In 1926, the largest cohort of Ireland’s population (29.2 per cent) was aged under 14 years. Dublin City Council’s historian in residence for children, Lorcan McEvoy, has already spent hours searching through the recently released census returns from that year, giving special attention to this sizeable but often unheard group.
“There are even some cases of children filling out the form,” he says. “Primary teachers were instructed to talk to children about the census, talk to them about how to fill it in so they would be aware as well.”
For historians like McEvoy, the census opens a window into how, where and who children lived with 100 years ago, illuminating our understanding of education, work and social class at a time of great transition for Irish society.
Importantly, it also underscores the intervention of [the Catholic] church and State in family life in 20th century Ireland. “The mother and baby homes are filled out like a household. There’s something very strange about that,” says McEvoy, pulling up returns for then newly established Tuam Children’s Home as it is described in the forms.
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“I felt like there was something almost jarring there.”
Looking at the details of one young woman recorded as living in the Co Galway mother and baby home on April 18th 1926, a 20-year-old local “farmer’s daughter”, McEvoy reflects on the poignancy of her absence from our picture of the household she grew up in.
“There’s a family somewhere and she’s not on their form, she’s here.” The census release, he says, will offer “an awful lot” for people seeking information about family who were housed in institutions around the foundation of the Irish Free State. The records of industrial schools, reformatory schools, mental hospitals, prisons and Magdalene laundries have been mapped by the National Archives, making this information accessible.
“I think there’ll be an emotional impact to just seeing it and that we can see the actual handwritten returns, individuals aren’t writing for themselves but [there is] that kind of tangible element of the past,” says McEvoy.
[ How to search the 1926 census: Top tips and how to find your family treeOpens in new window ]
There are, he points out “a lot of discrepancies” in the ways in which the names of Ireland’s most vulnerable citizens were recorded. For some, full names are given, while others are initialled.
This census was the first to record the status of children who had lost one or both parents. Whether or not a child’s parents were dead or alive – father, mother, or both – was included in the details of each child under 15 years of age recorded on the census form. After this age, marital status had to be recorded instead. “The rapid move at 15 to being single or married,” was among the most striking aspects of McEvoy’s initial research.
“It’s only after the second World War that we really get to appreciate this idea of adolescence, teenagers as an extension of childhood and that youth, so it’s interesting to see this kind of transition phase,” he says.
In 1926, 0.007 per cent of all children under 15 were orphans (6,642), while 88 per cent had both parents still alive (763,955).
Insights from the census into schooling and child labour at the time are another part of the picture.
Census 1926 reveals a primarily agrarian society, with just over half of the working population – 51 per cent of the 1,307,662 recorded in gainful occupations – working on the land according to the Central Statistics Office.
Many young people were working on their parents’ farms in rural Ireland. The State relied heavily on the next generation with 206,382 sons and daughters assisting farmers and 57,713 other relatives working on family land.
“You start to see from 14, 15, 16 [years old] in some of the census returns, boys beginning to be apprenticed. You see a lot of girls in their teens listed doing home duties, assisting mothers in the home,” says McEvoy. Electrical and mechanical apprentices were common occupations listed for boys, while girls were often employed as domestic servants.
Starting in May 1926, a month after the census was taken, the School Attendance Act set 14 years old as the official school leaving age. The Department of Education was in its infancy, having been formally established in 1924.
Children already in “lawful employment” were not required to attend school, while children over 12 were allowed short absences to engage in “light agricultural work” on the family farm. Under the Act, “manual labour” was also permitted for children living in industrial and reformatory schools.
Another lens through which childhood can be explored in the 1926 Census is by finding the census returns for historical figures who were at this point unknown young members of Irish society.
Noël Browne, “a very important figure for Irish childhood” was then only 10 years old. Twenty-five years later, Browne would resign from his position as minister for health when his Mother and Child Scheme to provide free healthcare to children under 16 and their mothers was blocked by the Government after lobbying by the Catholic hierarchy.
“He is an interesting one because we’re seeing a snapshot of a family that is about to be very badly affected by tuberculosis,” says McEvoy.
Browne’s father, Joseph, who was an inspector for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), died of the disease the following year. Soon after he would lose his mother and most of his siblings to TB, a significant motivator in Browne’s political career.
For McEvoy, the census offers “a really cool opportunity to get kids engaged with local history”. He is preparing to hold census workshops in libraries and schools across Dublin city from May onwards, where children can play “history detectives”, learning how to use the census to find out about their own families.
