Welfare reform, especially of the Irish Poor Law system, was a key facet of republicanism and nationalism in revolutionary and Free State Ireland. While the focus has traditionally been on the political, militaristic and, more recently, cultural aspects of this highly formative period, closer exploration of welfare and poor law reform provides much insight into the social attitudes underpinning Irish society.
Notions of respectability, and the division of the poor into the deserving and undeserving, were central to the poor law and welfare reforms implemented during the late 1910s and early 1920s, which emphasised the personal responsibility and moral failings of much of the poor.
Such principles permeated advanced nationalist reform of the system during the war of independence years. This was evident in Cork city where a harsh and strict disciplinary regime was introduced in the city’s workhouse, which specifically targeted those inmates of the institution denigrated as socially idle. The actions of the revolutionary Cork poor law administrators, who also implemented economic retrenchment policies, garnered widespread support not just from local republicans but also ratepayers’ groups, and the revolutionary Dáil Éireann.
The notions of social and cultural superiority upon which most forms of early twentieth-century nationalism across Europe were predicated had little place for those considered the undeserving poor who failed to live up to the ideals of self-reliance and self-preservation. Such severe attitudes, prevalent throughout much of Irish and British society, were amplified during an era of revolutionary transformation.
Similar attitudes permeated the Free State’s reform of the poor law. Free State reformers feared that an unchecked relief system could lead to immoral welfare dependency after the closure of the workhouses. Work-tests were introduced for the able-bodied to demonstrate eligibility as a substitute for the workhouse-test. Deterrence – a core poor law principle – remained central to the relief system implemented in the Free State. Many central and local government officials viewed poverty as a pathological condition which emanated from the poor’s characterological defaults. Descriptions of certain sections of the poor as lazy, riffraff and scum formed part of the official lexicon in welfare debates. Concern over this perceived problem was prevalent throughout the early decades of Irish independence, and the 1927 Poor Law Relief Commission was charged with investigating “wasteful” public expenditure on the “incorrigible idle”. Extreme measures, such as the forced detention of certain categories of the poor in labour camps, were articulated but never put into practice. However, strict terms of entitlement to public assistance continued and relief recipients experienced intrusive local authority supervision policies, which often amounted to the surveillance of their lives.
Another major aspect of the break-up of the poor law in early independent Ireland, which has been the focus of much recent and on-going modern-day controversy, was the treatment of unmarried mothers and illegitimate children who were formerly reliant on workhouses. A new layer of institutions – mother and baby homes – were established to remove unmarried mothers from the newly named county homes. Run by voluntary religious authorities, central and local government authorities were widely involved in the committal and financial maintenance of women in these homes.
Official policy-making was heavily influenced by the highly moralistic attitudes evident in Irish society regarding sexuality and illegitimacy, which were hardened by the increased Catholicism of the new Free State. Furthermore, unmarried mothers were viewed through the prism of the deserving and undeserving poor, and much of the harsh language – especially in relation to "repeat offenders" – echoed the rhetoric about the "incorrigible idle". Mother and baby homes, and to a lesser extent county homes, were part of what has been described as Ireland's architecture of containment. In many ways, these homes – along with other institutions such as Magdalene Laundries, industrial schools, orphanages and mental institutions – coercively confined individuals who were viewed as failing to live up to society's social mores. The institutionalisation of unmarried mothers was also designed to protect the wider community from the threat of immoral contagion. The desire to segregate and separate unmarried mothers from society, along with principles of punishment and moral reform, underpinned the institutionalisation of these women in Irish society.
Child welfare was another sphere where policies represented a form of social control. Authorities institutionalised children when family circumstances failed to live up to the middle-class values of official Ireland. Local authorities were generally unwilling to provide domiciliary support to lone fathers and unmarried mothers, which often led to the institutionalisation of children from vulnerable poor families. The poor were on the receiving end of moralistic judgements regarding their lifestyle, work-life and home conditions.
Religious authorities in charge of industrial schools frequently claimed that institutional life was more favourable than other forms of child welfare including boarding-out. Church figures also maintained that many families – often from the poorest of society – were “unfit” guardians of their children, and institutionalisation was justified within the framework of child protection.
Poor law reform was shaped by deeply ingrained attitudes regarding social class, deservingness, respectability and morality. Yet these attitudes and policies were far from dominant. The reform of the Cork workhouse was rapidly politicised, and the city’s labour movement criticised the policies for targeting the poor. Some of the harshest attitudes were prevalent among central government-appointed commissioners who temporarily replaced dissolved local authorities in the 1920s and 1930s. However, reinstated local authorities often developed more generous welfare policies. Furthermore, the strict local authority regimes of the 1920s were successfully challenged and transformed by social unrest during the depression of the early 1930s.
The rights of the respectable poor and working classes were widely articulated in terms of social integration, community and citizenship. This was central to the reform of medical care in the county and district hospitals, formerly workhouses, which aimed to free such provision from the “taint” of the relief of poverty. Such attempts were only partially successful during the 1920s, although the bonanza of Sweepstakes money helped to modernise these institutions. Similar to many early twentieth-century countries, public assistance and social intervention could strengthen the bonds of community and enhance the rights and welfare of the needy as much as the marginalisation, punishment and disciplining of the undeserving classes.
Child welfare policies were also marked by complexity. In Kerry, the local authorities often preferred the boarding-out of children in family and home environments over institutionalisation. The local authorities were occasionally willing to circumvent regulations and board-out children in families that did not always conform to middle-class ideals. Boarding-out allowances were granted in some circumstances where families were in crisis, often as a result of factors such as the death of a parent, disability and poverty, and were at times influenced by progressive principles and not always motivated by social control and moral reform.
Competing social, political and cultural attitudes towards poverty and the poor, along with the realities of everyday poverty, shaped a fluctuating welfare landscape which could be both harsh and caring. In exploring poor relief and welfare reform, it is apparent that concepts of respectability, social class and deservingness – as much as political allegiance – were central dynamics underpinning relations in Irish society.
This is based on Dr Donnacha Seán Lucey’s recently published book, The End of the Irish Poor Law? Welfare and Healthcare Reform in Revolutionary and Independent Ireland (Manchester University Press, October 2015). Dr Lucey is a lecturer in the history of medicine in the Department of Public Health and Policy, University of Liverpool. @dslucey
