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| Westmoreland Lock Hospital, Lazar's Hill, Dublin |
Two fascinating sites on Dublin history and lore have reawakened a certain nostalgia for my hometown and its somewhat colourful history. That history included squalor and disease as with the Act of Union in 1800 Dublin lost its Parliament and with it much of the aristocratic residents and trade. By the end of the 19th Century Dublin was said to have the worst slums and largest Red Light District (the infamous Monto) in Europe. The abolition of the parliament in 1800 had a major economic impact on the life of the city. Within a decade, many of the finest mansions (Leinster House, Powerscourt House, Aldborough House, etc) had been sold, often to government agencies. Though parliament itself was based on the exclusion of Irish Catholics, many catholic nationalist historians and writers blamed the absence of parliament for the increased impoverishment of Dublin, with many of the large mansions in areas like Henrietta Street sold to unscrupulous property developers and landlords who reduced them to tenements.
The story is told here;
http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/irish-parliament-building.html
What prompted these musings was a the fine picture of the Westmoreland Lock Hospital which once stood in Dublin's Townsend Street. A lovely picture and what a fine building, one of the many lost to the Philistines having been let run down when we got our freedom and demolished in 1949. Townsend Street was originally called Lazar's Hill after a leprosy hospital built outside the city - there was another Leprosy Hospital called St. Stephens in Clarendon Street and St. Stephens Green is named after it.
http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/tale-of-two-parks.html
This was known as the Westmoreland Lock Hospital after the Viceroy of Ireland who opened it in 1792. The name dates back to the earlier leprosy hospitals (as does Lazar), which came to be known as lock hospitals after the "locks", or rags, which covered the lepers' lesions. After 1820 with the decrease in leprosy it mainly treated female suffers of venereal diseases and had about 200 inmates, mainly prostitutes from Monto, a consequence of Dublin having a large garrison and port with estimates of 2,000 + prostitutes in the city most of who would have their lives shortened by disease for which there was no effective treatment.
What prompted these musings was a the fine picture of the Westmoreland Lock Hospital which once stood in Dublin's Townsend Street. A lovely picture and what a fine building, one of the many lost to the Philistines having been let run down when we got our freedom and demolished in 1949. Townsend Street was originally called Lazar's Hill after a leprosy hospital built outside the city - there was another Leprosy Hospital called St. Stephens in Clarendon Street and St. Stephens Green is named after it.
http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/tale-of-two-parks.html
This was known as the Westmoreland Lock Hospital after the Viceroy of Ireland who opened it in 1792. The name dates back to the earlier leprosy hospitals (as does Lazar), which came to be known as lock hospitals after the "locks", or rags, which covered the lepers' lesions. After 1820 with the decrease in leprosy it mainly treated female suffers of venereal diseases and had about 200 inmates, mainly prostitutes from Monto, a consequence of Dublin having a large garrison and port with estimates of 2,000 + prostitutes in the city most of who would have their lives shortened by disease for which there was no effective treatment.
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| From the 1856 survey of Dublin |
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| Monto, Dublin |
Initially the hospital treated 300 people of both sexes.
This was later reduced to 150 beds and from 1820 only women were admitted
(males were sent to Dr Steevens' Hospital and the Richmond Hospital). It was
supported by the state from the outset. Catholics and Protestants were
segregated. In the 19th century most of the patients were prostitutes, a
consequence of the large military presence in the city - Dublin having the
"largest garrison of the British army at home or in the colonies"
(Under-Secretary Thomas Larcom). It became part of the objectives of the
hospital governors to prevent the transmission of venereal disease to troops
stationed in the city, and the hospital was provided with a grant from the
government to effect this.
Monto was the nickname for the one-time red light district
in the north city centre of Dublin centred on the Gloucester Diamond. Monto was
roughly the area bounded by Talbot Street, Amiens Street, Gardiner Street and
Seán McDermott Street (formerly Gloucester Street). The name is derived from
Montgomery Street (now called Foley Street), which runs parallel to the lower
end of Talbot Street towards what is now Connolly Station. It was immortalised
as "Nighttown" in the "Circe" chapter of James Joyce's
famous work, Ulysses, where the central protagonists Leopold Bloom and Stephen
Dedalus together visit a brothel. I have a certain interest as this is the part
of the City Centre I lived and grew up in until the age of five, known then as
Summerhill. It was no longer a red light district (as far as a five year old
could tell!) but I do remember the definite atmosphere of the fine tall
Georgian Houses in the area which had been converted (probably badly) into
local authority flats, their height accentuated by a natural fall in the area towards
the River Liffey. These were in turn swept away by redevelopment at the end of
the 1970's.
http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/james-joyce-and-me.html
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| The "Tall Houses" of Summerhill |
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| Colm Henry's picture of U2 playing in the ruins of Summerhill before the Georgian houses were demolished |
In its heyday from the 1860s - 1920s, there were anything up
to 2,000 prostitutes working there at any one time, with all classes of
customers catered for. It was reputed to be the biggest red light district in
Europe at the time. Its financial viability was aided by the number of British
Army barracks and hence soldiers in the city, notably the Royal Barracks (later
Collins Barracks and now one of the locations of Ireland's National Museum).
After Ireland became independent in 1922 it became a target for cleanup by Catholic organisations keen to impose their Taliban like stamp on the new Irish Free State between 1923 and 1925. Religious missions led by Frank Duff of the Legion of Mary, an aggressive evangelical Catholic organisation, and Fr. R.S. Devane worked to close down the brothels. They received the co-operation of Dublin Police Commissioner, General William Murphy, and the campaign ended with 120 arrests and the closure of the brothels following a police raid on 12 March 1925, its financial viability having already been seriously undermined by the withdrawal of soldiers from the city following the Anglo-Irish Treaty (December 1921) and the establishment of the Irish Free State (6 December 1922). The "fallen women" were consigned to Magdalen Laundries, but that as they say is another story.
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| A postcard from the early 1900's showing the parade ground at the Royal Barracks, Dublin, Ireland. |
After Ireland became independent in 1922 it became a target for cleanup by Catholic organisations keen to impose their Taliban like stamp on the new Irish Free State between 1923 and 1925. Religious missions led by Frank Duff of the Legion of Mary, an aggressive evangelical Catholic organisation, and Fr. R.S. Devane worked to close down the brothels. They received the co-operation of Dublin Police Commissioner, General William Murphy, and the campaign ended with 120 arrests and the closure of the brothels following a police raid on 12 March 1925, its financial viability having already been seriously undermined by the withdrawal of soldiers from the city following the Anglo-Irish Treaty (December 1921) and the establishment of the Irish Free State (6 December 1922). The "fallen women" were consigned to Magdalen Laundries, but that as they say is another story.
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| Magdalen Laundry |
The area is commemorated in the folk tune Monto (Take Her Up
To Monto) written by George Hodnett, music critic of the Irish Times, and
popularised by the Dubliners. Some have mistakenly attributed the song to James
Joyce as George used slang and phraseology from Joyce in the song. This makes
it somewhat undecipherable to anybody other than native Dubliners. The opening
lines illustrate this well:
"Well, if you've got a wing-o,
Take her up to Ring-o
Where the waxies sing-o all the day;"
These words make no sense unless you know Dublin slang. A
"wing-o" was a girl friend because you walked out with her on the
"wing", "Ring-o" is Ringsend, a dockside area of Dublin
where the River Dodder joins the Liffey, and the "Waxies" were the
Cobblers who used waxed thread to sew boots. Their guild organised a picnic
each year to Ringsend which was satirised as the "Waxies Dargle", the
title of another folk song, as the Dargle River in Co. Wicklow was a picnic area
for the well off as you had to rent a horse and trap at Bray Railway Station to
make the journey, something too expensive for poorer families.
In 1794 the Lock penitentiary opened, which catered for
women who had been discharged from the hospital. Other destinations for those
discharged were the Lying-in hospital (now the Rotunda Hospital), the
work-house, or the Cork Street Fever Hospital, Dublin. The hospital never had
power to hold women against their will.
A number of broadside ballads were printed in Britain and
Ireland in the 19th century referring to the Lock Hospital or a similar
institution, and the downfall of a young man or soldier (and later, woman). An
early mention of a hospital is on early 19th broadsides, referring to The Lock
Hospital established in 1746 at Hyde Park Corner, London. A song was called The
Unfortunate Rake in Ireland and was sung in Dublin in the 1790s. A tune with this name was printed in Crosby's
Irish Musical Repository in 1808. In America, the song has been adapted to the
cattle range (The Cowboy's Lament or The Streets of Laredo) and the gambling
hall (St. James' Infirmary). Christy Moore recorded the Locke Hospital on
"Prosperous" (1972).
Another feature was that Protestant and Catholic inmates
at The Westmoreland Lock Hospital were separated presumably the presumption
being they had come from a different "station" in life and should not
mix, this being one area where the Catholics were professional and the
Protestants were amateurs? There was also a de facto separation of religions in
all the other city hospitals something which continued well into the 20th
Century under our very own Archbishop of Bling, John Charles McQuaid, who
objected to a new children's hospital being built at St. Ultan's in Charlemont
Street as Protestants would be on the Board of Management. Despite the land
having been already acquired at public expense after World War II (or "The
Emergency" as it was called in Ireland) the project was scrapped and
"Our Lady's" Hospital was built in an awkward out of city site at
Crumlin under the control of the Archbishop and reflecting the famous
"Catholic Ethos" imposed on the fertile by the infertile. The surplus
land acquired at the more convenient central site was utilised for the
Charlemont St. Corporation flats.
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| St. Patricks Hospital |
I saw another side of this religious segregation in the
early '80s visiting a friend who was being treated in St. Patrick's Psychiatric
Hospital in James Street. I knew the Hospital Secretary and its history as one of the first dedicated psychiatric hospitals as it
had been founded and endowed by Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral
and author of "Gulliver's Travels" and much more. He left the bulk
(£12,000) of his will to the hospital originally known as St Patrick’s Hospital
for Imbeciles, which opened in 1757 to, as he put it:
"He gave the little Wealth he had,
To build a House for Fools and Mad:
And shew'd by one satyric Touch,
No Nation wanted it so much:"
The hospital in those days still had a
"Protestant" Board of Management. Imagine then my astonishment when
visiting my friend to find the place was full of Catholic Clergy, Priests and
Nuns, who were having problems with "drink" and their "nerves." Presumably they were stashed away in this
"Protestant" hospital rather than the Catholic equivalent, St. John
of God, so the simple minded
"Faithful" would not see them and be scandalised by the sight of
these frazzled celibates who were having such difficulty coping with the same
reality they were so happy to advise their "flocks" on?
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| Jonathan Swift's Epitaph, St. Patrick's Cathedral Dublin where he was Dean 'Here is laid the body of Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Divinity, Dean of this cathedral Church, Where fierce indignation can no longer Rend his heart. Go, traveller, and imitate if you can This earnest and dedicated Champion of Liberty' |
Leper Hospitals were common features in Europe until after the 1940's when an effective cure for the disease was developed by a Norwegian physician and many cities had "Leper Colonies" on the outskirts, in London "Spitalfields" denotes one such, Spital being incorporated into our modern word, hospital. One of the last Leper colonies in Europe was on the Island of Spinalonga in Crete, apt in a way as the disease is reputed to have been brought to Europe from India by Alexander the Great's returning troops.
For more on Dublin sights and lore see DUBLIN IN THE RARE OLD
TIMES on Facebook and the wonderful "Come here to me" site http://comeheretome.com/
which also features on my Blogroll on
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