in Twentieth-Century Northern Ireland (Manchester, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Crossman, V., Poverty and the Poor Law in Ireland 1850–1914 (Liverpool, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 For a full discussion of the debates and controversies surrounding the introduction of the Irish Poor Law, see Gray, P., The Making of the Irish Poor Law, 1815–43 (Manchester, 2009)Google Scholar.

25 See Larkin, E., ‘The devotional revolution in Ireland’, American Historical Review, 77 (1972), 625–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Connolly, S.J., ‘Cardinal Cullen's other capital: Belfast and the “devotional revolution”’, in Keogh, D. and McDonnell, A. (eds.), Cardinal Paul Cullen and his World (Dublin, 2011), 289–307 Google Scholar.

26 Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory, 1865 (Belfast, 1865).

27 Jordan, A., Who Cared? Charity in Victorian and Edwardian Belfast (Belfast, 1993)Google Scholar.

28 Luddy, M., Women and Philanthropy (Cambridge, 1995), 27 Google Scholar.

29 For the Ulster Revival, see Hempton, D. and Hill, M., Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society 1740–1890 (London, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holmes, J., Religious Revivals in Britain and Ireland, 1859–1905 (Dublin, 2000)Google Scholar.

30 Gunn, S., ‘The ministry, the middle class and the “civilizing mission” in Manchester 1850–80’, Social History, 21 (1996), 33 Google Scholar.

31 The Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory, 1854 (Belfast, 1854).

32 Jordan, Who Cared?, 177.

33 Ibid., 74; for a full discussion of the work of this organization, see Dickson, J.N.I., ‘Evangelical religion and Victorian women: the Belfast Female Mission, 1859–1903’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 55 (2004), 700–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Belfast Directory, 1854.

35 McCormick, Regulating Sexuality, 45.

36 Walsh, O., ‘Protestant female philanthropy in Dublin in the early twentieth century’, History Ireland, 5 (1997), 29 Google Scholar.

37 McCormick, Regulating Sexuality, 48.

38 For a full discussion of this, see Holmes, J., ‘The role of open-air preaching in the Belfast riots of 1857’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 102C (2002), 47–66 Google Scholar.

39 Acheson, N., Harvey, B., Kearney, J. and Williamson, A., Two Paths, One Purpose: Voluntary Action in Ireland North and South (Dublin, 2004), 20–2Google Scholar.

40 Annual reports of the Irish Poor Law Commission 1855–75; eighth annual report of the Local Government for Ireland, HC 1880 [C. 2603] [C. 2603-I], xxviii.1, 39, 220; forty-second annual report of the Local Government Board for Ireland, HC 1914 [Cd 7561], xxxix.595, 266.

41 Local Government Board to Belfast Board of Guardians, 17 Jan. 1881, PRONI, BG/7/BC/3.

42 Belfast workhouse indoor registers 1864–65, PRONI, BG/7/1.

43 Belfast Union workhouse indoor registers Jan. 1901, PRONI, BG/7/52.

44 Census for Ireland, 1901; Belfast workhouse indoor registers 1900–01, PRONI, BG/7/G/51–3.

45 Belfast workhouse indoor registers Jan. 1901, PRONI, BG/7/G/52.

46 Ibid .

47 Ibid .

48 Hepburn, Catholic Belfast, 19.

49 Ibid ., 9.

50 McCormick, Regulating Sexuality, 19.

51 Ibid ., 17.

52 Belfast workhouse indoor registers Sep. 1900, PRONI, BG/7/G/51.

53 Ibid .

54 Ibid .

55 Ibid .

56 Census for Ireland, 1901.

57 Article 49, An Act for the More Effectual Relief of the Destitute Poor in Ireland, Compendium of the Irish Poor Law (Dublin, 1872), 36.

58 McCann to the Local Government Board for Ireland, 18 Apr. 1879, PRONI, BG/7/BC/1.

59 Belfast News-Letter, 13 May 1868.

60 Ibid .

61 Ibid .

62 Thane, P., ‘Women and the Poor Law in Victorian and Edwardian England’, History Workshop Journal, 6 (1978), 32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Freeman's Journal, 14 Mar. 1879.

64 Quoted in minutes, Belfast Board of Guardians, Feb. 1879, PRONI, BG/7/1/43.

65 Belfast workhouse, Copies of Minutes of Evidence Taken at the Recent Inquiry Held at the Belfast Workhouse by Inspectors Bourke and Brodie, together with their Report thereon, HC 1881, lxxix.69, 123.

66 Fuchs, R.G. and Page Moch, L., ‘Pregnant, single and far from home: migrant women in nineteenth-century Paris’, American Historical Review, 95 (1990), 1009 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Belfast workhouse indoor registers Sep. 1900, PRONI, BG/7/G/51.

68 Belfast workhouse indoor registers Jan. 1901, PRONI, BG/7/52.