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‘A share of the honeycomb’: Education, emigration and Irishwomen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

David Fitzpatrick
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Continuity and Change , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , August 1986 , pp. 217 - 234
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Daly, Mary E., ‘Women in the Irish workforce’, Saothar 7 (1981), 74–82;Google ScholarLee, Joseph J., ‘Women and the Church since the Famine’, in Margaret, Mac Curtainand Corrain, Donncha Ó, ed., Women in Irish society (Dublin, 1978), 37–45Google Scholar; David, Fitzpatrick, ‘Marriage in post-Famine Ireland’, in Art, Cosgrove, ed., Marriage in Ireland (Dublin, 1985), 116–31Google Scholar; David, Fitzpatrick, ‘The modernization of the Irish female’, in O'Flanagan, T. P., ed., The modernization of rural Ireland (forthcoming, 1986).Google Scholar

2 Affirmations of literacy are inevitably subjective, and unreliable in periods and regions of educational transition. Comparison of census schedules for the Glencastle district electoral division in Mayo for 1901 and 1911 (Public Record Office, Dublin) indicates that householders reporting their own literacy on both occasions were dispiritingly inconsistent. Among 115 household heads six apparently lost literacy, 17 claimed to have increased their attainments (all after the age of 30), whereas 92 testified consistently. As a result the percentage allegedly able to read and write (or, in the case of one weaver turned farmer, to‘read and rite’) rose from 48 to 56. Information given by householders as to their dependents was presumably still less reliable. As the Irish registrar general told a bemused Treasury committee on the census, ‘the children themselves interfere. My own children insisted upon being put down as able to read and write when I knew they could not’ (House of Commons Papers, hereafter H.C., 1890 [C. 6071], lviii, min. 449).

3 A rough index of age-heaping is the proportion of all persons aged 23–62 who returned ages divisible by 5, a proportion which should be about a fifth in the case of accurate reporting. In Ireland, the reported percentages for females (and males) were 42.7 (40.7) in 1841, 46.1 (44.1) in 1851, 45.1 (43.4) in 1861, 45.0 (43.9) in 1871 and 26.2 (26.5) in 1926 for the two Irish states together.

4 Akenson, Donald H., The Irish education experiment (London and Toronto, 1970), ch. ixGoogle Scholar; John, Coolahan, Irish education: Its history and structure (Dublin, 1981).Google Scholar

5 For children aged 13 throughout Ireland, the percentages of girls (and boys) attending school during census week were 14 (19) in 1841, 23 (24) in 1851, 25 (27) in 1861, 27 (29) in 1871, 34 (33) in 1881, 39 (37) in 1891, 46 (43) in 1901, and 59 (55) in 1911.

6 For all pupils at those Irish schools which submitted census returns covering the preceding year, the percentages of girls (and boys) attending on at least 100 days were 41 (42) in 1861, 41 (40) in 1871, 50 (50) in 1881, 58 (56) in 1891, 60 (59) in 1901, and 65 (64) in 1911. By 1901 the differential in favour of female attendance was particularly marked in the case of older pupils and those in Connaught. At the end of 1901, girls comprised 49 per cent of National school pupils at first standard, 51 per cent at second, third and fourth standards, and 54 per cent at fifth and sixth standards. Similar patterns were found among Irish children attending parochial and public schools in the United States, though a recent history of Irish female immigration mistakenly claims that ‘whereas in Ireland, more boys attended school than girls and stayed longer, in America the tables had turned’. See Irish census reports for 1861–1911; 69th report of the commissioners of National education for Ireland, hereafter Report C.N.E., H.C. 1903 [Cd. 1576], xxi; Diner, Hasia R., Erin's daughters in America (Baltimore, 1983), 140.Google Scholar

7 Daly,‘Women in workforce’; ConradM., Arensberg and Kimball, Solon T., Family and community in Ireland (Cambridge, Mass., 1948 and 1968), ch. iiiGoogle Scholar; Kevin, Danaher, The year in Ireland: A calendar (Cork, 1972).Google Scholar

8 Simple and partial coefficients of correlation were computed for the sets of 32 county observations concerning literacy, attendance and non-occupation which are summarised in Table 2. For girls, the simple coefficient for literacy and Attendance was r = +0.72, that for attendance and non-occupation was +0.71, and that for literacy and non-occupation was +0.49. Corresponding coefficients for boys were +0.65, +0.76 and +0.61; while those for the ratios of male to female proportions were +0.32, +0.47 and + 0.44. Partial coefficients are intended to indicate the extent of correlation between two variables if a third variable were held constant. For girls (and boys), the partial coefficients for literacy and attendance (discounting the mutual association with non-occupation) were +0.61 ( + 0.36); those for attendance and non-occupation (rather than literacy) were +0.59 (+0.61); and those for literacy and non-occupation (rather than attendance) were −0.04 ( + 0.24). It would thus appear that strong associations existed between child employment and attendance, and also between attendance and literacy, the independent association between child employment and literacy being negligible.

9 In 1901, 28 percent of candidates for Intermediate certificate examinations were girls. The percentages passing overall were 69 for girls compared with 64 for boys, so reversing the relative performance of the sexes in the early 1890s. Girls comprised 26 per cent of candidates at preparatory level, 27 per cent at junior level, 32 per cent at middle level and 33 per cent at senior level. See Report of the Intermediate education board for Ireland, for 1901, H.C. 1902 [Cd. 1092], xxix.Google Scholar

10 Corlett, A. B., ‘Some account of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Educated Women in Dublin’, Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1862), 812–13.Google Scholar

11 These proportions represent the probability that a woman initially aged 15 would leave Ireland before reaching 55, based upon the emigration rates for appropriate age-groups in successive decades. Return movement is taken to be negligible and mortality is ignored, so assuming that cohort members who died in Ireland between 15 and 55 had the same prior probability of emigration as those who did not. As in Table 3, the emigration rate is the number recorded as leaving Irish ports (with slight adjustments) divided by the census population at mid-decade. For cohorts born between roughly 1831 and 1871, the percentage probabilities of emigration for women (and men) were 55 (64) for the 1831 cohort, 44 (59) for the 1841 cohort, 43 (55) for the 1851 cohort, 42 (47) for the 1861 cohort, and 43 (43) for the 1871 cohort.

12 David, Fitzpatrick, ‘Irish fanning families before the First World War’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 25, no. 2 (04 1983), 339–74.Google Scholar

13 See David, Fitzpatrick, Irish emigration 1801–1921 (Dublin, 1984)Google Scholar; Diner, Erin's daughters 50–51.

14 Former, Robert S., ‘The culture of hope and the culture of despair’, Éire-Ireland 13, no. 3 (1978), 47, quoting The Irish People, 11 June 1864.Google Scholar

15 Patrick, Callan, ‘Irish history in Irish National schools, 1900–1908’ (unpublished M. A. Thesis, University College Dublin, 1975), 105.Google Scholar

16 The Irish Times, 12 05 1908Google Scholar; The Irish School Weekly, 23 05 1908, 454.Google Scholar

17 80th report C.N.E., H.C. 1914–16 [Cd. 7966], xx (Cussen, Westport district).

18 63rd report C.N.E, H.C. 1897 [C. 8600], xxviii (Beatty, Newtownards district).Google Scholar

19 Joyce, P. W., A handbook of school management and methods of teaching, 15th ed. (Dublin, 1892), 250, 157–58.Google Scholar

20 C.N.E, Agricultural class book (Dublin, 1854), 51.Google Scholar

21 67th report C.N.E., H.C. 1902 [Cd. 872], xxx.Google Scholar

22 76th report C.N.E., H.C. 1911 [Cd. 5491], xxiGoogle Scholar (Connelly, Sligo circuit). In 1882, the ‘Nun of Kenmare’ (M. F. Cusack) had urged the establishment in each province of a school where girls about to emigrate could ‘get practical advice as to their future life…and a general idea of housework could be given to those fitted for servants’: see‘Education as a preparation for emigration’, Trans. N.A.P.S.S. (1882), 493.Google Scholar

23 Cloakey, Robert F.,‘Irish female emigration from workhouses’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland 3 (07 1863), 418–19.Google Scholar

24 Royal Commission on Congestion in Ireland, Appendix to the fourth report, H.C. 1907 [Cd. 3509], xxxviGoogle Scholar, min. 19426 (evidence of W. J. D. Walker). Walker estimated (min. 19429) that a quarter of the 4800 pupils in domestic economy classes were about to emigrate, a suspiciously low proportion given the high rate of female emigration overall.

25 Mary, McNeill, Vere Foster 1819–1900 (Newton Abbot, 1971), 129.Google Scholar

26 Select Committee on Colonisation, Report, H.C. 1889 (274), x, min. 2704 (evidence of Major Ruttledge-Fair, local government inspector).

27 Starkie, W. J. M., diary for 15 07 1918, in Trinity College Dublin, MS 9211, 357. The resident commissioner's spelling has been amended.Google Scholar

28 Royal Commission on the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870, Minutes, H.C. 1881 [C. 2779–11], xix, min. 24607–08 (evidence of Rev. M. O'Connor).Google Scholar

29 Royal Commission on Labour, Assistant commissioners’ reports on the agricultural labourer: Ireland, H.C. 1893–1994 [C. 6894–xxi], xxxvii, pt. I, 102–03 (hereafter cited as Wilson Fox Report).Google Scholar

30 By contrast with women, literate men remained less prone than illiterate men to emigrate. Cohort depletion calculations for cohorts aged 15–24 in 1901 show that in 24 of Ireland's 32 counties the literate cohort was less heavily depleted than the illiterate cohort over the decade 1901–11, while in 1861–71 this applied to every county. By 1901–11, the relative propensity of literate people to emigrate was greater for women than for men in all counties except Kildare and Galway.

31 Simple correlation coefficients were calculated over 30 counties (excluding Dublin and Antrim), giving the association between literacy, cohort depletion and relative propensity to emigrate of illiterates (definitions as for variables 4, 5 and 6 in Key to Maps). For females, the coefficient for literacy and cohort depletion was r = −0.34, that for literacy and relative propensity of illiterates to emigrate was +1–0.50, and that for relative propensity and overall cohort depletion was −0.53.

32 Wilson Fox Report, 64.