Class, Religion and Society in Limerick City, 1922-1939
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Class, Religion and Society in Limerick City, 1922-1939 Thomas Keane Ph.D. (History) Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick 2015 Supervisor: Dr. Deirdre McMahon External Examiner: Professor Terence Dooley Contents Contents .................................................................................................................................... 1 Abstract: .................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements.................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter 1: The Garryowen Housing Crisis, the Bishop and the Courts, 1922 ............................. 27 Chapter 2: Bourgeois Limerick: The Limerick City Police Force 1922 ......................................... 52 Chapter 3: Working Class Limerick: The Yellow Road ................................................................ 69 Chapter 4: Social, Economic and Religious Change in Limerick: The Example of the Limerick Boat Club ....................................................................................................................................... 107 Chapter 5: The Expansion of the Catholic Church in Limerick, 1850-1904 ............................... 136 Chapter 6: St. Michael’s Temperance Society ......................................................................... 178 Chapter 7: The Gaelic League, Limerick and the Question of Irish Identity 1898-1922 ............ 196 Chapter 8: After Independence: The Gaelic League in Retreat, 1922-1939 ............................. 219 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................... 252 Appendices ............................................................................................................................ 263 Appendix A: Statement of ‘commandeered’ houses in Garryowen. ........................................ 264 Appendix B: St Michael’s Temperance Society Hall ................................................................. 267 Appendix C: Geographical locations of members St. Michaels Temperance Society 1930 – 1939. .............................................................................................................................................. 272 Appendix D: Detail of work done by Limerick City Police Force from 9 May to 22 June 1922. 274 Appendix E. Gaelic League Fundraising (by business) 1918-1919) .......................................... 290 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 292 Primary Sources................................................................................................................. 292 Secondary Sources............................................................................................................. 295 1 Candidate’s Declaration This thesis is entirely my own work, based on research in primary and secondary sources. Candidate: ________________________________________________ Supervisor:________________________________________________ Date:_____________________________________________________ 2 Abstract: This study focuses on the civil society which existed in Limerick City between the signing of the Treaty and the outbreak of the Second World War. The purpose of the thesis is to examine this civil society outside of the overtly political society. It contrasts the lifestyles of the working poor as opposed to the merchant class and the clubs and organizations which they belonged to by examining the housing crisis in the city, and particularly in Garryowen, in 1922 and the establishment of a police force by the merchant class in the city in 1922. The study also maps the rise and decline of the Gaelic League within the city as a cultural signifier of national identity from the early heady days of the late nineteenth century to the gradual decline following independence in 1922. The Protestant imperial ethos and its decline, as well as the rise of the new Catholic middle class in the city, have also been examined through the medium of an elite boat club. The study also focuses on the temperance movement and its journey from its protestant roots to its dominance by Jesuits and the influence of the Redemptorist Archconfraternity of the Holy Family. One locality in the city, the Boherbuoy (An Bóthar Buí), fondly known as The Yellow Road, came in for special recognition for its influence on working-class rugby football as well as its allegiance to St Michael’s Temperance Society, the Boherbuoy Brass and Reed Band and the Dominican Church. The connections between all of these organizations have been examined from the viewpoint of the social capital which they generated and the horizontal and vertical networks of association which operated within them. The study is based on research of archives both private and public. It has used local and national newspapers, journals and interviews with people who had memories of the period. It also includes reminiscences by the author of conversations with his father and grandfather who were involved in events of the period. Secondary sources were also frequently used and are contained in the bibliography. 3 Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge the debt of gratitude which I owe to my supervisor, Dr Deirdre McMahon for her encouragement, guidance, proof reading and eternal patience during our time together in formulating this thesis. I would also like to thank the History Department of Mary Immaculate College for their assistance during my work especially to Dr. Ursula Callaghan, and Dr. Maura Cronin who assisted me when I needed it most. I extend a special debt of gratitude to Fr David Bracken, Limerick Diocesan Archives for his assistance in guiding me through the papers of Bishop Hallinan, Bishop Keane and Bishop Newman. A special word of thanks is due to the staff of the diocesan office for their kindness during my visits. I wish to thank Tony Tynne for his invaluable help with the archives of the Limerick Boat Club and for his insights into the rowing world. My gratitude goes to Kieran Kerr for access to the Archives of St Michael’s Temperance Society. I wish to thank Pauline Quinn, who has since passed away, for her insights into the Limerick of the 1920s and 1930s and to Patrick ‘Pa’ Phealan for his memories and insights of the Yellow Road and the Boherbuoy Brass and Reed Band. My sincere thanks to my father and my grandfather whose memories I treasure and have recorded in this thesis. My sincere thanks to Fr. Joe McLoughlin, archivist Redemptorist Church Limerick, and to the staff of the library there for their kindness to me during my research. A special word of thanks is due to Michael Maguire of the Limerick City and County Library for his help in my researches. I also wish to thank the staff of the special collections section of the University of Limerick for the help they gave me in my researches, also to the staff of University College Dublin Archives, the National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin, and the National Archives of Ireland. Above all I wish to thank my wife, Christine, my sons Padraig and Cathal and my daughters Colleen and Ivanna without whose encouragement and support I would not have been able to complete this thesis. 4 Introduction Limerick city, Urbs antiqua fuit, studisque asperrima belli, It was an ancient city, and fierce (most fierce) in the skills of war. When the Limerick writer, Kate O’Brien, was writing of her native city she took exception to the word ‘asperrima’ in the city’s motto. This motto, she said, was composed of ‘two bits made into one from the Aeneid’.1 She obviously had great respect for the city and its people. She felt that they had a ‘certain austerity, or rather decorum, underlying the civic character’ and that the city was a ‘well-proportioned place’.2 She saw ‘repose’ in ‘its old look of good manners and good sense’.3 She was willing to accept that not everyone shared her opinion of the city and that there were criticisms that the city had ‘too many churches and chapels, and that the Limerick people are cold and suspicious in manner; that they lack style and that the women are not pretty’.4 She appreciated the remarks of the eighteenth-century English traveller, Arthur Young, of his description of the river Shannon at Limerick ‘a most noble river, deserving regal navies for her ornament, or what are better, fleets of merchantmen’.5 However, this romantic description of O’Brien’s and Young’s is in strong contrast to that of Frank McCourt, who grew up in the same city and whose memory of churches and the effects of the dampness from the river Shannon differed greatly to theirs: ‘worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish 1 Kate O’Brien, ‘Warmest Love’, part two, Old Limerick Journal, Vol. 4, Sept. 1980, p. 11. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Kate O’Brien, ‘My dear native place’, in Jim Kemmy, (ed.), The Limerick Anthology (Dublin, 1996), P. 332. 5 childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood’.6 In his inimitable way he correlated the damp, which arrived in ‘great sheets of rain gathered to drift slowly up the river Shannon and settle forever in Limerick’, with the religious practises of the native