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December 8th: the so-called 'Culchie Shopping Day'. The day when people ‘from the country’ came to Dublin to shop, in the days before online shopping. This was crucial to Dublin’s retail calendar, as the traditional shopping day for people from outside the capital who journey to the city. It is also the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

While the Victorians did not invent all the traditions we associate with Christmas, this era is the one when most of them became firmly established. Its iconography is an intrinsic part of the Christmas period, with scenes of Victorian carol-singers and sleigh bells, ruddy-cheeked children and trees bedecked with candles still decorating our Christmas cards. At a deeper level, the Victorian emphasis on the values of family and home remain entrenched in our perception of the festive season. The pictures in this Gallery are taken from two periodicals held in the Special Collections of Dublin City Libraries.

Jimmy Davenport was a member of the orchestra and occasional performer at the Capitol and Theatre Royal theatres in Dublin in the 1930s and 40s. Judging by his autographed photo album which has just been digitised, Jimmy Davenport was a bit of a showbiz addict. He collected over a hundred signed portraits of visiting celebrities and photos of some set pieces from the Theatre Royal.

This gallery consists of images of shops, stalls, and markets from the Dublin City Council Photographic Collection. A few of these are still open for business but most have closed their doors.

This gallery consists of images associated with the family merchant business Alex. Findlater and Company. The gallery highlights the life of Adam Findlater, 1855-1911, as he was not only the managing director of the business but he was also an extraordinary citizen of Dublin. Originally from Scotland, Alexander Findlater came to Dublin in 1823 to begin trading in Whiskey.

The River Liffey, and the port that lies at its mouth, is the commercial lifeblood of Dublin city. This image gallery celebrates the Port of Dublin and those who worked in it throughout the twentieth century. From dockers and shipwrights to barge-men and captains of industry, 'all along the riverrun' they made their livelihoods.

“Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub”James Joyce, Ulysses. This gallery consists of images of Public Houses from the Dublin City Photographic Collection.

Dublin was one of the most depressed cities in Europe at the turn of the century. Declining industry, overcrowding, unemployment, and poor housing created a cauldron of poverty for many Dubliners. The connection between poverty and disease had been formally recognised in the nineteenth century. These rarely seen images from Dublin Corporation’s Reports Upon The State Of Public Health In The City Of Dublin show some of the measures taken by Dublin’s civic authority to curb the spread of infectious diseases. We hope that it may be of interest to anyone researching the social history of Dublin in the early twentieth century.

The following political cartoons come from the United Ireland and the Weekly Freeman and the National Press, Irish nationalist newspapers that commented on the last few decades of nineteenth-century Ireland. These cartoons illustrate Irish nationalist sentiments at the time by commenting on political events and figures, in particular the Home Rule Movement, the Land War, and the 1892 General Election.

This photo gallery tells the history of social housing in Inchicore which is a suburb of Dublin, 5km west of the city centre. It traces the history of the area from tenements and one of Dublin Corporation’s first social housing schemes to the conversion of Richmond Barracks to Keogh Square then St Michael’s Estate and beyond.