The first old age pension payments 100 years ago transformed the life of the elderly in Ireland, writes Cormac Ó Gráda
NEW YEAR'S Day a century ago was truly a red-letter day in the history of the elderly in Ireland. On that day claimants to the old age pension - men and women aged 70 or more on annual incomes of £31 10s or less - obtained their first payment in post offices throughout the country. Septuagenarians living on £21 or less per year were entitled to five shillings (or £0.25), with payments decreasing on a sliding scale for incomes above that. In the event, most Irish pensioners got the full five shillings per week. That was a decent sum in Ireland at the time: an Ulster female linen weaver or a Connacht farm labourer, for example, would have earned only about twice that much in a week.
There was extensive reportage in the national and provincial press of the first pension day. All accounts conveyed the importance of the occasion, and several described its sometimes humorous and poignant aspects. In rural Roscommon neighbours ferried "cartloads of aged female pensioners" to the post office. In Abbeyfeale one sceptical old-timer asked the postmistress "if the money was any good". In Galway two very elderly pensioners wondered out loud why they could not claim "back time".
In Birr a 93-year-old woman fell ill on the way home from the post office, "not having been out of doors for many years before". In Ballymoney "the movements of the pensioners to and from the office were watched by a large crowd of spectators, but the best of good humour prevailed".
In Dublin, where many of the female pension claimants seemed under 70, one "youthful-looking" dame declared indignantly that she had been present at a celebration of the victory at Balaclava at the Custom House in 1854 - "not altogether conclusive evidence that she had passed the 70 limit". According to one report, a "goodly number" of the ladies seemed to be under 60.
The Freeman's Journal, drawing attention to the numerous Dublin claimants whose outward appearance suggested people who would not seek public charity, noted that helping the "genteel poor" was in the spirit of the legislation.
In neighbouring Kingstown, however, one old lady, who objected to mixing with her social inferiors in the pension queue, took some persuading before she stood in line like everybody else. In Waterford, too, most of the pensioners were "active and healthy, not to say brisk".
In some places, such as in Ennis and in Gort, the rush for payment required a police presence to keep order. A Monaghan pensioner showed his delight by waving his cap over his head and shouting "God save the King!" In Dublin's Dame Street a couple in their 80s blessed "the postmistress, the government, and the world in general".
In the nearby GPO the first recipient, one Mrs Ellen Canning of North Gloucester Place, signed her order with a mark. The inability of pensioners to sign was a widely noted feature; in Tralee "not one in 40" could sign. To the chagrin of the Belfast Newsletter, some male pensioners celebrated their new-found wealth with visits to the pub. An Enniskillen publican stated that business on that first pension day was as good as on a fair day.
A striking feature of Irish pension claimants is that they far outnumbered those across the water in relative terms. Tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, the editor of this newspaper declared that "this was surely a major tribute to the longevity of our race, and to the healthy character of our much-abused climate". The truth of course was different: since their ages could not be proven one way or another, tens of thousands of Irishmen and Irishwomen aged well under 70 could not be denied the pension. Throughout the country, old people - and many not so old - testified to "eating a potato out of hand" on the night of the "Big Wind" in 1839, so much so that remembering "Oíche na Gaoithe Móire" soon had to be discarded as a test of old age. In his memoirs one long-serving official would later describe "the bent, decrepit attitude and the high quavering voice peculiar to applicants for old-age pensions".
The pension was a real boon for the elderly and not-so-elderly poor. Although one reporter's prediction that it would lead to the amalgamation of Dublin's two workhouses proved off the mark, the pension did lead to reduced dependence on the workhouse.
In many poor households the elderly were now a valuable asset, entitled to added consideration and respect. The pension made relatives who might previously have consigned them to the workhouse think again. And, crucially, the pension never acquired the stigma attached to the "poorhouse".
The pension mattered most in rural western areas. One sign of its importance was the proposal during the Civil War by the leader of pro-Treaty forces in the west to suspend it in fractious parts of Connemara.
He reasoned that the pension had freed "the younger male members of the family from the assistance hitherto rendered towards the upkeep of the home". Against advice that such a measure would punish the innocent pensioner for the misdeeds of a few, finance minister Ernest Blythe was "for the time being . . . disposed to agree with the proposed action". A majority of ministers sensibly demurred.
A hard-line and politically unversed Blythe would soon establish an inextricable connection with the pension, however. In the wake of the Civil War, the importance of the pension made it seem both a necessary and dangerous target for fiscal retrenchment. The case for some cut in pension spending in the circumstances was a cogent one. Quite apart from the difficult financial situation, there was arguably an incongruity in Irish pension payments matching those of the United Kingdom, where GDP per head was two-thirds higher. Small wonder that the pension absorbed the bulk of what would today be deemed welfare spending in the Irish Free State, dwarfing by a ratio of 10 to one outlays on relief schemes, national health insurance and unemployment insurance.
Blythe's cuts in the budget of 1924 included a shilling off the pension, along with reduced eligibility and entitlements. This almost certainly hit the poor hardest. Critics from the Left compared Blythe's cuts with his concessions to the very rich in the form of reductions in the super-tax rate on incomes over £30,000 and in death duties on larger estates. These "concessions" to the well-heeled may have been mainly symbolic, but the reduction in income tax from 25 per cent in 1924 to 15 per cent in 1926 confirmed the regressive direction of fiscal policy. The fiscal dividend of Blythe was a reduction in spending on the pension from £3.2 million in 1924 to £2.5 million in 1927.
Surgeon-poet Oliver St John Gogarty, a supporter of Blythe and Cumann na nGaedheal, dismissed the pension as "the vote-catching device of an English politician", but Blythe's insensitive handling of the pension cuts would long be remembered as the vote-losing device of an Irish politician. Less than four years later, a chastened Blythe quietly restored the cuts made in 1924, but it was the cuts themselves that would be remembered.
The pension became something of a defining issue between Fianna Fáil and Cumann na nGaedheal, and claims that the pension was not safe with Cumann na nGaedheal featured prominently in Fianna Fáil's early electoral campaigns. On assuming power in 1932 Fianna Fáil capitalised on Blythe's unpopularity by significantly extending entitlements to the pension. That Blythe's attempts at fiscal rectitude gained such lasting unpopularity raises a broader point about fiscal retrenchment, with ample resonances for 2008 and 2009: highly transparent reductions in welfare benefits bode ill for those who perpetrate them.
The history of the pension introduced just a century ago was one of unintended consequences. First, in an era when some in Westminster were seeking to "kill Home Rule with kindness", the pension was not framed with Ireland in mind, but was the outcome of a long political debate in Britain. Yet its consequences would be most dramatic in the very different setting of rural Ireland.
Secondly, the pension would prove a fiscal nightmare both for the British administration that introduced it and, in the 1920s, for an Irish Free State administration that had to live with it.
In the United Kingdom it would spawn a constitutional crisis in 1909 - in Ireland it would prompt economic measures that earned lasting notoriety.
Thirdly, although intended to exclude freeloading malingerers, in Ireland the pension attracted thousands of fraudsters of a different and unexpected kind.
Fourthly, although intended at first to exclude those whose lack of character and foresight had left them dependent on the poor law, the pension would end up by relieving thousands of the indignities of poor relief. This was perhaps one of its greatest boons.
Finally, to the extent that the pension prompted the elderly owners of small Irish farms to retire gracefully and pass their land on to their sons, it will have, though once again unintentionally, improved the productivity of Irish agriculture by promoting the transfer of land to younger farmers.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance for rural Ireland of the pensions first distributed just a century ago. Ireland's relative poverty and the age structure of its population, coupled with the scope for lying about one's age, ensured that nowhere else in the United Kingdom would the pension mean as much.
No other welfare measure in 20th century Ireland would match what Sir Henry Robinson of the Irish Local Government Board would dub, correctly, "the greatest blessing of all".
• Cormac Ó Gráda is professor of economics at UCD. This article draws on his "The greatest blessing of all: the old age pension in Ireland", published in Past Present in 2002