The 19th Annual Sir John T. Gilbert Lecture - Transcript

The following is a transcript of the nineteenth Sir John T. Gilbert Commemorative Lecture "The Women were worse than the Men" given by Pádraig Yeates at Dublin City Library & Archive on 21 January 2016.

Audio

Welcome to the Dublin City Public Libraries and Archive Podcast. In this episode, ‘The Women were worse than the men’, Pádraig Yeates looks at crime in Dublin in 1916.  The 19th Annual Sir John T. Gilbert Lecture, was recorded in front of a live audience at Dublin City Library and Archive on 21 January, 2016.

Thanks very much for coming and I hope some people will learn something new, as I did, about Dublin City from this. Some people have queried the title ‘The Women were Worse than the Men’, so I hope to prove my case in the course of the evening.

The mobs that looted Dublin city centre in 1916 have entered the mythology of the Rising just as robustly as the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army and, as far as I am aware, it was the only occasion in the history of the capital, and possibly Ireland, when more women were convicted of criminal offences than men, hence the title of this talk. However I want to say something also about the wider impact the First World War had on crime in the city

The Easter Rising made Dublin unique in the United Kingdom in that it was the only city where fighting took place and the general breakdown in law and order created new opportunities for breaking the law, just as the Defence of the Realm Act passed on the outbreak of the 1st World War created new laws to actually break. The incidence of serious crime by juvenile gangs, often abetted by adults, such as housebreaking and robbery of coal trains, became commonplace, along with fraudulent claims for separation allowances, theft of military property and greatly increased desertion rates from the British armed forces. At the same time the large scale recruitment of young adult males from working class districts of the city saw a reduction in the pool of potential adult offenders and a decline, a quite dramatic decline in the population of Mountjoy Prison.

But to return to the looters initially: newspapers characterised them in vivid terms that are still remembered to this day. The Irish Times, which managed uniquely in Dublin to publish almost uninterruptedly through the fighting, reported on Tuesday, 25 April, 1916, that on the previous night

‘Shop windows in North Earl Street were smashed, and the shops were looted. Noblett’s sweet shop at the corner and that of Lewers and Company [children’s outfitters] next to it in Sackville Street, were sacked, and youngsters male and female, might be seen carrying bundles of sweets, or caps, and hats, or shirts, of which the shops were despoiled. … A public house in North Earl Street was looted, and when the looters had partaken of the ardent spirits some of them beat each other with bottles so violently that they were under necessity of having their wounds dressed in hospital’.

I should say, just that I think my father might be amongst those youngsters. He was about six at the time and he told me about playing in the ruins of the Rising, but I think they were looking more for cartridges and bandoliers than anything else.

But to continue, The Irish Independent, which did not actually appear until 4 May, reported that

‘When darkness set in on Easter Monday the lawless element in the city set themselves out for loot. ... The revolutionaries in the GPO, did their best to stop the looting, and fired blank shots at intervals over the heads of the mob. Nothing seemed to frighten them.

Cumann na mBan member Min Mulcahy, who was acting as a courier for the rebels during that week, describes the destruction in the city as well. She particularly noticed the destruction of the Irish Farm and Produce Company which was owned by leading Sinn Féin activist Jennie Wyse Power, and in her memoir to the Bureau of Military History, she said:

‘I remember seeing some of the looters at Norton's in Henry St. Prams were being thrown down through the windows above, for women to catch them below. By Wednesday, Mrs Wyse- Power's place was burned and looted. She was in a bad state. I think she did not let Nancy [her daughter] go back’. into the city.

Another witness Nora Marion Fitzpatrick - and I’m indebted to Máire Kennedy for this, it’s part of the tremendous collection that is being accumulated now upstairs [in Dublin City Public Library & Archive] of memorabilia and memoirs never been published or seen in public before. But she was a VAD nurse and she describes how she saw:

‘the mob attack the Dollymount tram.... I shall never forget the sight. It reminded me of the tales of the French Revolution. The back streets and slums had disgorged their inhabitants into the main thoroughfares. Looting had begun. The women, in many cases stripped absolutely naked to the waist from their struggles in the crowd, with their hair hanging loosely round their faces, were mostly drunk, and were doing far more damage than the men. They smashed the windows of the tram and tore the cushions and curtains to shreds. Then I heard some explosion... and the people scattered in all directions.’

So initially the Military Commander of the revolutionaries, James Connolly, dismissed the looters as ‘one more problem for the British’ but he soon sent out members of the GPO garrison to disperse them by firing over their heads. And as other witnesses have noted, it had little effect. Liam Archer, who was a Volunteer Section Commander nearby in the Church Street area, recalled the first evening of the Rising stopping ‘holidaymakers on their way home’ – because remember it was a bank holiday but also trying to repossess or take back the loot from the looters and having some difficulty with it.

And interestingly enough many of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) members were much more severe in their treatment of the looters than the Volunteers, and you can’t help feeling it was because they felt particularly let down, they were trying to elevate the working class and create a workers’ republic and these people were making a show of them.

So Prisoners’ Books - this is really the nut, the crux of what I’m talking about now. We haven’t really known who the looters were until now. Many of these people ran the risk of being shot, struck by shrapnel, crushed by falling buildings or burnt to death. And it is probable that a significant number of civilian casualties that week we actually looters.

But we can now for the first time identify a lot of these people because of the Dublin Metropolitan Police Prisoners Books, which have recently come to light. The most immediate fact to stand out is that possessors of loot were far more likely to be women than men, and married women or widows rather than single girls. In normal times men arrested for criminal activity in Dublin outnumbered women, and they still do I think, by a factor of about four or five to one, and this did not change significantly during the war, although, as I say women were more likely to be involved in some ‘white collar’ crimes such as fraudulent claims for separation allowances.

I’m just going to mention policing trends as well because this is important, it reflects on the general crime reporting. As I say the gender balance of criminals, or criminal classes or offenders – I’m not sure what the politically correct term is today, whatever the term is the gender pattern did not change during the war. But what is interesting - and people assume it would be the reverse of this, I think, in a time of unrest - is the retreat by the DMP from the streets.  Summonses served by the DMP fell by over half between 1912 and 1919, arrests fell by two-thirds and assaults on DMP constables fell by 80 per cent. This was part of a survival strategy pursued by policemen as the city became increasingly lawless. It certainly increased opportunities for crime, most of which went unreported and undetected. During the Rising itself, the absence of the police was very noticeable, but then three of them were shot dead on the first day, two of them by members of the Citizen’s Army, and this was an unarmed force remember it wasn’t like the RIC. A brief exception to this rule was the ‘housebreaking squad’ based in College Street Station - now closed, which was part of a G Division in College Street. According to Eamon Broy, who was a recent recruit then but later worked for Michael Collins as an undercover agent. Members of this unit ‘were revolted at the sight of so much stolen property being flaunted before their eyes’ from nearby shops such as Mansfield’s, the furriers, and they ‘sallied out and filled the cells at College St. police station’ on the Tuesday before being ordered back to the barracks.

However when the constabulary did return to the streets after the Rising, they did so with a vengeance, and particularly to the tenements and the ‘courts’ where they suspected those guilty of looting lived. People outside this area, if you were fortunate enough to live outside this area and to get away with something, chances are you weren’t going to get caught.

But with these caveats in mind what does the Prisoners’ Book tell us about those arrested in 1916? Well firstly it indicates significant differences, as I’ve said, between men and women. Women arrested tended to be older than the men. They also appear to have been more likely to offend as they grew older and men less likely. The proclivity to commit crime seemed to increase with age for women and go in the reverse direction for men. So females ranged in age from nine to eighty years, remember children could be arrested for crime in those days, and males from six to seventy years but the average age of a female offender in 1916 was thirty-one and a half, and men it was just under twenty-four. The average age of those arrested for looting after the Rising is significantly higher for both sexes than those arrested in other months, but the gender differential remains. Females arrested for illegal possession and related offences in May 1916 were thirty-seven on average, and their ages ranged from fourteen to seventy-five. The average for males was thirty, and aged between ten to seventy years.

As I’ve said, May 1916 is also unique for the number of females arrested. In January 1916, women comprised 20% of all those charged with criminal offences, in February the figure went down to 17%, in March it was 16% and in April it was 18%. But in May the figure rose to 58% and in June it was still over 27%, before dropping to normal levels, 13% in July, 23% in August, 17% in September, 23% in October, 16% in November and 21% in December. Women also accounted for 80% of all those arrested for looting, I think that’s a fairly conclusive figure. In the vast majority of cases women were charged with illegal possession rather than more active crimes such as shop breaking, larceny or theft. Consequently in May married women (including widows) overtook the British Army in terms of deserters, and also juveniles as the biggest group of offenders.

Of course entry in the Prisoners’ Book does not indicate women were guilty of looting but it does indicate they were its main beneficiaries. As I’ve said 44% of all those charged with looting offences were married women and 7% were widows who, after two years of war, presumably included a significant number of War Widows. Unfortunately in the vast majority of cases no description is given of the goods found, I think the reason is simply all the records were hand-written and the police sergeant who collated these in the Bridewell obviously got fed up itemising the details; he just put ‘ill. poss.’ for illegal possession - line after line. Nevertheless we have a few figures. Interestingly, I think there are only four cases of illegal possession of porter, as compared with seventeen of flour, twelve of household items, nine of bicycles, six of boots, two of sugar, two of footballs and one each of soap and a perambulator. Only eight women were charged with more active offences. Four with stealing boots, three with theft of jewellery and one was arrested with her husband for using violence to steal money. Almost all of these women came from traditional lower working class districts, some of them literally a stone’s throw from this building such as Queen’s Square, I think Pearse Square is where it is now, and Erne Street, upper and lower.

The main indicator of the value of the goods comes from the size of the fines imposed by Police Magistrates, which range from 5s to 40s for illegal possession and quite a number of looters were let off with a caution. The sentences also reflect a gender bias, with relatively few women receiving prison sentences compared with men. I’ve just taken this extract from the book to illustrate the case: James Kenna, a 27 year old labourer from 35 Francis Street was sentenced to one month for possession of ‘a cartload of loot’, by the same inspector, Inspector Barrett. Mary Jane Egan, a 26 year old woman, living around the corner at 36 The Coombe was arrested with the same cartload of loot but she was only fined 20s.

Altogether 49 women out of 443 charged with illegal possession received prison sentences which is 11%, compared with 35 of 179 men which is 19.5%. Men also tended to receive heavier sentences with three sentenced to six months and a 17 year old labourer to three years Borstal. The heaviest sentence given to women was two months with hard labour. Recipients of the latter sentence included a prostitute and a lady housekeeper, displaying a fine indifference to social rank by the Police Magistrates. The heavier sentences for men sometimes reflected aggravating factors such as larceny and warehouse or shop breaking, as opposed to relatively passive charges for most of the women of illegal possession and receiving.   

A look at the occupations of those charged with looting shows much diversity. After the married women and widows, who comprised 51% of all offenders, the next largest group comprised those listed as having no occupation which was 14%. Two thirds of these ‘vagrants’ were women and many of them had no address so that they were literally the human flotsam of the city.

Two other predictable groups were the 58 labourers and 19 dealers arrested. All but two of dealers were women, reflecting their dominance of this occupation. The number of labourers, I think is surprisingly small, given that they constituted a quarter of the adult male population of the city. By comparison messengers are over represented, probably reflecting the high level of Dublin’s juvenile crime as well as their greater familiarity with lucrative targets that their occupation provided. Porters were another over represented group and not one commonly associated in the popular mind with the 1916 looting phenomenon, unlike prostitutes, of whom only six were arrested. The presence of skilled workers such as bricklayers, a boilermaker, engineer (an engineer in those days would have been a fitter), printer, book binder and two cabinet makers does not conform with the traditional image of the looter either, although, as in the case of the bricklayer and the cabinet maker with no fixed abode, some of these men may have fallen on hard times rather than simply succumbing to the temptation of opportunist crime. The presence of a money lender, a publican, and licensed general dealer may be an indication of a network for feloniously receiving and recycling stolen goods. The records tell us that the publican, Thomas O’Reilly, aged 40, of 146 Upper Dorset Street was fined £3 for felonious receiving, the case against the money lender, Christine McCoy, aged 45, from Hutton Place, in the north inner city, was discharged and the fate of the licensed general dealer, Jacob Newman, aged 28, of 40 Hill Street, again in the north inner city, was not recorded, and I think it is quite possible that these people traded information for leniency.  

I’m putting up this notice just to remind people - you were wondering where all the rebels are and people with guns and that but once the Rising broke out, the military took over the city and most of the 2,000 people arrested in the aftermath of the Rising or during it, were in military custody so they’re not in the DMP books, so I’m sorry about that. There is one great unsolved crime though, from the Rising which I just want to mention which may relate to the British Army, it’s the theft of £5,000 worth of merchandise from the British and Irish Steam Packet warehouse on the North Wall. This was a huge amount of money at the time, it would be millions today, and none of this was recovered; nobody was ever charged. It occurs to me that the only people with both the organisation and the freedom of movement to carry out a robbery like that would be members of the British Army, probably Dubliners with criminal connections. However, we’ll probably never know for certain.

So now I’d just want to move on to another group, deserters and absentees. This has really been forgotten in the narrative, but in fact, if you leave aside looting, the First World War generated a lot of other crime problems, and the biggest one was deserters and absentees from the British Army who comprised the largest group of male offenders throughout the year. They accounted for 44% in January, no doubt with Christmas leave contributing significantly to the numbers, 37% in February, 27% in March and 37% in April. In May, when they would have been arrested people who might have been around when the Rising was on, the figure dropped to 16% when the Rising, if they did skew figures, skewed them downwards but they rose again to 23% in June and 30% in July. They accounted for 38% of all adult male offenders in August, 34% in September, 34% again in October, 19% in November and in December - Christmas coming again - was once more up to 42%. However, we don’t know really how far these figures reflect the internal dynamics of the British war effort – the movement of troops, composition of units stationed in Dublin or the war itself, which need further research, as opposed to the capacity or willingness of the DMP to deal with the problem.

What is indisputable is that desertion and absenteeism were major problems for all combatants, particularly in multinational states where identification with the metropolitan centres of power were weak. Left unchecked, and I thinking not just of the Irish with London, but Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, Ukrainians, Latvians, Finns – people in multinational empires who had very loose affinities with the centre. If you look at Britain or Germany, you have much more cohesive societies with far more support for the war literally up to the bitter end. If you look at, as I say, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prussian Empire or if you look at Ireland it’s quite a different picture. We also know that quite a few men would have deserted here from Britain under the delusion that in doing so they were somehow protected by the fact that there was no conscription in Ireland, but that wasn’t sadly for them the case and they would have been sent back to their units.

What is also interesting is deserters and absentees appear to have been looked after within their communities despite severe penalties for sheltering them. In January 1916 Annie O’Brien, a 19 year old weaver from 25 Meath Street was given six weeks hard labour for harbouring a deserter, presumably a relation or boyfriend, unfortunately I haven’t had a chance yet to access the 1915 books, he would obviously have been arrested before her, to try and check that out. But to give you other examples, a soldier’s wife and a female accomplice were fined 10s each in March for attempting to prevent military police from arresting her husband. In April a 59 year old postman and his wife were arrested for harbouring their son and assisting his escape but, unfortunately it’s one in a significant minority of cases, where we don’t know the outcome. It could have been quite severe because this was probably a case that was kicked upstairs by the Police Magistrates to the ordinary courts.

One of the most striking things, I found looking at the figures is that very few deserters or absentees were arrested as a result of begging - I came across one or sleeping rough - I came across one. It seems nearly all soldiers on the run had someone to put them up despite the risks. Many of these men were arrested as a result of committing other offences such as causing malicious damage, assault, larceny, or being drunk and disorderly. The prevalence of such anti-social behaviour may reflect psychological problems deriving from their war service. It is certainly well in excess of arrests for similar offences involving soldiers in Dublin in peacetime. Normally soldiers were handed straight over to the military authorities. Very occasionally a soldier who committed a serious assault or robbery would receive a prison sentence before being handed over, and thus, perversely, providing an incentive to commit serious crimes if a soldier’s main motive for not returning to his unit was to avoid being sent to the Front. Only a handful of sailors appear to have jumped ship in Dublin, because it was not a naval base. But they do include the case of a young boy - we don’t have an age, a lot of service men they don’t give ages for - but Jonathan Joseph Stewart, described as a boy sailor was arrested in the north inner city and put back on board his ship, HMS Orcona, even before it left Kingstown, so he wasn’t at liberty very long. If you tot up the figures there was a total number of absentees and deserters of 835, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s actually almost the full strength of a regular infantry battalion of the period. It equates to the whole average annual intake of Dublin recruits in a pre-war year, an average figure, it goes up and down but it’s around that. It equates to six week’s intake in 1916, a month’s intake in 1915, 20% of the annual recruits in Dublin in 1916, 27% in 1917, recruitment actually increased as the war ended, I won’t bore you with the details of why that happened, but it did. But I think you’ll see that makes it a very significant figure.

Coming to juveniles, because juveniles ran deserters a close second in most months of the year and actually overtook them as the largest group of offenders in February, March, May, June and July 1916. Offences ranged from stealing sweets to housebreaking, which was the most common serious offence committed by juvenile gangs. Housebreaking by teenage gangs exceeded such activities by adults and in some cases were clearly organised by adults, again usually women. If you dove into the figures you will see places where tenements where a group of kids aged anything from eight and fifteen or sixteen are arrested and the same police officers will arrest a woman, or a couple of women living in the same house, or adjoining houses who are charged with receiving illegal possession and I don’t think you need to be Sherlock Holmes to guess that there’s a connection between the two and that tradition went on for many generations afterwards.

The other major criminal activity involving juvenile gangs was larceny of coal. Coal cost 22s a ton in 1914 it cost 40s by February 1916. The cost of everything that was imported soared because of a German U-Boat campaign which pushed up the cost of maritime insurance as well as the war economy. The British war economy also meant that home grown products, particularly agricultural products went up and farmers took advantage of this to sell their goods at high prices in Dublin. Not surprisingly, therefore men working on the docks, railways, or in warehouses were frequently charged in conjunction with juveniles with larceny of such goods in transit either to or from Britain.

The Dublin Police Magistrates, I must say I share this view, but they have received a bad press, because whenever we see them, they appear as agents of the Crown, usually locking up labour agitators or militant nationalists, but they dealt with juvenile crime largely through bail and the Probation Act rather than sending offenders to institutions such as Glencree, Carriglea, Summerhill or Artane. In fact they seemed to have a particular aversion to sending children to industrial schools. Usually the parents were made liable for bail in the hope that the significant sums involved, usually £5 to £10, would ensure that the mother or father did a better job of policing their children than the DMP. Most offenders, girls as well as boys, were still at school or unemployed. And as I say, if there is a strong association between the job of messengers, who were often gang leaders, and housebreaking in the case of boys, the most common occupation for girls arrested was larceny and the occupation was usually as a domestic servant. So obviously it was a case of opportunity and poverty coming together.

Professional criminals were also involved in the war economy. Obviously it created new opportunities for them, and so were militant nationalists and soldiers anxious to supplement their wages which were fairly pitiful. Arrests for feloniously receiving items such as Khaki shirts and handkerchiefs, military blankets, boots, buckles or even in one case an army donkey are recorded. A flourishing new area of female crime was defrauding the War Office by making false claims for separation allowances. Fraudulent enlistment, always prevalent in Dublin, increased during the war. Penalties were severe. A married woman received three months hard labour in January for defrauding the War Office and a man convicted of fraudulent enlistment in February was sentenced to two months hard labour. Even minor offences such as the theft of a pair of army drawers attracted the options of a month in prison or a 40s fine, as well as £10 bail. A man convicted of wearing a Lieutenant’s uniform, and arrested in a hotel in February received three months hard labour.

The treatment of militant nationalists was often far less severe. A total of 19 people were charged with offenses that might be construed as subversive before the Easter Rising in 1916. Of these only four were actually charged with breaches of the Defence of the Realm Act, all of which involved distributing anti-war literature. I know for a fact, because I’ve checked it out, at least two of the four were actually dedicated pacifists, Jerry Dunlop, an author and a young lad called Malachy O’Connor. Dunlop received six months for putting up posters saying don’t join the British Army. Malachy O’Connor was a grocer’s assistant from Harold’s Cross and he only got two months probably because it is his first time in trouble with the law. I haven’t been able to check out the details of the other two so I’m not sure what their political connections were if any.

The attitude to subversion obviously changed once the Rising took place. During the last eight months of 1916 a total of 40 people were charged with what might be considered subversive activities. In what was possibly the first public demonstration of support for rebels on 18 June, which happens to be the anniversary of Waterloo, a parade was organised by 400 girls carrying a ‘Republican flag’, they’re the words used by the police report. I don’t know their ages and I don’t know what the flag was, it may have been a Tricolour or it could have been something else. They marched from Christchurch Cathedral towards the city centre and collected a crowd of 2,000 supporters as they went. Participants booed sentries outside Dublin Castle and at Bank of Ireland in College Green before being intercepted by the DMP at the Ballast office. In the following fracas seven people were arrested, four men and three girls. DMP Constable Henry Kells was injured. He was later assassinated in the War of Independence by the IRA as a temporary member of the G Division. When the Chief Police Magistrate, E. G. Swifte, heard the case he decided to treat it as a public order incident rather than under the draconian provisions of DORA because as he said himself of the ‘relative youth’ of the prisoners. All three girls were acquitted but three of the male prisoners were convicted of acts prejudicial to public order and received sentences ranging from six weeks for John O’Farrell a 30 year old chauffeur of no fixed abode, to 14 days for 16 year old newsboy Patrick Monaghan and a caution for Denis Fitzpatrick, a 16 year old labourer. All came from again the north inner city, interestingly enough.

On 28 June three printers at the Marinco Printing Works in Temple Bar printed a copy of Thomas McDonagh’s alleged Court Martial speech. I say alleged because I don’t think we’ve ever proved it was his speech but it obviously was subversive, whether he wrote it or not.  One of them was William Henry West, who printed the Irish Worker in 1913, and who was one of that unsung band of small jobbing printers who helped sustain the mosquito press right through the revolutionary decade with little or no reward and at the risk, as in his case of losing their press and livelihood. On 29 June, Jonathan Butler, a 31 year old tobacconist in Amiens Street, was fined £20 but given the option of three months for unspecified offences, but I think they were again distribution of subversive literature.

What struck me most actually, or I think anyone looking at this if you come from a traditional narrative is the firearms issue, I mean where were the guns? I mean there were people parading with guns all over the city.  But a total of only 12 people were arrested for firearms offences in Dublin before the Rising and they were all treated relatively leniently given that Britain was in a life and death struggle with Germany at the time. In 1916, for example, in January a forty year old widow, Mary Freer of 27 Coombe Street was fined £2 for unlawful possession of a service rifle and two men were charged with receiving a rifle. One was a barber against whom information was refused and his co-accused was a porter with no fixed abode and he got two months hard labour. John Lemass, a 16 year old student living at 2 Capel Street was charged with manslaughter after accidentally discharging a gun that killed his 22 month old brother Herbert. Again, information was refused, there was no prosecution. This was not an uncommon occurrence. In February a greengrocer’s assistant was charged with receiving military arms and sentenced to six months and a soldier arrested for larceny of rifles was handed over to the military authorities to be dealt with. In March John Brophy, a 15 year old Telegram Messenger of 103 South Circular Road and John Byrne, a 13 year old schoolboy from Reginald Street were arrested for illegal possession of a revolver and rifle cartridges. The older boy was put on £50 bail, by his parents, while the younger boy was let off with a caution. In April a grocer’s assistant, 19 year old James Byrne of Ballybough Road and Lawrence Fox, a 40 year old grocer’s porter from Bayview Avenue were given six months and two months respectively for receiving a military rifle. But these cases were a drop in the ocean of a city bristling with guns.

It would appear to me that we had a regime in Dublin Castle that devoted more of its resources to dealing with fraudulent claims for separation allowances than disarming private militias. And whatever we think of the rights or wrongs of the case it does seem a fairly lethal form of political myopia. The DMP were quite anxious and willing to prosecute individuals but Augustine Birrell and the Under Secretary, Matthew Nathan, wanted to avoid confrontations with the Irish Volunteers, or the Citizen’s Army or Hibernian Rifles at any cost really and certainly at a cost that would involve a mass seizure of weapons.

Of course after the Rising large quantities of arms were collected from Volunteers across the country, many of them surrendered voluntarily. In the remaining eight months of 1916 there were just two men arrested for attempting to buy military rifles. In spite of the fact there had just been a Rising they were each was fined £5 and let go.

The other area which would be contentious for people, certainly for descendants I imagine is sexual offences and this is the last one, but I just want to mention it briefly. There were relatively few sexually related offences reported in 1916. Although middle class citizens of all persuasions were so alarmed by the threat posed by the British Army to the moral welfare of the population, and particularly the female population, that an ecumenical Women’s Patrol was set up. Under its constitution it was composed of two-thirds Catholic and one third Protestant. They were accompanied by the DMP and they patrolled the streets to try and stamp out any improper behaviour at the outbreak of war. But as I say, I think the fear was largely unfounded. Prostitution had been in decline since the 1890s because there were significant other sources of employment for women. Between 1912 and 1919, prosecutions for soliciting fell from 1,067 to 198 and prosecutions for brothel keeping were more erratic, but I think they were more based on public outcry, if there was public outcry, the police would go and raid a few brothels to show they were busy and when it died down they would forget about it again. But if you look at the figures in 1916 - I’ve only been able to look at these in detail – only 35 prostitutes were charged with offences other than soliciting. Of these ten had no fixed abode and were probably homeless. The addresses of a further 15 suggested they did live in brothels and all those with any sort of address lived in a tenements or courts. 18 were charged with larceny, seven with stealing money or valuables, three with malicious damage, two with receiving, two with assault and one each with receiving, housebreaking and making base utterances, I’m not sure what base utterances are but it doesn’t sound very nice. Their average age was 32 and a small number of cases suggest to me again, that police interest was largely prompted by complaints from clients claiming to have been robbed or by public morality campaigns. Many of these cases were withdrawn after the original allegation was made, presumably it only dawned on the client or the alleged victim afterwards that they were going to have to appear in court and that might be a greater loss to them than admitting they’d lost a watch or trousers in compromising situation. Sorry one of the thefts did involve a pair of trousers which perhaps tells a story.

Arrests for more serious sexual offences were rare and invariably involved men. The low level of incidents reported almost certainly reflected public attitudes rather than levels of sexual activity. I think there was a general feeling of repugnance that it was better to leave blatant breaches of the law alone rather than deal with them. As with other offences, those arrested were mainly from the lower social orders. For example, in January a labourer received three years penal servitude for unlawful carnal knowledge, presumably of a minor, and another labourer received two months hard labour for indecent exposure. In February a soldier convicted of gross indecency on a boy received two months, while a butler was given four months hard labour for indecent assault at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Also in February, a 74 year old pensioner in Dolphin’s Barn was convicted of unspecified unnatural practices and received three months. In March an unemployed man received four months for indecent exposure, a van man received twelve months hard labour for attempted unlawful carnal knowledge, again presumably of a minor, and a soldier accused of indecent assault had the case discharged. In April a twelve year old boy, and these are quite sad really, a twelve year old boy was arrested in the Royal Barracks for loitering. That case was discharged. Three youths aged between thirteen and fifteen were put on eighteen months’ probation in November for ‘frequenting the Royal Barracks’. In May a soldier accused of unlawful carnal knowledge had his case discharged and in June a sergeant and private at Straffan Camp were both fined 5s for ‘buggery’. In June a hospital attendant faced the options of a £3 fine or six weeks for the same offence. Probably the most shocking case was a sea captain from Wexford who received three months for rape. I think the high proportion of soldiers involved in some of these incidences doesn’t confirm what some nationalists might think of the depravity of the British Army. I think a more likely explanation is there’s no privacy in army barracks and if you are going to do things which are against the law you are more likely to get caught and the military authorities are more likely to make an example of you. I think it’s no accident that there are no officers included in any of these figures, they are all private soldiers and NCOs. There was only one middle class offender - beyond the sea captain who got three months for rape, which was less than some of the labourers got for indecent exposure – and that was a barrister who was charged and convicted of sending ‘indecent communications’ through the post. He didn’t get a sentence at all he was referred to the Richmond Asylum for psychiatric treatment.

There is I think in these figures an odd dichotomy between the public concern by all sorts of bodies from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the female suffrage campaigners, trade unionists, city councillors and the churches at the widely acknowledged risks of abuse that existed, particularly for children, for child traders and beggars, and the relative absence of action to prevent it. It appears that in a city at war such concerns about public morality were often expressed but rarely acted upon. As with everything else, the crime problem fuelled popular resentment however at the hardships that the war was imposing, the shortages, the food prices, the black market, the housebreaking, the robbery of coal and tea and sugar and other goods, the changed nature of the economy due to the war. And I think as a result of that there was growing unpopularity for the war and its apologists, including John Redmond and the Irish Party.

We hope to have these books online in March so everyone can see them. It’s a joint venture by SIPTU, the Garda Síochána and UCD. SIPTU are involved because SIPTU and myself helped retrieve the books – they were in a skip in the north inner city. But they are now saved at last and so people will be able to see for themselves if you have any ancestors who were in trouble with the law in 1916 or any other year.

Thank-you very much.

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