[CDfm]

You may have heard this song in pubs over the years but the way the dubliners sang it -it was a social commentary.



Monto is now called Foley Street in Dublins City Centre and it was a red light district. As Ronnie used to put it Monto was sort of abolished and a new image of Ireland prevailed. Noel Purcell put it another way and saidb in the late 1970's "we are now living in the rare auld times".

There are plenty of angles on this on this,so take your pick, and I will be looking at the lore angles. Maybe some pics and you tube video's and funky stories.



<H1>

<H1>An Overview of the Years 1900-1910

The end of the Boer War (1899-1902) extended British control in southern Africa. In Europe tension between Britain and Germany was expressed in a developing arms race, and competition over the building of newer and larger battleships. Increased tension in the Balkans led to several conflicts. It was a period of economic prosperity in the United States and Europe. Unionisation and demands for better conditions for workers caused social tensions. The development of flight followed the Wright Brothers first success in 1903. The decade saw the emergence of film as an art form, and the beginnings of Modernism in painting and literature.
The first decade of the twentieth century saw Ireland as very much a part of the British Empire, ruled by the aging Queen Victoria. Cultural Nationalism, however, had a dominant place in Irish life, especially in areas of literature, drama and sport. This movement gained great impetus in the 1880s and 1890s with the establishment of a range of societies, paving the way for a cultural revival. The Gaelic Athletic Association was founded in 1884 for the preservation and cultivation of the national games, particularly hurling, football and handball. The Irish National Literary Society was established in 1892 by W.B. Yeats and Douglas Hyde to revive and preserve old Irish customs and culture, and to develop an Anglo-Irish literature. The following year, 1893, the Gaelic League was formed with the aim of reviving Irish and preserving it as a spoken language. The Irish Literary Theatre Society (later the Abbey Theatre) was set up in 1898 by W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn, staging plays in English and in Irish, and encouraging new playrights. In this way, the roots of cultural revival go back to the late 19th century, but it was to blossom in the first decades of the 20th century.







1900 (3-26 April) Queen Victoria ruled Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 to 1901. She made several visits to Ireland, the last of which took place in the spring of 1900. She died less than a year later, on 22 January 1901.

1904 (27 December) The Abbey Theatre (formerly the Irish Literary Theatre) opened with performances of Lady Gregory's Spreading the news and W.B. Yeats On Baile's strand. It occupied the premises of the Mechanics' Institute in Abbey Street.
1907 (17 May) International Exhibition opens in Dublin.
1907 (17 October) Marconi transatlantic wireless telegraphy service starts between Clifden, Co. Galway and Cape Breton, Canada.
© Dublin City Public Libraries

</H1>http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history-heritage/pages-in-history/important-irish-internati/an-overview-of-the-years-/

Dr Jacinta Prunty gives an alternative view.

www.BookDepository.co.uk
Dublin Slums, 1800-1925: A Study in Urban Geography, by Jacinta Prunty; pp. xvii + 366. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1998, [pounds sterling]22.50.
The author of Dublin Slums is both a practising historical geographer and a sister in a religious community, living and working in the Coombe, one of the districts of inner-city Dublin featured in her book. The result is a book that is scholarly and meticulously researched, but also heartfelt, a kind of lamentation for the poverty of both people and policy in nineteenth-century Dublin. Jacinta Prunty first describes in detail the succession of medical and public-health investigations that exposed appalling levels of mortality and disease, and the sanitary and housing reforms proposed to improve the physical and moral environments of the Dublin poor. In later chapters, she focuses on state (Poor Law) and religious, charitable responses to the poverty of the people, especially highlighting the less-than-Christian competition between minority Protestant and majority Catholic church agencies in relieving poverty and converting the poverty-stricken. Finally, she offers a case study of "a classic slum: Dublin North City," …

I would like to keep this to a kind of social history kind of thing but no doubt the demand for Monto was largely driven by the British garrison.

The city was smaller -population circa 400,000

I am doing Dublin cos I live here and am a culchie and I love quirky and would like to know a bit more of the places I pass.

So if there are buildings or whatever with a different use that catch my eye I will have a look,pieces of trivia are also good -if not obligatory.



</H1>

[mikemac]

Port city, large garrison, beside Amiens St station realy it's not suprise the Monto was around.
If you go to Belfast you'll a statue for this, right outside the Great Victoria St Station.

Yes, it's fiction and based off a book but check out Strumpet City,
http://www.amazon.com/Strumpet-Ustin.../dp/B000L2128G

You'll recognize a lot of the actors and places, Henrietta St is prominent
Was a huge project for RTE back in RTE, all credit due it's a fantastic adaption of the book

I've read your Dublin Slums book but this is even better, Dublin Tenenment Life
http://www.librarything.com/work/144480

First hand experiences from lots of people, newspaper sellers, skilled workers like shipbuilders in Ringsend and unskilled laborers and dockers.
And all mad jealous of the Guinness workers is a common theme.

But what struck me is while people were poor and desperate conditions and of course lots of drunken fighting going on, there was a great community and not that much crime.
If you had a job you'd happily work it and not look for anything else.

Maybe I was reading accounts of people looking back with fondness and rose-tinted glasses.
Times were hard but people were not that unhappy.

[tricky D]

http://www.chaptersofdublin.com/books/General/monto.htm

Terry Fagan is not your typical folklorist. But then again Dublin’s Monto and its people are not typical subjects.

Born and reared in Corporation Buildings, the heart of the one-time notorious red-light district - Fagan has just completed a comprehensive history of the area.

"Its a living history told through the people who lived and grew up there. With all these new developments that are springing up around us - we feel its important for something to be preserved and documented before the whole place fades into history."

The book ‘Monto - Madams, Murder and Black Coddle’ is the product of the North Inner City Folklore Project’ which Terry joined in 1981. A graduate of the ‘Redbrick Slaughterhouse’, Rutland Street School - Terry’s initially poor experience of education was redeemed years later when he returned to take a first class honours diploma for Social Entrepreneurs.

He has been running the Project himself for the last few years, archiving, interviewing locals and writing up and compiling material, the latest being his Monto book.

"Monto derived its name from Montgomery Street, now Foley Street, which runs parallel to the lower end of Talbot Street on the way to what was Amiens Street Railway Station (now Connolly Station).

But the heart of Monto was Mecklenburgh Street Lower (now Railway Street) and the surrounding lanes and alleyways - many of which are gone and replaced by flat complexes such as Liberty House Flats," he explains.

He says the name changes, which were many, "were deliberate so as to confuse newcomers." In fact so popular was Monto amongst the British soldiers and sailors that it rated a mention in 1903 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica! However one ironic oversight, (or maybe it was a cheeky planner’s decision,) was the renaming of Little Martin’s Lane to Beaver Street!

As Fagan, explains: "The exact origins of the emergence of the infamous ‘Madams’ who ran the brothels is unknown but some of the more famous ones are listed in Thoms Directory in 1860 as owners of properties in the district. Its proximity to British Army barracks in Portland Row and of course the docks - which was the life- blood of the area, were key factors to its evolution."

In its ‘heyday’ between 1860 and 1900, Fagan tells how anything up to 1,600 prostitutes were working in Monto at any one time. All classes of people were catered for - wealthy professionals and indeed the odd royal, namely Edward VII, would have been entertained in downstairs parlour rooms with music and wine in the more plush Georgian residencies; while gents from the lower orders either utilised the laneways or the famous ‘Kips’ - where the girls bedded down for sleep during the day.

Many of the elderly men and women, Fagan interviewed tell of how the ‘Madams’ were despised by the uninvolved locals - for exploiting those they refer to as the ‘poor unfortunate girls’ - the vast majority of whom were country girls lured into the profession with the promise of initial housework.

The stories tell of how the Madams would keep them in debt, rent them the latest fashions and ditch them out onto the street when they became pregnant or as Fagan describes it - "when the effects of their lifestyle began to show… but they would always return at Christmas and give out presents to the children, many of whom were illegitimate, known as the ‘Monto Babies’."

A lot of the women suffered sexually transmitted diseases and according to Terry Fagan, were often put out of their misery in the Westmoreland Lock Hospital, Townsend Street; the favoured method of euthanasia was 'smotheration'.

The book also details how Monto was a hive of IRA activity: in particular during the war of Independence. "Phil Shanahan’s pub was the venue for an execution ordered by Collins on the February 5, 1921 when John 'Shankers' Ryan, a Dublin Castle spy and sister of a Madam - Becky Cooper, was shot," Fagan tells.

The area had several safe-houses for the flying columns and local paperboys acted as intelligence sources, keeping tabs on the movements of the British.

But the decline of Monto wasn’t far off. The onset of the 1920s saw the emergence of the Legion of Mary and the rein of the evangelical civil servant Frank Duff who led an all out crusade to flush out the remaining Madams and bring religion to the girls of Monto.

Duff’s success and the consequences of bringing religion to Monto and its people - the Magdalen asylums, the reform schools etc., will be the subject of Terry Fagan’s next project.

"Monto - Madams, Murder and Black Coddle" is published by Printwell and is available in Easons, priced £5.00.

This article by Martin Barry first appeared in the Dublin People.

[mikemac]

If you're interested in Dublin history you might have heard of Pat Liddy. He writes books and does walking tours.
I've never done a walking tour but his books are good.

Back around 2004 he had a show on Newstalk called Hidden Dublin, it wasn't a national station then.
Himself and Declan Carty (missed from Newstalk!) would pick an area and do a podcast on it.
I've all of them, 66 in all, about 22 hours of history to get your fix!

Don't think they can be downloaded anymore
I remember I was asked to upload them before but I'm technically useless.
If you know an upload site send give a link and I'll see what I can do

[CDfm]

Originally Posted by feelingstressed

If you're interested in Dublin history you might have heard of Pat Liddy. He writes books and does walking tours.
I've never done a walking tour but his books are good.

What can you do


I was expecting you to say something about Irish Bathouses in a derogatory way when they really had theraputic properties for gout and the like.

In the mid-nineteenth century a new kind of Turkish bath was pioneered in Ireland, one that on the Continent is still called the ‘Roman-Irish bath’

Like this Emporium of Steam in Bray




http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/volume15/issue6/news/?id=114148


You might even have taken the Harcourt Street Line -all stations to Bray if you were attending a Ball

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harcour...ay_line#Trivia

"The Waxies' Dargle" is a traditional Irish folk song about an annual outing to the Dargle by Bray by Dublin candlemakers (waxies). It is a popular pub song in Ireland.




Was Harcourt Street the last stop in 1900



You had a great rail system probably comparable or better service wise than todays.

To visit the crash

http://dublintraincrash.net/

[mikemac]

Speaking of transport, of course there was a lot illiteracy back then


Yes, got this from the census site.
Symbols were used so people who could not read could easily identify their tram

The census website realy is quite good.
http://www.census.nationalarchives.i...lin/index.html



Walking to work every morning I always passed Alderborough House.
It was fenced off though you'd see the security guard climb over, it was quite a feat on a wet day!
Just up the road from the Monto on Portland Row

Realy overlooked building and pretty much in the city centre



Great thread here
http://www.archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=7878

Aldborough House was the last Great House to be built in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century,

It was uninhabited from 1802 to 1813, when Prof Von Feinagle leased it and opened it as a school. he built an addition to the house including large classrooms and a Chapel. He died in 1820 and by 1830 it had been closed altogether as a school.

Nothing has come to my notice of the house after the school closed until the outbreak of the Crimean War when it was used as Barracks on acquisition of the Government, and now it is the Stores Department of the Post Office.

That quote is pretty old, the IMRO were going to take it over but backed out, then I heard rumours of a nursing home.
I'm not sure of the current status and I hope it's not let to rot.
But if you check the Archiseek thread, the interior is in pretty good condition. It could definilty be renovated if some State quango wanted to take it over.

Became a barracks for 300 men just up from the Monto so here are the clients!

Professor Von Feinagle was an interesting charecther and had an alternative method of eduction and involving testing your memory I believe. This became the Feinaglian Institute, I'll see what else I can get on him. He was an innovator of his day

[CDfm]

Take me back to Monto
Fr



Massage parlours? Escort agencies? The sex industry is nothing new in Dublin – once upon a time, in one small part of the city, there were over 1,500 “poor, unfortunate girls” servicing clients (including King Edward and James Joyce) and being terrorised by madams. Until, that is, the Legion Of Mary came along. Billy Scanlan investigates the history of the battle for the soul of the city’s once infamous red-light district

From Hot Press -Wow - how times changed - it could have been Stringfellows.

And what about O'Connell Street -well 50% of it was blown up in 1916 -but here is an architectural snippet.

Feelingstressed will be pleased to see he could have a relaxing bath in Hammams Hotel in Upper O'Connell Street

Graham Lemon and Company opened the Confectioners’ Hall at 49 Lower Sackville Street (now Lower O’Connell Street) in 1842. Early 20th century tiling and signage is still present at first floor level, with some letters missing and others hanging loosely, spelling out “E CONFECTIONERS HAL”. The ground floor unit is currently occupied by Foot Locker, with large signage spanning the shop front and projecting to either side.
Lemon’s is described in Ulysses, at the beginning of the Lestrygonians passage, as a stop-off on the thoroughfare for schoolchildren and Leopold Bloom:

Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugarsticky girl shovelling scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne, sucking red jujubes white.

A sombre Y.M.C.A young man, watchful among the warm sweet fumes of Graham Lemon’s, placed a throwaway in a hand of Mr. Bloom.


The shop, along with Lemon’s factory on Millmount Avenue in Drumcondra, appears in the press only during a strike (Irish Times 1960), when a factory worker dies after being pulled into a machine by his coat (Irish Times, 1932), and in connection with minor break-ins, suggesting that its significance in the city’s food history is as a childhood memory or guilty pleasure rather than as a major industry. It also features in memoirs of growing up in Dublin.
In once such personal account of Sackville Street, F.W. Gumley recalls: “But perhaps the most interesting windows of all particularly at Christmas time was that of Lemon’s sweet and confectionery shop. Every year during the festive season one of the two windows displayed an attractive winter scene.”
Brady and Simms name Lemon’s when describing the street’s distinctive character, “strongly retail with a considerable presence of clothing stores” with food outlets such as the restaurants of the Metropole Hotel and the Dublin Bread Company.
Within the same area, Mary Street is noted for having numerous greengrocers and the Bewley and Draper mineral water company, while Upper O’Connell Street also featured large premises for Thwaites Mineral Water and Gilbey’s bottling stores. Shaw lists confectioners at number 45 and 23 Lower Sackville Street, as well as two tea merchants across the road, but food and drink make up a small proportion of the area’s retailers. By 1999, Goad’s Retail Map of Dublin North shows only fast food outlets selling food or drink.
O’Connell Street’s prime rents, coupled with a culture of shopping primarily in supermarkets or stopping in convenience stores for snacks, does not lend itself to supporting an expansive sweet shop. The lure of the window display may also be diminished, with broadcast, internet, print and billboard advertising ensuring that multinational confectionary brands are familiar to children, and convenience stores providing a ready supply of these heavily-promoted names.
Lemon’s opened on Sackville Street after the Gardiner Estate (for which Sackville Street was, according to Christine Casey, the showpiece) had begun to go into decline, beginning in the 1840s and continuing through the century, but in spite of losing the fashionable set to the suburbs, the address maintained a strong presence as a retail core into the 20th century.
The company last showed profits in 1977, and following an attempt by the State to rescue Lemon’s, they were bought out in 1984 and the Confectioners’ Hall closed.
While Dublin has very few examples of retained signage, O’Connell Street is at a significant disadvantage, given that over half of the street was destroyed in 1916 during the Easter Rising, with further destruction during the Civil War. O’Connell Street has only one other example today, and it is carried through a takeover rather than a complete change: the Bank of Ireland branch at 6 Lower O’Connell Street retains the cut stone lettering of Hibernia Bank (taken over in 1958). Perhaps more similar in spirit to the Confectioners’ Hall sign, the Hammam Buildings at 11-12 Upper O’Connell Street provides a nod in name to its previous existence as the Hammam Hotel and Turkish Baths, destroyed in 1922 during the Civil War.

The Confectioners’ Hall stands in contrast to the contemporary signage of the ground-floor premises and the adjoining businesses - there is no danger of confusion between the signage and the current use, and rather than communicating per its original purpose, the signage provides a small historical footnote in plain sight for those who look above the present shop fronts.

http://www.architecturefoundation.ie...-lisa-cassidy/

The Confectioners Hall mentioned here is now FootLocker O'Connell Street

[CDfm]

These Women are not from Monto they are from Carlow

The Catholic Church was an important social, cultural, and political institution and its views and its values, expressed by a united hierarchy, informed all levels of Catholic experience. The influence of the numerous religious orders was particularly strong. The number of nuns, for example, which had already greatly increased during the earlier nineteenth century, more than doubled in this period, from 3,700 in 1870 to 8,000 by 1900. Held in high regard by the people generally, the clergy were in a strong position to influence the younger generation through their work in schools. Nuns and brothers played an important role in teaching Catholic social and moral values. Their emphasis on the traditional place of women in family life and on sexual modesty, if not repression, ensured that those who stepped beyond the boundaries of a rigid moral code were condemned by the whole community

http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/Ireland_re...ture_1870-1914

Women Selling Flowers under Nelsons Pillar



Grafton St was also a popular standing ground for prostitutes and people who did not want to become nuns

http://caffettino.over-blog.com/article-28413894.html

Not everyone was a nun or lived in a tenement.

[CDfm]

Now I want to throw another spanner into the works here

This fella is not dressed to visit a convent - but how does he describe brothels

That summer was a very important one in Joyce's life. For some time he had been having "impure" thoughts and feelings and decided finally to throw off the hypocrisy of the church. He began visiting brothels in Dublin, experimenting with his awakening sexuality. This was the real point in which he turned away from the Catholic church. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce makes this statement, roughly equating to this point in his life:

https://www.users.muohio.edu/shermal...000/smith.html

Queen Victoria also came here on holiday in 1900



http://www.achart.ca/hibernian/review.html


http://www.chaptersofdublin.com/book...l/victoria.htm



On 30 November 1900 Oscar Wildes wallpaper decided it had enough of him.

Were there male prostitutes in Dublin too???????

[CDfm]

Here is a link for prostitution arrests 1870 -1900

If anything the figures show a large decline in the numbers of arrests and convictions. Now was that nun related or economic opportunity related.

http://books.google.ie/books?id=d5DY...vahCTKjtKoSy0g

[pjproby]

As i heard it at least one third of the British army worldwide were suffering from std at one time in the 19th century. The British army apparently believed that the majority of the problem originated in Dublin.
The Lock Hospital was set up to deal with both the soldiers and the prostitutes
eventually restricting itself to the women only
http://books.google.com/books?id=cGQ...ospital+dublin

There is a song about the hospital but i cannot find a you tube version.

[CDfm]

So they sent for the nuns



So what about the sexual and social lives of ordinary people.

Pubs, dances, what did they do?

And what happened to women who did not conform?

[Spanish Eyes]

Thanks CD and PJ, the links to those books you gave will have me awake all night, and it's work tomorrow.......

Fascinating.

[CDfm]

Here are some of the distractions that were available around 1900 - James Joyce started on of Irelands firstb Cinema's in 1909 but that failed.





The Tivoli Theatre c 1900



Bewleys

Brogan's Bar is located at the centre of Dublin's main cultural and historical area on Dame Street. There has been a pub on these premises since 1747 making Brogan's one of the oldest pubs in the city. Past guests here have included Daniel O'Connell, Michael Collins and the Invincibles. On display at Brogans are Guinness memorabilia and classic advertisements from days gone by.



The Palace Bar was established in 1843 and is therefore one of the oldest pubs in Dublin still in business today. For a long time it was the favourite haunt of the staff of The Irish Times, under leadership of editor-in-chief Smylie. Aside from appealing to journalist, The palce Bar was also very poular with Irish writers and poets living in Dublin in the early 1900's. the presence of people like W.B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O'Brien is still clearly felt today. The many photographs and drawings in the bar immortalise an illustrious past.

http://www.discoverdublin.ie/musicalpubcrawl_pubs.html

[pjproby]

In 1846 Thomas Willis published this book on living conditions in St Michan's parish in Dublin's north inner city.
It is truly an appalling vista he paints.

http://books.google.com/books?id=C15...r&dq=willis&ei