The final years of the Irish workhouse and its dissolution - Mary Daly.

A video recording of a presentation by Professor Mary E. Daly (UCD). Her paper - The final years of the workhouse and its dissolution - was given as part of a Birr Historical Society conference on Birr Workhouse, which took place in September 2013. Professor Mary E. Daly is an expert on the social and economic history of nineteenth and twentieth century Ireland. She is the author of many books including The Slow Failure. Population Decline and Independent Ireland (Wisconsin University Press), Dublin, the Deposed Capital: A Social and Economic History, 1860-1914 (Cork University Press), Industrial development and Irish national identity, 1922-39 (Syracuse University Press; Gill & Macmillan) and The Famine in Ireland (Historical Association of Ireland).
Professor Daly was also one of the principal investigators on the National Famine Commemoration Project along with Cormac Ó Gráda (UCD), David Dickson (TCD) and David Fitzpatrick (TCD). The project researchers (Andrés Eiríksson, Catherine Cox and Desmond McCabe) compiled databases from the workhouse registers and other documents belonging to the governing bodies of several poor law unions (including Parsonstown (Birr)). This data has been made available through the Irish Famine Research Project (IVRLA) and is now available on the UCD Digital Library website.
digital.ucd.ie/view/ivrla:33386
About Birr Workhouse:
Birr Workhouse opened as Parsonstown Union Workhouse in April 1842. It was designed to a standard plan by George Wilkinson for 800 inmates and was amongst the first 130 workhouses set up under the Irish Poor Law Act. Birr Workhouse is believed to be the least altered of all pre-famine workhouses still standing in Ireland. Closed in 1921, a succession of firms using it for light industries kept the building well maintained but essentially unchanged until about ten years ago. The surviving fabric of the workhouse has since deteriorated and now requires immediate attention.

[@devfish7672]

My great grandmother, Teresa Delany, was here from 1904 to 1916....

[@hilltop521]

The fact that this was part of ireland back in 1800 eds amazing there such little intrest in it todday there are local hse or doctors despencries and general hospitals one thing in common the hospitals are still overcrowded

[@sparkymodzgiveaways9664]

Just in there today gave me the creeps😖

[@mariedorrington8201]

crap not telling all the truth

[@TheLeonhamm]

It's called history, Marie; as a science, it weeds out (what its author considers to be) irrelevant or extraneous 'data' (e.g. the realities of being poor, of a cash-strapped government, or of the principles of 'care' laid down for the souls called upon to offer that government's penny-pinching and punitive services). Truth be told, nothing much has changed .. other than in the layers of smarmy rhetoric lacquered over the same more or less harsh regimes (now often more or less profit-making private companies, changing around or dissolving when the heat of 'inspection' comes close, i.e. Youth Detention, Migrant Hostels, etc). Mary Daly, in fact, does a rather good job in trying to achieve a workable balance between the overwhelming recorded data and presenting a more or less coherent and intelligible story .. but, remember, it is still just a story of sorts. ;o)
P.S. That dilemma was at the heart of the recent fiasco of 'Reports' into the Church based 'abuses' in state-funded / charity run Poor Law institutions (not least the justice system's use of punishment via Laundries and the callous underfunding of orphanages etc). So the 'facts' were trimmed to fit the news material - as demanded by the reporting media - but mostly to provide a decent enough fig-leaf to cover the naked embarrassment of so many various government regimes. Remember, the Poor Law was a government issue .. the misuse and abuse of charitable effort was a neat ploy to keep the cost of upkeep to a very basic (or worse, a sub-basic) minimum .. and then to hold it all at arms-length from the ruling politicians (who were actually responsible for the provision) at the time; and keeping abusers in situ, believe it or not, was a reliably cheap way to side-step the need for proper supervision .. little or none of that came out during the report's work.