The Non·Agricultural Working Class in 19Th Century Thomastown Wide Region
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William Murphy (ed.), In the shadow of the steeple II. Kilkenny: Duchas-Tullaherin Parish Heritage society, 1990. The Non·Agricultural Working Class in 19th Century Thomastown wide region. "The boats that now navigate from lni,tioge to by Marilyn Silverman. Thomastown carry 13 or 14 ton down the river when it is full Irish historians, both professionals and amateurs, tend to and can sometimes bring up 10 ton, but only 3 or 4 when th~ see rural parishes as made up of farms, farmers and water is low. They are drawn by eight men and require two agricultural labourers. Similarly, they tend to study the non· more to c~nduct the boat, and are helped occasionally by a agricultural working classes, such as industrial labourers, square saIl; the men are paid 13d. a day, with three penny only in the cities. In this paper, I try to bridge this gap by worth of bread, or 3d. in lieu of it".' describing a non-agricultural, labouring class in Another example is a report in the Kilkenny Moderator of Thomastown parish during the nineteenth century. March 9,1816 on a Grand Jury Presentment Session where it was decided to build "a new line ofroad between Thomastown Finding the Non-agricultural Labourer: 1800-1901 and Mullinavat, by which the ascents ... along ... the Walsh For people in Dublin, Waterford, Kilkenny City or New mountains will be avoided". The jurors stated that the Ross, Thomastown parish is "up the country" and "very project not only would help farmers and Waterford rural". It is made up of 54 townlands containing merchants, but that benefits would "follow to the county approximately 20,450 acres of which 100 or so function as a from the clrculatlon of so much money among the labouring small service centre with shops and relatively dense housing. ~lasses". Indeed, the building of the road itself was expected In 1981, the parish had a population of 2,500. Not to clrculate near £5000 among the working classes". Thus. surprisingly, in 1841 - prior to the Great Famine - the :here was road work, road workers and "labouring classes" population was larger and there were 7,410 people in the m Thomastown parish in 1816. parish. This number was reduced to 5,540 by 1851, In addition, Thomastown had several breweries which immediately after the Famine. There then followed a period were leased to a series of tenants in the early nineteenth of continuous population decline, largely because of cen:ury and which likely hired labour. Throughout the emigration. By 1901, Thomastown parish had a population pansh, also, were numerous mills and lime kilns. Most of of 2,840. these probably required labourers. For example an Throughout this same period - between the mid-1840s advertisement in .the Kilkenny Moderator (January 4,1817) and the late 1970s - only one·third of the houses in the to let 20 acres m Ballynamona - a townland in the parish were located in the service centre or in the so·called southwest part of the parish - noted that the holding was "town streets". Instead, most Thomastown people have near "several flour mills and two newly built lime kilns". lived in the mare rural parts of a country parish. Thomastown also had a tannery which had been Yet, in Thomastown, there is a non-agricultural labouring established in 1785 by John Ryan. In his 1815 marriage class of very long standing. If we begin in the first part of the settlement, he placed his properties in trust to provide his nineteenth century, we find several references to these wife - "in consideration of (her) marriage portion" - with labourers. an annuity of£60 in case of his death or bankruptcy. Ryan's For example, the failure during the latter half of the properties comprised not only the tannery, but also about 25 eighteenth century to "establish a navigation from Kilkenny acres in the townlands of Newtown and Jerpoint West. to the sea" using a system of canals along the Nore meant These committed him to paying rents of about £65 a year. To that, in the early part of the nineteenth century, there was a derive such an' income or annuity meant that Ryan's thriving river trade between Thomastown and Inistioge. As enterprise used considerable labour. of 1800, Thomastown served as a transhipping point for a Finally, there are references to the road workers again in 86 87 the early 1830s when it was reported that 20 to 30 road Itis also important to add here that the census category of workers "had employment on the public roads ... within the "manufacturing and trade" included shopkeepers and past year"'in the area of Jerpoint Abbey. In the northern factory owners as well as labourers and artisans. In part ofthe parish, it was estimated that another 50 men were Thomastown during the 1841 and 1861 period. the number of so employed. However, many were not in "constant shopkeepers stayed the same while the number of factory employment". Others, because wages were not paid "until owners decreased. Therefore, the proportion of labourer's the work is done, ... are often 0 bJiged to go in to debt for their and ar.tisanal families in manufacturing/trading wa~ support which reduces their wages considerably".3 mcreasmg. Overall, the extent of local industry, commerce and During the remaining decades of the nineteenth century. transport in Thomastown parish and, therefore, the presence the 1861 proportlOns stayed the same. Certainly this was the of a large non-agriculturallabourforceis not surprising - at case for the parish as a whole in the 1901 census: 37% of the least from the point of view of some historians. According to population was in the non-agricultural sector. Of the men Cullen, commenting on industry in pre-Famine Ireland: "Only in the textile industry was a general crisis over age 16,271 called themselves "labourers" or "artisans'" experienced. '" If one takes into account a large variety of and they comprised almost a third of the male adults in the other industrial occupations with significant numbers parish in 1901. employed, ... an impression of vigorous industrial activity remains'~.4 Why are there "People without History"? This general pattern persisted into mid-century in Although we can see that there was a relatively large and Thomastown parish. Griffith's valuators, who surveyed the growing non-agricultural, labouring sector in Thomastown area in the mid-1840s, found twelve mills in the parish. Four du~ng the nineteenth century, and although itis possible to were flour mills and one of these was the fourth largest in pomttosome of the industries in which it was employed, County Kilkenny which, in turn, had 127 mills in alL The there IS httle mformation on these labourers - their num bers other eight were corn mills. There was also employment lifestyle, wages, etc_ Why? ' provided by the Ryan tannery and the numerous lime kilns. The people who left records (such as deeds), or the people The parish also had about 30 retail shopkeepers and about who were named in the records (such as land registers), twenty self-employed artisans, many of whom hired labour. eIther owned or rented property. Labourers had little property In all, I estimate that about 130 people were employed in ~nd left ,few records. In addition, people who provided these concerns. In addition, the Waterford-Kilkenny turnpike mformatlOn for most historical records in the nineteenth ran through the parish, and the maintenance of this main century had little concern for non-agricultural labourers. thoroughfare also provided employment for even more We can look at one important source of historical workers. information to see how these biases were expressed. According to the 1841 census, in the central and most Parhamentary Commissions periodically investigated and densely populated part of the parish - in the DEDS of reported on Irish conditions. Witnesses were called to give Thomastown and Jerpoint Church - over 28 per cent ofthe information on their locality and in their area ofprofessional households were involved in the "manufacturing and trading competence - as doctors, land agents, shopkeepers, sector" as compared with 72 per cent in the "agricultural "respectable" farmers, etc. Few witnesses were called from sector". By 1851 and 1861, this manufacturing/trading amongst labourers. This meant that labourers were usually sector incorporated a growing proportion of Thomastown's described in terms of how non-labouring gentry, families. It incorporated almost 31 per cent ofthe families in professlOnals and farmers perceived them. What was this 1851 and almost 37 per cent in 1861. perception? 88 89 We can answer this by looking at the evidence taken by a and Commissioners were concerned only with the "poorer parliamentary investigation in the early 1830s into the classes" in agriculture. Yet, at the time of the investigation "conditions of the poorer classes". The investigation was in 1833, Thomastown had a thriving tannery, two breweries, stimulated largely by the Tithe Wars which centred in a woollen mill, two flour mills and numerous com mills, lime County Kilkenny and to the north. The resulting report is kilns and a turnpike. Not only were there non-agricultural often quoted by historians. labourers therefore, but they probably were constantly The witnesses from Thomastown provided information on employed in many of these industries. For one witness an area somewhat larger than the present-day parish, for described what happened to evicted smallholders and they included Tullaherin in their observations. According to cottiers: the witnesses, this area contained 11,980 people of whom "Of those who have ... been ejected, ... some have fixed 1,216 were labourers. Of these, approximately :50% had themselves in the outskirts of towns, and endeavour to permanent workS If we assume that 50 per cent of subsist by occasional hire and by taking con acre; others Thomastown's population was made up of elderly people have left this part of the country altogether'" and children, then the Thomastown area had a labouring, There is thus no indication that the rural displaced adult population which formed 20 per cent of the total in the became the non-agricultural labourers or that the non early 1830s.