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Registration of the Religion of Children under the Irish Poor Law, 1838–1870

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2009

MEL COUSINS
MEL COUSINS
Affiliation:
43 Dufferin Avenue, Dublin 8, Ireland; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

There were obvious tensions inherent in the fact that in nineteenth-century Ireland, while the majority of the population was Catholic, the state religion was Protestant. This had numerous effects on Irish political and social history, including the administration of the poor law. This article looks at one of the religious issues involved in the operation of the poor law: the registration of children (of unknown religion) on admission to the workhouse. The Irish attorney-general had ruled that they should be registered as Protestant. However, local boards of guardians often objected strongly to this. This article outlines and analyses the struggles which took place between the different interests involved.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 61 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 107 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 Evidence of the chief poor law commissioner, Alfred Power, to the Select committee appointed to inquire into the administration of the relief of the poor in Ireland … and into the operation of the laws relating to the relief of the poor in Ireland, Report, 1861 (408) x. 1 at q. 950. It may be doubted whether religious registration was the sole motive: for related practices in Italy see D. Kertzer, Sacrificed for honor: Italian infant abandonment and the politics of reproductive control, Boston 1993.

2 Obviously not all ‘Protestants’ were members of the Church of Ireland. However, the term Protestant is used here, rather than an alternative such as Anglican, as reflecting contemporary usage in the texts studied.

3 Select committee on the poor law, Report, 548–53. This return gives details of the religious composition of the inmates of individual workhouses (see nn. 23, 67 below).

4 I. Whelan, The Bible war in Ireland: the ‘second Reformation’ and the polarization of Protestant-Catholic relations, 1800–1840, Dublin 2005. See also S. J. Brown, ‘The new Reformation movement in the Church of Ireland’, in S. J. Brown and D. W. Millar (eds), Piety and power in Ireland, 1760–1960, Belfast 2000, 180–208.

5 C. Kinealy, The great Irish famine: impact, ideology and rebellion, Basingstoke 2002, 156–68. See also I. Whelan, ‘The stigma of souperism’, in C. Pórtéir (ed.), The great Irish famine, Cork 1995, 135–54.

6 See J. H. Whyte, The independent Irish party, 1850–9, Oxford 1958, 19–23, and J. Prest, Lord John Russell, Columbia 1972, 319ff.

7 See Whyte, Independent Irish party, 57–61. For a particularly violent local religious struggle see G. Moran, A radical priest in Mayo: Fr Patrick Lavelle, Dublin 1994, ch. ii.

8 Some supports for abandoned children had existed and it appears that, at least in relation to some of them, proselytism was a major issue: J. Robbins, The lost children: a study of charity children in Ireland, 1700–1900, Dublin 1980.

9 General Workhouse Rules, article 33.

10 Report by Captain Spark relative to charges of proselytism in workhouse of Dingle Union, 1851 (427) xlix.173. It should be noted that allegations of proselytism were by no mean confined to those against Protestants. See, for example, Daily Express, 4 May 1860 (report of an enquiry by a poor law inspector into Catholic proselytism in Bantry); Daily Express, Irish Times and Dublin Evening Packet, 4, 11, 18 Oct. 1860 (complaint of proselytism in the North Dublin union); Galway Express, 12 Mar.–16 Apr. 1870; and House of Lords Select committee appointed to inquire into … the relief of the destitute poor in Ireland, Report, 1846 (694) xi. 1 at qq. 249–58, 1488–1511, 2785–94, 4857–70.

11 On religious tensions in the South Dublin workhouse see H. Burke, The people and the poor law, Littlehampton 1987, 87–93. See also Robbins, Lost children, 244–57.

12 Behind the issue of religious registration lies the question of child abandonment in Ireland. In contrast to the detailed studies which exist for other Catholic countries, such as Kertzer, Sacrificed for honor, and R. Fuchs, Abandoned children: foundlings and child welfare in nineteenth-century France, Albany 1984, this issue has yet to receive detailed study in Ireland, although see Robbins, Lost children. There is also the related issue of the level of child mortality in workhouses. This was an issue of great concern at the time, receiving extensive treatment in the annual reports of the Poor Law Commission such as the Thirteenth annual report of the commissioners for administering the laws for the relief of the poor in Ireland, 1860 [2654] xxxvii. 321, and eventually led to the introduction of boarding out in 1862 and its subsequent expansion.

13 Blackburne was born in County Meath in 1782. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he was called to the English bar in 1805 and to the Irish bar in 1822. In 1830, and again in 1841, he was attorney-general for Ireland. In 1842 he became Master of the Rolls in Ireland, in 1846 Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, and in 1852 (and again in 1866) Lord Chancellor of Ireland. In 1856 he was made a Lord Justice of Appeal in Ireland.

14 House of Lords Select committee at qq. 4314–21. See also the comments of the committee at pp. xii–xiv of its report.

15 For example in the North Dublin union: Freeman's Journal, 2 July 1857.

16 Brewster was attorney-general from 1853 to 1855 and Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1867 to 1868.

17 Keogh was a Roman Catholic, an MP and a former member of the independent Irish party who had, amid great controversy, accepted office in the Aberdeen government: Whyte, Independent Irish party. The solicitor-general was deputy to the attorney-general.

18 See the Twelfth annual report of the commissioners for administering the laws for the relief of the poor in Ireland, 1859 [2546, Sess. 2] xi. 317 at qq. 20–1. The commissioners were correct as the office of solicitor-general was junior in rank.

19 During the 1850s two pastoral letters issued by the Roman Catholic bishops called for a proper classification of the inmates of workhouses and objected to the lack of proper provision for religious services and the administration of the poor law by an exclusively Protestant and English board. The 1859 pastoral had also made reference to attempts to Protestantise deserted children: Select committee on the poor law, Report, qq. 8030, 8035–6; Freeman's Journal, 1 July 1861.

20 E. Larkin, The making of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1850–1860, Chapel Hill 1980, 400–2.

21 Freeman's Journal, 1 July 1861.

22 Quoted in Larkin, Making of the Roman Catholic Church, 465.

23 See Copy of the application of the chaplain of the Urlingford workhouse, in 1854, for two deserted children … 1859 (150. Sess. 1) xxiv. 641. Urlingford was an overwhelmingly Catholic union and in 1861 only 2 of more than 170 inmates were registered as members of the established Church: Select committee on the poor law, Report, 548–53.

24 Through an oversight Richard's religion was not actually entered in the workhouse register.

25 Under poor law legislation it was the responsibility of the master to enter the details into the register which only the board of guardians could correct.

26 It is clear that many disputes ended due to the death or departure of the child: Twelfth annual report, 21

27 Robbins, Lost children, 246–6 (1850); Freeman's Journal, 10 Aug. 1861.

28 Longford Journal, 14 Jan.–25 Mar. 1854. This case primarily involves a dispute as to the religion in which the parents wished the child to be raised. For similar cases in Sligo union see Select committee on the poor law, Report, appendix, and in Tuam see T. O'Hagan, Selected speeches and arguments, London 1885, 285–308.

29 Freeman's Journal, 2 July 1857; 2 Oct. 1862.

30 See n. 41 below.

31 Freeman's Journal, 16 Mar., 2 Oct. 1861.

32 Dublin Evening Post, 15 Mar., 5 Apr. 1859.

33 Daily Express, 23 Jan. 1860.

34 Nation, 23 Feb. 1861.

35 The phrase is Larkin's: Making of the Roman Catholic Church.

36 Holmes, J., ‘The role of open-air preaching in the Belfast riots of 1857’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy ciiC/3 (2002), 47–66.Google Scholar

37 J. G. Donat, ‘Medicine and religion: on the physical and mental disorders that accompanied the Ulster Revival of 1859’, in W. F. Bynum, R. Porter and M. Shepherd (eds), The anatomy of madness, London 1988, iii. 125–50.

38 J. Prunty, Margaret Aylward, 1810–1889: lady of charity, sister of faith, Dublin 1999, ch. iii; Moran Radical priest.

39 See Twelfth annual report, 20–1.

40 Ibid. appendix viii; Thirteenth annual report, para 22 and appendix iv. See also the extensive newspaper coverage in National Library of Ireland, Dublin, Larcom ms 7782. On Fr Daly, whose brushes with authority were by no means confined to the poor law commission, see Mitchell, T., ‘Father Peter Daly (c. 1788–1868)’, Journal of the Galway Archeological and Historical Society xxxix (1983–4), 27–114Google Scholar.

41 Poor Relief (Ireland) Acts Amendment Bill. The bill also provided for the boarding out of children: Hansard cliii.672ff., 23 Mar. 1859.

42 The bill provided that deserted children were to be boarded out without ever entering a workhouse, thereby avoiding the need for recording their religion in the workhouse registers. Naas's approach appears to have been based on the practice under the grand jury system up to the 1830s under which children were brought before a grand jury and boarded out, a practice which did not appear to give rise to religious tensions: Select committee on the poor law, Report, qq. 648–50.

43 Dublin Evening Post, 5 Apr. 1859.

44 Select committee on the poor law, Report, qq. 900–89, evidence of Alfred Powers.

45 The Dublin Evening Packet (19 Apr. 1860), staunchly Protestant, saw it as a ‘sinister feature’ of the bill, while the Nation, in contrast, welcomed it (28 Apr. 1860) as a one of a number of ‘commendable though not satisfactory attempts to improve the law’.

46 See Hansard clx.144ff., 24 July 1860, and the newspaper coverage in ms Larcom 7780, especially Dublin Evening Post, 10 May 1860.

47 Select committee on the poor law, Report, qq. 915, 917.

48 Ibid. q. 940.

49 Ibid. qq. 920–3.

50 On Cullen's involvement in this area see E. Norman, The Catholic Church and Ireland in the age of rebellion, 1859–73, London 1965, 73–7. Cullen described giving evidence as having ‘talked [himself] hoarse saying everything ill about the poor houses for almost four hours’: Cullen to Alessandro Barnabo, 12 June 1861, quoted in E. Larkin, The consolidation of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1860–1870, Chapel Hill–London 1987, 139. The Roman Catholic bishops had submitted a petition to the House of Commons in 1861 objecting to the poor law provision for religious needs and the fact that the commission was exclusively Protestant and English. The petition, which made broadly similar points to those raised in Cullen's evidence, also objected to the registration and education of deserted children as Protestant. Cullen's ‘favourite’ MP, William Monsell, subsequently put forward a number of the issues raised by Cullen at the select committee but to limited effect.

51 Select committee on the poor law, Report, q. 3933.

52 Cullen had recently visited Bicêtre in Paris, where he had gone to visit the Irish College, which had ‘a very fine chapel’: ibid. q. 3936.

53 Ibid. q. 3969.

54 Ibid. qq. 3991, 3995. His evidence on the latter point, however, was somewhat undermined by the fact that he referred to a case arising in 1842.

55 Hansard clv.339ff., 14 Feb. 1862. Cullen objected to the bill on various grounds but mainly on the basis that it proposed to rate church property. This clause was subsequently dropped by Peel: Freeman's Journal, 24 Feb. 1862.

56 Dublin Evening Packet, 10 Mar. 1862.

57 Hansard clxvii.116ff., 29 May 1862, Grogan at col. 117. Most Irish Conservative MPs voted for this approach and most Irish Liberals against it. See Dublin Evening Post, 31 May 1862, for the division lists (as regards Irish members) which are not in Hansard.

58 Hansard clxvii.119 (Vance), 122–3 (Newdegate).

59 Daily Express, 31 May 1862.

60 Hansard clxviii.338–42, 15 July 1862; clxviii.419–20, 17 July 1862.

61 Ibid. col. 7821, 27 July 1862.

62 The liberal Post aptly stated (24 July 1862) that the House of Lords had once more thoroughly vindicated its reputation as the ‘chief stronghold of intolerance’.

63 Sixteenth annual report, 1863 [3135] xxii. 341.

64 Dublin Evening Mail, 10 Oct. 1862. O'Hagan was born at Belfast in 1812. Called to the Irish bar in 1836, and admitted to the inner bar in 1849, he was appointed solicitor-general in 1860 and, in the following year attorney-general (1861–5). He sat as Liberal MP for Tralee from 1863 to 1865, when he became Justice of the Common Pleas. Appointed Lord Chancellor (1868–74, 1880–1), he was the first Catholic in the office since the reign of James ii. Lawson was an unsuccessful Liberal candidate for the Dublin University seat in 1857 and attorney-general (1865–6).

65 Poor Law Commission to North Dublin Union, Irish Times, 10 Oct. 1962. See also the Packet's reaction on 10 October 1862. Unfortunately, neither the specific question referred to the law officers, the reasons for that reference nor the rationale for O'Hagan's decision are apparent. Lawson appears to have adhered to the existing line.

66 It is noteworthy that the question was never considered by a court of law. It might be argued that parliament, having considered and not altered the legislation in 1862, was to be taken as having approved the existing (Blackburne's) interpretation. But then O'Hagan presumably had regard to this point and in the absence of any more authoritative ruling it is perhaps surprising that the commissioners did not follow the interpretation of the senior (and very experienced) law officer.

67 Correspondence with the guardians of the poor of Tulla union, respecting the religion of a foundling child baptised a Roman Catholic, 1867–8 (275) lxi.53. Tulla was also an overwhelmingly Catholic workhouse with one non-Catholic among 250 inmates in 1861: Select committee on the poor law, Report, 548–53.

68 On disestablishment see, in particular, P. M. H. Bell's excellent study Disestablishment in Ireland and Wales, London 1969.

69 In fact, one of the few subsequent references I have seen to the issue is a circular issued by the Local Government Board (the successor body to the Poor Law Commission) to boards of guardians in the 1880s advising them to take care in distinguishing between the different Protestant religions in their registration of children: Local Government Board circular on religious registration of paupers, 5 May 1888.

70 C. Barr, ‘An Irish dimension to a British Kulturkampf?’, this Journal lxi (2005), 473–95.

71 Ibid. 476. Without wishing to enter into the question of whether or not this amounts to an instance of Kulturkampf, or indeed whether this is the most appropriate question, one might point out that it was by no means an isolated example. For example, the legal outcome of the Fr O'Keeffe case (discussed by Barr), in constitutional terms, was a declaration by the Court of Queen's Bench (by a majority of three to one) that papal ordinances remained illegal in Ireland under an Elizabethan statute: O'Keeffe v. Cullen I. R. 7 C. L. 319 (1873–4).

72 See also its grudging acceptance of nuns as workhouse nurses and its effective deferral to the authority of Archbishop Cullen in the Fr O'Keeffe case. On nuns see M. Luddy, ‘“Angels of mercy”: nuns as workhouse nurses, 1861–1898’, in E. Malcolm and G. Jones (eds), Medicine, disease and the state in Ireland, 1650–1940, Cork 1999, 102–17. On O'Keefe see A. Power to Lord Hartington, Gladstone papers, BL, ms Add. 44144, fos 71–9; P. J. Walsh, William J. Walsh, archbishop of Dublin, Dublin 1928, ch. iii; Norman, Age of rebellion, 431–6; and Barr, ‘Irish dimension’.

73 E. Larkin, ‘The devotional revolution in Ireland, 1850–1875’, in E. Larkin, The historical dimensions of Irish Catholicism, Washington 1997, 57–89.

74 See the discussion in Larkin, Historical dimensions at pp. 5–9, and Brown and Millar, Piety and power, 5–9.

75 The issue of nuns taking up positions as workhouse nurses also appears to have developed largely without the direct support of the hierarchy: Luddy, ‘Nuns as workhouse nurses’, 102–17.