DIRECTORIES
Dublin Directories.

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Directories

For those areas and classes which they cover, Irish directories are an excellent source, often supplying information not readily available elsewhere. Their most obvious and practical use is to find out where precisely, in the larger towns, a family lived. But for members of the gentry, and the professional, merchant and trading classes, they can show much more, providing indirect evidence of reversals of fortune or growing prosperity, of death and emigration.

In many cases, directory entries are the only precise indication of occupation. The only classes totally excluded from all directories are, once again, the most disadvantaged, small tenant farmers, landless labourers and servants. Virtually all classes other than these are at least partly included, in some of the nineteenth century directories in particular. One point to be kept in mind when using any directory is that every entry is at least six months out of date by the time of publication.

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