Ireland and the Industrial Revolution: The impact of the industrial revolution on Irish industry, 1801-1922

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Ireland and the Industrial Revolution

What happened to Irish industry during and after the industrial revolution? This book is largely animated by this question, providing a broad outline of the major industries which developed in Ireland between 1801 and 1921. It provides a new synthesis of work published in Irish industrial history, in a format which facilitates a deeper analysis of the performance of the major industries in Ireland in a wider UK context, which exploits previously unused industrial statistics. In his fascinating monograph, Bielenberg discusses the industrialisation of the Irish linen industry, shipbuilding and engineering, particularly in east Ulster, the food and drink sector which was focused more in the south of Ireland, in addition to the construction industry and its links to the wider economy. This collectively provides a more coherent overview of the industrial sector’s contribution to the Irish economy during the period of the Union. The book illustrates that certain industries experienced development in Ireland despite strong British competition; by the twentieth century Ireland was a net exporter of textiles and had become a major centre of world shipbuilding. However, as in other parts of Europe, industrial development was highly concentrated geographically. Moreover, the lack of mineral resources prevented Ireland following the same developmental paths as England, Scotland and Wales. This factor makes Ireland something of an anomaly within the economic and social history of the United Kingdom in this period. This book will be of interest to academics in economic history, Irish history, Irish economic and social history, Irish studies, Irish business history, Irish and British industrial historians and industrial archaeologists, as well as those teaching and researching the British industrial revolution. Andy Bielenberg is a statutory lecturer in economic history at the Department of History, University College Cork, specializing in Irish economic and social history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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Ireland and the Industrial Revolution


The impact of the industrial revolution on Irish industry, 1801–1922

Andy Bielenberg


First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

© 2009 Andy Bielenberg All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bielenberg, Andy, 1959Ireland and the industrial revolution : the impact of the industrial revolution on Irish industry, 1801-1922 / Andy Bielenberg. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Industrial revolution–Ireland. 2. Ireland–Economic conditions. I. Title. HC257.I6B54 2009 338.09415'09034–dc22 2008043736 ISBN 0-203-87933-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 978-0-415-44846-8 (hbk) ISBN 978-0-203-87933-7 (ebk)

Downloaded by [INFLIBNET Centre] at 05:59 30 August 2012 In memory of my mother, Charlotte



Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction

xi xiii 1

PART I

The linen industry: the lead sector in the industrialisation of Ulster 1

9

The evolution of the linen industry prior to mechanisation, 1700–1825

11

2

Transition: the first generation of wet spinners, 1825–50

20

3

The high watermark of the Ulster linen and clothing industry, 1850–1914

32

PART II

Southern comfort: the food, drink and tobacco industries

53

4

The food-processing industries

55

5

Drink and tobacco

77

PART III

Missing links? Engineering, shipbuilding and the dearth of mineral wealth

105

6

The mining and engineering industries

107

7

Shipbuilding: an exception to the rule?

128

x

Contents


PART IV

Construction and the Irish economy

141

8

The timber trade and the Irish building industry

143

Conclusion

175

Appendices Notes Bibliography Index

181 200 242 265


Illustrations

Figures 3.1 5.1 6.1 7.1 8.1

Net flax supply to the Irish linen industry, 1850–1921 Beer produced in Ireland, 1856–1909 (gallons) Belfast machine exports, 1859–1921 Tonnage launched in Ireland, 1855–1920 Irish timber imports, 1801–1921 (loads)

49 82 125 135 150

Tables 1.1 2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 6.3

7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4

Irish linen exports, 1827 Estimate of number of linen weavers in Ireland, 1841–1861 Spindles and powerlooms in the European linen industry in 1875 Linen mills in Ireland, 1839–1914 Horse power used in the United Kingdom textile industry in 1870 Vertically integrated firms in the Irish industry in 1913 Number of pigs purchased by Irish bacon curers (dead and alive) Total Guinness sales in the calendar years 1886–1921 Spirit production in Great Britain and all Ireland, 1920–1926 Value and share of Irish portion of United Kingdom mineral produce as valued at quarries and mines, 1884–1913 The iron and metal working trades in 1841 Employment and horse power in foundries, machinery works and all metal workshops, etc. in factory returns for the metal trades in 1871 Vessels built in Irish ports, 1814–1826 Net tonnage of sailing and steam vessels launched in Ireland by port, 1866–1886 Shipbuilding and repair yards in Ireland in 1871 Employment breakdown in Harland and Wolff, 1907–1916

15 30 33 34 35 38 58 86 97 112 114

122 129 130 131 136

xii

Illustrations


7.5

Five year averages of tonnage launched in Ireland and the United Kingdom, 1815–1919 8.1 Gross stock of domestic reproducible fixed assets in 1850 and average annual capital formation by type of asset 1851–60 in Ireland 8.2 Inhabited dwellings in Ireland and houses being built in each census year and annual average increase per decade, 1821–1841 8.3 The total number of dwellings in each category, 1841–61 8.4 Number of additional first- and second-class houses added to census of 1851 compared to 1841 8.5 Census returns for building craftsmen 1831–1861 8.6 Additions to first- and second-class houses returned between census years 8.7 Number of houses in the course of construction at each census, 1821–1911 8.8 Timber imports in five-year averages 8.9 Materials quarried in Ireland 8.10 Number of workshops, etc. connected with building and total employment in 1870 8.11 Return of employment in factories and workshops connected with construction in 1907. C.1 Industrial employment in Ireland as returned in each census, 1841–1911

139

147 152 154 156 159 161 164 166 168 172 173 180


Acknowledgements

This book has been many years in the making. My interest in the topic began during undergraduate days many years ago in University College Cork, attending the lectures of the late John O’Brien in Irish economic history. I went on to undertake an M.Litt. in Trinity College Dublin under the capable supervision of David Dickson on industry in Cork in the nineteenth century and he has been supportive since. Research and the foundations for part of this book started while undertaking a PhD on the topic in the Economic History Department at the London School of Economics. I would like to thank Dudley Baines who supervised this and provided important criticism and patient direction. His best advice was to try and explain what happened in Ireland during the industrial revolution rather than what did not happen, which is how I first attempted to approach the subject with very obvious difficulties. I think this has influenced the shape of the book. In the LSE, I would also like to thank Edward Hunt, Bill Kennedy and Terry Gourvish. The Institute of Irish Studies in Belfast provided a brief and enjoyable pit stop to move the thesis onwards, with Liam Kennedy and the late David Johnson providing some useful criticism at this point, while Des McCabe provided accommodation on trips to Belfast. David Dickson opened up a connection with the Irish distilling industry, which resulted in a brief and enjoyable diversion to research and write the history of Locke’s distillery in Kilbeggan, which funded the middle years of the thesis. I wish to thank Senia Paseta for her valuable advice on the final draft of the thesis. From this phase of the project I would like to thank John Kelleher, Pat O’Mahony, Edward Lahiff, Brian Doran, Tom O’Connell and Teresa Moriarty. Moving back south to Cork (where I have lived since), Joe Lee provided a temporary contract in the Department of History in UCC in the early 1990s, which eventually became a permanent job. This ultimately facilitated the second and much slower phase of the book’s evolution as teaching, research in other areas and the business of life created other priorities. The second phase of this project involved more detailed work on specific industries, notably the collection of more comprehensive production statistics. Members of the Historical National Accounts Group for Ireland have provided invaluable criticism throughout this phase, which has helped to somewhat


xiv Acknowledgements improve the quality of my methodology and arguments; in alphabetical order these include Louis Cullen, David Dickson, Frank Geary, Wally Johnson Kieran Kennedy, Liam Kennedy, Mick Lucey, Cormac Ó Gráda, Kevin O’Rourke, Peter Solar and Tom Stark among others. Librarians and archivists have provided much support, notably all the staff at the Boole Library in UCC where I have been one of the resident pests. Brian Donnelly at the National Archives in Dublin (who made available a range of business records) deserves special mention. Also staff of the National Library, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Cork City Library, the CSO library at Mahon, Cork, Trinity College Dublin, Queen’s University Belfast, London School of Economics and the British Library. I would also like to thank Lilliput Press for permission to use revised chapters in the flour milling and distilling sections, the Irish Economic and Social History Society for permission to use the revised section on tobacco and Routledge for a revised version of the section on brewing. There are a host of others I would like to thank. Colin Rynne for his shared interest and knowledge in industrial history, John McHugh for both his research on the milling project and his sceptical views on many aspects of Irish economic history in the era before the Celtic Tiger, Richard Harrison for knowledge of Quakers, and all my colleagues in the Department of History here in UCC. I would also like to thank the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Science in NUI Cork for financial support for researching a number of sections of this book, and for providing a number of sabbaticals which were absolutely critical in bringing the whole project to the finishing line. For reading chapter drafts I would like to thank John Cockerill, Bill Mulligan, Brenda Collins, Richard Harrison, Peter Solar, Liam Kennedy, and Edward Lahiff. Although all went well beyond the call of duty in tackling my wayward prose, Edward was my most waspish critic. Finally, I must thank all my extended family from my aunts in London who put me up in the early stages of the thesis in Stockwell and Covent Garden respectively. When completing the thesis my oldest children (Becky and Leo, who were then small infants) delighted in scribbling all over my books on Irish industrial history. As I finish this book many years later, my two youngest (Ben and Rosa) have continued this wretched practice. I would like to thank my partner Linda for cheerfully living through a number of chapters of Irish industrial history. She found my chapter on shipbuilding had a particularly pleasant somnolent effect.


Introduction

The Irish industrial sector has not greatly preoccupied those writing the classic works on the British industrial revolution. Given the different developmental path of most of Ireland, compared to Great Britain there were many good reasons for leaving Ireland out.1 This book argues that Ireland’s industrial history can add to our understanding of the wider global influences of the British industrial revolution. Ireland’s close proximity to Britain and it’s increasing integration into the wider United Kingdom economy from the early nineteenth century, provides an early case study of the affects of British competition, notably in textiles. From a different perspective, Ireland became the leading centre of the linen industry globally, while the largest shipyard and brewery in the world by the end of the nineteenth century were in Ireland, not Britain. Such companies were major stake holders in the wider process of industrialisation within the United Kingdom. The industrial revolution impacted on Irish society in many other ways. The communications revolution, for example in steam navigation, railways, postal services and newspaper production, altered trading relationships facilitating the greater movement of people, information and ideas. Its impact on the Irish economy created opportunities for increasing Irish agricultural commodity exports to meet the rising demand for food in Britain. In turn it altered patterns of consumption, accelerating the adoption of British fashions in clothing at the expense of local traditions. By 1885, the Irish footwear industry for example supplied no more than 25 per cent of the Irish market because of competition from cheap factory produced footwear made largely in Northampton, Stafford, Leeds and Leicester.2 An expansion of the volume of industrial commodity imports between 1801 and 1921 created strong competition for Irish manufacturers. While some Irish industries and traditional crafts contracted or vanished as a consequence of this rising tide of textiles, clothing, pottery and hardware from the British industrial districts, others proved more resilient, successfully adapting the new technologies pioneered in Britain and elsewhere. Through some important studies, we are now beginning to get a glimpse of some of the industrial communities that emerged in Ireland in this period,3 but we understand less about the economic history of the industries they worked in. This book provides a general history of the

2

Introduction


more dynamic elements of the industrial economy of Ireland between 1801 and 1922. Irish nationalists have historically had a negative view of the impact of British industry and industrial policy on Ireland during the Union. George O’Brien, Ireland’s leading economic historian in the inter-war years, neatly summarised official nationalist thinking at this somewhat fraught point in Anglo-Irish relations: The history of Ireland exhibits the most remarkable example of industrial repression of one nation by another. The policy of the British parliament throughout the 18th century aimed at the suppression of Irish manufactures, with the result that, with the exception of the linen and provision trades, Ireland was practically destitute of industry in the age of the industrial revolution.4 O’Brien had essentially produced a distilled version of views which had gathered momentum during the nineteenth century. Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal Association went to great lengths to demonstrate the perceived links between the implementation of free trade following the Act of Union and the decline of a host of Irish trades and industries.5 This position was reiterated by a number of writers, including Behan, who argued in 1881 that ‘ … the English government did deliberately in both a direct and an indirect way destroy our manufactures’.6 In the same year Blackburn bluntly asserted that ‘the impetus which the Union was to give to the trade and manufactures of the country, culminated in famine’.7 For many nationalists of this era, and indeed for some still today, the sad story of Irish industrial history provides strong proof of the malign impact of British mercantilism in the eighteenth century, and free trade in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Across the border in Northern Ireland, in contrast, by the 1930s Unionists looked back nostalgically at the golden era of industrialisation and free trade (then drawing rapidly to a close) when Ulster linen and Belfast ships were recognised as global industry leaders. Industrial development in the nineteenth century had distinguished them from the rest of the island, and more than anything else, was seen as a proud manifestation of their British identity. Unionists thereafter tended to view Irish industrial history from an east Ulster perspective; Green’s pioneering study of the industrial revolution in the Lagan valley and McCutcheon’s study of Irish industrial archaeology only concerned themselves with the six counties of Northern Ireland.8 This occlusion of the rest of the island placed the east Ulster experience firmly in the British fold and underwrote a version of Irish economic history in which a form of economic partition had taken place long before the 1920s. So essentially, two very different accounts of Ireland’s industrial history have emerged between unionism and nationalism, the two dominant ideologies on the island since the nineteenth century. O’Brien’s pessimistic analysis gained widespread acceptance in the south of Ireland until the publication of


Introduction

3

Cullen’s revisionist survey of Irish economic history in 1972 provided a powerful antidote. Cullen was the first to dispute that de-industrialisation occurred prior to the famine, arguing that decline was only significant within the textile sector.9 Part of his evidence for this claim is a comparison of the 1831 and 1841 census which he claims demonstrates some growth in employment in a number of industries. This drew strong criticism from Mokyr who argued that the occupational census data for these years are incompatible. Instead Mokyr compares some very broad occupational categories between the 1821 and 1841 census and concludes from this that de-industrialisation was widespread and not confined to textiles.10 The evidence for industrial decline or growth in the pre-famine period has predominantly hinged on the numbers engaged in manufacturing in the census years between 1821 and 1841. This evidence has not, however, been conclusive as the occupational data is not strictly compatible between each year. Using an alternative approach (exploiting a wider range of statistical evidence in a number of industries), Bielenberg and Geary have concluded that Irish industry experienced growth in absolute terms between the Union and the Great Famine.11 This and a series of articles by Geary generally provide support for Cullen’s more optimistic interpretation of Irish industrial development down to the Famine at least.12 Less work has been done on the period between 1850 and 1920, although a number of studies dedicated to specific industries, firms or regions have been undertaken.13 Some excellent case studies have been undertaken on some of Ireland’s best known industrial firms, but we still know relatively little about most Irish industrial companies in this period despite the survival of significant collections of industrial business records in Dublin, Belfast and Cork in particular.14 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the agricultural community provided the principal source of demand for many industrial commodities and agriculture provided many of the raw material inputs for most Irish industries. Flax was grown and spun extensively in the northern half of the country, providing yarn for linen manufacture, Ireland’s premier industry, which accounted for over 56 per cent of total Irish exports by 1796–97. Both linen and to a lesser extent woollen goods were manufactured largely by rural households, often connected with agriculture. It was only in finishing and bleaching that mechanisation and the adoption of chemical processes got under way during the eighteenth century.15 Industries dependent on foreign trade (like sugar-baking) or imported coal (like glass) were clustered in the port cities, which also provided the largest markets for consumer goods (like silk, furniture or carriages) and the exit point for exported manufactures (like linen or provisions). Concentrations of industrial activity developed along the rivers in proximity to these ports, providing the requisite energy to drive iron works, paper, textile and corn mills. In the ports, manufacturers and processors (who were often merchants) also had access to superior credit facilities, particularly in Dublin and Cork. By the end of the eighteenth century, small-scale artisan workshops with low levels of fixed capital investment still predominated in most production processes.16


4

Introduction

Dublin emerged as an important centre for textile printing and finishing during the eighteenth century. By 1760, there were numerous linen printing yards on the rivers around the city. Many of these yards also handled cotton by the end of the eighteenth century. Art historians now acknowledge that Dublin at this time was second only to London (and ahead of Paris) as a centre of innovation in printing textiles using copper plates. Dublin and its immediate hinterland accounted for eight of the 23 printing and finishing works in Ireland in 1800, and these were among the largest in the country.17 Dublin also remained the chief centre of manufacture and distribution in the Irish market for a host of luxury goods produced by urban artisans including items of dress, furniture, silver and tobacco, but was also the largest centre for industries like brewing, distilling, construction, paper, printing books and newspapers.18 In the nineteenth century, Dublin was eclipsed by Belfast as the major industrial city, and as a result of this industrial development it became the largest urban centre, and the largest port in Ireland. There is a general consensus within the historiography that the second half of the eighteenth century was a period of industrial growth. O’Malley argues that by 1800, Ireland had a fairly well-developed industrial sector by the standards of time, compared with all European countries except Great Britain.19 Even the Irish cotton industry which utilised the new technologies pioneered in the British cotton industry was more advanced than most European countries (other than Britain) by end of the eighteenth century.20 The view that things went downhill thereafter has not entirely receded in popular thinking. Moreover, among academics both past and present, the pessimistic appraisal of Irish industrial history in this period has a respectable lineage, which is by no means confined to nationalists. Green concluded: The repeal of the Union duties [in 1824] followed by the economic crisis of 1826 marks the stage at which Union became integration. This meant that the Irish economy was now forced back onto those kinds of activity for which it was endowed by nature or in which it had developed some special skill. There was precious little of the latter other than the linen industry. It was a matter then of concentrating on the production of foodstuffs to satisfy the English market.21 O’Malley has cogently argued the pessimist position suggesting that the main explanations for pervasive industrial decline in the nineteenth century were mainly connected with the advantages of large-scale and centralised production... [in Great Britain in particular]... from the early stages of mechanisation, as well as proximity to large markets. These factors generally worked against Irish industry, except in the north-east, and in favour of competitors elsewhere. The experience of Irish industry under the union may be regarded as an example of the fact that, even given quite favourable local conditions, free market forces can by no means be

Introduction

5


relied on to generate industrial development, or even to sustain existing employment, in a relatively late-developing economy in close competition with more advanced industrial countries.22 The issue of industrial development and decline had particular resonance in the Republic of Ireland in the early 1980s when O’Malley was writing, as the recession which followed the oil crisis of 1979 deepened and Irish industrial development based largely on foreign direct investment stalled, while unemployment and emigration increased to new heights in the 1980s. This was also a grim decade for the Northern Irish economy, notably its declining industrial sector. This period witnessed the birth of an increasingly circumspect view of the region’s industrial history. In the early 1990s, Ollerenshaw challenged conventional thinking on the ability and dynamism of Ulster linen entrepreneurs, highlighting a weakness in research and development, poor advertising and marketing, poor production planning, design and cost accounting techniques and too much emphasis on craftwork as opposed to the application of new technologies. In all these, he argued, the captains of Ulster industry could have performed much better and more focus needs to be given to these shortcomings.23 From an entirely different perspective, economic sociologist and world systems theorist,O’Hearn has gone so far as to argue that the linen industry ‘was semi-peripheral and dependent and, therefore, insufficient to induce development of the broader regional economy’.24 This conclusion is somewhat at odds with historical perceptions of the impact of the industry in Ulster in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, or Whelan’s contention that linen had grown ‘to be among the world’s leading half dozen industries by 1800’.25 O’Hearn’s conclusion with regard to the cotton industry, which argues that Irish industrial interests in this sphere (and more generally) were subjugated to the industrial interests of the British world system, broadly echoes traditional nationalist sentiments.26 Proto-industrial theory has given rise to a greater level of debate in Irish industrial history than other theoretical perspectives. However, the focus of this work in an Irish context has tended to look more closely at the decline of domestic linen manufacture than how it contributed to the process of mechanisation.27 A problem with the Irish variant of this debate is that it depends heavily on the 1841 census, which provided the first good occupational data at a regional level.28 Unfortunately, the mechanisation of flax spinning had been under way for some years by 1841, reducing much of value of this source with regard to what it can tell us about pre-industrial domestic flax spinning. In general, the debate on proto-industrialisation has revealed relatively little about the dynamics of industrialisation, since it focused too narrowly on the Irish countryside, thereby ignoring the role of a host of other important influences. Relatively little work has been undertaken on the mechanisation of the linen industry from the 1820s,29 than the rise and fall of the Irish cotton industry,30 a much less important episode in Ireland’s industrial history.


6

Introduction

On the linen industry after the mid-nineteenth century there has been more emphasis by Ollerenshaw on the problems of the industry,31 while James excellent study of Ulster handloom weavers essentially focuses on a trade which was contracting from the mid-nineteenth century.32 Part I of this book provides a survey of the long-term development of linen manufacture in Ireland, with particular reference to the process of industrialisation in the nineteenth century, when linen became the lead sector in the industrialisation of east Ulster. Emphasis is placed in this survey on identifying the more dynamic elements in the industry’s development. Although the rapid growth of the Irish cotton industry marked the first tentative phase of industrialisation in east Ulster from the end of the eighteenth century, it became one of the early victims of British competition, and ultimately its meteoric rise and decline was not central to Ireland’s industrial history. The author has dealt with the Irish cotton and woollen industries sufficiently elsewhere, and they have not been included here.33 Linen dominated Irish textile history in this period more than the cotton industry did in Great Britain. Agriculture provided the raw materials for the next major group of industries after textiles and clothing; the food and drink sector, which are dealt with in Part II of the book. This included the trade in provisions (such as barrelled processed meats and butter) and malting and baking, in addition to the industries associated with leather, bone, candle and soap. The growth of commercial tillage farming from the mid-eighteenth century provided the raw materials for the extension of milling, brewing, and distilling, which were among the first to adopt many of the technologies pioneered in the British industrial sector even before the end of the eighteenth century. In contrast to the textile and clothing sector, these industries were more concentrated in the south of Ireland. Ireland was not as well endowed with raw materials, most notably coal, as in Great Britain. Part III of the book argues that this had a critical influence on the nature of Irish industrial development and placed Ireland at a major disadvantage to Britain in energy intensive industries. This was one of the reasons why the industrial sector in Ireland was significantly smaller. Kane, probably the best-informed contemporary observer of the condition of the Irish industrial sector in the mid-nineteenth century, isolated four major factors which had retarded Ireland’s industrial development down to the 1840s: these included poor communications, a lack of industrial raw materials, a lack of education and a want of capital.34 Some of these problems were overcome during the second half of the nineteenth century. The communications infrastructure was further developed, while education improved considerably, literacy levels rising from 47 per cent of the population in 1841 to 88 per cent in 1911.35 Lee has pointed out that recent research has not substantiated the once fashionable belief that lack of capital frustrated industrialisation.36 Jointstock companies and limited liability provided many investors with a convenient means to invest in Irish industry from the 1850s, while banks also facilitated industrialists with credit for viable business propositions.37 The lack


Introduction

7

of industrial raw materials in Ireland, however, could not be overcome. This simply prevented the development of an iron, steel and coal complex comparable to the major industrial zones in Britain and continental Europe. Part IV of the book deals with the construction industry, which has largely been ignored by industrial historians, despite the fact that it was one of the most important industries in terms of male employment. This chapter utilises timber imports as an indicator of construction activity throughout the period of the Union. The changing volume of construction through time depended on developments in the wider economy. From 1857, it is possible to break this down by the major ports, providing some indication of regional variations in construction activity. This provides an opportunity to assess the impact of industrialisation in east Ulster on the wider regional economy, compared to other parts of Ireland. A 32 county/all Ireland perspective has been adopted as the focus of this book, not for any political reasons, but because official statistics on industry in this period cover the whole island as a component of the UK, which makes it a better unit of analysis than the province of Ulster, the six counties which became Northern Ireland, or the 26 southern counties which became the Irish Free State. Moreover, the relationship of industrialists in Dublin and Cork in this period to Britain in terms of trade, technology, the implementation of the factory acts, and so on, was broadly similar to those located in Belfast. One of the problems in Irish industrial history in this period is that relatively little work has been done in collating, processing and analysing the substantial amount of official statistical evidence which was compiled annually on various Irish industries. In this book, and in some articles cited in the bibliography, a number of new statistical series have been generated by the author. These will provide a better framework for comparative analysis between Ireland and Great Britain, and more precise information on the timing of growth and decline trends across a wider spectrum of Irish industries.


Part I

The linen industry Downloaded by [INFLIBNET Centre] at 05:59 30 August 2012

The lead sector in the industrialisation of Ulster



1

The evolution of the linen industry prior to mechanisation, 1700–1825

Linen had already emerged as Ireland’s most important industry during the eighteenth century. This chapter will briefly trace the evolution of the industry in the pre-factory era, when some of the groundwork was laid for the subsequent industrial development of Ulster. In this period, new technologies were utilised for bleaching and finishing Irish linens, new trading frontiers were opened up and new systems of raising credit and marketing cloth were adopted. Linen at this point was used for a range of household furnishings and clothing right across the social spectrum from infants christening gowns to shrouds for the dead; from the coarse cloth worn by slaves in the West Indies and America to the more refined products demanded by the British and Irish gentry. Flax could also be used to make sailcloth, sacking and tents.1 The home market was clearly an important source of demand in the eighteenth century, although this is difficult to measure. It has also attracted considerably less attention than the dramatic expansion of exports, which rose from about 2 million yards in 1713, to over 47 million yards by 1796, when linen, flax and hemp accounted for over 56 per cent of the value of all Irish exports.2 It has been generally argued that the export orientation of the linen industry distinguished it from other Irish industries, as its early development was not dependent on the Irish market. Participation in extra-regional markets made it more resilient and dynamic. With the assistance of legislative support in the form of protective tariffs, Ulster linens were out-selling continental rivals on the London market by 1740. Duty-free access to the British market (the largest free-trade area in Europe and the fastest-growing market in the eighteenth century) was critical, according to Harte. In 1696, the English parliament enacted that Irish linens should enter the British market free of all duties, to reduce British dependence on foreign linens and encourage the settlement of foreign Protestants in Ulster. These advantages were further enhanced from 1705, when the Navigation Acts were modified to allow Irish linens to be exported to the colonies duty free. Harte argued that this official support in the mercantilist era enabled the Irish industry to compete in terms of cost and quality with the major continental linen producers, Germany and Holland.3 However, the importance of Irish linen in the British market should not be exaggerated. Irish linens had certainly not displaced European linens in the


12

The linen industry

English market by 1756, when 30,000,000 yards of linen were imported to England from the continent, compared to a mere 12,000,000 yards from Ireland, and a similar quantity from Scotland (while another 26,000,000 yards were produced in England).4 Despite the impressive growth of Irish exports in the first half of the eighteenth century, this indicates that Irish linen had by no means yet become the major supplier to the English market. While drapers and bleachers played an important role in establishing a local framework for finishing and marketing cloth, landlords also eagerly assisted the growth of the industry during the eighteenth century. They saw its potential for increasing their rental income and invested in improving transport infrastructure and provided market facilities and housing for spinners and weavers. The landlord interest also played an important role in the establishment of the Linen Board in 1711 as a vehicle to promote the industry. The growth of demand for linen in Britain and its colonies is generally seen as the vital dynamic factor which brought about an expansion of the industry in the Ulster countryside. By 1784, the province accounted for over four-fifths of Irish linen output, according to Gill’s estimation, which implied a total output for Ireland of 48,700,000 yards of linen cloth, of which 26,700,000 yards was accounted for by exports and the balance by home consumption.5 These estimates imply that Irish demand accounted for roughly 45 per cent of output, which if correct, would require some modification to the widespread notion that the industry depended largely on exports. A notable feature of the export trade at this point was that Ulster was beginning to dominate the supply of fine linen to the British and colonial markets, which had important implications for Ireland’s subsequent specialisation in this area.6 However, a large part of the Irish export trade was still coarse linen. Linen manufacture was particularly suited to Ireland, since most processes (with the exception of bleaching and finishing) were labour intensive. Labour was cheaper in Ireland than in Britain, which became an increasingly important factor in an industry which proved far more resistant to mechanisation than the cotton and woollen industries. The cultivation and spinning of flax, and the weaving of yarn into cloth were activities which were well suited to smallholders in Ulster, as they took up the slack periods in the farming calendar. By the mid-eighteenth century, yarn spinning was already undertaken outside Ulster, spreading westward into Connacht and also southwards into north Leinster and parts of Munster (notably Co. Cork), thus increasing the supply of yarn. Much of this was sold on for use in the weaving districts in Ulster, while some was retained for the manufacture of coarse linen manufacture as it began to become established in other parts of Ireland.7 While exports data provides evidence of dramatic expansion during the eighteenth century, the growth in native flax supplies (which accounted the bulk of raw material inputs) provides more comprehensive evidence of expansion the first quarter of the nineteenth century; the acreage sown increased from 80,000 in 1800 to 140,000 in 1825. Gray’s detailed work on the surviving household returns of the 1821 census for 15 parishes in Cavan (an important


The linen industry pre-mechanisation, 1700–1825

13

yarn-producing county) reveals that 52 per cent of all households in her sample had at least one resident flax spinner. This is not surprising since in the preceding quarter of a century Cavan had been one of the many counties in the northern half of the country where the number of spinners increased (in areas with poorer land) in response to the rising demand for linen yarn. Producers drew on family and kinship networks to expand the spinning workforce.8 The dramatic expansion of domestic linen production during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has spawned an Irish variant of the debate on proto-industrialisation. The development of the Ulster linen industry displays many characteristics highlighted by the proponents of the theory; it was predominantly rural and carried out by families who combined flax cultivation and spinning and or weaving with farming, while expansion was supposedly export driven.9 Almquist’s work on the 1841 census has demonstrated that there was a strong correlation in Ireland between rural domestic industry, population density, smaller holdings and a lower average age of marriage and higher fertility. Population in Ulster rose from about one million to two million people between 1760 and 1841, by which time the province had the highest population density in Ireland. Linen is certainly one of the stronger candidates to explain this. Almquist argues that the transition to full industrialisation occurred in east Ulster, which was precisely the area where preindustrial textile production had been most intense. Armagh, at the heart of the linen triangle, was the county with the highest population density.10 Trying to fit Ireland into the wider European debate on proto-industrialization has had the salutary effect of providing a greater focus on the contribution of rural households and women to economic development. Gray, in particular, has drawn attention to the importance of the exploitation of domestic female labour in facilitating the accumulation of capital further down the production chain, with the family unit of production thus contributing to the growth of capitalism within the industry.11 However, the proponents of proto-industrial theory have not provided many new insights on the dynamics of Irish industrialisation. Unfortunately, the first source which can be utilised for the entire island, the 1841 census (on which much of the Irish debate has focused), only provides a snapshot some years after the advent of factory-based spinning in the 1820s.12 Partially as a consequence, the Irish variant of proto-industrial theory has focused more on areas which ‘de-industrialised’ (or more correctly de-proto-industrialised). Collins, for example, has suggested that emigration from Ireland in the second quarter of the nineteenth century was greatest from regions where the linen industry experienced decline, notably counties Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, Cavan, Monaghan, Leitrim and Longford. These were the areas where, prior to the advent of wet spinning, households had been predominantly engaged in cultivation of flax and the spinning of yarn.13 The focus of proto-industrial theory on rural contexts and exports has failed to illuminate anything about the significance of cotton production, bleaching, merchant capital and foreign capital to the development of the industry.14 It has unfortunately downplayed


14

The linen industry

the significance of Irish market and the urban context of much of the industry.15 Many of the dynamics of nineteenth century industrialisation in Ulster were not to be found in the countryside. We know much more about Irish linen exports than those consumed on the Irish market. The expansion of trade within the Atlantic world opened up new markets for Irish linen in the Americas. Growing shipments of flaxseed from America in the middle decades of the eighteenth century complemented the growth of exports of linens from Ireland to North America.16 Truxes suggests that the relatively high and rising cost of labour in the American colonies compared to Ireland made good-quality Irish linens attractively priced in the American market. He identifies the bounties (on re-exports of Irish linen through British ports) after 1745 as the most important encouragement for the transatlantic trade, enabling Irish linen to displace German cloth. Re-exportation through Britain also provided more extensive and regular options for conveyance to the Americas in addition to a superior range of marketing and financial services. But the trade was sufficiently large to leave room for a direct trade from Irish ports, notably from Dublin, which was also the major retailing centre for the Irish market. While higher-quality goods (which could not avail of the bounty) could be ordered directly from Ireland (notably Dublin), the bulk of the trade in more inexpensive cloth was ordered through English merchants. The Caribbean trade likewise was routed through London since it was largely inexpensive cloth for slaves clothing.17 The returns relating to foreign exports and bounties in the 1820s indicate that by that decade at least the great bulk of Irish linen exported to trans-Atlantic markets were coarse cloths which qualified for the bounty.18 The rapid growth of Irish linen cloth exports during the eighteenth century peaked in 1796 when exports stood at almost 47,000,000 yards. The export trade stagnated in the following decades not surpassing that level until 1818.19 A significant part of the explanation for this slow-down was the advance that cotton cloth was making in competing with linens, while the Scottish were providing strong competition in coarser-quality linens. Table 1.1 reveals the extent of the Irish industry’s export markets and puts their relative significance in context. The industry’s reach could not be described as global. Its markets predominantly fell within the Atlantic world. Irish penetration of the continental European market was minimal. Far-off Latin America accounted for marginally more of the export trade than the whole of continental Europe. The United States and the West Indies collectively dominated the entire overseas trade and it appears that the bulk of the linens for these markets were coarse.20 Great Britain still remained by far the most important market, demand there having grown dramatically since the mid-eighteenth century, despite competition from British cottons. By the advent of wet spinning in the late 1820s, the Irish linen industry had achieved a dominant position in the British market.


15


Essentially, expanding demand within Great Britain and Ireland provided the core source of expansion for the Irish linen industry between the beginning of the eighteenth century and the mid-1820s, while trans-Atlantic demand from the Americas and the West Indies provided an additional source of trade. Continental Europe, Asia and Africa were of relatively minor consequence at this point for the Irish linen trade (see Table 1.1). If Gill’s rough estimate of Irish home consumption of linen cloth of 40 million yards in 1821 is credible,21 it implies that the Irish market at this point was the most significant Table 1.1 Irish linen exports, 1827 (yards) Country

Irish linen exports

British Northern Colonies West Indies United States Brazil Mexico Colombia Peru Chile Buenos Aires/Montevideo Subtotal

America

Russia Norway Germany Netherlands Portugal/Azores/Madeira Spain/Canaries Gibraltar Italy Malta Ionian Islands Turkey Guernsey/Jersey/Alderney/Man Subtotals

Total

Continental Europe Asia Africa Great Britain

385,679 4,556,141 6,796,325 664,709 387,885 47,700 64,426 13,257 16,549 12,932,671 540 1,386 1,870 4,866 239,121 35,910 794,143 8,849 7,994 650 273 5,650 1,101,252 41,889 11,200 32,093,988 46,181,000

Sources: Breakdown of foreign trade derived from BPP 1828, xix, Accounts relating to Hemp, Flax and Linens imported and exported in the year ending 5January 1828, including British re-exports from Ireland. Figure for total Irish exports from P. Solar, ‘The Irish Linen Trade, 1820–1852’, Textile History 21 (1990), p. 69. Figure for GB arrived at by deducting foreign trade (e.g. outside the UK) from total Irish exports.


16

The linen industry

source of demand for Irish linen. The important point here is that the Irish industry by the 1820s essentially depended on the dramatic expansion of United Kingdom demand, and to a far lesser extent on the growth of trade within the wider Atlantic world. Within the United Kingdom, the Irish market probably took a greater share of the cheap lower-quality linens, while conversely Great Britain took a higher share of the more expensive finer-quality cloth. But coarse-cloth production still accounted for a greater share of Irish output at this point. British consumption was ultimately therefore far more important in the rapid expansion of the Irish industry than all other centres of the export trade combined. In the second and third decades of the eighteenth century this was concentrated more in the middling qualities of cloth, at a point when cotton had not yet become fully established. The Irish also supplied smaller amounts of finer cloth, whilst they were losing out to Scottish producers in the market for coarser linens. Rapid population growth in Britain and rising incomes created conditions where consumers could take advantage of the superior laundering and fashionable qualities of linen for shirting, dresses and other clothing. Linen also retained its superior reputation for household goods such as table cloths, napkins and sheeting. By 1758 linen cloth and yarn made up 80 per cent of Irish total exports to Great Britain, and linen cloth remained the largest single item in Anglo-Irish trade throughout the eighteenth century, when the export trade witnessed the most spectacular phase of growth in the industry’s history.22 Despite the concentration of the linen labour force in the province of Ulster in the eighteenth century, the principal distribution centre of the industry for both exports and the domestic market for most of this period was Dublin. The northern linen drapers had insufficient resources to purchase cloth from weavers and wait for payment from buyers elsewhere in Ireland or in England. Instead they received immediate cash payment from the wealthy Dublin merchants who in turn sold the cloth in London. However, in the latter part of the eighteenth century a number of Ulster merchants began by-passing Dublin, dealing directly with London where credit facilities were superior to those offered in Dublin. Around 1810, London merchants were offering eight months’ credit while those in Dublin could only offer two.23 This enabled Ulster drapers and bleachers to draw on capital resources from outside the region to provide working capital for the industry. Drapers provided the initial link between independent weavers and the market.24 They purchased webs from the weavers at markets all over the country. In Ulster there were about 60 linen markets by the end of the eighteenth century. Crawford has demonstrated that the production and sale of cloth in brown linen markets by independent weavers remained the standard way in which linen entered the market right up to the 1820s. Even the large bleachers purchased their cloth through agents at the public markets. This was a major revision to Gill’s emphasis on an emerging trade in cloth organised by manufacturers employing weavers on a putting out basis.25



17

The commercial system which evolved in numerous markets around Ulster during the course of the eighteenth century facilitated those engaged in spinning and weaving to exchange flax and yarn, also enabling weavers to dispose of their unbleached cloth. Brownlow and Geary have highlighted the persistence of traditional production techniques and market mechanisms, with the industry following a ‘pre-capitalist organizational path’ until the development of wet spinning in the 1820s.26 However, in bleaching and finishing, the final stages of cloth production, expanding proto-firms played an increasingly important role in the development of the industry. Methods, technologies and organisation in bleaching, finishing and marketing cloth did not proceed along traditional lines, but were radically transformed between the first half of the eighteenth century and the 1820s, when bleachers purchased cloth directly (through their own buyers) at the linen markets, bleached and sold it directly to customers in Ireland, Britain or overseas. Acquisition of the latter stages of production and the primary stages of marketing significantly increased their wealth and importance within the industry.27 Chemicals speeded up the whole process; from the early 1760s Irish bleachers were among the first in Europe to use oil and vitriol. Ireland became the major overseas customers for vitriol (sulphuric acid) from Scotland, and the major importers, Greg and Cunningham, established the Vitriol Island Works in 1766–67 in Lisburn, so that it could be manufactured in Ireland. The adoption of water-powered machinery was already well under way by the mid-eighteenth century, including the use of rub boards, wash mills and beetling engines. In the 1730s, for example, wash mills for finishing linen were adapting the heavy wooden machinery that had been used in tuck mills in the Irish woollen industry. From the 1760s, there was a gradual increase in the size of bleachgreens and the trade became more concentrated in a smaller number of larger firms. The number of bleachgreens in Ulster fell from over 350 in 1787 to 130 by 1830 to just over 40 in the mid-1850s. By 1816, the brown-linen markets in the four north-eastern counties of Antrim, Down, Armagh, Derry and also much of Tyrone were supplying the heavy concentration of bleachers on the rivers Lagan, Bann and Callan.28 The installation of machinery required more capital. According to L’Amie a new class of capitalist bleachers was emerging at this time, with the resources to finance such outlays. From the mid-eighteenth century, the industry became more specialised and productivity rose. Richardsons’ works at Lisburn, for example, was one of the first to engage in bleaching and finishing all year. Previously all work in this department ceased entirely between the end of October and the middle of March. These changes led to a reduction of the costs incurred, which assisted the competitiveness of Irish linens, which had a good reputation on international markets for their standard of finish.29 Bleachers became the most dynamic actors in the industry between 1700 and the 1820s, utilising new technologies, intensifying capital investment and centralising the bleaching and finishing process. They aimed to turn over their capital twice in the year, thus contributing to the process of capital accumulation.


18

The linen industry

The consequent rise of these large firms within the bleaching and finishing sector meant that by the 1820s credit could now be advanced directly to major wholesale customers. One dealer in Irish linen noted in the mid-1820s that whilst thirty years earlier the major share of the linen business had been done in the Dublin Linen Hall, in the interim the bleachers had emerged as major exporters on their own account.30 Even before the advent of wet spinning in 1828, Belfast had already emerged as the commercial centre of the industry. In 1820 Belfast was the most important port for linen exports, but it still accounted for less than half of total Irish exports. However by 1830 it accounted for three-quarters of the Irish linen shipped to the two major English ports of Liverpool and London, which suggests the Irish trade became increasingly concentrated there in that decade even prior to the widespread adoption of wet spinning.31 The likely candidates for this would include the growing concentration of the trade in increasingly larger firms engaged in bleaching and finishing which had the financial capacity to underwrite the trade and were also able to exploit the local advent of joint stock banking. The spectacular expansion of Irish linen exports during the eighteenth century, which was undoubtedly the most dynamic feature of the Irish economy in this period, reached a peak in 1796 when exports were approaching 47,000,000 yards. The industry fluctuated at a lower level over the next decades and it was only in 1818 that a higher level of exports was recorded.32 One of the impediments to the growth of the linen industry in this period was the rapid expansion of the cotton industry in Britain and Ireland. Flax prices rose significantly relative to cotton wool during the first half of the nineteenth century placing downward pressure on piece rates for flax spinning and weaving contributing to emigration from Irish linen producing regions.33 Another problem the Irish linen industry faced in the mid-1820s was that it was hampered by archaic regulation. Irish yarn, for example, had to be reeled in a particular way and since foreign yarn and British-mill-spun yarn did not conform to these regulations, it could not be used in Ireland legally, thus inhibiting yarn imports,34 which might have helped to expand the production of coarse and medium cloth types. In the following years, these and a range of other regulations were repealed and the Linen Board, which had been responsible for enforcing them, was dissolved in 1828.35 This effectively marked the end of an era in the way the industry was organised and regulated on a number of fronts, while the advent of wet spinning necessarily brought new modes of organizing both spinning and weaving. Thereafter, the Irish market was opened up to competition from British mill spun yarn. Large manufacturers increasingly took control of the yarn supply, initially importing mill spun yarn from England also using Irish mill spun yarn as its availability gradually increased from the late 1820s.36 In several respects therefore, the late 1820s marks a definitive watershed in the industry’s history. Thereafter the advent of wet spinning marked the beginning of a new phase of development, in which machinery was substituted



19

for large numbers of domestic producers. This process of transition marked one of the great structural shifts in the Irish economy which contributed to widespread emigration from the traditional linen manufacturing districts between the 1830s and the 1850s. Within Irish economic and social history, these fundamental changes in the mode of industrial production have been over shadowed to a large extent by the Great Famine. However, ‘de-proto-industrialisation’ also contributed significantly to reducing employment opportunities and household incomes in the Irish countryside, inducing widespread emigration from traditional centres of linen spinning between the 1830s and the 1850s.37 The causes of these structural shifts within the Irish industrial sector will be examined in more detail in the next chapter.

2

Transition


The first generation of wet spinners, 1825–50

This chapter will examine the first phase of industrialisation in the Irish industrial sector, in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, when it became possible to spin finer linen yarns mechanically. This brought major structural changes to the way in which flax was manufactured into cloth in Ireland. In the spinning sector, vast numbers of female hand spinners were displaced by the falling cost of machine-spun yarn. The central position of the household as the main unit of production in spinning and weaving was undermined. The control of the yarn supply and position of handloom weavers also altered dramatically once wet spinning had been introduced from the mid-1820s. The finer yarn produced by mechanised wet spinning was much sought after in Ireland and its increasing importation from Britain provided a major impulse for Irish flax spinners to adopt the new technology. This chapter examines the adoption of wet spinning and its immediate impact on the Irish linen industry.

I Marshall, the great pioneering Leeds power spinner (who toured the north of Ireland in 1829 to expand his yarn sales), noted the rise and growth in the traditional Irish weaving centres of merchant firms and the rapid rise in demand for machine spun yarn imported from English firms such as Marshalls, Hives and Atkinson (both in Leeds) and Kay (in Manchester).1 Although machine-spun yarn could not yet be used for the finest types of cloth, it was noted (with some exaggeration perhaps) that ‘vast quantities’ of Leeds yarn was sold in Ulster between 1825 and 1829.2 By 1835 it was estimated that flax yarn imports into Ireland had risen to over 1183 tons with a value of £1.2 million, with Belfast alone accounting for almost £1 million of this.3 From the mid-1820s, it is evident that a number of Irish spinners were taking more than a passing interest in the new technology. A list of flax spinning mills at work in the north Ireland by January 1836 provides a convenient starting point to examine the context in which the first generation of Irish wet spinners emerged:4



21

1. Andrew Mulholland & Co, Belfast 2. S.K. Mulholland, Hind & Co, Belfast 3. J. & J. Herdman & Co, Belfast 4. J. & J. Herdman & Co, Francis St., Belfast 5. John Boyd & Co., Belfast 6. John Murphy & Co., Belfast 7. Charters, Coates & Gamble, Falls Rd, Belfast 8. Stewart & M’Clelland, near Belfast 9. Robert Thompson, near Belfast 10. Dr. M’Kibbin, Connswater, near Belfast 11. John Montgomery & Co., Grove, Ballymacarrett Co. Down 12. Jas Grimshaw & Son, Whitehouse 13. Edmund Grimshaw, Mossley 14. R. & R. Watt, Doagh 15. W. Cunliffe, Glynn. 16. Walker & Co., Carrickfergus 17. Jas Murland & Son, Castlewellan 18. Samuel Law, Banbridge 19. Dunbar, Stewart & Co., Gilford 20. William Hudson, near Newry 21. Joseph Nicholson & Son, Newry 22. A. & J. Davison, Broughshane 23. T. & A. Davison, Laragh, near Castleblayney 24. H. Mc’Kane, Keady 25. Smith, near Ballymoney 26. Herdman, Lyons & Co., near Strabane 27. W. Cowan & Co., Whiteabbey Subsidies to mechanical dry spinners from the Linen Board since the early nineteenth century provided some assistance. Samuel Smith, Balnamore, Ballymoney Co. Antrim, a dry spinner, acquired the site of his mill from his brother-in-law, Josiah Bryan, who had established the flax spinning mill in 1808. Smith continued dry spinning until about 1840 when a steam-driven wet spinning mill was added.5 A few southern flax spinners also persisted with the dry system.6 Crosthwaite of Lucan, Co. Dublin was possibly the first to dabble in the new technology and he claimed to have been experimenting with both Lamb and Kay’s invention for wet spinning.7 By late December 1825 Crosthwaite had ‘personally examined, in England, Mr Kay’s system of spinning’.8 At the beginning of March in 1826 Crosthwaite wrote to the Linen Board in relation to a patent which extended to Ireland that Mr Kay of Preston, Lancashire had obtained for a new mode of spinning linen yarn by machinery. He informed the board: I have got over one of Mr Kay’s Double Spinning Frames, and another Frame used by him previous to the process of Spinning, and I find, from

22

The linen industry


the small experiment I have made, that the same Flax can be spun twice as fine by it, as it can by the other process; but this experiment, to be conclusive, must be conducted much further, and on a larger scale.9 He subsequently sought a grant from the Linen Board in a letter dated April 1826 to experiment with this new flax-spinning machinery.10 Despite Crosthwaite’s early interest, progress was slow. By September 1828 he had only just got 100 spindles from England in operation for spinning fine yarn.11 The Proceedings of the Linen Board in which this evidence appears was effectively public information and would have been readily available to other interested parties. The commercial application of wet-spinning technology was more appropriate for yarn used in the finer ranges of cloth made in the north of Ireland. It was a select group of bleachers in south–east Ulster who appear to have been the most important in driving the initial phase of experimentation, putting in claims to the Linen Board for assistance for spinning fine yarn mechanically. Joseph Nicholson (a bleacher) at Bessbrook on the Camlough River, who had also been among the pioneers of dry spinning in the early nineteenth century, considered replacing some of his dry-spinning machinery with some for spinning fine yarns in September 1826, and sought assistance after having spent ‘a handsome fortune’ on perfecting dry spinning. By November 1826 he appears to have acquired some of Mr Kay’s new spinning machinery with which he was about to embark on some experiments.12 Other pioneers included the linen merchant William Hudson, who had spinning mills at Mount Caulfield on the Camlough river, in Co. Armagh, and James McKane of Keady, a bleacher on the Callan river.13 Hudson, provides a tentative link with the second cluster of innovators which emerged in Co. Down, who had bleachgreens close to Hudson’s at Seapatrick. This group had strong kinship links; Hayes of Seapatrick was married to the sister of Samuel Law, a member of another bleaching family who had been in the industry since the mid-eighteenth century, and builder of the Hazelbank Spinning Mill at Banbridge around 1833–34.14 Hudson brought in English wet-spinning machinery by 1826 for the production of white thread at Mountcaulfield.15 Thread making added a further impulse to the transition to wet spinning in Co. Down. A number of Irish linen thread makers were purchasing yarn from British spinners. Barbour and Dunbar, for example, were buying from Marshall in Leeds by the end of the 1820s, then bleaching the yarn and selling it on spools.16 Dunbar was also one of a number of manufacturers in the district employing large numbers of weavers, to whom he put out imported yarn. In 1836, he established his own wet-spinning mill in Gilford in partnership with Robert Stewart of Banbridge. The Gilford Mill later became one of the largest in Ireland.17 The Proceedings of the Linen Board reveal that by the end of 1827, Hudson of Newry and Nicholsons of Bessbrook and Keady (all in Co. Armagh), McKane and Co. in Keady, Crosthwaite in Lucan (Co Dublin), Hayes in Seapatrick



23

(Co. Down) had all appealed to the Linen Board to assist their attempts to spin fine yarn mechanically.18 Many of these claims produced little in the way of results. McKane, for example, had not even put up the flax-spinning machinery, despite having received a grant for this purpose from the Linen Board.19 The key technological impulses seem to have come from Kay of Lancashire rather than from Leeds. The proceedings reveal some important pointers in relation to Kay’s activities in Ireland. In November 1827, Messrs G & W Hayes of Seapatrick ‘had a call from Mr Kay who stated to us the cost of spindles would be £1 1s and the necessary machines for preparing the flax for 1,000 spindles £200 … [adding] he would come over himself and see machinery properly put up and set to work.’20 Hayes willingness to adopt Kay’s technology was evidently conditional on the support of the Linen Board.21 This was clearly not the case with another nearby bleaching operation, the Murland Brothers of Castlewellan, who had been bleaching linen at Annsborough since the beginning of the nineteenth century. It seems highly likely that Murlands also received a visit from Kay, since they acquired the new wet spinning technology by entering a specific agreement with Kay and Co. for permission to work under their system.22 As a direct consequence, in the spring of 1828, they were the first in Ireland to successfully adopt wet spinning on a commercial basis.23 All of this evidence illustrates the central importance of Kay in promoting the new spinning technology in Ireland, although there were other promoters. In 1828, according to the reminiscences of a Dundee mill manager, machinery was being made in Dundee for two new Irish mills ‘to spin yarns for the Dundee market’.24 Murlands, who built a second larger mill in the mid-1830s, were not just bleachers, but appear to have already been engaged in ‘manufacturing’ since 1824. In 1838 they employed about 700 handloom weavers working in their own houses. Murlands delivered the yarn along with tickets with required specifications directly to the weavers and made cloth of all qualities and lengths and breadths, so they acquired full control over the process of spinning, weaving and bleaching.25 In referring to Murlands’ operation, McCall noted that ‘like many of their brother bleachers, they had frequently found considerable difficulty in procuring the class of yarns required for certain sets of goods’.26 Difficulties accessing suitable yarn may have provided them and other bleachers with one of the necessary incentives to establish their own spinning mills. The area between Banbridge and Guilford was referred to by the Handloom Weavers Commission in 1839 as ‘the principal seat of the linen manufacture of the north of Ireland’ where some of the first manufacturers invested large amounts of capital in placing the industry on a new footing. This was attributed to various factors including the water of the Bann for the provision of power and bleaching, contiguity to the great weaving districts and proximity to Belfast. It was noted that many of the manufacturers spin their own yarn, and bleach their own cloth, and all of them either dispose of their goods at their own offices, to

24

The linen industry


the agent of their customers, export them directly from Belfast, or consign them there to the great linen factors, who dispose of them on commission.27 Some bleachers and dry spinners also featured among the first wet spinners in Co. Antrim. Alex and John Davidson of Broughshane Co. Antrim were formerly bleachers and dry spinners and converted to wet spinning around 1832. Alex Davidson also invested in another spinning mill in Monaghan.28 Robert Thompson who built the Wolfhill Mill near Belfast, was also a bleacher.29 The Watts, who set up two spinning mills on the river Doagh near Ballyclare Co. Antrim, had been involved in bleaching and their father had earlier been involved in cotton spinning with Boomers in Belfast.30 Another rural pioneer was Herdman in Strabane, established in 1835, but despite its outlying rural location, the Herdman connection was initially associated with the emergence of spinning in Belfast, to which we will now turn. Along with the initial lead in wet spinning provided by bleachers and dry spinners, a parallel impetus was given to flax spinning by those exiting the region’s cotton industry, notably in Belfast which as a consequence quickly emerged as the principal seat of flax spinning in Ireland.31 Belfast was the main centre of mechanised cotton spinning in Ireland and the city already had an extensive workforce accustomed to millwork, in addition to a large capital outlay in spinning mills, located around the commercial centre of the Irish linen industry, with relatively cheap access (in Irish terms) to British coal supplies. Moreover, the demand for machine-spun linen yarn in the region was evidently more buoyant than the demand for cotton yarn. The Mulholland family had been involved extensively in manufacturing muslins at the end of the eighteenth century. In 1824 they constructed a large six storey cotton mill at York St. When the mill was destroyed by fire in 1828, the Mulhollands had a decision to make. They later explained that; ‘as the English and Scotch competition in the cotton-spinning business was so great, and as the linen trade was the natural business of Ireland, it would be advisable in rebuilding the mill to adapt it for the spinning of flax by machinery, which was accordingly done’.32 They gained all the necessary technical information with the assistance of John Hind, a Yorkshire born textile engineer and consultant, who had also been in a partnership with his father in a cottonspinning venture in Manchester before arriving in Belfast around 1808. He later became a partner in one of the Mulholland mills and a manager in another. He took technical responsibility for the large mill at York St. using the best available designs from John Marshall’s Holbeck Mill in Leeds. Hind had reputedly established and run wet-spinning machinery on an experimental basis at the Mulholland’s Francis Street Mill since about 1827, but flax spinning commenced in earnest at the newly built mill in York St. in 1830.33 It was an immediate success. By 1833, the mill contained 8,000 spindles, was driven by a 100 hp steam engine and employed 660 persons. The company expanded to 15,300 spindles in 1837, and two more steam engines were installed. Employment rose to 900 and when in full production the mill spun 700 tons



25

of flax into yarn per annum. The family also established another large flaxspinning mill in Durham St. in 1832 and were engaged in others during the 1830s, including the Francis St. and Blackstaff mills in Belfast, and Herdman’s at Sion Mills near Strabane.34 Mulhollands engaged about 4,000 to 5,000 weavers by the end of the 1840s and also carried out bleaching, with much of their cloth being sold in the West Indies and South America.35 Mulholland and Co. remained the largest firm in the Irish industry thereafter.36 As in the case of the pioneering country mills in south–east Ulster, the major flax spinners of Belfast in 1836 acknowledged the technological contribution that Kay had made to their trade and followed the patent case in England between Kay and Marshall with great interest. While there was a diversity of opinion in relation to Kay’s right to hold a patent, the Belfast spinners were unanimous in regard to Kay’s right to remuneration, admitting that ‘he has been a useful Man to the trade’. They went on to advance the opinion that ‘as an act of justice to Mr Kay’, he should be given something in the region of one shilling per spindle to stop further litigation.37 This effectively indicates that most of the Belfast manufacturers were willing to acknowledge Kay’s important contribution to the development of flax spinning in Ireland. The central position of the Mulholland family among these pioneers hardly requires emphasis. Herdman’s entry also appears to have been connected with the Mulhollands through the Francis St. mill, and one on Winetavern St. (presumably the one on the 1836 list above) while A. and K. Mulholland also retained a third of the shares in the mill Herdmans and Lyons established at Sion Mills in Co. Tyrone in 1835.38 John Boyd and Co. can also be linked to this network, as Captain John Boyd opened the Blackstaff mill in 1832 in partnership with his brother-in-law, John Hind.39 Kinship networks seem to have been equally important among urban pioneer wet spinners as for those working in rural contexts in the diffusion and sharing of technical information. Many of the Co. Antrim mills outside Belfast on the 1836 list had also been engaged in cotton production. The Grimshaws were originally a Lancashire textile family who in the first- and second-generation established a textile village at Whitehouse in the eighteenth century, which included both cotton spinning and calico printing. The third generation took over a cotton mill nearby in 1821, but gave up cotton spinning and printing, converting to flax spinning in 1833. Another mill, the Lower Mill, was let to Bell and Calvert who started flax spinning there in 1839.40 J. & J. Grimshaw initially hired two Leeds managers from Marshalls mill but without success, and then hired a Scotch manager from Dundee in 1834 who enabled them to produce fine yarn successfully and establish a second mill in Belfast.41 The Grimshaws were related by marriage to John Murphy and Conway Grimshaw in partnership with him established John Murphy and Co. who built the Linfield Mill.42 Green has suggested that early investment in power spinning by bleachers was rare, even in the 1840s.43 It is evident from Table 2.1 that he is mistaken on this point at least. Bleachers in southeast Ulster were the first pioneers and


26

The linen industry

evidently there were a number of other bleachers (some who were also engaged in dry spinning) across east Ulster who had invested in the new technology by 1836. The cotton industry in and around Belfast, which initiated the first phase of urban industrialisation in east Ulster, also provided a number of the entrepreneurs among the first generation of wet spinners. For Rimmer, the historian of Marshall’s of Leeds, a decisive factor which made the Irish spinners competitive was the rise of specialised machine makers in Leeds. By 1841 there were 18 machine makers in Leeds who set the technical pace for the industry. Rimmer noted that ‘spinners elsewhere could for the first time operate with similar production ratios to those used in Leeds. This terminated a real advantage that had so far favoured Leeds producers.’44 In the early years of wet spinning, labour costs were also cheaper in Ireland than in Leeds or the Scottish centres of the industry. The major Belfast flax spinners also employed a higher proportion of young females and children, which enabled them to further reduce labour costs.45 Since many processes in the industry were slow to succumb to mechanisation, labour inputs and costs remained of great significance. The lower cost of labour in Ireland relative to Britain had long been an important factor in the development of the Irish linen industry, notably in the cultivation of flax. Arthur Young, writing in the 1770s, estimated that labour accounted for 60 per cent of the costs of producing an acre of flax. By the end of the 1830s, Ireland still only imported about one fourth of its flax supply.46 Low labour costs in Irish agriculture in the pre-famine period kept down the final cost of flax, which was the first significant cost component in flax spinning. Initially Ulster lagged behind Leeds in the production of fine yarns. But the Ulster manufacturers were closing the gap during the 1830s and once the major technical constraints had been overcome, the Irish manufacturers had a number of cost advantages over Leeds. A comparison of the costs of Mulholland’s spinning mill in Belfast with a similar mill in England in 1837 reveal that wages accounted for 13 per cent of Mulholland’s annual output of £80,000, flax accounted for 39.4 per cent, and fuel 3.8 per cent. In an English mill wages were higher at 16.9 per cent, while fuel costs were lower at 2.3 per cent.47 The number of flax-spinning mills in Ireland recorded by the factory inspectors had risen from 22 in 1835 to 69 by 1850, while employment rose dramatically from 3,370 people to 21,121.48 When the technological problems of wet spinning fine yarn had been overcome, price was the determining factor in the struggle between the hand spinners and the machine spinners increasing mechanisation and centralisation in mills. The control of the yarn supply and its price were critical factors in determining changes in the organisation of the industry. Remuneration for hand spinning fell by 90 per cent between 1815 and 1836, and by 1846 it had been completely abandoned in the major linen producing counties.49 Geary has highlighted the cataclysmic fall in female employment in the textile industry between 1841 and 1851 which was largely associated with the decline of hand spinning in the linen industry.50



27

Geographically, flax spinning shifted its location; hand spinning had traditionally been widely dispersed across the northern half of the country. By the end of the 1830s, the three east Ulster counties, Antrim, Armagh and Down accounted for 30 of the 40 spinning mills in Ireland and 80 per cent of total employment in the mill spinning sector.51 The impact of the mechanisation of wet spinning in Ireland and Britain was keenly felt in much of rural Ireland where hand spinning had been an important source of employment for women in particular. Effectively the introduction of mill-spun yarn started the erosion of the family unit of production, thus loosening the control which the rural weaver traditionally had over both the yarn supply and the sale of the cloth. The evidence compiled by the investigations into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland reveal that in many districts by the mid-1830s, the opportunities for women and children in the hand spinning of flax had been considerably reduced. In numerous townlands across Connacht and in most of the traditional spinning centres of outer Ulster it was reported that since the ‘decline’, ‘failure’ or ‘destruction’ of the linen industry (e.g.. hand spinning), the principal source of employment for women and children had gone, thus considerably reducing the household incomes of the poorer classes. In many districts women and children continued to be involved in growing and processing the flax crop, including some flax spinning (notably in weaver households). But overall hand spinning was experiencing reversals by the mid-1830s,52 which continued between 1841 and 1851 when female textile spinners (who had been predominantly employed in flax spinning by hand) fell dramatically from over 515,000 to less than 112,000.53 This dramatic decline in employment should not be taken to demonstrate that the Irish economy de-industrialised in this period; instead it should be seen as the de-proto-industrialisation of the traditional mode of production as a consequence of rapid mechanisation of flax spinning in Ireland and Britain. By 1851 Ireland had 79 spinning mills in operation with 486,876 spindles, compared to roughly 260,000 spindles in 1841.54 Most of the southern centres of linen manufacture, which made coarser linens, declined from the mid-1820s,55 with the exception Drogheda, Co. Louth, which seems to have struggled on using both imported and Irish machinespun yarn. But even here English and Scottish competition had depressed the wages of weavers. In Dublin by the beginning of the 1840s the linen trade was suffering due to the application of powerlooms in the Scottish industry. In outer Ulster and Connacht (counties Donegal and Sligo, for example) handloom production for the market had largely ceased by the end of the 1830s.56

II Mechanisation of spinning brought improvements to the quality of Irish linens. John Marshall, the British flax spinner, ventured the opinion in 1833 that imported machine-spun yarn was a major advantage to the Irish industry as ‘it has given their linens a preference over the continental linens which they had not before; it has improved their manufacture’.57 It was noted in 1835 that

28

The linen industry


The rapid improvement in linen manufacturing which followed the introduction of the wet spinning system, and the cheapness with which yarns were produced, and the great regularity in regard to weights, counts, etc., as compared with the hand spun material, enabled manufacturers to considerably reduce the price of cloth. Irish cloth rapidly displaced German cloth abroad, and some of the south American markets, which formerly took the manufactures of Silesia and Brabant etc, were now supplied with Irish Silesians and Brabants etc.58 The falling price of cambric, for example, in the 1830s gave Ulster advantages over French cambric in the London market.59 Mechanisation had made the Irish industry more competitive than its major continental rivals and it had a significant impact on the way the weaving trade was organised in the major linen manufacturing districts in Ulster. According to Crawford, within about 15 years of the advent of mill spinning, the majority of Ulster weavers were employed by manufacturers.60 By the end of the 1830s Muggeridge identified cottier weavers (i.e. those without land) working for manufacturers as the largest class of weavers in Ireland. Some had previously worked for the market, while others started out working for manufacturers. The capital tied up in yarn and cloth was thereby increasingly passing into the hands of merchant manufacturers and factory spinners and this transition in the organisation of the industry was stated by Richardson (of the Derry firm of Richardson and Smith) to have greatly increased within the industry since the second half of the 1820s. Muggeridge concluded that throughout the counties of Down, Antrim, Derry and Armagh, many thousand weavers, formerly weaving for the market, are now in the regular employ of manufacturers, and though they still retain their looms, have no property in the materials in them. Almost all of those still weaving on their own account combine the character of small farmers, and retain the loom as an auxiliary to their agricultural operations.61 James’ study of Ulster linen weavers reveals a fairly varied picture still in 1840, but rural farms and cottages still remained the dominant sites of Irish linen weaving. Manufacturers put out yarn to many weavers, notably in the linen triangle where the finest cloth was made, as transaction costs fell with the mechanisation of spinning. This was the case around Banbridge and Dromore, where few weavers worked on their own account. Large merchant manufacturers employing many weavers emerged as an important feature of the trade here and elsewhere. Manufacturers also directly employed some weavers in workshops. This was the case for most weavers based in Belfast. But independent weavers still prevailed in the towns of Ballymena, Ballymoney, Coleraine and Lurgan.62 Regional specialisation remained strong in weaving and this is well illustrated by Ure who briefly summarised some of the localities where different cloth types were made c. 1860:


29


coarse linens for blouses etc, and for the common kinds of export goods are chiefly made in the county of Armagh: medium and fine kinds of export cloth about Ballymena and Coleraine: damasks and diapers at Lurgan, Lisburn and Belfast: lawns at Lurgan and Dromore; cambrics at Lurgan, Waringstown and Dromore; heavy linens and sheetings for the home market at Banbridge; hollands in the counties of Antrim and Armagh; shirt fronts, woven in plaits, at Dromore; and the coarsest fabrics, such as bed-ticks, coarse drills, etc, at Drogheda.63 The traditional means of weaving cloth by handloom continued long after the advent of wet spinning in the mid-1820s, even if the organisation of weaving changed dramatically and there was some increase in productivity in the following decades. One weaver noted in 1838 that mill-spun yarn could be woven in half the time of hand spun, and women were then entering the trade.64 Although women had previously been recruited in wartime conditions of labour scarcity in the early nineteenth century, the impact of this should not be exaggerated in the pre-famine period at least. In 1841 females accounted for just under 8 per cent of all specified linen weavers and their representation among unspecified weavers was not dramatically higher.65 After the advent of wet spinning, the Irish weaving population became increasingly more concentrated in Ulster counties where yarn could be accessed easily. Since over two-thirds of the weavers in Ireland were linen weavers it is possible to trace this geographical shift in the distribution of all male textile weavers between 1831 and 1841. The 1831 census probably somewhat understates the number of weavers in Ireland, but this can be overcome by viewing the percentage share of all Ireland in each county. An exclusively male head count is taken here since the 1831 census did not record female occupations. It is evident from the 1841 return that the great majority of weavers in the pre-famine period were still male. In the years between 1831 and 1841 the province of Ulster’s share of adult male weavers in all Ireland rose dramatically from just under 52 per cent in 1831 to just under 72 per cent in 1841. The change in the leading five Ulster weaving counties of Antrim, Down, Tyrone, Armagh and Derry taken collectively rose from 41.2 to 61.4 per cent of all adult male weavers. Antrim was the county which increased its share most dramatically from 3.8 to 14.9 per cent in these years, but Down, Derry, Tyrone and Armagh also increased their share, which indicates that linen weaving was not entirely an east Ulster phenomena in these years. Of the other Ulster counties, Fermanagh and Donegal lost ground and Cavan held its own, while Monaghan actually increased its share marginally. Among the counties outside Ulster, only Louth increased its share, Leitrim held its own (at a low level), while all other counties experienced a relative fall in their handloom weaving populations in the 1830s.66 The 1831 census probably understates the number of handloom weavers in Ireland, though it is likely the number of linen weavers expanded in the 1830s, assuming population growth raised native demand, while exports evidently increased.67 Otway reported to the Handloom Weavers Commission in 1840


30

The linen industry

that ‘the amount of linens sold in Belfast is stated to be progressively on the increase: and the first commission agents in the town stated, that at no former period was either the home consumption or the foreign trade so extensive’.68 What happened to the number of weavers during the 1840s remains uncertain. According to the comments of one of the factory inspectors in 1852, the Great Famine had witnessed a significant decline in the number of ‘small farmer weavers’ through emigration, which disturbed ‘the cheapness of weaving in Ireland’.69 Despite ‘the steady increase in linen consumption in neutral markets’ (e.g. those which were not protected), the inspector concluded that those weavers who now follow no other occupation, due to rising wages and falling food prices, had been in a position to reduce the amount of weaving they did, which created a ‘check’ or bottle neck in the industry.70 The use of the censuses to track employment is plagued by the numbers of unspecified weavers, particularly in the 1841 census, in which the majority are returned as unspecified, so that we don’t know if they worked in linen or other fabrics. Table 2.1 is a rough attempt to estimate the number of linen weavers by relocating the unspecified weavers in the censuses between 1841 and 1861. This suggests that the number of weavers overall had not declined as a result of the impact of the Great Famine, with the linen handloom workforce actually increasing during the years between 1841 and 1851, while in the following decade it decreased. A notable feature of the 1840s and 1850s was the increase in the number of female recruits to weaving. The number of females specified as linen weavers rose in this period from less than 8 per cent in 1841 to almost 31 per cent in 1851 to over 45 per cent by 1861, which probably broadly reflects the significant gender shift in linen handloom weaving in the intervening period. The number of non-farmer weavers working for manufacturers were also increasing. Much of the decline in the handloom workforce in the 1850s can be attributed to the displacement of hand weavers working on coarser and medium sets as a consequence of the growth of power weaving. As Carter records:

Table 2.1 Estimate of the number of linen weavers in Ireland, 1841–1861 Year

A

B

C

D

Total Linen Weavers

1841 1851 1861

22,326 79,394 60,626

91,086 18,996 29,144

70.80% 79.90% 83.40%

64,488 15,178 24,306

86,814 94,572 84,932

Source: Census 1841–61. Notes: A = Specified linen weavers in census B = Unspecified weavers in census C = Linens % share of specified weavers in census D = Linens estimated share of unspecified (B)


31


The commercial start of linen weaving by power in Ulster is generally attributed to the work of Daniel Currell, who had 40 looms working in 1849, and Foster Connor, who had 40 looms working in 1850. Forty looms was … a … set, being the number which could be served by one dressing machine. At first only a drill (‘Barnsley drill’) was manufactured by powerloom.71 By the end of 1856, the number of powerlooms had risen to 2,200 and they were operated by 25 different firms. It was then noted that ‘a large proportion of the looms in operation are making drills, heavy linens for the home market, and coarse goods of various descriptions, but many have been pretty successful in weaving light goods with common qualities of yarn’.72 The 1840s and 1850s also brought a rise in weavers’ wages relative to agricultural labourers. Powerlooms only made limited inroads in the Irish linen industry in the 1850s, notably in Belfast, Lurgan and Bessbrook, and they remained confined to coarse and medium sets of cloth. Despite the greater expansion of demand at the coarse end of the trade for military purposes in the United States in the 1860s and a growth in investment in powerlooms in that decade, handlooms continued to hold their own in finer branches such as cambrics, damask, diaper and finer shirtings.73

III During the nineteenth century, the bleaching and finishing sector became increasingly concentrated in a smaller number of more highly capitalised concerns located along the major rivers in east Ulster, utilising traditional grassing techniques alongside the increased use of chemicals.74 By the early 1860s it was estimated that almost 4,200 persons were employed in this sector alone.75 By 1870, there were only three print works engaged in linen left in Ireland all located in east Ulster. The one located at Old Park (established in 1800) also undertook work for Manchester cotton firms. Clady (1830) and Clonard (1822) mainly printed linens and lawns, but all the engraving for these operations was by this stage undertaken in Belfast and Glasgow.76 Nonetheless, the increasing concentration of all aspects of the linen industry in east Ulster created significant external economies by the mid-nineteenth century. These included an experienced and skilled labour force in all branches of the industry, the best linen-bleaching facilities in Europe, and a growing number of machine builders and repairers. The city was also firmly established as the commercial centre of the fine linen industry in the UK with all the necessary services for warehousing, packaging and marketing linen internationally. Any type of yarn, cloth or made-up good was more readily at hand in Belfast than anywhere in Europe, making it easier to respond to customer requirements. These economies of agglomeration by the mid-nineteenth century increased the attractiveness of Belfast and its hinterland as a site for further investment in all aspects of the industry. The second phase of industrialisation in the industry in the period after 1850 will be traced in the following chapter.


3

The high watermark of the Ulster linen industry, 1850–1914

This chapter will focus on the period when the Irish industry was at its most prosperous. From the mid-nineteenth century to the First World War, Ulster became the most dynamic linen manufacturing centre in the world.

I During the second half of the nineteenth century, Irish manufacturers were more willing to invest in mechanisation than other centres of the European industry. The industry in Ireland had better growth prospects because of the market segments it occupied and the external economies which had been built up in east Ulster. This put the Irish industry in a better position to exploit the growing market for finer linens in the USA in particular. Comparisons of the number of spindles and powerlooms in the European industry reveal that Ireland (after a slow start in the late 1820s) had become the leading centre of mechanised flax spinning in Europe by the 1870s, by which time it had significantly eclipsed rivals in terms of investment. Its lead in powerlooms was less marked (see Table 3.1) One of the advantages the Irish industry enjoyed was that it did not have competition from other textiles in terms of capital investment. It has been noted in the last chapter that cumulative investment in bleaching, finishing and distribution, followed by investment in power spinning in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, made further investment in power weaving in the second half of the nineteenth century a logical progression in the industry’s development. Moreover, in wet spinning its niche in the medium to fine branches of the industry made it more resilient in the face of competition from cotton and other fabrics than those continental European countries engaged in the coarse to medium branches of the trade, many of whom depended to a large extent on protective tariffs, which also facilitated investment in the cotton and jute industries which provided competition for linen in terms of investment. The British industry subsequently declined partially as a consequence of Irish competition. While many continental spinners could defend their markets from Irish competition through protectionism, only the Russian spinning industry experienced


The Ulster linen and clothing industry, 1850–1914

33

growth between 1870 and 1910 (from a very low threshold). The German industry stagnated, while Belgium, France and Austria-Hungary experienced various degrees of decline. Ireland also led in the field in the production of linen cloth on powerlooms by the 1870s. Table 3.1 suggests Scotland was not far behind in this department, but France and Germany, the major competitors on the continent, were well behind Ireland. Ditt’s data suggests Ireland was overtaken by German investment in power weaving in the first decade of the twentieth century. Since most German linen cloth was sold on the protected German market this had little impact on the Irish industry, since Germany was not a major market for Irish producers. Ireland appears to have experienced a notable increase in investment in spindles between the 1830s and the end of the 1860s followed by a period of stagnation until there was some recovery in the decade before the First World War. The number of powerlooms in contrast increased more steadily throughout this period.1 Collectively across all branches of the industry, relatively higher capital investment helped the Irish to build up advantages over rival linen-producing regions, enabling it to become the principal linen manufacturing district in the world. Table 3.2 provides some record of the pace of investment in mechanised production. It was the cotton industry which first witnessed the development of an industrial workforce of consequence in Belfast, the linen industry dramatically accelerated this process from the 1830s. The expansion of the factory workforce in linen (see Table 3.2), was most pronounced in the period between the advent of mill spinning in the late 1820s and the boom in the 1860s. Increased employment opportunities in mills for a predominantly female workforce

Table 3.1 Spindles and powerlooms in the European linen industry in 1875 Country

Spindles

Powerlooms

Austria Belgium France Germany Holland Italy Russia Sweden Spain Switzerland England Scotland

414,676 320,000 620,000 326,538 7,700 55,000 150,000 3,810 8,000 291,735 275,119

5,624 18,529

Ireland

920,677

20,152

3,393,255

68,458

Total

1,100 10,000 8,000 1,200 750 2,000 98 1,000

Source: Ninth Report of the Flax Supply Association for 1875 (Belfast, 1876), p. 33.

34

The linen industry


Table 3.2 Linen mills in Ireland, 1839-1914 Year

Mills

1835 1838 1842 1845 1850 1853 1860 1868 1878 1889 1905 1914

25 40 60 69 80 100 143 144 162 160

Spindles

260,000 290,000 396,338 500,000 592,981 905,525 808,695 840,448 812,925 955,471

Powerlooms

Steam hp

Water hp

Employed

928

1,052

3,681 9,017

58

2,285

1,095

21,121

4,666 12,969 19,611 25,555 32,851 37,293

10,710 21,595

2,384 3,466

33,525 57,050 56,342 64,475 73,000

Sources: Factory Returns, UK, BPP 1836, xlv, p. 92. Factory Returns, UK, BPP 1839, xiii, pp. 336–9.1842: Brotherton Library, Leeds; MS 200/15/42/6 Marshall Collection. 1845: H. McCall Ireland and her Staple Manufactures (Belfast, 1870), p. 397. Factory Returns, UK, BPP 1850, xlii (745), p. 19. 1853: W. Charley, Flax and its Products (London, 1862), p. 36. Factory Returns, UK, BPP, 1862, lv, Factory Returns, UK, BPP 1890, lxvii, p. 22. BPP 1905, lxxii, pp. 2–3. J. Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry (London, 1920), pp. 1107–11. J. Murphy, Ireland Industrial, Political and Social (London, 1870), p. 43.

raised potential household income in and around Belfast, but also in smaller industrial towns such as Lisburn, Lurgan, Portadown, Dungannon and Ballymena, and a host of industrial villages largely in Ulster, so that a number of industrial working-class communities were expanded or newly established in this period. The population of Belfast expanded most dramatically of all the urban centres in Ireland from just over 37,000 in 1821 to over 174,000 by 1871.2 Industrialisation driven principally by linen manufacture in this period raised the demand for housing. Units were built (to minimal standards permissible under the city bye laws) in repetitive tightly packed rows so characteristic of British industrial towns in close proximity to the mills. Half the population of the city by 1851 was under 20 years of age, which was partially a reflection of the youthful profile of the factory workforce in linen and the far lower life expectancy of the cities population relative to the rest of Ireland in addition to a large proportion of the population who migrated at a young age into the city, most notably from the neighbouring counties of Antrim and Down.3 While working conditions in flax processing and linen manufacture were poor in terms of exposing many workers to hazards which had implications for their health and longevity, the British Factory Acts at least restricted working hours and improved working conditions for women and children, relative to those working in the linen industry in continental Europe, even though conditions and pay were worse than in British cotton and woollen mills.4 Mid-nineteenth-century observers noted appalling housing conditions,



35

lacking proper sanitation, which were overcrowded and rampant with disease, crime, poverty and unemployment,5 all suggesting that Belfast had by no means escaped the worst excesses of the industrial revolution. Rapid employment growth in linen mills was a consequence of the most intense period of capital investment in Irish factory production between the mid-1820s and the end of the American Civil War. This is demonstrated by Solar’s work on the birth of linen firms (and the utilisation of sites), which indicates that half the new sites utilised in the Irish industry had already been established before 1850, some time before the boom of the 1860s. Indeed the period between 1825 and 1849 witnessed the use of 65 new sites and the birth of 66 firms, while the period that followed from 1850 to 1869 marked the use of 60 new sites while new firm formation accelerated to 106.6 The unusually high profits made during the 1860s led to the establishment of a number of new firms, even outside the heartland of the industry in east-Ulster. The consequence of this intense phase of capital investment in the Irish linen industry, which accounted for the bulk of the Irish textile sector is evident from Table 3.3, which implies that at this point at least Irish textile works on average used relatively higher levels of motive power than textile works in Great Britain, but horse power utilised per employee was not radically different. However, this notable phase of expansion in the Irish linen industry was terminated in 1873–74, by the end of the international boom and the restoration of cotton-textile production. After this, the rise in spindles stagnated and only increased again in the early twentieth century. Although it took until 1909 to recover the number of spindles to the peak achieved in 1875, in the interim period there had been some replacement of coarse spindles by finer spindles in the Irish industry, which reduced competition from Belgium in coarser counts and increased the value of the yarn produced (though spindles on fine counts worked off yarn more slowly).7 Irish machinery was therefore probably more up to date than continental competitors in relation to those producing finer counts at least. However, overall investment in the Irish industry after 1870 focused more on powerlooms, the making-up trade and finishing and marketing rather than in spinning. While many male weavers drifted away from linen in the 1850s, many were attracted back to the trade during the boom conditions during the American Civil War, when James has noted the prosperous condition of many handloom

Table 3.3 Horse power used in the United Kingdom textile industry in 1870

Ireland England Scotland

Works

Steam hp

Water hp

Employed hp/works

hp/employee

1,749 42,770 16,892

25,032 419,389 68,314

8,293 19,547 7,202

86,564 975,946 267,170

0.4 0.4 0.3

19.1 10.3 4.4

Source: Return of Manufacturing Establishments under the Factory Acts and Workshop Regulation Act BPP 1871, lxii, pp. 271–315.


36

The linen industry

weaving communities, despite the advance of powerlooms. By 1874, it has been estimated that there were still a larger number of handloom weavers (25,000) than powerloom weavers. However, the handloom workforce was declining (despite its survival in some of the finer branches of the trade for finer shirtings, damask and cambric). The number of powerlooms in Ireland relentlessly rose in this period from under 5,000 in 1860 to over 35,000 by 1910,8 progressively replacing handloom work in many cloth types. Even finer cloths like damask could be made on powerlooms; Bessbrook Spinning Company were power-weaving damask on looms fitted with the Jacquard mechanism from the 1870s, and Irish power-woven damasks could produce the legends and crests of hotels, shipping lines and railway companies. Ulster became the principal seat of this branch of powerloom production by the end of the nineteenth century, though hand production survived for the finest products. Even cambric was no longer profitable to weave on handlooms by the 1880s.9 By the 1890s powerlooms were displacing handloom work for the kind of fine shirting linens made by the Ballymena handloom weavers, which by 1912 had become a dying trade. At this stage it was estimated that there were merely 3,000 hand weavers left in cambric and damask, the latter being the final preserve of the handloom weavers.10 If handloom and powerloom production co-existed between the mid-nineteenth century and the First World War, the trajectory of each was moving in opposite directions and there can be little doubt that most of the handloom workforce became victims of mechanisation. Capital invested in buildings and machinery (connected with spinning) was estimated to be worth £1,700,000 in 1841, rising moderately to only £2,370,000 in 1853.11 A more comprehensive estimate of total capital employed in the industry in 1874 put the figure at £20,000,000 and annual output at about £8,000,000.12 Asset values were probably grossly inflated in 1874 at the end of a major boom in the industry. This is evident from a much more sober appraisal of the capital invested in the industry by the end of the nineteenth century at £12,000,000, indicating that significant amounts of capital had been written off in the interim (if the figures broadly reflect investment and asset values).13 By 1910 another estimate of total capital employed put the figure slightly higher at £14,000,000,14 which was consistent with growth in the intervening years. Mechanisation, combined with competition with other European producers, reduced the cost of common- and medium-quality linen cloth made in Ireland, putting them within reach of more people, thus increasing demand.15 By 1890, yarn prices were half of what they had been in the 1860s, which was a significant fall even allowing for the fact that this was a period of general deflation. European competition in spinning led to a decline in Irish yarn exports to Britain from the mid-1870s, as continental spinners increased their market share there. In the 30 years after 1868, 36 linen firms became insolvent in Ulster, and a further 18 closed down, and 18 passed into new ownership. Firms engaged in powerloom weaving however, did somewhat better as they benefited from



37

the lower cost of yarn, so investment in this sector continued to expand at the expense of handloom weaving.16 Rising incomes in the major markets for Irish linen, notably in the USA and Britain, probably also contributed to increasing demand for the kind of finer linen made in Ulster. Ireland also appears to have had a well-established tradition of bleaching and finishing. The reputation of Ulster bleachers was so good by the end of the century that large quantities of cloth were sent there from Belgium, France and Germany to be bleached.17 Coyne noted that ‘from the peculiarity of the climate, its linen can, when adequately treated, be brought to a snowy whiteness, which no other country can equal’.18 The Irish climate has also been advanced by Clark as one important factor for the excellence of Irish bleaching, which permitted year-round grassing operations which gave Ireland advantages over continental rivals, while he also pointed to ‘the inherited skill of the workers’.19 From the mid-nineteenth century, a small number of vertically integrated firms played a particularly prominent role in the Irish industry (the York Street Spinning Company, the Brookfield Linen Company, William Ewart and Son, and the Ulster Spinning Company), carrying out all aspects of the industry from flax spinning right through to finishing and retailing cloth. The larger vertically integrated firms tended to market wider ranges of cloth in geographically more dispersed markets which made them less vulnerable during recessions than smaller firms.20 While some spinners had been investing in weaving and powerloom production in the period prior the 1860s, Boyle has demonstrated that the shift to vertical integration accelerated during the 1860s when a number of powerloom weavers invested in spinning to secure yarn supplies. By 1868, there were 26 vertically integrated concerns in Ireland, which were on average larger than a host of specialised spinning or weaving concerns. However, five had already closed by 1871 and this marked the beginning of a reversion from vertical integration back to specialised weaving and spinning firms. By 1905, there were only twelve vertically integrated concerns left.21 This had risen to 13 by 1913 (see Table 3.4). All had adopted limited liability and all were large so they collectively accounted for a disproportionately high share of the industry’s output. This group included the largest weaving concern (Ewarts) and the largest linen firm (York St.), but the largest spinners (J & TM Greeves), with 70,000 spindles, were not vertically integrated. Although the integrated firms were somewhat atypical of the general organisation of firms in the industry, as a group they constituted most of the leading players in the manufacture of linen (excluding thread) and were probably over-represented in the various associations representing firms and employer interests in the industry. There was some sense in this since the leading firms had a wider knowledge of the industry at large and were in a better position to represent its interests since they did everything from the purchase of flax in Russia, Belgium, Ireland and elsewhere through all the manufacturing processes to the sale of cloth in Britain and the USA and elsewhere, having travelling salesmen, agents and

38

The linen industry


Table 3.4 Vertically integrated firms in the Irish industry in 1913 Firms

Spindles

Looms

Location

York Street Flax Spinning Co. Ltd Ulster Spinnning Co. Ltd William Ewart & Sons Ltd New Northern Spinning & Weaving Co. Ltd Brookfield Linen Co. Ltd Lindsay, Thompson & Co. Ltd Bessbrook Spinning Co. Ltd Richardson, Sons & Owden Ltd Cork Spinning & Weaving Co. Ltd Blackstaff Flax Spinning & Weaving Co. Ltd Falls Flax Spinning Co. Ltd Whitehouse Spinning Co. Ltd Thomas Sinton Ltd

63,000 55,500 33,500 25,000 24,000 23,000 20,000 20,000 19,150 18,000 15,000 15,000 12,000

1,000 408 1,800 750 1,400 450 760 760 200 312 640 200 360

Belfast Belfast Belfast Belfast Belfast Belfast Besbr/ Belfast Cork Belfast Belfast Whiteh/ Tandrag/

Source: W.A.G. Clark, Linen Jute and Hemp Industries in the United Kingdom (Washington 1913), p. 22. Note: There may be double counting in the Bessbrook and Richardson returns.

branch sales offices in a number of the major cities in the western world. This put them in a better position to ascertain the big picture and gave them market specific advantages over their smaller rivals and foreign competitors. However, the persistence of a large number of smaller firms into the twentieth century indicates that there was significant room for specialists.22 An important feature of the industry was the symbiotic relationship between large vertically integrated firms trading at all levels of the production chain and a multiplicity of specialists. Since the company records of the larger firms are disappointingly thin, it is possible to trace elements of this practice in records of some of the smaller companies which have survived. William Smyth & Co., for example (who were linen merchants and bleachers), were trading in 1883 with some of the larger vertically integrated concerns including the Ulster Spinning Co. Ltd, Thomas Sinton and the Bessbrook Spinning Co. Limited (along with many smaller companies).23 In addition to a host of foreign orders carried out on its own account, the Broadway Damask company was trading with the Brookfield Linen Co., Ewarts and Richardsons in the 1880s and 1890s.24 Much earlier in 1847, Ferguson a bleacher based at Forge Green, Belfast, informed Richardson Sons and Owden, that they had ‘engines to spare for beetling and would be glad to finish goods by the piece’.25 Later in the same letterbook they informed J & J Herdmans and Andrew Mulhollands of the price they charged for bleaching yarn.26 Both these instances imply that this kind of sub-contracting by the larger firms was commonplace (even though Mulhollands and Richardsons both had bleach works of their own). This meant that large vertically integrated firms with greater market information and coverage could handle very larger orders more effectively, and could also acquire specific types of yarn, cloth or other services by farming out work without investing



39

additional capital.27 York St. was the chief buyer of fine cloth from handloom weavers in the 1860s and 1870s. The large companies were also in a better position to exploit foreign markets as they could afford to establish offices abroad to promote international sales and establish what kind of linens were in demand.28 Larger vertically integrated firms may have played a vital role in the industry as a whole, but in return they acquired a dominant position in the most profitable stage in the production chain: marketing cloth. The York Street Flax Spinning Company was consistently profitable between 1864 and 1914, which was unusual within the industry at large. It benefited from the wide range of cloth it manufactured. By 1890, they made fronting linens, interlinings, family linens, printed linen shirtings, printed dress linens and lawns, dress goods, diapers, damasks, clothes and napkins, huckabacks, towels, sheetings and pillow linens, glass cloths, roughs, elastic canvas, furniture coverings, drills and ducks, hollands, buckrams, stair drills, paddings, cambrics, handkerchiefs, creas, platillas, Bretanas, silesias, Irlandas and many more, operating in every market in the world, both in the purchase of flax and in selling their cloth.29 To facilitate the large volume of cloth it was finishing, the York St. Spinning Company purchased the Muckamore Bleachworks in Co. Antrim in 1883–84, which were then reputedly the largest in the trade.30 The scale of operations and turnover at York St. facilitated greater innovation than at smaller concerns and it was possible to make advances in machinery design, since the firm could afford to employ people specifically for this task.31 As with Kay’s machinery in the 1820s, they were quick to exploit innovations in many aspects of the spinning trade. For example, when new systems emerged in the early 1890s, they could afford to legally defend the application of such innovations, challenging the legitimacy of others’ patents.32 Ulster, more than anywhere else in the world, marketed finer linen at costs which were affordable across the social spectrum. In the early 1880s, it was said of the Bessbrook Spinning Co., that ‘magnificent specimens of table linen for the mansions of the wealthy can be seen, but the wants of every class are catered for equally largely, and a marvellous production in table napkins, real damask, is now made, prices 1s 6d per dozen. Paper, even, can hardly compete with this.’33 Through power weaving of damask, Bessbrook and other concerns34 could, by reducing costs, widen the market base for a cloth which had traditionally been a luxury commodity. Ulster producers were more successful than competitors in exploiting the benefits of mechanisation and were thus in a better position to market a wider range of cloth types and made up clothing at affordable prices to the expanding middle classes of the USA, the United Kingdom and the British Colonies, whose social aspirations were rising along with their incomes in this period.

II An important indicator of the performance of the Irish linen industry from the mid-nineteenth century to the First World War is the export trade. Solar’s


40

The linen industry

work on the volume of linen exports from Ireland indicates that growth essentially took place in two distinct periods; the first wave of expansion took place during and after the American Civil War (with exports peaking in 1875); the second wave ran from 1890 through to the First World War.35 Within this latter period the greatest boom since the American Civil War was experienced between early 1905 and late 1907 when Irish spinners made significant profits and cleared off all stocks.36 Export volume without prices only gives part of the picture. This point is best illustrated in the years from the mid-nineteenth century when the value of Belfast exports rose sharply from £2,667,100 in 1851 to £3,954,540 in 1856, compared to the volume of linen exported in these years which rose merely from 70.2 million yards to 72.1 million.37 The Belfast figures reflect a sharp rise in prices in this period; using Solar’s work on firm formation, this period also witnessed the most rapid growth in the utilisation new sites and firm formation in the period between 1850–54 than any other five-year period between 1825 and 1914, including the boom years of the American Civil War,38 which was probably a response to the rising profitability of the industry as a result of the higher prices which linen could command in these years. After the boom years of the 1860s and early 1870s, exports stagnated and even declined. The Flax Spinners and Powerloom Linen Manufacturers Association emerged as a body for manufacturers to co-operate in efforts around the general interests of the trade, notably in resisting trade-union demands for a rise in wages and a forum for reaching agreements on the issue of working short time, as a means of dealing with downturns.39 The mid-1880s was a particularly difficult period. The factory inspector for Ireland noted in 1885 that ‘the linen trade of Ireland is also very much depressed, owing to low prices and a sluggish demand. Out of the 874,788 spinning spindles in Ireland about 50,000 are lying idle’.40 Reade, the director of the York Street Flax Spinning Company, attributed the falling off in the trade at this point ‘ … partly to the displacement of linen fabrics by cotton and woollen fabrics; partly, no doubt, to the effect of foreign tariffs, and partly to the effect of foreign competition. Continental competition in particular, the wages being lower and the hours of labour longer.’41 The Linen Merchants’ Association complained in its 1897 report of the cumulative negative impact of the implementation of a host of tariffs on the US market for manufacturers and traders (M’Kinlay, which passed into law in 1890, Wilson in 1894, Dingley in 1897), suggesting that Irish linen sales in the US were adversely affected by these new tariffs. However, some recovery was noted by the Linen Merchants’ Association in 1899 ‘after a long period of extreme dullness’ as a consequence of the prosperous condition of the US market, revival in Cuba and the satisfactory condition of the home market, combined with a general advance in the price of textiles fabrics.42 By the beginning of the twentieth century competition from European yarn producers was becoming more severe, reducing both profitability and the demand for Irish yarns in the following years.43 Irish firms co-operated to



41

reduce competition by purchasing and dismantling mills which went out of business to prevent new entrants. Closure resulted in over 200,000 spindles being taken out of production between 1873 and 1903.44 In the longer-term there is evidence of productivity increases resulting from capital investment in improved machinery such as better hackling equipment; moreover production speeds were also raised. Trade unionism among linen workers was relatively weak in resisting changing methods of production, although a number of unions became established from the 1870s. It was male workers in the industry who initially became organised (notably the most common male jobs, flax dressers and roughers) and the first major linen strike took place in 1872.45 It was only in 1885 that the Lurgan Hemmers, Veiners and General Women Workers Union was established, but this collapsed in 1891, only to resurface again in 1902 and reach a membership of 2,500 by 1919.46 In 1893, the Textile Operatives of Ireland was established to organise women within the industry. This had little success until Mary Galway was appointed its organising secretary in 1897 and over the following years she gradually built up membership. But by the end of the nineteenth century the ten unions in the Irish linen industry only had 5,000 members in all. The Textile Operatives’ Union membership had risen to 2476 members by 1910 and by 1918 membership had risen to 10,000. Despite these significant achievements, even Galway admitted that young female industrial workers were disadvantaged in ways which militated against their engagement in trade unionism.47 This, and the fragmentation of the workforce into multiple tasks, often in different locations, may have militated against wider organisation in the industry as a whole. Women warehouse workers, for example, considered themselves to be of a higher social caste than factory girls.48 Moreover, in outwork where there was little or no trade-union presence the workforce could evidently be grossly exploited.49 Although there were buoyant periods during which trade unions were in a position to exact improvements in conditions and wages, in the longer term, employers for the most part were successfully able to resist trade union demands. This enabled them to adopt new methods and innovations such as ‘piecing out’, which replaced traditional methods of hackling from the late nineteenth century and were general within the industry by the First World War, despite opposition from hacklers, thus significantly raising productivity due to the adaption of new machinery.50 Employers certainly held the view that the industry was relatively free of labour disputes.

III Linen was still Ireland’s most important industry in 1907 with a net value of over £4.8 million. Output of cloth had reached 230 million yards by 1907.51 The industry had become more mechanised and more centralised during the second half of the nineteenth century and Ulster had increased its international market share, despite the fact that world consumption of linen was stagnant. From the 1820s, there was a shift in the destination of UK trans-Atlantic


42

The linen industry

linen exports; the trade to South America and the West Indies contracted, while that to the USA increased.52 The importance of fine linens within UK exports increased as global demand shifted away from coarse to finer varieties. In a European context, Ulster benefited from this shift in the nature of demand, as it specialised in the finer branches of the UK industry, most notably in the trans-Atlantic trade. Ireland by 1913 supplied four-fifths of the value of UK linen exports of £8.2 million. At this stage the USA took about half of all linen exports from Ulster,53 and Clark argued quite reasonably that the US market had become so important to the Irish industry that it largely depended on fluctuations in American demand.54 Some expansion of demand and slightly improved circumstances within the industry were noted in the early twentieth century in a revealing passage in the 1903 annual report of the Linen Merchants’ Association. The report noted if there is one thing more peculiar to the linen industry it is the steadiness that dominates it. We naturally have fluctuations in our turnover taking one year with another, but these changes are generally of small account, and with them all the tendency hitherto at any rate, has been in the direction of improvement … Linens are bought mainly by the well-to-do classes to whom an increase in price, when it is to be paid, is of little moment, and it consequently follows that from this section of the community we can reckon with a good average trade, year in year out. The great middle class population patronise the fabric when times are favourable … The active demand that was experienced last year for dress linens is a case in point, these goods were not adopted by the wealthy who affect the finest woollens, silks or poplins, but by the great middle class referred to, and if we can win back and hold the trade we did in dress linens, not so very many years ago, it will be a good thing for Belfast … the consumption of linen dress material both in the United Kingdom and in the States, was probably never before equalled, and it is anticipated that the coming season will be even better. Our manufacturers are certainly to be congratulated upon the efforts they have made to evolve something new in the way of design and texture.55 The report reveals some recovery in the trade at this point and more significantly it suggests that manufacturers were proactive in advancing new designs in response to the changing vagaries of fashion in international markets and were consciously cultivating the growing market opportunities created by an expanding middle-class clientele throughout the western world.

IV One of the more important developments during the second half of the nineteenth century was the growth of the ‘making-up’ trade in Ulster. By 1892 there were over 85 firms engaged in making handkerchiefs, pinafores, collars,



43

cuffs, shirts, underclothing, bedding, and so on.56 This created more added value in Ulster than simply exporting cloth. Despite the growth of the making-up trade, linen cloth continued to be exported in large quantities.57 Making up in Belfast and the neighbouring urban centres was largely focused on household articles, wearing apparel, handkerchiefs and ladies’ underclothing. Derry and its rural hinterland focused more specifically on shirt collars and ladies’ underwear. Embroidery work on these articles was generally carried out in domestic contexts in rural districts in counties Down, Antrim, Tyrone, Londonderry, Donegal and Fermanagh usually for exceedingly low wages. Industrialisation thus took place in tandem with domestic household production, which continued to be an important source of employment for women into the early twentieth century. The utilisation of home labour enabled factory owners to expand production without investing considerable capital and enabled them to respond rapidly to an expansion of demand, and as this receded house workers with equal facility could be struck off. In 1907, for example, a growth in demand for embroidered table cloths, ladies’ underwear, napkins and handkerchiefs was met by increasing the volume of work put out. Agents who could command a large workforce of women prepared to work into the night to meet rushed orders were most likely to win contracts. At the end of the nineteenth century many who were prepared to undertake such work were deserted wives, widows or spinsters or had husbands on low wages; in 1897 a survey demonstrated that 40 per cent of home workers were the sole bread winners, thus revealing a high level of dependence on this kind of work throughout Ulster in particular.58 Already during the 1830s a number of Scottish firms established agencies in Ulster who put out sewing work. The census returns between 1851 and 1911 reveal that embroidery, sewing and dressmaking employed between one in four and one in nine women in every Ulster county. Although the muslin trade in which many of these women were employed declined, embroidery work on linen household goods increased during the second half of the nineteenth century.59 Putting out was already evident in Belfast in the 1850s, and shirt making had become established in the city, though on a more limited scale than in the north-west around the city of Londonderry (see below). Belfast was then acting as the main organising centre for putting out for the sewed muslin trade which reputedly employed 300,000 scattered throughout Ulster with a gross value of £1.5 million. There were about 50 Scots and Irish warehouse owners employing agents to handle this trade, but the industry declined in the following decades due to competition from Swiss machine-sewn embroidered goods. Some of those exiting this trade were suitably trained for shirt production.60 Wilkinson and Turtle established a factory for making cuffs and collars in Belfast as early as 1858. By 1871, Antrim was the county in the United Kingdom with the second highest number of operatives in shirt and collar factories (Derry being the first). Sefton & Co. opened in Newtonards in 1880


44

The linen industry

for machine sewing and embroidery, shortly afterwards adding a powerloom factory to reduce the cost of cloth.61 It is difficult to ascertain the number of outworkers employed in Ireland since no official returns were made, but a considered estimate in 1912 by William Walker suggested a figure of 90,000 in all Ireland. However, other evidence in the same report suggests outwork in the shirt industry had declined significantly since the beginning of the twentieth century, when the figure was probably somewhat higher. Making up linen and cotton goods at this stage was by far the most important source of outwork; in Belfast alone outworkers were employed by drapers’ shops, shoemakers’ shops, tailors, in finishing hosiery, in paper bag and box making, in rope nets, suit finishing, shirt and collar finishing and making, in machining blouses, overalls, aprons, pinafores, underwear and handkerchiefs, and in thread drawing.62 As more centralised linen manufacture and distribution developed in and around Belfast there were external economies for those in the making-up trades located there. Pinafore manufacture, for example, which became established around Belfast from the late 1870s (having previously been largely confined to Glasgow) due mainly ‘ … to exceptional opportunities for obtaining linens at moderate rates, with occasional odd lots’.63 By 1887, there were ten firms engaged in this trade in Belfast compared to one in 1877. Outside Belfast, Lurgan emerged as the chief seat of the handkerchief trade, with many working in the numerous factories and workshops in the town, while a large domestic industry was carried on in the countryside around Lurgan, Dromore and Portadown in addition to agencies who put out handkerchief work elsewhere in Ulster for hemming, drawing and veining. In Belfast, however, both linen (and from the 1880s cotton) hem-stitched handkerchiefs were an increasingly important feature of the expanding making-up trade in factories, workshops and domestic contexts and it was considered that the labour obtainable in Belfast in this branch was ‘better instructed’ producing a ‘superior article’.64 A parliamentary report on the making-up trades connected with linen revealed the gross exploitation of outworkers in Belfast, smaller urban centres and in rural districts. The report found that the majority worked for a pittance, at rates which even employers conceded constituted ‘sweating’. Many worked such long hours their health was undermined.65 Warehouse work was largely carried out in Belfast where goods were prepared and packaged to meet the special needs of each market. Some Belfast warehouses had rooms with hundreds of girls operating sewing machines, and outworkers were also being used.66 It was estimated that by 1890 about 5,000 persons were working in warehouses alone.67 Outside the wide range of clothing made up in and around Belfast, the most notable development within the Irish clothing sector was the growth of the shirt and making-up industry in Derry and Donegal. This became the main seat of the shirt and collar trade in the United Kingdom between the midnineteenth century and the First World War.68 From small beginnings it expanded to encompass a large workforce employed in factories and outstations, in



45

addition to large numbers employed in their own homes. The Scott family, which had developed links with Glasgow following the introduction of steam navigation, dominated the shirt trade by the 1840s, acting as an agent for English and Scottish houses exploiting the local knowledge of needle work and shirt production and low labour costs. They were probably the first to use a centralised set-up employing cutters and sewers. British concerns became more directly involved from the mid-nineteenth century; the first shirt factory in Londonderry was established in 1851 by William Tillie, a Scotsman, and by 1856 there were 14 shirt-making operations and agencies based in the city, the majority of which were branches of larger British concerns based in London, Manchester and Glasgow. These establishments utilised new technologies, notably sewing machines from 1856. British links were critical for the development of the industry; up until the 1880s all shirts were sent to Britain to be laundered. When this started to be done locally it created problems for the Derry water supply. Other associated trades, such as box making and boxing finished products, were increasingly carried out in Derry. By 1871 already, Derry was the county in the United Kingdom with the highest number of operatives in shirt- and collar-making factories and the highest number of sewing machines.69 The Londonerry Sentinal noted at the end of 1888 that Derry was competitive in the European shirt industry. Profits were down by half in the preceding 20 years, but the quantities made were not down. By 1889, 18 concerns based in Derry produced 3.8 million shirts and 7.5 million collars and cuffs. There had also been some diversification into other areas such as 750,000 items of ladies underclothing.70 In the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century there was increased competition from Germany and the west of England in lower-class goods for the home market, but Derry still dominated the trade for high-class white shirts.71 White shirts had been the staple trade of the Derry industry in the second half of the nineteenth century, but colour shirts became more fashionable in the early twentieth century and these were more suitable for factory production. The main demand for shirts came from the United Kingdom market and the British colonies (notably Australia and Canada), but sales were also made in continental Europe and the United States.72 The position of north-west Ulster as the premier shirt-making district was eroded to some degree in the later nineteenth century as the diffusion of the sewing machine led to more competition on the international market and reduced profit margins. The utilisation of machines to apply buttons in the 1890s and the introduction of double-needle sewing machines increased the tendency towards centralisation in the Irish industry from the beginning of the twentieth century resulting in a general decline in the number of outworkers.73 An estimate of the extent of the labour force engaged in outwork in the early twentieth century (when the industry was probably at its peak in terms of employment) put the figure at 80,000 persons if all outworkers and those in outstations and factories were included. Of these, only 18,000 worked in factories.74 While outwork in the shirt industry expanded during the second half of the nineteenth century

46

The linen industry

providing an example of the extension of domestic industry in tandem with factory-based production, the numbers engaged in outwork began to decline from the beginning of the twentieth century, as the industry became more centralised.75


V A number of companies invested much effort in marketing cloth abroad. Following the downturn in prices in the aftermath of the American Civil War boom, the bleacher William Clark of Upperlands intensified his sales efforts and travelled to England nine times in 1867, visiting London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and the Midlands.76 Richardsons posted family members to establish linen importing operations in the key markets overseas at Liverpool, Philadelphia and New York.77 Two of the sons of Sir William Ewart (1817–89) were resident in New York to promote and look after American business. It is clear that all the largest companies in the Irish linen trade had an important connection in New York, due to its great commercial significance in the export trade, and from 1875 the Linen Merchants’ Association made representations there on behalf of the Irish trade.78 The York Street Company sent one of its most promising managers, William Crawford, to run and re-organise the Paris sales branch in 1862, and having accomplished this, he returned in 1887 to become the managing director of the company.79 Boyle has demonstrated the way in which a number of firms, both large and small, used kinship networks to market cloth in the USA, including Ewart’s, Grimshaw’s, Watt’s, Clarke’s and Richardson’s. While in the 1820s much of the transatlantic trade from Ireland in linens was handled by British merchant houses, as the nineteenth century proceeded Irish cloth destined for the US market was increasingly handled directly by Irish firms. They used their own salesmen or independent agents who acted on their behalf, or both. Moreover, following the practice of larger British companies, a number of the Irish linen companies established branch sales offices and went to great lengths to carefully package and market cloth and meet specific customer requirements. They also sought new uses for linen cloth and developing the making-up trade in linen to suit changing consumer demand. This proactive approach to marketing enabled the Irish industry to establish a far stronger capacity to exploit the expanding north American market more effectively than competitors based in Britain or continental Europe.80 There is plenty of evidence relating to the major Irish linen companies that suggests they conformed more closely to the more optimistic conclusions reached by Nicholas in regard to overseas marketing performance of British firms.81 In contrast, Ollerenshaw, in line with the more pessimistic view within British business history, argues that between 1870–1914 ‘a great deal more could have been done [within the Irish linen industry] to improve marketing methods’.82 But it is difficult to see how the growth in Irish linen exports from under 40 million yards at the beginning of the nineteenth century to over 210 million yards by 1907 could have been achieved without a considerable marketing efforts by Irish linen producers.



47

Within British business history much has been made of growing German competition between 1870 and 1914 and indeed Germany emerged along with Belgium as the strongest competitor to the Irish linen industry in this period. Although Ollerenshaw cites some German trade-press evidence with regard to some German inroads into certain Irish markets,83 research on the German industry by Ditt indicates that it depended increasingly on a protected home market. In the 1820s exports had accounted for about 47 per cent of German output, but this share fell to 9 to 10 per cent in the 1860s and 8 per cent by the First World War. The Irish industry out-performed German linens in the crucial US market. By 1900 UK linen (the majority of which came from Ireland) accounted for 60 per cent of US linen imports compared to a mere 8–10 per cent from Germany. By the beginning of the twentieth century, German linen manufacturers were not in a strong position to supply the kind of niche products (such as bed and table wares, collar cuffs, shirt fronts, handkerchiefs) for wealthy sections of the upper and middle classes, shipping lines, hotels, etc. on international markets,84 all of which Irish manufacturers successfully targeted, in addition to meeting the new demand for other cloth types such as dress linen. Ditt’s work does not speak highly of German entrepreneurship in linen manufacture. Demand in the Irish market is difficult to assess in the nineteenth century. Solar using the 1907 Census of Production in conjunction with net exports of cloth concluded without any great confidence in the data in both instances that per capita cloth consumption in Ireland was about nine yards in 1907, which he compares using the same method to Gill’s very rough estimate of output of 89,500,000 yards in 1820 which implies a figure of almost six yards per capita for home consumption (or the equivalent of almost 45 per cent of total Irish linen cloth output).85 Close examination of a report on markets across Ireland in 1816 carried out by the Linen Board (which gives some qualitative general detail on the destination of linens sold in each market for export or the home market) provides some impressionistic evidence on the home and export trades. From this, it is difficult to see how Irish home consumption in this period could account for such a high share of total output as Gill’s estimate for 1821 implies. First, an assessment of the Ulster markets (which accounted for the bulk of the linens sold in Ireland) leaves the impression that a significantly greater share was exported. Second, although a somewhat greater share of much smaller southern sales seemed to be destined for the home market than in Ulster, even much of this was exported. Third and finally, although Dublin was the main seat of distribution for the home market, much of the cloth sent to Dublin from both the north and the south was also destined for the export trade.86 One estimate for the end of the eighteenth century suggests that only one third of the cloth exposed for sale on the Dublin market was purchased for the home market.87 If we assume the 1907 estimate is more solidly based, but allow for some downward revision to per capita output in 1821, this implies some growth in the consumption of linen per capita in Ireland between the 1820s and the beginning of the twentieth century (as opposed to contraction). This is


48

The linen industry

consistent with one assessment of the French experience at least,88 but also with rising purchasing power in Ireland during the second half of the nineteenth century. In Germany in contrast, linen flax yarn (and presumably linen cloth consumption) appears to have declined between 1878 and 1914.89 In a country where the mechanisation of the industry had proceeded furthest in global terms, with costs thus being lower and choice of linens being greater, and a population more familiar with its qualities, there are many good reasons why the Irish may have been fonder of the fabric than elsewhere. Growing upwardly mobile Irish communities, notably in North America, Britain, and its colonies, brought an appreciation of Irish linen to other markets, providing part of the explanation for the growing exports of mass produced fine linen, since it provided a badge of Irishness and respectability simultaneously, which could be passed on to the next generation.

VI An alternative perspective to that provided by cloth exports can be constructed by focusing on the flax inputs to the Irish industry. This provides an aggregate picture of inputs of the key raw material to the Irish spinning sector between 1850 and 1921, which has the advantage of including flax made into linen for the home market, but the disadvantage is that it also includes yarn made up in Ireland for export. But the latter can be viewed as an important part of the Irish industry’s output. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century there is some data on the flax acreage grown in Ireland. Almost all the flax used in Ireland at the beginning of the nineteenth century was grown there and imports and exports in the first quarter of the nineteenth century were of minor consequence. Between 1812 and 1815 the average acreage grown was a little over 101,000, rising in the following decade to almost 159,000 for the three years 1823 to 1825, which is consistent with a general growth in the industries output in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Linen exports were rising in this period, and it seems probable that native demand was also rising in line with population growth.90 In the second quarter of the nineteenth century the flax acreage in Ireland appears to have declined somewhat to roughly 100,000 acres in the mid-1840s according to one estimate, before falling dramatically to roughly 57,000 acres in the famine years between 1847 and 1849. The picture is complicated somewhat by the fact that imports and exports of both flax and yarn became more significant in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, at a time when data on both is limited, so the overall picture of the raw material supply to the industry is somewhat incomplete during the first phase of industrialisation in spinning.91 An estimate of flax-yarn imports into Ireland from Britain in 1835 put its value at £1.2 million and its weight at 1183 tons in 1835, while flax and tow exports from Ireland were estimated to have risen from under 2745 tons in 1825 to over 8197 tons in 1835.92 It was noted in the mid-1840s that foreign flax imports were increasing.93



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From 1848 onwards, it is possible to chart the extent of the flax supply more systematically. The full extent of the flax crop was recorded from 1847, while imports and exports of flax were also returned and from this data it is possible to generate a rough estimate of the net supply of flax in Ireland from 1848 to 192194 (see Figure 3.1). From the major downturn during the late 1840s there was some strong growth in the early 1850s to the first peak in 1853, which was followed by a trough between 1855 and 1861. The industry experienced growth in the following years to the all time peak for the years between 1851 and 1921 in 1864 as a consequence of the impact of the American Civil War, which raised the demand for linen cloth as a substitute for cotton when supplies of cotton wool to the British cotton industry dried up. This resulted in significant investment in the Irish industry but demand was not sustained thereafter, and the Irish industry experienced stagnation in the following decades, only recovering the level of flax inputs achieved in 1871 in 1888. From here the industry remained at a slightly higher level during the 1890s until after the turn of the century when from 1905 flax inputs experienced the most sustained upturn down to 1917 of the entire period between 1848 and 1921, with high points in 1907 and 1912–13 and 1917, which were not as high as peak of 1864 but were more sustained over a number of years. There was a brief interruption to this during the downturn of 1908. This period between 1905 and 1917 could essentially be described as the Indian summer of the Irish linen industry. From the 1917 peak the industry went into decline rapidly in 1918 and by 1921 the net flax supply was down to by far its lowest level for the entire period in question. In the mid-nineteenth century, the bulk of the flax supply was still sourced in Ireland, but from the early 1870s imports began to play an increasingly

Figure 3.1 Net flax supply to the Irish linen industry 1850–1921 Source: See appendix 1.


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more important role, and although native supply recovered its position in a number of years between 1876 and 1886, when exports of native flax are taken into account, imports in most years were of greater consequence. From the late 1880s flax imports became progressively more important in sustaining the Irish industry. The main causes of the decline of Irish flax cultivation in the second half of the nineteenth century was a rise in the cost of Irish agricultural labour and the superior quality of foreign flax, which became an important consideration as the balance of Irish output shifted towards finer linens. Russian flax could be acquired more cheaply by Irish spinners than that grown in Ireland, while the finest qualities were purchased in Courtrai in Belgium, where there was a small Irish community handling the trade. Growth in flax inputs after the American Civil War until the 1903–17 upturn are much more limited than that revealed by Solar’s estimates of linen exports in this period, possibly reflecting a slower growth in the total output of the industry in terms of quantity at least.95 Improved hackling machinery in this period reduced the proportion of tow, giving a higher proportion of usable flax per ton. Moreover, with the significant decline in the Irish population in this period undoubtedly exports became relatively more important than the Irish market for linen, even if Irish per capita consumption rose slightly over this period. Another point of comparison is with raw-material inputs into the UK cotton industry. Between 1850 and 1860, flax inputs into the Irish linen industry had fallen, while raw cotton consumption had almost doubled. The tables were turned in the 1860s when linen experienced an intense phase of growth due to shortages of cotton from the USA during the American Civil War, but while cotton recovered and expanded between 1870 and 1888, flax inputs never surpassed the peak of 1870 again until 1888. Thereafter growth was stagnant in both industries until the more sustained upturn between 1905 and the First World War, interrupted in the case of linen in 1908, but with both industries achieving their peaks for the entire period in 1912–13. However, UK cotton inputs were 40 per cent larger in 1912 than in 1888, compared to a growth of almost 35 per cent for Irish flax inputs in the same period. However, from 1914 to 1921 the contraction of Irish flax inputs were dramatically sharper, with inputs in 1921 being less than a quarter of what they had been in 1914, while UK cotton consumption was merely halved.96

VII Ollerenshaw charted the fate of the industry during and after the First World War. At the outset, the Irish industry was already in recession, with many mills on short time and unemployment commonplace, though by 1915 military recruitment began to create labour shortages. Flax supplies from Russia were cut off following the Russian Revolution in 1917 and were not restored until 1922, while Belgium was also overrun; these two countries had accounted for roughly 80 per cent of the Irish flax supply. The years of the First World War



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marked a major watershed in the industry’s history for several reasons. From March 1915 until the end of the war the state took control of flax supplies. Government control intensified with the establishment of the Flax Control Board in October 1917. Irish flax acreage was increased threefold during the war years, while cotton yarn was increasingly mixed with linen to make unions. Civilian consumption and exports were curtailed as the state intervened to secure military requirements. Fine linen was used for aircraft construction (notably for wings), so from 1916, this became a central focus of a large part of the Ulster industry. There were 55 Irish linen firms working on government contract by the end of the war.97 When the war ended, orders were immediately cancelled, while firms also had to deal with sharply rising prices of raw material and wage costs. The loss of flax supplies from Russia continued to be a problem into the 1920s. Many of the industry’s traditional markets were never recovered after the war. In particular, Ulster never recaptured the position it held in its premier export market, the USA, where native manufactures made of cotton and linen increasingly displaced the imported article. The decline in Irish emigration to North America from the First World War onwards may have been an additional factor reducing demand. Moreover, on the British and Irish market changes in fashions meant that linen was no longer regarded as a necessity in middleclass households. The decline of domestic service highlighted the high maintenance costs of linen fabrics, which had also increased in price relative to other textiles all of which further reduced demand. Many spindles and looms were idle, and productivity in the industry relative to cotton was falling even further behind. By 1920 already many firms had stocks on hand which they could not sell, leading to liquidity problems. Output in the Northern Irish industry declined from 211 m sq yards in 1912 to 161 in 1924.98 The rise in labour costs in particular during and after the war, in an industry which was more labour intensive than the other major textiles, posed major problems in relation to the competitiveness of linen cloth against other textiles, most notably cotton.99 As a consequence of these problems, it was noted in August 1921 that since the previous January, 20 mills representing half the entire spindles in the industry had remained continuously closed, while the balance were only working a few hours each week. Only about 15 per cent of the normal yarn output was being produced and about 60–70 per cent of the 130,000–140,000 operatives were unemployed. Most of the rest were on short time and wages had been reduced.100 These dramatic changes from the more propitious international environment which prevailed for the industry prior to the First World War, in terms of dramatically rising raw material and labour costs, changing fashions, price and the loss of traditional markets, collectively altered the relative position of linen compared to other textiles. The industry in Ulster began its fall from grace, battered by forces largely outside the control of Irish manufacturers.


Part II

Southern comfort Downloaded by [INFLIBNET Centre] at 05:59 30 August 2012

The food, drink and tobacco industries



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Since the Irish economy was dominated by agriculture, it is hardly surprising that food processing had already become an important industry by the end of the eighteenth century. This chapter examines the development of food processing during the Union focusing in the following sections on bacon curing, corn milling, baking and biscuit making, and finally the development of creameries. The following section will focus on the the development of the bacon-curing industry in this period.

I With a rapid growth in population in Ireland during the eighteenth century the demand for food in the home market rose dramatically. Simultaneously, with the expansion of British and Irish trade with America and the West Indies, Ireland built up a profitable niche in the export of provisions, notably in beef, butter and pork. As a result, a number of the larger ports had witnessed significant capital investment in food processing.1 The decline in the transatlantic trade from the 1780s was more than offset by the demand created by the British army and navy during the Napoleonic War and rising demand in Britain, while native demand was also increasing in the war years. According to Dickson, military victualling had become very extensive in the final phase of the French wars, and the port of Cork remained the main victualling centre down to 1815, which stimulated local investment in brewing, distilling, processed cereals and biscuits, pig meat, beef and butter for many decades. Pig-meat slaughter and processing became more important than beef processing in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Dickson notes a steady growth of high value added processed food exports from Cork city in particular, along with by-products such as candles, tallow, soap, shoes, between the 1780s and 1820s, in addition to the baking of biscuits and bread for export and local military demand.2 In the port of Waterford, Hearne notes a similar process of development in this period, with bacon emerging as a major export commodity during the first third of the nineteenth century.3 With the advent of steam navigation from the mid-1820s, live export of animals eclipsed the traditional trade in provisions, so that exports of processed


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beef and pork continued to decline. The export trade in bacon and ham to Britain was the only processed meat of any consequence thereafter.4 At a more local level, statistics relating to the port of Limerick reveal that the exports of pork fell from 12,369 barrels to only 6962 between 1820 and 1829, while bacon exports in the same years rose from 12,672 cwt to 46,160.5 It was from this period, that bacon curing began to become organised on a factory basis. In 1820, Matterson’s was established in Limerick (utilising the method of curing then used in Berwick-upon-Tweed in Scotland) and Shaw’s set up a factory in the city in 1831. In 1834, Lunham Brothers of Berwickupon-Tweed established a factory in Cork, and Denny’s also opened during this period.6 London appears to have been the main market in the 1850s, with Waterford exports dominating this trade, while Lancashire and the north of England were also important and this was supplied largely from Limerick and Belfast, which both had an extensive domestic trade in bacon and ham, as did Cork.7 Matterson’s of Limerick for example, sent most of its bacon to London in 1866, also delivering a ton of sausages a week to Dublin, in addition to producing for local markets.8 Solar’s research has revealed the significant growth of exports of bacon and ham from 3,404,000 cwt in the mid-nineteenth century to a substantial 10,824,000 cwt in 1900.9 Growing meat consumption in Britain appears to have remained the main driver of the Irish bacon industry throughout the Union, assisted by the impact of the transport revolution in steam navigation and rail. While most Irish bacon was exported to Great Britain, to sustain this trade Ireland increasingly consumed cheaper American bacon in the second half of the nineteenth century. Danish competition increased in the British market during last quarter of the nineteenth century, but Irish bacon retained its high reputation.10 To meet rising demand in Britain, the industry was obliged to modernise; new plants were built and old ones were upgraded in the last third of the nineteenth century. Methods of curing changed radically in the 1860s when brine was pump injected into the meat instead of piling it in beds of salt, which improved the taste. The size of a number of plants increased. Lunham’s of Cork, for example, handled 30,000 pigs per annum by 1878; the figure more than quadrupled over the next decade and new buildings covering an acre and a half had been erected before 1892. The two Limerick firms of Shaw and Matterson had a massive combined turnover of two million pounds by 1876. By using ice, they could go on curing through the summer season which had previously not been possible. Shaw’s, who slaughtered 150,000 pigs per annum by 1892, claimed to be the second largest bacon curing establishment in Europe.11 The number of pigs slaughtered in Irish bacon factories was estimated to be in the region of 650,000 in 1859,12 and output appears to have grown over the remainder of the nineteenth century. By 1902, there were 20 bacon-curing factories in the country employing over 1,600 people, which dealt with about 850,000 pigs per annum. There appears to have been a decline in pigs handled



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over the previous 12 years, but the number of pigs purchased by bacon curers rose to 1,143,025 by 1910 which suggests some increase in the industry in the intervening years (see Table 4.1). At this stage pig breeding had been significantly improved to the advantage of curers. The Munster curers drew pigs south of a line from Dublin to Galway and had the advantage of being able draw pigs which could be reared from the waste of the dairy industry centred largely in Munster. Limerick was the largest centre of the industry and its output was about equal to Waterford and Cork combined. Next came Belfast and there were also a number of smaller centres of the industry in Londonderry, Dublin, Tralee, Enniscorthy, Dundalk, Ballymena and New Ross. A large part of the industry became centralised in more highly capitalised plants which used the latest techniques, which enabled Irish curers to compete successfully in the British market.13 In Limerick, bacon curing became the major industry with four substantial plants operating in the city by the end of the nineteenth century. The O’Mara family subsequently established an interest in works in Dublin in 1906, while Denny’s had plants in Cork, Limerick and Waterford by the 1920s.14 Shaw’s had a strong trade within Ireland for bacon, hams and other pork products such as brawn and sausages, but they also exported to England and America. They were the first plant in the west to generate and utilise electricity extensively (from 1896).15 O’Mara’s Bacon Factory on Roche’s street at this stage had extended its trade into the US market. Its trade in bacon and lard to London was so extensive that the company opened offices there by 1893 staffed by members of the family. At this point the company had also acquired an interest in a Russian bacon plant. It appears that the London trade declined somewhat in the first decades of the twentieth century while simultaneously the home trade was becoming more important. The performance of the Irish bacon-curing industry during the second half of the nineteenth century was reasonably good. The industry was export oriented, it therefore had to compete on the British market with the US and Denmark. But the Irish industry was still a little larger than the Danish in 1902. However, there had been a steady decrease in the killing of pigs in the twelve years leading to 1902, which was partially a consequence of Danish competition and the rise in live exports of pigs from Ireland since the early 1880s.16 Nonetheless, growing per capita income in Ireland also increased the demand for bacon and ham on the home market. By 1920, it was estimated that about 37 per cent of the pigs reared in Ireland were consumed on the home market.17 The First World War and its aftermath clearly disrupted the industry (see Table 4.1). The potato crop was an important source of food for pigs and the partial failure of the crop in 1916 had a detrimental impact. Government Food Control policy dramatically reduced the importation of maize, another important source of food for pigs. The unstable political circumstances in Ireland from 1919 and a general recession from 1920, further disrupted bacon curing. By the mid-1920s, the medium-to-large-sized factories in Munster,

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Table 4.1 Number of pigs purchased by Irish bacon curers (dead and alive) Year

Pigs

1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922

1,143,025 1,253,197 1,416,765 1,181,269 1,277,458 1,376,063 1,277,250 967,594 726,647 874,525 898,113 1,030,123 976,365

Source: Irish Trade Journal, December 1925, p. 55.

which accounted for 12 of the 25 factories in the 26 counties (which became the Irish Free State), dominated production, handling most of the pigs slaughtered, but there were still plants at Roscrea, Dublin, Castlebar and Sligo.18

II If bacon curing was export driven, corn milling stood at the opposite end of the spectrum depending largely on the home market. Between 1835 and 1850 milling was the most widely dispersed industrial activity on the island, with very roughly 2,500 corn mills in operation,19 compared to about 20,000 grain mills in Britain in 1800,20 giving some indication of the greater importance of milled cereals in the diet and economy of the larger island at this point. There was a gradual decline in the number of Irish mills to 1,222 by 1908 as the industry became more concentrated in larger mills, but clearly many smaller rural mills survived the dramatic changes witnessed by the industry during the period of the Union.21 The general expansion of tillage farming in the 70 years or so prior to the Famine22 contributed to the significant investment in Ireland’s milling infrastructure in this period. Wakefield, in 1812, noted that wheat acreage had been expanding in the previous decades: ‘The business of converting wheat into flour is increasing in Ireland, a considerable change with respect to food, having taken place in the habits of the people in many parts of the country, wheaten bread begins now to be much more used then it was formerly.’ Wakefield noted that the principal tillage areas ran from Co. Kilkenny through Kildare, parts of Meath and Louth, while areas in Cork, Tipperary,



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King’s and Queens counties and Wexford were also identified as significant wheat growing districts.23 McCutcheon’s survey of the Ulster grain milling industry concludes that many were rebuilt or expanded between 1780 and 1830, incorporating improved waterwheels and internal machinery. This conclusion is born out by other studies.24 Many of these were small grist mills; in Co. Tyrone for example it was noted there was 124 such mills and each landlord generally owned one or two.25 In the 1830s, it was noted that the advent of steamship navigation on the cross-channel trade led to a rapid increase in the number of grain mills across the country as consequence of this additional source of demand provided by exports.26 However, an examination of the export data suggests that this was far less important than rising native wheat consumption. An agricultural report in 1836 noted that native wheat production has increased very materially … there has been more wheat consumed in Ireland the last two years than ever was known … coarse flour has been so low [in price], that a part of the population which has been in the habit of living upon oatmeal has eaten coarse flour, and therefore, notwithstanding there has not been a greater export from Ireland, the growth has considerably increased.27 The growing application of steam power for grinding grain between the mid1820s and early 1840s provides additional evidence of investment in flour milling during this period.28 One witness in the Report on Agriculture noted in the mid–1830s that ‘ … there is a great increase in flour mills and I understand from people that have been connected with them, that it is attended with a great profit’.29 Milled cereals were featuring more strongly and frequently in Irish diet, even in poorer households. In 1841, the Grand Canal Company noted: ‘ … the decided change which has taken place in the previous habits of a large portion of the People of this Country, which by enabling the Poor to become purchasers and consumers of Flour, Oatmeal etc to a much greater extent than formerly. … ’30 The Great Famine and its aftermath further increased the demand for milled cereals. This is evident from the rise in imports of indian corn in particular from 1846, and also in the rise in net imports of wheat over the following decades.31 On the 30 April 1847, McAdam, the Belfast ironfounder, noted in his diary that distress had increased their trade ‘as it has caused a demand for machinery to grind indian corn which is imported now in large quantities to feed the poor’.32 The investment in corn milling increased in these decades; by 1852 Carlow town, for example, had four grain mills powered by steam (installed in the previous decade). Cork city had five steam powered mills by the end of 1852,33 in response to the growth in cereal imports during and after the Great Famine. Likewise, in the town of Galway there were 25 mills prior to 1847 and the towns milling capacity expanded during the following decade.34 Surviving business records from flour mills provide additional


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evidence that the market for flour was not restricted to the larger towns. While many flour millers sold into the buoyant Dublin market, they also sold flour to the local villages and towns in their hinterland.35 The large flour mill in Slane, sold extensively in counties Louth, Cavan, Meath and the city of Dublin in the 1830s in addition to handling a large export trade to Britain.36 The Dundalk flour millers in the 1830s sold to towns in the north, while Belfast at this stage was supplied by flour mills in or near Belfast at Larne, Lisburn, Cumber and Bangor.37 Solar’s estimate of total Irish calorific production in 1840–5 and 1846–50 reveals the greater calorific significance of potatoes over cereals prior to the famine. However, this trend was reversed during the famine.38 Alternatively, Ó Gráda’s pre-famine cereal output estimate (which is less conservative than Solar’s) suggests that c. 1845 gross value added of wheat and oats combined was £13 million, compared to £8.8 million for potatoes, reflecting the differences between the calorific significance and the market value of cereals and potatoes. Wheat in the latter estimate accounted for almost £4.9 million, illustrating graphically the importance of oats in the nineteenth-century Irish economy.39 Bourke suggests that in normal pre-famine years nearly 80 per cent of domestic oat production was retained for consumption in Ireland. In many parts of the country oatmeal was one of the dietary staples and as one moved up the social scale, oatmeal and bread were commonplace in more varied diets.40 The growing demand for oatmeal for human consumption and exports, provide much of the explanation for the existence of the large milling infrastructure in pre-famine Ireland. The expansion of flour milling between 1801–45 contributed to building up the more capital intensive and technically advanced elements of the milling sector in response to the rising native demand for flour. In terms of size and technical sophistication, many of the larger Irish mills compared favourably with English mills. The largest in the country was Alexander’s mill in Millford, Co. Carlow, with 22 millstones by the 1840s.41 Between the early 1820s and the years of the Great Famine, a number of Irish millers also traded in the expanding British market, notably in the wheat-growing areas of Munster and Leinster, which produced a surplus. In Waterford, which accounted for half of Irish flour and wheatmeal exports by 1838, flour exports dramatically eclipsed wheat in significance in this period, with the port dominating Irish exports of flour and wheatmeal, since it was a convenient mustering point for handling the produce of the hinterlands of the rivers Barrow, Nore and Suir.42 Clonmel (situated inland) was the largest flour-milling centre in Ireland, exported most of its flour through Waterford. However, native demand for flour was ultimately far more important than the export trade. In 1846, for example, flour and wheatmeal exports for Ireland amounted to only 724,000 cwt, when Irish flour production was in the region of 5,595,000 cwt.43 Native oatmeal production and consumption was greater still. In the decades after the Great Famine oatmeal milling declined somewhat as part of the general decline of tillage farming in this period, but not to the



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same extent as wheat production. The oat harvest in 1864 yielded only 21,872,000 cwt compared to 32,258,000 in 1847.44 The harvest of 17,166,000 cwt in 1907 was not significantly less than in 1864; however, human consumption of oatmeal had declined drastically since the Famine. It was noted in the Select Committee on Irish Industries in the mid-1880s that oatmeal consumption was dying out in Ireland and that oatmeal consumption was not one fourth of what it was twenty years previously.45 It is apparent from the Census of Industrial Production in 1907 that oats for milling by then accounted for a relatively paltry share of the Irish oat crop,46 which implies that the lions share of it was destined for animal consumption. Despite this significant decline in volume, oatmeal production continued in many smaller rural mills on an increasingly reduced scale, utilising the existing milling infrastructure. The Brinny Mills near Bandon in Co. Cork, for example, ceased producing white flour at the end of the nineteenth century, as they were unable to compete with American imports and the produce of mills in the port of Cork. Instead they concentrated thereafter on grinding or crushing oats and barley on commission for local farmers for animal feeds, in addition to producing some wholemeal flour.47 Scott’s of Omagh (established in 1850) milled some flour and more oatmeal and maize meal. By the end of the nineteenth century they had moved into the production of rolled oats, or flaked oatmeal which was forwarded to selling agents in London, Dublin, Belfast and Glasgow. They had abandoned flour milling by 1900 and made more space for the Indian meal plant and continued to concentrate on oatmeal, also milling cereals for farmers at the Omagh site and other mills they had acquired an interest in.48 Oats remained a staple crop in Irish agriculture during the second half of the nineteenth century; this, and the expansion of provender milling, explains the survival of many mills, so that the number of corn mills only fell gradually from just under 2,000 in 1835 to 1,482 in 1891.49 A number of mills survived through diversification into maize milling. Maize had been used since the beginning of the nineteenth century in crisis years as a substitute food source for the poor when the potato crop failed. It was imported during the famine years in large quantities as a relief measure, and from this point it began to feature more commonly in the diet of labourers to bridge the months after the old potato crop had run out, in addition to famine years. Many millers having introduced new machinery to grind maize during the famine years found it profitable to mill maize for animal feeds and human consumption thereafter and imports rose. The greater relative importance of the maize milling in the Irish economy is evident from the fact that, by 1907, Ireland accounted for half the UK output of maize meal.50 The greater consumption per capita in Ireland can be explained by a combination of factors. The use of maize for human consumption continued during the second half of the nineteenth century, most notably in years when the potato crop was poor; it could be made into a stirabout or alternatively baked as griddle cakes. It was also used in workhouses and as an adjunct in the more varied diets of more prosperous households, though it is impossible to


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ascertain the exact significance of human consumption.51 Cannon and Brunt have argued that human consumption of maize tended to decline as living standards rose between the 1840s and the 1920s, while imports in this period rose due to the growing poultry population. Certainly the consumption of meal by poultry was a factor, and human consumption was falling, but they have omitted cattle as major consumers; this was reported in Ulster after 1850 and it was observed that almost all the maize imported into the port of Cork on the eve of the First World War was for feeding cattle.52 It was also fed to a lesser extent to pigs. This new niche in provender milling from the mid-nineteenth century onwards enabled a number of mills to survive the contraction in the other branches of the trade. It conveniently complemented whatever trade in oatmeal and flour could be retained in many smaller country mills, while many of the larger milling operations milled all three grains.53 The relatively larger imports of maize into Belfast from the late nineteenth century onwards may partially be a consequence of its use as a cheaper substitute to barley for the production of patent still whiskey and alcohol. Though oatmeal production had been of greater consequence in the decades around the mid-nineteenth century, in terms of value it had been dramatically eclipsed by both maize and flour milling by the beginning of twentieth century, with flour milling in value terms being the slightly more important commodity among the latter two. By the early 1860s, net Irish wheat imports exceeded native wheat production. The increased significance of imports had important implications for the organisation and location of the Irish industry. These circumstances led to a significant decline of flour milling in many inland locations, which depended entirely on native wheat. Those centres with a strong flour-export trade to Britain in the pre-famine era also experienced decline, notably Clonmel, where a number of concerns had closed by the end of the 1870s.54 A witness to the Commission on Irish Industry declared in 1885 that the flour-milling business was fairly prosperous in Ireland from the mid-nineteenth century down to the mid-1870s.55 The volume of flour produced increased in these years;56 clearly a number of flour mills in locations with access to growing imported supplies of wheat, either in proximity to the major ports, or with connections to them via canal or rail heads benefited at the expense of mills in more isolated locations, who depended on dwindling supplies of native wheat. Those who adapted increasingly became the dominant players in the Irish market for flour by the mid-1870s. Although some rural mills, for example, invested in installing new centrifugal bolting equipment,57 it was the ports which witnessed greater levels of investment in this period. In the growing industrial city of Belfast, for example, there was a steady increase in milling capacity in this period; Davidson’s Bridge Mills were opened in 1852, Macaulay and Co. began operating the Steam Flour Mills in Steam Mill Lane in 1858. The Pheonix Flour Mills opened for business in 1861 on Great Georges St. and in 1868 the Brookfield Flour Mills began to operate on Crumlin Rd. Mc Cammon’s Mill in King St. which had been initially set up for grinding maize in 1848 was also converted for flour milling during this period.58 Hughes in Belfast completed ‘The Model Mill’ in



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1877, a large seven storey structure which subsequently had the latest Simon roller system installed in 1881.59 One of the largest mills in Dublin in this period was the Dublin North City Milling Co. Ltd on Glasnevin Rd. adjacent to both the Royal Canal and Midland and Great Western Railway. Incorporated in 1873, it had 34 pairs of stones driven by steam and waterpower, for the manufacture of oatmeal, indian meal and flour. The company had originally been established by the Murtagh brothers who were corn merchants and millers in Dublin, Athlone, Longford, Castlerea, Castlebar and Ballina.60 However, this was eclipsed by developments at Boland’s Ringsend Mill in Dublin, which had 63 millstones by the end of the 1870s.61 These examples give some indication of the growing scale of the larger port-based concerns in this period, and the increasing significance of the large bakeries which were extending their milling capacity. It was becoming more profitable to mill close to the major centres of population and at the major ports. Cork’s traditional position as a strong milling region was sustained through the mid-nineteenth-century transition to imported wheat. The city and county became the principal import, milling and distribution centre in the south of Ireland for both flour and maize meal. It remained the second most important centre for importing wheat after Dublin during most of the second half of the nineteenth century. Hall’s of Cork became the largest Irish wheat and maize importers during the second half of the nineteenth century. The rapid transition in the industry in the latter part of the Famine is evident when they reported in July 1849 that ‘hard wheat is little known amongst the millers here’, but later in October of the same year they commented, ‘we find the demand for foreign wheat exceedingly good’.62 Although local millers at this point were not favourably disposed to hard wheats, Hall’s were already building up ‘a very good connexion’ with the regions flour millers, who were clearly turning to imported wheat supplies to meet the growth in demand.63 Their letterbooks between 1849 and 1851 reveal extensive wheat imports from Poland, France, Egypt, Syria, Leghorn, Marianople and Constantinople. By the 1860s, Hall’s had customers all over Cork and the adjoining counties, and from the mid-1870s they were increasingly importing north American wheat, in addition to wheat from Odessa, Danzig, Salonica, the Caspian Sea, France, Spain, Argentina and Australia.64 Flour milling remained reasonably remunerative down to the mid-1870s, but competition from rising imports of cheap American flour produced in roller mills, increasingly reduced profitability, putting many millers out of business. The main advantage of the new system was that it required less motive power to grind a given quantity of corn and it also produced a greater proportion of finer white flour. The diffusion of the new technology was confined predominantly to Hungary and the US by the mid-1870s. British and Irish mills were initially slow to adopt the new technology.65 Combined with the significant reduction in trans-Atlantic shipping costs, this meant that American flour could be sold in Ireland at increasingly competitive rates from the mid-1870s


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onwards. This increased the use of white bread as opposed to wholemeal bread. A number of witnesses to the Commission on Irish Industry in 1884 pointed to the major reversals in the Irish flour-milling industry resulting from American flour imports from the roller mills of Chicago and St. Paul. The Commission drew much attention to the impact of American competition on Irish flour millers by the mid-1880s.66 This corroborates reports in the Miller in 1883 that there was a lot of American flour in Dublin bread. In the following year the journal noted that ‘14 years ago the milling trade in this country was in a prosperous condition’, being one of the chief industries of Ireland.67 Imports of North American flour had an even greater impact on Irish flour milling in the 1890s, reaching their maximum impact between 1899 and 1903, declining rapidly in the following year. At this point English milled flour (utilising imported wheat) was beginning to make some headway in the Irish market. Taking a more long-term perspective, net imports of flour rose dramatically between 1867 and 1904 from around 600,000 cwt to almost 5,200,000 cwt.68 Although the amount of flour consumed in Ireland rose considerably, Irish flour production fell from 6,978,000 cwt in 1867 to 4,978,000 cwt in 1904. This reveals a significant loss of market share for Irish millers to imports, as per capita consumption of flour in Ireland increasingly converged with the rest of the UK between the mid-nineteenth century and the eve of the First World War. The declining price of flour on the Irish market resulting from foreign competition contributed to a major increase in Irish per capita flour consumption notably in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The significance of bread in the diet throughout Ireland therefore increased dramatically in this period. By the eve of the First World War flour consumption in Ireland was slightly higher than in Great Britain.69 Family budgets for households in the west of Ireland in the 1890s which were drawn up by the Congested Districts Board reveal that household expenditure on bread and flour at this stage were highly significant, even among the most impoverished households. In one district in Donegal, for example, over a fifth of household expenditure went on flour or bakers bread,70 and this was fairly typical of the pattern across the western seaboard. By 1904 imported flour accounted for roughly half of the Irish flour supply, and while the native milling industry recovered some of this lost ground between 1904 and 1917, the volumes of flour produced never retained the levels produced in most years between the famine and late 1880s. Despite the major reversals experienced by the Irish flour milling as competition increased, a number adapted to these circumstances by exploiting the major technical innovations and advances within the English milling and machine industries, with some Irish millers contributing to the first phase of innovation. The partial use of rollers for bruising wheat was already being undertaken in Ireland in three mills (at Chapelizod, Lucan and Tanderagee) as early as 1845.71 Turner of Ipswich installed an early roller system in Russell’s of Limerick in 1863–4,72 and a few years later another was installed by S.S. Allen of Midleton (which was not a success). Although a number of Irish millers



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had installed Wegmann’s patent porcelain roller system by the late 1870s, it was only in 1880 that Messrs Shackleton of Carlow brought a full and complete roller mill into production, using the Simon system (in a converted stone mill), which proved to be a commercial success.73 Over the following decade a number of Irish mills were either converted or built for roller milling. In Belfast in 1881, D. and W. Carmichael built the Dufferin Mills in Duncrue St. and by 1884 the new system had also been installed in mills on Meadow St. and the Falls Rd. Others who adopted the system in Ulster included Wilson of the Foyle Mills in Derry, Scott’s Omagh Mills in Co. Tyrone and Walker’s Mills in Newry, Co. Armagh. At this stage one of the larger mills in Galway had been converted for roller milling. By 1891, there were two such mills in the port of Cork; Furlongs on Lapp’s Quay (with 19 sets of rollers) and Mc Mullen’s on Margaret St. (with 17 sets).74 Others adapted by relocating; Andrews for example transferred their entire flour milling interests from Comber, Co. Down to the port of Belfast in the early 1880s, and by 1900 they were one of the two Belfast survivors. In the next decade, this firm improved its plant and output developing a strong trade in Derry, Donegal and the west of Ireland,75 presumably at the expense of local milling interests. However, competition in the Belfast market, the fastest growing in Ireland, was intense. From the late 1880s, wheat imports into Belfast fell as flour imports rose, which led to a number of reverses in the local flour-milling trade. Even the major industrial bakers, Hughes, who built the Model Flour Mills on Divis St. in 1877, closed down their mills in 1900, as it became more economical for them to import flour.76 Despite major setbacks, there was an impressive response to greater foreign competition among some Irish flour millers. Carter, another major British milling engineer, later claimed that the first automatic roller system in the world was designed, erected and started by him in Boland’s Flour Mill, Dublin in April 1880.77 The pace of innovation in Irish flour milling compares favourably with Britain when the smaller population and scale of the Irish industry is taken into account. By 1887, of the 471 complete roller process mills which had been installed in the UK, 73 were located in Ireland.78 This indicates that a number of Irish flour millers were able to take advantage of the major innovations which were taking place within the United Kingdom flour milling industry in this period. The diffusion of Simon’s complete roller system in Ireland in particular from the early 1880s has been well tracked by Jones, and Irish adaptation of the new technologies assisted the recovery of market share by Irish flour millers in the early twentieth century, by which time there were four principal milling centres, Belfast, Dublin, Cork and Limerick, with Messrs James Bannatyne of Limerick probably being the largest mill at this point in terms of output.79 Many of those who failed to adapt went out of business, and flour production by the 1920s became more concentrated in the hands of those who had adopted roller mills. The corn supply for the Irish milling industry in this period also became more concentrated in the hands of a smaller number of larger grain dealers. From 1880, R.H. Hall of Cork, for example, opened new offices in Belfast,

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Dublin and Waterford and expanded their trade in these ports. Despite a depression in the industry, Hall’s noted optimistically in March 1886: Our millers for many years past suffered very heavily from the competition with American flour, the American mills having exceptional advantages from their new machinery, and their great command of fine wheats. All this has now changed. Out of the 24 principal millers in the South of Ireland, 16 have been remodelled after the American model, and can now defy competition, being fully fitted with the newest machinery. Seven out of the remaining 8 nearly always pay cash for what they buy from us. Moreover our millers have now become favourably situated … to compete with America. The UK has now the produce of all lands and notably the cheap Indian wheats are beating out the American. Milling therefore, which so long has been a staple industry here, gives promise now of recovering its old position … Many millers have gone down, but those surviving are mostly the largest.80 Hall’s perspective was that of the major suppliers in an industry which was rapidly becoming more centralised. The significant extent of their operations in 1893 is dramatically illustrated by their annual turnover which was between 2 to 2.5 million pounds. They claimed in 1893 that ‘in Cork we do about threefourths of the corn trade, in Waterford the entire, in Dublin and Belfast about half the business done. With the disappearance of several of our competitors during last year, our opportunities for doing business are greatly increased, especially in Dublin.’81 The company used these extremely difficult years in the Irish corn trade to make cheap acquisitions in Waterford in 1890 and Westport in 1894.82 It seems probable that the presence of Hall’s grain-importing business from the mid-nineteenth century transition to imported grain was a major benefit to the flour millers in the city and county of Cork as it ensured constant supplies on competitive terms. A number of mills in Cork city and its hinterland made the transition to roller milling from the 1880s. There were six large roller mills by 1908 located in the port of Cork, using imported grain; these included Messrs John Furlong and Sons, Ltd, Marina Mills (a custom-built roller mill established in 1891) and Lapp’s Quay; Messrs J.W. Mc Mullen and Sons Ltd. Cork Steam Mills, George’s Quay; Messrs George Shaw and Sons, St John’s Mills, John St.83 Despite the closure of a number of rural mills in the region as a result of this concentration of mills in the port, some survived and even prospered outside the city. Messrs T. Hallinan & Sons, Ltd were perhaps the most successful, having taken over the Glandalane Mills in Fermoy in 1861, the Avoncore Mills in Midleton in 1874 and the Quartertown Mill in Mallow in 1912.84 Economies could be achieved in medium to large-sized plants using roller mills which enabled them to displace smaller mills in their hinterland.85 Limerick also became an important centre for importing and milling foreign wheat in the second half of the nineteenth century, with foreign imports



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reaching and surpassing those of Cork from the 1890s. Wheat was also forwarded from the port to mills in Clara, Galway, Kilrush and Cahir, amongst other places. With the transition to roller milling from the 1880s, flour milling in the region became more concentrated in two large companies in Limerick city (Bannatynes and Russells), which were conveniently located for distributing meal and flour via the Shannon system by canal, in addition to the rail system. However, some other mills continued to operate profitably such as Glynn and Sons at Kilrush, Co. Clare and Maguire’s Curraghgower Mills at Croom, Co. Limerick.86 Bannatyne’s took over a steam-driven mill in Roches St. in Limerick city in 1858, converting to the roller system in 1884, which was extended in 1886.87 Russell’s and Bannatyne’s had depots all over Munster and even in parts of Connaught, which facilitated large sales of grain, flour and meal.88 Although Russell’s mills were among the largest in Ireland in terms of capacity, they were ultimately surpassed by Bannatyne’s City Roller Mills which were considered the largest flour mills within the Irish Free State after partition.89 The concentration of ownership evident within the Munster industry continued when the shareholders of John Furlong and Sons (1920) Ltd, one of the largest of the Cork city milling operations, offered to sell all the shares to Bannatyne and Sons Ltd for £121,736. The offer was accepted.90 In Dublin the most notable developments were the emergence of the large industrial bakeries, Boland’s and Johnston, Mooney and O’Brien, who milled much of their own imported wheat. Johnston, Mooney and O’Brien had a share capital of £150,000 when incorporated in 1889, which included the Clonliffe Mills, Jones Rd, one of larger Dublin mills, which had just been fitted with a roller system.91 Patrick Boland had taken over Pim’s Mills in Ringsend at the Grand Canal Basin in 1873, installing a Carter roller system in the early 1880s. Boland’s was incorporated in 1888 with a share capital of £205,000. The amount of wheat ground there can be traced through the company accounts. The quantity remained fairly steady in the 1890s and then rose in the following decade to a peak of 202,779 brls in 1911, declining slowly over the following decade. By 1921–22, the amount ground was half of that in 1911.92 This suggests that Boland’s flour-milling operation became increasingly less competitive with flour imports from Britain. However, much of the Irish flour trade was not for commercial bakers’ flour, but for the home-baking trade which utilised the coarser flours in which Irish mills remained competitive. In 1890, it was estimated that about 80 per cent of the flour sold in Ireland was for the shop trade, while the remaining 20 per cent was for bakeries.93 Home baking was more significant in Ireland than in Britain, notably in rural areas. This may have been one of the reasons there was less competition with flour imports in the Munster market, than in Dublin and Belfast, where bakers flour had a larger market share. A number of smaller Leinster mills engaged in flour, oatmeal and maize milling continued to operate at canal and rail heads outside Dublin, or in smaller port towns. The Annagassan Mills, Dunleer, run by Dougherty & Co. was the only survivor in Co. Louth by the 1920s, employing at least 20 persons. The Davis family mill in Enniscorthy was one of the few concerns to


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survive into the twentieth century in Co. Wexford.94 Milling was strong in counties Kildare, Offaly, Carlow, Kilkenny and King’s where a number of mediumsized firms survived as the industry became more concentrated, producing a wide range of products other than flour. The order forms for Perry of Belmount Mills, for example, included superfine flour for bakers, household grades, in addition to Indian meal and oaten meal.95 The Pilsworths took over a range of mills in Kilkenny, and increasingly centred their flour and maize milling interests on Grennan Mill in Thomastown (since it had rail access), buying up and closing down other flour mills in the region, or simply using them as sales outlets and stores.96 Fogarty’s of Aughrim were milling native Wicklow wheat, while also taking consignments of foreign wheat delivered off the Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford railway, which they also used for delivering flour.97 But lower through rail rates seem to have increasingly favoured the port-based millers or English imported flour. Scott’s at Omagh, for example, claimed like many other inland mills that railway rates discriminated against their interests in receiving wheat or delivering flour compared to mills located in Derry or Belfast.98 It seems clear that the port millers increasingly had greater advantages in terms of transport costs and access to international wheat supplies. To deal with competition from the ports, the Odlum family, who had inland milling interests in Naas, Portarlington, Maryborough and St Mullin’s, embarked on a joint venture in 1920, providing them with a foothold in the Dublin trade.99 The Dublin Port Milling Co. Ltd located at Alexandra Basin, which came into production in 1924, brought together a strategic alliance with experience in grain handling/milling/baking including the Kennedy and Spicer baking interests, Hall’s, the grain importers and Odlum’s among others. This was indicative of the centralising tendencies within the industry and the consolidation of resources between companies in cognate fields.100 The contraction in the number of country mills accelerated from the mid1870s as prices fell and competition increased. By 1891, there was 1,482 grain mills in Ireland, falling gradually to 1,100 by 1916. The number of concerns engaged in flour mills in these years (which are included in the above figures) fell from 228 to 127. While almost all counties experienced a reduction in flour milling, Co. Dublin registered an expansion from 6 to 10 mills, reflecting the growing concentration of larger mills there including newly built concerns. Oatmeal production accounted for the majority of mills and over half of these were located in Ulster in both years, which is probably a reflection on the greater importance of oatmeal in the social economy of Ulster than in the rest of Ireland, although Leinster had a far more significant representation of such mills than Munster or Connaught. Between 1891 and 1916, Munster and Connaught registered an increase in the number of mills handling maize, in contrast to the other two provinces, and by the latter year Munster had a slightly higher number than Ulster and Leinster, probably reflecting the greater importance of provender milling for livestock and poultry.101 English flour began to make inroads into the Irish market from the early twentieth century, when the whitening or bleaching of flour was prohibited in



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the USA. The preference for bleached flour for much of the Irish trade provided British mills with an opportunity in the Irish market, which was augmented by the transition from barm to yeast in Irish baking, which favoured the use of a combination of strong and weak wheats. In these circumstances, large mills at Birkenhead in Liverpool using imported wheats (which they could acquire at lower costs than Irish mills) operated at full capacity with lower labour inputs and the best technologies, thereby enjoying economies of scale. In the decades leading up to the First World War Liverpool became one of the leading flour-milling centres in the world. Liverpool-based millers provided increasingly formidable competition for the Irish flour trade, supplying much of the bakers patent flour by the 1920s, in addition to some household flour for soda bread. Irish mills at this point focused more on slightly cheaper flour for household use. Since the British market was over-milled and oversupplied with flour by the 1920s, and continental exports had been reduced, the Irish market became the most important destination for British flour exports. By 1922, Irish flour mills only supplied roughly half of the Irish demand for flour. Even the larger Irish bakers who engaged in milling found it cheaper to import a large part of their flour needs from Britain. Although this highly competitive situation was beneficial to Irish consumers in terms of the price of flour and bread (which by 1922 collectively accounted for around 10 per cent of expenditure of the average wage earning household in the Irish Free State), growing flour imports (largely from Liverpool) contributed to a major downturn in Irish flour milling which precipitated a number of closures in the 1920s.102 The decisive impact of foreign competition on Irish flour milling was keenly felt from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the increasing globalisation of the world’s wheat supply drove down the price of wheat and flour, as UK prices began to converge with those in north America.103 The benefits of this price decline in Ireland was that bread and flour became very affordable in the diets of even the poorest western households, reducing dependence on the potato and increasing the variety of diets. However, while falling prices were good news for consumers, they simultaneously dramatically increased competition for Irish flour millers. In 1920, Riordan recalled the crisis of the 1880s resulting from flour imports, and the installation of rollers in a number of Irish mills in response to this influx of cheap flour. Riordan concluded that ‘no Irish industry has had to face fiercer competition from outside these shores, and has done it more successfully in the long run than the Irish flour milling industry’.104 While this perhaps rings true in the case of the larger players in Irish flour milling, estimates of flour production in Ireland reveal a somewhat bleaker picture in the half century leading up to the 1920s.105 In the first half of the 1870s it would appear that Irish millers retained full control of the buoyant market for Irish flour. Over the succeeding 30 years they lost half of Ireland’s flour supply to competition from imports. Jones notes that there was greater scope for scale economies in Britain,106 and this was probably the defining factor in the Irish loss of market share in this sector. Oatmeal milling declined as a consequence of the general fall in oatmeal consumption in Ireland


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the second half of the nineteenth century, in a period when maize meal milling was growing as a consequence largely of its importance for livestock and poultry. Oatmeal production recovered briefly during the years of the First World War and efforts were made by the Department of Agriculture to revive oatmeal mills since it could be used as a substitute for shortfall in maize meal. It is clear from a detailed assessment of mills in Westmeath that the condition of the machinery in many of them was substandard due to a lack of turnover for many years.107 The major period of decline and loss of market share in the Irish milling industry took place in the last quarter of the nineteenth century notably as a consequence of American competition.108 In the first two decades of the twentieth century English competition intensified. By the 1920s, Liverpool in particular (one of the major milling centres in the world) had carved out a strong niche in the Irish market, replacing the position that American flour had attained by the end of the nineteenth century. Liverpool could operate mills in more optimal conditions than those located in Ireland.

III Baking and biscuit making became important industries during the nineteenth century. Although many towns and villages still had no bakery in 1800, they became more common as the nineteenth century proceeded. Bakers’ bread was in greater demand in larger towns and cities where the cash economy was more developed. In the mid-1820s there were about sixteen bakers operating in Belfast alone for example to service the requirements of its growing industrial population. At this point bakeries were small and the slow methods of bread making (including much night work) had changed little with bakers working from 12 to 18 hours per day. Barney Hughes was the first to modernise and expand the trade in Belfast opening his bakery at the end of 1840 and a second in 1847.109 In Dublin city (the main market for flour) bread was considered in 1803 to be ‘the most necessary article of life to the population’.110 By 1802 already, the consumption of wheaten bread was noted among the miners of Castlecomer,111 and by the mid-1830s the consumption of wheaten bread among urban labourers in Waterford had ‘increased considerably’. It was also commonly consumed by workers engaged in linen manufacture and the urban population across the north.112 In many rural districts at the end of the eighteenth century bread eating was much less common; the consumption of bread (made from wheaten flour) was considered a luxury for the labouring population.113 Clarkson and Crawford’s work on the Poor Inquiry in 1836 reveals that bread was only named as a food consumed by the poor in less than 8 per cent of the parishes in Ireland and it was more commonly consumed in Leinster than the other provinces.114 Nonetheless, by the late 1830s they suggest that a sizable part of the entire population (i.e. 4 to 5 million) ate bread at least some of the time.115 This implies that by the eve of the Famine, the Irish wheat-eating population was somewhat larger than has traditionally been assumed. Dudgeon, for example, suggested that in 1841



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the wheat-eating population of England and Wales was less than 90 per cent, in Scotland 40 per cent and in Ireland 25 per cent.116 Clearly, potatoes featured more prominently in Irish diet in fulfilling the carbohydrate needs of the population than in the rest of the United Kingdom, but bread consumption was increasing. Solar’s estimates of Irish wheat production and net exports in 1840–5, suggest that Irish flour consumption was around 62 lb per capita just before the famine. Ó Gráda’s estimate of the same period would raise the figure a little.117 The 1841 census provides a useful barometer of the geography of commercial baking and bread eating (though this tells us nothing about the home baking of wheatmeal bread). In 1841 the nine larger towns and cities returned 1652 bakers compared to a total of 6641 bakers for all Ireland. Perhaps the most important implication here is that commercial baking was by no means confined to the larger urban centres, having spread out into the smaller towns and villages. The less comprehensive 1831 census tells a similar story with 1471 bakers recorded for the 13 larger towns and cities returned out of a total for Ireland of 4565, with the implication that the incidence of commercial baking was increasing in the intervening years.118 Commercial oven-baked bread was clearly a well-established feature of the pre-famine economy, not just in the larger towns and cities. Bread soda came into use in the pre-famine period, which could be used as a leavening agent for making soda bread with wheatmeal, while fadge (a mixture of wheatmeal and potatoes), was also consumed. Though built-in baking ovens were not common outside the town bakeries, inns or the houses of the gentry, iron griddles, pans or bastable ovens were commonly used to bake soda or griddle bread. These factors helped to extend the market for wheatmeal flour and led to an increase in flour consumption in rural households in particular.119 During the Great Famine, with the widening gap in the food supply, the trade of baking expanded, as people were forced to modify their diets. The Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 facilitated the greater importation of foreign grain and bread consumption seemingly increased thereafter. In Belfast, Hughes bakery, for example, began to expand its markets into rural Ulster using bread vans working off the expanding railway network. Hughes built the more mechanised Model Bakery on the Falls Road in 1853 and the Railway Bakery on Donegal Place to meet the expansion of demand, becoming the largest baker in Ireland. He also became directly engaged in flour milling. His son Edward Hughes took over and built the Springfield Road Model Bakery, further updating the flour mill. By the time of his death in 1893 the concern was the largest baking and milling operation in Ireland. The company made an exit from flour milling at the turn of the century, but the baking trade remained profitable and by 1920 bread and confectionary produced by Bernard Hughes and Co. was sold as far afield as Donegal and Sligo and even parts of Dublin. However, partition subsequently reduced distribution to Northern Ireland.120 The impact of large city bakeries on provincial centres in Ulster became increasingly stronger from the 1880s; in Newry, for example, there had been at least ten bakeries in the 1870s. Competition and falling prices had reduced this


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to only one by the mid-1930s. The sole survivor by the latter year, McCanns, modernised to meet this competition, moving and rebuilding the Victoria Bakery in 1894 on a more spacious site nearby, thus facilitating the installation of coke-fired Peel ovens with double deck drawplates and other new mechanised mixing plant including dough dividers. The team of bread servers using horsedrawn bread vans pushed further out into the surrounding countryside, taking in the nearby industrial village of Bessbrook. Competition by 1916 necessitated the use of motorised bread vans to protect and extend local markets.121 Larger industrial bakeries were also established in Dublin during the second half of the nineteenth century, the major centre of baking, biscuit making and confectionery in Ireland in this period. Between the 1860s and the 1890s baking in the city became more centralised in a smaller number of larger production units.122 Boland’s existing bread baking and biscuit production facilities were extended when the City of Dublin Bakery was erected on Grand Canal Street in 1874. The nearby Ringsend Mills were purchased in 1873 and converted to roller milling in the early 1880s to supply most of their flour needs. The roller system adopted, the Carter system, was the first of this type to be used within the United Kingdom. By 1887, 800 hands were employed by Bolands.123 The Dublin firm Johnston and Co. established in 1846, expanded until its conversion into a limited company in 1889. This was an alliance of bakers and a flour miller with a substantial capital of £150,000, who traded as Johnston, Mooney and O’Brien.124 The business appears to have been highly successful until the First World War when government food controls considerably reduced profits from 1917.125 These problems were commonplace within in much of the Irish food sector in these years. By the 1880s, the demand for white bread was strong in Ireland. One witness in the Select Committee on Industries even went so far as to suggest that ‘the great food of the Irish is the white bread’.126 Although Irish bread-making traditions are more commonly associated today with home-made soda bread, as a consequence of the industrialisation and centralisation of bakeries in larger production units between the mid-nineteenth century and the First World War, a number of distinctive bread types were produced in Ireland by the 1920s, which were not found in Great Britain. In general the quality of bread was considered to be superior to that on the larger island. Batch was found in the north, the hexagon in Dublin and the midlands, and the turnover was found in the south (notably Cork), while skulls were also more generally made. The English straight dough style had become common in the larger bakeries in particular at this stage, with a stronger Scotch influence in northern bakeries.127 These significant regional variations in method and taste were an important feature of the character of the Irish baking industry.

IV Biscuit making, the other component of the baking sector, also witnessed a shift to larger mechanised concerns in the second half of the nineteenth



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century. Biscuits were essentially a British invention where the major pioneers in the mechanisation of fancy biscuit production were Quakers (Carr and Palmer).128 It seems most probable that this Quaker influence extended to their Irish networks; George Baker and Co. of Cork (a Quaker firm established in 1844) was the pioneer of machine biscuit making in Ireland. The market for ship biscuits (the antecedent of the more palatable fancy biscuit) was clearly important in this firm and another Quaker venture in Waterford, Jacobs, which was established at the beginning of the 1850s. Following the pattern of a number of British Quaker houses in this period (Huntley and Palmer, Carr and Peak Freen who left their mark on the United Kingdom biscuit industry), Jacob’s started out as a small town baker, subsequently establishing their Dublin plant at Peter’s Row adjacent to the Liberties in 1853. With a labour force close at hand, this provided ready access to the Dublin market in addition to proximity to the leading railway networks for the country trade. As in bread baking during the second half of the nineteenth century, Dublin emerged as the main centre of biscuit manufacture in Ireland and W. & R. Jacob and Co. became by far the largest biscuit-making firm in Ireland. From the outset the company imported British machinery, and by the mid-1850s was already trading in most counties in Ireland, also securing a significant niche in the British market for biscuits. Expansion of sales was therefore rapid and in 1874 Baker’s in Cork was taken over and taken out of production and their Cork market was now supplied by the Dublin works. Following a fire in 1880, the entire works was rebuilt and further expanded along Bishop Street. From the mid-1880s, Jacob’s began producing cream crackers which quickly became their best-selling biscuit. Large-scale production with specialist machinery enabled them to become important players in the expanding English market and a depot was consequently opened in Liverpool in 1886–7, London (1902) and Manchester (1906), and finally a new plant was built at Aintree in Liverpool which went into production in 1912 to service the expanding British market and that of its colonies, since there was no space for further expansion in Dublin.129 The firm placed much emphasis on developing its export trade and as a consequence of its success, Ireland built up a large net export trade in biscuits. By the turn of the century the firm was among the top five biscuit manufacturers in the UK employing 1,700 in 1902 (which was about half of total employment in the Irish biscuit sector), rising to 3,000 in 1911. Dublin had seven biscuit factories and two in Limerick, and three in Londonderry and others in Belfast.130 The importance of this sector is evident from the fact that by 1907 the net value of Irish baking and biscuit making was greater than milling and bacon curing combined.131 The First World War altered conditions in the industry and fancy-biscuit production was cut back and the focus switched to servicing British military demand. Jacobs however were back to full capacity already in 1919, probably because military demand had helped sustain its trade during the war years.132

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V The manufacture of butter, which had traditionally been a farm-based industry, gradually became more centralised in creameries after the introduction of the centrifugal separator in the early 1880s (pioneered on the continent), which carried out separation in less than an hour compared to days using the older method. The Irish industry was obliged to respond to the revolution of the European butter industry in the preceding decade as a consequence of Dutch butterine, French blending factories and Scandinavian creameries utilising mechanical separators, which collectively had implications for Ireland’s dominant position in the British market for butter.133 From the late 1870s, Cork butter merchants began introducing an element of mechanisation by establishing blending factories along French lines.134 Canon Bagot and some local farmers set up the first ‘gathered cream’ creamery on a joint stock basis for mechanised butter production at Hospital in Co. Limerick, which was fitted for both cream and milk intake. The Hospital venture faltered and was sold to Cleeve’s in 1887, but at this stage a number of other creameries had been established utilising power driven separators.135 Proprietary and joint-stock creameries played an important role in laying the foundations of a commercially viable creamery sector, but subsequently had to compete with the emerging co-operative creameries, after the first one had been established in 1889 at Dromcolliher by Limerick butter merchants. Co-operative ventures experienced a dynamic phase of development after the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) was established in 1894 to promote their cause. A series of auxiliary creameries were also set up in the hinterland of many of the major creameries, where cream could be separated, thus reducing transport costs to the main creamery where it was processed into butter.136 Ó Gráda concludes that although the diffusion of the creamery system was slow relative to Denmark (Ireland’s main competitor in the British market), Irish creameries made up lost ground subsequently by adopting the new methods which the Danes had established. The creamery system spread initially in Limerick, the premier dairying county. By 1906, there were 800 creameries in Ireland over half of which were proprietary operations.137 The transition in production from farm to factory was quite rapid and the amount of creamery butter produced rose from two million lbs in 1892 to over twenty million lbs in 1904 and 37 million by 1915, which provides some indication of the growing importance of this dispersed branch of the food sector, in the south and west of Ireland in particular.138 Many of the creameries had been established by merchant families associated with the traditional trade in firkin butter.139 Dowdall’s of Cork, for example, had built and equipped 13 creameries by 1888 all over Munster. Others were British firms investing in Ireland and the largest of these was the Co-operative Wholesale Society of Manchester, which operated 41 creameries and 52 auxiliary creameries by 1900.140 Others were established by new companies such as Cleeve’s, who began making condensed milk in 1885 and



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by 1892 had invested £100,000 in the Limerick plant of the Condensed Milk Company of Ireland Ltd (established in 1889). The Lansdowne Factory (which had been a linen spinning mill) was equipped with a condensery and can-making equipment. Condensed milk was one of the key areas in which canning could be successfully utilised. The product developed an extensive international market and the company expanded, establishing condenseries across Munster, including plants at Carrick-on-Suir, Mallow and Tipperary. By 1909, the company processed over 15.5 million gallons of milk. Although most of the milk gathered was processed into condensed milk, the company also produced creamery butter and milk powder (the latter being made by the roller process from its plant at Annacarthy in Co. Tipperary prior to the First World War). During the war it ran a huge trade in condensed milk to the British army making substantial profits. By 1919 Cleeve’s employed 3,000 workers in all their operations (largely in creameries in Limerick, Cork, Tipperary and Waterford), 600 of whom worked at the Lansdowne plant in Limerick, which was reputedly one of the largest of its type in the world. Demand for condensed milk fell after the war and their plants were hit by a tide of labour militancy between 1919–22. By the end of 1921 the company had run up net losses of .27 million.141 By 1923 after turning in losses for a number of years the company went bankrupt, changing ownership in 1924 and again in 1925 before the state took it over in 1927.142 The years after the war were particularly difficult for the Irish creamery sector as a whole. Creameries were targeted by British forces during the War of Independence, which in any case was an unsettled period for the butter industry according to Ryan, as government regulation was only lifted in 1920 and subsequently both prices and sales fell dramatically.143 Despite the emergence of creameries, much butter continued to made in the traditional way, though blending factories (frequently established by major butter merchants) increasingly improved the poorer grades of butter. This and the growing significance of creameries further reduced the importance of the traditional channels of exchange between the 1890s and partition and the Cork butter exchanged finally closed down in 1924.144 The balance of power between the private sector and the co-ops shifted in favour of the latter, with privately owned operations declining from a peak of 537 in 1905 to only 180 in 1920 while in the same years the number of co-ops grew from 254 to 330. Apart from the advance of mechanisation within the sector, this was one of the most significant transitions in the dairy industry during the first decades of the twentieth century.145

VI The relative importance of the food sector within the Irish food, drink and tobacco sector as a whole is evident from the factory inspectors returns of workshops and non-textile factories in Ireland in 1907. This reveals that the food industries in that year collectively employed 20,489 persons in works under the remit of the factory inspectors, compared to 10,519 persons in the


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drink sector and 2491 in the tobacco industry.146 In the same year, the UK Census of Industrial Production provides more disaggregated evidence which indicates that in terms of employment bread and biscuit making was the most important of the food industries in Ireland employing 9,500 persons, followed by grain milling which employed 4,675, the butter and cheese industries employed 4,233, followed by bacon curing with 2,100, cocoa and confectionary with 1,648 and finally fish curing with a mere 640 persons.147 As incomes rose between the mid-nineteenth century and the First World War, the consumption of butter, bacon and biscuits increased in Ireland, but a significant export trade to Britain in these commodities had also been developed. However, the most striking aspect of these figures is that they illustrate the central significance that bread had gradually assumed in Irish diet during the nineteenth century.


5

Drink and tobacco

The drink sector was among the early industries which became industrialised in Ireland. Already in the last decades of the eighteenth century some large breweries and distilleries were operating in Ireland which utilised the latest technologies. The tobacco industry became industrialised much later. The first section of this chapter focuses on the brewing sector, the second on distilling and the final section examines tobacco production.

I In contrast to Britain, the market for beer in Ireland remained fairly limited prior to the mid-nineteenth century. Despite the best efforts of the Irish administration to subordinate spirit production, while simultaneously encouraging brewing, the expected shift from spirits to beer consumption never materialised. Robert Peel observed in 1817 that ‘whiskey from long habit’ was still the nation’s favoured drink.1 A few years later in 1823, Arthur Guinness informed the Irish Revenue Commissioners that beer was drunk predominantly in the towns and cities of Munster and Leinster and to a lesser extent in Connacht. He pointed out that the urban working class were the main consumers, while ‘the lowest order of people’ had a greater preference for whiskey.2 With a much smaller working class compared to Britain, and a stronger predilection towards whiskey and poteen amongst a large rural peasantry, the prospects for the brewer’s art in early nineteenth century Ireland did not at first glance look promising. Yet by the eve of the First World War, Guinness had become the strongest force in UK brewing and largest brewery in the world. Since it accounted for about two-thirds of Irish brewing output at this stage, it must necessarily dominate any treatment of the Irish industry. Gourvish and Wilson have viewed the development of the company from a wider United Kingdom perspective, providing important insights into Guinness’s acquisition of a substantial British market share.3 But between the beginning of the nineteenth century and the First World War one of the more significant factors in explaining the phenomenal growth of the firm was the different nature of the market for beer in Ireland and Britain. In the larger port towns, which provided the main market for beer (Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford) at the beginning of the nineteenth century,


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publicans by and large had ceased to produce beer, purchasing their requirements from local commercial brewers. However, at the other end of the spectrum in the smaller towns of the western seaboard, publicans were still the only producers. Between these two extremes, the retail brewers still operated in many of the larger towns, but their numbers were contracting rapidly.4 Poor quality, high prices and stringent excise regulations restricted the potential expansion of the industry prior to the 1790s. Irish commercial breweries were finding it difficult to compete with London imports, which had risen consistently during the half century prior to 1790. By 1790–4, registered English exports of beer to Ireland were the equivalent of over one fifth of the beer produced in Ireland, at least that on which duty was paid.5 But the Irish trade of the London brewers was rapidly reversed after the mid-1790s, a pivotal decade for the growth of commercial brewing in Ireland. A range of factors contributed to this transformation. These included legislation by the Irish parliament which favoured the development of brewing as opposed to distilling. Members believed that brewing was better for the working classes and the Irish economy. In 1792, spirit duties and beer import duties were raised, thereby reducing competition from the Irish brewers’ major rivals; the large London breweries and the commercial distilleries in Ireland. Three years later, the excise duty on beer was abolished and other legislation regulating the industry was simplified. Thereafter all the tax on brewing was levied solely on malt. The outbreak of the French Wars in 1793 further reduced English competition, while war-time demand provided a major stimulus to Irish industry and agriculture, raising purchasing power and increasing the demand for beer. All of these factors helped to initiate the first phase of industrialisation in the Irish brewing industry, which witnessed a significant improvement in quality and a growth in scale. The Irish brewing industry had already been transformed before the end of the Napoleonic Wars.6 Production increased from 449,790 barrels in 1800 to 960,300 in 1809.7 Another manifestation of this transition was a growth in the capital invested in Irish breweries which used the anonymous partnerships (a predecessor of the joint stock company) as a means of raising capital. Between 1788 and 1802, 21 Irish brewing partnerships were registered with an average joint stock of £4,272. Between 1803 and 1816, no fewer than thirty eight brewing partnerships were set up with an average joint stock of £9,342.8 The anonymous partnership arrangement enabled brewers to utilise the capital of landowners and merchants who wished to remain anonymous. The Sperling family, for example, who owned estates in North Essex, Suffolk and some property in Ireland, were engaged in a partnership with the Dublin brewer Grange and some other Irish landowners. This partnership, with a joint stock of £48,000 in 1810, was much higher than average.9 Beamish and Crawford of Cork, who were the largest brewers in Ireland in the early decades of the nineteenth century, claimed that their fixed capital investment by 1832 amounted to no less than £250,000.10 This growth in size enabled the larger concerns to enjoy economies of scale. The malting manager at Beamish and Crawford’s noted in 1835 that the


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‘charge of manufacture [of malt] is greatly reduced as the quantity made increases’.11 The costs of making and selling a barrel also fell with rising output. Between 1813 and 1818 Guinness noted that on a trade of 35,570 barrels the costs were 10s and 1d per barrel, while on a trade of 53,360 barrels they were 8s and 4d.12 As a consequence of these improvements in competitiveness, shortly after the turn of the century Ireland became a net exporter of beer.13 While the quantities exported were initially small, they indicate that the larger Irish brewers could compete in England by the 1820s. This marked the beginning of Guinness’s export trade to Britain which led to the firm’s extraordinary expansion in the following decades when it established a firm lead over its Irish rivals. By 1840, 53 per cent of Guinness’s sales (in bulk barrels) were in England and Scotland and about 60 per cent by value.14 Despite the emergence of a few large firms in Dublin and Cork, market conditions for most Irish breweries (whose trade was predominantly local) were more difficult in the decades from 1815 when the industry experienced a slump. The malt tax returns suggest output in the early 1830s was not much greater than it had been at the beginning of the century. The industry recovered in the late 1830s, only to enter another downturn in the first half of the 1840s.15 Despite widespread evasion of the malt tax, the annual totals of duty paid provide a rough guide to broad trends within the industry. It seems that high transport costs and a low level of purchasing power among the rural peasantry in pre-Famine Ireland confined the bulk of Irish beer consumption to a number of urban enclaves. Despite the fact that there had been no spectacular rise in output between 1790 and the mid-nineteenth century, the nature of the industry had been transformed. The number of breweries had declined gradually from 319 in 1791 to 245 by 1835. After a growth in numbers during the upturn in the 1830s, they fell dramatically to only 115 in 1846.16 The industry was becoming more concentrated in a smaller number of larger breweries, predominantly located by the eve of the Great Famine around the larger cities and towns, which provided the main source of demand. Dublin at this stage had been able to build up a healthy export trade to complement the local trade. Almost half of the malt tax paid in 1846 was raised from the Dublin district. The Cork region (when Bandon is included) was the second brewing centre in Ireland, accounting for almost 12 per cent of registered production. Connacht accounted for less than 4 per cent reflecting the low level of beer consumption there. Ulster accounted for under 12 per cent, Munster over 24 per cent and Leinster over 60 per cent. Limestone land with low soil acidity was the most suitable land for growing barley, and access to this was an important consideration, which partially explains why most of the industry was located in Munster and Leinster. All the more important Irish breweries and barley-growing districts were within an area which takes in Dundalk, Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick. The main barley-growing counties were Cork and Tipperary (in the province of Munster) and Offaly, Laois, Louth and Kildare (in the province of Leinster).


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Population density and higher wages provided the brewers located in Dublin and Cork with greater demand than in the smaller towns. While both distributed beer through the coastal trade, Dublin could also exploit the canal network to both expand its market inland and access barley and malt. More significantly, the advent of steam navigation opened up opportunities in the English market from the 1820s which further enhanced Dublin’s advantages. An important factor in the growth of Irish beer exports to Britain from the 1820s onwards was that Irish brewers enjoyed lower raw material costs than their English rivals. Barley (the most expensive raw-material input) was cheaper in Ireland because the wages of agricultural labour was significantly lower. In addition, evasion of the malt tax seems to have been more widespread in Ireland during this period, further reducing raw-material costs. With great indignation, a Yarmouth maltster informed the Commission of Excise Inquiry in 1833–4 that ‘Mr Bass, the eminent brewer at Burton, tells me that it [Irish porter] is selling next door to him at Burton cheaper than he can make it’. Another critical factor (acknowledged by Tizard in his ‘Theory and Practise of Brewing’) was that by and large Dublin porter tasted better than the adulterated ‘black sulky beverage’ which was being produced in many English breweries.17 Irish brewers’ ability to compete in the English market was increased by the growing railway network in Britain, which made the major English urban centres increasingly accessible, notably for Guinness. By 1840, three-fifths of Guinness’s sales (in value) were in Britain, while the rest was evenly divided between Dublin and the country trade. Outside Dublin, Guinness’s trade was largely confined to the canal network and a few seaports. Others Irish brewers served more limited local markets. Expensive transport costs and the popularity of whiskey and poteen excluded Irish brewers from building up a significant trade in rural Ireland until after the Great Famine. Thereafter, the construction of the railway network improved market access for the larger urban breweries. Average per capita income was increasing in the post-Famine decades. By the end of the 1850s, Irish-spirit duties had been brought into line with the rest of the UK; duties rose from about 2s 8d in 1850 to 8s 1d at the end of the decade. This major increase in duty curtailed whiskey consumption in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Poteen consumption was also falling, judging by the falling number of detections of illicit stills in rural Ireland.18 The rise in spirit duties provides the most likely explanation for the dramatic upward spike in both the malt consumed by brewers in Ireland, and an estimate of the barrels made in this period from the raw-material inputs.19 In the longer term, per capita beer consumption in Ireland increased dramatically from 3.5 gallons in 1851 to 26 gallons by 1901.20 Effectively, by the end of the nineteenth century Irish drinking habits had moved closer to UK norms. The larger Irish brewers exploited the opportunity presented by the railway network to expand into rural markets. This resulted in the closure of many small provincial concerns, for although the industry experienced a dramatic growth in output, the number of breweries declined from 115 in 1845 to only


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38 by the end of the nineteenth century.21 Dublin’s dominance increased during this period, and in the secondary centres of the industry (Cork, Louth and Kilkenny) a few larger firms also experienced growth. In Cork city, Ireland’s second brewing centre, output increased during the second half of the nineteenth century, the trade being shared by a few larger concerns, notably Murphy’s Lady’s Well Brewery (established in 1856) and Beamish and Crawford (the two largest Munster brewers). Murphy’s built up sales from under 34,000 barrels in 1859 to over 140,000 by the end of the nineteenth century, by which time it apparently sold approximately double the beer sold in Cork city outside the city, although the city trade was more profitable due to lower costs.22 Following a pattern more commonly found in England than in Ireland, the two major Cork breweries had a large number of tied houses in the city, and they went to great lengths to extend their tied trade. Beamish and Crawford took over Lane’s brewery in 1901, thus acquiring all of its tied houses and three years later they took over a brewery in Dungarvan and one in Bandon in 1914, while Murphy’s took over Arnott’s and the Riverstown Ale Brewery.23 Since they were both brewers of traditional porter, the unwelcome presence of Guinness as a powerful competitor loomed large. Other smaller Munster breweries felt the heat of competition from Guinness even more keenly, also competing in many cases with the two Cork concerns. As a consequence, by 1920 there were only two Munster breweries still in business outside Cork city; Deasy’s of Clonakilty and Murphy and Co. of Clonmel. Limerick (an important brewing centre in the mid-nineteenth century) had lost all its breweries by the late 1880s.24 In the province of Leinster (outside Dublin) breweries tended to be located in the major barley-growing districts. There were still five breweries in Co. Louth by the end of the nineteenth century. Seemingly, these concerns were able to use their location on the railway network to advantage, cornering some of the Ulster beer market, in addition to extending their local trade. Macardles and the Great Northern Brewery in Dundalk, for example, aside from their local trade, sold beer in Belfast.25 The Cairne’s family, who founded the Drogheda Brewery in 1825, subsequently amalgamated this with another acquisition in Castlebellingham, which were both incorporated as one company in 1890; it continued to turn in profits during the 1890s.26 Other provincial centres in Leinster to survive the dramatic contraction in the number of breweries between the 1840s and 1920 included Kilkenny, where two breweries survived and prospered; the Smithwick’s family entered the trade in 1827, purchasing an older concern at St Francis Abbey from the Ormonde estate where they subsequently built a new brewery whose output increased fivefold between 1851 and 1873, developing a local market for ale, stout and porter and also exporting to Britain. A second brewery in Kilkenny owned by the Sullivan family on James St. operated between 1810 and 1914;27 Davis Strangman and Co. and Kiely and Sons in Waterford (both established at the end of the eighteenth century), Lett in Enniscorthy (1810), Wickham of Wexford (1800), Perry’s of Rathdowney (1800) and Egan in Tullamore (1852) each


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retained a regional niche. The whole province of Connacht could boast of only one small brewery in Galway at the end of the nineteenth century and even this had gone out of business by 1920.28 Ulster, like Connacht, was not a major barley-growing area, and what was grown largely went into distilling. Competition from cheap whiskey was still strong. In general, there was a preference in Ulster for beer from Dublin, Co. Louth or Great Britain.29 By 1920, the only surviving Ulster breweries were Downe’s in Enniskillen and McConnell’s and Caffrey’s of Belfast, both of which had been established around the end of the nineteenth century.30 In the Dublin excise district the number of breweries declined from 24 to eight between 1835 and the end of the nineteenth century.31 Despite the advance of Guinness, some other firms also managed to increase their trade in this period. The Phoenix Brewery extended its trade and acquired the neighbouring sixacre premises of Mander’s Brewery.32 However, after turning in net profits of between £4,000 and £25,000 in the 1880s and 1890s, sales declined from 1899 and the company was put up for sale in 1905.33 Guinness was gradually turning the screw on all its Dublin rivals. By 1920, their ranks had dwindled to only three: D’Arcy’s Anchor Brewery, The Mountjoy Brewery, and Watkin’s, Jameson, Pim and Co.34 The large numbers of breweries in Dublin over the nineteenth century relative to other centres of the industry in Ireland and even this more select group of survivors at the time of partition suggest strongly that the success of Guinness owed some of its good fortune at least to its Dublin location. The malt tax returns in the second quarter of the nineteenth century35 and excise returns for the Irish brewing industry between 1856 and 1909 (see Figure 5.1) suggest that brewing was the fastest-growing sector within the food and drink industry during the nineteenth century and among all industries in

Figure 5.1 Beer produced in Ireland 1856–1909 (gallons) Source: See Appendix 2.


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the south of Ireland. While a small number of firms enjoyed this growth as the industry became more concentrated in larger concerns at the expense of smaller rivals, increasingly the expansion of one firm in particular accounted for most of this growth. In order to understand how it managed to achieve this pre-eminent position, it is worth tracing some aspects of the firm’s history in greater detail. There was nothing exceptional about the early history of Guinness.36 Like other Dublin breweries its trade was predominantly local; it still sold sixsevenths of its total output in Dublin in 1807–8, but it had become the largest brewery in the city.37 With production rising to over 70,000 barrels in 1810, Guinness outdistanced its nearest Dublin rivals, Connolly and Somers, who produced under 51,000. Nevertheless, they were well eclipsed by the meteoric rise of Beamish and Crawford in Cork (established in 1792) who produced about 100,000 barrels by 1810.38 Like most other breweries, Guinness did well during the Napoleonic wars, although it experienced something of a downturn in the following decade. By the mid-1820s, it had still not drawn significantly ahead of its nearest rival in Dublin, Sweetman’s Brewery.39 The 1820s marked the beginning of a turning point for Guinness. Tracking Irish migrants eastwards to Britain, the firm began to develop an export trade on a scale which differentiated them from other Irish breweries. Agencies were opened in Liverpool, Bristol and London in the mid-1820s. The firm was able to exploit the advent of steam navigation and the railway age to greater effect than its rivals. These factors dramatically changed the economics of transporting beer, enabling Guinness to carve out a niche in the English market, where there was a demand for high-quality porter at reasonable prices. By 1855, about four sevenths of Guinness sales in volume (and more by value) were in the British market.40 Having initially developed the business through acquiring a leading position in the Dublin market, the second phase of expansion was achieved by developing a healthy trade in the British market, where they had set up a more effective agency system than other Irish breweries. From the mid-nineteenth century, as a result of the construction of the Irish rail network, Guinness were gradually able to build an extensive trade in rural Ireland.By 1840 Guinness sold as much beer in Ireland outside Dublin as it sold in the metropolis. The potential growth of this trade was constrained prior to the railway age to areas accessible by canal or coasting shipping and areas within twenty miles of the city. As it became economically feasible to sell beer in many new locations served by the railways, Guinness gradually began to colonise the markets of many smaller provincial brewers who had previously been protected by prohibitive transport costs. Guinness simultaneously won many new customers in areas which had a limited beer-drinking tradition. It was able to capitalise on the general shift in Irish drinking habits away from spirits towards beer. Thus by 1864, over half the beer sold in Ireland outside Dublin was Guinness.41 By 1914 Guinness accounted for 80 per cent of all the beer sold in Ireland. The company had less competition in Ireland than in Britain and because of


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its great scale and its consistently high quality, it could easily out distance its Irish rivals. By 1888, the Irish share of sales had recovered significantly and 70 per cent of its total production was sold in Ireland, but this declined gradually in the longer term to about 57 per cent by the eve of the First World War. The scale of its market share in Ireland had a major impact on the evolution of the Irish brewing industry at large, and led to a much more centralised industry than in Britain. The number of breweries in Ireland fell from 245 in 1835 to only 39 at the end of the nineteenth century, with a significant growth of output in the interim. While there was room for brewers engaged in producing ale, many of Guinness’s Irish rivals in the porter trade were slowly squeezed out (with a few notable exceptions). Having achieved domination in the Irish market where beer consumption was rising dramatically during the second half of the nineteenth century, it was much easier for Guinness to compete in England, where it did not face the demand restrictions faced by many major British breweries during this period. Guinness, in other words enjoyed scale economies over its British rivals in the British market, built on the foundations of its success in the Irish market. The steady expansion of its trade in Britain meant that this market had again become more important than Ireland by 1920.42 One of the key features of Guinness’s success in the British market was that few British brewers managed to compete with them in the market for highquality stout. Another important factor was that Guinness specialised in stout and porter production. The company did not invest large amounts of capital in acquiring public houses like many of the larger British breweries. In order to increase or retain sales in the face of falling per capita consumption, many British breweries acquired tied houses. By specialising in manufacturing on an extraordinary large scale, and staying out of the capital intensive business of retailing, Guinness became relatively low-cost manufacturers.43 There seems to be little doubt that the brewery had outstanding management over a number of generations, which put Guinness at the forefront of the revolutionary changes which were taking place within the spheres of technology, finance and science during the last third of the nineteenth century. This resulted in a rationalisation and expansion of the entire structure of the business and brewery plant, all of which were reorganised into departments. Technically, the brewery was second to none. It is evident from Barnard that much machinery was being imported from British engineering concerns, including most of the 51 steam engines and boilers operating in the brewery. However, there was considerable design innovation within the company. Walker, for example (Geoghegan’s predecessor as chief engineer), invented a device for removing yeast from beer. Spence of Dublin built a number of the steam locomotives for the internal rail network designed by Geoghegan, which linked all the various departments with the canal and rail network for the Irish trade and the quays of the Liffey for British exports. While a number of new labour-saving devices were put in place by the engineering department, its greatest task was to integrate and further develop the brewery infrastructure to facilitate the ever-expanding volume produced. By 1914, it supplied over 10 per cent of the UK beer market.


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Output in the Dublin brewery had risen to 2,842,740 bulk barrels at this stage which was almost twice that produced by Bass, its nearest UK rival.44 The sheer scale of Guinness entire operation posed huge logistical problems in the acquisition of raw materials (the greatest cost in brewing and the price of which had a marked effect on profitability). By 1912, Guinness consumed more than half the Irish barley crop and still had to import additional malt as only 60 per cent of the malt used was sourced from Irish barley. Hops were almost entirely imported from North America and England.45 While the brewery was highly advanced in technical and organisational terms, the scale economies achieved by its huge output gave it great advantage over its rivals in both Ireland and Britain. The growth in scale and the relative significance of the Irish and British markets can be clearly traced through the sales figures in the years between 1886 and 1921 (see Table 5.1). The figures indicate that the Irish trade remained dominant throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century and this remained the case in the years leading to the First World War. The Irish trade reached its high watermark between 1910 and 1914, peaking in 1913. The disruption of the war years and the duty rises hit Irish sales harder than British sales and, for the first time in 1916, the British trade eclipsed the Irish. Finally from 1920 onwards British sales were decidedly stronger than Ireland. But Dublin continued to supply the entire trade throughout this period. In general, the UK brewing industry was slow to respond to advances in the sciences. For example, Pasteur’s work on yeast fermentation, published in France in 1876, had little impact initially. The head brewer’s reports at Guinness reveal that it was only in 1881 that a microscope was first used at St James’s Gate to examine ‘doubtful samples of yeast’.46 The appointment of a number of academic chemists as brewers in the 1890s marked a reluctant acceptance within the company of the growing importance of science in brewing. Over the following decades Guinness made a leading contribution to scientific research in the UK industry. These new employees with a scientific training helped to improve further the cost effectiveness of raw-material inputs (malt and hops accounting for about 40 per cent of the total cost of brewing at the end of the nineteenth century). An experimental brewery and maltings were set up within the company after the turn of the century to assist scientific investigation. Here they discovered the nitrogen levels and strains of barley best suited to brewers’ needs, which were important findings for the UK brewing industry. Guinness scientists also made important contributions to the understanding of the use of hops in brewing, with a hop farm in Sussex being purchased to assist study in this area.47 The financial organisation of the firm was totally overhauled in 1886 when Guinness became a limited liability company which was floated on the London Stock Exchange for £6 million.48 The success of the Guinness conversion provided an example which many other UK brewers emulated. The family retained control of the company through its shareholding structure and board control, which enabled Edward Cecil Guinness to realise part of his large financial

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Table 5.1 Total Guinness sales in the calendar years 1886–1921 (hogshead) Year

Ireland

Export

Total

1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922

595,565 626,935 647,449 646,470 626,204 682,295 685,463 706,226 724,632 735,087 763,153 780,715 807,936 844,954 853,587 874,358 904,404 929,746 931,037 942,465 946,725 955,396 963,218 996,707 1,035,082 1,058,911 1,108,703 1,153,894 1,127,746 948,484 852,765 518,529 514,484 814,534 956,656 879,855 790,122

247,642 260,311 272,837 276,787 334,912 309,830 305,960 292,670 295,449 298,944 298,581 305,013 317,290 351,374 382,942 418,834 454,445 473,890 457,583 485,039 525,222 551,421 551,994 569,517 636,488 674,019 742,220 804,120 840,305 853,141 867,503 490,255 467,632 747,000 1,255,123 1,125,587 901,631

843,207 887,246 920,286 923,257 961,119 992,125 991,423 998,896 1,020,081 1,034,030 1,061,734 1,085,728 1,125,226 1,196,328 1,236,529 1,293,192 1,358,849 1,403,636 1,388,620 1,427,504 1,471,947 1,506,817 1,515,212 1,566,224 1,671,570 1,732,930 1,850,923 1,958,014 1,968,051 1,801,625 1,720,268 1,008,784 982,116 1,561,534 2,211,779 2,005,442 1,691,753

Source: Guinness Park Royal/RDI.1/7. Note: From 1886 to 1909 inclusive the figures represent ‘Consignments from the Brewery’, no correction having been made for store stocks. After 1909, the figures are ‘Sales to Customers’.

stake in the company. It is not difficult to see why aspiring shareholders broke down the doors of Baring’s Bank in their efforts to acquire prospectuses. Guinness turned out to be one of the most solid investments of the era. Total profits between 1886 and 1914 amounted to over £25 million with dividends on the ordinary shares rising from 15.4 per cent to 35.7 per cent.49


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Prior to 1886, most of the capital for expansion was raised through ploughing profits back into the firm. Brewing was a capital intensive, with low levels of employment per unit of capital employed, and low added value. But it yielded huge profits to the Guinness family. Of the firm’s income between 1871 and 1876 (taken together), more than £600,000 went to the partners, less than £400,000 was reinvested, and only £300,000 went to pay wages and salaries.50 As a consequence of the unprecedented success of the brewery, Edward Guinness became enormously wealthy, ranking among the richest persons in the United Kingdom, and certainly the wealthiest in Ireland, by the time of his death having amassed a personal fortune over his lifetime estimated to have been in the region of £40 million.51 The detrimental impact of rising beer duties and government restrictions were shared by the Irish brewing industry in the period between 1914 and 1920 when duties progressively rose from under 8s per standard barrel in 1914 to 100s by 1920, which was one of a number of factors raising costs and reducing sales. Restrictions and interference from 1917 in particular curtailed production over the remainder of the war. The restrictions on gravity were only finally removed in 1921. In general, the post-war years were a far less promising environment for brewers than the pre-war era and punitive levels of taxation remained a feature of the Irish industry thereafter.52 Undoubtedly, Guinness was the most successful concern in the Irish food and drink sector in this period. Why was Guinness so successful? Why did a brewery in Dublin emerge to dominate the United Kingdom brewing industry, rather than one in London, Burton or Edinburgh, the main centres of the industry in Britain? Gourvish and Wilson stress consistency and quality, four generations of exceptionally good managers, and specialisation in production with little investment in retailing and distribution.53 In attempting to answer the second question, this section has examined circumstances in the Irish brewing industry which provided Guinness with certain advantages over both its British and Irish rivals, which can be viewed conveniently in distinct phases. First, the period between its establishment in 1759 and the 1820s when it established a lead in the Dublin market, which was at that point the second city within the United Kingdom. It therefore had few disadvantages relative to other centres of UK brewing (with the exception of London). It enjoyed cheaper raw material and labour costs than all its English rivals with whom it was able to compete once the transport revolution (notably steam navigation and the emerging British railway network) opened up the English market, while the Irish rail network opened new markets in much of rural Ireland. Guinness enjoyed greater scale economies, which combined with its consistent quality, gave it significant advantages over all other breweries in the United Kingdom. However, the central importance of the Irish market in the rise of Guinness in the second half of the nineteenth century needs to be stressed here, and Table 5.1 demonstrates that the British market only became consistently more important in terms of sales volume from 1920 onwards.

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II The market for spirits in Ireland (legal and illicit) in the first four decades of the nineteenth century exceeded that in Scotland or England.54 At this stage, the pub or shebeen was a focal point of recreational drinking and social life in most communities and spirits were also sold in shops and groceries. The consumption of whiskey at births, christenings, weddings, wakes and funerals was commonplace; it was also used as a goodwill gesture at fairs, markets and for other commercial transactions. It was not uncommon for artisans and labourers to take a few drinks during and after the course of a day’s work.55 Irish per capita consumption of duty-paid spirits, while higher than in England, seems to have been lower than in Scotland between the 1820s and 1840s.56 It was the much larger population in Ireland, which gave Irish distillers a major advantage over Scottish rivals, but at this point there was limited competition as the market for spirits had not yet become fully integrated, due to various restrictions on the movement of spirits within the UK, which were finally removed in 1858.57 There was a significant drop in the price of legal (or ‘parliament’) whiskey, from about 13 shillings a gallon in 1800 to between nine and ten shillings a gallon in 1815,58 falling further to about seven shillings a gallon by 1830–1 (by which time duty accounted for about three shillings and four pence); illicit poteen at this stage could be purchased for about three shillings a gallon. The falling price of corn after 1815, reductions in duty in 1823, and the new laws with regard to bonding spirits further reduced costs. This price fall, coinciding with a period of sharp population growth, drove up Irish production and consumption between 1800 and the mid-1830s.59 The larger demand for whiskey in Ireland relative to England provides the obvious explanation for the greater development of the industry in Ireland in this period. The Irish legal industry developed along somewhat different lines than in Scotland. While Ireland had 108 distilleries in 1827, there were 353 in Scotland, and only 13 in England,60 indicating that the Irish industry was more heavily capitalised than in Scotland, when production levels are taken into account.61 This early growth in the scale of Irish distilleries is evident from the average amount of capital invested in distilling partnerships (as registered under the Anonymous Partnerships at the Registry of Deeds in Dublin). The joint stock of the first five partnerships set up between 1791 and 1795 were all under £1,200. The average joint stock of the next 13 partnerships set up between 1795 and 1802 was £3,800. In the nine partnerships set up between 1802 and 1813 the average joint stock rose to £11,244.62 As in brewing, the scale of fixed capital investment in distilling and the working capital required was increasing. By the 1820s, banks were advancing short-term seasonal loans to distillers to meet some of these demands.63 The major factor contributing to the greater centralisation of the Irish industry relative to Scotland, was that Irish excise legislation penalised smaller rural distilleries. To counteract fraud, new legislation was introduced in 1779–80, excise being levied thereafter on the basis of still size and the assumed


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speed in working it off over 28 days. Licensed distillers had to work a minimum of 112 days. Production therefore became more concentrated in larger concerns with the number of licensed distilleries in Ireland falling from 1228 in 1780 to 246 in 1790, as the new regulations made it uneconomic to work smaller units. The revenue authorities obviously felt these changes were justified since the quantity of spirits on which duty was paid in these years rose from 1.2 million gallons to 3 million gallons.64 The figures for spirit production and consumption in Ireland during the first quarter of the nineteenth century need to be interpreted with caution, because of the growing significance of the illicit industry. The rising duty on spirits, from 1 shilling 1.5 pence per gallon in 1791 to 6 shillings 1.5 pence in 1816, improved the margins for the illicit distiller,65 particularly in Ulster and Connacht where most of the small licensed distillers had been put out of business. To make matters worse, the government encouraged brewing, at the expense of distilling, by abolishing the tax on beer in 1795. The net result by 1806 was that there were only 51 licensed distillers left in Ireland.66 The new legislation suited larger urban concerns with significant local demand, notably in Dublin and Cork. But in many rural areas, the legislation of 1779–80 plunged official control of the industry into crisis. By 1808, there were only two licensed distillers operating in the whole province of Ulster, and hardly surprisingly, the illicit industry was thriving. One surveyor of excise held the opinion that in Ulster and Connacht duty was paid on only 2 per cent of the spirits consumed!67 Evasion was also prevalent among the larger distillers. At least once (in 1808) Jameson’s, for example, had all their stock and utensils seized for not paying the correct duties.68 The potential magnitude of evasion is illustrated by a witness to a Report on Irish Revenue in 1823, who suggested that output was probably as high as 10 million gallons and duty was only paid on less than 3 million of this.69 The dramatic rise in duty-paid output in the subsequent decades, when duty was reduced and excise regulations were liberalised suggests this estimate was not implausible. Little faith can be placed in the aggregate figures for the production and consumption of spirits in Ireland during the first quarter of the nineteenth century at least. The illicit industry, located predominantly in the north and west (notably in Donegal, Cavan, Leitrim, Mayo, Clare, Sligo, Monaghan and Tyrone) was important in poorer regions. By the 1830s, when the domestic textile industry was in decline in these districts (because of the mechanisation of flax spinning) illicit distillation became a major source of income for many households. Poteen manufacture was much less common in south-east Ulster. Neither was it commonly found in Leinster or Munster which were the strongholds of the legal industry. The techniques used by illicit distillers had more in common with traditional methods of distilling, then the scaled up modern industry, which was very much a child of the industrial revolution, utilising mechanical devices and new metal working techniques. The far greater detection of illicit stills by the excise in Ireland relative to England and Scotland, and the more heated conflict caused by official attempts


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to suppress illicit production, were two indications of its greater economic importance in Ireland. Landlords were reluctant to intervene since the sale of illicit spirits was often the only way rent payments could be raised in marginal agricultural districts. The turf and provisions trade and the coasting trade or fishermen provided convenient means for distributing poteen to the major markets. According to a number of Dublin distillers, illicit spirits were sold on the streets of that city as openly as a loaf of bread.70 In a report on illicit distilling in the north-west it was conceded by an excise official in 1834 ‘that it appears to be generally agreed that the Revenue Police has failed in materially checking this practice’, despite the fact that ‘expeditions into the remote districts in which the illegal distillery is principally carried on assume almost entirely a military character’.71 The excise data suggest that the illicit industry was losing ground to legal distillers from the mid-1820s to the late 1830s when legal production increased dramatically, with the assistance of reforms to the excise legislation. By the 1820s, parliament had recognised that bad excise legislation had contributed both to the growth of the illicit industry and extensive fraud amongst the surviving licensed distillers. New legislation was introduced in 1823; distillers thereafter could use the best technologies available, working off their stills slowly (which improved quality), making as much or as little as they wished. Duty, which was halved, only became payable on sales rather than on the amount made, which reduced the amount of capital tied up in stock, since spirits could be stored in bonded warehouses without paying duty. Much cumbersome excise legislation was overhauled so that distillers thereafter could achieve success by the efficient management of production.72 These changes led to a significant decline of the illicit industry and a corresponding period of pronounced investment in the legal industry, the result being that duty-paid output in Ireland rose threefold during the 1820s. The number of distilleries in Ireland rose dramatically from 32 in 1821 to 82 in 1827, to a peak for the nineteenth century of 93 by 1835.73 Provincial distillers regained local markets from their larger rivals in Dublin and Cork.74 Dublin and Cork, were the largest markets for spirits in Ireland and remained the most important centres of the industry at the end of the 1820s.75 Co. Cork was an important region for growing barley. Dublin acquired barley from a wider hinterland exploiting the canal network and the coastal trade. Access to cereal supplies were an important consideration since they accounted the lion’s share of distilling costs. Apart from enjoying greater local demand and easier access to the export trade, the larger ports also enjoyed cheaper supplies of imported coal. The remainder of the industry was geographically more dispersed in towns across the country. The growth and industrialisation of the Irish distilling industry up to the end of the 1830s was largely dependent on the home market.76 The greater scale achieved in the Irish industry relative to Scotland, perhaps helps to explain why the commercial use of the ‘patent’ or ‘Coffey’ still (the major innovation in distilling during the nineteenth century), was adopted initially by Irish


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distillers. The first of these stills was erected in Dublin, and by 1829 there were three operating in Ireland. They were first used in Scotland in 1830 and England in 1836 where they were quickly adopted on a more extensive scale. This indicates that in the pioneering stages at least, a number of Irish distillers were willing to take risks in applying the new technology for commercial purposes.77 The arrival of the patent still revolutionised the economics of the industry; its design enabled spirits to be extracted at lower costs than from the pot still since less fuel was required. It produced a concentrated spirit containing between 86 and 95 per cent alcohol in a rapid and continuous process, thus saving on labour costs as well. However, the impact of the patent still only became significant during the second half of the nineteenth century, 1854 being the first year when more patent still spirit was produced in Ireland than pot still spirit.78 The favourable demand conditions on the home market which had given Irish distillers an advantage over their Scottish rivals between 1800 and 1840 proved less favourable in the next phase of the industry’s history. A number of factors combined to bring about a contraction in demand for whiskey in Ireland in the early 1840s, notably economic depression and the growth of the Temperance Movement, which contributed to the rapid fall in the number of distilleries to 51 by 1847. Irish consumption between 1841–45 had fallen to 6,276,000 gallons p.a., rising to 7,089,000 between 1846 and 1850.79 Legal whiskey consumption did not decline during the Famine, suggesting that the main consumers were not the poorest sections of Irish society, on whom the famine had its greatest impact, but those for whom the cash economy held up reasonably well.80 An obvious explanation here is that the poorest strata of Irish society depended far more on illicit production and as a result the setbacks of the famine years made no impression on the official figures. In the longer term, however, it is clear that the post-famine decline in population and the dramatic increase in duty on spirits in 1858 (when UK rates of duty on spirits were harmonised) contributed to a general fall in spirit consumption and production; the number of distilleries fell from 37 in 1857 to only 27 by 1862, which continued a general pattern of concentration within the industry, which was intensified by the fall in demand from 1858. Production fell dramatically from almost 10 million proof gallons in 1857 to just over 4 million in 1862. Agricultural recession probably augmented this downturn, from which there was a notable recovery through the mid-1860s and much of the 1870s. The Scottish industry did not experience the post-1858 downturn to anything near the same extent as the Irish, pulling further ahead in this period. This is perhaps indicative of the greater dependence of the Irish industry on the native agricultural sector; the Scottish industry also benefited from earlier entry into the growing English market for whiskey. The late 1870s marked the beginning of a long-term decline in demand for spirits on the Irish market.81 Per capita consumption of spirits in Ireland fell from 1.47 proof gallons in 1851 to 0.86 proof gallons in 1901.82 The Catholic Church began to acquire greater influence; increasingly the traditional drunken festivities on holy days and saints’ days were replaced by more sober activities. The church also exercised


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its growing authority in reducing opportunities for heavy drinking at weddings, wakes, patterns, dances, fairs and festivals. In addition to the general decline of the Irish population, Irish distillers also had to contend with a general rise of beer consumption in the second half of the nineteenth century.83 The drinking habits of the growing urban working class seem to have been curtailed somewhat less by such general developments. The Royal Irish Constabulary estimated that 30 to 40 per cent of the total populations of Cork, Waterford and Limerick cities went to pubs on Sundays, while the Dublin Metropolitan Police estimated that for that city the figure was as high as 50 per cent. Malcolm notes that even if these figures were halved to allow for exaggeration they remain remarkable.84 The rapidly growing industrial working class in the north-east may partially explain the initial emergence of the region as a major distilling centre somewhat after Dublin and Cork, while growing British working-class demand facilitated the expansion of Ulster’s far more dynamic export trade in spirits than proved to be the case in the southern centres of the industry. The harmonisation of UK taxation in 1858, and various more liberal excise regulations in the following years which removed restrictions on the movement of spirits within the UK, opened up new possibilities for exporters, which Irish distillers began to exploit more extensively from the 1870s. The growing disparity during the second half of the nineteenth century between Irish production figures and Irish consumption figures, can largely be explained by the growth of Irish whiskey exports to Britain.85 The rise in output of the Irish industry in the last quarter of the nineteenth century depended largely on exports. By 1900, output had risen to a peak of 14.5 million gallons of which over 71 per cent was made in patent stills.86 Irish distillers had to respond to a change in demand conditions; from the 1860s Scotland gradually became a more important market for spirits than Ireland, while England and Wales became by far the largest market with a level of demand, which was five times greater than Ireland by 1900.87 From the 1860s, the limited liability company became a convenient way to secure capital for both new ventures and the expansion and financial reorganisation of older concerns. The Cork Distillers Company (CDC), set up in 1867 with a nominal capital of £250,000, is a good example of a firm which used such capital resources to rationalise the regions distilling sector. Set up by James Murphy, owner of Midleton, the most successful of the Cork distilleries, CDC took over Daly’s of John Street, the Green Distillery, the Watercourse Distillery and Wise’s North Mall Distillery, all located in Cork city. To reduce costs and oversupply, production was concentrated at Midleton and the North Mall.88 The seven joint-stock distilling companies set up between 1867 and 1874 had an average nominal capital of £125,714. By far the largest was Dunville’s of Belfast, established in 1879 with a nominal capital of £500,000. Dunville’s heralded the arrival of the large Belfast patent still producers and blenders, which were to dominate the Irish industry over the next half century.89 The growing capitalisation of a number of these larger distillers from the late 1860s coincided with a strong phase of concentration and expansion, driven


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largely by export growth. A number of older distilling establishments exploited the protection afforded by limited liability and the increased capital resources it could yield. John Jameson of Bow St., perhaps Ireland’s most prestigious distillery, experienced significant expansion in the 1890s. It became a limited company in 1891 with a nominal capital of £450,000; Irish sales increased from 289,956 gallons in 1890 to 587,460 gallons in 1899. The concern was enlarged further, so that by 1900, the distillery was turning in net profits of £119,705.90 H.S. Persse Limited of Galway registered in 1896 with a nominal capital of £150,000; the money they raised through the sale of shares and loans from two banks enabled them to make significant improvements to their plant and acquire new premises at Earl’s Island in Galway city in 1899. By 1901, the additional working capital had enabled the company to expand its trade, net profits averaging £12,000 per annum between 1897 and 1900, exceeding those made before incorporation.91 The banks played an important role in contributing to the capital requirements of many Irish distillers in the second half of the nineteenth century. They advanced credits on a seasonal basis so that distillers could purchase stocks of corn in the autumn (the principal working cost within the industry). At Locke’s in Kilbeggan, for example, malt and grain accounted for about 74 per cent of total production costs. The bank overdraft which distillers built up in the autumn was then cancelled by sales of raw and mature spirits during the following season.92 The banks also assisted companies in their capitalisation programmes; there were three banks involved in the amalgamation of the five distilleries which made up the Cork Distillers Company; by 1873 the Bank of Ireland, The Provincial Bank and the Munster Bank had each advanced £30,000 to the company which thereafter continued to use the credit facilities of all three. There are plenty of examples in the Irish distilling industry to support Ollerenshaw’s contention that Irish banks could not be blamed for failing to facilitate the capital requirements of Irish industry.93 The main problem facing Irish distillers was contracting demand on the home market. Some, it is true, could increase their market share in the home market, but it was the export trade which became the main engine of growth in the industry during the second half of the nineteenth century. Dublin exports of pot still whiskey increased during the second half of the nineteenth century, but the main growth in Irish exports came from patent still distillers and blenders based in Belfast and Derry, who successfully exploiting the growth in British demand. The oldest of the Ulster patent still dynasties which emerged in this period was Watt’s of Derry, established in 1825. The installation of a patent still in 1833 had enabled them to reduce costs and undercut other licensed distillers in the region, as well as allowing them to compete with the thriving illicit industry in neighbouring County Donegal. They became the leading distillers in north-west Ulster, developing an export trade to Britain by the end of the nineteenth century.94 The most spectacular developments in this period however took place in Belfast, where a number of large export-oriented distilleries were established.


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These included Dunville’s Royal Irish Distillery built in 1869; Higgin’s Avoniel Distillery established in 1882; the Irish Distillery Ltd. of Connswater (1886); and McConnell’s Distillery, built towards the end of the century. Smaller pot still distilleries were still operating in Comber, Limavady, Coleraine and Bushmill’s at the end of the nineteenth century.95 Exports from Belfast (largely of grain whiskey) rose dramatically, a large share going to Scottish blenders and English dealers, who bought up the cheap grain whiskey for blending.96 Despite increased demand in England, in particular, the productive capacity of the patent still resulted in an over-supply of spirits on the market. Already by the 1860s, a number of UK firms (including Irish based distilleries such as Walker of Limerick, Cork Distillers Company, Watt and Co. of Londonderry and Brown of Dundalk) cooperated to reduce output by using a quota system, initially through the Scotch Distillers’ Association (1865–1876) and later the United Kingdom Distillers’ Association (1878–1888). Higgin’s Avoniel Distillery was also forced to join this group in 1883 shortly after it had been established. Three major Belfast blenders responded to these attempts to control market supply by setting up the Irish Distillery Ltd. at Connswater in 1885, but this only contributed to the over-supply problem which led to a significant depreciation in the value of whiskey stocks. Dunville’s stock in 1879, for example, which at 928,907 gallons were valued at just over £41,692, had risen to 1,419,175 gallons by 1895, worth just under £25,109. Since it could do little to control prices, the United Kingdom Distillers’ Association broke up in 1888.97 The blenders were becoming an increasingly important force in the industry by the 1890s, notably in distributing and marketing whiskey. Mitchell, for example, who had been one of the three blenders who set up the Connswater Distillery, had a trade of 500,000 gallons by 1909.98 Yet the blenders were drawing criticism as growing problems emerged underneath the surface of an industry which appeared to be increasing its output down to 1900. H.E. Hudson, editor of Dublin’s Whiskey Trade Review, observed in 1893 that Irish whiskey had fallen behind Scotch in the English market in the previous twenty years; his view was that Scotch merchants and blenders paid more attention to public taste and keeping down prices, while promoting the whiskey by hiring travellers to market it. Hudson argued that Irish merchants, blenders and distillers needed to promote and develop Irish whiskey in the British market, using ‘good travellers’ and ‘bold advertising’ as opposed to a ‘channel of agents’. The Irish industry in his view required ‘rousing into activity’ and more aggressive marketing. The Wine Trade Review expressed similar sentiments some years later; the Scotch product had adapted better to public taste, distillers reducing the strong characteristics of their whiskey by exploiting the art of blending to convert inferior spirits into something quite drinkable, while simultaneously using advertising and marketing.99 Despite the growth of Irish distilling output in the second half of the nineteenth century, it is clear that by the end of the century all was not well. Much of the output growth was in cheap immature grain whiskey sold to Scottish


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blenders and English dealers, rather than in higher value matured, blended and bottled brands. Much of Irish output was merely neutral grain spirit with no market profile, so when over-supply in the UK market reached critical levels in the first decades of the twentieth century, the Irish industry was desperately vulnerable. As demand in the UK market fell, a strategic merger took place in 1902 between three of the major Ulster patent-still producers, the intention being to reduce competition. Watt’s of Derry, the Irish Distillery Ltd and Avoniel in Belfast formed the United Distillers Ltd (UDL). This merged entity dominated the Irish market in the supply of patent-still spirit and became one of the key players in the UK, second only to Distillers Company Ltd of Scotland (DCL). A conflict of interests therefore existed between the two firms, which was resolved in 1905 when both accepted an exchange of shares and directors; DCL of Scotland acquired 50 per cent of the shares in the Irish venture, while UDL acquired a 9.8 per cent stake in DCL. This arrangement worked reasonably well initially, enabling the price of Irish grain spirit to be raised, in cooperation with other Irish patent-still producers through the Irish Distillers’ Association formed in 1905.100 However, exports to Britain were of far greater significance for UDL than the Irish market. By 1904, over 12.5 million gallons was distilled in Ireland, while over 8.6 million gallons of spirits were exported (or the equivalent of over two-thirds of total production) the bulk of which was grain whiskey.101 It seems probable that a greater share of these exports merely entered Scotch blends, rather than being marketed under Irish brand names in Britain. Irish distillers however continued to dominate the smaller and contracting Irish market for potable spirit. It seems clear that a number of Irish pot still distilleries produced a high-quality product, while the bulk of the grain spirit produced by UDL’s distilleries was targeted largely towards the UK working- class market, either to make up cheap Scotch blends, or as cheap Irish brands of questionable quality. However, this market was particularly vulnerable to downturns and in general most Irish whiskey brands had a poor market presence relative to Scotch. UDL certainly put little effort into marketing brands. The Managing Director, William Virtue, informed the Royal Commission in 1908 that UDL produced between 5 and 6 million gallons of patent still whiskey and only 0.25 million gallons of pot still, selling their output almost entirely to the wholesale merchants and blenders.102 Much of their product was bought by Scottish blenders, and marketed as Scotch, which created an increasing conflict of interests with DCL, particularly as the UK market for spirits began to contract. The corner of the British market which declined most rapidly from 1909 was precisely the working-class markets targeted by Scotch and Ulster blenders, which were most sensitive to the rapidly rising cost of whiskey (the result of duty rises). The less dynamic Irish market contracted even more, a response to the rise in duty from under 15 shillings per proof gallon in 1909 to over 72 shillings in 1920. Moreover, the Immature Spirits Act of 1915 imposed a minimum age of three years’ maturation on spirits entering the market, further


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raising overall costs tied up in stock. This combined with the disruption imposed by the war, led to a decline in UK spirit consumption from 28 million proof gallons in 1915 to only 13 million in 1917. UDL and a holding company – the Distillers Finance Corporation – was particularly hard hit by the Immature Spirits Act of 1915, since it had large stocks of immature spirit on hand. Despite these problems, the war provided some respite for the Irish distilling industry; it was less affected by war-time restriction than the Scotch trade and production levels in Ireland held up well during and immediately after the war, relative to the Scottish industry. UDL helped replenish Scotch stocks, which had been depleted due to the war. But by 1921, the very large trade in Irish grain whiskey sold to Scotch blenders and English traders was being threatened by greater demarcation between the Scotch and Irish product. UDL’s position by 1921, with its core export trade to Britain, had been made even worse by the fact that their distilleries were ‘at present deprived of the large filling orders they usually get from Dublin and the South of Ireland owing to a political boycott’.103 Political turmoil in these transition years created additional problems for all Irish producers, on top of the economic recession from 1920 and the general reduction in demand as a result of far higher duties. However, UDL and its holding company, DFC, still had yeast and industrial alcohol, which were becoming increasingly significant features in the industry. By 1915, five Irish patent-still producers were making yeast, and at Watt’s in Londonderry yeast production had, by 1921, become more important than spirit production. In the previous year, the Distillers Finance Corporation had formed the International Yeast Company, in alliance with the Fleischmann Co. of New York, who had acquired a new process of yeast manufacture. This was of some concern to DCL, who already had 70 per cent of the UK yeast market. With interests in industrial alcohol, yeast and potable spirit, UDL was DCL’s largest surviving competitor. However, UDL did not have the stomach to ride out the threat posed to their interests by Irish political instability. The years between 1920 and 1922 witnessed particularly severe sectarian attacks in both Belfast and Derry, the UDL production bases, and a sense of insecurity and pessimism prevailed in these years; 500 Catholicowned businesses were closed and a quarter of the Catholic population in Belfast were expelled from their homes. Faced with declining sales, falling prices for grain spirit and problems with their core Scotch and English trade, UDL agreed to a defensive take-over in 1922; the sale price was £2,996,000 million (from which could be deducted cash assets to the tune of £1,200,000). Weir, the historian of the company, notes that this was ‘an extraordinary cheap purchase and of major strategic importance to DCL’s future’.104 Conversely it was a major loss to the Irish industry. Although distilling was in retreat all over the UK in this period, the Scotch distillers (through the aegis of DCL) comprehensively outperformed and outflanked their Irish rivals (notably UDL). The precise timing of the decline of the Irish industry can be easily identified; production statistics for the UK indicate that Irish output held up very well in the immediate aftermath of the


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war, still accounting for almost 40 per cent of UK production in 1919.105 But its position within the UK industry began to decline thereafter, in relative and absolute terms, production falling drastically from over 11 million gallons in 1920 to under a million gallons in 1926, with total British and Irish production in the same years falling far more gently-from over 47 million to 28 million. From a position of comparative strength in 1919–20, the Irish distilling industry over a period of only seven years almost completely collapsed (see Table 5.2). Increasing taxation on the UK spirit trade from 1909 may not have been intended to discriminate specifically against Irish distilling, but the net outcome was that Ireland ultimately fared worse than England and Scotland from this, due to the relatively poorer segments of the UK market that the Irish distillers served (both in Ireland and Great Britain), and the lesser significance of industrial alcohol in the Irish trade. The fiscal policies pursued subsequently by the new Irish Free State government were equally regressive,106 providing little respite for what remained of the southern Irish industry. Ó Gráda has emphasised the lack of marketing and investment in blending and distribution in this period (in contrast to what the Scots were doing) as plausible explanations for the distilling industry’s contraction from the end of the nineteenth century.107 Scotch was one of the major marketing success stories in British economic history. In contrast, marketing and advertising was a relatively weak feature of the Irish industry.108 Many Irish pot-still producers were hostile to blending, selling in bulk to dealers, blenders and retailers, spending little on advertising or marketing. As the UK market for whiskey experienced contraction in the first quarter of the twentieth century, there was less goodwill for Irish brands, since less had been invested in advertising and marketing. As prices rose dramatically in the wake of duty rises between 1909 and 1920, the British working-class market and relatively poorer Irish consumers were hit hardest. Furthermore, since the only major Irish player in the UK yeast and industrial alcohol industry (UDL) was taken over (and ultimately shut down by DCL), the Irish distilling industry failed to make the Table 5.2 Spirit production in Great Britain and Ireland, 1920–1926 (proof gallons) Year

England

Scotland

1901 1912 1920 1923 1926

12,603,311 12,702,427 7,123,078 7,365,073 10,614,359

30,196,016 24,114,590 29,296,316 27,423,640 16,532,282

N. Ireland

Irish F.S.

6,263,000

[3,612,747]

2,534,426 176,800

1,675,503 689,063

All Ireland

Total

1,4221,520 9,875,747 11,128,714 4,209,929 865,863

57020,847 46692,764 47548,108 38998,642 28012,504

Sources: PRO London: Cust 1st Report to 18th Report of HM Customs and Excise (1910–1927). Fifth Annual Report of the Revenue Commissioners (Irish Free State) (Dublin, 1928). Figure in 1912 for six counties which became Northern Ireland taken from Board of Trade Journal, 2 February 1928. [Figure] for remaining 26 counties estimated by deducting six counties from total for all Ireland.

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transition from the ‘whiskey age’ to the ‘chemical age’ during the inter-war years, like DCL, who moved successfully from its traditional dependence on whisky to a supplier of the British chemical and textile industries. By the mid–1920s, the Irish distilling industry was a pale shadow of what it had been on the eve of the First World War. A dwindling number of Irish distillers survived the economic carnage of the intervening years, largely supplying the contracting demand for pot still whiskey in the Irish market.109


III The success of the tobacco industry in Ireland in the nineteenth century is surprising. It was not an industry where Ireland had any particular advantages; its raw material was imported (there were ventures into tobacco cultivation but the product was inferior). On the supply side, therefore, it differed from food processing, brewing and distilling, which were largely based on homegrown produce. Tobacco initially served the domestic market. It was small scale and dispersed. Unprotected, it faced direct competition from major suppliers in Britain like WD and HO Wills. Yet it survived, retaining much of the domestic market. Furthermore, Irish tobacco had made inroads into the British market and had built up a substantial overseas export trade. By 1907, Ireland was a net exporter of tobacco. Undoubtedly, one of the explanations for the success of the industry was the extent of Irish demand and variation in local tastes. As early as 1812 Wakefield noted that tobacco was one of the few imported commodities that was widely consumed, despite the dire poverty of a large section of the population. A witness to the revenue commissioners inquiry in 1823 noted that ‘the lower orders … are the chief consumers, both men and women have great delight in it … ’.110 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, tobacco was imported in leaf form so that duty was paid not only on the tobacco content, but also on the stalks and the moisture content. As duties rose, in order to economise on waste, manufacturers increasingly used tobacco which had previously been stripped from the stalk, dried and compressed. By the 1840s up to two-thirds of UK tobacco imports were in strip form.111 So pound for pound, the tobacco entered for home consumption in the mid-nineteenth century made more tobacco than at the beginning of the century. There are also reasonable grounds for believing that adulteration by Irish tobacco manufacturers increased over the period, with an array of substances added to roll tobacco, including, for example, rhubarb, dock leaves, logwood and iron sulphate. The Mixing Act of 1840 permitted most forms of adulteration.112 Evidence suggests that these admixtures continued to be used in Ireland long after their use became illegal as a result of the Pure Tobacco Act of 1842.113 There was also an extensive trade in contraband, which an inefficient and corrupt revenue service was unable to cope with, which makes the official statistics of Irish tobacco consumption difficult to interpret.114 A senior figure in the service on the eve of the Great Famine was willing to admit that smuggling


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could be as high as 15 per cent of the quantities entered for home consumption.115 There is evidence from a manufacturer named Foot that by 1844 tobacco consumption was on the increase: ‘I think it is not on the decrease; tobacco is as extensively used, and particularly by the lower orders of the people, as ever I recollect it to have been..’ Foot noted that the greatest quantity of tobacco consumed in Ireland was roll tobacco for both chewing and smoking among the lower classes.116 Since virtually all the tobacco consumed in Ireland during the period in question was imported, the larger importers and wholesalers tended to be located in the major ports, which also happened to be the largest markets. Many of these importers also engaged in manufacturing and retailing tobacco, in addition to selling unprepared tobacco to the numerous smaller manufacturers and dealers who were dispersed across the country. There were 291 tobacco manufacturers operating in Ireland in 1835.117 The 1841 census returns for tobacco twisters reveal some concentration in the larger ports with 44 recorded in Cork city, 48 in Limerick city, 29 in Waterford city, 42 in Dublin and 84 in Belfast. Many tobacco twisters were also to be found in small provincial towns,118 working on a small scale serving limited local markets. Imports of tobacco in 1835 (as returned in the Railway Commissioner’s Report) suggest that Dublin was the main centre of the industry, accounting for over 43 per cent of total imports; Cork accounted for about 14 per cent, Belfast 12 per cent, Limerick about 9 per cent, Waterford 8 per cent and Derry for just under 6 per cent. The Dublin excise district also had the greatest number of tobacco manufactories, accounting for 34 of the 291 in Ireland in 1835. The Cork excise district came next with 31, Lisburn (which included Belfast) had 21, Clonmel 20, Limerick 19, while Waterford, Galway and Mallow had 18 each.119 This suggests that Dublin still dominated the importation and manufacturing of tobacco in the mid-1830s. In the pre-Famine period, the preparation of tobacco from the imported raw material to a state where it was ready for smoking could be carried out with limited capital resources. In much of the country, the preparatory operations were carried out by merchants and retailers, who sold tobacco among a range of other commodities. A surviving day book of a merchant in Castlewellan in Co. Down (covering the period between 1791–95) reveals the purchase of leaf tobacco which was prepared for final consumption. But this was part of a much wider business in tea, sugar, textiles, whiskey, corn, cheese and many other commodities.120 This type of unspecialised small-scale operation was common in smaller towns all over Ireland until well into the second half of the nineteenth century. In most of the country the local tobacco trade simply was not extensive enough to justify specialisation. Most manufacturers depend on manual labour to carry out most of the processes connected with the industry, but significant expertise was required for controlling moisture content, blending, and for getting the right match between cost and quality.121 This gave established businesses an advantage over less experienced rivals; a number of the firms which


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had become prominent in the tobacco industry by the end of the nineteenth century were already well established by the mid-nineteenth century. Lundy Foot and Co., Dublin’s most prominent snuff maker, for example, was established in 1780, while Lambkin’s of Cork claimed their lineage ran back some decades before this. Murray’s of Belfast was established in 1810, Spillane’s of Limerick in 1829, Clarke’s of Cork in 1839, Taylor’s of Dublin, 1800, Carroll’s of Dundalk in 1824 and the Bagnalstown Tobacco Factory in 1830.122 Gallaher’s began in 1857. These firms with decades of experience in the industry successfully adopted machinery when the industry became more mechanised in the last third of the nineteenth century. This was also a period of growth in retailing, with the number of retailers and dealers with a license to sell tobacco and snuff in Ireland rising from 2,059 in 1825 to 10,349 in 1830, reaching 20,155 by 1860. Dublin dominated the retailing of tobacco in the first half of the nineteenth century, accounting for 220 of the 537 tobacconists recorded in the 1841 census.123 The city was the largest market for tobacco in Ireland; it was also the best point for dispatching tobacco to rural markets on the road and canal network. Many of the Dublin tobacco traders did a large trade with dealers and private customers all over the country. Imports from English tobacco manufacturers remained fairly minimal during the first half of the nineteenth century. Will’s, the largest English firm, already had an agency in Dublin for a few years before 1854, but sales at this stage were negligible.124 Significant variations in local taste and lower labour costs still protected manufacturers working away from the larger centres of the industry. Although tobacco was one of the first mass consumed food-like substances, the processing and manufacture of tobacco was one of the last products to be processed in large factories. It was only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that the international tobacco industry witnessed a major transformation in scale, distribution and marketing.125 The Irish industry began to become more concentrated in a smaller number of larger factories from the mid-nineteenth century, and during the last third of the century it began to become more mechanised. This changed the way in which tobacco was processed, packaged, marketed and sold. Factory producers sought extra regional markets, and by the turn of the century they attempted to extend their appeal to consumers by advertising. The most dramatic development within the Irish industry in this period was the emergence of a major international firm, which was founded and managed by Thomas Gallaher, ‘the Irish Tobacco King’. Gallaher started his apprenticeship in the early 1850s with Robert Bond of Shipquay St. in Londonderry. Bond was a general merchant, with an extensive wholesale trade in Donegal and the West of Ireland. Although the chief portion of its trade was in tea, the firm also engaged in the manufacture of pipe tobacco; it was in this department that Gallaher gained his early experience of the industry.126 In 1857, he began his own business in Derry, transferring to Belfast in 1863. The firm expanded using power-driven rather than hand-operated machinery, and


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in 1881 a five-storey factory was built in York St. where 600 were employed. It was at this point that Gallaher’s began to expand into the British market; in 1888, a subsidiary plant was built in London. Forming a limited liability company with nominal capital of £1,000,000, he had a second factory and bonded stores built in Belfast around 1896; this enabled the company to import leaf directly into Belfast. By the turn of the century the company was the largest tobacco manufacturer in Ireland and one of the biggest in the UK. In 1897 it had the third highest number of travellers employed in the UK industry. In the decade before 1914, Gallaher’s expanded its markets in Britain, the Empire, the USA and Scandinavia.127 This was probably the main explanation for both the scaling up of that company’s production facilities and the rise in Irish exports of manufactured tobacco from the mid-1880s, when a significant difference emerges between the amount of tobacco paying duty in Ireland and that actually consumed in the country. Carroll’s of Dundalk provides a good example of one of the provincial tobacco firms which managed to develop a larger trade and transform its production techniques during this period. P.J. Carroll established the business in 1824 on a very small scale, preparing and blending leaf, which was then twisted or spun by hand into roll tobacco for the local market. The earliest surviving day book indicates that in the period between 1838 and 1845 the firm also sold pigtail (chewing) tobacco, snuff and tobacco pipes.128 The firm was opening up new markets by 1850 outside Co. Louth, and by the time the founder died in 1879, its trade extended to three or four Irish counties, while machinery had been introduced for spinning.129 The founder’s son, V.S. Carroll, had entered the business in 1864, extending and re-equipping the works in the 1880s and 1890s. During this period the firm began to sell branded products. The entire factory was burnt out in 1909, so a new works was built. Carroll’s managed to build up a significant trade outside Ireland in the last decades of the nineteenth century. By 1911, net sales amounted to over £37,440 with over £20,342 of this being sold in Scotland. A distribution branch had been set up in Glasgow in 1906. The firms Irish trade was still mostly in branded pipe tobacco in Leinster and Ulster (i.e. Target, Mick McQuaid, Carrick Cut Plug, Premier Coil, Grange, etc.) in addition to selling pigtail tobacco and snuff. They were also importing and selling Player’s Woodbines which was obviously becoming a profitable trade in Ireland (because of their low price). The firm embarked on the manufacture of cigarettes in 1905. At this stage they employed about 250 people. Taylor’s of Dublin was another firm which had successfully expanded, employing 200 people in 1912, making pipe tobacco and cigarettes.130 These firms were the largest in the south of Ireland. There were smaller firms servicing local markets which managed to survive selling traditional pipe tobacco; Joseph O’Neill and Sons of Bagnalstown Co. Carlow for example employed only 16 people in 1887. A surviving ledger of John Clune Ltd of Limerick indicates that between 1908 and 1916 trade was largely restricted to counties Limerick, Kerry, Clare, Tipperary and Cork. Some of these smaller firms had even developed a limited export trade; Lundy


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Foot and Co. of Dublin boasted in 1892 that its snuff brand Irish Blackguard had ‘extended into all lands, and it is almost as well known in China, India, Japan, and Australia as among the valleys and hills of Erin’.131 However, with the exception of the three largest firms, Irish tobacco manufacturers largely depended on the committed pipe smokers of Ireland. Many of the smaller companies went out of business as the industry became more mechanised and centralised. The number of tobacco manufacturers operating in Ireland declined dramatically from 291 in the mid-1830s to only 17 by 1920; in the latter year these were located in Belfast (2), Dublin (4), Dundalk, Bagnalstown, Cork (2), Waterford city, Dungarvan, Limerick (4) and Londonderry.132 Mechanisation, the growth of the cigarette trade, branding, and the emergence in the early twentieth century of a combine of most of the larger British producers, the Imperial Tobacco Company of Great Britain and Ireland, were perhaps the four most important developments in the industry between 1860 and 1914. The invention of the bonsack machine in the 1880s, for making cigarettes mechanically, subsequently had a radical effect on the evolution of the UK tobacco industry. Wills’, the largest British tobacco manufacturer, secured the patent which was more efficient than rival machines. This provided them with a significant advantage over their competitors in the UK cigarette market, particularly from the late 1880s when they introduced the packet of five for a penny. The emergence of brands like Wills’ Woodbine, marked a growing trend towards standardisation in the industry, and advertising also increased significantly over the following decades. These innovations marked a major turning point in the UK industry, increasing the market share for cigarettes against other tobacco. Cigarettes rose from about 10 per cent of GB tobacco sales in 1900 to about 50 per cent by 1920.133 Cigarettes were much less successful in Ireland; Ireland remained more traditional in its smoking habits than Great Britain; it was closer to other European countries in this respect. At the turn of the century ounce for ounce, cigarettes were 50 per cent dearer than medium-priced packet tobacco, which may have been a factor in the slower adoption of cigarettes in Ireland along with the more rural nature of Irish society. The growth of Wills’ cigarette sales at this time was disproportionately greater in large urban centres, particularly among working-class smokers.134 Nonetheless, the growing popularity of cigarettes was discernible after the turn of the century, when a number of Irish manufacturers began to make them. Gallaher’s had made cigarettes in their London factory since 1895, installing cigarette-making machinery in Belfast in 1902; Carroll’s followed in 1905.135 It was in cigarettes that English competition was strongest. Wills’, in particular, was able to extend its success in the British market to Ireland with its cheapest cigarette brand, Woodbine. By the early 1920s, Wills’ accounted for over 40 per cent of total cigarette sales in Ireland, despite the wide choice of native cigarette brands which Irish consumers had. However, Wills’ and other English firms had much less success in marketing pipe tobaccos in Ireland, where it seems locally based Irish firms catering for


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regional markets and local tastes were tenaciously able to hold their own. Since pipe smoking tobacco still accounted for 60 per cent of tobacco consumed in Ireland in the early 1920s, this remained a more significant branch of the industry than in Great Britain.136 A number of the larger Irish firms adapted successfully during the period of mechanisation between the late 1860s and 1914; they extended their markets in Ireland at the expense of many smaller provincial manufacturers. Gallaher’s and Murray’s adapted best and by 1911 Belfast accounted for most of the unmanufactured tobacco imports into Ireland and the bulk of manufactured exports. Gallaher’s were the principal importers and exporters of tobacco in Ireland, with a large part of their output being manufactured in bond for export to both Britain and the British empire. They were the only firm which manufactured in bond in Ireland, and it was the only major international player in the Irish tobacco trade.137 By 1908, Gallaher had opened a number of factories in the tobacco growing regions of the USA. At this stage the company was also operating works in London and Newcastle, and there were branch warehouses in Leeds, Hull, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and Dublin. They employed 3,000 in Belfast alone by 1907. Expansion in Belfast was so rapid, that it became necessary in 1909 to build a new factory with double the capacity of the existing works which employed a further 800 when it opened in 1911. At this stage Gallaher ran the largest independent tobacco business in the world.138 Murray’s, the second firm in Belfast, also expanded significantly between 1900 and 1914, making cut tobacco, Irish roll, snuff and cigarettes. Both Murray’s and Gallaher’s used advertising extensively which had become an important feature of the trade.139 By 1889, Ireland was a net exporter of tobacco, sending roughly 2.5 million lb of manufactured tobacco to England, while roughly 1.5 million lb of English-manufactured tobacco was imported into Ireland.140 Exports from Belfast, which accounted for the bulk of Irish exports, increased from 531 tons in 1884, to 1,782 tons in 1894, to 3,223 tons in 1904 to 5,509 in 1914. When full trade statistics for Ireland became available it is evident that between 1904 and 1914, Ireland continued to retain its position as a net exporter of tobacco, despite growing imports of British manufactured tobacco.141 The overall performance of the Irish tobacco industry was quite respectable. On the eve of the Great War the Irish industry processed 12 per cent of UK output at a time when Irish population was under 10 per cent of the UK total.142 This compares very favourably with the relative performance of other Irish industries in a UK context.

Conclusion Ireland performed well in the food and drink sector because a large proportion of native income was spent on food, drink and tobacco. Moreover, locally based manufacturers could gauge and supply local market preferences more effectively. Irish tobacco manufacturers for example were able to resist British


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competition in the production of pipe tobacco, while distillers largely retained the home market for spirits. Since Ireland produced a significant share of UK agricultural output it was an obvious location for industries deriving their raw materials from agriculture, and a number of large plants emerged in the sector utilising the best technologies available internationally. The growth of a substantial export of food, drink and tobacco indicates that Ireland was able to compete very effectively in the British market, while retaining most of the domestic market. As a consequence, the food and drink sector constituted a substantial component of the Irish industrial sector. The sector remained much more dispersed geographically than Ireland’s other staple industries centred largely in Ulster. More companies and products established or further developed during the union in the Irish food, drink and tobacco sector have survived in some form down to the present day, than in other branches of manufacturing. Brand names and companies such as Guinness, Smithwicks, Murphy’s, Jacob’s. Jameson, Power’s, Bushmills, Locke’s, Carroll’s, Shaws, Denny, Odlums, Flahavan’s, Johnston, Mooney and O’Brien (just to name a few), are instantly recognisable to Irish consumers and to many elsewere. Their survival and development is a testimony to the robust competitiveness of the food and drink sector in Ireland between 1801 and 1921.

Part III

Missing links? Downloaded by [INFLIBNET Centre] at 05:59 30 August 2012

Engineering, shipbuilding and the dearth of mineral wealth



6


One of the major differences between the Irish and British industrial sectors was the relative lack of mineral wealth in Ireland and the small size of its mining industry. Ireland’s engineering and foundry sector was also relatively small compared to Great Britain where iron and engineering figured prominently in the industrial revolution. This chapter first examines the extent of Ireland’s mineral wealth in a comparative UK context. Second, it focuses on the limited development of iron and engineering in Ireland with a particular focus on the regional variations in the demand for these industries.

I The extent of Ireland’s mineral wealth during the period of the Union with Great Britain attracted the attention of Irish political economists, economic nationalists, a host of professional and dilettantish geologists and men of science, in addition to aspiring entrepreneurs and a few swindlers. The potential realization of great wealth from what lay beneath the surface seems to have had a greater attraction to would-be entrepreneurs in this period than more conventional forms of investment. As a consequence, large sums of British and Irish capital were sunk in a host of fruitless Irish mining ventures. Robert Kane’s opus magnum, The Industrial Resources of Ireland, first published in Dublin in 1844, was probably the most influential publication on Ireland’s natural resources and it had a magnetic appeal to potential investors. Kane in his preface to the first edition drew attention to the great strides the continental nations were making in terms of industrial development and that if Ireland displayed similar zeal and intelligence in developing its industrial resources ‘there would be no fear of the result … ’.1 Kane made a sweeping assessment of the minerals of consequence on the island, but in the final analysis he concluded: By far the greater portion of this island is constituted of mineral formations, analogous to those of the principal mining districts of England and of the Continent of Europe. That in almost every quarter valuable deposits of the more important metals, rocks and minerals have been found, and the quantity of ores raised and sold is annually on the increase.2

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This wildly over optimistic assessment of the potential for Ireland’s mineral resources influenced a distinguished line of nationalists from Davis, who believed Ireland had sufficient coal resources to industrialise, to Griffith, who took similar flights of fancy. Even prior to the Civil War, the emerging new regime carried out a major investigation into Irish coalfields, paying less attention to the relatively meagre amounts that had been extracted annually from Irish coal mines in the previous 75 years.3 More circumspect observers were far closer to the truth. Bastable, the Professor of Political Economy at the University of Dublin, noted: A branch of industry which is often advocated, but which has, I believe, proved uniformly unsuccessful in Ireland, is that of mining. In spite of the glowing descriptions which are often given of the mineral resources lying unworked in various localities, there is no example of brilliant success to set off against the losses which have undoubtedly been incurred. The Mining Company of Ireland and the Wicklow Mining Company have not proved exceptionally profitable investments, nor is there any prospect of more favourable results being obtained.4 Modest as it was, coal mining was the most steady and predictable sector within Irish mining during the second half of the nineteenth century and by the 1880s when copper mining was largely defunct, coal had little competition from other minerals in terms of the value raised. At this stage the gross output of Irish quarrying (see Chapter 8 on construction) was far more valuable than all Irish mining activity combined.5 In the nineteenth century pits began to be sunk to much deeper levels than the typically shallow workings of the eighteenth century. Most of the coal mined in Ireland was anthracite and the dust produced in mining (culm) could also be utilised for domestic and industrial purposes. The most productive mines were the anthracite mines of Castlecomer, Rossmore and Wolfhill in Leinster. The coalfields of Munster at Ballingarry, Cratloe and Kanturk also produced anthracite; the Arigna mines in Connacht produced semi-bituminous coal, while those in Ulster at Ballycastle and East Tyrone produced a softer bituminous coal more akin to that largely produced in Britain.6 The East Tyrone coalfield had been worked sporadically long before the nineteenth century, but production reached its peak between the 1830s and 1850s as a consequence of the investment of two companies in a number of collieries, which supplied the demand created by local industry. However, depletion, poor management and geological problems in working the pits resulted in a significant decline in output by the 1870s, although production continued.7 The value of coal output from collieries in Ulster and Connuaght between the 1880s and partition was fairly negligible, with Munster and more notably Leinster accounting for the bulk of Irish production.8 Higher levels of investment in the collieries in these provinces even before the Great Famine can be deduced from the fact that there were five steam engines installed in collieries in Co. Kilkenny between 1827 and 1838, while in Tipperary five steam engines



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were in use by 1836 at the colliery at Slieveardagh where 200–300 persons were employed at that point.9 Substantial investments in the workings at Slieveardagh were made by the Mining Company of Ireland from 1827 and coal was extracted for over 50 years, being used locally for domestic purposes and for drying corn and burning lime; the mine therefore depended largely on the farming community for custom. The markets for the Kanturk coalfield were also closely linked to the agricultural population and it has been estimated that it produced around 965,000 tons between the 1820s and the 1880s, contributing to agricultural improvement in that region.10 The field was never fully developed and by 1921 only one pit at Lickfinn was being exploited and it was noted that ‘the methods of working are of a primitive description’. The workings in Connacht in the Arigna coalfield at this point also appear to have been small and old fashioned in technical terms.11 There were 34 collieries in Ireland in 1867, but the number fell in the following years to 30 by 1871.12 The Leinster coalfields accounted for about half of the value of Irish output by 1885. In 1894, R.H. Prior-Wandesforde inherited the Castlecomer operations in Co. Kilkenny (which had been in his family since 1637); taking full operational control thereafter, he further developed the mines so that by the eve of the Great War there were five pits being worked. All the coal produced was brought together at one point, adjacent to a railway branch linking the mines with Kilkenny by the end of the war. At this stage the Castlecomer Colleries Ltd. was the only substantial coal mining company in Ireland; it employed over 500 people, accounting for over half of those employed in the Irish industry and over two-thirds of the value of output, which implies that its productivity was far higher than other Irish mines.13 Most of the coal and culm produced was consumed for domestic and industrial purposes in the hinterland of the mines where it could be purchased more cheaply than British coal. Culm balls were made and used as a domestic fuel in parts of Kilkenny, Laois, Carlow and Tipperary.14 Rynne points out that in the end, Irish coal deposits by and large were too small to justify significant capital investment, while transit facilities usually limited markets to within 30 miles.15 Low investment meant that on average productivity was low. In 1877, for example, it was estimated that Irish collieries produced a third of the amount of coal per person in 1877 as those located in Lancashire.16 Irish coal mining provided a very limited supply of coal creating few forward or backward linkages to the Irish economy at large. Most of the coal supply therefore came from the larger island throughout the period in question, so that the British economy gained more than the Irish from the rising demand for energy in the Ireland.

II In the early nineteenth century Wakefield noted that copper ore exports had been on the increase and there were about 500 people working in the mines at Ross Island near Killarney.17 If this venture was short lived, the growing demand


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for copper in Britain as the industrial revolution proceded increased speculation in mining activity in Ireland, notably from the 1820s. While a number of smaller mines opened briefly for a few years, the mines at Allihies in West Cork were the first to be worked in a sustained way over a number of years between 1812 and 1884 and then sporadically until 1913. The grinding poverty and exploitation of the Berehaven miners contrasts starkly with the wealth generated by the Puxley family, who sold up the depleted mines for £100,000 in 1869 before the industry crashed with plummeting copper prices in the following decades. The Berehaven output of 297,000 tons over the entire period between 1812 and 1913 constituted the greatest of the three Irish mining zones (judging by the copper ore received at Swansea), followed by Knockmahon in Waterford, which produced 237,813 between 1826 and 1879. The third group of mines in Wicklow produced 211,662 tons between 1808 and 1913, but since part of its ore was sold outside Swansea, it is possible that it output may have been ahead of Waterford at least.18 Copper mining was by far the most valuable of the Irish mineral industries for most of the second and third quarter of the nineteenth century. Mulligan has tabulated the quantity of Irish copper ore received in Swansea annually.19 From this data it is apparent that copper-ore production reached its peak in the period between 1834 and 1847 with a smaller and less sustained peak between 1860 and 1864. In the first peak it is apparent that the works at Bunmahon Co. Waterford and at Bearhaven in Co. Cork was accompanied by extensive work in Wicklow which probably exceeded production in the former two mines; however, once the peak ended after 1847 the Bunmahon and Bearhaven mines dominated the flow of Swansea bound ore.20 The mines in Wicklow were centred on Avoca where copper had been mined already in the eighteenth century, but the period from the 1820s to the 1860s witnessed the high-water mark of copper-ore production and sulphur mining with employment opportunities declining in the 1870s, though very small workings continued into the 1880s.21 The history of the mines in Bunmahon in Waterford broadly followed the same pattern with profitability declining from the 1860s as copper prices deteriorated and much of the mining community emigrated.22 Irish copper-ore production declined dramatically from the mid1860s, and by the end of the 1870s its contribution to Irish mining output was of little consequence. There were various other mineral resources exploited in Ireland, but generally these operations were carried out on a much more modest scale than on the sister island. Salt was mined in Ireland from the mid-nineteenth century in Co. Antrim.23 Lead, silver, bartyes, iron pyrites, bauxite, zinc were all extracted and mostly shipped to England to be processed, although lead smelting was carried out in Ireland. More typically large amounts of iron pyrites were shipped from Arklow and Wicklow from the 1840s for the production of sulphuric acid in England. Rynne notes that 85 per cent of iron pyrites raised in the UK between 1857 and 1869 came from the Vale of Avoca, but demand for this also declined from the 1880s.24



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The extraction of iron ore began to increase in Ireland during the 1860s. It was centred largely in Antrim and its fate (like copper) was largely determined by the fluctuating demand and price in Britain, where all the ore was exported for further processing. The mines at Glenravel employed about 700 in the 1870s and 1880s but the iron-ore mines and miners of the Glens of Antrim ultimately suffered the same fate as their copper-mining predecessors and mining had ceased by the 1920s.25 Irish copper- and iron-ore mining had brought profits to a few shrewd investors for a while and they spawned some new industrial communities which were very vulnerable to downturns and were ultimately unsustainable when prices dropped. Moreover, the ore they produced provided no forward linkages within the Irish economy other than transportation to the quays and across the sea to Britain for smelting.26 Thus Ireland in contrast to Britain was unable to add value to most of its small mineral output. Ultimately, there was a glaring gap in mineral wealth between Ireland and Britain which was a direct consequence of the divergent geological inheritances of the two islands. This is starkly evident in the value of the minerals raised on the two islands returned in the UK mineral statistics between the 1880s and partition (see Table 6.1). Irish mineral output made a tiny contribution to UK mineral output in the 1880s and its relative share actually declined further in the following decades. Minerals evidently made a very small contribution to the Irish economy in terms of net value added compared to Great Britain and the employment this sector provided was also of relatively limited consequence. The gap between the two islands for the amount of coal produced in particular (see Appendix 3) had very negative implications for the potential development and survival of fuel intensive industries in Ireland, notably those processing iron (and later steel). In smelting copper ore, for example, 45 per cent of costs were for fuel.27 It made little sense to undertake these operations in Ireland, which was therefore precluded from pursuing the same path to industrial development as England, Scotland or Wales, where energy intensive industries dependent on coal and other minerals were an important part of industrialisation. Ireland’s consistently derisory share of the minerals raised in the UKwas not therefore a consequence of a lack of Irish effort or capital investment, but can largely be accounted for by a simple twist of geological fate.

III Iron smelting had been common in Ireland in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century when Irish woodlands were exploited for the production of charcoal. However, by the late eighteenth century this had dramatically decreased due to the depletion of woodlands and the consequent contraction of charcoal supplies.28 Arthur Young noted in 1785 that the iron-works in Enniscorthy and Mountrath (the only iron working centres then still operational in Ireland) were smelting English ore and due to lack of charcoal they were only operating for a few months every third or fourth year. The supply

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Table 6.1 Value and share of Irish portion of United Kingdom mineral produce as valued at quarries and mines, 1884–1913 (£) Year

Ireland

UK

Irish %

1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913

397,283 388,281 375,160 381,412 374,596 391,011 406,512 394,233 387,128 170,396 174,312 196,083 188,013 199,068 214,126 220,130 239,840 244,234 235,053 217,787 221,169 238,135 238,792 215,660 217,056 213,816 216,726 222,006 208,042 229,209

61,232,028 58,428,608 55,010,231 55,323,889 59,834,997 73,476,000 92,794,481 91,238,032 82,350,760 70,767,651 77,898,938 69,129,664 69,088,366 72,043,801 77,415,063 97,470,296 135,957,676 115,360,039 107,134,854 101,808,404 97,477,639 95,828,812 105,842,992 135,279,088 130,003,670 119,394,486 122,105,582 124,579,313 131,220,853 160,112,607

0.65 0.66 0.68 0.69 0.63 0.53 0.44 0.43 0.47 0.24 0.22 0.28 0.27 0.28 0.28 0.23 0.18 0.21 0.22 0.21 0.23 0.25 0.23 0.16 0.17 0.18 0.18 0.18 0.16 0.14

Sources: BPP 1884–85, lxxxv, annually to BPP 1914, xcix, Mining and Mineral Statistics of the UK.

of fuel was therefore an important factor in curtailing potential development. An ironworks was set up in Arigna in County Roscommon in 1788 by the O’Reilly brothers who used coke drawn from the Connaught coalfield following the practise successfully adopted in England much earlier in the eighteenth century. Although about 200 were employed in Arigna in the second half of the 1820s, operations here never proved successful and the only thing that seemed significant about its miserable commercial history were the vast funds invested. The last attempt at commercial iron smelting took place at Creevelea, where a coke furnace was built in 1852; however, hopes that Leitrim would become the Staffordshire of Ireland were dashed when it closed six years later, opening sporadically in the next half century but without any continuous commercial success. Lacking coal and iron resources in suitable



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quantities and locations, Ireland failed to develop any of the initial iron processing industries.29 Wallace noted at the end of the eighteenth century that there not more than five mills for slitting and rolling iron in Ireland and these were the least valuable branches of the trade. He also noted that there was an extensive consumption of japanned ware but none of this was made in Ireland.30 Most of the iron used in Ireland by the end of the eighteenth century was imported from Sweden and England,31 while coal also had to be largely imported from Britain. The larger foundries therefore tended to be located in the major ports, which were also the largest centres of demand. With over 40 coach factories for example, Dublin was the major centre of the Irish coachbuilding industry at the end of the eighteenth century, which required a significant degree of specialist iron-working skills.32 The city at this point was also the main centre for supplying castings for the construction industry.33 There was plenty of demand in Dublin for general foundry work such as that undertaken by Sheridan’s of Church St., who sought custom in 1818 from breweries, distilleries, builders, millers, chandlers, millwrights, iron mongers and country dealers.34 By 1824, there were 13 iron foundries in Dublin, compared to 5 in Belfast.35 By 1850 there were 29 foundries in Dublin, including 2 substantial ironworks on the Dodder near Clonskeagh. Smaller foundries were to be found in some midland towns by the mid-nineteenth century, using local scrap and imported pig iron from Britain as their main feedstock.36 If Dublin city still dominated the traditional iron and metal working trades in employment terms, Belfast and its hinterland had surpassed it and the rest of Ireland by the 1840s in terms of the employment of machine makers and millwrights reflecting the growth and demand created by east Ulster’s early industrial development. Cullen notes that 60 per cent of machine makers were located in Ulster in 1841 (see Table 6.2).37 At this point Belfast had also just about eclipsed Dublin city in terms of the number of iron founders employed. However, millwrights, machine makers and iron founders were a small elite band in the pre-famine industrial workforce concentrated either in the traditional urban industrial centres or more particularly in the growing industrial zone of east Ulster. Cork city was a secondary centre of engineering, millwork and iron founding to service its construction, shipbuilding and food and drink industries, but Co. Cork contained the largest number of blacksmiths and other trades associated with iron and metal. This reminds us that the bulk of iron and metal working within the pre-famine Irish economy were still supplied by blacksmiths and a host of other traditional metal-working craftsmen (see Table 6.2), with agriculture and transport-related services creating much of the demand. Blacksmiths accounted for well over half of all those in engaged in the metal, engineering and foundry trades on the eve of the Famine, shoeing horses and making and repairing iron equipment and implements.38 After the mideighteenth century, more specialised spade mills emerged in some parts of the country, notably in Ulster, with a smaller number being established close to Dublin and Cork. These applied a greater degree of technical sophistication

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Table 6.2 The iron and metal working trades in 1841 Location

Machine makers

Millwrights

Clare Cork City Cork Co. Kerry Limerick City Limerick Tipperary Waterford City Waterford Galway Town Galway Leitrim Mayo Roscommon Sligo Carlow Meath Dublin City Dublin Kildare Kilkenny City Kilkenny King's Co. Longford Louth Drogheda Queen's Co. Westmeath Wexford Wicklow Antrim Armagh Belfast Carrickfergus Down Donegal Cavan Fermanagh Londonderry Monaghan Tyrone

4 104 18 3 23 1 25 21 10 2 5 1 1 2 7 9 174 32 2 2 9 6

8 31 30 3 16 7 33 6 20 13 10 9 18 13 19 17 20 96 42 17 13 10 17

2 13 49 3 8 4 19 205 30 336 8 79 7 4 9 55 7 25

Iron founders

Blacksmiths

Others*

1 2 6 132 20 10 5 4 2

814 316 2,518 744 199 870 1,614 125 657 74 1,099 240 805 491 415 403 708 1,035 606 519 59 702 456

321 507 1,158 347 260 301 843 137 186 95 258 197 310 318 299 197 330 2,001 446 303 150 290 264

14 25 20 33

1 15 10 23

293 448 55 561

229 379 96 303

9 17 8 69 68 60 6 49 11 12 1 41 23 32

3 5 3 8 10 134 1 5

442 1,031 504 857 634 284 27 1,198 730 473 284 619 495 781

235 455 229 406 330 515 23 637 254 332 197 428 262 384

52 3 2 29 1 7 22 6 2

4 17 1

Source: L. Clarkson, M. Crawford and M. Litvack, Occupations of Ireland: 1841 (Belfast, 1995) Note: *includes toolmakers, tin workers, nailers, tinkers, gunsmiths, cutlers, wire workers, wire drawers, coach makers, cart makers, coach smiths, whitesmiths, braziers and coppersmiths, harness-makers, needle makers, harness-platers, spur and bit makers, pin makers, sieve makers and sickle makers.



115

on a larger scale to processes commonly practised in the traditional forge. But unlike the forge, they utilised water power to drive bellows, shearing machinery, grind stones and trip hammers for spade making enabling the scale of operations to be increased. But most were small concerns serving limited local markets until well into the nineteenth century. The larger mills which emerged from the 1830s onwards tended to broaden their markets, at the expense of smaller ones, by diversification into the production of a wider range of regional spade types. This also enabled them to survive against the competition of more standardised English imports.39 During the last quarter of the eighteenth century small foundries were established close to the major ports which made heavier castings for the agricultural sector, like plough parts, harrows, axles and crow bars. The spread of improved iron ploughs (which displaced timber) required a new range of construction and repair skills. Iron ploughs incorporating these new designs were often built by blacksmiths who bought the main components from iron foundries. This practice continued in many regions into the twentieth century.40 By the 1830s, a number of Irish foundries were making ploughs and their constituent parts. Dublin dominated the trade, but in Ulster this was also a period of growth; Gray’s of Belfast and Kennedy of Coleraine were both established in the early 1840s. The growth of arable farming between the 1780s and 1840s increased the demand for ploughs, harrows and a range of other equipment. Technology for threshing and winnowing grain, for example, began to be manufactured by Irish foundries, who adopted (and adapted) English or Scottish prototypes.41 Horse-driven threshing machines were initially imported from Scotland at the end of the eighteenth century. They were expensive and therefore only suitable for larger farms. This is perhaps why they were adopted more readily in the major grain-growing regions in the south in the early nineteenth century, notably around Cork, Dublin and Wexford.42 However, with the more extensive use of iron parts production costs had fallen by the mid-nineteenth century, and their installation became economically more attractive, even for small farmers. The gearing was often designed so that the drive could also be used for running churning or winnowing machinery. Ulster became the main area of demand, and by the turn of the century, Kennedy’s of Coleraine had become the principal manufacturers of these machines. Mowers and reapers were used predominantly in the south so their manufacture became concentrated in southern foundries,43 Sheridan of Dublin and Pierce of Wexford being the best-known makers. Wexford’s early success in agricultural machinery was a consequence of its location in one of the main tillage farming regions in the country. The industry in the town was associated particularly with one firm, Pierce. James Pierce (a millwright) started out manufacturing fire fans in 1830, designing and making threshing machines from 1846, and later ploughs and sowing machines. Between the 1790s and the mid-nineteenth century it is evident that arable farming provided an important source of demand for ironwork within the agricultural sector.44


116

Missing links?

In general, Irish agriculture became less labour intensive during the second half of the nineteenth century, and there was a shift away from arable farming to livestock. Farmers’ incomes improved, so they had more capital to invest in machinery. The application of iron equipment and machinery in the diminishing arable sector accelerated in the post-Famine period, as the cost of labour was rising. From the 1860s, Irish agricultural machine makers experienced increased competition from machine factories in North America and Britain. Employment in the five major Dublin firms that made agricultural equipment, for example, declined from 250 to 50, between 1855 and 1880.45 This malaise seems to have affected many of the agricultural machine and implement makers in Ireland. Only a few companies were able to compete, notably in Wexford, in the heart of one of the major arable regions, but also located on the east coast, convenient for British supplies of coal. By the mid-nineteenth century, Pierce of Wexford had already become the largest manufacturers of threshing machines in Ireland. They also became extensively engaged in the production of ploughs with interchangeable parts. Around the 1860s, they began making reaping machines, which could also be used for mowing hay, subsequently becoming the largest manufacturers in Ireland, even developing an export trade. The firm subsequently diversified into the production of bicycles. The dramatic expansion of the company is evident from the level of employment, which rose from 140 in 1889 to almost 1,000 by 1914. By the 1860s, a second agricultural machinery works had opened in Wexford, the Selskar Ironworks (owned by the Doyle family). A third works opened in 1893, the Star Works (the Wexford Engineering Company), which specialised in making wheel rakes, swath turners, hay cars, tumbler rakes, mowers and ploughs.46 Ireland was a net importer of agricultural machinery by the end of the nineteenth century. Firms increasingly concentrated on sales and repairs rather than manufacturing. A range of firms such as MacKenzie’s, McBride’s and Atkin’s of Cork, Kennan’s, Lenehan’s and Sheridan’s of Dublin, Boyd’s of Limerick, McGee’s of Ardee, Thompson’s of Carlow (just to name a few) concentrated on importing and servicing agricultural machinery produced by the best British and American firms.47 Thompson and Co. of Carlow was a good example of a firm that established a successful business importing, selling and repairing machinery. By the 1870s, they acted as agents and intermediaries for larger manufacturing firms based in England, installing and servicing their machinery. They also sold mowers, reapers and threshing machines and sold parts for Pierce and Co. by the 1880s.48 Servicing and repairing agricultural machinery was a lucrative trade, but Irish farmers increasingly imported their equipment from specialist producers based in Britain and America. As a result the manufacture of agricultural equipment contracted in Ireland, though a few larger firms survived.

IV The construction of the Irish railway network created a new type of demand for heavy engineering and iron work, which led to a growth in scale at many



117

existing foundries and the establishment of a number of new ones. In addition, the rail companies built their own engineering works for the construction and maintenance of rolling stock. Dublin, at the hub of the network, came to dominate Irish railway engineering. The works of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway were completed in 1837, and although there was a small foundry at their Grand Canal Street Works, most of the larger castings such as frames and cylinders had to be purchased outside.49 Engineering firms in Dublin such as Mallet’s, Dawson’s and Courtney and Stephens all experienced major expansion in the 1840s as a result of the demand created by railway construction. Mallet’s, which had an established reputation doing castings for public works, carried out much of the ironwork for the major railway stations in Dublin. They also won some large contracts in Britain against stiff competition, including the engine shed at Miles Platting near Manchester and the passenger shed at Wakefield. By the mid-1850s they employed between 200 and 300.50 Grendon’s of Drogheda were another prominent engineering firm which made the transition into railway engineering. Between the 1840s and 1880s the firm became the most prominent private builder in Ireland, undertaking the construction of 42 locomotives; they also made cylinders, boilers, water tanks, bridges, carriage wheels, axles, girders, roofs, columns and turn-tables for the various railway companies, employing over 300 people by the 1860s.51 Further north railway construction first attracted a young English engineer, Edward Manisty, to Ireland in 1869, to work on the Ballymena to Cushendall railway which was being built to handle the Antrim iron ore deposits. Although Manisty’s main experience was working on major civil engineering projects, in 1878 he purchased the Dundalk Iron Works, which had been established 57 years previously. He extended the business, making plant and doing millwork for breweries, distilleries, flax mills and tobacco manufacturers, and also making agricultural equipment and undertaking structural ironwork for railways, including footbridges and roofs, in addition to repairing rolling stock. Manisty employed 100 at these works in 1887.52 His career provides a good example of the ways in which railway engineering improved the quality and capacity of general engineering and foundry facilities in Ireland. The Inchicore Works of the Great Southern and Western Railway became by far the largest engineering works in Dublin, and the south of Ireland. Within a year of its establishment in 1846 there were already 250 people on the payroll. A growing community began to spring up around the works, with most of the houses being built by the railway company. Initially the company found it difficult to recruit sufficient skilled labour and management, so many were recruited from British railway workshops.53 At first, the works only engaged in the construction and repair of wagons. Until 1851, most of the engines were ordered from Britain. Thereafter they could be supplied up to 15 per cent cheaper than those imported from England. Gradually the company became more self-sufficient. Between 1852 and 1924, 90 per cent of the 400 engines used by the GSWR were built at Inchicore. This compares well with the 75 per cent of the Midland and Great Western Railway’s more modest locomotive

118

Missing links?


requirements, which were built at the Broadstone Works during the same period. From the 1860s, Inchicore opted for a high degree of standardisation which helped keep down costs. Construction at Inchicore was heavily influenced by best English practice, most notably from Crewe: most of the chief engineers had worked in English workshops.54 A description of the works in 1878 provides some impression of developments: Since 1864 a very considerable amount of machinery of the best kind has been obtained, and considerable additions have been made to both the locomotive shops and those for building carriages and wagons. … at present from eight to twelve new locomotives can be built in a year. In addition to the ordinary works the engines, carriages and wagons, there are now mills where all the timbers and sleepers used on the railway line are cut, and there are creosoting works for preparing sleepers. There are small gas works which supply gas to the workshops and the terminal at Kingsbridge. All the iron forgings are made from scrap iron and heated in a small Siemens gas furnace, which is supplied with gas made from peat,’55 and coal could also be used. By 1876 the works employed about 1,200 people.56 The size and power of the locomotives manufactured at Inchicore increased in the last decades of the nineteenth century to meet the growing loads being hauled. The expansion of the company as a result of its acquisition of many branch lines raised the demand for rolling stock. Employment had risen to 1,400 people by 1913. By this stage the company was building nearly all its own rolling stock; in technical terms the works were said to be among the finest in the United Kingdom.57 However, most of the Irish rail companies were not large enough to justify in-house engineering shops, so about twothirds of the locomotives used by Irish railways between 1841 and 1921 were imported from British manufacturers. Dublin-based companies dominated Irish manufacture, accounting for over four-fifths of the numbers built.58 Once the main railway routes had been built, a number of firms which were dependent on railway work went out of business. Mallet’s closed in the early 1860s. Courtney and Stephen’s of Dublin went bankrupt in 1884, while Grendon’s in Drogheda struggled on for a few more years before finally closing in the early 1890s.59 Railway engineering became concentrated in the workshops of the rail companies. Since most companies located their works in Dublin, the city was able to retain its dominant position in the industry. By 1895, the majority of the 2,654 workers in the engineering sector in Dublin were employed in railway workshops.60 Dublin was able to retain its advantages in railway engineering because of its geographic position and its central role in Ireland’s internal goods and passenger traffic. Surprisingly, Belfast never emerged as a significant centre of railway engineering, suggesting that in this industry at least demand was more important than capacity. However, the railways did provide a demand for a range of



119

castings from local foundries. McKeown’s Ironworks in Belfast, for example, supplied local rail companies in the 1870s and 1880s with everything from carriage side lamp irons, linen boxes and girders to castings for footbridges.61 While a number of locomotives were built in Belfast railway workshops between the early 1860s and 1882, this early momentum was not sustained. When most of the Ulster railways were amalgamated into the Great Northern Railway in 1876, the new company inherited five workshops. It was decided to centralise all heavy engineering in Dundalk as opposed to Belfast, due to its location at the junction of the important routes of the new company. The construction of these works commenced in 1880; by 1913 it covered 14 acres and employed at least 1,000 men. The Great Northern Railway maintained and partially built their rolling stock here.62 For Belfast (in stark contrast to Dublin), industrial development ultimately proved to be a much more important stimulus to the city’s engineering sector than railway engineering.

V From the end of the eighteenth century, the Irish industrial sector became an important source of demand for engineering services both in Ireland and Britain. Mill machinery and parts for grinding corn, finishing linen, finishing wool and extracting oil were largely made of timber during the eighteenth century. The itinerant millwrights who erected and serviced these mills were therefore skilled woodworkers, though they could also work with iron and stone. As iron became more important from the 1790s onwards, engineering firms with foundries and machine shops began to displace millwrights in the construction of larger mills. But these firms employed erection and maintenance squads in which millwrights played an important role.63 By the 1830s, there were roughly 2,500 corn mills operating in the country.64 Their construction and maintenance provided extensive work for millwrights and foundries. A number of English and Scottish engineers were hired to carry out millwork in Ireland from the end of the eighteenth century. The best known were Rennie, Hewes and Fairbairn. Through their work a number of Irish industrialists were able to fully exploit the revolution in milling technology which was under way in Britain. Many of the new Irish engineering firms and foundries were established by English and Scots artisans and engineers; some of the skilled workers employed were also from Britain, all of which helped the diffusion of new techniques and methods in Ireland. Gradually the standard of the millwork done in Ireland improved and it became more cost effective and convenient for Irish millowners to hire Irish-based firms to install and service mill machinery.65 The firms which carried out millwork tended to extend their trade into the surrounding counties. Thus, for example, Cooke’s foundry in Derry (established in 1821) made and erected machinery for corn, flour and flax mills mainly in Derry and Donegal, but also in locations as far off as Sligo and Roscommon.66 Many works started on a very small scale; John Steel, for example, a Cork-based


120

Missing links?

millwright in the 1820s, slowly built up a good trade in the hinterland of the city installing waterwheels, flour dressing machinery and other milling equipment. By the 1840s, he had established the Vulcan Foundry to make castings for mills, subsequently diversifying into casting ship bollards, manhole covers and iron railings. The Hive Iron Works in Cork also had small beginnings; it was established in 1800 by Thomas Addison Barnes for making screening machinery for flour mills, distilleries and maltings. Barnes entered into a partnership with a wrought iron and brass founder named Atkinson in 1811 who had been making textile machinery and steam engines. Two more partners, Perrott and McSwiney, joined in 1813 and a large new foundry and engineering works was built on Hanover Street. Although the main activity of the company was millwork, in 1816 they built the first Irish marine engine. The manufacture of stationary steam engines and boilers became an important part of the firm’s activities over the next decades. They also made a wide range of agricultural equipment and household goods. When Perrott took over the entire business in the 1830s, they were the largest iron founders, engineers and iron merchants in Munster.67 The food and drink sector, notably the more capital-intensive flour milling, distilling and brewing industries and the many activities connected with the harvesting and processing of corn were collectively an important source of demand for mill and foundry work, particularly in the secondary centres of engineering such as Cork, where such companies took on whatever other work they could get to service the local construction sector and the demand generated by other local industries such as shipbuilding. The Hive Ironworks in Cork provides a good illustration of how unspecialised many of these engineering works and foundries were during the first half of the century. Even the larger and more successful ones, like Victor Coates in Belfast, undertook a wide range of work to meet local demand, which was insufficient to warrant a high degree of specialisation. This was to be a major disadvantage for many Irish firms during the second half of the nineteenth century when competition from the more specialised British engineering industry became more intense. Clooney’s in Wexford, for example, by 1903 got the waterwheel and millwork for their corn mill done by Harpers Ltd. who were iron founders and engineers based in Aberdeen, instead of any Irish based company.68 Where demand justified it, more specialist firms emerged. In Dublin, for example, Miller’s serviced the needs of the city’s breweries and distilleries. Initially John Miller (a Scotsman) came over from Glasgow around 1806 to help Jameson’s equip the Bow St. Distillery; by 1810, they were doing work for other distillers and brewers in Dublin. Their reputation spread and, by 1825, they were building stills and doing pipe and copperwork all over Ireland.69 By the early 1870s, Dublin still remained the centre of the traditional metal-working trades, and due to the significance of railway engineering in particular it was still affording similar levels of employment in engineering and metal work (if iron shipbuilding is excluded) as east Ulster (taken here to be Antrim and Down). However, the foundries of Belfast were larger in terms of horse power utilised



121

and employment in 1871, by which time the emerging field of textile engineering was giving it an edge over Dublin. After this Cork, Derry and Louth feature as secondary centres of foundry and engineering work, while in the rest of the country developments were fairly limited, with only a few works of any consequence (see Table 6.3). The great gulf between Ireland and Great Britain in terms of the development of engineering and metal work is starkly apparent from Table 6.3. Ireland was better represented in the foundry sector than in other areas accounting for 5.4 per cent of UK employment in this sphere, while in the metal trades in general it accounted for a mere 1.5 per cent of UK employment. In machinery its share was only marginally higher. This implies that up to this point at least the opportunities in iron founding in Ireland were better than in the manufacture of machinery and other metal products. The unspecialised trade of most iron foundries, the costs of moving heavy castings for construction and the availability of scrap are a few factors which may have assisted Irish concerns when competing against British rivals, but the tide was beginning to turn against Irish foundries. Ireland simply did not have the blast furnaces and iron mills which were commonplace on the larger island. The hundreds of smaller works in Britain in each specialised trade making everything from nails, rivets, guns, files and saws to tools, cutlery, locks and brass objects could in Ireland be counted on one hand, or alternatively were entirely lacking. With the exception of railway engineering, even Dublin’s proud tradition of foundry work and engineering was coming under pressure in the 1870s and 1880s. The Irish Builder lamented in 1883 that, ‘Ironfounding in Dublin is a tantalising shadow of the past, and even our bell and brassfounding is miserably small in extent.’70 In the mid-1880s, Ross and Walpole, one of the largest surviving Dublin iron founders, attributed the decline of Irish foundries to increased competition from large specialist works in Britain who had a more advantageous location. They complained that cheap through rates on the railways gave the English and Scotch further advantages in Ireland where foundries had also suffered from the decline of other industries like mining, paper and milling.71 By the early twentieth century, a number of Dublin iron foundries still produced a limited range of commodities for the construction industry.72 But the decline in foundry work in Ireland in general since 1871 and Dublin particular is confirmed by the dramatic fall in employment in foundries recorded in the 1907 factory returns.73 The demand provided by the linen industry in Ulster had a significant influence on the development of engineering in Belfast during the nineteenth century. The first large foundry in Belfast was built in 1799 at Short Strand by Mc Clenaghan, Stainton and Co. This was taken over by Victor Coates in 1802. The ‘Lagan Foundry’, as it became known, made castings for bleachworks and mills.74 All of these early foundries in east-Ulster made equipment for bleaching linen. The mechanisation of cotton spinning in Ireland from the late eighteenth century created a demand for highly specialised millwork. The surviving letterbook of one firm (Boomer) indicates that most of the machines

20

8 13 12

1

1 2 2

4.2

3.7

24,606 5.4

85,799

4,608 17,750 63,441

33 66 29

19

17 45 21

299 1,508

103 151

2,111 206

Workers

2.5

1,983

50 171 1,762

1 3

1 4

5 13 1

7

16

Works

1.5

42,069

649 4,817 36,603

8 31

30 52

29 306 49

75

118

HP

Machinery

2

166,981

3,396 22,294 141,291

32 95

113 441

123 1,570 38

460

562

Workers

1

18,238

188 3,013 15,037

81 5 2 29 13 2 9 63 3 1 2 7 5 1 1 3 36 3 5

Works

0.5

328,694

1,743 28,791 298,160

678 37 0 91 62 0 71 564 49 6 60 57 0 20 0 0 50 21 43

HP

1.5

586,400

8,933 71,106 506,361

2,891 234 4 682 176 5 430 3,392 43 17 158 491 17 19 3 17 170 98 124

Workers

Total in all metal workshops

Source: BPP 1871 lxii, Return of Manufacturing Establishments under the Factory and Workshop Regulation Act, pp. 301–14. Note: Iron shipbuilding has been excluded from this table, but details for this can be found in Chapter 7.

Irish %

1,518

6 30 2

1 1 1

UK

42 249

2 25

909 2,551 21,146

14 62

2 3

64 144 1,310

518 29

HP

Foundries

19 4

Works

Ireland Scotland England/Wales

Antrim Armagh Cavan Cork Derry Donegal Down Dublin Fermanagh Galway Limerick Louth Monaghan Queens Sligo Tipperary Tyrone Waterford Wexford

County

Table 6.3 Employment and horse power in foundries, machinery works and all metal workshops, etc. in factory returns for the metal trades in 1871




123

for these mills by the 1820s were made and serviced by Manchester-based machine makers, and there is other evidence of southern cotton manufacturers also resorting to Manchester-based firms to carry out the major contracts for new millwork. Malcomson’s at Portlaw in Co. Waterford hired the famous Manchester engineer William Fairbairn to design and install waterwheels and other machinery.75 Similarly, the first generation of mechanised flax spinners in Ireland mostly used machinery made by Leeds-based firms. But as demand increased in the 1830s and 1840s, local firms began to meet this demand. Many English and Scottish engineers and mechanics moved to Belfast, which assisted the rapid growth of the city’s machine industry. The numbers employed in engineering works and foundries in the city in 1837 was under a thousand. By 1851 the five largest foundries alone (out of a total of 12) employed 1,500 people.76 The more rapid urban development around Belfast resulting from industrialisation also boosted demand for ironwork for construction purposes. The extent of the linen industry in east Ulster gave Belfast machine makers advantages over European rivals and firms in the city began to export flaxspinning machinery. Belfast foundries provided castings for agriculture, millwork, household goods and the construction industry, as in the south; but they also benefited from the backward linkages created by the region’s textile industry, which gave rise to the development of a larger and more complex engineering sector, which facilitated some specialisation in flax spinning and preparing machinery. Because of the demand for steam engines created by the mechanisation of linen spinning from the 1830s, Belfast became the principal centre for the manufacture and servicing of steam engines in Ireland and, in relation to that city, Spring Rice noted in 1834 that ‘a great improvement has taken place in the foundry and millwright business; and I can say with safety that no part of England can produce better steam engines than have lately been manufactured by Coates and Young, of this place’.77 Coates undertook a wide range of castings and contracts for linen bleachers and shipbuilders; they engined the first steam boat launched in Belfast with two 70 horse power engines in 1820. These were probably the largest yet built in Ireland. In 1838, they built and launched the first Irish-made iron steamboat. While the firm did a wide range of millwork, and castings for the construction industry (like many of the southern foundries), it is evident that industrial development in Belfast and its hinterland was providing a more sustained demand for steam engines and specialist equipment for linen manufacture in particular.78 The corn-milling industry provided a substantial source of demand for provincial engineering works and foundries in Ulster who carried out millwork.79 Bowie estimated that there were at least 50 firms of engineers and millwrights doing millwork throughout the country during the nineteenth century.80 A number of these smaller foundries ran into difficulties in the second half of the nineteenth century as the demand for millwork began to contract considerably with the decline of arable farming and rural flour milling from the 1870s. Increasingly, in this sphere Irish engineering works also faced competition from Britain.81


124

Missing links?

It was only in the north-east that demand from the industrial sector was sufficiently buoyant to sustain a strong engineering sector. Most of the flaxspinning and preparatory machinery for the linen industry was initially made in Manchester and Leeds in the 1830s; by the early 1850s, production of much of this had switched to Belfast. At this stage, Victor Coates of the Lagan Foundry was probably the most prominent general engineering and foundry works in Ireland.82 By the 1870s, Victor Coates and Rowan’s built most Irish-made steam engines and were the major firms servicing them. Coates engined a large number of linen mills and other industrial premises all over the country, also constructing and installing boilers. The firm also undertook contracts for the construction industry, made and installed water-wheels, mill gearing, rope and strap drums for main driving, and a wide range of castings and machinery for linen bleachers. They also supplied plant for breweries, distilleries and other industries in the region. They made turbines from the 1850s onwards, and from the 1880s, they made roller mills and centrifugal flour dressing machinery. It can be seen that the work of the foundry was very general.83 Apart from the manufacture of steam engines and boilers, Coates had failed to build up any specialist niche. The demand for steam engines was in decline by the turn of the century because of the growing use of electric motors, gas and internal combustion engines, which were not made in Ireland. This ultimately led to the company’s demise in 1906. The lack of specialisation was a major problem in the Irish engineering industry at large, even among some of the largest firms such as Combe and Barbour.84 Firms which specialised in the manufacture of machinery for the linen industry were more successful in the second half of the nineteenth century than those doing general engineering and foundry work. Local demand for flax-spinning and preparing machinery was greater than other flax-manufacturing regions in Europe, which enabled a number of Belfast engineering firms to specialise, improving and developing machinery in co-operation with local manufacturers. Belfast gradually built up an export trade in flax spinning machinery. This remained fairly modest in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, but expanded particularly from the 1890s as other centres of linen spinning sought to exploit Belfast’s technical superiority in this sphere (see Figure 6.1). By far the largest of these firms was Combe and Barbour of the Falls Foundry. James Combe, a Scotsman, initially set up this foundry in 1845 to provide castings for the railways. By 1852, the company had expanded into the manufacture of spinning machinery for linen. The firm subsequently made a number of technological improvements to spinning and preparing machinery, including roving frames with expansion pulleys, double-thread faller screws for preparing and spiral-type drawing frames. They built up a world-wide reputation, becoming one of the more important machine makers in the UK. Employment at the firm expanded from 380 in 1852 to 1,200 people by 1882 and 1,800 by 1912. In the 1880s, Combe, Barbour and Combe started making steam engines for mills, factories all over Ireland, while some were also sold abroad. After Coates closed in 1906, they were the only remaining steam-engine makers left in Ulster.85



125

Figure 6.1 Belfast machine exports 1859–1921

Around 1856, Combe began to develop a rope-drive system for transmitting power from shafts to machinery and ultimately from prime movers to the main shafts. This proved efficient compared to gearing and shafts, so it was subsequently widely adopted in a number of textile mills. It was one of the most important engineering innovations made in Ireland.86 It is evident from the company’s sales that while a significant share of its contracts were in Ulster, by the mid-1860s the contracts coming from Scotland, France, Germany and Belgium were collectively equally significant.87 In an attempt to halt falling prices for work done, and low profits in many years, at the turn of the century Coombe, Barbour and Coombe amalgamated with two prominent Leeds based machine makers who supplied and serviced the textile industry. This large engineering combine, trading as Fairbairn, Lawson, Combe, Barbour Limited, remained at the cutting edge of flax-preparing and spinning technologies globally. However, the company was badly affected by the downturn in trade during 1914 and the outbreak of the First World War since at this stage 75 per cent of its business was with countries implicated in the conflict, and many of these markets were consequently lost.88 There were some compensations during the war; In Belfast by late 1915 it was estimated that there were about 100 factories of various sizes making war munitions.89 Other smaller firms emerged to service the regions linen industry in Belfast. James Mackie (a Scotsman) had come to Belfast to work as a manager in James Scrimgeour’s foundry and engineering works on Albert Street, which went bankrupt in 1858. Mackie purchased the premises and some of the plant and focused on machinery repairs, moving into installation and servicing as demand rose in the 1860s boom. This small firm specialised in renovation and took contracts for the replacement of old machinery with new plant in the 1870s. His son (also James) entered the business and took over on the death of


126

Missing links?

the founder in 1887, being joined by a younger brother subsequently. By the time the firm moved to larger premises on the Springfield Road in 1893 (becoming a limited company in 1897) many contracts were being undertaken in central and eastern Europe. The company took over the Clonard Foundry 1902, which brought John Horner into the business, who contributed to developing important new innovations in hackling machinery in particular. Expansion continued in the favourable conditions within the linen industry in the following decade when the firm employed about 350. Its competitiveness, which can be judged by the fact that its prices charged were about 10 per cent lower than Fairbairn, Lawson, Combe, Barbour Limited, enabled it to win some important contracts against its larger rival.90 Others smaller operations specialised to meet specific sectors of the linen industry; a Mr Benson, for example, was operating a premises on Durham St. for the manufacture of Jacquard machines which revolutionised the power weaving of damask both in Ireland and abroad.91 Such specialised engineering services available in Belfast provided additional advantages to Ulster manufacturers. However, the narrowness of Ireland’s industrial sector made many of these Belfast firms vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the international linen industry.92

VI Increasingly strong competition from specialist engineering concerns based in Britain, more notably in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, led to a contraction of the kind of general Irish foundries operating in the larger urban centres. Ireland only built up a niche in a few specialist areas in which machinery was exported such as textiles and agricultural equipment (which were both built up on the strength of local demand in these fields). Although Irish demand gave rise to various non-traded engineering services in railway engineering, construction and agriculture, in general there was greater scope for specialisation in Britain due to the greater scale of demand and various cost factors. Ireland accounted for only 1.1 per cent of UK net industrial output in the iron, steel and engineering sector in 1907 (excluding shipbuilding). In mining and quarries in the same year Ireland accounted for a mere 0.1 per cent of recorded UK net output.93 The latter position can largely be explained by geological resource constraints. In general, Britain enjoyed strong comparative advantages and greater scope for specialisation in these fields relative to most of Europe and the beneficial links between its coal, iron, steel and engineering industries were almost entirely lacking in Ireland, and as the two economies became more integrated this explains why many branches of this sector in Ireland (such as general foundry work) receded in the face of British competition, more notably from the 1870s. The limited profile of the Irish engineering, foundry and mining sectors (relative to Great Britain) by the beginning of the twentieth century can largely be explained by resource constraints, demand constraints and strong British competition. There only remained a few areas at this stage which


127


could be better served by Irish based engineering ventures, notably those associated with railways, construction, agriculture and the linen industry. However, by far the most important sphere of metal working by the end of the nineteenth century (in terms of output, employment and engineering innovation) was the Irish shipbuilding industry, which overcame all the disadvantages of an Irish location. This will be dealt with in detail in the following chapter.

7

Shipbuilding


An exception to the rule?

During the first half of the nineteenth century shipbuilding was a minor industry in Ireland, however between the mid-nineteenth century and the First World War it became the fastest growing Irish industry. By the early twentieth century the two major shipyards of Belfast had become by far the largest industrial employers in Ireland and the industry was the only branch of ironworking and engineering which accounted for a significant share of UK output by 1907.1 As such, it was something of an exception to the general rule, and the factors which contributed to its development will be explored in this chapter. Merchant tonnage accounted for the bulk of Irish shipbuilding in this period, so naval construction will not be dealt with in any great depth in this chapter.2 There have recently been a number of important advances in the historiography of Irish shipbuilding during the Union,3 so that it is now probably the industry that historians know most about. However, little attention has been given in this work to the statistics of UK shipbuilding which include an Irish component. The official records of ships built in the United Kingdom have been exploited here to re-examine the history of shipbuilding in Ireland between 1800 and 1920. This data provides a useful barometer of Irish production relative to the rest of the UK. The statistical series recording Irish and UK merchant tonnage has been tabulated in appendix 5 and 6. The following section examines the history of shipbuilding in Ireland during the first half of the nineteenth century, when timber was the principal raw material used for ship construction.

I Since the requirements of the pre-industrial shipbuilding industry were fairly limited in terms of location, Irish timber shipbuilding was widely dispersed in several ports during the first half of the nineteenth century. These generally provided an appropriate location in tidal waters in an estuary with sufficient depth for launching close to a port which provided the requisite demand, in addition to providing access to timber and other imported components. Overall, the Irish industry made a relatively minor contribution to UK output during this period accounting in most years for less than 3 per cent of UK tonnage


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129

launched (see Appendix 5). While some larger trading vessels were built in Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Belfast, and smaller craft in many locations,4 the scale and output of the industry remained small overall. Craftsmen provided many of the tools and the requisite knowledge of ship construction. The capital costs of setting up a yard were not initially prohibitive; Morton, an extensive Dublin builder, for example, set up a yard for less than £5,000 in 1812. At this point, Dublin was the largest centre of the industry with five shipbuilders in the port employing about 400 shipwrights. But the Dublin industry rapidly declined over the next decades; by 1838 work was confined to repairs and the construction of smaller craft.5 By the 1820s, the Cork region emerged as the most important shipbuilding centre (see Table 7.1). The trade of the port and the British naval presence created a demand for shipbuilding and repair work, while the extensive fishing industry in Co. Cork provided a demand for boats in the smaller ports of west Cork.6 Though shipbuilding facilities in the port and harbour of Cork remained fairly rudimentary until the 1830s, already in 1815 a Passage-based company, Hennessy, had built the first Irish paddle steamer, while a similar craft was subsequently engined at the Hive Iron Works with the first Irish-made marine engine. Following these early achievements, a period of pronounced investment began in the late 1820s. Most of the timber ships were built by two companies; Brown at Passage, where a large dry dock was built in the mid-1830s, and Robinson and Co. of the Waterside Dockyards in the port which was established in 1830. The latter became the largest and most successful of the Cork yards, building large sailing ships and steamers and employing 600 men by 1864. However, it ceased building by the end of the 1860s. This yard in addition to the dockyards at Rushbrook, Passage and Halbowline focused largely on repairs after 1870 and shipbuilding was only undertaken intermittently (see Table 7.2).7

Table 7.1 Vessels built in Irish ports, 1814–1826 (tons) Port Cork Belfast Dublin Newry Limerick Baltimore Waterford Youghal Kinsale Galway Others Total

1814

1817

1820

1823

1826

217 232 510 70 130 90

625 475 105 24

215 323 240 132 35 47

344 112 173 44

1,095 364 157 311 304 119 187

20 156 13 348 1,973

29 17 325 757 257

62 237 45 312

135 89 27 111 93 122

3,126

1,684

1,659

Source: C. Moreau, Past and Present State of Ireland (Dublin, 1827), p. 19.

83 33 2,653


130

Missing links?

There were also significant developments in the Waterford industry in the middle decades of the nineteenth century which have been highlighted by Irish’s research. Between 1820 and 1868, White’s built over 60 vessels largely of timber construction, in addition to repairing several hundred vessels, which accounted for a large share of their turnover. While this firm was able to benefit from the rise in the demand for shipping in the 1850s, orders for new ships dried up in the early 1860s. The shipyard of the Neptune Ironworks, which catered for the needs of Malcomson’s of Waterford, launched its first ship in 1846. Irish claims that Waterford became the dominant centre of iron shipbuilding in Ireland between 1850 and 1862–3, when it was overtaken by developments in Belfast. The Neptune Ironworks finally closed when Malcolmson’s went bankrupt in 1877, though construction had ceased some years prior to this.8 The timing of the decline of the industry in Waterford was broadly similar to that in Cork (see Table 7.2), which suggests that the same factors may have been responsible. While Cork and Waterford made a significant contribution to raising the tonnage launched in Ireland in the 1850s, they were both fading by the end of the 1860s. By 1871, of the total tonnage launched in Ireland (7,903), Belfast accounted for 7,439.9 The final years of southern Irish shipbuilding industry focused on Dublin, Waterford and Cork is captured by the returns of the

Table 7.2 Net tonnage of vessels launched in Ireland by port (1866–1886) Year

Belfast

Waterford

Cork

Dublin

Others

Total

1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886

3,717 6,105 3,093 5,107 5,814 7,439 10,813 1,716 11,954 13,384 3,962 8,505 8,556 11,432 8,871 13,893 20,198 27,423 22,295 26,653 18,678

2,370 1,364 805 2,178 35 28

631 1,757 151 458 320

1,170 604 601 1,615 507 384

208 444 107 167 149 52 87 17 131 447 207 108 298 286 55

8,096 10,274 4,757 9,525 6,825 7,903 10,919 1,896 12,364 14,268 4,311 8,936 9,021 11807 9,004 13,893 20,228 28,209 22,479 26,806 18,792

19 108 7 17 40

200 42

55 272 420 142 83 125 89 78

30 786 25 90

52

107 153 24

Source: For annual reference see P. Cockton, Subject Catalogue to the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 208–9.


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Board of Trade who tabulated the data by port from 1866 (see Table 7.2). In this period the industry in Waterford, Cork and Dublin was contracting, while Belfast gradually consolidated its position as the only major centre of shipbuilding in Ireland, but it is worth noting that as late as 1866 Belfast still only accounted for less than 46 per cent of the tonnage launched. In 1871 the factory inspectors provide some indication of the number of yards in the United Kingdom, which provides further information on the geography of the industry in Ireland (see Table 7.3). British demand, in addition to the presence of British skilled workers and an English owner (Harland), played a significant role in the emergence of Belfast as a major shipbuilding centre in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, when iron displaced timber as the principal raw material used. Prior to this, the first yard of any consequence in Belfast was established in 1791 by a Scot named Ritchie, who brought ten men from a yard in Ayrshire. Another member of the family set up a second yard in the harbour at the end of the eighteenth century.10 The first steamboat launched in Belfast in 1820 was engined by Coates and Young, who subsequently built a number of marine engines. In the same year, they also launched the first iron steamboat in Ireland, and over the following decades the company built a number of iron hulled boats. Timber shipbuilders continued operating in the port during this period, including Ritchie and Mc Laine, Charles Connell and Sons and Thompson and Kirwan.11 The first major iron-shipbuilding venture in Belfast began on the Queen’s Island during the 1850s. The public authorities played an important role in assisting the growth of iron shipbuilding in Belfast by providing a suitable location for launching ships, in contrast to Dublin or Liverpool where shipbuilders were squeezed out by dock development. The growth of a successful

Table 7.3 Shipbuilding and repair yards in Ireland in 1871 Yard

Cork Down Antrim Dublin Limerick Waterford Total

Shipyards Iron

Timber

2 1

2

Horse-power

Employment

Iron

Timber

Iron

Timber

30

371 2,085

365

60 82

2 1

10 19

1 1 5

32 10

5

144 625

171

44 72

72

3,153

553

Source: BPP 1871, lxii, Return of Manufacturing establishments under the Factory and Workshop Regulation Act, pp. 301–14. Note: There is a type error in the Cork returns for timber yards which has been adjusted, along with the total. This information combined with that on tonnage launched implies that the yards outside Belfast were dealing largely in repairs by 1871 and a number of them were simply dockyards.


132

Missing links?

iron shipyard took place after a number of failures initiated by Liverpool entrepreneurs. A well-equipped ironworks and foundry was established on the Queen’s island by Robert Pace and Thomas Nugent Gladstone, at a cost of £25,000; in 1851 the first boiler plate to be rolled in Ireland was made there. But it was difficult to make a commercial success of this as it was cheaper to import British iron.12 Hickson, another Liverpool engineer, took over the works in 1853 and established a shipyard there. The Harbour Commissioners eagerly supported this venture by providing more land. Between 1854 and 1859 Hickson built eight vessels, predominantly for Liverpool owners. Late in 1854, as Hickson’s knowledge of shipbuilding was limited, he appointed Edward Harland as manager, who was to play a decisive role in the emergence of Belfast as a major centre of iron shipbuilding.13

II In a relatively short period, the construction of iron ships displaced timber sailing vessels within the Irish industry. Strong British demand for shipping, along with the coal and iron working capacity of Great Britain, gave Belfast and other UK shipbuilding centres major advantages in the construction of iron vessels in contrast to the advantages North America enjoyed in regard to timber-ship construction, due to the vast supplies of timber there. When iron began to be used more extensively in shipbuilding from the mid-nineteenth century, a knowledge of iron working was essential and major port locations close to the iron working and coal-mining districts of northern Britain emerged, notably the Tyne, the Tees, the Wear and the Clyde.14 Due to the knowledge of Harland, in particular, and the skills of craftsmen migrating from Britain, Belfast was able to share in all these advantages. Close proximity to the emerging industry on the Clyde was a critical factor for Belfast’s development, but another centrally important factor was Edward Harland’s background and training in the emerging shipbuilding zone of northern Britain where new methods in iron shipbuilding were being pioneered. Harland was 23 when he entered Hickson’s yard, but already had eight years experience in British engineering and shipbuilding establishments. Family connections enabled him to secure an apprenticeship at the engineering works of Stephenson (the rail engineer) in Newcastle upon Tyne, which provided a thorough grounding in the most advanced practises in iron working and drawing. In his first job as a journeyman with a shipbuilding company on the Clyde, he was quickly appointed to the position of head draughtsman. During the following two years he became acquainted with the techniques applied by the more important yards there. In 1853, he moved briefly to a shipyard in Newcastle as manager, before taking up the job in Belfast.15 After Harland’s arrival, the business experienced on-going financial difficulties, so in 1858 Hickson offered Harland his entire interest in the concern for £5,000 which was accepted. Harland acquired the financial backing of Schwabe, a Liverpool shipping magnate with whom his family were connected,


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who also secured a number of important contracts for the company from John Bibby and Sons of Liverpool. A growing involvement with Liverpool shipping interests provided both the demand and capital that enabled the new company to expand. Skilled labour drawn from the Clyde and Newcastle was also critical in the development of the yard. Among those taken on was Schwabe’s nephew, Gustav Wolff, who became a personal assistant to Harland in 1857. In 1861, Harland entered into a partnership with Wolff and by 1862 the capital of the company stood at £23,000, rising dramatically over the next years to over £96,000, which was indicative of the rapid pace of expansion.16 Harland and Wolff were in a good position to take advantage of rising demand for shipping resulting from the growth of world trade in the 1860s and 1870s. The Bibby Line of Liverpool initially provided the orders which stabilised the business, while the White Star Line of Liverpool provided the important orders for the firm from 1870.17 Harland and Wolff were among the pioneers in the construction of larger iron ships, breaking away from the limitations imposed by the use of timber. This significantly increased the capacity of vessels without any significant increase in running costs. Greater strength could be achieved by making up the entire deck of iron and filling the spaces between the frames with Portland cement.18 While the technical and entrepreneurial achievements of Edward Harland are not in question, the performance of the company up to the end of the 1870s was not remotely as impressive as from the 1880s onwards. In general, Irish shipbuilding tonnage increased in response to the significant rise in UK demand during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, but growth did not match that witnessed in England and Scotland. It was only from the 1880s that Ireland became a major centre of the UK shipbuilding industry, specifically as a result of developments in Belfast. From the mid-1870s, the partnership and management of the company was reconstructed as the founding partners wished to give more time to other pursuits. Pirrie and Wilson, who had been trained within the company, increased their financial commitments and effectively took charge of the management and direction of the firm. However, the financial inputs of the two older partners remained important, notably when the new engine works was built in 1879–80 at a cost of £60,000. The company had no engine works prior to this. Harland was the principal shareholder when the business was registered as a limited liability company in 1885, with a capital of £297,500. Pirrie at this stage emerged as the new leader, once again assisted by his family connections with Liverpool, which had been so vital in the formative years of the yard.19 Harland and Wolff remained at the forefront of the application of new designs during this period, building up a reputation for technical excellence and economy. The company was quick to adopt the use of steel for hull construction in 1880, which reduced weight and facilitated an increase in the size and speed of ships, while triple expansion engines replaced those made on the compound principle.20 The larger liners it began to build for the growing trans-Atlantic passenger trade were more comfortable, with more powerful


134

Missing links?

engines reducing voyage times. The company also made some important innovations after its engine works opened, introducing the surface condenser so that steam could be condensed and returned to the boiler without using salt water internally, which avoided ‘salting up’, thus reducing fuel and repair costs.21 The average size of vessels built in Belfast by the late 1860s, in terms of net tonnage, was already much larger than the other shipbuilding districts in the UK and this remained the case at the eve of the First World War. Initially these larger vessels were cargo liners or composite passenger and cargo liners. In the early twentieth century, Harland and Wolff in particular developed an unrivalled niche in large passenger liners, which accounted for over 53 per cent of its output between 1900–14, while cargo passenger vessels accounted for a further 15 per cent.22 This gave Belfast superior economies of scale. From about 1890, the company devised a radical new method of selling ships for the cost of construction plus a fixed commission. These terms were offered to a select group of Harland and Wolff’s larger customers (known as the Commission Club), who agreed to place all their UK repair work with them. This guaranteed them greater continuity in construction and repair contracts than most other yards and brought the yard a huge volume of trade. Because a large output was maintained, Harland and Wolff were able to gain economies of scale and keep costs down. The company achieved sufficient levels of productivity to compete effectively by continually reinvesting in refitting the yard with the best available technology. By 1914, Harland and Wolff employed 24,425 people in total (including works at Glasgow, Southampton and Liverpool), rising to 40,000 by 1925. By 1919, with order books full. Pirrie sought to achieve higher throughput, through massive levels of investment and acquisitions and by dramatically increasing the size of the labour force. In order to further increase turnover, management conceded a shorter working day in 1897 and in return the workforce accepted a three-shift system. Work thereafter could be done around the clock and the yard had outpaced all other yards in the world by the end of the nineteenth century.23 The unskilled component of Harland and Wolff’s workforce was larger than that of yards in Britain in the years immediately before, during and after the First World War. About 60-65% of the workforce in the British shipbuilding industry was skilled. Lynch’s forensic assessment of Harland and Wolff’s workforce in August 1919 indicates that only about 43.5% of the workforce in the shipyard in Belfast alone was skilled, 10.65% were semi-skilled, about 5% were white collar, leaving a balance of slightly under 41% to cover unskilled workers (which included a small number of female employees). Although there was a lot of demarcation and friction between this highly stratified workforce, industrial relations between employers and employees within shipbuilding were relatively good. Though it was a dangerous industry, wages among unionised skilled and semi-skilled workers were high and work was seldom held up.24 Although the company adopted labour-saving technologies, its major advantage was achieved, through exploiting a higher proportion of unskilled labour


Shipbuilding

135

than the multiplicity of smaller yards located in Britain. With high turnover, economies of scale were achieved, which offset lower profit margins. This formula worked well as long as demand was buoyant. Pirrie’s spectacular achievements in management are one important explanation for the dramatic expansion of the firm. His capacity for making sales ensured far higher levels of output than those attained under Harland’s brief management, although Pirrie was undoubtedly able to build on Harland’s pioneering achievements, his tenure as the leader of the company was far longer than his predecessor and ultimately far more successful (with the notable exception of the downturn in the final years of his life). The business networks and investments he had made in a range of international shipping mergers and combines made him a major player in world shipbuilding. In May 1918, he became Controller General of Merchant Shipbuilding for the UK and acquired a seat on the Board of the Admiralty. He also had direct access to the British cabinet, having successfully extended the standard shipbuilding programme during the war years.25 When he entered the partnership in 1874, there were 3,000 on the payroll, rising to 40,000 by 1925, the year after his death.26 This provides a useful barometer of the expansion of the business during his tenure when Harland and Wolff became the largest shipbuilders in the world. It is evident from Figure 7.1 that there was no dramatic rise in Irish shipbuilding output down to the 1880s; from the end of that decade, however, by which time the industry was almost completely concentrated in Belfast, growth was rapid with production entering a new plateau with some fluctuations. The war marked a severe downturn in merchant tonnage launched in Ireland, and the focus shifted to war ships and repairs (which are not registered here). Demand for merchant shipping was extremely high in the aftermath of the war. As a result, the Irish industry reached peak output for the period of the

Figure 7.1 Tonnage launched in Ireland 1855–1920 Source: See appendix 6.


136

Missing links?

Union in 1919; Ireland accounted for 10.5 per cent of merchant tonnage launched in the UK between 1915 and 1919 compared to a mere 1.7 per cent in the years 1870–4.(see Table 7.4). A second shipbuilding firm, Workman Clark and Co., was established in Belfast in 1879 by two former employees of Harland and Wolff. They could take advantage of the large pool of skilled and unskilled labour in the city with experience in shipbuilding. The rapid development of this yard is apparent from the growth in employment from 150 in 1880 to 7000 by 1902. Initially all their vessels were engined on the Clyde, but in 1893 they took over the engineering works of MacIlwaine and MacColl for this purpose.27 After the turn of the century, the tonnage launched by Workman and Clark was sometimes greater than the rival yard, thus making an important contribution to raising Belfast’s share of UK output in this period. The company built up a strong niche in cargo vessels, notably refrigerated fruit and meat carriers; over 47 per cent of their output during 1900–14 was in cargo vessels, while a further 33 per cent were in passenger-cargo vessels.28 The two major Belfast yards specialised in larger passenger and cargo vessels, enabling them to compete effectively with other yards in Britain. In 1907–14, according to Lynch, the average Belfast-built merchant vessel displaced 3,960 ton net, compared to 2,030 on the Wear and 1,260 on the Clyde. There were only three firms in Belfast compared to 45 on the Clyde and 17 on the Wear.29 Belfast could exploit the external economies of the far larger number of shipbuilders working on the Clyde to a greater degree than other British shipbuilding centres, due to its proximity. Moreover, the two large vertically integrated yards in Belfast enjoyed greater economies of scale, and lower labour costs, which gave them a competitive edge within the UK industry. While skilled labour costs were not cheaper in Belfast, semi-skilled and unskilled labour were. Geary and Johnson have argued that Belfast’s comparative advantage lay in its abundant supply of cheap unskilled labour. Of the four major shipbuilding centres which emerged by the end of the nineteenth century (Clydeside, Newcastle, Sunderland and Belfast), Belfast was the cheapest in terms of the average cost of labour.30 Table 7.4 Employment breakdown in Harland and Wolff, 1907–1916 Employment

1907 Dec

Main yard Engine works Electrical work Glasgow Liverpool Southampton

7,045 2,429

Total

1912 April 9,031 3,979 427

1914 Jan

1916 Sept

1,353

8,342 5,373 456 2,782 5,894 2,186

8,006 5,471 982 4,073 5,235 1,139

14,790

25,033

24,906

Source: PRONI; D. 2805/MIN/A/1 Harland and Wolff Directors Minutes 1907–1912. D. 2805/MIN/A/3 Harland and Wolff Directors Minutes 1914–1916.


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137

Belfast, in stark contrast to other Irish centres of the industry, was able to build up and retain a large workforce with specialist skills. Greater continuity of business enabled it to exploit fixed capital investments more effectively, which also facilitated the retention and further development of the existing pool of human capital. It has been argued that another attraction for employees was that female employment opportunities for wives and daughters of shipyard workers in the textile and clothing industry were greater in Belfast than in shipbuilding centres in Britain, thus increasing potential household incomes. Moreover, rents in Belfast were lower and the standard of working-class accommodation was better. Lynch argues that ‘without textiles Belfast would never have been able to recruit and retain the skilled labour its shipyards needed’.31 While this hypothesis remains untested, it is a possible advantage which may have been of greater importance for unskilled and semi-skilled shipyard workers to raise household incomes. Since Harland and Wolff depended more than other yards on semi-skilled and unskilled labour, the retention of this part of the labour force was equally important as the skilled component. The growth in the labour force employed by Harland and Wolff was dramatic between 1907 and the eve of the First World War, and much of this was a result of the development of operations at Glasgow, Southampton and Liverpool (see Table 7.4). However, in the early years of the war employment actually declined in Belfast, Liverpool and Southampton but expanded at Glasgow, reflecting the decline in the construction of merchant tonnage and liners and the servicing and repairing of the same, and the greater emphasis on naval contracts. In Belfast employment in the engine works and in the electrical field expanded, despite the overall employment decline, reflecting a general shift to refit work (see Table 7.4). The Irish industry played a very minor role in the construction of warships for the Admiralty prior to the First World War,32 although Harland and Wolff had provided propulsion machinery and undertaken refit work. This lack of naval contracts has often attributed to political factors, notably a lack of government patronage to Irish shipbuilders, but an important dimension to Ireland’s general exclusion in this sphere was the specialisation of shipbuilding districts in particular types of shipping. Warships were more commonly built on the Clyde, Barrow, Tyne and at Birkenhead.33 Pirrie had refused to tender for Admiralty contracts prior to the war, probably because they frequently resulted in losses.34 During the First World the construction of naval and auxiliary vessels became more significant, notably in 1915 and 1916. While Harland and Wolff produced some large warships, smaller monitors dominated their naval construction programme, while Workman and Clark made oil tankers, sloops, patrol boats, hospital ships, boom defence vessels and two monitors sub contracted from Harland and Wolff. From 1917, when the replacement of lost merchant tonnage became a priority, Belfast reverted to its traditional specialisation in this sphere, in addition to undertaking an extensive range of repair and conversion work.35 In the exceptional conditions created by the First World War and its immediate aftermath between 1915 and 1919, the Irish share of UK merchant


138

Missing links?

output rose to 10.5 per cent (see Table 7.5). This was achieved partially because of the shift in focus to naval contracts in many British yards, but this was not the only factor. Ireland turned out by far its highest tonnage figure for the entire period of the Union in 1919. Harland and Wolff and Workman and Clarke focused on replacing lost merchant tonnage in the later part of the war, and its immediate aftermath. During 1918, Harland and Wolff completed 201,070 gross tons of merchant vessels compared to just under 66,000 gross tons in 1914. With full order books, the Belfast industry reached peak employment just after the war at 36,000 men.36 Pirrie’s formula, which required massive investment (the capitalisation of the company rose from £500,000 in 1900 to £8.1 million in 1921), worked well up to the post-war slump in 1920. However, it created major problems for the company in the more recessionary conditions which set in from 1920. His dictatorial style of management and his failure to cultivate a new generation of managers to succeed him created major problems subsequently.37 The postwar downturn in UK output dramatically changed Belfast’s position, as the high turnover of both yards was scaled back. Employment at Harland and Wolff’s yards and engine works stood at roughly over 27,000 in the summer 1919. The shipyard labour force was cut by 58 per cent by September of 1921, and the engine works by 35 per cent, reflecting the general slump in demand.38 The viability of Workman and Clark, the second shipyard, was fatally undermined through becoming involved in a merger in 1920, which resulted in a drawn out lawsuit from 1923, from which the company never recovered.39

III In conclusion, when the UK shipbuilding industry began to make its decisive shift northwards to the coal supplies and iron working districts of northern Britain, the Clyde (which had been a relatively unimportant location for shipbuilding in the early nineteenth century) emerged as the new centre of UK shipbuilding, accounting for 46 per cent of UK employment in the sector by 1871.40 At this point Belfast had all the trump cards in the Irish industry and its close proximity to the Clyde was a major advantage. Many Belfast built ships, for example, were engined there down to the 1880s, while a multiplicity of other parts, equipment and plant could be acquired there with ease. Outside Belfast, there was no sustained development in shipbuilding following this shift northwards. The Cork and Waterford shipbuilders went into decline from the 1860s. In Dublin, the industry survived perilously, depending predominantly on local orders and repairs of little consequence. The firms involved in ship repairs in Dublin frequently had to import skilled labour from Belfast or Britain as work was too intermittent to keep artisans permanently employed.41 Developments in Derry also had little continuity; although the Foyle Shipyard built 26 sailing vessels and seven steamships between 1887 and 1892, when the yards closed. Most of the artisans then moved to Glasgow. When it re-opened between 1899 and 1904 as the Londonderry Shipbuilding


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139

and Engineering Company, it had to recruit its labour force from the Clyde, and all ships built had to be engined there or on the Tyne. When it closed and re-opened yet again in 1912–13, it was a Tyneside company, Swan and Hunter, who invested in its expansion leading to its greatest period of activity during the First World War. At the end of the war, 2,000 were employed, but as a result of the post war recession it closed finally in 1924.42 Irish shipyards outside Belfast experienced temporary expansion during the war years, as a result of the exceptional demand for repairs and other war work.43 Many of these new concerns were unable to survive in the less propitious environment for the industry in the first half of the 1920s. Table 7.5 provides a convenient means to assess Ireland’s overall contribution to the construction of UK merchant tonnage during the period of the Union, using five year averages. The table sets out the Irish and UK data using five year averages. The Irish share remained insignificant down to the 1880s, which marks the emergence of Belfast as a major centre within the UK shipbuilding industry. Irish performance within the UK industry provides a good benchmark of its international competitiveness since the UK dominated the world shipbuilding industry in this period. Between 1814 and 1885 Ireland retained its relative position in the expanding UK shipbuilding industry, with Belfast offsetting the decline of shipbuilding elsewhere in Ireland during the

Table 7.5 Five-year averages of tonnage launched in Ireland and the UK, 1815–1919

1815–19 1820–4 1825–9 1830–4 1835–9 1840–4 1845–9 1850–4 1855–9 1860–4 1865–9 1870–4 1875–9 1880–4 1885–9 1890–4 1895–9 1900–4 1905–9 1910–4 1915–19

Ireland

UK

Irish % share of UK

2,195 1,806 2,174 2,324 2,886 3,525 2,561 3,511 7,280 10,458 8,406 7,981 9,669 18,763 30,651 63,347 69,670 82,926 89,367 97,573 72,720

88,944 65,986 99,857 87,829 134,574 135,778 126,984 170,187 272,854 305,754 371,002 460,659 431,756 667,307 513,104 733,272 759,335 899,127 887,440 1,027,771 690,318

2.5 2.7 2.2 2.6 2.1 2.6 2 2.1 2.7 3.4 2.3 1.7 2.2 2.8 6 8.6 9.1 9.2 10.1 9.4 10.5

Source: see Appendices 5 and 6.


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Missing links?

third quarter of the nineteenth century. The Irish share of UK tonnage began to rise steadily from the second half of the 1880s, assisted by the emergence of a second major yard in Belfast. By 1900–04, Ireland accounted for about 10 per cent of UK merchant tonnage. This fell back to about 9.4 per cent between 1910 and 1914, which remained impressive given that the UK accounted for about 60 per cent of world output in shipbuilding at this point.44 Unskilled labour costs were lower in Belfast than in major shipbuilding centres in Britain. It has been argued here that Belfast also enjoyed greater economies of scale than yards based in Britain, while closer proximity to the Clyde meant it also enjoyed the external economies generated there to a greater degree. As a consequence of this combination of factors, Belfast built liners were more cost competitive per ton by the beginning of the twentieth century than those built by its major international rivals45 in continental Europe and North America.46 This goes a long way to explaining why Irish output in the period between the 1890s and the First World War was relatively larger in most years than the merchant-shipbuilding output of most continental European countries.47


Part IV




8

The timber trade and the Irish building industry

Construction made a significant contribution to the Irish economy during the nineteenth century; it covered a wide variety of activity from the provision of basic dwellings to large public institutions and other public works, industrial, commercial and agricultural buildings, and transport infrastructure, as well as renovations and repairs. Moreover, it also gave rise to a range of related industries such as quarrying and preparing building stone and slate, the production of lime, brick and tiles, in addition to the operation of saw mills and joinery works for the preparation of timber, just to name a few examples. As such, construction was one of the major employers of male labour in the Irish economy throughout the period in question. Yet, with the notable exception of D’Arcy’s series on building wages,1 trends in construction between 1801 and 1921 remain largely uncharted. This chapter will trace the trend in building activity (insofar as this is possible given data limitations) over the entire period of the Union by utilising timber imports as an indicator. In addition, for the second half of the nineteenth century (when timber import statistics improve) it will focus on the varying regional incidence of building activity across Ireland, with the assistance of import data at different ports in addition to data on house construction returned in each of the census years between 1821 and 1911. The final section of the chapter will examine the development of cognate industries supplying raw materials to the construction industry.

I Timber largely entered Ireland as an element of non-UK trade, which continued to be recorded throughout the period in question, in contrast to AngloIrish trade, which ceased to be recorded between the mid-1820s and the beginning of the twentieth century as a consequence of the Act of Union. It is worth giving some consideration to the demand for timber and how this was met in Ireland. As a consequence of economic and population growth, the demand for timber rapidly accelerated in the eighteenth century and this had to be met to a large extent through increased imports. Hardwoods were used to some


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degree in the eighteenth century (both local and imported) but on the whole public buildings and private dwellings substantially depended on the importation of softwoods from the forests of northern Europe.2 This remained the main source until the crisis year of 1808, when European supplies were curtailed; thereafter North America began to make a significant contribution.3 Bogwood and native timber partially supplied demand among the poorer classes in particular, but even bogwood was becoming more difficult to acquire, while the acreage of Irish native forestry was steadily declining between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and as a consequence was too depleted to make a significant contribution to supplying the construction industry by the beginning of the nineteenth century. The area under woodland in Ireland expanded significantly in the first half of the nineteenth century.4 Smyth has drawn attention to the importance of tenant tree planting in the period from the end of the eighteenth century to the Great Famine, adding to that undertaken by landlords. By 1841 it was estimated in the census of that year that there were 487,558 acres of trees (including those in hedgerows, etc.). Smyth’s analysis of tree registration data in a number of counties implies that there was a significant rise in planting in the first half of the nineteenth century.5 Official estimates from the mid-nineteenth century, based on surveys of each townland (as opposed to guesstimates and presumably utilising more conservative definitions as to what constituted forestry) indicate that by 1851 there were 305,000 statute acres of forestry in Ireland.6 These estimates suggest that a more sedate level of planting took place between the mid-nineteenth century and the peak year of 1881, when there were 339,858 acres of forestry in the whole country. Thereafter, the beginning of land transfer from landlord to tenants led to a reduction in landlord interest in forestry, while, hardly surprisingly, long-term investment in trees had limited attraction to new owners whose interests were fixed firmly on annual incomes derived from agriculture. Many landlords began to cut down their trees prior to selling their land to raise cash notably after the 1903 Land Act.7 The curtailment of foreign supplies in the First World War further depleted native resources, so that by 1917, the last reliable year for which data is available the area under woodland and plantation had fallen to 292,450 acres.8 Forbes noted that stocks of mature timber continued to be felled at a far faster rate than replanting through to 1920 as a consequence of shortages in imports.9 In 1916, Forbes observed that Ireland has hitherto been independent of home grown supplies to a considerable extent, and the importance of maintaining a timbered area for purely industrial purposes has generally been lost sight of. Numerous shipping ports have enabled foreign timber to be imported not only more easily, but at a relatively cheaper rate than the home grown article could be converted and carried to the chief consuming centres; and the shipping ports of Dublin, Waterford, or Cork for many years back, have presented the curious anomaly of inward bound vessels bringing in sawn timber of

The timber trade and building industry

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pine and spruce from Russia, Scandinavia, or north America, and cross channel boats loading up with practically the same species in the round for the colliery districts of South Wales or Lancashire.10 The important point here is that native timber production was a fairly marginal element of the Irish economy between 1801 and 1921. The records kept by the Department of Agriculture of Irish forestry activity confirm Forbes’s picture from the end of the nineteenth century at least. The amount of trees felled is recorded from 1892, along with the number used for construction and furniture down to 1914. This indicates that only a very small proportion of Irish felled trees were used for construction and furniture, rising from under 1 per cent of the total in 1892 to just over 13 per cent in 1912 (an exceptional year).11 Because of the low acreage of woodland in Ireland by the nineteenth century, imports increasingly supplied the bulk of the rising demand for timber. This makes it possible to trace a very substantial share of timber used annually through the figures for non-UK imports into Ireland. Although foreign trade comprised only a small share of total Irish trade, it does provide a reasonably good coverage of Irish timber imports, since it was an expensive commodity to unload and load again for reshipment from Britain to Ireland. It was more economic in most cases to land timber directly in Irish ports. Therefore the great bulk of timber imports throughout the period in question entered Ireland directly as part of non-UK trade.12 The timber import series presented here (see Appendix 7) is not perfect, and the use of imported timber for other purposes such as furniture creates a degree of unavoidable noise in the statistics. However, uses of timber for purposes other than construction was far less significant in the Irish economy than in Great Britain, which had much larger shipbuilding and furniture industries, for example. Construction used much more timber than all other sources of demand, so the series is responsive to the general trends in Irish construction.13 Moreover, native woodland formed a much smaller share of the land surface in Ireland than in the rest of the United Kingdom during the period of the Union, while plantations in Ireland were not exploited to the same extent for commercial purposes as on the larger island. By the beginning of the twentieth century woods accounted for only 1.5 per cent of the land surface in Ireland compared to 5.1 per cent in England, 4.5 per cent in Scotland and 3.8 per cent in Wales.14 So native woodlands were of less consequence as a source of timber than they were in the sister island. For all these reasons, timber imports are a better indicator of construction activity in Ireland than they are in Great Britain. Essentially the timber trade was returned under three headings: staves, which do not concern us here and have therefore been excluded; the square timber trade, which was timber hewn and squared into sections eight inches square and upwards; and finally deals, which were sawn or split into sections. Square timber and deals have been used to construct the series presented here since they provided the great bulk of the timber for construction purposes in


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Ireland. They were largely drawn from the temperate climes of Northern Europe and North America. The series also include some hardwoods (such as oak) from these temperate zones (which were largely used for construction), but the figures do not include tropical hardwoods. Like Great Britain, Ireland experienced rapid levels of population growth between the mid-eighteenth century and the mid-1840s. But due to significantly lower living standards, its resort to foreign timber supplies was lower than in Great Britain. Between 1822 and 1826 Ireland consumed just over 10 per cent of UK imports of square timber and over 11 per cent of the trade in deals at a time when its population was roughly 32 per cent of the UK total,15 so it is evident that imported timber was used much more sparingly in Ireland, and those on lower incomes had to find alternative supplies and solutions to roofing and finishing out new dwellings, or repairing and patching up older ones. The difficulty in assessing the significance of native sources of timber (including bogwood) for the construction of dwellings in the early nineteenth century make firm conclusions on the relative significance of timber imports in the total supply difficult at this point. The predominant focus of ethnographic studies on surviving vernacular structures such as roof timbers (which reveal much about the type of timber used and the international and local context of carpentry styles)16 may have had a tendency to overlook the significance of imports, more especially if the inferior classes of Canadian wood used between 1815 and the 1850s were prone to rot more readily17 and as a result were less likely to survive into the twentieth century for ethnographic analysis. Conversely, the more enduring nature of bogwood and certain native timbers in the roofs of surviving vernacular dwellings may have led to a slightly exaggerated impression of its relative significance in Irish construction overall. Gailey, an ethnographer, who has also extensively exploited historical sources (in tandem with surviving structures) reveals that some houses incorporated all three sources of timber: native, bog wood and imported material. Although many of the unspecialised building traditions of the rural poor continued after the Great Famine (notably in poorer districts), overall they became relatively less significant thereafter,18 and specialist craftsmen using imported timber became relatively more important. As a consequence, the series probably becomes more responsive to the cycles in Irish construction from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. The greater the relative importance of native timber and bogwood usage was in the earlier period, the less sensitive the series would have been to the construction of poorer vernacular dwellings in particular. Nonetheless, the series is probably sensitive enough in the pre-famine period to register the cycles in private dwellings built by craftsmen for the urban and rural upper and middle classes, landlord-sponsored building activity, combined with buildings resulting from public, commercial and industrial investment. As such it broadly captures the major swings in construction activity from the beginning of the nineteenth century.



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The overall significance of the construction industry in Irish capital formation can be roughly derived from Feinstein’s estimates of average annual capital formation in the UK and GB during the 1850s, when the residual between these two can be taken as an approximate indication of the equivalent Irish figures (see Table 8.1). Although these estimates are highly conjectural,19 they illustrate the central importance of construction in Irish capital formation, with all buildings and works taken as a whole accounting for almost 84 per cent of the gross stock of domestic reproducible fixed assets and over 61 per cent of Irish annual average gross domestic fixed capital formation. The table gives some indication of the importance of farm dwellings and nonresidential dwellings connected with agriculture (both returned under ‘other non-residential buildings’), reflecting the primary importance of agriculture in construction activity at this point. We can now proceed to briefly outline the method adopted to compile the timber import series (see Appendix 7) between 1801 and 1921.

II From the Act of Union down to 1822 Irish timber imports can be extracted with ease from the British parliamentary papers. The two major items in the Irish timber trade at this point included ‘timber, eight inch squared and upwards’, which was recorded in tons for most of the period between the Union and the Great Famine, and deals and deal ends, which were returned in great hundreds. These imports largely came from outside the United Kingdom, but a small amount was also imported from Great Britain.20 Table 8.1 Gross stock of domestic reproducible fixed assets in 1850 and average annual capital formation by type of asset 1851–60 in Ireland (£ million in current prices) Stock of fixed assets

Capital formation

Dwellings Industrial/commercial buildings Other non-residential buildings Total buildings and works Plant/machinery/equipment Rolling stock/vehicles Ships

27 7 43 77 12 1 2

0.17 0.17 1.13 1.47 0.78 0.1 0.04

Total

92

2.39

Source: C.H. Feinstein and S. Pollard, Studies in Capital Formation in the United Kingdom 1750–1920 (Oxford, 1988),pp. 431–435. Note: residential farmhouses are not returned under residential dwellings as they are treated as part of agricultural capital and are returned under ‘other non-residential buildings’.


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After 1822, only the trade in timber imports to Ireland from outside the United Kingdom continued to be recorded, which constituted the bulk of the trade. Throughout the 1820s it is possible to extract the amount of timber arriving in Ireland from outside the United Kingdom (the foreign trade) which was returned for square timber in ‘loads’, while deals and deal ends continued to be returned in great hundreds.21 A load was about 600 board feet of timber or 50 cubic feet, while a ton and a load appear to have been approximately similar at this point, so they are used interchangeably here. A great hundred was at some point 120 pieces of timber, but it was more particularly a cubic measurement of 165 cubic feet, which was the St Petersburg standard which prevailed in the British trade.22 By estimating the cubic feet imported by converting from great hundreds, it is then possible to convert this figure in loads (of 50 cubic feet), which it is assumed is the same as a ton weight, so we can derive estimates of the total number of loads imported into Ireland between 1801 to 1822, and the foreign trade down to 1829. From 1830, the only available returns for Irish timber imports are given in official prices, which can be found in the Annual Class Accounts (Finance) of the United Kingdom under Trade and Navigation. There has been much discussion in British economic history about the pros and cons of the trade returns in official prices as a viable source. Although historians of nineteenth-century Irish economic history have kept their distance from them, they can be pressed into service here to trace the volume of timber imports in the short period from 1830 to the mid-1850s, thus plugging an important gap in the data. Statistical luminaries such A.W. Flux and B.R. Mitchell have noted their potential in terms of tracing changes in volume in this period at least,23 since the official price was effectively a constant price for a number of commodities. Problems arise if the constant price is changed for any reason, but this appears to be a greater problem for exports rather than imports.24 For Ireland in this period there is a currency adjustment to bring Irish currency into line with sterling in the mid-1820s. However, by using ‘loads’ to 1829 (as outlined above) this issue is overcome. We now need to check if the official prices for timber are indeed constant. From 1826 to the end of the recording of official prices in the 1860s it is apparent that square timber of eight inches and upwards, which was subsequently recorded from 1840 as timber which was ‘hewn but not sawn’ had an official price of £2.538 per load,25 essentially because these two categories before and after 1840 were one and the same. Using this conversion rate, the official price in each year can now be converted back into loads, giving us a complete return for the square timber trade between 1830 and 1856. Thus far, however, the series does not include sawn timber imported which was returned under various different headings (notably great hundreds and later also in loads). This branch of the trade is more difficult to trace through official prices because it was more disaggregated, with deals and deal ends, for example, having different official prices. Also, unlike the square trade, the definition and categories returned changed over time so it is not possible to



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trace volume changes through official prices. From 1840 deals and deal ends are returned under the same heading, along with battens. Different approaches have therefore been devised for the two periods, the first from 1830 to 1839 and the second from 1840 to 1856, when all sawn and split timber was returned in loads and official prices, although only the latter survives in most years. However, between 1857 and 1866 it has been possible to establish that the official price of sawn and split timber was either £0.6 or £0.599 per load. Since the difference is of little consequence, the former has been adopted and it is assumed that this official price can be taken back to 1840. Since the official price for all sawn and split timber is returned in the British parliamentary papers, it is possible to convert these annually into loads between 1840 and 1856. These are added to the number of loads calculated for the square trade and the total is returned in Appendix 7. It is possible to check the plausibility of these figures by comparing them against the figures for the amount of timber retained annually for home consumption in Ireland.26 For most years they fit very well and provide supporting evidence for the veracity of the procedure adopted above. For 1830–1839, essentially the same procedure has been adopted, but this time working forward from an estimate of the official price of a great hundred (i.e. 165 cubic feet of timber) in 1827–9. This measure appears to have still been used for deal and deal ends until 1839. Deals constituted the great bulk in this trade in the 1830s,27 and although deal ends were also returned in great hundreds, they had a different official price. To overcome this an average official price of £3.11 per great hundred was estimated from 1827–9 for deals and deal ends, when official prices and great hundreds were both returned.28 The official price was then used annually to calculate the number of great hundreds imported which are converted initially into cubic feet and then into loads. These are added annually to the figures for square timber and the total loads imported between 1830 and 1839 are returned in Appendix 7. The figures for 1839 and 1840 which have been calculated adopting the different procedures outlined above appear to be close. It is possible that this is a mere coincidence, but more probably it lends support to the credibility of the method adopted here. For the remainder of the Union after 1857, the foreign-trade data can be traced annually in British parliamentary papers (and this data is also reproduced in Thom’s Directory) with the two types of timber in question, sawn and not sawn, all being returned in loads, are added and returned in appendix 7. From 1904 to 1921, returns for all Irish trade have been utilised, which includes the small amount of sawn and unsawn timber imported from Britain. The entire series can now be set out in graph form (see Figure 8.1). In the next section, the timber-importation data will be assessed in conjunction with other evidence to identify more precisely the trends in construction activity between 1801 and 1921.

III Since preference was given in the United Kingdom to timber imports from the British colonies, duties on them were consequently lower than for timber


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Figure 8.1 Irish timber imports 1801–1921 (loads) Source: see appendix 7.

imported from northern Europe, which had been the traditional source of supply for deals and square timber in the eighteenth century. As a result of duty changes in the early nineteenth century, Ireland developed a large trade with British North America, which encouraged the emigrant trade on the return journey. In the square trade, the timber was squared (or hewn) with the broad axe in the country of origin, which made it convenient for shipping and the sawing was generally undertaken in the country of importation by hand. Sawn timber was a more refined product.29 The significant Irish market for deals in the post-famine period was noted by a partner of one of the major Liverpool timber firms in the 1860s, who observed that the favourite dimension ordered in the trade he handled in Ireland was twelve foot deals, which were nine inches wide by three thick, which could be used for rafters or flooring and if cross cut could be used for door or window openings for cottages.30 The popularity of deals of this dimension is confirmed by other evidence provided by the Committee on Timber Duties in 1835.31 If houses were designed with the availability of such specific dimensions in view, minimal expense was lost on milling timber or waste. With limited capital investment in saw mills in Ireland (and fewer of them) and the great expense in utilising sawyers who worked by hand, it made more sense to import timber which was processed sufficiently for a carpenter to fit with minimal waste. Cullen concludes that town growth was very rapid in the period 1790 and 1815, and these years marked the culmination ‘of a long wave of expansion going back to the 1740s’ with capital formation continuing apace, notably the completion of the Grand and Royal canals, the most capital intensive projects yet undertaken in Ireland, along with investment in flour mills. This gave way



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to a more recessionary period after the war which deepened in the 1820s.32 Extensive military expenditure on construction is evident during the war years; Dickson notes a spate of barrack construction and naval fortification across the Cork region raising the demand for building materials in this period.33 Public expenditure on construction is also evident in Dublin in the period following the Union, with the beginning of the King’s Inn in 1800 and the General Post Office in 1814. However, private investment in housing in the capital was sluggish in the early nineteenth century, judging by the severe decline in building on the Pembroke and Gardiner estates, with the pace picking up somewhat in the decades after 1816.34 Provincial towns also witnessed some development; the distinctive Georgian terraces in the vicinity of Newtown Pery in Limerick, for example, were well under way in the first decades of the nineteenth century, but the pace was slow and the square was only completed finally in the 1840s.35 Towns, however, were only part of the story. A much greater share of building activity in this period was undertaken in rural Ireland. This made the industry dispersed and fragmented and the distinctive nature of each structure built, made it difficult for the industry to increase productivity or benefit from economies of scale; however, the preponderance of rural over urban at least reduced labour costs in the sector as a whole. The timber import data suggests that construction activity was relatively low during the first quarter of the nineteenth century when compared to the rest of the century. This may partially be a consequence of the fact that a large impoverished portion of the population, who lived in makeshift dwellings, resourcefully exploited whatever meagre sources of timber could be utilised, without resorting to either imports or specialist craftsmen. Fossil timber (or bog wood) was frequently recovered with great effort from the bogs all over Ireland and was widely traded and utilised for construction, fuel and furniture as native timber supplies became depleted in the preceding century. Driftwood was exploited in coastal locations36 and the fairly limited if growing supply of native timber from the woodlands and hedgerows between 1800 and 1850 was also exploited, along with whatever could be recycled from abandoned dwellings, the hulks of old ships or indeed anything constructed of timber which could be pressed back into service. Native woodland undoubtedly made a contribution, notably when many trees were brought down, such as during the Great Wind in 1839. However, in the normal scheme of things demand could not be fulfilled from all these sources alone. Those higher up the social scale invariably resorted to timber imports for their dwellings, while public buildings and most commercial or industrial structures also utilised imports. It appears from the graph of total imports that construction activity picked up a little from the first nineteenth century peak in 1825–6, through the 1830s. The highest peak in timber imports during the first half of the nineteenth century was in 1845–46, which indicates that the Great Famine probably interrupted the greatest boom in construction activity experienced since the Act of Union at least. Census data from 1821–41 provide some clues on additions to the housing stock.(see Table 8.2)

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Table 8.2 Inhabited dwellings in Ireland and houses being built in each census year and annual average increase per decade, 1821–1841 Year

Dwellings

1821 1831 1841

Building Building Building

1821 1831 1841

Inhabited Inhabited Inhabited

1821–31

Annual average increase Annual average increase

1831–41

Leinster

Munster

Ulster

Connacht

Ireland

479 3715 1275

398 3796 1023

239 3997 626

234 3800 392

1350 15,308 3313

278,398 292,729 306,459

306,995 330,444 364,637

359,801 402,005 414,551

211,637 224,638 243,192

1,142,602 1,249,816 1,328,839

1433

2345

4220

1300

10,721

1373

3419

1255

1855

7902

Source: Census 1821–41. Note: average annual inter census increase calculated from the rise in the number of inhabited houses from one census to the next.

Table 8.2 indicates that the pace of construction as measured by the average number of new houses added per annum between 1821 and 1831 (10,721) was somewhat greater than between 1831 and 1841 (7,902). House construction was booming in the early 1830s at least, judging by the number of houses being built at the time the 1831 census was taken. Ulster house construction appears to have been more buoyant than the other provinces in the 1820s, while Munster significantly outpaced the other provinces in the 1830s. The evidence on timber imports (see Figure 8.1) reveals a general growth in supply in the decades leading to the Great Famine, despite the high duties to encourage the colonial trade. The Select Committee on Timber Duties provides some evidence on the nature of the demand for imported timber. In the mid-1830s, John Astle, a ship broker and agent working out of Dublin, implied that imports were used largely in the houses in and around the city, but in the countryside the poor used little imported timber for their cabins except for the doors. The roofs of the bulk of mud cabins were made of wattles and straw.37 The evidence advanced in Cork, implied a somewhat wider usage of imported timber outside the confines of the city and port. William Parker, a Cork timber merchant in the early nineteenth century (who became a speculative builder in the city and county after 1809) pointed out in 1835 that the duties on Norwegian timber especially ‘have been highly injurious to the construction of houses by the peasantry of Ireland, because it has amounted to a prohibition’. However, when pressed to estimate the proportion of native timber relative to foreign used around Cork he suggested that around one tenth was native due to ‘the scantiness of the indigenous timber of Ireland’. He suggested that the doors in cottages in particular were largely of foreign timber, while roofs of the cottages of the poor were largely made of native timber in the interior, but on rivers


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where foreign timber could be had they utilised this instead.38 Alexander Deane, an architect, builder and timber merchant, estimated that nine-tenths of imports were used for house-building, and of that amount one third went for the cottages and farm buildings for the lower orders. He noted that the poorer agricultural population required timber for shelter and farm buildings and were thus obliged to resort to the lowest price timber that can be had in the market regardless of its durability.39 The evidence compiled by Gailey also reveals a growing usage of imports in Ulster, with significant differences among different social strata. He notes: Native oak commonly provided the principal load-bearing members in many areas until the middle of the eighteenth century. Fossil timber recovered from peat bogs became increasingly important as a resource for building purposes as the eighteenth century progressed, particularly at lower social levels. Purchased sawn timber of foreign origin was first used by more prosperous owners, became increasingly common in the roofs of better off farmhouses towards the end of the eighteenth century, and was being used even for cottage construction in the second half of the nineteenth century. The use of imported timber was noted in parishes all over Ulster in the 1830s.40 However, Gailey’s research on a number of estates in the 1840s. for which he was able to compile statistics on the housing of tenants in Armagh, Down, Donegal, Derry, Fermanagh, Clare, Kerry, Offaly and Wicklow, indicates that the great majority of houses were single-storey thatch dwellings instead of slate so that roof timbers did not have to be so strong or even in finish as for slate roofs, and first-floor joists and flooring were not required. The use of windows in these rural contexts was more mixed, though in poorer districts such as Iveragh in Kerry, and a portion of the TCD estates in the barony of Armagh, for example, the majority of houses had no windows, but in most districts surveyed the majority of dwellings had windows. Earth floors were found to be much more commonplace than timber.41 It is not clear to what extent these samples can be taken as typical of the country in general, but they indicate that imported timber was used very sparingly by those lower down the social scale. However, these observations reflect circumstances in the housing stock at large which invariably reflected the nature of structures which had been built long before the 1840s, as opposed to those built in the 1840s. Census data help fill out the picture in that particular decade (see Table 8.3). Table 8.3 indicates that much of the growth in housing stock in the 1840s and 1850s was concentrated higher up the social scale, most notably in the second-class category, in which imported timber was more likely to be incorporated. Middling and better off farmers were improving their housing and farm buildings. Even in the heart of Ireland’s leading manufacturing centre, the editorial of the Belfast Mercantile Register observed revealingly in January 1846 (in the middle of the peak years for timber imports in the first half of the

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Table 8.3 The total number of dwellings in each category and the intercensal increase, 1841–61

First-class houses Second-class houses Third-class houses Fourth-class houses


Total increase

1841

1851

Increase

1861

Increase

40,080 264,184 533,297 491,278

50,164 318,758 541,712 135,589

10,084 54,574 8,415

55,416 360,698 489,068 89,374

5,252 41,940

73,073

47,192

Source: Census 1841–61.

nineteenth century) that increase of the industry and commerce of the town was not altogether attributable to the industry and frugality of its manufacturing and other industrious inhabitants, but principally to those good qualities possessed by the farming and agricultural interest, added to their unwonted perseverance, which accomplished the improvement of their lands and enriched themselves, thus spreading their wealth to this town. Purchasing Timber and other building materials for the improvement of their homes … it is then especially to the increasing product of the soil that we must turn our attention for the principal causes of our increasing commerce-indeed there has not been a more favourable period in our memory towards the welfare of the farmer than the last years has been-with one exception, the disease and consequent destruction of the potato.42 Despite the beginning of the Great Famine, this qualitative evidence corresponds to the peak in timber imports registered in the years 1845–46, which marks the major peak for the first half of the nineteenth century. There is other quantitative evidence relating to the city of Dublin for this period which records the tonnage of stone, sand, flags and bricks entering the city on the Royal Canal, which suggests a slightly later peak for the capital in 1847, with 1848 being the next highest year, followed by 1846, with 1845 recording a lower than average traffic in these construction related commodities,43 indicating that there was some regional variation in the timing of peaks. The returns of houses in the census years from 1841 provide evidence on the variable quality of the housing stock. Over one third of all housing in 1841 was comprised of the lowest class of dwelling (fourth class), defined as oneroomed mud cabins.44 The dramatic decline in this lowest strata by 1851 is indicative of the cataclysmic impact of the Great Famine and emigration on the poorest section of society in the second half of the 1840s. However, across the island as a whole, there was an increase in the number of all other categories of houses (i.e. first, second and third classes) and this can only be explained



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by the construction of new dwellings in each of these categories, most notably second-class dwellings. Table 8.4 highlights the geography and urban/rural breakdown of these additions to the first- and second-class housing stock. The bulk of additions took place in rural contexts, urban developments being defined by the census as settlements of 2,000 and upwards. The most striking aspect of Table 8.4 from a geographical perspective is the heavy concentration of additional domestic dwellings in the 1840s in the province of Ulster. Industrial development must have made a substantial contribution to much of the expansion in the east of the province, but Donegal, Derry and Tyrone also clocked up additions to the housing stock, suggesting that development in that province was not driven entirely by industrialization. Counties Dublin and Cork experienced more marked development than elsewhere in the south, with Dublin’s development being linked to the expansion of middle-class urban and suburban developments or in rural villas close to the city, including those developing on the major transport arteries adjacent to the city, such as Kingstown, Rathmines and Rathgar.45 Church building (both catholic and protestant) was an important source of work for the Irish construction industry. Larkin estimates that in the half century before the famine the Catholic Church alone invested about £100,000 per annum in capital improvements, which were largely spent on the building of cathedrals, churches, chapels, convents, seminaries, schools and clergy housing. Another estimate implied that the Catholic Church in Ireland spent roughly £5.7 million on various buildings between 1800 and 1868, of which about £3.2 million went on 1,842 churches.46 A new chapel site (generally on more accessible points in the emerging road system than older religious sites) brought with it a nucleation of secular developments such as schools, barracks, post offices and commercial outlets, such as shops, groceries and dispensaries, in addition to domestic dwellings.47 From the 1840s to the end of the nineteenth century churches of all denominations and other buildings connected with religion continued to be a very important source of work for builders all over Ireland. Another important axis of capital formation in this period was the estate. Part of the substantial rental income expropriated by landlords was invested in building or altering their grand country houses, in addition to coach houses and farmyards, tenants’ dwellings, gate lodges and in some cases whole estate villages.48 Ó Gráda estimates that landlords invested roughly 4 to 5 per cent of their rental income on improvements or capital formation in the decades after the Great Famine. This was probably a conservative estimate given that seven of the 15 estates on which hard data could be generated spent considerably more than this. It is not clear if this figure includes capital invested in their own country houses or in erecting property in estate villages or towns.49 Ó Gráda concludes that tenants were responsible for much of the improvements made in agriculture; given the importance of residential farm buildings and outhouses in Irish capital formation this area requires more research. Investments of this nature probably account for part of the upturn

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Table 8.4 Number of additional first- and second-class houses in 1851 census compared to 1841


Location Antrim Belfast Carrickfergus Armagh Carlow Cavan Clare Cork Cork city Donegal Down Drogheda Dublin Dublin city Fermanagh Galway Galway town Kerry Kildare Kilkenny Kilkenny city King's Co. Limerick Limerick city Londonderry Longford Louth Mayo Meath Monaghan Queen's Co. Roscommon Sligo Tipperary Tyrone Waterford Waterford city Westmeath Wexford Wicklow

Rural increase 4,457

Urban increase

872 2,003 697

649 139

5,034 3,191 103 2,891 229 1,612 1,857 4,642 589 2,864 5,275 2,864 3,890 1,986 1,565 1,297 176 1,408 798 1,259 44 548 1,074 879 2,964 985 616 1,183 1,049 1,247 60 1,368 636 1,046 4,304 1,299 386 872 652 836

Leinster Munster Ulster Connacht

7,951 11,122 25,330 5,685

6,100 1,753 5,594 123

14,051 12,875 30,924 5,808

Ireland

50,624

14,034

64,658

75 2,530 133 1,611 1,867 4,545 2,864 4,651

1,522 1,254 1,305 798 1,259

577 3,191 28 361 96 1

Total increase

97 589 624 182 3,890 1,986 43 43 176 103 44

548 1,070 2,545 985 564 1,183 1,049 1,030 1,324 618 1,046 4,045 1,299

4 879 419 52 217 60 44 18 259 386

Source: census 1841–1851. Note: totals for Ireland and provinces may not tally with counties as counties or towns with a lower number of rural or urban houses in 1851 compared to 1841 are not included.



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between the 1890s and the eve of the First World War, as tenants acquired ownership of their holdings and were thus more willing to invest in buildings. From somewhat different circumstances, a small number of nineteenth-century industrial villages emerged, largely though not exclusively in Ulster, between the 1830s and the 1870s, which evidently contributed to the additions to the housing stock in Antrim and Down (see Table 8.4) in particular.50 Although Belfast’s industrial development was already under way, it is interesting to note that urban development in Leinster was still greater than in Ulster in the 1840s, while urban development in Munster was much more muted and in Connacht it was almost non-existent. Table 8.3 illustrates that overall there was a significantly greater number of new dwellings built in the 1840s (the great bulk of these being second-class dwellings) than in the 1850s. This contributed to the higher levels of timber imported in the 1840s, compared to the 1850s. These additions and improvements of the housing stock at the top two levels across the country as a whole represents an addition of 21.2 per cent to the housing stock of 1841 over the following ten years. It seems probable that the bulk of these (new dwellings which were second class) utilised imported timber and specialist craftsmen. If roughly 65,000 houses in these upper categories were added to the housing stock (which may underestimate the actual figure since new houses replacing an old house which became derelict or was demolished would not count as an addition), this implies a considerable rate of capital formation in housing within the higher echelons of Irish society. It is possible that a boom in construction of this category of house (at a time when labour was cheap and timber duties were further reduced from 1842) took place in the first half of the 1840s as the Irish population reached an all-time high and the housing stock needed to be increased at all levels of society up to the point when emigration and excess mortality during the Famine dramatically reduced demand. In this scenario the Famine interrupted a building boom. Another possibility is that the rising price of food as a consequence of the Famine brought considerable advantages to the more prosperous elements of the farming community, increasing their purchasing power and their capacity to invest in housing and other farm buildings. This may reconcile the extremely divergent experiences of the Famine for those at the bottom and the top of the social spectrum. More research is required on the precise timing of house construction since a boom in railway investment in 1845–46 and public investment throughout the 1840s prevent firm conclusions on this front based on timber-import data alone. Another consideration is the significance of repairs and renovation work. Much housing and commercial property, for example, was destroyed or damaged in Ireland by the hurricane conditions experienced in on 6–7 January 1839, and resulted in significant additional work in the construction industry.51 Public investment increased from the beginning of the nineteenth century, notably during the 1830s. State driven initiatives resulted in a host of public buildings like police stations, schools, court houses, customs and excise facilities, etc. were built in the 1830s and 1840s all contributing to raising the demand


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for imported timber. The establishment of a state fund in 1831 to make provision for two-thirds of the costs of buildings for national schools contributed significantly to their construction and improvement, providing an incentive to raise the remaining third locally and this system worked best in more prosperous regions.52 The 1841 census reveals that 100 Union poor houses were then under construction. By the end of the 1847, 130 workhouses had been completed and were in working operation.53 Some idea of the total employment given can be had from the fact that 2,614 masons, bricklayers and paviors were employed on these structures in 1841, compared to 17,993 returned for the whole country (almost 15 per cent). The census observed ‘that it is probable that a larger amount of capital was actually at that period in the process of investment in buildings than at almost any former time’.54 The timber import series supports this proposition, as 1841 witnessed the highest level of timber imports up to that point since the Act of Union, but this was shortly to be well surpassed by 1845 and 1846. The Board of Works gradually accumulated a range of responsibilities during the first half of the nineteenth century from the construction and maintenance of a number of public buildings in Dublin, in addition to an increasingly diverse range of other buildings and civil engineering schemes throughout Ireland which included roads, bridges, lunatic asylums, barracks, as well as harbours, inland navigation, drainage and fishery infrastructure.55 These responsibilities culminated during the famine years, when the board was under pressure to provide further employment, so a series of new asylums and extensions to existing ones were commissioned and got under way. Further major building projects included the three Queen’s colleges and some extension to the buildings at Maynooth College, while 170 coastguard stations were also upgraded during the Famine years. By 1850 fourteen major projects were under way and by the time these were completed in the first half of the 1850s, the board had witnessed its busiest phase of construction throughout the nineteenth century. O’Dwyer notes that ‘the completion of the colleges and asylums marked the end of a frenetic period of building activity’.56 The beginning of the construction of the railway network contributed to raising demand for timber from the mid-1840s. Lee notes that ‘the backbone of the system was laid between 1845 and 1853, when Dublin was connected with Cork, Galway and Belfast’.57 But sufficient evidence has been set out above to indicate that this was not just railway mania. A confluence of factors contributed to the major peak of the first half of the nineteenth century in 1845 and 1846, when capital formation was at its highest during the first half of the nineteenth century, and most probably for any period up to this point. However, this boom had clearly terminated by the end of the Famine. By 1849 timber imports were at their lowest since 1823 (see Appendix 7). Kinahan refers to a construction downturn preceding the year 1850, which had disastrous consequences for the industries supplying building materials.58 The impact this had on the workforce engaged in construction is evident from the substantial drop in the number of building craftsmen returned in the



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1851 census compared to 1841 (see Table 8.5), most notably stone masons and carpenters, who clearly found prospects in Great Britain and North America more attractive than remaining in Ireland by the end of the 1840s. The census returns also provide testament to the dramatic employment boom at the beginning of the 1840s. How do Irish timber imports compare with those of Great Britain and is there any relationship between the peaks on the two islands at this point? If we take British timber imports between 1801 and 1829 (recorded in official prices) and utilise these as a crude indication of volume change, the GB peak for these years occurs in 1825. In terms of using timber imports as an indication of building activity, it is reassuring that an index for England and Wales which utilises the number of bricks on which duty was paid also peaks in the same year.59 The Irish peak for this period comes one year later in 1826, but 1825 in Ireland was higher than any other year since the beginning of the nineteenth century. The peak for the first half of the nineteenth century for the UK falls between 1845 and 1847, for both timber imports and bricks; however, timber’s peak year is in 1846 and bricks in the following year.60 The Irish timber-import peak for the first half of the nineteenth century also falls in 1845 and 1846 (the latter being the highest), but the difference is that it is not sustained into 1847 and it is possible that it is at this point that the impact of the Great Famine on construction begins to kick in. Moreover, while the UK subsequently proceeded to an even higher peak in 1853 and 1854, Ireland only experienced this one as a lesser peak than that at the outset of the Famine. So it seems reasonable to conclude that there was some relationship between the Irish and British peaks, notably the highest ones, but they were certainly not entirely synchronised. While some of the lower years in Irish timber imports in the first half of the nineteenth century coincide with those in Britain (1808 and 1817, for example), with the same foreign-supply problems causing the

Table 8.5 Census returns for building craftsmen, 1831–1861 Craftsmen

1831

1841

1851

1861

Brick makers Builders Stone cutters Brick layers Stone masons Slaters Thatchers Plasterers Sawyers Carpenters

516 736 1469 1537 13,707 2818 357 1095 3556 24,404

644 792 3811 1331 16,505 3285 1018 1425 3866 38,891

918 849 3414 1310 12,790 2508 1331 1083 3267 26,445

514 919 3159 1571 12,300 2319 1212 1418 2753 30,499

Total

50,195

71,488

53,915

56,664



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severe curtailments in 1808, the lower troughs did not always coincide exactly.61 Moreover, the Irish share of UK timber imports fluctuated somewhat from year to year. Although Ireland accounted for an average of over 10 per cent of UK square timber imports between 1822 and 1826, for example, this masks considerable variation; in 1823 Ireland accounted for only 6 per cent, while in 1826 it accounted for 15.6 per cent.62 Although local factors on both islands provide partial explanations for this variance, Britain had a more varied and expansive demand for timber usage outside construction, with the demand generated by shipbuilding, furniture production and pit props for mining, for example, all figuring more prominently in the economy of the larger island. However, despite major differences in the two economies the links between the peaks in timber imports in Ireland and Britain indicates a growing degree of integration between the two, presumably largely a result of the intensifying trading relationship between the two islands and the impact this had on middling to better off Irish farmers in particular. Decisions on public investment through the auspices of the British Treasury may have been another factor in bringing trends closer together, in addition to the significance of British investment in the early years of Irish railway construction,63 which thus followed the same years of intense capital formation. In the second half of the nineteenth century the registration of joint stock companies provides some evidence on rising capital investment in textiles and the food and drink sector in particular. Within the services sector, rapid expansion in Irish trade until the mid-1870s (in terms of tonnage)64 and the continuation of railway construction through the second half of the nineteenth century (including light rail and tramways in the last decades) were accompanied by investments in shipping lines, retailing and distribution, warehousing and hotels, while banking witnessed the formation of a numerous new joint stock companies in the main cities and ports. The peak for investment in both industry and services took place in the last decades of the nineteenth century, contributing to the dramatic rise in construction activity.65 The lowest points in Irish timber imports frequently mirrored the lowest points in house construction in Britain in the years between 1914 and 1920.66 1917, for example, was the lowest level of timber imports on record in Ireland since the early 1820s, and plumbed depths which were not reached in the latter part of the Great Famine and its aftermath. Despite some limited recovery thereafter, the disruption brought about by the Anglo-Irish War between 1919 and 1921, combined with the impact of the north European recession from 1920, are also evident. The lowest period registered in Great Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century was 1857–1867. While some of the Irish lows fall in these years, they don’t coincide, and indeed some Irish lows coincide with British peaks such as 1875, for example. Ireland did not share the significant upturn in British house construction between 1875 and 1878, so there were some important differences between Ireland and Great Britain, even if the highest peaks were generally shared, as in the first half of the nineteenth century. Irish low points in the second half of the nineteenth century (which



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were far less dramatic than those during and post-First World War) included 1857–8, 1862–5 1873, 1875, 1879 and 1886, with 1862 being the lowest of all followed closely by 1879. Undoubtedly, a number of these years were linked to agricultural recessions, which correspond to those identified by Solar and Kennedy in their work on Irish agricultural prices, most notably in the early 1860s, 1879 and 1886.67 These downturns are evident from other sources. Unemployment among the building tradesmen of Galway in the early 1860s provides testament to the lack of public and private works in that city, and the general dullness in the building trade was also evident in Drogheda at this time.68 The significance of agriculture in determining the level and fluctuations in Irish construction (noted in the first half of the nineteenth century) was still evident in much of the country in the second half of nineteenth century (see Table 8.6). Rural Ireland (excluding towns of 2,000 upwards) still accounted for 69 per cent of the buildings under construction at the time the 1861 Census was taken.69 The recession in Irish construction in 1879 was noted with the comment that ‘general agricultural depression in Ireland re-acts upon cities and towns to far greater extent than it does in the sister kingdoms’.70 The difference in development between rural and civic areas is captured by the census returns for the number of houses, if we isolate first-and second-class houses (which constituted the bulk of capital formation in dwellings in this period). The table indicates that almost 61 per cent of additions to the first- and second-class housing stock were located in rural contexts (excluding towns of 2,000 upwards). Even allowing for substantial village development, the importance of agriculture stands out, and it is only in two decades (the 1860s and 1890s) that development in urban Ireland eclipsed additions in the Irish countryside. The high points in timber imports during the Union were all registered in the period between 1892 and 1913, the peak year being 1897, followed by 1900 and 1903 and 1910. The 1880s did not witness any significant growth in construction until the end of the decade,71 which marks the beginning of a general rise in imports to a higher threshold which lasted down to the eve of the First World War. This mirrors the growth in Britain from the beginning of Table 8.6 Additions to first- and second-class houses returned between census years Year

Civic

Rural

Total

1841–51 1851–61 1861–71 1871–81 1881–91 1891–01 1901–11

14,034 13,433 20,599 16,763 18,597 34,749 24,024

50,624 33,759 4,884 30,608 29,829 24,558 46,948

64,658 47,192 25,483 47,371 48,404 59,307 70,972



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the 1890s, which peaks in 1898. This upturn in Great Britain lasts until 1908–9, then falling off down to and through the war.72 In Ireland in contrast, this upturn is more sustained down to the eve of the war. So broadly speaking, Irish construction upturns tend to take place in roughly the same years as those in the neighbouring island (as in the first half of the nineteenth century) but the exact timing of the rise and fall of these upturns, including the highest peaks, is slightly different. This implies that the Irish construction broadly shared many of the same major influences which affected the British construction industry, but differences in the details are not unlike the regional variations found in construction activity in different parts of Britain.73 The greater significance of agriculture in the Irish economy was undoubtedly the most important difference from the rest of the UK, and agricultural downturns affected Ireland more. Apart from the UK upturn, the rise in Irish construction activity between the early 1890s and the First World War arose as a consequence of several other factors unique to Ireland. The Land Acts provided greater incentives for investment by owner occupiers in agricultural buildings and improved dwellings. The various Labourers’ Acts passed between 1883 and 1919 increased construction activity for lower-income dwellings, notably after 1906 when more substantial funding became available from the state to augment local authority investment. By 1921 about 61,000 dwellings had been built as a consequence of these acts, in addition to the much smaller number of houses built by the Congested Districts Board. This was supplemented on a much smaller scale in urban contexts by various philanthropic charitable housing bodies and local authorities. All of these measures collectively contributed to increasing construction activity at the poorer end of the social spectrum,74 supplementing more speculative activity in the private sector to service the demands of the urban and rural middle classes. In addition, public expenditure on government buildings to accommodate the expansion of government services from the end of the nineteenth century (when the Department of Agriculture was established), as well as the significant expansion of local government at this point, collectively boosted the construction sector. Additions were made to the Earlsfort Terrace site for University College, Dublin between 1914 and 1919, while the Board of Works was also engaged in the construction of 926 cottages for exservice men in 1920–21. Additions to public investment in the maintenance and building of post offices, police stations, schools, etc included the construction of labour exchanges all over Ireland following the passing of the Labour Exchange Act in 1909.75 From 1857, it is possible to breakdown imports by port, which provides greater coverage of regional variations in the levels of construction activity. The growth of Belfast was deemed worthy of notice in 1863 the Irish Builder (or Dublin Builder as it was initially called) as entire new streets were emerging to accommodate the expanding working classes with about 400 houses in the course of construction and these developments were dramatically accelerating by the end of the decade, along with a range of other buildings such as banks, warehouses and churches.76



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However, in the 1860s Dublin still accounted for larger timber imports than Belfast, due partly to its larger country trade, and the expansion of its suburbs, along with service-related commercial buildings such as banks and insurance offices in more central locations.77 Though Belfast imports were at a similar level to Dublin in 1864, and exceeded them in 1866, 1874 and 1877, in most years down to 1880 it remained lower than Dublin (see Appendix 8). However, by 1871, house building in the province of Ulster appears to have been well ahead of Leinster. But the differences were only really dramatic in 1891. Building firms located in east Ulster not only benefited from these housing booms; the more diversified economy of east Ulster and Derry provided by industrialisation, gave rise to contracts for factories and mills.78 For example, in the early 1890s McLaughlin & Harvey of Belfast were undertaking a host of building contracts for companies engaged in the region’s linen industry.79 Between 1856 and 1900 the six counties which later became Northern Ireland accounted for over 54 per cent of the nominal capital of new joint stock companies engaged in manufacturing registered in Ireland, compared to under 30 per cent of service companies, revealing the heavy concentration of manufacturing investment in those counties.80 Cockerill has constructed a series on the number of houses built in Belfast between 1874 and 1914 and 1897 emerges as the peak year when 3,528 houses were built.81 This corroborates with the peak figures for timber imports for both Belfast and Ireland for the entire period of the Union. The peak in 1897 across the island coincided at a regional level with the all time peaks for Belfast and Cork, but other regions peaked in other years: Derry in 1890; Dublin in 1903 and Waterford in 1910, thus revealing some regional variance. However, all of these regional peaks fell within the most sustained period of higher timber imports for Ireland as a whole running between 1892 and 1913. Speculative building in east Ulster cooled off considerably after the turn of the century and by 1911 Ulster house building was eclipsed by activity in both Munster and Leinster (see Table 8.7). An important part of the explanation for this shift in the centre of gravity of construction geographically was investment in labourers cottages resulting from the Labourers (Ireland) Acts passed between 1883–1919.82 Fraser’s work reveals that the lion’s share of investment in these dwellings and the majority of houses built under the terms of these acts were erected between 1900 and 1916.83 These were concentrated in rural Munster and Leinster, where in addition the benefits of the land acts may also have encouraged investment in long-term improvements in the housing stock of those living in rural contexts who acquired ownership of their holdings. In both cases activity was a consequence of government legislation and intervention. In addition, in Dublin and other larger southern municipalities other factors augmented these developments. The Dublin municipal authorities, for example, also began to invest in building flats in this period, while private philanthropic and employer initiatives also added to the housing stock.84 Many new creameries were built from the 1880s; there were 800 in Ireland by 1906,85 with the greatest concentration of these in Munster.

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Table 8.7 Number of houses in the course of construction at censuses, 1821–1911 Year

Dublin

Rest of Leinster

Munster

Connacht

East Ulster

Rest of Ulster

Total

1821 1831 1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911

407 3,194 1,035 317 479 277 190 351 459 937

72 521 237 276 384 197 481 251 459 350

398 3,795 1,023 473 725 579 219 585 493 1034

234 3,800 392 282 530 304 71 166 226 431

179 1,050 251 198 365 421 566 911 656 461

60 2,947 375 322 437 392 183 338 299 395

1,350 15,308 3,313 1,868 2,920 2,170 1,710 2,602 2,592 3,608

Source: Census 1821–1911

The services sector was the fastest growing sector in the Irish economy between the Great Famine and partition. The expansion of the administrative apparatus of government in Ireland required more office space and housing for civil servants. In January 1915, for example, it was noted that ‘public buildings of the larger sort, never a strong feature of Irish building, have recently been more in evidence than at any previous period since the eighteenth century. The new government offices in Upper Merrion Street are proceeding … ’.86 Dublin benefited more than other regions from these kind of developments. Nonetheless, between 1900 and 1914 developments in rural Ireland contributed more to raising timber imports than in urban Ireland and this conclusion sits well with the rise in-house construction in the more rural provinces of Munster and Connacht, while the relative significance of east Ulster declined. The major phase of expansion in house building was over in Belfast. In January 1912 the editor of the Dublin focused Irish Builder grudgingly conceded that ‘1910 and 1911 were perhaps not quite so depressing as the previous years which immediately preceded them, and there were not wholly wanting signs of a slight revival in trade’, and improvements were noted for 1911 and 1912, despite the wave of strikes hitting the building trade in these years.87 The more serious lockout in 1913 brought the building trade to a standstill for five months in Dublin. Despite these problems the Dublin industry was still brisk by the outbreak of the war. At this point it was estimated that almost 60,000 persons were dependent for employment in Dublin on the building and allied trades,88 making it by far the largest employer in city. The outbreak of the war in 1914 severely reduced construction activity, notably during the last years of the conflict. Building materials including timber became scarce and very costly and many tradesmen and labourers drifted into the armed forces or war work and many building supplies became progressively more difficult to procure.89 Limited work, such as reconfiguring the shipyards



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in Belfast for war work, and work connected with munitions, hospitals and barracks, including the reconstruction in Dublin during the last stages of the war of the area destroyed during the 1916 Rising, took place but building work in general was significantly reduced. After the war, recovery was limited and short lived before another deep recession set in 1920 and 1921, reflecting the impact of the general economic recession in northern Europe at this point, in addition to the unstable political circumstances in Ireland. The population census between 1821 and 1911 provides intermittent snapshots of the incidence of house construction (see Table 8.7). The data has been divided into regions to sharpen the analysis of the spatial distribution of construction activity through time. The return for 1831 is exceptionally high; It is unclear if this extreme result was a consequence of the problematic way in which the 1831 census was enumerated, or if there was a major growth of poor-quality dwellings to accommodate the burgeoning pre-famine population. The next best years recorded by this extremely partial picture was in 1911, followed by the pre-famine census year of 1841. The lowest level of house construction is recorded in 1821, reflecting the impact of the post-Napoleonic recession. The early 1880s and the immediate aftermath of the Famine witnessed the next lowest years among those returned. Between 1821 and 1911 the quality and value of dwellings improved dramatically, particularly between 1841 and 1851, so if the high figure for 1831 marks the rapid construction of a multiplicity of makeshift mud cabins, this cannot necessarily be construed as constituting a high degree of capital formation in that year, but it perhaps captures instead the desperate struggle to increase the housing stock of the poorer sections of Irish society. Since the first timber series is unresponsive to this development in 1831, it seems probable that it largely constituted a range of poorer vernacular dwellings, which utilised minimal quantities of imported timber. In poorer districts such as Co Clare such socalled fourth-class dwellings constituted over half the housing stock, and all over Ireland the number of these dwellings must have increased dramatically in the half century leading up to the Famine.90 The growing significance of East Ulster which accounted for under 8 per cent of new houses being built in 1841, rising gradually to a peak of 35 per cent in 1891, is a striking testimony to the significance of industry in driving development between the 1860s and 1890s, declining thereafter to under 13 per cent of the Irish total by 1911. This implies that house construction in east Ulster continued through the second half of the nineteenth century, peaking in the period between 1891 and 1901 and cooling thereafter. Other factors in agriculture and services accounted for the overall upturn in the construction of dwellings in the rest of Ireland by 1911, by which time the impact of the land acts and the construction of labourers’ dwellings may have increased investment in dwellings in Munster and Leinster, in addition to other public and private investments. When the figures are tabulated in five-year averages they provide a smoother indication of shifts through time by ironing out the peaks and troughs. Table 8.8


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shows the timber-import volume gradually increasing throughout the period up to the First World War, reflecting the deepening of capital formation in the Irish economy in this period. The first quarter of the nineteenth century produced the lowest returns, notably the immediate post-war years. From this point imports gradually increased to the eve of the Famine, declining somewhat in its aftermath, but then from the mid-1850s a new plateau is reached which lasts until the 1890s, followed by a second higher plateau from the early 1890s to the eve of the war. This exercise indicates that 1906–10 collectively constituted the peak years followed by 1896–00. Interest rates were on average lower in the period after the mid-1860s (see Appendix 7), than they had been before which may have assisted construction, while rising living standards per capita also provided incentives to improve the housing stock.

IV Construction created a demand for many raw materials. Stone was a critical input and the bulk of this was sourced in Ireland. Demand was greatest close to the larger cities and towns which gave rise to larger quarries but many

Table 8.8 Timber imports in five-year averages (loads) Year

Timber imports

1801–05 1806–10 1811–15 1816–20 1821–25 1826–30 1831–35 1836–40 1841–45 1846–50 1851–55 1856–60 1861–65 1866–70 1871–75 1876–80 1881–85 1886–90 1891–95 1896–00 1901–05 1906–10 1911–15 1916–20

89,807 61,729 74,827 57,813 71,995 106,612 119,343 135,203 166,796 155,369 141,539 195,337 200,977 229,719 214,052 220,676 226,046 231,200 269,779 318,830 316,155 328,277 287,954 138,374

Source: see Appendix 7.



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smaller quarries operated in rural areas, while surface stones were also exploited if local geological formations offered this option.91 However, for major public buildings and some larger private dwellings stone imported from Britain was used, notably for dressings and cut work, and this competition seems to have increasingly created problems for Irish quarries after the First World War when British stone became more competitive than the native article in terms of cost.92 Already in 1907 The Irish Builder and Engineer noted that there had been a significant fall off in the number of working quarries since the 1850s; in the case of sandstone only those at Dungannon, Mountcharles and Scrabo and one or two others survived.93 The use of British imported stone into the major ports was more significant than the small amount of marble, granite and slate exported from Ireland to Britain; however, in the countryside the Builder reported approvingly in 1919 that imported stone ‘is much less in evidence’.94 Different kinds of stone were used depending on the locality. In Carlow, for example, where granite field stone abounds it was cleared from the fields for construction purposes and was also used up in an extensive system of stone walls.95 Around the quarries of Liscannor in Co. Clare cottages and stone walls had long been constructed of the stone of the local quarry and early in the twentieth century this quarry was exploited to a greater degree and an export trade was developed to Britain as the stone of Liscannor was durable enough to be used for galvanising, for acid tanks or in alkali works.96 Evidence from the mineral statistics for Ireland between 1895 and 1920 (see Table 8.9), combined with import data from 1904 to 1921 imply that native stone still remained much more important than imported stone. Native limestone was the principal stone quarried and was used in a number of major public buildings in this period. Cork city in particular was well endowed with limestone in its immediate hinterland, with large quarries located at Ballintemple near Blackrock, and at Little Island and around Midleton. These were utilised in a number of the major public buildings in Cork city along with red sandstone, or sometimes a combination of both.97 Lime was the most common form of mortar during the nineteenth century and it was produced in lime kilns all over Ireland.98 Builders in the most extensive granite district in the United Kingdom, which covered an area over counties Dublin, Wicklow, Carlow, Kilkenny and Wexford, could exploit the abundance of local granite. Dublin builders used the granites of Wicklow most extensively, notably those from Ballyknockan Quarry (established in 1824) and the various quarries around Glencullen, Kilgobbin and the Three Rock region.99 The dramatic expansion of Dublin in the latter part of the eighteenth century opened up opportunities for those engaged in stone cutting, which engaged about 1,000 operatives, including 41 master contractors, 330 craftsmen and a large group of labourers and polishers. However, the number of master stone cutters was down to 15 by the 1820s, reflecting the stagnation of the building trade in Dublin at this point.100 Until the 1880s, Belfast builders could resort to the sandstone of Scrabo, which had been established by the builder Robert Corry in 1826. The quarry

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Table 8.9 Building materials quarried in Ireland (tons)

1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920

slate

limestone

gravel/sand

clay

sandstone

10,848 4,914 12,167 6,641 5,443 5,637 5,192 5,638 6,302 6,846 6,341 5,562 5,024 4,658 5,568 4,658 4,588 5,341 3,483 3,017 2,968 2,984 1,690 1,273 4,315 966

447,513 548,497 490,350 523,849 508,347 488,589 449,225 446,234 477,709 469,724 493,291 524,237 559,691 557,755 568,046 585,954 562,223 528,107 582,851 426,030 343,174 303,577 310,926 262,400 236,264 145,243

26,002 82,460 49,687 42,402 66,055 41,875 198,123 191,537 167,910 170,070 151,993 126,664 132,078 94,908 83,249 81,784 83,025 70,654 102,360 78,609 99,718 60,487 82,525 110,249 82,517 69,294

126,800 29,064 56,338 214,275 105,943 72,352 91,450 106,287 113,245 126,049 116,437 219,361 104,629 109,806 120,338 132,400 124,460 100,500 121,294 111,472 61,324 41,315 68,453 50,847 67,305 95,200

39,021 42,236 37,433 31,995 28,613 49,075 43,143 34,621 40,937 31,855 28,018 24,001 27,099 29,429 36,008 64,753 42,121 31,543 27,984 45,600 46,937 74,842 61,816 83,986 82,775 68,971

igneous rocks

126,647 188,689 207,923 202,884 210,438 221,121 237,115 226,789 295,939 263,499 257,682 288,955 325,194 359,370 384,494 395,343 460,127 504,320 421,826 281,845 302,002 336,575 299,736 387,740

Source: General Summary of Mineral Produce of the United Kingdom BPP 1895 cvii –BPP 1921 xli .

subsequently supplied builders all over Ulster and was used in a number of prominent buildings in Belfast, including Queen’s University, where it was used for rubble work and foundations.101 Of greater significance were the blackstone quarries of north Belfast and the bluestone quarries of Ballygowan and Dundonald, which were used for civil engineering, road building and the production of concrete.102 Builders in Ulster could also utilise the large granite quarries near Bessbrook, which were more suited for construction than the Mourne granite, which was made into paving blocks and exported to British cities. However, brick ultimately featured more prominently in the expanding streetscape of Belfast in the nineteenth century than in other Irish cities and towns.103 Brick making in Ireland at the beginning of the nineteenth century was seasonal; bricks were dried in the open and fired in clamps. Large-scale mechanised brick production was a later development which progressed in Belfast particularly, bringing down costs. The expansion of the city (in which



169

most buildings incorporated at least some brick) led to an increase in the number of brickfields in the vicinity of the city from four at the beginning of the nineteenth century to 16 in the 1830s, rising to 33 by 1896. By the latter year many of these were very well equipped and Cockerill estimates that in 1897 (the peak construction year for Belfast and Ireland) these yards may have produced over 100 million bricks, which he noted were cheaper than in other parts of Ireland and Britain.104 The best Belfast bricks were made from local glacial clays which were also utilised for terracotta ornamental mouldings, chimney pots, tiles, drain pipes, and so on, while the Keuper marls produced a strong brick. All were fired with imported coal. Lamplaugh observed c. 1904 that ‘the aggregate output is very large, and after supplying the requirements of the rapidly expanding city, provides a heavy surplus for transport to other parts of Ireland, principally the neighbouring towns in Ulster and to places on the east coast as far south as Dublin’.105 In the second and third quarter of the nineteenth century a host of brick works were operating all over Ireland exploiting both coal and turf as fuel, depending on location and in some cases both were used.106 In midland locations, in addition to providing fuel, the bogs could also supply the clay for brick production, making them a cheap source of bricks if transport costs did not restrict distribution to the immediate locality.107 Transport costs were an important consideration for a relatively heavy commodity. The canals facilitated the growth of the midland brick trade, providing reach to all the towns serviced by the network, including the Dublin market. For this reason, nearly all the brick fields in Co. Offaly in 1837 were located along the banks of the Grand Canal, exploiting turf for fuel.108 The industry in Youghal (which was supplying Cork city and much of Co. Cork by 1845,109 utilised both the Blackwater river (which was navigable to Cappoquin) and the coasting trade to service towns and ports along the south coast until the railway from Youghal to Cork city (opened in 1861) provided an alternative distribution network.110 Railways, like canals before them, opened up new possibilities for marketing bricks and had an important influence on the survival of older works or the development of new ones. The Dublin brick industry was more dynamic in the eighteenth century than for much of the nineteenth when imports from Britain or Belfast were preferred for facing brick.111 However, supplies of mechanically produced bricks from Co. Cavan, Co. Longford and Harold’s Cross in Dublin were noted by 1885, and by the beginning of the twentieth century some quite large brick works were operating in the vicinity of the city and the industry was thriving again; the Dublin Brick and Tile Co. (established in 1883) produced six million bricks per annum by 1902, employing about 100 persons, while the Dolpin’s Barn Brick Co. (established in 1896) was also providing substantial quantities of bricks to the construction industry in and around Dublin.112 Roughly 70 brick works were still in existence in Ireland in 1920 according to Riordan, but many were not operative. The industry had become increasingly less profitable for some years due to British competition.113 Employment in


170


the Youghal works, which had employed about one hundred persons before the First World War, fell to only 40 during 1920.114 The Irish Builder and Engineer noted in 1919 and again in 1921 that Irish brick making was at its lowest ebb in a century and that hand-made and facing brick production had largely ceased and many of the best Irish brick works had been shut down. In the short term, the decline in the volume of building activity during and after the war added to the problems of rising transport and fuel costs, while the rising cost of bricklayers wages and the growing use of concrete collectively contributed to reducing native demand for bricks. Moreover, in the longer term the technical revolution in British brick production had made price competition too keen for Irish entrepreneurs to take an interest.115 Irish entrepreneurs proved even less willing to take advantage of the rising demand for cement, so Ireland did not benefit from the growth in cement usage. The Drinagh Cement Works in Wexford (established in 1871) was the first in Ireland to manufacture Portland cement successfully and it employed about 150 persons by the 1890s. Various other works were established down the years, but by 1904 all had ceased production and only the small Drinagh works was still in business. It was subsequently taken over in 1918 by one of the large English combines, Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers Ltd, who shut down the plant after operating for just one year.116 In 1915, a second plant was built at Magheramore in Co. Antrim by the other English combine, the British Portland Cement Co. Ltd, and this was the only survivor by 1920. Most of the Irish cement supply therefore continued to be imported from Britain, following an established pattern.117 Although, thatch appears to have still been the most common roofing material in much of rural Ireland as late as the 1840s,118 slate was used in the cities and towns and among those with higher incomes in rural areas, and it was also used more extensively in districts with slate quarries, even for poorer dwellings. Although native slate production had been common at the beginning of the nineteenth century, already by 1845 Wilkinson noted that ‘Ireland at present time derives the greater part of her supply of slates from Wales’.119 The important slate quarries at this point were located at Killaloe in Co. Tipperary, Valentia in Co. Kerry, Benduff in Co. Cork and at Ashford Bridge in Co. Wicklow. The Wicklow quarries went out of business in the construction downturn in 1850,120 while the others were only worked intermittently thereafter. The Valencia quarry had been established in 1816 by the Knight of Kerry and then worked at intervals by others subsequently. By 1852 there were about 120 employed there with many of the tradesmen and overseers being brought in from Wales. Valencia slate was more suited to the production of large slabs, much of which was exported to Britain where it was used in railway stations, for shelving and billiard tables, while the waste was worked into small roofing slates in the 1850s and 1860s which were shipped along the coast to towns in counties Kerry, Clare and Limerick, until the 1870s when the trade was displaced by Welsh competition.121



171

By 1904 the Victoria Slate Quarries in Tipperary, the Ormond Quarries in Kilkenny and Killaloe Quarries were still operational.122 The Killaloe Quarry was probably the most successful. Opened first in 1826 by the Mining Company of Ireland, it employed up to 700 in the 1830s. Rynne attributes this success to its access to the River Shannon, which provided access to Dublin (via the Grand Canal system) and other urban centres, including nearby Limerick, all of which helped overcome the high cost of transport experienced by more isolated quarries.123 Killaloe slates were used by the Board of Works for public buildings, for most of the workhouses in the south and west, and also on military barracks, churches, banks, railway stations and artisan dwellings all over Ireland. Slabs suitable for cisterns and tanks were exported to England. In the second half of the nineteenth century much smaller numbers were employed with reports of between 50 and 155, depending on the extent of demand.124 It is evident from the UK mineral statistics that the Irish slate trade declined in the decades leading up to partition when most of the remaining quarries shut down. Killaloe was one of the two remaining quarries still operational in 1923.125 Productivity gains were slow in construction during the nineteenth century. Timber was sawn mechanically increasingly during the second half of the nineteenth century, replacing the slow laborious handwork of sawyers, while joinery shops facilitated further mechanisation within the timber trades. The development of extensive steam-driven saw mills and joinery works in Dublin to process imported timber for the Dublin market and the country trade was a notable feature of the trade during the 1860s and 1870s.126 In the city of Belfast alone, there were at least eight steam engines employed in saw mills.127 Machines could also be applied to cutting stone and brick making became more industrialised. Some idea of the geography of builders’ works can be deduced from the factory returns of 1870. Table 8.10 reveals significant more concentration of workshops etc supplying construction in Dublin than other locations. Moreover, most of these workshops were located in only six counties: Dublin, Derry, Antrim, Cork, Tyrone and Down.128 The table also indicates that the processing of wood was the field of construction, which was most amenable to mechanisation. The far greater concentration of brick and tile works in east Ulster in Table 8.10 perhaps reflects the greater cost competitiveness of brick over stone in that region. At least five steam engines were utilised in Belfast alone for brick and tile making in 1871.129 Figures for factories and workshops engaged in construction activities in 1907 suggest an increase in mechanisation, although this may be simply a consequence of improved coverage by the Factory Inspectors (see Table 8.11). This suggests some increase in the mechanisation of aspects of the timber trade in particular. It also indicates a growing share of the construction workforce working off site in various workshops which presumably raised productivity somewhat.130 However, compared to Britain relatively fewer people were to be found in such workshops, implying that productivity gains from mechanisation

172



Table 8.10 Number of workshops, etc. connected with building and total employment in 1870 Location

Carpentry/ joinery

Furniture

Antrim Armagh Cavan Cork Donegal Down Dublin Fermanagh Londonderry Louth Sligo Tipperary Tyrone

13 1

4 1

8 3 15 2 3 2 12

7 2 7 32 1 3

Ireland

59

Marble/ stone

8 5

Other

Employment

8 1 1 15

2

2 8

258 4 4 225 6 318 1,502 7 295 92 23 63 217

18

75

3,201

1 7

7

22

7

11 7

3 4 68

Brick/ tile

15

Source: BPP 1871, lxii, Return of manufacturing establishments under the factory and workshop acts, pp. 301–315. Note: Furniture includes cabinet making. Brick and tiles have been included here, which in original return were incorporated into ‘miscellaneous manufactures’. This return in the Irish case appears to be less complete than in Britain so comparisons need to be drawn cautiously, but it probably includes the larger Irish concerns at least.

were probably harder to achieve in Ireland, with a falling population and a much greater share living in dispersed locations compared to Great Britain. However, in the largest urban centres, Belfast and Dublin, there is evidence of improvements in productivity and the application of machinery. Cockerill has argued that important gains in productivity were made from the application of machinery off site, while the development of specialist contractors, competitive tendering, standardisation of materials and new materials and techniques, better supervision by site managers and foremen, professional costing and design collectively tended to improve productivity among the larger Belfast firms. It seems probable that this was also the case in Dublin at least. The influence of larger timber and construction firms on the rural construction scene in Ireland requires further research. Large saw mills and joinery works in the larger cities may have supplied rural areas, and some of these urban companies fulfilled many contracts outside Belfast and Dublin.131 If timber particularly, but also brick supplies handled in more mechanised works in the largest cities benefited builders who consumed them in provincial locations, most builders outside the major cities must have found it much more difficult to achieve significant productivity gains on site. In more dispersed locations, specialisation was far less feasible.


173

Table 8.11 Return of employment in factories and workshops connected with construction in 1907 Location Dublin Cork Belfast Londonderry


Ireland

Boxes 721 151 452 12

Furniture

Clay/stone

1,551 267 1,513 31

1,222 324 1,028 187

Wood 2,889 898 2,049 292

Total 6,383 1,640 5,042 522

1,336

3,362

2,761

6,128

13,587

Great Britain

44,670

12,884

168,375

140,298

482,227

United Kingdom

46,006

132,246

171,136

146,426

495,814

Source: Compiled from BPP 1910, lxxxiii summary of employment in non-textile factories (1907) and BPP 1911, lxxxix summary of employment in workshops (1907).

V If timber imports are used as a rough indicator, capital formation in the Irish economy at large appears to have been relatively limited during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. If the decades leading to 1815 look impressive from an eighteenth-century perspective, they look far less so when viewed retrospectively from the nineteenth century. However, from 1825 to the peak of 1845–46, there was a steady rise in capital formation. The benefits of growing agricultural exports to Great Britain to large and medium farmers in particular stands out as one of the potential explanations for this steady rise,132 combined with increasing public investment from the early 1830s alongside the beginning of industrialisation in east Ulster and the development of the railway network. All of this reflects the significant deepening of capital formation within the Irish economy from the second quarter of the nineteenth century, compared to the previous century. Although there were improvements in the quality of dwellings built for the urban working classes during the second half of the nineteenth century in Belfast, in particular, and for rural labourers from the 1880s, a more notable feature of the entire period was the expansion and improvement of the betterquality housing stock for the rural middle classes and landlords throughout the period (whose incomes were derived directly or indirectly from agriculture), with the industrial and service sector middle classes also boosting demand in urban contexts. The growth in public and private investment in non-residential buildings from the 1830s onwards is also noteworthy, which progressively increased the depth of capital formation in the Irish economy between the late 1820s and the eve of the First World War, most particularly during the years between 1892 and 1913, which marked the most intense phase of construction and capital formation during the period of the Union. This construction upturn in the 1890s incorporates the final phase of expansion in east Ulster associated with industrial development, but after the turn


174


of the century the improved condition of agriculture and the better prospects of owner occupiers resulting from the land acts encouraged more long-term investment in rural dwellings and in agricultural buildings, while state and local authority initiatives in the construction of labourers’ dwellings, philanthropy, speculative building for the expanding middle classes and a general expansion of services collectively shifted the centre of gravity in construction at the end of the nineteenth century from Ulster to Munster and Leinster, where agriculture and services dominated economic activity.133 While Ireland broadly followed the major upturns and downturns in Great Britain’s construction industry during the Union and its timber supply was exposed to the same exogenous factors as the rest of the UK, the relatively greater share of agriculture in Irish GDP relative to the rest of the UK meant that demand for construction services in Ireland was influenced more by issues relating to agriculture throughout the period between 1801 and 1921. Conversely industry contributed far less to Irish capital formation and economic development than it did in Great Britain and the other major European economies. It was only in parts of Ulster, where the construction of dwellings for the industrial working class in large numbers alongside a much smaller number of up-market dwellings of middle-class employees and owners, combined with the construction of factories and warehouses and other buildings to service the needs of the industrial sector, that industrial development had a marked impact on both the shape the emerging urban landscape and the local economy. In both cases, in contrast to Great Britain, these influences in an Irish context were much more temporary and confined geographically.


Conclusion

In the final analysis, this account demonstrates that the impact of the British industrial revolution on Ireland was a mixed story. On the one hand it brought many benefits to the more successful industries which utilised British technologies, capital, markets and trade networks, and it brought Irish consumers high-quality industrial products at reasonable prices. On the other hand it resulted in the decline of a number of Irish industries, which were unable to cope with British competition, contributing ultimately to emigration and regional economic decline in parts of the south. As in the rest of Europe in this period, Irish industrial development was geographically highly concentrated. As a consequence of the intense concentration of industrial activity in east Ulster the population of Belfast rose dramatically from roughly 25,000 in the first decade of the nineteenth century to 386,947 in 1911, which was quite exceptional by Irish standards. At this stage, Belfast had become Ireland’s premier port and accounted for about two-thirds of Irish industrial exports.1 During the Union, greater industrial development in the six counties of Ulster, which later became Northern Ireland, created a more mixed economy than in the rest of Ireland, with more employment opportunities there for both men and women. This is reflected in a far more modest level of population decline between 1841 and 1926 in the six Ulster counties which became Northern Ireland than in the rest of the country. From 1891 population in these six counties actually increased.2 The uneven benefits of industrial development in Ireland in geographical terms between 1801 and 1921 may go a long way to explaining why southern nationalists and northern unionists have such different views on Irish and British industrial history in this period. Industry shaped the life world of a significant part of the Irish population between 1801 and 1921 and the expansion of working-class communities in this period, notably in Belfast, but also in other Irish cities, towns and industrial villages, was perhaps the most significant social impact of industrial development.3 A small but influential industrial middle class also began to make its presence felt not just in industry, but in shaping emerging urban landscapes, in philanthropy and in politics.4 These aspects of the industrial story are beyond the scope of this study but the underlying economic history of Irish industry explored in this book provides an important background to the material forces


176

Conclusion

shaping these new social formations, which need to be more fully incorporated into Irish social history.5 If recent accounts of the British industrial revolution have emphasised a slower pace of economic development,6 growth in the Irish industrial sector was even slower still. The available statistical evidence suggests limited industrial output growth in absolute terms between 1800 and 1840, as modest growth in linen, engineering, food and drink, paper and construction more than offset decline in woollen, cotton, tanning and glass.7 In this period, the high costs of transport continued to provide protection for many industries at a local level from competition from producers in Britain and the larger Irish urban centres, despite the shift to free trade. It still took between four and five days to move goods traffic between Dublin and Galway and by 1845 there was still not even 70 miles of railway in operation in Ireland.8 By the mid-nineteenth century, certain Irish industries had succumbed to British competition, most notably the cotton and woollen industries, leather and glass. But there was no widespread or ‘rapid industrial decay’ following the removal of the last of the union duties in 1824 as Greene suggests.9 Ireland’s industrial development between the Union and the Famine depended more than British industry on processing raw materials produced by the agricultural sector. With much lower labour costs than the rest of the United Kingdom, Ireland could provide raw materials derived from agriculture at lower costs to its industrial sector. These included corn and its derivatives for the brewing, distilling, milling, malt and baking industries and flax for the linen industry. The food and drink industries remained more concentrated in the south throughout the period in question but these agro-based industries were capital intensive, rather than labour intensive. The food and drink industries also yielded relatively lower added value compared to the more labour-intensive textile, clothing and shipbuilding industries which became progressively concentrated in Ulster during the second half of the nineteenth century, spreading the benefits of industrial development more widely across the social spectrum. In south in contrast the industrial workforce was too small to make a wider impression on economic development. This book has placed much importance on the lack of mineral resources in Ireland (notably coal) as part of the explanation for the significantly lower level of industrial development in Ireland compared to Great Britain, where mineral resources played a significant role in shaping the character of the industrial sector. The abundance of these natural resources in Scotland, for example, facilitated the transformation of its industrial sector between 1750 and 1850; an extensive iron industry emerged as new technology enabled it to convert its rich indigenous geological resources into pig iron, using its own coal reserves which developed as an industry in its own right. Johnson and Kennedy point out that all the first generation of industrial countries (Britain, Belgium, Germany and the US) were well endowed with mineral resources, which provided income, exports and cheap fuel for other industries. Natural resources gave these countries significant advantages over countries like Ireland, which lacked them. The great constellation industries processing iron and steel which developed around the coalfields in


Conclusion

177

Britain were also of limited consequence in Ireland. The absence of substantial coal and iron ore deposits therefore excluded Ireland from following the paths to industrial development pursued by England Scotland and Wales.10 The amount of engineering and foundry work undertaken in Ireland appears to have increased between the Union and the Famine. This industry became more specialised and regionally concentrated during the second half of the nineteenth century with textile engineering located predominantly in Belfast, and railway engineering in Dublin. Most of the general engineering works and iron foundries which did not specialise went into decline from the 1870s in the face of competition from specialist producers located in Britain. By the beginning of the twentieth century the mining, engineering and metal sectors in Ireland were relatively insignificant in a wider UK context. Although some important engineering firms emerged, as a sector, Irish engineering was relatively unimportant by UK standards; shipbuilding, heavily concentrated in Belfast, was the major exception. Against a background of rising world trade, Pollard and Robertson identify proximity to major shipping centres, cheap supplies of iron, steel, coal and machinery and labour supply as the major factors which made the rivers in the north of England and Scotland attractive to shipbuilders.11 The Belfast shipbuilding industry was closely linked to this heavy engineering zone in northern Britain, only separated from cheap supplies of iron, steel and coal by a narrow stretch of water. Belfast enjoyed all the advantages of the other shipbuilders in this region, and could draw with ease on the external economies of the Clyde, while also enjoying all the benefits of British demand in a period when British shipping interests dominated world trade. When this was combined with the comparative advantage Belfast enjoyed in terms of lower unskilled labour costs and greater economies of scale, it can be seen that the conditions for the growth of shipbuilding in Belfast were not unpromising. However, it took entrepreneurs and company leaders with particular flare and ability to capitalise on such advantages. From the eighteenth century to the First World War, the linen industry took centre stage as Ireland’s premier industry and primary industrial export. Why was the linen industry relatively more successful in Ireland than in the rest of Europe? An assessment made by a committee of major linen manufacturers in 1874 highlighted … the encouragement [linen] received after the repressive and ruinous measures which … resulted in the practical extinction of the woollen trade; the deservedly high character of the quality of the material produced; the adaptability and capability of the soil for the growing of flax: the production of flax in fair quantity, the industrious habits of the people; the abundance of labour; the comparative immunity the linen trade has hitherto enjoyed from combinations and strikes; and the impulse given by the Cotton Famine during the American war to the production of linen fabrics.12 Clark (in 1913) suggested favourable climatic conditions for bleaching and spinning fine yarn and cheap relatively unorganised labour were the chief


178

Conclusion

factors which led to the concentration of the UK linen industry in the north of Ireland.13 Decades earlier, Reade, the director of York St., also viewed ‘special climatic advantages’ as important for the higher class of goods.14 This book has borne out the importance of a number of these factors but clearly there were others of consequence. The accumulation of capital by Irish bleachers and merchants through the exploitation of domestic producers from 1700 until well into the nineteenth century was an important feature of the early development of the industry. The resistance of flax to mechanisation gave Ireland advantages over Britain in terms of labour costs in the cultivation of flax, its preparation, spinning and weaving. While linen bleachers pioneered wet spinning in Ireland, entrepreneurs and capital drawn from other sectors and areas, notably from Britain and the declining Irish cotton industry, also featured strongly among the first generation of wet spinners. With improved marketing techniques, greater productivity, and the growth of the ‘making up’ trade between the 1850s and the First World War, manufacturers in Ulster managed to increase their share of the world market for linen at a time when the industry in much of Europe was contracting. The potential significance of the Irish Diaspora as customers for Irish linen in the USA in particular, but also throughout the British Empire has only briefly been alluded to in this book. We will understand the history of the industry much better when further research is done on the changing pattern of consumption of Irish linen on the international market. On the production side, it is clear that Ulster manufacturers were willing to invest more capital in the industry, relative to their British and European competitors. This gave them the edge over international rivals in terms of productivity, while greater economies of agglomeration were achieved in east Ulster than anywhere else in the world, so that a greater variety of linens could be acquired in Belfast. Moreover, nobody could challenge Ulster’s supremacy in finishing, making up and marketing of medium and fine linens. Although there were certainly many problems in the European linen industry between 1870 and the First World War, highlighted by Ollerenshaw,15 there were also many opportunities which Ulster manufacturers were able to capitalise on more successfully than their international rivals. A number of the large vertically integrated linen firms in Ulster knew more than anybody else about all aspects of the industry from purchasing flax in Russia or Belgium right through all the manufacturing processes in east Ulster to marketing cloth in the great urban centres in Britain, the USA and elsewhere. However, in the post-war era all this counted for little as linen went out of fashion and manufacturers found it increasingly harder to compete in cost terms with other textiles; the life cycle of the industry thus entered its terminal phase. This book has not borne out O’Hearn’s conclusion that the Irish linen industry was too peripheral ‘to induce development of the broader regional economy’.16 According to Crawford, contemporaries believed that Ulster had become the wealthiest province of Ireland by the early nineteenth century, largely as a consequence of the rapid development of the linen industry in the eighteenth


Conclusion

179

century, despite the relatively poorer quality of the land in the province.17 The linen industry does not support the contention that Irish industrial interests were subordinated to those of Britain. Instead, it has been argued that the privileged position of Irish linen within the British market and its colonies was an important feature of the development of the industry in the eighteenth century, while it was one of the Irish industries which benefited from free trade in the nineteenth century. O’Hearn’s conclusions on the supposed semiperipheral nature of the industry are simply not credible given that it employed a higher share of the Irish population by the beginning of the twentieth century than the cotton industry employed in Great Britain. The fatal flaw in world systems theory as promulgated by O’Hearn is that it fails to recognise the agency of Irish economic actors in shaping developments in certain industries since the theory over plays the impact of the core industrial regions in Britain in shaping everything that happened in Ireland. In the final analysis the linen industry was not semi-peripheral (as O’Hearn suggests) but semicore and it turns world-system theory on its head, since ultimately Irish linen manufacturers out performed their British and European rivals. His arguments in relation to the Irish cotton industry are somewhat more compelling.18 But cotton was always much less important in Ireland than linen and although its rise and fall was an important episode in Irish industrial history, it cannot be taken as an exemplar of the industrial sector as a whole. Census data between 1841 and 1911 imply that labour inputs into the Irish industrial sector began to contract certainly from the 1840s and possibly even from the 1830s. The contraction of the numbers engaged in domestic textile production was the major factor here, but the clothing industry also became more mechanised and centralised, despite the importance of homework and outwork. The late mechanisation of the linen, woollen and clothing industries considerably reduced the labour force in both textiles and dress. However, other industries experienced a growth in employment levels during this period (see Table C.1 below). This expansion in employment in industries unconnected with textiles and clothing was accompanied by a growth in productivity. Moreover, the evidence from the factory returns between 1835 and 1907 indicates that the workforce employed in factories and workshops connected with textiles increased from 9571 persons in 1835 to 75,692 persons in 1907. The Irish share of the entire UK textile workforce employed in factories and workshops thus increased from a mere 2.7 per cent in 1835 to 7 per cent in 1907 (see Appendix 9). The First UK Census of Production in 1907 put the Irish share of UK textile employment slightly higher at 7.6 per cent of total UK textile employment.19 Ireland therefore was not simply an exporter of agricultural produce; in the first decades of the twentieth century it was a net exporter of textiles, despite its proximity to Britain, while also exporting food, drink, tobacco, ships in addition to a small range of other industrial commodities.20 Comparisons with Britain generally cast Irish industrial performance in a relatively unfavourable light. Johnson, however, points out that Britain may not


180

Conclusion

be the most appropriate comparison. When pre-partition Ireland is viewed from a broader European perspective, he notes that its industrial sector was by no means backward; since 23 per cent of the economically active population were involved either in manufacturing industry or construction in 1911, which placed Ireland in the middle rank of industrial countries such as Portugal, the Scandinavian countries, Italy and the Netherlands, all of which were in the band from 22 to 25 per cent. Ireland was ahead of Austria, Spain, Hungary or any of the nations of Eastern Europe in his comparison.21 A more recent estimate of net output in Irish industry in 1907 set against a GDP estimate for the same year, however, creates a less favourable impression of Irish industrial development in a wider European context; the share of national income derived from industry in Ireland was only 20 per cent, which was somewhat behind Denmark, Finland and Italy which were all roughly in the range between roughly 24 and 26 per cent, and far behind Germany, Britain and France which fell between 32 and 38 per cent.22 Industry was therefore less important to the Irish economy than in Britain or all the more developed continental European economies. Although the industrial workforce of roughly 500,000 or more persons at the beginning of the twentieth century was smaller than what it had been in the early 1840s, productivity was significantly higher in a number of industries. It seems reasonable to assume that the textile and clothing sector collectively experienced some modest growth in net output between the 1840s and the early twentieth century, given the capital investment and growth in productivity associated with factory production in both sectors. The increase in the industrial labour force outside textiles and clothing between the 1840s and the eve of the First World War, accompanied by some productivity growth, implies that overall there was some growth in Irish industrial output between the 1840s and the early twentieth century in absolute terms, which was one of the factors contributing to the rise in Irish living standards in this period. Greater focus needs to be given by future researchers to the more dynamic aspects of the Irish industrial sector which underpinned these developments, notably its relationship with the markets of Britain and North America.23

Table C.1 Industrial employment in Ireland as returned in census, 1841–1911 Year

Industrial class

% female

Textiles and dress

Other industries

1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911

1,097,900 796,800 667,172 538,135 691,509 656,410 639,413 613,397

63.1 56.2 51.2 46.3 38 38.4 36.5 29.1

898,100 600,600 462,974 344,076 290,860 283,313 247,392 200,717

199,800 196,200 204,198 194,059 400,649 373,097 392,021 412,680


Appendix 1


The net supply of flax for the Irish linen industry, 1848–1921 (tons) Year

Irish flax

Imports

Exports

Net supply

1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888

12,930 14,920 22,427 33,861 35,462 43,862 35,606 23,428 18,791 14,475 17,583 21,576 23,760 22,568 24,258 42,646 64,506 39,561 40,991 35,392 24,987 29,569 30,771 12,929 17,089 19,843 18,037 22,430 27,140 22,213 22,176 19,144 25,532 28,332 20,622 18,292 15,662 20,578 23,379 15,106 20,598

4,665 9,002 9,842 7,815 7,336 8,725 6,990 7,506 9,807 12,409 8,791 9,248 9,521 7,389 12,093 7,530 10,273 12,336 10,484 6,680 12,033 9,666 20,146 31,749 24,306 25,928 24,389 21,393 14,678 21,086 17,641 21,017 18,342 16,378 21,679 16,952 22,949 20,888 16,310 21,247 24,395

1,742 1,074 1,457 4,001 8,189 4,974 7,984 7,818 3,954 3,862 7,899 5,054 6,583 7,900 7,992 11,578 12,397 17,768 12,091 9,400 9,178 3,871 9,543 6,805 4,718 5,563 7,339 6,988 4,812 7,829 6,409 5,132 5,409 6,020 6,347 5,325 5,430 4,391 4,029 4,380 3,352 (Continued on

15,853 22,848 30,812 37,675 34,609 47,613 34,612 23,116 24,644 23,022 18,475 25,770 26,698 22,057 28,359 38,598 62,382 34,129 39,384 32,672 27,842 35,364 41,374 37,873 38,508 40,208 35,087 36,835 37,006 35,470 33,408 35,029 38,465 38,690 35,954 29,919 33,181 37,075 35,660 31,973 41,641 next page)


182

Appendices

Year

Irish flax

Imports

Exports

1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921

19,366 20,201 13,763 9,691 15,382 21,508 12,193 10,292 7,272 6,724 7,158 10,181 13,275 11,242 8,628 9,341 10,872 12,024 11,647 7,922 7,158 8,876 11,240 12,922 13,439 8,792 10,162 15,404 16,271 18,252 14,270 16,652 5,210

28,063 24,547 30,337 29,068 28,543 26,881 35,506 36,650 37,715 34,440 40,145 31,563 28,785 29,727 38,168 33,024 40,063 37,332 46,201 32,511 42,828 41,168 37,517 48,124 45,865 41,356 37,282 39,632 37,942 10,157 11,967 12,221 9,895

4,053 4,940 4,950 3,246 4,422 4,367 5,253 4,565 4,446 3,634 3,438 3,789 3,839 4,129 3,487 3,446 2,771 3,276 3,845 4,242 4,587 4,057 4,279 4,859 4,205 5,034 6,514 6,503 3,643 1,012 2,355 3,107 4,197

Net supply 43,376 39,808 39,150 35,513 39,503 44,022 42,446 42,377 40,541 37,530 43,865 37,955 38,221 36,840 43,309 38,919 48,164 46,080 54,003 36,191 45,399 45,987 44,478 56,187 55,099 45,114 40,930 48,533 50,570 27,397 23,882 25,766 10,908

Sources: Irish native flax supply 1848–1912: annual Irish agricultural statistics of the Register General and the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. 1913– 21: annual reports of the Flax Supply Association (PRONI D. 2088/8/6 and 2088/8/8). Imports and exports for 1848–9: A. J. Warden, The Linen Trade, Ancient and Modern (London, 1864), p. 419. 1850–76: E. Boyle, ‘The Economic Development of the Irish Linen industry’, unpublished PhD, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1979), p. 257. 1877 onwards: annual reports of the Flax Supply Association in PRONI D. 2088/8/6 and 2088/8/8.

Appendix 2


Beer brewed in Ireland and the UK, 1856–1909 (gallons) Year

Ireland

UK

1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896

926,000 910,195 1,119,622 1,213,307 1,437,714 1,298,374 1,150,356 1,236,239 1,242,671 1,535,209 1,412,317 1,585,721 1,561,355

17,984,773 18,166,635 19,152,564 20,340,096 19,534,460 19,989,313 20,081,408 21,360,461 22,546,889 25,388,600 25,206,665 24,301,841 24,542,664

1,616,654 1,578,657 1,836,961 1,898,188 2,025,614 2,089,734 2,152,478 2,117,342 1,919,160 2,066,269 2,044,331 2,143,866 2,114,462 2,229,939 2,149,561 2,234,234 2,275,143 2,346,618 2,460,584 2,555,240 2,585,137 2,637,085 2,639,249 2,677,583 2,802,598 2,769,202

26,431,760 28,270,511 29,774,988 30,670,081 31,014,381 32,279,459 31,988,991 32,083,824 29,767,075 30,742,649 27,687,562 27,001,529 27,628,877 27,876,718 27,094,456 27,851,377 28,147,386 28,564,556 30,791,080 31,861,953 32,142,522 32,050,593 31,138,324 31,879,397 33,787,447 34,169,058 (Continued on next page)


184

Appendices

Year

Ireland

UK

1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909

2,857,245 2,949,790 3,041,009 3,149,142 3,214,698 3,324,282 3,371,594 3,205,970 3,275,309 3,395,786 3,434,425 3,351,326 3,567,941

35,600,049 36,468,077 37,063,680 36,369,790 36,013,392 35,978,699 35,323,350 34,404,287 34,109,263 34,352,313 34,491,415 33,348,258 32,947,252

Sources: 1856–1868: BPP 1870, xx, Report of the Commission on Inland Revenue on the duties under their management, 1856–1869, p. 398: number of barrels of beer brewed in the United Kingdom calculated according to the charge for licence duty in years ending 31March of the following year returned above. 1871–1880: BPP 1884–5, xxii, 28th Report of the Commission of Inland Revenue; statement showing the number of barrels of beer brewed estimated from the quantities of malt and sugar used in brewing. 1881–1901: National Archives, London Reports annually of Inland Revenue based on barrels of beer charged with duty with year ending 31 March of year following year returned above. 1901–1909: National Archives, London First Report of Customs and Excise for year ending 31 March 1910; number of barrels of home made beer calculated at the standard gravity of 1055º upon which duty was paid in year ending 31 March in year after year returned above.

Appendix 3


Coal production in the UK and Ireland (tons) Year

Ireland

UK

1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896

148,750 145,620 136,635 120,630 120,750 120,300 119,425 123,070 127,500 127,050 125,000 123,500 123,750 125,000 126,950 127,923 141,470 165,750 103,463 135,731 139,213 128,201 125,195 140,181 122,051 129,003 133,702 127,585 127,777 126,114 122,431 109,035 105,563 106,704 91,904 103,201 102,267 105,681 111,881 105,678 112,604 125,586 129,585

64,661,401 64,453,070 66,645,450 65,394,707 65,008,649 71,979,765 80,042,698 83,635,214 81,638,338 86,292,215 92,787,873 98,150,587 101,630,544 104,500,480 103,141,157 107,427,557 110,431,192 117,352,028 123,497,316 128,680,131 126,590,108 133,306,485 134,125,166 143,179,968 132,612,063 133,720,393 146,969,409 154,184,300 156,499,977 163,737,327 160,757,779 159,351,418 157,518,482 162,119,812 169,935,219 176,916,724 181,614,288 185,479,126 181,786,871 164,325,795 188,277,525 189,661,362 195,361,260

Irish share (%) 0.23 0.23 0.21 0.18 0.19 0.17 0.15 0.15 0.16 0.15 0.13 0.13 0.12 0.12 0.12 0.12 0.13 0.14 0.08 0.11 0.11 0.1 0.09 0.1 0.09 0.1 0.09 0.08 0.08 0.08 0.08 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.05 0.06 0.06 0.06 0.06 0.06 0.06 0.07 0.07 (Continued on next page)


186

Appendices

Year

Ireland

UK

Irish share (%)

1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920

135,025 129,965 125,420 124,699 103,029 108,737 102,812 105,637 90,335 93,662 99,704 103,158 89,392 79,802 84,564 90,307 82,521 92,400 84,557 89,833 95,646 92,001 92,414 107,961

202,129,931 202,054,516 220,094,781 225,181,300 219,046,945 227,095,042 230,334,469 232,428,272 236,128,936 251,067,628 267,830,962 261,528,795 263,774,312 264,433,028 271,891,899 260,416,338 287,430,473 265,664,393 253,206,081 256,375,366 248,499,240 227,748,654 229,779,517 229,532,081

0.07 0.06 0.06 0.06 0.05 0.05 0.04 0.05 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.05

Sources: BPP 1894, lxxvii, Return showing the annual output of coal in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland respectively from the year 1853 inclusive. For annual reference to turn of the century see P. Cockton, Subject Catalogue to the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 105–6. Annually thereafter: BPP 1901, lxxxviii, General Summary of the Mineral Produce of the United Kingdom to BPP 1921, xli, General Summary of the Mineral Produce of the United Kingdom.

Appendix 4 Export of machinery from Belfast (tons)


Year 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900

Machinery 622 764 891 1,213 1,483 1,774 2,132 2,710 1,770 1,077 818 1,756 1,657 2,005 2,472 2,126 2,404 2,002 1,633 1,597

3,552 3,384 3,562 3,672 3,445 3,610 4,906 4,654 3,929 3,828 4,088 4,277 5,212 5,662 6,435 6,735 6,963 (Continued on next page)


188

Appendices

Year

Machinery

1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921

6,078 6,809 7,267 7,316 9,897 10,235 10,224 10,527 9,639 9,915 9,939 11,504 14,304 9,761 8,832 10,854 9,110 9,443 12,428 14,077 9,958

Sources: National Library, Ir. 387 b. 2; Belfast Harbour Commissioners, Imports and Exports.

Appendix 5


Shipping launched in Ireland and the UK, 1800–1854 (tons) Year

Ireland

UK

1800 1801 1802 1803 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 1832 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839

1,680 1,383 2,324 2,418 1,611 1,212 1,687 1,838 1,235 1,643 1,331 1,655 1,952 2,082 1,973 1,922 1,985 3,179 2,283 1,606 1,673 2,323 1,554 1,665 1,815 2,450 2,653 2,450 2,005 1,313 2,564 2,425 1,909 2,218 2,505 2,521 1,917 3,291 2,617 4,084

86,075 102,943 84,676 81,263 86,748 89,091 66,691 58,076 50,928 63,151 91,083 122,479 118,363 93,144 88,663 76,635 75,532 83,852 90,180 89,212 100,367 116,635 86,509 131,171 157,255 181,301 (Continued on next page)


190

Appendices

Year

Ireland

UK

1840 1841 1842 1843 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854

3,115 4,430 4,051 2,465 3,564 2,618 2,726 2,884 2,430 2,147 1,929 968 2,450 2,694 9,512

211,289 159,578 129,929 83,097 94,995 123,230 125,350 145,834 122,552 117,953 133,695 149,637 167,491 203,171 196,942

Sources: The annual references for the first decade of the nineteenth century for Ireland can be found in BPP 1810–11, v, An account of the number of vessels with the amount of their tonnage which have been built and registered in Ireland. Thereafter they are in P. Cockton, Subject Catalogue to the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (Cambridge, 1988), vol. 1, pp. 353–4; vol. 2, p. 208.

Throughout this period the amount of ships built and registered in the UK were recorded as a consequence of the Shipping and Navigation Act of 1786, which established a general register under the control of the Board of Customs, which was compulsory for all ships over 15 tons burden. A combination of measures were used to establish the carrying capacity in the period up to 1855, including estimates based on length and breadth, and from 1836 a cubic measure of capacity became optional until 1855 when it became compulsory. This measure was based on the registered carrying capacity of the hull (with 100 cubic feet being one ton register).1 Before 1855, the figures at least give a rough idea of the Irish share of UK shipbuilding (see Appendix 5) with no growth of consequence in the Irish industry during this period.2 To construct a comprehensive series for the amount of merchant shipping launched from Irish shipyards during the Union, the figures have been drawn annually from the British parliamentary papers. The Finance and Navigation accounts record annual figures for shipping launched and registered in the United Kingdom down to 1854. The series constructed here between 1800 and 1854 does not include tonnage built for foreigners.3 This would have been much less important in a UK context in this period than it was to become in the second half of the nineteenth century. In Ireland it was of even less consequence as very little shipping was built for foreigners.

Appendix 6 Shipping launched in Ireland and the, UK 1855–1921 (tonnage)


Year 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895

Ireland 10,123 7,564 6,178 4,409 8,126 11,582 9,629 8,619 10,976 11,482 9,378 8,096 10,274 4,757 9,525 6,825 7,903 10,919 1,896 12,364 14,268 4,311 8,936 9,021 11,807 9,004 13,893 20,228 28,209 22,479 26,806 18,792 16,955 36,145 54,559 53,854 71,643 72,550 55,620 63,068 62,746

UK 349,559 278,639 286,774 236,554 212,744 225,871 208,326 261,932 378,307 454,336 444,469 369,238 302,375 353,191 385,738 393,387 390,978 474,678 453,263 590,990 459,778 378,006 447,484 468,237 405,275 472,511 603,540 782,604 891,946 585,935 435,550 330,688 373,232 572,048 854,003 809,201 809,193 798,756 582,203 667,009 643,482 (Continued on next page)


192

Appendices

Year

Ireland

UK

1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920

43,267 73,057 86,076 83,203 97,631 51,226 107,013 78,436 80,326 89,871 88,432 95,252 99,434 73,849 91,778 108,705 102,651 79,788 104,944 13,608 9,008 105,124 95,135 140,725 92,663

723,503 635,265 863,876 930,550 932,749 972,133 950,232 758,308 882,212 1,037,868 1,148,560 1,036,967 593,213 620,594 698,469 1,107,796 1,096,929 1,200,489 1,035,172 410,154 423,892 771,827 826,492 1,019,225 1,277,954

Source: annual references in the nineteenth century can be found in P. Cockton, Subject catalogue to the House of Commons parliamentary papers (Cambridge, 1988), vol. 1 pp. 353–4. vol. 2 p. 208. annually thereafter from BPP 1901 Lxxv Number and net tonnage of mercantile vessels built at the principal ports in the UK to BPP 1921 xxxiv, Number and net tonnage of mercantile vessels built at the principal ports in the UK. Note: this table only includes mercantile vessels, including any built for foreigners. In years during the First World War information on foreign orders was not available but is likely to have been limited or non-existent. Naval vessels are not included which were not of any consequence in Ireland for most of this period, except during the First World War.

The records of ships built in the United Kingdom (including Ireland) become more consistent from 1855.1 Steam vessels under the new measure, had the machinery and bunkering spaces deducted which yielded a net measure of carrying capacity. Sailing vessels continued to utilise a gross tonnage measure until the Merchant Shipping Act of 1867 allowed seamen’s living spaces to be deducted, thus also introducing a net estimate for sailing vessels. Moreover, from 1855, tonnage built in the UK for foreigners were also recorded. In most years there were no ships built for foreigners in Ireland, but it became a progressively important element in shipbuilding on the larger island. The warships built for foreigners have been deducted from the UK total, as has the single warship built in Ireland for foreigners in 1892.2 So the series constructed here deals with merchant tonnage only.

Appendices

193

There are some anomalies in the official data. A note in the Navigation accounts series records:


The return for the years 1867, 1868 and 1869 denote the number and tonnage of newly built vessels which were first registered in those years … in the returns for the years 1870 and 1871 the number and tonnage of vessels, the building of which was completed in these years, are given, whether registered or not.3 Another minor anomaly is that in some years the criteria for inclusion changes slightly. In 1871, for example, vessels under 50 tons were excluded, while by 1875 it is evident from the returns for individual ports that vessels under 50 tons were included. But these constituted too small a share of output to radically alter the general picture.

Appendix 7 Timber imports into Ireland, 1801–1921 (loads)


Year 1801 1802 1803 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 1832 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 1843

Foreign

Total

Interest (%)

61,204 96,055 105,958 90,686 95,131 82,332 86,083 14,460 31,783 93,988 93,476 76,001 71,287 40,971 92,401 55,451 34,995 59,473 85,592 53,552 47,652 75,719 54,123 78,039 104,443 135,267 86,611 99,092 113,719 98,370 101,807 126,345 140,884 116,989 110,691 128,100 129,322 120,203 144,407 153,984 161,686 134,495 140,130

4 4.5 4

5 5 4 4.6 4.5 5.5 5.5 5 5 (Continued on next page)


Appendices Year

Foreign

1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894

160,661 237,006 233,803 135,538 182,925 106,041 118,536 154,774 125,780 140,347 178,815 107,977 156,755 192,568 191,975 209,121 226,267 256,184 178,107 189,525 186,307 194,761 226,471 225,839 214,418 243,686 238,180 260,452 229,177 194,500 205,103 181,029 241,461 235,513 231,225 180,938 214,243 213,907 228,057 242,207 225,066 220,995 190,294 211,388 205,725 275,931 272,662 222,275 302,104 253,939 278,208

Total

195

Interest (%) 4 4.5 6.5 5 4.6 3.2 4.1 5.3 5.3 5.9 7.3 4.6 3.9 4.7 5.4 3.3 5.3 7.4 4.8 6.6 3.3 3.5 3.8 4.6 4 4.9 5.5 4.2 3.8 4 3.9 4.2 3.6 3.5 4 4.8 4 3.9 3.8 3.9 3.9 4 4.4 4.8 4.2 3.6 4.1 3.3 (Continued on next page)


196

Appendices

Year

Foreign

1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921

292,369 290,347 399,040 285,214 298,069 321,478 302,161 301,092 360,656 299,170 260,427

Total

336,614 280,254 336,722 342,434 273,300 304,054 384,875 322,856 325,571 324,387 262,320 204,635 168,280 57,405 77,961 188,353 199,873 110,675

Interest (%) 4 3.7 4.1 4.7 4.6 4.6 4.2 4.2 4 4 4.8 5.6 4.6 4.3 4.4 4.3 4.4 5 5.7 6 5.5 6 7 6.4

Sources: The method used to compile this series is explained in Chapter 8. Interest rates taken from F.G. Hall, The Bank of Ireland 1783–1946 (Dublin, 1949), pp. 381–390.

Appendix 8


Irish timber imports by port 1857–1916 (loads) Year

Dublin

Belfast

Cork

Limerick

1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899

46,748 60,037 55,217 73,065 86,324 66,778 58,913 49,202 55,684 61,806 69,447 67,378 68,321 71,059 80,433 97,321 81,957 67,127 67,325 98,300 80,249 89,539 71,057 75,329 62,786 88,016 91,201 73,284 89,299 70,083 72,562 70,434 88,140 85,522 84,676 81,959 82,803 96,776 84,760 84,215 111,970 73,791 95,917

42,666 38,061 29,323 45,408 45,511 31,916 42,118 49,509 43,655 67,411 44,709 53,220 54,416 58,671 63,716 64,877 56,143 77,577 57,352 79,140 82,580 77,233 61,739 86,849 88,988 75,644 82,342 80,643 75,836 66,771 90,741 77,629 112,426 121,604 91,432 153,731 104,475 117,373 128,822 136,393 192,928 139,905 134,168

19,063 16,510 22,798 26,638 32,011 13,844 25,312 20,072 21,994 21,513 22,816 20,928 27,782 23,050 20,922 27,437 20,842 23,531 22,665 24,800 25,424 20,257 16,393 15,784 23,590 23,242 24,024 28,452 21,686 20,746 16,106 21,127 33,840 30,512 21,873 29,622 27,252 29,913 30,007 34,651 45,836 36,136 27,372

14,320 12,893 12,613 11,802 15,613 14,124 5,979 10,169 11,745 10,300 5,761 8,322 14,106 16,780 13,074 16,116 14,866 15,124 11,457 14,856 19,515 18,819 14,902 14,030 13,297 10,881 14,687 18,330 11,993 10,715 10,297 13,210 15,352 10,444 5,907 11,293 11,537 12,429 18,116 11,347 16,723 15,475 12,628

Derry 12,737 14,649 11,612 18,052 14,978 11,752 16,236 13,319 13,403 11,677 15,208 12,112 16,990 11,734 16,074 13,198 13,686 13,185 12,456 14,707 18,843 16,842 10,042 14,459 13,900 16,588 14,335 15,365 11,032 14,033 14,794 14,705 16,518 24,050 9,297 15,097 13,919 12,608 19,518 12,079 20,194 9,836 17,353 (Continued on

Waterford 6,035 10,868 5,577 8,124 7,992 8,992 9,554 4,664 7,690 7,217 8,578 8,746 8,945 7,153 7,166 10,228 7,006 9,303 9,774 9,658 8,902 8,535 6,805 7,792 11,346 9,776 15,618 9,042 11,149 8,258 6,888 8,620 9,655 10,597 9,090 10,402 13,953 9,106 11,143 11,662 11,389 10,071 10,631 next page)


198

Appendices

Year

Dublin

Belfast

Cork

Limerick

Derry

Waterford

1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916

104,266 92,984 97,259 124,356 88,651 79,033 97,809 97,452 74,780 100,121 113,518 88,868 79,738 89,458 57,408 67,203 53,703

144,342 135,704 132,611 151,520 134,187 125,562 135,651 132,032 113,100 127,787 164,574 139,742 141,987 149,079 104,678 78,136 66,839

34,802 33,142 37,066 39,149 39,700 18,035 28,961 34,634 23,146 26,934 33,110 37,021 26,818 29,749 27,861 23,578 15,566

10,598 11,548 10,589 14,561 12,812 16,251 19,141 26,230 17,307 16,249 24,513 22,976 20,524 30,295 14,535 16,619 6,790

16,614 16,010 12,854 18,964 15,526 14,427 12,967 14,836 8,010 12,209 18,611 13,485 9,063 14,763 12,974 10,600 3,506

10,856 12,773 10,087 12,094 8,294 7,119 11,152 12,245 12,149 9,786 15,785 7,829 9,697 10,520 9,032 6,345 5,074

Source: Thom’s Directory (Dublin, 1858–1918). Includes loads of timber not ‘sawn’ in addition to ‘sawn and split’.

Appendix 9


Employment in textile factories in Ireland and the UK, 1835–1907 Year

Scotland

England

Ireland

UK

Irish % of UK

1835 1838 1847 1850 1856 1861 1867 1870 1874 1878 1885 1890 1895 1898 1901 1904 1907

50,180 59,312 67,243 75,688 77,432 95,055 111,606 127,214 154,919 136,213 152,279 154,591 146,819 139,839 137,948 133,035 135,571

294,933 348,509 455,042 495,707 572,077 642,607 669,674 718,051 783,022 777,703 813,824 858,252 855,064 823,969 821,267 822,451 875,960

9,571 14,870 22,591 24,687 32,988 38,872 72,963 61,965 67,744 61,630 68,158 71,788 73,868 72,762 70,138 70,892 75,692

354,684 422,691 544,876 596,082 682,497 776,534 854,243 907,230 1,005,685 975,546 1,034,261 1,084,631 1,075,751 1,036,570 1,029,353 1,026,378 1,087,223

2.7 3.5 4.1 4.1 4.8 5 8.5 6.8 6.7 6.3 6.6 6.6 6.9 7 6.8 6.9 7

Sources: W. Page, Commerce and Industry: Tables of Statistics for the British Empire from 1815 (London, 1919), pp. 228–9.


Notes

Introduction 1 N.G. Butlin, ‘A New Plea for the Separation of Ireland’, Journal of Economic History xxviii (1968), pp. 274–291. For the classic works on the industrial revolution, see the bibliography of N. Crafts, British Economic Growth During the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1985). 2 J. Press, The Footwear Industry in Ireland 1922–1973 (Dublin, 1989), pp. 18–22. 3 See, for example, B. Messenger, Picking Up the Linen Threads (Belfast, 1975) based on more recent oral testimony; T. Hunt, Portlaw, County Waterford 1825–76: Portrait of an industrial village and its cotton industry (Maynooth, 2000); M. Cohen Linen, Family and Community in Tullylish, County Down 1690–1914 (Dublin, 1997). D.S. McNiece, ‘Industrial villages of Ulster 1800–1900’ in P. Roebuck (ed.) Plantation to Partition: Essays in honour of J.L. McCracken (Belfast, 1981), pp. 172–190; S.A. Royle ‘Industrialization, Urbanisation and Urban Society in Post Famine Ireland c. 1850–1921’ in B.J. Graham and L.J. Proudfoot (eds) An Historical Geography of Ireland (London, 1993), pp. 255–292; A.C. Hepburn and B. Collins, ‘Industrial Society; the Structure of Belfast, 1901’, in P. Roebuck (ed.) Plantation to Partition; Essays in honour of JL McCracken (Belfast, 1981), pp. 210–228; M. Neill ‘Homeworkers in Ulster, 1850–1911’ in J. Holmes and D. Urquhart (eds) Coming into the Light: The work, politics and religion of women in Ulster 1840–1940 (Belfast, 1994), pp. 1–32. 4 Saorstat Eireann, Irish Free State, Official Handbook (Dublin, 1932). 5 R. Black, Economic Thought and the Irish Question 1817–1870 (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 140–141. 6 J. Behan, Why Ireland has No Manufactures (Dublin, 1881), pp. 6–9. 7 E. Blackburne, Causes of the Decadence of the Industries of Ireland (Dublin, 1881), p. 54. 8 E.R.R. Green, The Lagan Valley 1800–1850: A local history of the industrial revolution (London, 1949); W.A. McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland (Cranbury, 1984). 9 L.M. Cullen, An Economic History of Ireland since 1660 (London, 1972), p. 124. 10 J. Mokyr, Why Ireland Starved (London, 1985), p. 13. 11 A. Bielenberg and F. Geary, ‘Growth in Manufacturing Output in Ireland between the Union and the Famine: Some evidence’, Explorations in Economic History 43 (2006), pp. 119–152. 12 F. Geary, ‘The Act of Union, British–Irish trade, and pre-Famine de-industrialization’, Economic History Review 48 (1995), pp. 68–88. F. Geary, ‘Regional Industrial Structure and Labour Force Decline in Ireland between 1841 and 1851’, Irish Historical Studies 30 (1996), pp. 167–194; F. Geary, ‘Deindustrialization in Ireland to 1851: Some evidence from the Census’, Economic History Review 51 (1998), pp. 512–541.


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13 For regional industrial histories outside Ulster see A. Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution: Development or decline (Cork, 1993); M. Daly, Dublin the Deposed Capital: A social and economic history 1860–1914 (Cork, 1984), pp. 20–52. 14 See in particular M. Moss and J. Hume, Shipbuilders to the World: 125 years of Harland and Wolff (Belfast, 1986); P. Lynch and J. Vaizey, Guinness Brewery in the Irish Economy 1759–1876 (Cambridge, 1960); S.R. Dennison and O. Mac Donagh, Guinness 1886–1939: From incorporation to the Second World War (Cork, 1998). 15 W.H. Crawford, ‘The Political Economy of Linen: Ulster in the eighteenth century’, in C. Brady, M.O’Dowd and B. Walker (eds) Ulster: An illustrated history (London, 1989), pp. 134–136; D. Dickson, New Foundations: Ireland 1660–1800 (Dublin, 1987), pp. 100–103. 16 Dickson, New Foundations, pp. 116–24; L. Cullen, ‘Economic Development 1750– 1800’, in T. Moody and W. Vaughan (eds) A New History of Ireland, iv (Oxford, 1988), p. 182. 17 A. Longfield, ‘Irish Linen and Cotton Printing during the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 8 (1937), p. 33; S. Chapman, The Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1987), p. 60. D. Dickson, ‘Aspects of the Rise and Decline of the Irish Cotton Industry’, in L.M. Cullen and T.C. Smout (eds) Comparative Aspects of Scottish and Irish Economic History 1600–1900 (Edinburgh, 1978), pp. 104–114. 18 D. Dickson, ‘Death of a Capital? Dublin and the Consequences of Union’, Proceedings of the British Academy 107 (2001), pp. 111–31. 19 E. O’Malley, ‘The Decline of Irish Industry During the Nineteenth Century’, Economic and Social Review 13 (1981), pp. 21–42, E. O’Malley, Industry and Economic Development (Dublin, 1989), pp. 35–52. 20 C.Ó Gráda, Ireland: A new economy history 1780–1939 (Oxford, 1994), p. 275. 21 R. Green ‘Industrial Decline in the Nineteenth Century’ in L.M. Cullen, The Formation of the Irish Economy (Cork, 1968), p. 94. 22 O’Malley (1981), p. 41. 23 P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Problems of the European Linen Industry 1870–1914’ in M. Cohen (ed.) The Warp of Ulster’s Past (New York, 1997), pp. 191–210; P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Textiles and Regional Economic Decline: Northern Ireland 1914–70’, in C. Holmes and A. Booth (eds) Economy and Society; European industrialisation and its social consequences (Leicester, 1991), p. 79. A much earlier and largely unheralded thesis advancing this more pessimistic view of Ulster industrial entrepreneurs can be found in A. Caskey, ‘Entrepreneurs and Industrial Development in Ulster 1850–1914’, (unpublished M. Phil, University of Ulster, 1983). 24 D. O’Hearn, ‘Irish Linen: A peripheral industry’, in M. Cohen (ed.) The Warp of Ulster’s Past (New York, 1997), pp. 161–190. 25 K. Whelan, ‘Settlement and Society in Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in G. Dawe and J. Wilson Foster (eds) The Poet’s Place: Ulster literature and society, essays in honour of John Hewitt 1907–87 (Belfast, 1991), p. 56. 26 D. O’Hearn, ‘Innovation and the World-system Hierarchy: British subjugation of the Irish cotton industry 1780–1830’, American Journal of Sociology C 3 (1994), pp. 587–621. 27 For a bibliography containing the relevant works, see J. Gray, Spinning the Threads of Uneven Development: gender and industrialisation in Ireland during the long eighteenth century (Lanham, 2005); B. Collins, ‘Proto-industrialization and Pre-famine Emigration’, Social History 7 (1982), pp. 127–146. 28 E. Almquist, ‘Pre-famine Ireland and the Theory of European proto-Industrialization: Evidence from the 1841 census’, Journal of Economic History 39 (1979), pp. 699–719. L.A. Clarkson, ‘Ireland in 1841: Pre-industrial or Proto-industrial: Industrializing or De-industrializing?’ in S.C. Ogilvie and M. Cerman (eds) European Protoindustrialization (Cambridge 1996), pp. 67–84.


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29 Exceptions include P. Solar ‘The Birth and Death of European Flax, Hemp and Jute Spinning Firms: The Irish and Belgian cases’, in B. Collins and P. Ollerenshaw (eds) The European Linen Industry in Historical Perspective (Oxford, 2003), pp. 245–258; E. Boyle, ‘Vertical Integration and de-integration in the Irish Linen Industry’, in M. Cohen (ed.) The Warp of Ulster’s Past (New York, 1997), pp. 211–227. P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Problems of the European Linen Industry 1870–1914’, in M. Cohen (ed.) The Warp of Ulster’s Past (New York, 1997), pp. 191–210. 30 For a recent survey citing all the relevant works see A. Bielenberg and P. Solar, ‘The Irish Cotton Industry from the Industrial Revolution to Partition’, Irish Economic and Social History 34 (2007), pp. 1–28. 31 P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Problems of the European Linen Industry 1870–1914’, in M. Cohen (ed.) The Warp of Ulster’s Past (New York, 1997), pp. 191–210. 32 K.J. James, Handloom Weavers in Ulster’s Linen Industry 1815–1914 (Dublin, 2007). 33 Bielenberg and Solar, ‘The Irish Cotton Industry from the Industrial Revolution to Partition’; A. Bielenberg, ‘British Competition and the Vicissitudes of the Irish Woollen Industry: 1785–1923’, Textile History 31 (2000), pp. 202–221. 34 R. Kane, The Industrial Resources of Ireland (Dublin, 1845), pp. 69, 387, 402–426, cited by S. Royle, ‘Industrialisation, Urbanisation and Urban Society, c. 1850–1921’, in B. Graham and L. Proudfoot, An Historical Geography of Ireland (London, 1993), pp. 260–1. 35 J. Lee., The Modernisation of Irish Society 1848–1914 (Dublin, 1989), p. 13. 36 Ibid., pp. 11–12. 37 P. Ollerenshaw, Banking in Nineteenth Century Ireland: The Belfast banks 1825– 1914 (Manchester, 1987). P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Aspects of Bank Lending in Post Famine Ireland’, in R. Mitchison and P. Roebuck (eds) Economy and Society in Scotland and Ireland (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 222–32. On joint-stock companies see W.A. Thomas, The Stock Exchanges of Ireland (Liverpool, 1986). 1 The evolution of the linen industry prior to mechanization, 1700–1825 1 B. Collins, ‘Matters Material and Luxurious Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenthcentury Irish Linen Consumption’, in J. Hill and C. Lennon (eds) Luxury and Austerity (Dublin, 1999), pp. 106–120; P. Solar, ‘The Linen Industry in the Nineteenth Century’ in D. Jenkins (ed.) The Cambridge History of Western Textiles (Cambridge, 2003), ii, p. 809. 2 D. Dickson, New Foundations 1660–1800 (Dublin, 1987), pp. 101–125. For developments before this see W.H. Crawford, ‘The origins of the linen industry in north Armagh and the Lagan Valley’, Ulster Folklife 17 (1971), pp. 42–51. 3 N. Harte, ‘Protection in the English Linen Trade’, in N. Harte and K. Ponting, (eds) Textile History and Economic History (Manchester, 1973), pp. 92–94. 4 C. Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry (Oxford, 1925), p. 11. 5 W. Crawford, ‘Drapers and Bleachers in the Early Ulster Linen Industry’, in L. Cullen and P. Butel (eds) Negoce et Industrie en France et en Irelande Aux xviii et xix Siecles (Paris, 1980), pp. 113–120; W. Crawford, ‘Ulster Landowners and the Linen Industry’, in J. Ward and R. Wilson (eds) Land and Industry and the Industrial Revolution (Newton Abbot, 1971), pp. 117–144; Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry, p. 161. Also see L. Clarkson, ‘The Environment and Dynamic of PreFactory Industry in Northern Ireland’, in P. Hudson (ed.) Regions and Industries (London, 1989), pp. 259–263. 6 A. Durie and P. Solar, ‘The Scottish and Irish Linen Industries Compared, 1780–1860’, in R. Mitchison and P. Roebuck (eds) Economy and Society in Scotland and Ireland 1500–1939 (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 212. 7 Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry, pp. 31, 47; L. Cullen, The Emergence of Modern Ireland (Dublin, 1983), p. 57; W. Crawford, Domestic Industry in Ireland

Notes


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9 10

11 12

13

14

15

16

17 18 19 20

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(Dublin 1972), p. 76; W. Crawford, ‘Economy and Society in South Ulster in the Eighteenth Century’, Clogher Record (1975), p. 247; Clarkson, ‘The Environment and Dynamic of Pre-Factory Industry in Northern Ireland’, p. 263. While weaving was also undertaken in Cavan yarn production was more important. Weaving was in severe decline by the 1830s, but hand spinning persisted in that decade, despite a decline in remuneration. J. Gray, Spinning the Threads of Uneven Development: Gender and industrialization in Ireland during the long eighteenth century (Lanham, 2005), pp. 40–78, 84; W Smyth, ‘Flax Cultivation in Ireland: the development and demise of a regional staple’, in W. Smyth and K. Whelan (eds) Common Ground (Cork, 1988), p. 241. By the eve of the famine there were about 600 scutch mills largely located in Ulster. L. Clarkson, Proto-Industrialization; The First Phase of Industrialization (London, 1985), pp. 15–18. E. Almquist, ‘Pre-Famine Ireland and the Theory of European Proto-Industrialization: Evidence from the 1841 Census’, Journal of Economic History 39 (1979), pp. 699–719; Clarkson, ‘The Environment and Dynamic of Pre-Factory Industry in Northern Ireland’, p. 265. Gray, Spinning the Threads of Uneven Development. The bibliography contains all the relevant references to the debate on proto-industrialisation. See Almquist, ‘Pre-Famine Ireland and the Theory of European Proto-Industrialization’, pp. 699–718. For a useful overview from the eye of the storm see L.A. Clarkson, ‘Ireland 1841: Pre-industrial or proto-industrial; industrializing or de-industrializing?’ in S.C. Ogilvie and M. Cerman (eds) European Proto-industrialization (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 67–84. B. Collins ‘Proto-industrialization and Pre-Famine emigration’, Social History 7 (1982), pp. 127–146. The most recent contribution by Gray, Spinning the Threads of Uneven Development, on Cavan, which cleverly utilises some of the limited surviving data from the 1821 census, but unfortunately focuses on an area which ‘de-industrialised’. Long before the debate on proto-industrial theory began, Gill had noted that several of the major firms in the industry, such as Sidebotham, Coulson, Richardson, Barbour and Cruikshank, were established with British capital (The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry, p. 196). Clarkson and Collins point out that the theory ignores the many urban dwellers who worked within the industry in the towns of east Ulster prior to mechanisation. L. Clarkson and B. Collins, ‘Proto-Industrialisation in an Irish Town: Lisburn, 1820–21’, viii Congress International D’ Histoire Economique (Budapest, 1982), pp. 1–20. The flaxseed trade in New York (the greatest port for this trade) was controlled by the Irish American merchant community. T.M. Truxes, ‘Connecticut in the IrishAmerican flaxseed Trade 1750–1775’ Eire-Ireland 12 (1977), pp. 34–62; T.M. Truxes, Irish-American trade, 1660–1783 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 193–211. A.D. Hood, ‘Flax seed, Fibre and Cloth: Pennsylvania’s Domestic Linen Manufacture and its Irish Connection, 1700–1830’ in B. Collins and P. Ollerenshaw (eds) The European Linen Industry in Historical Perspective (Oxford, 2003), pp. 139–158. Truxes (1988), pp. 171–92. The Watt family provide an example of one house with a family member acting on their behalf in Kingston, Jamaica PRONI; mic 135/26–45. BPP 1825 xxi Accounts relating to hemp, flax and linens, imported and exported. pp. 8–9. Gill The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry, pp. 342–343. This conclusion is based on the fact that in 1824 a little over 21 million yards of Irish linen were exported from the United Kingdom and most of this (e.g. over 18 million yards) had bounties paid on it, which were only payable on cheaper coarser cloths (BPP 1825 xxi Accounts relating to hemp, flax and linens imported and

204


21 22 23

24 25 26

27

28

29

30

Notes

exported). This implies that the finer linens were sold in the British and Irish markets. Williamson testified in 1825 that ‘we purchase the very finest linens for the London market, and the coarse for the South American market, that of the United States, and West Indies’. He sourced the fine linen from Antrim, Down, Monaghan and Tyrone and the coarse from the lower part of Antrim and Dublin (which came from the south of Ireland). BPP 1825 vol. v Minutes of Evidence before the Select Committee on the Linen Trade of Ireland p. 124. Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry, p. 277. L.M. Cullen, Anglo-Irish Trade 1660–1800 (Manchester, 1968), pp. 46–66; Collins, ‘Matters Material and Luxurious Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-century Irish Linen Consumption’, pp. 106–120. Crawford, Domestic Industry in Ireland p. 4; Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry, p. 177; London University Library, Ms 622, Evidence on State of Linen Industry in 1774. According to Payne who gave evidence many of the Irish manufacturers [presumably bleachers]; ‘were people of good fortune many of whom had resources here on the opulent factors in London’. For a case study see W.H. Crawford, ‘The Market Book of Thomas Greer, A Dungannon linendraper 1758–9’, Ulster Folklife 13 (1967), pp. 54–60. W. Crawford, ‘The Evolution of the Linen Trade in Ulster’, Irish Economic and Social History 15 (1988), pp. 33–51. G. Brownlow and F. Geary, ‘Puzzles in the Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Production coordination, contracting and work organization in the Irish linen trade, 1750–1850’, Cambridge Journal of Economics 29 (2005), pp. 559–576. On the same issue also see F. Geary, ‘The Evolution of the Linen Trade before Industrialization: Why did firms not replace the market?’ in B. Collins, P. Ollerenshaw and T. Parkhill (eds) Industry, Trade and People in Ireland 1650–1950 (Belfast, 2005), pp. 131–153. R. Green, The Industrial Archaeology of Co. Down (Belfast, 1963), p. 2; W. McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaology of Northern Ireland (New Jersey, 1984), pp. 288–292; Crawford, ‘Drapers and Bleachers in the Early Ulster Linen Industry’, pp. 113–119. For a useful case study of one bleaching firm with a large trade to England see J.W. Conaghy, ‘Thomas Greer of Dungannon 1724–1803’ (unpublished PhD, 1979. Queen’s University, Belfast). McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaology of Northern Ireland, pp. 292–293; W.H. Crawford, ‘The Political Economy of Linen: Ulster in the eighteenth century’ in C. Brady, M.O’Dowd and B. Walker (eds) Ulster: An illustrated history (London, 1989), pp. 134–136; R. Green, The Lagan Valley 1800–1850 (Manchester, 1949), pp. 74, 79, 92–3, 122; B. Collins, ‘Taste, Chemistry and Mechanics: Early industrial Lisburn 1760–1825’, in B. Collins, P. Ollerenshaw and T. Parkhill (eds) Industry, Trade and People in Ireland 1650–1950 (Belfast, 2005), pp. 112–113. Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry, pp. 315, 322. McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaology of Northern Ireland, pp. 292–293. For an example of how bleachers in search of sufficient water power congregated along the upper reaches of the river Callan, which accounted for 20 of the 24 beetling mills in Co. Armagh in 1830, despite the fact that the manufacture of linen and the major markets of the county were located to the north in a zone which lacked appropriate water power sites see W.J. Smyth, ‘Locational Patterns and Trends within the Pre-Famine Linen Industry’, Irish Geography (1975), pp. 97–110. L. Amie, ‘Chemicals in the Eighteenth Century Irish Linen Industry’, unpublished MS thesis, 1984, Queen’s University, Belfast), pp. 234–247. For a case of a bleachworks see A. Monaghan, ‘An Eighteenth Century Family Linen Business: The Faulkners of Wellbrook, Cookstown, Co. Tyrone’, Ulster Folklife 9 (1963), pp. 30–45; G. Clark (ed.) The Industries of Ulster (Belfast, 1882), p. 12. Cullen, Anglo-Irish Trade 1660–1800, pp. 96–110, Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry, p. 298 footnote 4 (the evidence of Thomas Oldham). Gill gives detailed

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36 37

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evidence on Richardson’s in particular who sold white linen directly to a number of British customers. Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry, pp. 247–258. P. Solar ‘The Irish Linen Trade 1820–1852’, Textile History 21 (1990), pp. 66–68. Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry, pp. 342–342. Solar, ‘The Linen Industry in the Nineteenth Century’, vol. ii, pp. 814–817. BPP 1825, xxii, Linen Board, Ireland, pp. 185–187. BPP 1825, iii, A Bill for the Better Regulation of the Linen Manufacture of Ireland. BPP 1828, iii, A Bill for the Regulation of the Linen and Hempen Manufactures of Ireland. Durie and Solar ‘The Scottish and Irish Linen Industries Compared, 1780–1860’, pp. 211–221. The whole system of subsidy for cloth was reduced between 1825 and 1830, when they were finally abolished. The end of export subsidies contributed to a decline in the centers of the industry focusing on coarser and less valuable cloth types. Report on Handloom Weavers, BPP 1840, xxx (43), pp. 591–676. For some work on this area see in particular B. Collins, ‘The Linen Industry and Emigration to Britain during the Mid-Nineteenth Century’ in E.M. Crawford (ed) The Hungry Stream; Essays on emigration and Famine (Belfast, 1997), pp. 151–160. Collins (1982), pp. 127–146. F. Geary, ‘Regional Industrial Structure and Labour Force Decline in Ireland between 1841 and 1851’, Irish Historical Studies 30 (1996), pp. 167–194. F. Geary, ‘Deindustrialization in Ireland to 1851: Some evidence from the Census’, Economic History Review 51 (3) (1998), pp. 512–541.

2 Transition: the first generation of wet spinners, 1825–50 1 W.G. Rimmer, Marshalls of Leeds: Flaxspinners 1788–1886 (Cambridge, 1960), p. 192. 2 H. McCall, Ireland and Her Staple Manufactures (Belfast, 1870), p. 388. 3 BPP 1837–8, xxxv, Second Report of the Commissioners appointed to Consider and recommend a general system of Railways for Ireland, pp. 813–836. 4 R.M. Young, Historical Notices of Old Belfast (Belfast, 1896), p. 255. 5 W. Carter, A Short History of the Linen Trade (Belfast, 1952), vol. II, p. 26 6 John Blundell, a Lancashire man, established a dry-spinning mill at Athlumney in Co. Meath in the early nineteenth century and operated until well into the second half of the century. C. Ellison, The Waters of the Boyne and Blackwater (Dublin, 1983), pp. 44–46. The factory returns of 1835 reveal there were flax-spinning mills at this point in Dublin, Kildare and Cork; BPP 1836, xlv, Factory Returns, UK. Both Crosthwaite and Blundell also appear in the 1851 list in the Brtherton Library, Leeds; Ms 200/15/43 Spindles in Ireland in 1851. 7 A. Takei, ‘The Early Mechanisation of the Irish Linen Industry 1800–1840’, M. Litt, 1989, Trinity College, Dublin, pp. 59–61, 87–8, 102. Crosthwaite was still spinning flax in 1847. 8 Proceedings of the Trustees of the Linen Manufacture of Ireland (1826), p. 25. 9 Ibid., p. 162. 10 Ibid., p. 64. 11 Proceedings of the Trustees Linen Manufacture in Ireland, year ended 1 January 1829, p. 58. Crosthwaite appears to have been the largest of the three southern spinners returned by factory inspectors and continued to manufacture coarse linen for a number of years. BPP 1840, xxiii, Reports of Assitant Commissioners on Handloom Weavers, p. 645. See evidence of Crosthaite in BPP 1825 v, Minutes of Evidence before Select Committee on the Linen trade of Ireland p. 727. 12 Proceedings of the Linen Board 9 September 1826 and 6 November 1826, pp. 258, 278, 280. 13 C. Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry (Oxford, 1925), p. 312; A. Takei, ‘The First Irish Linen Mills, 1800–1824’, Irish Economic and Social History 21 (1994), pp. 28–38. Gribbon, The History of Water Power in Ulster, p. 95.


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14 Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry, p. 260. Also see E.R.R. Green, The Industrial Archaeology of Co. Down (London, 1962), pp. 18–19. Both hired William Fairbairn of Manchester to erect waterwheels and other machinery. Also see M. Cohen, Linen, Family and Community in Tullylish, Co. Down (Dublin, 1997), pp. 123–124. 15 Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry, p. 260 Takei, ‘The Early Mechanisation of the Irish Linen Industry 1800–1840’, p. 104 It would appear that this yarn was not fine enough, so he sought further support from the Board to produce finer millspun yarn. Proceedings of the Linen Board Nov 1826. 16 Brotherton Library, Leeds; Marshall Collection Ms 200/17/19 Employee to Henry Marshall, 2 October 1829. 17 Cohen, Linen, Family and Community in Tullylish, Co. Down, pp. 126–129; M.P. Campbell, ‘Guilford and its Mills’, Journal of the Craigavon Historical Society 4 (1981–2), pp. 20–21; H.C. Lawlor, ‘The Genesis of the Linen Thread Trade’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology 6 (1943), p. 30. According to Armstrong The Growth of Industry in the North of Ireland (Oxford, 1999), p. 214, Stewart had gained his knowledge of thread making from John Barbour, who built up the works at Hilden. Green (1963), p .6. 18 Evidence from the Proceedings of the Trustees Linen Manufacture in Ireland (1827), pp. 278–279. 19 Belfast Newsletter, 15 January 1828. Crossthwaite had been promised £500 from the Linen Board to set up 800 spindles, but he had never erected these and had still not received the grant in 1828 although he had got some spindles running later in the year. Evidence from the Proceedings of the Trustees Linen Manufacture in Ireland, year ended 1 January 1829, p. 58. 20 Ibid., pp. 278–9 21 Ibid., p. 279. Hayes focused entirely on thread making after 1835. Green, The Industrial Archaeology of Co. Down, p. 13. 22 Brotherton Library, Leeds; Marshall Collection Ms 200/18/3 Thompson to Marshall, 5 April 1882. 23 E.R.R. Green, ‘James Murland and the Linen Industry’, Threshold, vol. 1 (1957), pp. 48–53. 24 University of Dundee Archive; Ms 198 Reminiscences of Flax Spinning, p. 68 25 BPP 1840, xxiii, Handloom weavers, p. 711; Green, The Industrial Archaeology of Co. Down (London, 1963), p. 33 26 McCall, Ireland and Her Staple Manufactures, p. 390. 27 BPP 1840, xxiii, Report of the Assistant Commissioners on Handloom weavers, p. 659. 28 H. Gribbon, The History of Water Power in Ulster (Newton Abbot, 1969), p. 66, 213; P. Murnane and J.H. Murnane, ‘The Linen Industry in the Parish of Aughnamullen, Co Monaghan … ’ Clogher Record 12 (1987), p. 342. OS Memoirs South Ulster vol. 40 (Belfast, 1998), pp. 73–4. 29 E. Boyle, ‘Linenopolis; the Rise of the Textile Industry’, in J.C. Beckett (ed.) Belfast the Making of the City (Belfast, 1988), p. 45. 30 OS Memoirs Co Antrim, xi, vol. 29 (Belfast, 1995), p. 139. G. Benn, History of the Town of Belfast, vol. 2, p. 130. 31 Geary has argued that from the late 1820s, due to the technical breakthroughs in mechanised flax spinning, it became more profitable to spin flax than cotton in the greater Belfast region, and this explains the gradual exit from cotton in the 1830s as mill owners converted their fixed capital investment from cotton to linen spinning. This it is argued was a rational response of entrepreneurs to the changing comparative advantages and disadvantages of operating linen and cotton spinning mills in east Ulster compared to British centres once wet-spinning technology came on line. F. Geary, ‘The Rise and fall of the Belfast Cotton Industry, Some Problems’, Irish Economic and Social History, 8 (1981); also see F. Geary, ‘The Belfast Cotton Industry revisited’, Irish Historical Studies 26 (103) (1989).


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32 G. Benn, A History of the Town of Belfast (London, 1880) vol. 2, pp. 129–130. 33 Carter, A Short History of the Linen Trade, p. 27 Carter claims the machines were built at a small machine shop established by Hind in the Soho Foundry. 34 Takei, ‘The Early Mechanisation of the Irish Linen Industry 1800–1840’, pp. 108– 109. 159. In 1845, the York Street Flax Spinning Mill had a capital of £80,000 which was divided into 800 shares of £100 each. The mill then contained 19,388 spindles and was still the largest in Ireland (Northern Whig, 15 April 1845). The Herdman family sold their tanning business in the early 1830s, before they became engaged in flax and tow spinning in Belfast and Sion Mills (B. Collins ‘Herdman, James’ Oxford D.N.B. (Oxford, 2004), vol. 26 pp. 758–9). 35 J. Manners, Notes of an Irish Tour (London, 1849), pp. 144–145 Manners noted that linens were the preferred fabric for most items of clothing in the West Indies and Latin America. 36 J. and J. Herdman and Co on Francis St. employed about 100, John Boyd and Co employed 250, James Boomer and Co. 200 Robert Thompson and Co. 200 and James Grimshaw and Co. 200, while the mills of Charters, Murphy, Stewart, M’Kibbon and Montgomery were all being built in the mid-1830s. BPP 1836, xxx, Appendix to First Report of the Commissioners for Inquiring into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland, app c, part 1, p. 5. Boomer’s mill is missing from the 1836 list but started wet spinning in BPP 1833, xx, First Report regarding employment of Children in Factories, p. 128. Boomer and Gamble appear to having been spinners on the Falls Road (possibly in the same mill), while Montgomery’s mill was in Ballymacarrett, Co. Down; see Belfast Street Directory 1835–6, Matiers Belfast Directory 1835. 37 Brotherton Library, Leeds; Ms 200/16/5 Campbell to Marshall 10 August 1836. Andrew Mulholland and Co., acted as a representative of the Belfast trade and were clearly being consulted by Marshalls of Leeds as such in relation to the court case then in progress in relation to Kay’s patent. Mulhollands appear to have generally been in greater sympathy with Marshalls position by the end of the 1830s, as of course they had the largest number of spindles in Ireland and as such the most to loose if Kay’s patent was successfully renewed (which it was not). Brotherton Library, Leeds; Ms 200/17/35 Mulholland to Marshall, 2 Febuary 1839. 38 PRONI D 1286/1 100 Years of Flax Spinning; Herdmans Ltd Sion Mills 1835–1935. D 1905/2/164/1a Indenture 6 January 1864 reveals Mulholland and Herdmans still collectively involved in this mill in 1846 which later became the location of the Smithfield Flax Spinning and Weaving Company. J.A. Beck, ‘When Belfast was a Cotton Centre’, two Mulholland Mills Fibres and Fabrics and Cordage, 7 March (1946), p. 106. 39 H.C. Lawlor, ‘The Rise of the Linen Merchants; The Mulhollands and Hinds of Belfast’, Fibres and Fabrics Journal, August (1943), p. 291. Boomers began flax spinning in the summer of 1833, but continued to spin cotton and were also engaged in power weaving, while S.K. Mulholland had converted their cotton spinning mill to tow spinning the previous summer. BPP 1833, xx, First Report re employment of children in factories, p. 128. 40 A.K. Longfield, ‘Notes on the the Linen and Cotton Printing Industry in Northern Ireland in the Eighteenth Century’, Belfast Natural History Society Proceedings iv (1955).OS Memoirs Antrim 1, vol. 2 (Belfast, 1990), pp. 47–48. On the Bells see B. Jackson, Ringing true; the Bell’s of Trummery (York, 2005), pp. 95–98. 41 University of Dundee Archive; Ms 198 Reminiscences of Flax Spinning, pp. 74–6. 42 E.R.R. Green, ‘Belfast Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century’, in L.M. Cullen and P. Butel (eds) Negoce et Industries en France et Irelande aux xviii et xix Siecles (Paris, 1980), p. 139. 43 E.R.R. Green, The Lagan Valley 1800–1850 (Manchester, 1949), p. 115. 44 Rimmer, Marshalls of Leeds, p. 233.


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45 BPP 1834, xix, Employment of Children in Factories, p. 35. BPP 1836, xxx, Appendix to First Report of the Commissioners for Inquiring into the Condition of the poorer classes in Ireland, app c, part 1, p. 5; Green, The Lagan Valley 1800– 1850 , p. 115. 46 This is the estimate of CG Otway; BPP 1840, xxiii, Reports from Assistant Commissioners on Handloom Weavers, p. 655. 47 R. Kane, The Industrial Resources of Ireland (Dublin, 1845), pp. 65, 330. The quantity of flax consumed by Mulhollands in 1837 comes from Takei, ‘The Early Mechanisation of the Irish Linen Industry 1800–1840’, p. 109. 48 Persons Employed in Mills and Factories, UK, BPP 1836, xlv (138), p. 92. BPP 1850, xlii (745), p. 19. 49 E. Boyle, ‘The Economic Development of the Ulster Linen Industry 1825–1913’, unpublished PhD, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1977, p. 48; P. Solar, ‘A Belgian View of the Ulster Linen Industry in the 1840s’, Ulsterfolklife, 34 (1988), p. 18. 50 F. Geary, ‘Deindustrialization in Ireland to 1851: Some evidence from the census’, Economic History Review 51 (1998), p. 516. 51 Factory Returns, UK BPP, xlii, 1839 (41), pp. 336–339. 52 BPP 1836, xxxi, First Report of the Commissioners for Inquiring into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland. Supplement to Appendix D, pp. 399–509. 53 F. Geary, ‘Regional Industrial Structure and Labour Force Decline 1841–51’, Irish Historical Studies 30 (118) (1996), p. 521. 54 Brotherton Library, Leeds; Ms 200/15/42/6 List of spinners beside Leeds spinners (1842). Ms 200/15/43 Spindles in Ireland July 1851. 55 For a case study of one of the southern centres of the linen industry see A. Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution 1780–1880 (Cork, 1993), pp. 8–20. 56 A. Durie and P. Solar, ‘The Scottish and Irish Linen Industry Compared, 1780– 1860’, in R. Mitchison and P. Roebuck (eds) Economy and Society in Scotland and Ireland (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 211–221. BPP 1840, xxiii, Reports on assistant commissioners of Handloom Weavers, pp. 645–651, 671–2. 57 BPP 1833, vi, Minutes of Evidence before the Select Committee on Manufactures Commerce and Shipping, p. 165. 58 F.W. Smith, Irish Linen Trade Handbook and Directory (Belfast, 1876), pp. 75–76. 59 K.J. James, Handloom Weavers in Ulster’s Linen Industry 1815–1914 (Dublin, 2007), p. 40. 60 W.H. Crawford, Domestic Industry in Ireland (Dublin, 1972), p. 51. 61 BPP 1840, xxiii, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners on Handloom Weavers, pp. 637–48, 711–3. 62 James, Handloom Weavers in Ulster’s Linen Industry 1815–1914, pp. 25–74. 63 A. Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures (London, 1861), p. 599. 64 BPP 1840, xxiv, Report of the Commissioners on the Condition of Handloom Weavers, p. 747. 65 A. McKernan, ‘War, Gender and Industrial Innovation: Recruiting Women Weavers in Early Nineteenth Century Ireland’, Journal of Social History, 28 (1994), pp. 109–24; Census 1841, 1851, 1861. 66 The decline of the cotton and woollen industries in the south of Ireland in the 1830s also contributed to the relative decline of the southern weaving population; however, linen would have dominated the figures. 67 P. Solar, ‘The Irish Linen Trade 1820–1852’, Textile History 21 (1990), p. 69. 68 BPP 1840, xxiii, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners to the Handloom Weavers, p. 655. 69 BPP 1852–3, xl, Reports of the Inspector of Factories, pp. 36–38. 70 Ibid., pp. 37–38. 71 Carter, A Short History of the Linen Trade, pp. 8–10. Power weaving of linen cloth had been attempted before the mid-nineteenth century.


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72 19 January 1857, Belfast Linen Trade Circular. 73 James, Handloom Weavers in Ulster’s Linen Industry 1815–1914, pp. 25–74. 74 W. Smyth, ‘Locational Patterns and Trends within the Pre-Famine Linen Industry’, Irish Geography, (1975), p. 104; Green, The Lagan Valley 1800–1850, pp. 92–3, 122; E.R.R. Green, ‘Industrial Decline in Ireland During the Nineteenth Century’, in L. Cullen (ed.) The Formation of the Irish Economy (Cork, 1968), pp. 6–7; A. McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland (New Jersey, 1984). pp. 292–3; R. Lloyd Paterson, ‘The British Flax and Linen Industry’, in W. Ashley (ed.) British Industries (London, 1907), p. 143; Carter, A Short History of the Linen Trade, pp. 14–15. 75 A.J. Warden, The Linen Trade, Ancient and Modern (London, 1864), p. 410. 76 H. McCall, Ireland and her Staple Manufactures (Belfast, 1870), pp. 472–475. 3 The high watermark of the Ulster linen and clothing industry, 1850–1914 1 For some useful European comparisons see P. Solar, ‘The Linen Industry in the Nineteenth Century’ in D. Jenkins (ed.) The Cambridge History of Western Textiles (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 818–819. On the limits of the German industry and impact of Irish competition on the same see K. Ditt, ‘The Rise and Fall of the German Linen Industry in the Nineteenth Century and Twentieth Century’ in B. Collins and P. Ollerenshaw (eds) The European Linen Industry in Historical Perspective (Oxford, 2003), pp. 259–283. 2 W.E. Vaughan and A.J. Fitzpatrick (eds) Irish Historical Statistics: Population 1821–1971 (Dublin, 1978), pp. 36–37. 3 E. Jones, A Social Geography of Belfast (London, 1960), pp. 52–135; P. Froggatt, ‘Industrialisation and Health in Belfast in the Early Nineteenth Century’ in D. Harkness and M. O’Dowd, The Town in Ireland (Belfast, 1981) 4 D. Greer and J.W. Nicholson, The Factory Acts in Ireland 1802–1914 (Dublin, 2003). 5 J. O’Hanlon, Walks among the Poor in Belfast (Belfast, 1853); A.G. Malcolm, The Sanitary State of Belfast (Belfast, 1853). 6 P. Solar, ‘The Birth and Death of European Flax, Hemp and Jute Spinning Firms: The Irish and Belgian cases’ in B. Collins and P. Ollerenshaw (eds) The European Linen Industry in Historical Perspective (Oxford, 2003), p. 252. 7 W.A.G. Clark, Linen Jute and Hemp Industries in the United Kingdom (Washington, 1913), p.15. 8 Solar ‘The Birth and Death of European Flax, Hemp and Jute Spinning Firms’, p. 819. 9 W.H. Crawford, The Irish Linen Industry (Belfast, 1987), pp. 23–25. B.J. Mackey, ‘Centres of Drawloom Damask Linen Weaving in Ireland in the 18th and 19th Centuries’ in R. Schorta (ed.) Leinenendamaste Produktionszentren und Sammlungen (Riggesburg, 1999), p. 99. 10 K.J. James, Handloom Weavers in Ulster’s Linen Industry 1815–1914 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 64–140. For powerloom numbers in a comparative European context see Solar, ‘The Birth and Death of European Flax, Hemp and Jute Spinning Firms’, p. 819. For examples of small rural weaving communities which survived see W.H. Crawford, ‘A Handloom Weaving Community in Co. Down’, Ulster Folklife 39 (1993), pp. 1–14; F. Carragher, ‘The Ballydugan Weaver’s House’ in T. Owen (ed.) From Corrib to Cultra (Belfast, 2000), pp. 48–61; B. Collins ‘The Loom, the Land, and the Market Place: Women weavers and the family economy in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Ireland’ in M. Cohen (ed.) The Warp of Ulster’s Past (New York, 1997), pp. 229–252. 11 J. MacAdam, An Economic Review of the Linen Industry (Belfast, 1847), p. 11; J. Sproule, The Irish Industrial Exhibition of 1853 (Dublin, 1854), p. 287.


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12 Linen Hall Library, Belfast, BPB 1874.18. Statement Concerning the Linen Trade of Ireland, p. 2. 13 R. Lloyd Paterson, ‘The British Flax and Linen Industry’ in W.Ashley (ed), British Industries (London, 1907), p. 120. 14 Clark, Linen Jute and Hemp Industries in the United Kingdom, p. 24. 15 A.J. Warden, The Linen Trade, Ancient and Modern (London, 1864), p. 407. 16 P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Industry, 1820–1914’ in P. Ollerenshaw and L. Kennedy (eds) An Economic History of Ulster (Manchester, 1985), pp. 80–84; W. Crawford, Irish Linen and Some Features of its Production (Belfast, 1910), p. 9. 17 Riordan, (1920), p. 115. Ollerenshaw, ‘Industry, 1820–1914’, pp. 83–84. 18 W. Coyne (ed.) Ireland, Industrial and Agricultural (Dublin, 1902), p. 416. 19 Clark, Linen Jute and Hemp Industries in the United Kingdom, pp. 17, 49–50. 20 A. Caskey, ‘Entrepreneurs and Industrial Development in Ulster 1850–1914’, (M. Phil, University of Ulster, 1983), pp. 35, 131–136, 141–142. 21 E. Boyle, ‘Vertical Integration and De-integration in the Irish Linen Industry, 1830– 1913’ in M. Cohen (ed.) The Warp of Ulster’s Past (New York, 1997), pp. 211–227. 22 C. Ó Gráda, A New Economic History of Ireland: 1780–1920 (Oxford, 1997), p. 291. 23 PRONI D. 1769/24/1A Statement of affairs William Smyth & Co. 24 PRONI D. 1193/LSI/1 Irish sales. Also see D. 1193/OA/1 American Orders and D. 1193/OF/1 Foreign order book. 25 PRONI D. 1905/3/21/1 letterbook Ferguson to Richarsons 6 April 1847. 26 Ibid., 6 July 1847. 27 The York Street Flax Spinning Company claimed in a court case in 1873 (in relation to a dispute over customs duties in which the US government claimed they were under valuing linen to reduce duty payments) that in an order to a New York house for linens valued at $261,235, York St. shipped to its branch house in New York ‘its own goods manufactured either in whole or in part by them’. PRONI D. 1905/2/174b/1 legal briefs; York St. v USA 1873. It is evident that it also included cloth produced on handlooms. At this point the company claimed the US was its most important foreign market, followed by Cuba. 28 H. Lawlor, ‘The Rise of the Linen Merchants: The Mulhollands and Hinds of Belfast’, Fibres and Fabrics Journal x (1943), pp. 322–323. York St. opened offices in Paris in 1870, New York in 1871, London in 1874, Berlin in 1876 and Melbourne in 1882. 29 Caskey, ‘Entrepreneurs and Industrial Development in Ulster 1850–1914’, p. 132; W. Crawford (ed.) Industries of the North (Belfast 1986), p. 26. 30 It acquired the Milewater mill for £28,100 in 1879 Benn (1880) ii, pp. 129–130. Ollerenshaw ‘Industry, 1820–1914’, p. 79; W. Carter, A Short History of the Linen Trade (Belfast, 1952), pp. 30. Benn noted that the large profits made during the American War enabled the company to build up a considerable reserve fund and it was then the only company in the trade whose shares still commanded a premium on the market. By 1890, the reserve fund was over £300,000 in value. For several years prior to 1885 the firm had managed to pay a dividend of 13.5 per cent. This according to one of the directors was because they sensibly retained most of the abnormal profits made during the American Civil War. 31 Carter, A Short History of the Linen Trade, p. 31. 32 ‘Pirrie V York Street Flax Spinning Co.’, Law Reports, Ireland vol. xxxi (1892), pp. 3–27 and vol. I (1894), pp. 417–487. 33 G. Clark (ed.) The Industries of Ulster (Belfast, 1882), p. 10. 34 Ibid., p. 11. For a case study see R.S. Harrison, The Richardsons of Bessbrook (Dublin, 2009). 35 P. Solar, ‘The Irish Linen Trade 1852–1914’, Textile History 36 (2005), pp. 44–68. 36 Clark, Linen Jute and Hemp Industries in the United Kingdom, pp. 15–16. 37 National Library, Ir. 387 b. 2. Belfast Harbour Commissioners. Imports and Exports.


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38 Solar, ‘The Birth and Death of European Flax, Hemp and Jute Spinning Firms’, p. 252 39 PRONI; D 2088/24/1 Minutebook of Flax Spinners and Powerloom Linen Manufacturers Association 1875–1886. It appears that a number of firms co-operated long before this in working short time when demand was down. See, for example, the review of 1857; Belfast Linen Trade Circular, 4 January 1858. 40 BPP 1886, xiv, Annual Report of HM chief inspector of Factories and Workshops, p. 802. 41 BPP 1884–5 IX Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Industries (Ireland), p. 653. 42 PRONI D. 2088/1/5 Linen Merchants’ Association Report for 1897 and 1899 (tabled 22 January 1898 and 2 February 1900). 43 D 2088/24/2 Flax Spinners and Powerloom Weavers’ Association 1886–1907 26 January, 9 March 1900. 44 PRONI; D 2088/22/9 Flax Spinners’ Association; Typescript list of mills closed in Ireland since 1873. 45 E. Boyle, ‘The Linen Strike of 1872’, Saothar 2 (1975–6), pp. 12–22. 46 B. Black, ‘Reassessing Irish Industrial relations and Labour History: The northeast of Ireland up to 1921’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations 14 (2002), p. 67. 47 T. Moriarty, ‘Mary Galway 91864–1928)’ in M. Cullen and M. Luddy (eds) Female Activists: Irish Women and Change 1900–1960 (Dublin, 2001), pp. 9–36. 48 On this distinction see N. Connolly and O’Brien, Portrait of a Rebel Father (Dublin, 1935), p. 124. 49 Trade unionism never became a major force among women in the shirt trade, and what strike action there was largely took place after 1900 and was generally unsuccessful. It was not easy to organise low paid, unskilled female workers for a variety of reasons, including the reluctance of many trade unions to open up membership; ultimately however 5,000 women clothing workers joined the Amalgamated Society of Tailors when it accepted the entry of female factory workers in 1917, when trade-union membership in Ireland was expanding dramatically until the downturn of 1920. J.A. Grew, ‘The Derry Shirt Making Industry 1831–1913’, (unpublished M. Phil, University of Ulster, 1987) pp. 215–221; S. McAteer, ‘The ‘New Unionism’ in Derry 1889–1892: A demonstration of its inclusive nature’, Saothar 16 (1991), pp. 11–22. 50 E. Boyle, ‘The Economic Development of the Irish Linen Industry, 1820–1913’, (unpublished PhD, Queen’s University Belfast, 1979), p. 170. 51 First UK Census of Production (1907), BPP 1912, cix (cd. 6320), p. 354. 52 Boyle, ‘The Economic Development of the Irish Linen Industry, 1820–1913’, p. 204. Harte (1973), pp. 108–109. 53 A.S. Moore, Linen from Raw Material to Finished Product (London, 1914), p. 39; W.H. Crawford The Irish Linen Industry (Belfast, 1987), p. 28. 54 Clark, Linen Jute and Hemp Industries in the United Kingdom, p. 190. 55 PRONI; D/2088/1/6 Linen Merchants Association Report p. 291. 56 Boyle, ‘The Economic Development of the Irish Linen Industry, 1820–1913’, pp. 106, 206–112, 224. For some idea of range of goods made up, prices packing, etc. see PRONI; D./2088/1/3 Linen Merchants’ Association June 1886. 57 In 1891, for example, it was noted that the Troy shirt makers in the USA utilised large quantities of bleached linen from Ireland.PRONI D. 2088/1/4 Linen Merchants Association 27 January 1891. 58 M. Neill, ‘Homeworkers in Ulster, 1850–1911’ in J. Holmes and D. Urquhart (eds) Coming into the Light: The work, politics and religion of women in Ulster 1840–1940 (Belfast, 1994), pp. 1–32. 59 B. Collins, ‘Sewing and Social Structure: The flowerers of Scotland and Ireland’ in R. Mitchison and P. Roebuck (eds) Economy and Society in Scotland and Ireland 1500–1939 (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 242–254.


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60 O’Hanlon (1853), Grew, ‘The Derry Shirt Making Industry 1831–1913’, pp. 45, 67–69; B. Collins, ‘The Organisation of Sewing Outwork in Late Nineteenth Century Ulster’ in M. Berg (ed.) Markets and Manufacture in Early Industrial Europe (London, 1991), pp. 139–156. 61 Grew, ‘The Derry Shirt Making Industry 1831–1913’, p. 14; Clark (1882), pp. 14–15. 62 BPP 1914–16, xxxi, National Health Insurance Joint Committee: Outworkers Committee (Ireland), pp. 639–746 (see in particular Q. 2034, 2084, 47950). 63 BPP 1888, xxvi, Annual Report of HM Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, p. 28. 64 Ibid., pp. 28–31. 65 BPP, xxviii, 1912 Conditions of Employment in the Linen and other making up trades of the north of Ireland (see in particular Q. 2034, 2084, 4795, 4943). 66 Clark, Linen Jute and Hemp Industries in the United Kingdom, pp. 58–60. 67 PRONI; D. 2088/1/4 Linen Merchants’ Association, 10 August 1891. 68 BPP 1908, viii, Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Home Work, p. 236 (Q. 4083) 69 Grew, ‘The Derry Shirt Making Industry 1831–1913’. 70 Londonderry Sentinel, 31 December 1889. 71 Londonderry Sentinel, 29 December 1888, 31 December 1892, 31 December 1901, 31 December 1904. 72 Londonderry Sentinel, 30 December 1913. 73 Grew, ‘The Derry Shirt Making Industry 1831–1913’. 74 Coyne, p. 418. 75 K.J. James, ‘Handicraft, Mass Manufacture and Rural Female Labour: Industrial work in north west Ireland 1890–1914’, Rural History 17 (2006), pp. 52–57. 76 W. Clark, Linen on the Green: An Irish mill village 1730–1982 (Belfast, 1982), p. 52. 77 E. Boyle, ‘Vertical Integration and De-integration in the Irish Linen Industry’ in M. Cohen (ed.) The Warp of Ulster’s Past (New York, 1997), p. 224. 78 L.A. Clarkson, ‘Ewart, Sir William’ Oxford DNB (Oxford, 2004), vol. 18, p. 815. PRONI D. 1905/3/10/5 Memorandum of Association of William Ewart & Son, p. 4. PRONI; D/2088/1/1 Linen Merchants’ Association Petition of New York Merchants for a reduction in the rates of Duty on Importations of line Goods. (22 January 1878). Also see Report 1877. 79 E. Boyle, ‘Crawford, Sir William’ Oxford DNB (Oxford, 2004) vol. 14, pp. 85–86. 80 Boyle, ‘The Economic Development of the Irish Linen Industry’, pp. 201–223. 81 S. J. Nicholas, ‘The Overseas Marketing Performance of British Industry 1870–1914’, Economic History Review 37 (1984), pp. 489–506. 82 P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Problems of the European Linen Industry 1870–1914’ in M. Cohen (ed.) The Warp of Ulster’s Past (New York, 1997), p. 202. 83 Ibid., p. 204–7. 84 K. Ditt, ‘The Rise and Fall of the German Linen Industry in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’ in B. Collins and P. Ollerenshaw (eds) The European Linen Industry in Historical Perspective (Oxford, 2003), pp. 259–283. 85 Solar, ‘The Irish Linen Trade 1852–1914’, p. 60; P. Solar, ‘The Irish Linen Trade 1820–1852’, Textile History 21 (1990), p. 84 n. 45. 86 Minutes of Trustees of Linen and Hempen Manufactures of Ireland (Tour of Inspection of Leinster, Munster and Connaught) (Dublin, 1817), appendix. Minutes of Trustees of Linen and Hempen Manufactures of Ireland (Tour of Inspection of Ulster) (Dublin, 1817), appendix. 87 D. Dickson, ‘The Place of Dublin in the Eighteenth Century Irish Economy’ in T.M. Devine and D. Dickson (eds), Ireland and Scotland (Edinburgh, 1983), p. 183. 88 P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Problems of the European Industry 1870–1914’ in M. Cohen (ed.) The Warp of Ulster’s Past (New York, 1997) p. 193.


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89 Ditt, ‘The Rise and Fall of the German Linen Industry in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, pp. 272–275. 90 C. Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry (Oxford, 1925). pp. 342–3. Solar, ‘The Irish Linen Trade 1820–52’, p. 69. 91 Warden, The Linen Trade, Ancient and Modern, p. 411; estimate for the mid1840s from R. Kane, The Industrial Resources of Ireland (Dublin, 1845), p. 330. Another estimate of the Irish flax crop put the figure at 112,000 acres in 1843 (J.H. Dickson, A series of letters on the improved mode in the cultivation and management of flax (London, 1846), p. 10). 92 BPP 1837–8, xxxv, appendix b no. 10. Report of the Railway Commissioners. 93 Dickson, A series of letters on the improved mode in the cultivation and management of flax, p. 10 94 The flax harvest is derived from the annual Irish agricultural statistics between 1848 and 1912, while the Flax Supply Association figures have been used from 1913 to 1921 (as the agricultural figures are not available after 1917) and both returns were close at this point. The figures and sources for this data are set out in Appendix 1 95 Solar, The Irish Linen Trade 1852–1914’, p. 54. 96 UK cotton consumption data for this period can be found in Mitchell (1988), p. 332. 97 P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Textile Business in Europe during the First World War: The linen industry, 1914–18’, Business History 41(1) (1999), pp. 63–87; P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Textiles and Regional Economic Decline: Northern Ireland 1914–70’ in C. Holmes and A. Booth (eds) Economy and Society; European industrialisation and its social consequences (Leicester, 1991), pp. 62–72. 98 Ibid. 99 One estimate suggests that labour accounted for more than half the cost of spinning, weaving and finishing just before the First World War, P. Solar, ‘The linen industry in the nineteenth century’ in Jenkins (ed.) (2003), p. 812. 100 PRONI; D/2088/20/5 Flax Spinners’ Association, 3 August 1921. 4 Food processing 1 D. Dickson, New Foundations, Ireland 1660–1800 (Dublin, 1987), pp. 118, 124. 2 D. Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005), pp. 366–393. 3 J.M. Hearne, ‘Waterford: Society and Politics 1780–1852’, (unpublished PhD, University College, Cork, 2001), pp. 4–10. On background to Waterford’s provisions trade in processed foodstuffs see J. Mannion, ‘The Waterford Merchants and the Irish-Newfoundland Provisions Trade, 1770–1830’ in L.M. Cullen and P. Butel (eds) Negocé et industrie en France et en Irlande aux xviiie et xixe Siècles (Paris, 1980), pp. 27–43; J. Mannion, ‘The Maritme Trade of Waterford in the Eighteenth Century’ in W.J. Smyth and K. Whelan (eds) Common Ground: Essays on the Historical Geography of Ireland presented to T. Jones Hughes (Cork, 1988), pp. 208–233. 4 A.W. Shaw, ‘The Bacon Curing Industry’ in W.P. Coyne (ed.) Ireland Industrial and Agricultural (Dublin, 1902), pp. 241–257; BPP 1828, xviii, Beef, pork, bacon, hams and butter exported from Ireland 1801–1828. 5 BPP 1830, vii, Account of the principal exports from the port of Limerick. 6 J. O’Donovan, The Economic History of Livestock in Ireland (Cork, 1940), p. 273; January 1926, Irish Trade Journal, p. 79. 7 J.A. Lawson, ‘The Provision Trade of Ireland’, Transactions of the National Assocation for the Promotion of Social Science (1861), pp. 700–709; E. Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry (London, 1920), pp. 79–81; January 1926, Irish Trade Journal, p. 79.


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8 P. Lysaght, ‘Limerick’s bacon factories’, Old Limerick Journal 15 (1980), p. 12. 9 P. Solar, ‘Growth and Distribution in Irish Agriculture before the Famine’, (unpublished PhD, Stanford, 1987), pp. 151, 155. 10 R. Perren, The Meat Trade in Britain 1840–1914 (London, 1978), pp. 35, 71–2, 124, 171, 216–8; J. Daly, Glimpses of Irish Industries (Dublin, 1889), pp. 13–4. 11 Daly, Glimpses of Irish Industries, pp. 14–16. O’Donovan, The Economic History of Livestock in Ireland, pp. 273–274; Stratten’s Dublin Cork and the South of Ireland (London, 1892), pp. 167, 278. 12 Lawson, ‘The Provision Trade of Ireland’, p. 703. 13 Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry, pp. 80–1; W. Coyne, Ireland, Industrial and Agricultural (Dublin, 1902), pp. 241–257. For an example of the layout of a smaller plant in Navan see The Irish Builder and Engineer, 30 January 1904, pp. 45–46. 14 Irish Trade Journal, January 1926, p. 80. 15 J. Quaney, ‘The Electrification of Shaws 1894–96’, Old Limerick Journal 20 (1986), pp. 29–32. 16 P. Lavelle, James O’Mara A Staunch Sinn-Feiner 1873–1948 (Dublin, 1961), pp. 11–195; M. McCloskey, ‘O’Mara’s of Limerick and their Overseas Businesses’, Old Limerick Journal 37 (2001), pp. 10–12. 17 Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry, p. 82. 18 December 1925, Irish Trade Journal, p. 52; January 1926, Irish Trade Journal, p. 79. 19 For basis of this rough estimate see A. Bielenberg ‘A Survey of Irish Flour Milling 1801–1922’ in A. Bielenberg (ed.) Irish Flour Milling: A history 600–2000 (Dublin, 2003), p. 187. 20 C. Petersen, Bread and the British Economy c. 1770–1870 (Vermont, 1995), p. 50. 21 Agricultural Statistics of Ireland 1908. 22 K. Connell, The Population of Ireland 1750–1845 (Oxford, 1950), pp. 86–120; K. Connell, ‘The Colonization of Waste Land in Ireland, 1780–1845’, Economic History Review 3 (1950), pp. 44–52; C. Ó Gráda, ‘Poverty, Population and Agriculture 1801–45’ in W. Vaughan (ed.) A New History of Ireland; 1801–1870 (Oxford, 1989) vol. V, p. 130. 23 E. Wakefield, An Account of Ireland (London, 1812), vol. 1, pp. 363–416, 746. 24 W. McCutcheon, ‘The Corn Mill In Ulster’, Ulsterfolklife 15 (1970), p. 73. For two Ulster case studies see J. Burls, Nine Generations: A History of the Andrews Family, Millers of Comber (Belfast, 1958); W. Scott, A Hundred Years A Milling (Dundalk, 1951). Also see R. Green, ‘The History of the Belfast Grain Trade’, Proceedings of the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society, 8 (1971). pp. 38–47; H.D. Gribbon, The History of Waterpower in Ulster (New York, 1969), pp. 37–52. Also see G. Bowie, ‘Corn Drying Kilns, Meal Milling and Flour in Ireland’ Folk Life 17 (1979), p. 12. 25 Scott, A Hundred Years A Milling, p. 130. 26 C. Ó Gráda, ‘Industry and Communications 1801–45’, A New History of Ireland; 1801–1870 vol. V (Oxford, 1989), p. 146; P.M.A. Bourke, ‘The Irish Grain Trade 1839–48’, Irish Historical Studies 20 (1976–7), p. 159. 27 Second Report on Agriculture BPP 1836, vol. viii,p. 81, Q. 6003–4, 6008–9. 28 Report of the Railway Commisioners BPP 1837, xxxv,pp. 836–7; G.L. Smyth, Ireland, Historical and Statistical (London, 1849), vol. iii, pp. 306–310. 29 Third Report on Agriculture BPP 1836, viii, p. 286, Q. 14781. 30 R. Delany, The Grand Canal of Ireland (Newton Abbot, 1973), p. 164. 31 For indian corn see BPP 1852–3, xcix, Grain and flour Imported into Ireland. 32 PRONI; D. 2930/7/6 Diary of James McAdam; entry 30 April 1847. 33 Griffiths General Valuation of Rateable Property in Ireland; Borough of Cork (Dublin, 1852); C. Rynne, The Industrial Archaeology of Cork City and its Environs (Dublin, 1999), pp. 88, 92. 34 A. Marmion, A. History of the Maritime Ports of Ireland (London, 1860), p. 460.


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35 National Library; Ms 5219 Mill Account book of Mullins, Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny 1815–62. Ms 12,150 Mill Records in Wilson Slator Papers for period 1839–46. 36 National Library; Ms 10379, Ms 10273 Townley Hall Papers (Records relating to Slane Flour Mills). 37 BPP 1837–8, xxxv, app b Second Report of the Railway Commissioners, p. 26 38 Solar, ‘The Great Famine was no Ordinary Subsistence Crisis’, p. 123. 39 C. Ó Gráda, ‘Irish Agricultural Output Before and After the Famine’, Journal of European Economic History 13 (1984), pp. 149–165. 40 Bourke, ‘The Irish Grain Trade 1839–48’, p. 165; T.P. O’Neill, Life and Tradition in Rural Ireland (London, 1977), pp. 60–61. 41 C. Ó Gráda, Ireland Before and After the Famine (Manchester 1988), p. 32. 42 P. Solar, ‘The Agricultural Trade of the Port of Waterford 1809–1909’ in W. Nolan and P. Power (eds) Waterford; History and Society (Dublin, 1992), pp. 506, 511, 514. 43 A. Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution, Development or Decline? (Cork, 1991), pp. 41–49; L. Cullen, ‘Corn Milling in Ireland During the Eighteenth Century’ Irish Economic and Social History, 4 (1977), p. 24; Bielenberg, Irish Flour Milling, pp. 59–87. 44 B. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 198–199. 45 Select Committee on Industries (Ireland) Q 7379. 46 BPP, cix, 1912–13 Census of Production (1907), p. 492. 47 Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, pp. 198–199; J. Blake, ‘Brinny Mill’, Bandon Historical Society Journal 6 (1990), p. 42. 48 Scott, A Hundred Years A Milling, pp. 153–159. 49 Second Report of the Railway Commissioners, BPP 1837–8, xxxv, app. B, no. 14, p. 97; Agricultural Statistics for 1891, BPP 1892, lxxxviii (c. 6777), p. 25. 50 R. Green, ‘Industrial Decline in the Nineteenth Century’, in L.M. Cullen (ed.) The Formation of the Irish Economy (Cork, 1969), p. 100. 51 E.M. Crawford, ‘Indian Meal and Pellegra in Nineteenth Century Ireland’ in J.M. Goldstrom and L.A. Clarkson, Irish Population, Economy and Society (Oxford, 1981), pp. 113–133. 52 E. Cannon and L. Brunt, ‘The Irish Grain Trade from the Famine to the First World War’, Economic History Review, 57 (2004), pp. 33–79; Scott, A Hundred Years A Milling, p. 135; Cork Corporation, Cork Past and Present: A Handbook for the Irish Convention on its visit to Cork (Cork, 1917), p. 48. 53 W. McCutcheon, ‘The Corn Mill in Ulster’, Ulsterfolklife 15–16 (1970), p. 76; Solar, ‘Growth and Distribution in Irish Agriculture before the Famine’, pp. 233–234. For the diverse trade of a larger mill see NAI Dub 10/2/4 and 10/3/1 Shareholder minutebook 1874–1945 Dublin North City Milling Co. Ltd which had trading assets in Dublin, Athlone, Longford, Castlerea, Castlebar and Ballina. 54 W. Burke, History of Clonmel (Clonmel, 1907), pp. 183–184. 55 BPP 1884–5, ix, Commission on Irish Industry Q 7331. 56 Bielenberg, Irish Flour Milling, pp. 59–87. 57 G. Bowie, ‘Corn Drying Kilns, Meal Milling and Flour in Ireland’, Folk Life 17 (1979), p. 12. 58 E.R.R. Green, ‘The History of the Belfast Grain Trade’, Belfast Natural History Society Proceedings, viii (1967), p. 42. 59 J. Magee, Barney Bernard Huges of Belfast 1808–1878 (Belfast, 2001), pp. 226–231. 60 NAI; Dub. 10 1/1 Memorandum of Association of Dublin North City Milling Co. Ltd. Dub. 10 2/4 Shareholders Minutebook 1874–1945. 61 J. Tann and G. Jones, ‘Technology and Transformation: The diffusion of the roller mill in the British flour milling industry 1870–1907’, Technology and Culture 37(1) (1996), p. 53; 2 December 1889, 5 February 1894, The Miller.


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62 Cork Archives; B. 501/55/5 Hall’s outgoing letter-book 1849–50 Hall to Kingsford, 21 July 1849, Hall to Sargent, 23 October 1849. 63 Cork Archives; B 501/55/6 Letterbook 1850–51 Hall to Pollans Ferguson 22 May 1850. 64 Cork Archives; B 37/87 Cargo Ledger 1866–73 and 1874–6. 65 R. Perren, ‘Structural Change and Market Growth in the Food Industry: Flour milling in Britain, Europe, and America, 1850–1914’, Economic History Review, 43 (1990), pp. 423–424. 66 BPP 1884, ix, Select Committee on Industries (Ireland) Q. 342, Q. 2245-2252, Q. 5518, Q. 6612, Q. 7379, Q. 9243 For more detail on the condition of a number of Galway mills in 1880 see PRO Kew; T 1/17314 and the more prosperous condition of flour milling in Galway on the eve of the famine see Marmion (1860), p. 460. 67 Miller, 7 May 1883, 7 April 1884. 68 Communication with Peter Solar. 69 Bielenberg, Irish Flour Milling, pp. 70, 85–87. 70 W.L. Micks, An Account of the Congested Districts Board for Ireland (Dublin, 1925), appendix 3. 71 National Library; Ms 10380 (3) Townley Hall Papers Lamont to Balfour, 7 July 1845. 72 Thom’s Directory of Manufacturers and Shippers of Ireland (Dublin, 1908), p. 440. 73 4 February 1878, 4 December 1893, Miller. Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution, Development or Decline?, p. 47. Scott, A Hundred Years A Milling, p. 153. 74 Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution, Development or Decline?,p. 47. Commission on Irish Industry BPP 1884–5, ix, (Q. 5641), p. 304; (Q. 7353), p. 403; Green, ‘The History of the Belfast Grain Trade’, p. 43. James Neill Ltd. was also remodelled for roller milling in the 1880s. 75 Burls, Nine Generations, pp. 159–166. Milling 16 December 1933 The firm also innovated and benefited from advances in bleaching flour, which reduced American competition. 76 However, after the turn of the century flour milling in the port began to recover and expand down to 1910, falling off a little before rising to a similar level again in 1920 (Green ‘The History of the Belfast Grain Trade’, pp. 41–44). 77 4 December 1893, 5 February 1894, The Miller. William Stringer (of Black Lion Co. Carlow), who had been in charge of Shackleton’s mill in Carlow when it was converted, ultimately became one of the principal engineers and innovators in Simon’s service in England. Simon’s equipment increasingly dominated the Irish milling industry in the following decades. By 1936, Simon Ltd. claimed that over 75 per cent of the flour produced in the Irish Free State was produced by Simon plants (25 April 1936, Milling). 78 Tann and Jones, ‘Technology and Transformation’, pp. 64–65. 79 G. Jones, ‘The Introduction and Establishment of Roller Milling in Ireland, 1875–1925’ in A. Bielenberg (ed.) Irish Flour Milling; A History (Dublin, 2003), pp. 106–132. 80 Cork Archives; B. 501 Private Letterbook 1874–98 Halls to Anderson Cooper 16 March 1886. 81 Cork Archives; Private Letterbook 1887–1910; Hall to Barlow 14 March 1893. This was one of a few years when the company turned in a loss. Box 2 B. 501 Profit and Loss Account. Hall’s of Cork dominated the Waterford grain trade, from where corn could be forwarded to mills in counties Waterford, Carlow, Kilkenny. 82 Cork Archives; B 501/85/1 Yearly Summary Book 1901–12 and list of Shareholders 1901. The nominal capital of the company remained low (at £226,000) given its huge turnover. Other than the extensive Hall family interest, there were a number of millers (usually customers) on the shareholders’ register. 83 Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution, Development or Decline?, pp. 47–49. Cork’s Past and Present; A handbook for the Irish Convention on its visit to Cork (Cork, 1917), pp. 48–49.


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84 Milling, 17 December 1910, Cork’s Past and Present; A handbook for the Irish Convention on its visit to Cork (Cork, 1917), p. 49. 85 Perren, ‘Structural Change and Market Growth in the Food Industry’, p. 433. 86 NAI; Lim 2 Croom Mills and Cl. 4 Glynn and sons, Kilrush. 87 NAI; Lim 21 deed box no. 4 O’Mara v Bannatyne (statement of defence 1886). The company was incorporated with a nominal capital of £300,000 in 1894. Goodbody’s of Clara become more closely involved in managing the firm, extending their Limerick milling interests when they became associated with Russell and Sons Ltd. in 1903. 88 Russell’s ground over £409,000 worth of wheat in the year Aug 1921 to August 1922, and over £140,000 worth of maize. Both these Limerick concerns linked well with their jute factory (which made sacks) at Clara and their milling interests there, which could be supplied with grain from Limerick. NAI Lim 21 Ranks Deed Boxes nos 1 and 4. Stratten’s Dublin, Cork and the South of Ireland, p. 288. D. B. Quinn ‘Clara: A Midland Industrial Town 1900–1923’ in W. Nolan and T.P. O’Neill (eds) Offaly; History and Society (Dublin, 1998), pp. 799–830. 89 Milling, 25 April1936. 90 NAI; Lim 21; Deed Box no. 1 Rank’s Collection; Bannatyne’s Minutebook 1894. 91 NAI; Dub 115 Prospectus Johnston, Mooney & O’Brien Ltd Minutebook 1890–1956. 92 Irish Builder, 1 January 1888 (supplement). NAI; Dub 115 Johnston, Mooney and O’Brien Minutebook 1890–1956 contains Boland’s Prospectus. Dub. 69 Boland’s Secretary Dept. Abstract Account, Ringsend Rd. Mills 1889-. 93 Burls, Nine Generations, p. 162. 94 Free State Farmer December 1928. St John’s Mills were acquired by the family in 1858; they were extended and ultimately converted to the roller system in 1885, and produced both household and bakers’ flour, in addition to maize livestock feeds. 95 NAI; Off 9/3/17 Robert Perry & Co. Letterbook 1892–4. The Manor Mills in Maynooth Co. Kildare also undertook the production of oatmeal, indian meal and flour, and between 1854 and 1866, in addition to selling around Kildare it was selling to customers in the greater Dublin area and as far a field as Carlow and Kilkenny. NAI; KLD 8/2/1 Ledger Manor Mills Maynooth 1854–66. 96 M. Silverman and P.H. Gulliver, In the Valley of the Nore: A social history of Thomastown Co. Kilkenny 1840–1983 (Dublin, 1986), pp. 76–78. Although some firms, like Mosse Ltd at Bennettsbridge Co. Kilkenny survived on an almost entirely local trade, even after independence. 97 NAI; Wick 3/2 Notebook 1 August 1867. 3/5 Wheat Purchase Book. 25 April 1936, Milling. 98 NAI; Dub 128/B/2/1, 1904 AGM Irish Flour Millers Association, p. 7. Scott, A Hundred Years A Milling, p. 160. 99 NAI; Dub 128/b/2/7 Irish Flour Millers Association and 128a/4/2/1, Odlum and Pemberton’s Leinster Steam and Water Roller Mills, Irish Wheat Book 1881–1920. Also see Hoey and Denning box 38 (1a-37-38). 100 Milling, 25 April 1936, pp. 43, 54 Kennedy’s had six Dublin bakeries Milling 25 October 1924 NAI; D. 2448 Dock Milling Co..In 1923 the company was valued at £24,606. 101 Agricultural Statistics, Ireland 1891, p. 26.; 1916, p. 75. 102 Report on the Application for the Tariff on Flour (Dublin,) Prices Commission Report on Wheaten Flour (Dublin, 1934) Milling, 25 October 1924, Irish Trade Journal, April 1926; A.J.H. Latham and L. Neal, ‘The International Market in Rice and Wheat 1868–1914’, Economic History Review 36 (1983), p. 274; M.E. Daly, Industrial Development and Irish National Identity (Syracuse, 1992), p. 44. 103 C. Knick Harley, ‘Transportation, the World Wheat Trade, and the Kuznets Cycle, 1850–1913’, Explorations in Economic History 17 (1980), p. 219. 104 Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry, pp. 61, 88–92.


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105 A. Bielenberg, ‘A Survey of Irish Flour Milling 1801–1922’, in A. Bielenberg (ed) Irish Flour Milling: A History 600–2000 (Dublin, 2003), pp. 85–86. 106 G. Jones, ‘The Introduction and Establishment of Roller Milling in Ireland, 1875– 1925’ in A. Bielenberg (ed.) Irish Flour Milling; A History (Dublin, 2003), p. 128. 107 For a detailed written assessment and map of the condition and geography of oatmeal mills in Westmeath and amounts advanced to various millers in war years see NAI: AG 1/E 14905/25. For details on Archers Mill, Thurles, Co. Tipperary see AG 1/A 7818/24 108 Bielenberg, Irish Flour Milling, pp. 59–87. 109 J. Magee, Barney Bernard Huges of Belfast 1808–1878 (Belfast, 2001), p. 4. 110 PRONI; D/1854/4/19 Croker to Earl of Annesley (1803) Letter re corn and flour trade in Dublin. In 1790, 82 flour mills from all over Ireland were listed sending flour to Dublin. Journal Irish House of Commons (1790–1), vol. XIV, Account of number of Corn Mills at Present in Ireland. 111 L.M. Cullen, The Emergence of Modern Ireland 1600–1900 (London, 1981), pp. 144, 150. 112 Clarkson and Crawford (1989), p. 189. and (2001), pp. 69–70, 83. Second Report of the Railway Commissioners BPP 1837–8, xxxv, app. B, p. 26. 113 M. Crawford, ‘Diet and the Labouring Classes in the Nineteenth Century’ Saothar 15 (1990), p. 88. 114 L. Clarkson and M. Crawford, ‘Dietary Directions: A topographical survey of Irish diet, 1836’ in R. Mitchison and P. Roebuck (eds) Economy and Society in Scotland and Ireland 1500–1939 (Edinburgh, 1989), pp. 171–192. 115 L. Clarkson and M. Crawford, Feast or Famine: A history of food and nutrition in Ireland 1500–1920 (Oxford, 2001). They have also demonstrated that for upper and middle-class families expenditure on cereal consumption (including flour and wheat meal) was considerable after the 1750s, pp. 67–70, 34, 41, 57, 76, 80, 83. 116 Collins has suggested a more conservative figure of 88 per cent for England and Wales in 1850 and 44 per cent for Scotland in the same year, and going back in time he tentatively suggests 66 per cent for England and Wales at the beginning of the nineteenth century and 10 per cent for Scotland. E. Collins, ‘Dietary Change and Cereal Consumption in Britain in the Nineteenth Century’, Agricultural History Review 29 (1975), pp. 110, 114. 117 This is assuming a harvest of 6,750,000 cwt after 10 per cent has been deducted for seed, stock feed, waste etc. then deducting net wheat exports of 249,000 cwt leaving 6,501,000 cwt which with an extraction rate of 80 per cent produces 5,201,000 cwt of flour from which 636,000 cwt deducted for net flour exports, leaving Irish flour consumption at 4,565,000 cwt (or 62 lb per capita); P. Solar, ‘The Great Famine was No Ordinary Subsistence Crisis’ in E.M. Crawford (ed.) Famine: The Irish experience 900–1900 (Edinburgh, 1989), pp. 132–133; Ó Gráda, ‘Irish Agricultural Output Before and After the Famine’, pp. 149–165. 118 1831 Census. The 1831 census only records males aged 20 or more, but this accounts for most bakers. 119 B. Mahon, Land of Milk and Honey: The story of traditional Irish food (Cork, 1998), pp. 7, 74; E. Estyn Evans, Irish Folk Ways (London, 1957), pp. 77–78; C. O’Danachair, ‘Bread’ Ulsterfolklife 4 (1958), pp. 29-32. 120 J. Swift, History of the Dublin Bakers (Dublin, 1949), pp. 226–227; Magee, Barney Bernard Huges of Belfast 1808–1878, pp. 1–60, 97–111, 225–234. 121 P. Makem and J. Murphy, Five Generations of Baking in Newry 1837–1987 (Newry, 1988), pp. 30–55. 122 J. Daly, Glimpses of Irish Industries (Dublin, 1889), pp. 32–33. For a list of Dublin bakers for example see Swift, (1949), p. 303. 123 The Irish Builder, 1 January 1888, Supplement, pp. 1–4.


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124 NAI; Dub 115 minutebook 1890–1956 (Prospectus; Boland’s, 1888; Johnston, Mooney and O’Brien, 1889). Milling and the National Baker 5 December 1925, pp. 786–787. 125 NAI; Dub 115 Johnston, Mooney and O’Brien Ltd, Ballsbridge, Minutebook 1890–1956. By early 1919, there was still no settlement with the Flour Control Committee, which had taken over the company’s flour mill in 1917. 126 Select Committee on Industries (Ireland) 1885 Q. 342 127 Milling, 25 October 1924, pp. lvii–lxi. In many of the bakeries, vanmen bought the product, taking full responsibility for distribution. Much bread was delivered to these vanmen by dedicated trains. Belfast, for example, supplied much of the north where there was few bakeries, many of them having been displaced. 128 T.A.B. Corley, ‘Nutrition, Technology and the Growth of the British Biscuit Industry 1820–1900’ in D. Oddy and D. Miller (eds) The Making of the Modern British Diet (London, 1976), p. 16. 129 S. O’Maitiu, W. & R. Jacob: Celebrating 150 years of Irish biscuit making (Dublin, 2001), pp. 1–56; Corley, ‘Nutrition, Technology and the Growth of the British Biscuit Industry 1820–1900’, p. 21. 130 Ibid., pp. 32–3. Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry, pp. 92–93. R.F. O’Connor, ‘Biscuit Manufacture’, The Irish Rosary 6 (1902), pp. 461–468. 131 First UK Census of Production (1907) BPP, cix, 1912–3 (cd. 6320), p. 503. 132 O’Maitiu, W. & R. Jacob, pp. 39–48. 133 J.S. Donnelly, ‘Cork Market: Its role in the nineteenth century Irish butter trade’, Studia Hibernica 11 (1971), pp. 135–146. 134 R. Ryan, ‘The Butter Industry in Ireland 1922–1939’, Irish Economic and Social History 28 (2001), pp. 32–33. 135 J. Foley, ‘The Irish Dairy Industry: A historical perspective’, Journal of the Society of Dairy Technology 46 (4) (1993), p. 125; C. Rynne, At the Sign of the Cow: The Cork butter market 1770–1924 (Cork, 1998), p. 96. 136 P. Breathnach, ‘The Development of the Dairy Industry in Co. Waterford’ in W. Nolan and T.P. Power (eds) Waterford History and Society (Dublin 1992), p. 709. 137 C. Ó Gráda, ‘The Beginnings of the Irish Creamery System 1890–1914’, Economic History Review, 30 (1977), pp. 284–305. 138 D. Greer and J.W. Nicholson, The Factory Acts in Ireland 1802–1914 ((Dublin, 2003), pp. 264–272. 139 Ó Gráda, ‘The Beginnings of the Irish Creamery System 1890–1914’, pp. 284–305. 140 R. Ryan, ‘The Butter Industry in Munster 1884–1939’, (M. Phil, University College, Cork, 2000), pp. 12, 19–20. 141 Stratten’s Dublin, Cork and South of Ireland (London, 1892), pp. 280–1; Foley, ‘The Irish Dairy Industry’, p. 127; Ryan, ‘The Butter industry in Munster 1884–1939’, p. 18; D. Lee, ‘The Munster Soviets and the Fall of the House of Cleeve’ in D. Lee and D. Jacobs (eds) Made in Limerick (Limerick, 2003,) pp. 287–306; D. Haugh ‘The ITGWU in Limerick 1917–22’, Saothar 31 (2006), pp. 27–42. The scale of its activities and the voracious demand for milk it consumed is evident from the fact that it still accounted for 114 of the 180 privately owned creameries in the Irish Free State in 1926. 142 Irish Trade Journal, March, 1934, pp. 3–4. 143 Ryan, ‘The Butter Industry in Munster 1884–1939’, pp. 126–127. Cheese and margarine production was small in Ireland. After the emergence of the creamery system cheese manufacture provided a means to utilise surplus seperated milk and output increased, notably with the food shortages at the end and in the immediate aftermath of the First World War when exports increased dramatically; but this was a short lived boom. There were two margerine factories in Cork and one operating in Waterford in 1921 Tariff Commission Report on the Application for a tariff on Margerine (Dublin, 1927); M. O’Shea, ‘Irish Cheesemaking’, Irish Agricultural and Creamery Review November (1952), pp. 10–12.

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144 C. Rynne, At the Sign of the Cow: The Cork butter market 1770–1924 (Cork, 1998), pp. 95–101. 145 Breathnach, The Development of the Dairy Industry in Co. Waterford’, p. 711. 146 BPP 1910, lxxxiii, Summary of employment in non-textile factories (1907). p. 797. BPP, lxxxix, 1911 Summary of returns of employment in workshops (1907), p. 9. 147 A. Bielenberg, ‘What Happened to Irish Industry after the British Industrial Revolution? Some evidence from the first UK Census of Production in 1907’, Economic History Review, 61 (2008) pp. 820–41.


5 Drink and tobacco 1 R. Shipkey, ‘Problems in Alcoholic Production and Controls in Early NineteenthCentury Ireland’, Historical Journal, 16 (1973), p. 295. 2 E. Malcolm, Ireland Sober, Ireland Free: Drink and temperence in nineteenth Century Ireland (Dublin, 1986), p. 26. 3 T. Gourvish and R. Wilson, The British Brewing Industry 1830–1980 (Cambridge, 1994). 4 Irish House of Commons Journal, 1792–4, vol. 15, appendix cxci. 5 P. Mathias, The Brewing Industry in England 1700–1830 (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 151–5. 6 Ibid., pp. 151–157. 7 G. O’ Brien, The Economic History of Ireland from the Union to the Famine (London, 1921), p. 343. 8 Registry of Deeds, Dublin; The Anonymous Partnerships, vols 1 and 2. 9 Essex Record Office; Sperling Family Collection, D/DGd, B. 3 to B. 7. 10 A. Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution 1780–1880 (Cork, 1991), p. 56. 11 Ibid., pp. 56–7. 12 P. Lynch and R. Vaizey, Guinness’s Brewery in the Irish Economy 1759–1876 (Cambridge, 1960), p. 127. 13 Account of Beer Exported from Ireland BPP, 1828, xviii. 14 Lynch and Vaizey Guinness’s Brewery in the Irish Economy 1759–1876, p. 260. 15 Return of Licensed brewers in the UK BPP 1823, xvi (316), p. 3 annually to BPP 1847–8, lviii (101), p. 12. See P. Cockton, Subject Catalogue of the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1801–1900 (Cambridge, 1988) for references for each year. 16 Return of Licensed Brewers in the UK, BPP, xliv (136), p. 12. 17 Lynch and Vaizey, Guinness’s Brewery in the Irish Economy 1759–1876, pp. 81–82, 223. 18 K. Connell, ‘Illicit Distillation’ in Irish Peasant Society (Oxford, 1968), p. 21; J. Lee, ‘Money and Beer and Beer in Ireland, 1790–1875’, Economic History Review 19 (1966), pp. 183–190. 19 The figures for malt used by brewers between 1820 and 1901 can be found in A. Bielenberg, ‘The Irish Brewing Industry and the Rise of Guinness 1790–1914’ in R.G. Wilson and T.R. Gourvish (eds) The Dynamics of the International Brewing Industry since 1800 (London, 1998), pp. 120–121. For beer brewed in Ireland see Report of the Commission on Inland Revenue 1856–1869 BPP 1870, xx, p. 398. 20 Malcolm, Ireland Sober, Ireland Free, p. 324. 21 Return of Licensed Brewers in the UK BPP, 1846, xliv (136), p. 12. and BPP, 1896, lxxvi (100), p. 9 22 D.Ó Drisceoil, The Murphy’s Story: The history of Lady’s Well Brewery, Cork (Cork, 1997), pp. 45, 61. The records of the Cork brewing industry are extensive. See Archives Service, UCC Library; Murphy’s Brewery Collection. Cork Archives; Beamish and Crawford Collection. 23 Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution 1780–1880, pp. 50–60.


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24 J. Keane, ‘Limerick Breweries,’ The Old Limerick Journal 8 (1981), pp. 17–20. 25 W. Coyne, Ireland, Industrial and Agricultural (Dublin, 1902), pp. 480–482. 26 NAI 976/2 and 975/6 material relating to Cairnes family brewing interests. Lynch and Vaizey, Guinness’s Brewery in the Irish Economy 1759–1876, p. 97. For history of Castlebellingham brewery see J. Leslie, History of Kilsaran (Dundalk, 1908). 27 T.B. Halpin, ‘A Brief History of the Brewing Industry in Kilkenny’, Old Kilkenny Review 4 (1989), pp. 583–591. 28 E. Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry (London, 1920), pp. 159–160. Return of the Malt duties in the UK BPP, 1900, lxxviii (69), p. 10. 29 P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Industry 1820–1914’ in L. Kennedy and P. Ollerenshaw (eds) An Economic History of Ulster 1820–1939 (Manchester, 1985), p. 86; H. Gribbon, The History of Waterpower in Ulster (Newton Abbot, 1969), p. 127. 30 Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry, pp. 159–160. 31 Return of Licensed brewers in the UK, BPP, 1836, xlv (259), p. 3. Return of Malt Duties paid in the UK, BPP, 1900, lxxviii (69), p. 10. 32 Lynch and Vaizey, Guinness’s Brewery in the Irish Economy 1759–1876, pp. 91–92 33 National Library Ir 670 P. 12. Material relating to the Phoenix Brewery (Dublin) Ltd. 34 Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry, pp. 159–160. 35 Bielenberg, ‘The Irish Brewing Industry and the Rise of Guinness 1790–1914’, pp. 120–1. 36 For some useful insights into the founding father of the brewery see Patrick Guinness Arthur’s Round: The life and times of Arthur Guinness (London, 2007). 37 Lynch and Vaizey, Guinness’s Brewery in the Irish Economy 1759–1876, pp. 70–80, 122. 38 Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution 1780–1880, p. 55, Mathias, The Brewing Industry in England 1700–1830, pp. 166–167. 39 National Library, Large Pamphlets, no. 15, Copy of a note showing the brewers of Dublin in 1756 and 1825. 40 Lynch and Vaizey, (1960), p. 199. 41 M. Daly, Dublin, the Deposed Capital (Cork, 1985), pp. 23–26, National Library, Ir 6633 G. 2, Guinness brewery (Dublin 1906); G. Measom, Guide to Midland … Great Southern and Western Railways (Dublin, 1866). 42 S.R. Dennison and O. MacDonagh, Guinness 1886–1939: From incorporation to the Second World War (Cork, 1998), pp. 38–39. 43 Lynch and Vaizey, Guinness’s Brewery in the Irish Economy 1759–1876, p. 225, K. Hawkins and C. Pass, The Brewing Industry (London, 1979), pp. 25–28. 44 Gourvish and Wilson, The British Brewing Industry 1830–1980), pp. 98–99. 45 Dennison and MacDonagh, Guinness 1886–1939, pp. 40, 94, 203–218: J. Brown, Guinness and Hops (London, 1980), pp. 1–21, 230–231. 46 Guinness Archive, Park Royal GDB/BR 12/1; extracts from the Head Brewer’s Reports, 1880–97 (extracts made in 1930s). 47 Brown, Guinness and Hops, pp. 1–21; M. Sigsworth, ‘Science and the Brewing Industry 1850–1900’, Economic History Review 17 (1965), p. 550. For a useful study of one innovative maltings supplying Guinness see T. West, Malting the Barley: John H. Bennett the man and his firm, 200 years of malting barley in Ballinacurra (Midleton, 2006). The records of this business are held in the Cork Archives. 48 Daly, Dublin, the Deposed Capital, pp. 23–26, National Library Ir 6633 G.2, Guinness Brewery (Dublin, 1906) 49 Gourvish and Wilson The British Brewing Industry 1830–1980), pp. 216, 250. 50 Lynch and Vaizey, Guinness’s Brewery in the Irish Economy 1759–1876), p. 179. 51 For more detail on this see A. Bielenberg, ‘Late Victorian Elite Formation and Philanthropy: The making of Edward Guinness’, Studia Hibernica 32 (2002–3), pp. 133–154.


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52 For the impact of the war on the two largest breweries see Dennison and MacDonagh, Guinness 1886–1939, pp. 149–159; D.Ó Drisceoi and D.Ó Drisceoil, The Murphy’s Story: The history of Lady’s Well Brewery, Cork (Cork, 1997), pp. 73–82. 53 Gourvish and Wilson, The British Brewing Industry 1830–1980, pp. 98–103. 54 Malcolm, Ireland Sober, Ireland Free, p. 23. 55 By 1843, according to one estimate there was one licensed liquor seller to every 40 families. J. Barrett, ‘Why Paddy Drank, The Social Importance of Whiskey in Pre-Famine Ireland’, Journal of Popular Culture 11 (1977), pp. 156–160. 56 British Parliamentary Papers 1870, xx, Account of British Spirits Charged with Duty. pp. 8–9. 57 R. Weir, ‘The Patent Still Distillers and the Role of Competition’, in L. Cullen and T. Smout (eds) Comparative Aspects of Scottish and Irish Economic and Social History, 1600–1900 (Edinburgh, 1977), p. 131. 58 K. Connell, Irish Peasant Society (Oxford, 1968), pp. 1, 19, 21. Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution, Development or Decline?, p. 73. 59 G. O’Brien, The Economic History of Ireland from the Union to the Famine (London, 1921), p. 359; Connell, Irish Peasant Society, pp. 19–21. 60 BPP 1831, xvii, Accounts Relating to Spirits. 61 For production levels see A. Bielenberg ‘The Irish Distilling Industry under the Union’ in D. Dickson and C. Ó Gráda (eds) Refiguring Ireland (Dublin, 2003), pp. 308–11. 62 Registry of Deeds, Dublin. Anonymous Partnerships, 1. Dublin was the premier distilling centre in Ireland where these partnerships were set up, including the largest (Roe on Thomas St.) which had a joint stock of £27,000. But large investments were also made elsewhere. A partnership in Clonmel set up with a joint stock of £24,000. Many more were set up without partnerships; two distilleries were set up in Midleton in the mid-1820s at a cost of £20,000 and £30,000. Others were set up at Limavady, Carrickfergus and Ballyshannon between 1814 and 1826, all of which had about £10,000 invested in them, while one built at Dungannon cost £16,000 to build. Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution, Development or Decline, p. 64; H. Gribbon, The History of Waterpower in Ulster (Newton Abbot, 1969), p. 125. 63 Allied Irish Bank, Foster Place, Dublin; Provincial Bank Records, General Committee Minutes, no. 1. 1825–6, Bank of Ireland, Baggot St., Dublin; Court of Directors Transactions, no. 3, 3 January1826. Wise’s distillery in Cork for example received a cash credit of £12,000 in 1826 from the Provincial Bank. In the same year, Roe of Dublin received a similar loan using his premises as collateral. 64 E. Maguire, Irish Whiskey (Dublin, 1973), pp. 127–128, 148. 65 Seventh Report on Excise, BPP, 1834 xxv, App. 66, p. 228. 66 J. Nettleton, The Manufacture of Spirits (London, 1895), p. 8; R. Shipkey, ‘Problems in Alcoholic Production and Controls in early Nineteenth Century Ireland’, The Historical Journal 16 (1973), pp. 291–295. 67 Nettleton, The Manufacture of Spirits, p. 182. 68 PRONI. D. 207/32/77, Document Concerning Excise Payments Relating to Jameson’s. 69 BPP 1823, vii, Fifth Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the Revenue Arising in Ireland p. 8. 70 K. Connell, Irish Peasant Society (Oxford, 1968), pp. 13–29, 49. 71 PRO London Cust 119/265 Report on Illicit Distilling in North West Ireland. 72 Maguire, Irish Whiskey, pp. 240–244. 73 Connell, Irish Peasant Society, p. 43. Return of Spirits Distilled in UK, BPP 1852–3, xcix, (547), p. 2; Nettleton (1895), p. 31. 74 BPP 1840, xliv, An Account of the Gallons of Proof Distilled inEeach Collection of Excise in Ireland 1825–39.


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75 BPP 1831, xvii, Wash Distilled in GB and Ireland. 76 Exports in this period to England, the major export market, peaked in 1831 and 1832 at roughly 1.2 million gallons; in other years they were usually significantly lower than this. BPP 1840, xliv, Account on Spirits. 77 BPP 1909, xlix, Royal Commission on Whiskey and Other Potable Spirits; Minutes of Evidence, pp. 250–255. The notable difference in the taste between pot- and patent-still whiskey is a consequence of the application of different distilling techniques. Patent-still spirit contain very little of the volatile oils produced from the pot still which give whiskey its flavour and character. Patent-still whiskey is therefore blended with pot-still whiskey to give it more body and taste (W. Coyne Ireland, Industrial and Agricultural (Dublin, 1907), p. 502). 78 A. Slater ‘A London Firm of Still Makers’, Business History, 8 (1966), pp. 48–59. BPP 1909, xlix, Royal Commission on Whiskey and Other Potable Spirits. 79 B. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), p. 408. 80 Exports to England in this period (the most important export market) were exceptionally high at 1.5 million gallons in 1847, falling under 1.2 million until 1852 when they rose gradually to 2.3 million in 1856. BPP 1851, liii, Return of Spirits Taken Out of Bond for Export. BPP 1861, lviii, Return of spirits exported from Ireland. 81 Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, pp. 408–409; Malcolm, Ireland Sober, Ireland Free, p. 323; Coyne (1907), pp. 498–499; J.S. Donnelly, ‘The Irish Agricultural Depression of 1859–64’ Irish Economic and Social History 3 (1976), pp. 33–54. 82 Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, pp. 408–409; W. Vaughan A.J. Fitzpatrick (eds) Irish Historical Statistics; Population 1821–1971 (Dublin, 1978), pp. 12–13. 83 Malcolm, Ireland Sober, Ireland Free, p. 327. Barrett (1977), p. 19. 84 E. Malcolm ‘The Rise of the Pub; A Study in the Disciplining of Popular Culture’ in J. Donnelly K. Miller (eds) Irish Popular Culture 1650–1850 (Dublin, 1998), p. 51. 85 Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, pp. 407–409. 86 Weir, ‘The Patent Still Distillers and the Role of Competition’, pp. 132, 138–139. 87 Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, pp. 408–409. 88 Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution, Development or Decline?, p. 69. 89 Register of Joint stock Companies, BPP annually, for reference for each year see P. Cockton Subject Catalogue of the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1801–1900 (Cambridge, 1988). Weir, ‘The Patent Still Distillers and the Role of Competition’, pp. 136–139. 90 NAI; Dublin. Irish Distillers Collection, Jameson’s; Box 3 and 5. Maguire, Irish Whiskey, pp. 373–374. 91 NAI; M. 4859, Prospectus of Persse, Ltd. 92 A. Bielenberg, Locke’s Distillery: A History (Dublin, 1993), pp. 48–49. 93 P. Ollerenshaw ‘Aspects of Bank Lending in Post Famine Ireland’, in R. Mitchison and P. Roebuck (eds) Economy and Society in Scotland and Ireland (Edinburgh 1988), p. 229. 94 A. Bielenberg, A.,’The Watt Family and the Derry Distilling Industry, 1762– 1921’, Ulsterfolklife, 40 (1994), pp. 1–11. PRONI D 1506/11, A Watt’s Letterbook 1895–1922 (gives sales 1896–8). They acquired a smaller rival pot-still distillery (the Waterside) in 1867. 95 Maguire, Irish Whiskey, pp. 348–349. P. Ollerenshaw ‘Industry 1820–1914 ‘ in L. Kennedy and P. Ollerenshaw (eds) Economic History of Ulster (Manchester, 1985), p. 86. Comber, for example, had a strong local trade which extended to Belfast, also exporting to Britain and its colonies. PRONI; D. 1808/1/2 Comber Letterbook 1907. 96 PRONI; D. 1506/11a, Watt Letterbook (see communications with David Watt, 7 and 10 March 1903). 97 Weir, ‘The Patent Still Distillers and the Role of Competition’, pp. 131–14; PRONI; D. 2132/3/1 Private Journal No. 1 Dunville and Co. Ltd Weir (1980), pp. 45–65.


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98 BPP 1908, lviii, Minutes of Evidence, p. 337. 99 15 July, 1 August, 1 September 1893, Whiskey Trade Review. 15 November 1897, Wine Trade Review. 100 R. Weir, The History of the Distillers Company, 1877–1939: Diversification and growth in whisky and chemicals (Oxford, 1995), p. 121. R. Weir, ‘In and Out of Ireland: The Distillers Company Ltd. and the Irish whiskey trade 1900–1939’, Irish Economic and Social History, 7 (1980), pp. 54–56. 101 BPP 1909, xlix, Minutes of Evidence; Royal Commission on Whiskey and Other Potable Spirits Appendix T, p. 261. Thoms’ Directory 1907 (for 1904 exports). 102 BPP 1908, lviii, Royal Commission on Whiskey; Minutes of Evidence, pp. 152–8. 103 National Archives; Irish Distillers Collection Powers Box 5; Meeting (Joint) of the Council and London Export Committee of theWhiskey Association 23/Sept./1921. On the boycott see D. Johnson ‘The Belfast Boycott, 1920–1922’ in J. Goldstrom and L. Clarkson (eds), Irish Population, Economy and Society (Oxford, 1981), pp. 287–307. 104 Weir, The History of the Distillers Company, 1877–1939, pp. 121, 141–148, 161,197–225. 27 October 1921, Londonderry Sentinel. Maguire, Irish Whiskey, p. 306. 105 See A. Bielenberg, ‘The Irish Distilling Industry under the Union’ in D. Dickson and C. Ó Gráda (eds) Refiguring Ireland (Dublin, 2003)), pp. 308–311. 106 T.K. Daniel, ‘Griffith on his Noble Head: The Determinants of Cumann na nGaedhael Economic Policy 1922–32’, Irish Economic and Social History 3 (1976), pp. 59–60. Humphreys (1994), pp. 93–103. 107 C. Ó Gráda, A New Economic History of Ireland 1780–1939 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 297–304. 108 For some comparisons of Scotch and Irish advertising see J. Murray, The Art of Whisky (London, 1998) 109 Weir, The History of the Distillers Company, 1877–1939; Weir, ‘In and Out of Ireland’, pp. 64–65; M. Humphreys, ‘An issue of confidence; The decline of the Irish whiskey trade in independent Ireland, 1922-1952’ Journal of European Economic History, 23 (1940 pp. 93-103). 110 E. Wakefield, An Account of Ireland (London, 1812), vol. 2, p. 31. Tenth Report of the Commissioners of Enquiry into the Revenue Arising in Ireland, BPP, 1824, x, p. 391, p. 770. 111 Report From Select Committee on Tobacco Trade; Minutes of Evidence BPP, xii, 1844, 1. Evidence of W. Scholey, tobacco broker, 6870, and John Lloyd, tobacco merchant, 7766. B. Alford, Wills and the Development of the UK Tobacco Industry 1786–1965 (London, 1973), p. 85. There was still a good market for stalks in Ireland. see National Archives Dub 70 Ledger 1832–59 of Michael McNamara, Leaf Tobacco Importers, Dublin. As late as 1892, Lundy Foot of Dublin still imported the full leaf, carrying out the stripping process themselves; see Stratten’s Guide to Dublin, Cork and the South of Ireland (London, 1892), p. 83. 112 First Report on the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the Adulterate of Food, Drink and Drugs, BPP, 1854–5, 221. Evidence of G. Phillips, Chief Officer of the Inland Revenue Department, 2416, A. Tanner, Tobacco (London, 1912), p. 11. 113 Alford, Wills and the Development of the UK Tobacco Industry 1786–1965, pp. 76, 82–3. Tanner, Tobacco, pp. 13–17. Hansards Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, vol. 169, col. 981 Debate on Tobacco Duties Bill, 2 March 1863. Colonel Dunne referred to ‘molasses, rum, and other materials’ being used in Irish tobacco. 114 First Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the Collection and Management of the Revenue Arising in Ireland BPP, 1822, xii, 1. L.M. Cullen, ‘The Smuggling Trade in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. 67, no. 5 (1969), p. 161. 115 S.C. Tobacco, 1844, Evidence of Dombraine, 7241–65. 116 S.C. Tobacco, Evidence of Foot. 7129–48.


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117 Second Report of The Railway Commissioners BPP, 1837–8, xxxv, Appendix B. No, 14. 118 L. Clarkson, M. Crawford and M. Litvack, Occupations of Ireland, 1841 (Belfast, 1995). 119 Railway Commissioners, appendix B, no. 9 and no. 14. 120 PRONI; D. 1202, Merchant’s Daybook Castlewellan. 1791–5. 121 Alford, Wills and the Development of the UK Tobacco Industry 1786–1965, pp. 62, 75, 107, 130. 122 Stratten’s Guide to Dublin Cork and the South of Ireland (London, 1892), p. 83. Cork, It’s Trade and Commerce (Cork, 1919), p. 201; Cork Examiner, 2 October 1933;Irish Tobacco Trade Journal, 15 March 1904, 15 October 1912; ‘Bagenalstown Tobacco Factory’, Carlovianna 36 (1988–9). 123 Alford, Wills and the Development of the UK Tobacco Industry 1786–1965, p. 110. Clarkson et al., Occupations of Ireland, 1841. The metropolis accounted for 845 of the 11,989 dealers who had a licence to sell tobacco in Ireland in 1835. The Railway Commissioners 1837–8, Appendix B. no. 14, p. 97. 124 Alford, Wills and the Development of the UK Tobacco Industry 1786–1965, p. 385. 125 J. Goodman, Tobacco in History; the Cultures of Dependence (London, 1993), p. 90, 235. 126 PRONI; D. 3624 Newspaper Cuttings on Thomas Gallaher. 127 PRONI, D. 3624/3 Newspaper Cuttings of the Gallaher family. W.D. and H.O. Wills (Bristol) came first with 30 travellers, while Lambert and Butler (London) came second with 21 and Thos. Gallaher (Belfast) came third with 16. Other Irish firms listed include TR and R Goodbody (Cork and Dundalk) with 8 and Murray and Sons (Belfast) with 7. Alford, Wills and the Development of the UK Tobacco Industry 1786–1965, p. 215. 128 NAI; Louth 25, Carroll’s Daybook 1838–45. 129 NAI; Louth 25, Carroll’s Daybooks 1845–50, 1852–9, 1876–; Dundalk Teamwork Project, Dundalk: A Tradition of Industry (Dundalk, 1986), pp. 23–5. 130 NAI; Louth 25 Daybook 1910–11. Private Letterbook 1908–1923. Up to about 1906 Carroll’s purchased tobacco in London, Glasgow, Liverpool and sometimes in Dublin, but by 1909 they were purchasing their years requirements in one lot on the American market which increased the companies borrowing requirements. (two years’ stock was worth £25,000). Dundalk Teamwork Project, Dundalk; The Irish Tobacco Trade Journal, 15 January 1910, 15 October 1912. 131 NAI; Lim 6/1/1, Ledger, John Clune Ltd, 1908–1916. ‘Bagnalstown Tobacco Factory’ Carloviana, no. 36, 1988–9. Stratten’s Dublin, Cork and the South of Ireland (London, 1892), p. 93. 132 Railway Commissioners, 1837–8, appendix B, no. 14, p. 97; E. Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry (London, 1920), pp. 181–3. 133 Alford, Wills and the Development of the UK Tobacco Industry 1786–1965, pp. 139, 168–169. Goodman, Tobacco in History; the Cultures of Dependence, p. 93. 134 Alford, Wills and the Development of the UK Tobacco Industry 1786–1965, pp. 223–224, 314. 135 H. Gribbon, ‘Economic and Social History 1850–1921’, New History of Ireland (Oxford, 1996), p. 303. A return of employees employees gives some idea of the high degree of specialisation in the many departments which the works contained, and the large number of women employed. See PRONI; T. 3305, List of Employees at Gallaher’s Tobacco Factory. 136 Alford, Wills and the Development of the UK Tobacco Industry 1786–1965, pp. 385–386. National Library, ILB 300 p. 6 Item 59; Men and Women of Ireland, pamphlet by Countess Markievicz (c. 1922) extolling the use of native brands. 137 Irish Tobacco Trade Journal, 15, February 1904, 15 March, 1904, 15 April, 1913 D.A. Chart, An Economic History of Ireland (Dublin, 1920), p. 134.


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138 P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Industry 1820–1914’, in L. Kennedy, and P. Ollerenshaw (eds) An Economic History of Ulster (Manchester, 1985), p. 87; Irish Tobacco Trade Journal, 15 March 1904, 15 Febuary 1908, 15 August 1909, 15 August 191; PRONI, D. 3624/3/2 Nomad’s Weekly and Belfast Critic 23 January 1909 and Leaflet on Gallaher’s. 139 Irish Tobacco Trade Journal, 15 Febuary 1909; PRONI; D. 3542/10 Bill Head of Murray D. 3624/3/2 Newspaper Cuttings of Gallaher Family. Mr R.W. Murray left a will of £208,000 reflecting the profitability of the business Irish Tobacco Trade Journal, 15 March 1905. 140 Financial Relations of GB and Ireland BPP 1895, xxxiii, QQ. 396–397. 462, 492. 141 National Library; Ir 387 B. 2. Belfast Harbour Commissioners Accounts. 142 Revenue and Expenditure between England, Scotland and Ireland (annually). B.P.P. 1911–16. 6 Mining, iron, engineering 1 R. Kane, The Industrial Resources of Ireland (Dublin, 1845), p. vi 2 Ibid., p. 247. 3 R.P. Davis, Arthur Griffith and Non Violent Sinn Fein (Dublin, 1974), p. 131; Commission of Inquiry into the the Resources and Industries of Ireland: Memoir on the Coalfields of Ireland (Dublin, 1921). 4 C.F. Bastable, ‘On Some Economic Conditions of Industrial Development with Special Reference to the Case of Ireland’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society 62, July (1884), pp. 466–467. 5 BPP 1886, lxxi, UK Mineral Returns. 6 M.J. Conry, Dancing the Culm: Burning culm as a domestic and industrial fuel in Ireland (Carlow, 2001), pp. 14–17. 7 W.A. McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland (Cranbury, 1984), pp. 325–342. 8 For annual references to UK mineral statistics see P. Cockton, Guide to the British Parliamentary Papers (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 104–106. 9 Railway Commissioners report BPP 1837–8, xxxv, Appendix B, no. 17, p. 837 and Appendix B, no. 8, p. 790. C. Rynne suggests that employment had risen to about 1000 by the 1840s Industrial Ireland 1750–1930: An Archaeology (Cork, 2006), pp. 84, 92. 10 W. Nolan, ‘The Collieries at the Time of the 1848 Rebellion’, Ballingarry Parish Journal (2000), pp. 159–165. A. Coughlan and F.D. Reilly, ‘The North Cork Coalfields’, Mallow Field Club Journal (1992), p. 47. Conry, Dancing the Culm, pp. 19–21. 11 Commission of Inquiry into the the Resources and Industries of Ireland; Memoir on the Coalfields of Ireland (Dublin, 1921), p. 73, pp. 133–8. 12 BPP 1873, x, State of the Coal Trade, appendix no 1. 13 R.C. Prior, Wandesforde ‘Coal Mining in the Castlecomer Area’, Carlovianna 2 (24) (1975), p. 38; Mineral Statistics (UK) BPP 1886, lxxi:. E.J. Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry (London, 1920), p. 147; T. Lyng Castlecomer Connections (Freshford, 1984), p. 250. 14 For a full treatment see M.J. Conry, Dancing the Culm: Burning culm as a domestic and industrial fuel in Ireland (Carlow, 2001). 15 Rynne, Industrial Ireland 1750–1930, p. 93. 16 G. Phillips Bevan, ‘The Industrial Resources of Ireland’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society, 4, December (1881), p. 684. 17 E. Wakefield, An Account of Ireland, Statistical and Political (London, 1812), vol. 1, p. 136. 18 R.A. Williams, The Berehaven Copper Mines (Kenmare, 1993), pp. 14–17, 159. On the smaller or less successful mines in West Cork mines see W. O’Brien, Our Mining Past: The metal heritage of Cork (Cork, 1994); D. Cowman and T.A. Reilly, The Abandoned Mines of West Carbery (Dublin, 1988).


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19 For value of Irish copper ore sold in Swansea from 1806–1881 see J. Williams, Digest of Welsh Historical Statistics (Aberystwyth, 1985), vol. 2, pp. 6–7. I would like to thank William Mulligan, (who is currently completing an overview of the Irish copper industry in this period), for drawing my attention to this reference. From the mid-nineteenth century Irish copper ore was also sold at ports other than Swansea so these figures do not give the full picture. On this see J. Sproule, The Irish Industrial Exhibition of 1853 (Dublin, 1854), pp. 50–1. 20 See D. Cowman, The Making and Breaking of a Mining Community: The copper coast county Waterford 1825–1875 (Waterford, 2006) for ore sent from Bunmahon to Swansea. 21 D. Cowman, ‘The Mining Community at Avoca 1780–1880’ in K. Hannigan and W. Nolan (eds) Wicklow: History and Society (Dublin, 1994), pp. 761–788. 22 Cowman, The Making and Breaking of a Mining Community. The miners from Allihies have left the strongest migrant trail to both the Keweenaw, Michigan and Butte, Montana. W.H. Mulligan ‘From the Beara to the Keweenaw: The migration of Irish miners from Allihies, Co. Cork to the Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan, USA 1845–1880’, Journal of the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland 1 (2001), pp. 19–24. D. Emmons, The Butte Irish. Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town 1875–1925 (Illinois, 1990). 23 C.G. Ludlow, ‘A History of Salt in Ireland’, (unpublished PhD, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1993). Salt was extensively refined in Ireland before the mid-nineteenth century. 24 Rynne, Industrial Ireland 1750–1930, pp. 129–148. 25 D.P. McCracken, ‘The Management of a Mid-Victorian Irish Iron Ore Mine: Glenravel, County Antrim 1866–1887’, Irish Economic and Social History 11 (1984), pp. 60–72. 26 E. Newell, ‘“Copperopolis”: The rise and fall of the copper industry in the Swansea District, 1826–1921’, Business History 32 (3) July (1990), pp. 75–97. 27 Newell, ‘“Copperopolis”’, p. 75. 28 W.E. Coe, The Engineering Industry of Northern Ireland (Newton Abbot, 1969), p. 157. 29 S. Hogan, A History of Irish Steel (Dublin, 1980), p. 5; J. Feehan, Laois-An Environmental History (Stradbally, 1983), pp. 337–340; Rynne, Industrial Ireland 1750–1930, pp. 125–8. The Belfast Ironworks, established in 1851, had the capacity to roll boiler plates but it quickly ran into financial difficulties; M.S. Moss and J. Hume, Shipbuilders to the World: 125 years of Harland and Wolff (Belfast, 1986), pp. 11–12. 30 T. Wallace, Essays on the Manufactures of Ireland (Dublin, 1798), pp. 233–7. For detail on one of these see The Dublin Mercantile Advertiser, 3 November 1834. 31 NLI; P. 225, L. O’Brien, Observations on the Manufactures Trade and Present State of Ireland (Dublin, 1785). Throughout the period in question many foundries utilised whatever scrap could be had; see adverisements in Dublin Evening Post, 31 December 1818 and Londonderry Journal, 19 April 1836. Inchicore railway works used scrap iron for locomotive and other forgings Irish Builder, 1 Febuary 1876, 1 October 1881. 32 J. Webb, Industrial Dublin since 1698 (Dublin, 1913), p. 88. Excluding car, gig and chaise makers coach building employed between 1,700 and 2,000 men in the city in 1799. There were 25 carriage works in the city in 1849 J. McCracken, ‘The Age of the Stage Coach’ in K. Nowlan (ed.) Travel and Transport in Ireland (Dublin, 1973), p. 50. For a case study see J. Cooke, Ireland’s Premier Coachbuilder: The Story of the Coachbuilding Firm of John Hutton & Sons (Dublin, n.d.). 33 For examples of decorative ironwork for construction see ‘Ironwork’, The Georgian Society Record 3 (reprint Dublin, 1969), pp.125–9. 34 The Dublin Evening Post, 31 December 1818. 35 Pigots Directory, 1824, p. 75.


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36 Hogan, A History of Irish Steel, pp. 3–5. Also see The Dublin Builder, 15 July 1863, The Irish Builder, 1 January 1867, 1 June 1873 and 1 April 1887. 37 L.M. Cullen, An Economic History of Ireland (London, 1972), p. 124. 38 M. Watson, ‘North Antrim Swing Ploughs: Their construction and use’, Ulster Folklife 28 (1982). The number of blacksmiths was clearly expanding at this point. In Donegal for example it was noted in 1843 that 82 blacksmiths had been registered in the previous 10 years. BPP 1843, l, Blacksmiths (Ireland). 39 Bell and Watson, A History of Irish Steel, pp. 43–4; A. Gailey, Spade Making in Ireland (Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, 1982), pp. 1–15. For two valuable case studies see B. Wigham and C. Rynne, ‘A Life of Usefulness’: Abraham Beale and the Monard ironworks ((Blarney, 2000); A. Gailey, ‘A Family Spade Making Business in Co. Tyrone’, Folk life 10 (1972), pp. 26–45. 40 Watson, ‘North Antrim Swing Ploughs’, pp. 13–14. 41 Coe (1969), p. 111; T. O’Neill, ‘Tools and Things: Machinery on Irish farms 1700–1981’, in A. Gailey and D. O’hOgain (eds) Gold under the Furze (Dublin, 1982), pp. 101–114. 42 Bell and Watson (1986), pp.192–224; A. Gailey, ‘Introduction and Spread of the Horse-Powered Threshing Machine in Ulster’, Ulsterfolklife 30 (1984), pp. 37–54. 43 Coe (1969), p. 113. 44 O’Neill (1982), p. 101–114; J. Neill-Watson, A History of Farm Mechanisation in Ireland (Dublin, 1993), p. 9. 45 M. Daly, Dublin: The deposed capital (Cork, 1985), p. 34. BPP 1884–5,. ix, Commission on Irish Industry. 46 J. Bell and M. Watson, Irish Farming 1750–1900 (Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 18, 33, 80–1, 194, 212; J. Neill-Watson, A History of farm Mechanisation in Ireland 1890–1990 (Dublin, 1993), pp. 9–11; A.M. Sullivan, ‘Pierce’s of Wexford’, Journal of the Wexford Historical Society. 16 (1996–7), pp. 126–42. 47 Neill-Watson (1993), pp. 1–25 48 NAI; Dublin; Records of Thomas Thompson and Son, Hanover Works, Carlow. Car 15/290/2, 15/29/4, 15, 13/1, 15/36/1, 15/45/1. A major part of their business was installing, altering and repairing millwork for the larger corn mills in the region. They also built up an extensive trade in iron roofing for hay barns. 49 K. Murray, Ireland’s First Railway (Dublin, 1981), pp. 190–222. 50 G. Bowie, ‘Watermills, Windmills and Stationary Steam Engines in Ireland’, Unpublished PhD, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1975), p. 27;. R. Martin, Ireland, Before and After the Union (London, 1848), pp. 76–92; R. Cox, Robert Mallet 1810–1881 (Dublin, 1982), pp. 1–90. 51 R. Clements, ‘Grendon Locomotives’, Journal of the Irish Railway Record Society, ix (1969), pp. 63–79;Comercial Directory of Ireland, Scotland and Northern England (Manchester, 1820); Pigot’s Directory (1824) Slater’s Directory (1846). 52 C. O’Mahony, ‘Made in Manistys’, Journal of the Irish Railway Record Society 19 (134) (1997), pp. 439–443. 53 G. Ryan, The Works: Celebrating 150 years of Inchicore Works (Dublin, 1996), pp. 4–12; H. Geraghty and P. Rigney, ‘The Engineers Strike Inchicore Railway Works’ Saothar 9 (1983), p. 120. 54 K. Murray and D. McNeill, The Great Southern and Western Railway (Dublin, 1976), pp. 142–57; M. Kirby, ‘Product Proliferation in the British Locomotive Building Industry, 1850–1914’, Business History, 30, no. 3 (1988). Irish Railway Record Society Archives, Irish Steam Locomotives 1834–1984, unpublished manuscript by the Irish Railway Study Group, 1984. 55 TCD; Gal TT 8 51, Guide to the City and County of Dublin (London, 1878), p. 89. 56 The Irish Builder, 1 Febuary 1876, 1 October 1881 57 J. Cairns, ‘Inchicore Works’, Railway Magazine, 43 (1913), pp. 265–278. 58 Irish Railway Records Society Archive; Irish Steam Locomotives 1834–1984, Unpublished manuscript by the Irish Railway Study Group, 1984.


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59 Clements (1969), pp. 63–79, Cox, op. cit., pp. 85–90. Daly, p. 35. Courtney and Stephens employed up to 300 people in the 1870s. The stamp mark of the company can be seen on bridges, water tanks and other railway ironwork all over the country. 60 Daly (1985), pp. 34–5. 61 PRONI, T., 2385a Letterbook 1876–84 McKeown Ltd, Ironworks. 62 The Irish Builder, 15 April 1881; J. Cairns, ‘Dundalk Works’, Railway Magazine, xl (1917), pp. 159–79; W. Coe, The Engineering Industry of the North of Ireland (Newton Abbot, 1969), pp. 103–4; J. McQuillan, The Railway Town: The Story of the Great Northern Railway Works and Dundalk (Dundalk, 1993), pp. 19–69. 63 Coe, The Engineering Industry of the North of Irelan, pp. 19–20. 64 Second Report of the Railway Commissioners (P.P., 1837–8, xxxv), app. B. no. 14 records 1882 corn mills in Ireland. For the basis of the upward revision to 2500 see A. Bielenberg (ed.) Irish Flour Milling; A History 600–2000 (Dublin, 2003), p. 187, footnote 1. 65 A. Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution, Development or Decline? (Cork, 1991), pp. 94–5. Bowie, ‘Watermills, Windmills and Stationary Steam Engines in Ireland’, p. 237. C. Rynne ‘Technological Innovation in the Early 19th Century Irish Cotton Industry: Overton cotton mills, county Cork, Thomas Cheek Hewes and the origin of the suspension water wheel’ in E.C. Casella and J. Symonds (eds) Industrial Archaeology; Future Directions (New York, 2005), pp. 205–16. 66 T. Mullin, Ulsters Historic City: Derry, Londonderry (Belfast, 1986), p. 134. 67 A. Bielenberg, Locke’s Distillery, A History (Dublin, 1993), pp. 96–8. The shop buildings and the foundry walls of the Hive Iron Works can still be seen on Hanover St and Washington St. in Cork. 68 NAI; Wexford 9/11 Letters from Harpers Ltd to G. J. Clooney (1903). 69 Business records of Miller and Co., Church St., Dublin. In Derry, David Craig undertook specialised copper and brasswork in 1836 for breweries and distilleries, making stills and worms and brewing pans, in addition to undertaking to casting, weights, plough mountings, mill and machinery castings Londonderry Journal 19 April 1836. 70 Irish Builder, 1 January 1883. 71 Commission on Irish Industry B.P.P., 1884–5, vol. ix. 72 The Irish Builder, 25 March 1916. For some insight into one Dublin foundry in this period see National Library; P. 1920; B. Murphy, The Hammond Lane Foundry Co. Ltd 1902–1952 (Dublin, 1952) 73 BPP 1910, lxxxiii, Return of employment in non-textile factories, pp. 796–7. 74 Coe, The Engineering Industry of the North of Ireland, p. 23. 75 PRONI, D. 2450/2, Boomer Letterbook, 1826–9. Also see Rynne (2005), pp. 205–16. A. Bielenberg and J. Hearne, ‘Malcomsons of Portlaw and Clonmel: Some new evidence on the Irish cotton industry 1825–50’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Section C, vol. 106 (2006), p. 342. 76 E. Boyle, The Economic Development of the Irish Linen Industry 1825–1913, (unpublished PhD, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1977), pp. 190–1; Lewis, vol. 1, pp. 194–5; The Advocate or Irish Industrial Journal, 23 April 1851. 77 Belfast Newsletter, 15 Febuary 1811, 22 September 1820; A. Takei, The Early Mechanisation of the Ulster Linen Industry 1800–1840, (unpublished M. Litt., Trinity College, Dublin 1989), p. 167. 78 Coe, The Engineering Industry of the North of Ireland, p. 41, 112. A. McCutcheon, The Stationary Steam Engine in Ulster (Dublin, n.d.), p. 5. 79 W. McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland (New Jersey, 1984), p. 235. 80 Bowie, ‘Watermills, Windmills and Stationary Steam Engines in Ireland’, p. 23. 81 Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution, Development or Decline?, pp. 97–8, 113–15.


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82 The Advocate of Irish Industrial Journal, 23 April 1851; Rebbeck, p. 50; A. Marmion, The Ancient and Modern History of the Maritime Ports of Ireland (London, 1855), p. 359. 83 McCutcheon (Dublin, n.d.), pp. 5–7; H. Gribbon, The History of Water-Power in Ulster (New York, 1969), p. 33; Coe, pp. 42, 112, 115. PRONI, D 1770/3/1, Richardson’s Letterbook, 1894–5. 84 J. Lindsay, ‘Falls Foundry 1900–1914: A textile machinery firm in Belfast’, Textile History 1 (1968–70), p. 352. 85 McCutcheon, (Dublin, n.d.), p. 7; McCutcheon, The Industrial Archaeology of Northern Ireland, p. 301; W. Coe, The Engineering Industry of Northern Ireland (Plymouth, 1969), pp. 41, 63; Lindsay (1968–70), p. 360; P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Industry 1820–1914, in L. Kennedy and P. Ollerenshaw (eds) An Economic History of Ulster (Manchester, 1985), p. 73. W. Barbour, ‘Falls Foundry Belfast’, Textile Quarterly 6, (3) (1956), pp. 208–214. For examples of Irish mills with Combe and Barbour spindles see PRONI D. 1326/16/6 Eliza St. Spinning Co. sale (1876). PRONI D. 2168/1 Taylors mill in Carrickfergus had Combe hackling machinery. 86 Barbour, ’Falls Foundry Belfast’, pp. 208–214. 87 PRONI, D.769/15. Combe and Barbour Orderbook 1860–1870; G. Clark (ed.) The Industries of Ulster (Belfast, 1882), p. 18. 88 W.T. Barbour, ‘Falls Foundry Belfast 1845–1956’, Textile Quarterly 6 (3) (1956), pp. 164–9; Lindsay (1968–70), pp. 354, 361. S.A. Caskey Entrepreneurs and Industrial Development in Ulster 1850–1914, (unpublished M. Phil, University of Ulster, 1983), pp. 146–7, 231. 89 W.J. Branagan, ‘Irish Industries after Twelve Months of War’, Studies September (1915), p. 466. 90 D. Johnson, ‘Mackie, James’, Oxford DNB (Oxford, 2004), vol. 35, pp. 640–1. During the war years employment at Mackie’s rose to 650, when the company focused on munitions (Lindsay (1968–70), p. 355). 91 Clark, The Industries of Ulster, p. 17. 92 For 1840s and 1850s see PRONI D. 2930/7/4–9 Records of James MacAdam, relating to Soho foundry. See Lindsay for early twentieth century (1968–70), pp. 350–362. 93 A. Bielenberg, ‘What Happened to Irish Industry after the British Industrial Revolution? Some Evidence from the First UK Census of Production in 1907’, Economic History Review 61 (2008), p. 823. 7 Shipbuilding; an exception to the rule? 1 A. Bielenberg ‘What Happened to Irish Industry after the British Industrial Revolution’, Economic History Review 61 (2008), p. 838 2 The means by which naval tonnage was measured (by displacement) was entirely different to the way in which merchant tonnage was handled, so merchant and naval tonnage are not compatible. Work undertaken for the British navy, or indeed for foreign navies, was extremely limited in Ireland throughout this period, except during the First World War. 3 For Belfast see J.P. Lynch, An Unlikely Success Story: The Belfast shipbuilding industry 1880–1935 (Belfast, 2001); F. Geary and W. Johnson, ‘Shipbuilding in Belfast, 1861–1986’, Irish Economic and Social History, 16 (1989), pp. 42–64. For a detailed business history of Ireland’s premier shipbuilder see M. Moss and J. Hume, Shipbuilders to the World: 125 years of Harland and Wolff (Belfast, 1986). Also see A. Armitage, ‘Shipbuilding in Belfast: Workman Clark and Company 1880–1935’ in L.R. Fischer (ed.) From Wheel House to Counting House: Essays in Maritime Business History (St John’s, Newfoundland, 1992), pp. 97–124. For Cork see C. O’Mahony, ‘Shipbuilding and Repair in Nineteenth Century Cork’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 94 (1989), pp. 74–87. The most

Notes

4

5


6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24

25 26 27

231

comprehensive case study of the southern Irish industry is B. Irish, Shipbuilding in Waterford 1820–1882 (Bray, 2001). With the passing of the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, the responsibility for this register passed to the Board of Trade and in 1873 a central agency was established (the General Register and Record Office of Shipping and Seamen). N. Cox, ‘The Records of the Register-General of Shipping and Seamen’, Sources for Maritime History 11 (1972), pp. 168–174. G.S. Graham, ‘The Ascendancy of the Sailing Ship 1850–85’, Economic History Review 9 (1956), p. 79. S. Pollard and P. Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry (London, 1979), p. 67; J. Webb, Industrial Dublin since 1698 (Dublin, 1913), pp. 81–4. A. Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution (Cork, 1991), pp. 103–113; C. O’Mahony, ‘Shipbuilding and Repair in Nineteenth Century Cork’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 94 (1989), pp. 74–87. Bielenberg, Cork’s Industrial Revolution, pp. 103–113; O’Mahony (1989), pp. 75–85. On Rushbrooke see The Irish Builder, 11 September 1920. The British navy underutilised the repair facilities at Haulbowline dockyard in Cork harbour, despite the fact that upwards of three-quarters of a million pounds had been invested here by the end of the nineteenth century. BPP 1896, liv, Report of the Committee on Haulbowline Dockyard, p. 17. B. Irish, Shipbuilding in Waterford 1820–1882 (Bray, 2001), pp. 64, 75, 174–5, 224–7. BPP 1877, lxxii, Vessels built at each port in the UK (1871–75), pp. 612–3. Moss and Hume, Shipbuilders to the World, pp. 1–2. D. Rebbeck, ‘The History of Iron Shipbuilding on the Queen’s Island’, (unpublished PhD, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1950), pp. 36–53. Rebbeck, ‘The History of Iron Shipbuilding on the Queen’s Island’, pp. 50–55. Moss and Hume, Shipbuilders to the World, pp. 11–12. R.T. Harrison, Industrial Organisation and Changing Technology in UK Shipbuilding (Aldershot, 1990), p. 41. Moss and Hume, Shipbuilders to the World, pp. 12–19. Ibid., pp. 16–22; Rebbeck, The History of Iron Shipbuilding on the Queen’s Island’, p. 100. P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Industry 1820–1914’, in P. Ollerenshaw and L. Kennedy (eds) The Economic History of Ulster 1820–1939 (Manchester, 1985), pp. 90–1. C. Oldham, ‘The History of Belfast Shipbuilding’, Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland 12 (1911), pp. 430–1. Moss and Hume, Shipbuilders to the World, pp. 36–54; W. Coe, The Engineering Industry of Northern Ireland (Plymouth, 1969), p. 197. J. Lynch, ‘Technology, Labour, and the Growth of Belfast Shipbuilding’, Saothar 24 (1999), pp. 34–5. Oldham, ‘The History of Belfast Shipbuilding’, pp. 422–3. S. Pollard and P. Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry 1870–1914 (London, 1979), p. 59; Lynch, ’The Belfast Shipbuilding Industry 1919–1933’, p. 22; W. Johnson and F. Geary, ‘Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm’ in D. Jeremy (ed.) Dictionary of Business Biography (1986), p. 856. Moss and Hume, Shipbuilders to the World, pp. 9–22, 133, 175, 213, 258. J. Lynch, A Tale Of Three Cities: Comparative studies in working-class life (London, 1998), pp. 58, 187; J. Lynch ‘The Belfast shipyards and the industrial working class’ F. Devine, F. Lane, N. Puirseil (eds) Essays in Irish Labour History (Dublin, 2008) pp. 135-156. C.E. Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry (London, 1927), p. 254. R.D.C. Black, ‘William James Pirrie’ in C.C. O’Brien (ed.) The Shaping of Modern Ireland (London, 1960), p. 177; Moss and Hume (1986), pp. 224, 233, 258. Ollerenshaw ‘Industry 1820–1914’, pp. 94–5. McIllwain and MacColl, operating between 1868 and the 1890s, built many smaller craft for many Irish owners in

232

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32

33 34 35 36 37

38 39

40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47

Notes

contrast to the larger yards, in addition to undertaking repair work. J. Lynch, ‘Belfast’s Third Shipyard’, Ulster Folklife 41 (1995), pp. 19–25. Shipbuilding at Belfast 1880–1893: Workman and Clarke (Belfast, 1928), p. 26; Lynch, ’The Belfast Shipbuilding Industry 1919–1933’, p. 22. Lynch, ‘Belfast’s Third Shipyard’, p. 19. Geary and Johnson, ‘Shipbuilding in Belfast, 1861–1986’, pp. 51, 63. Lynch, ‘Technology, Labour, and the Growth of Belfast Shipbuilding’, Saothar 24 (1999), p. 42. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century no naval contracts for shipbuilding appear to have been undertaken in Ireland. See BPP 1813–14, xi, Accounts and papers relating to shipbuilders. BPP 1825, xxi, An account of the names … of each ship in the Royal Navy launched since January 1815. Also see for example the Irish Builder, 15 April 1869. Navy contracts for Harland and Wolff, the most important yard for naval work, are recorded in Moss and Hume, Shipbuilders to the World, pp. 508–524. The odd service vessel was built elsewhere. See BPP 1884–5, xlviii, Returns relating ships built and building, p. 530. Lynch, ‘Technology, Labour, and the Growth of Belfast Shipbuilding’, p. 35. S. Pollard, ‘British and World Shipbuilding, 1890–1914: A study in comparative costs’, Journal Of Economic History 17 (1957), p. 433 M.S. Moss, ‘Pirrie, William James’, Oxford DNB (Oxford, 2004), vol. 44, p. 414. Moss and Hume, Shipbuilders to the World, pp. 175–207, 519; Lynch (2001); Armitage (1992), p. 112. Moss and Hume, Shipbuilders to the World, pp. 175–207, 519; J. Lynch, ‘The Belfast Shipbuilding Industry 1919–1933’, Ulster Folklife 43 (1997), pp. 18–23. Despite these problems in the latter part of his career, overall Johnson’s conclusion that Pirrie was the greatest Irish businessman of his generation is not misplaced. D.S. Johnson ‘Pirrie, William James’ in D. Jeremy (ed.) Dictionary of Business Biography (London, 1985), vol. 4, pp. 702–710. For a more phlegmatic view of his career see M.S. Moss, ‘Pirrie, William James’ Oxford DNB (Oxford, 2004) vol. 44, pp. 413–414. Lynch, ‘The Belfast Shipbuilding Industry 1919–1933’, pp. 18–23. A. Armitage, ‘Shipbuilding in Belfast: Workman, Clark and Company, 1880–1935’ in L.R. Fischer (ed.) From Wheel House to Counting House: Essays in maritime business history in honour of Professor Peter Neville Davies (St. John’s, Newfoundland, 1992), pp. 97–124; also see PRONI; COM 40/1/w 34 for details on shareholding and financial circumstances of Workman and Clarke in the final years. A. Slaven, ‘Modern British Shipbuilding 1800–1990’ in L.A. Ritchie (ed.) The Shipbuilding Industry: A Guide to Historical Records (Manchester, 1992), p. 4. J. Smellie, Shipbuilding and Repairing in Dublin (Glasgow, 1920), p. iii. G. Hasson, Thunder and Clatter: The history of shipbuilding in Derry (Londonderry, 1997), pp. 22–37. R. Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry (London, 1920), pp. 99–100. In Cork, the dry docks at Passage West and Rushbrooke were taken over by Furness, Withy & Co. in 1917. They closed the Rushbrooke venture for three years to enlarge it while effectively decommissioning the facilities at Passage West. P.G Martin, ‘The Development of Shipbuilding in Cork Harbour’, Quarterly Transactions of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects January, (1963), p. 92. Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry, p. 416. Lynch, ‘Technology, Labour, and the Growth of Belfast Shipbuilding’, pp. 28, 48. Pollard, ‘British and World Shipbuilding, 1890–1914, p. 444. Germany was the notable exception. A summary of world shipbuilding can be found in Lloyd’s Register of Shipping; Annual Summary of the Mercantile Shipbuilding of the World for 1925. The Belfast/Irish figures can be found in Lloyd’s Annual Summary of Shipbuilding held at the library in Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, 71 Fenchurch St., London.

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8 The timber trade and the Irish building industry 1 F.A. D’Arcy, ‘Wages of Labourers in the Dublin Building Industry 1667–1918’, Saothar 14 (1989) pp. 17–32. 2 A. Gibney, ‘Studies in Eighteenth Century Building History’, (PhD, Trinity College, Dublin, 1997), pp. 160–3. 3 BPP 1817, viii, Account of the Timber Imported into Ireland. 4 E. Neeson, A History of Irish Forestry (Dublin, 1991), pp. 92–100; A.C. Forbes, ‘Tree Planting in Ireland during Four Centuries’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 41 (1933), pp. 168–199. By 1801, it was estimated according to Neeson that there were only 132,000 acres of plantation throughout Ireland, rising to 290,000 acres of total forest land, including nurseries, scrub and new plantations by 1827. 5 W.J. Smyth, ‘The Greening of Ireland – tenant tree planting in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, Irish Forestry 54(1) (1997), pp. 55–72. 6 DATI Agricultural Statistics, 1913, Annual Report. 7 Irish Builder and Engineer, 11 July 1908, 23 January 1909. There was a significant growth in saw milling during this period as a result of this development, with 843 mills operating in Ireland by 1908. 8 DATI, Agricultural Statistics of Ireland with detailed report for the year 1917 (London, HMSO, 1918), p. 3. 9 Forbes suggested that a moderate estimate of the commercial timber cleared during the four years covering the First World War was 30,000 acres, even though much of this cleared area was still returned as woodland in the official returns; in reality it had no commercial value (A.C. Forbes, ‘Private Forestry in the Free State’, Journal of the Department of Agriculture (1924), pp. 218–9). 10 A.C. Forbes, ‘The Present and Future Timber Supplies of Ireland’, DATI Journal 18 (1916–17), p. 20. 11 In the year ending June 1908, for example, 904,667 trees were felled weighing an estimated 261,855 tons (or roughly .289 tons per tree). However, only 25,015 trees in that year were used for furniture and building purposes, or roughly 7,229 tons. If we assume a ton is equal to roughly a load (the basis of this assumption is explained in section II of this chapter; also see note 22 below) and we deduct one third for waste and that portion going into furniture production, the amount going to construction was under 5,000 loads, which would have been the equivalent of less than one and half per cent of total timber imports in 1907. DATI Agricultural Statistics, Ireland, 1908 [forestry operations], pp. 152–3. 12 This is evident from comparing total imports with foreign-trade imports in years where they can be compared before 1822 and from 1904. 13 The series includes timber utilised for the construction, extension and renovation of factories, agricultural buildings, public works and public buildings, transport and other service-sector construction activity, in addition to all renovation, repairs and alterations. It incorporates all construction activity (and indeed any other activity) which utilises imported timber. Repairs and alterations and civil engineering tended to be counter cyclical (J. Cockerill, ‘The Construction Industry in Belfast 1800–1914’, (unpublished PhD, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1993), p. 701. 14 C.L. Falkiner, ‘The Forestry Question Considered Historically’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland (1903), p. 171. 15 BPP 1826–7, xviii, Wood imported into Great Britain and Ireland. Population taken from B.R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), p. 11, using 1824. 16 For a useful discussion of this and reference to background to wider research in the field see Chapter 5 in A. Gailey, Rural Houses of the North of Ireland

234

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19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31

32 33 34 35

Notes (Edinburgh, 1984), pp. 67–111. Also see D. McCourt, ‘The Cruck Truss in Ireland and its West European Connections’, Folk-liv (1964), pp. 64–75. On inferior quality of much of the imports in this period, see BPP 1835, xix, Select Committee on Timber Duties Q 1261–3, 1298, 4786, 4851, 4892. Gailey, Rural Houses of the North of Ireland, pp. 27–31, 70–71. Gailey points out (on p. 27) that specialist craftsmen were not used in construction in parts of Donegal until the end of the nineteenth century (and presumably in other poorer localities). Feinstein implies that the necessary data to generate estimates for UK capital formation in the eighteenth and nineteenth century is largely missing, so the estimates must necessarily adopt fairly heroic assumptions. BPP 1823, xvi, Exports and Imports of Ireland. 1822 to 1826 can be found in BPP 1826–7, xviii, Wood Imported in Great Britain and Ireland, pp. 4–5. National Archives, London: Cust 15/136–140 for figures from 1826 through to 1829. A.R.M. Lower, Great Britain’s Woodyard: British America and the timber trade 1763–1867 (Montreal, 1973), p. 252. B. Poole Statistics of British Commerce (London, 1952) p. 135, 299. used tons and loads interchangeably. Comparison of the tons returned in BPP 1823, xvi, between 1801 and 1822 with loads returned in years when these were available for the foreign trade confirm they were close. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, footnote 13, p. 446 A. Maizels, ‘The Sources and Nature of Statistical Information in Special fields of Statistics: The overseas trade statistics of the United Kingdom’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, 112, no. 2 (1949), pp. 207–223. Official values for 1826 can be estimated from National Archives, London: Cust 15, 1826. and this remains constant as evident from the returns of the foreign trade recorded in the 1860s in Thom’s Directory. This can be found in Thom’s Directory. This assumption is based on a return of timber imported into Dublin in 1838 (BPP 1839, xlvi, p. 433). National Archives, London: Cust 15/138–140 for figures from 1827–9. J. Potter, ‘The British Timber Duties 1815–1860’, Economica 22 (1955), pp. 122–136; A.R.M. Lower, ‘The Trade in Square Timber’, Contributions to Canadian Economics 6 (1933), pp. 40–61. On the north-east European trade in sawn timber, see S.E. Astrom, ‘Northeastern Europe’s Timber Trade between the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars: A preliminary survey’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 35 (1987), pp. 170–7 and ‘Britain’s Timber Imports from the Baltic 1775–1830’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 37 (1989–1830), pp. 57–71. The trade in deals was much larger than the square trade in the early nineteenth century but the square trade surpassed the trade in deals between 1816 and the late 1830s. J. Rankin, A History of Our Firm; Being some account of the firm of Pollok, Gilmour and Co. (Liverpool, 1921), pp. 242–3. BPP 1835, xix, Select Committee on Timber Duties Q. 4707 and 4870. For some discussion of the Cork timber Trade at this time see R. Harrison, ‘Harvey, Deaves & Harvey: Sidelights on Cork’s timber trade 1760–1848’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 107 (2002), pp. 135–156. The Irish market was also served by English companies Rankin (1921), pp. 17–19, 224–5, 242–3. For some insight into the Belfast trade, see J. Caughey, Seize then the Hour: A history of James P. Corry & Co. Ltd (Belfast, 1974), pp. 14–40. L.M. Cullen, An Economic History of Ireland since 1660 (1972, London), pp. 100–1. D. Dickson, Old World Colony Cork and South Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005), p. 369. C. Casey, Dublin (New Haven, 2005), pp. 47–51. J. Hill, The Buildings of Limerick (Cork, 1991), pp. 90–94.


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36 A.T. Lucas, ‘Bog wood A study in rural economy’, Béaloideas 23 (1954), pp. 71–121 37 BPP 1835, xix, Select Committee on Timber Duties Q. 4756–4759. 38 Ibid., Q. 1247. 39 Ibid., Q 4892, 4975–6 40 Gailey, Rural Houses of the North of Ireland, pp. 71–2. 41 A. Gailey, ‘Changes in Irish Rural Housing 1600–1900’; P. O’Flanagan, P. Ferguson and K. Whelan (eds) Rural Ireland 1600–1900: Modernisation and Change (Cork, 1987), pp. 96–98. 42 Belfast Mercantile Register, 6 January 1846. I would like to thank Richard Harrison for drawing this reference to my attention. 43 Thom’s Directory 1851, 1855 (section on inland navigation). 44 On the housing of the poor see in particular A. Gailey, ‘The Housing of the Rural Poor in Nineteenth Century Ulster’, Ulster Folklife 22 (1976), pp. 34–58; J. Bell ‘Miserable Hovels and Substantial Habitations: The housing of rural labourers in Ireland since the eighteenth century’, Folk Life 34 (1995–6), pp. 43–56; F.H.A. Aalen, ‘The Rehousing of Rural Labourers in Ireland under the Labourers (Ireland) Acts 1883–1919’, Journal of Historical Geography 12 (3) (1986), pp. 287–306. 45 S. O’Maitiú, Dublin’s Suburban Towns 1834–1930 (Dublin, 2003), pp. 19–46. 46 E. Larkin, ‘Economic Growth, Capital Investment and the Roman Catholic Church in Nineteenth Century Ireland’, American Historical Review 72 (1967), pp. 852–883. For a critique of Larkin’s thesis see L. Kennedy, ‘The Roman Catholic Church and Economic Growth in Nineteenth Century Ireland’, Economic and Social Review 10 (1978), pp. 45–59. 47 K. Whelan, ‘The Catholic Parish, the Catholic Chapel and Village Development in Ireland’, Irish Geography xvi (1983), pp. 115. 48 For a case study illustrating estate and church investment in one county see M.J. Conry, Carlow Granite: Years of history written in Stone (Chapelstown, 2006). 49 C. Ó Gráda, ‘The Investment Behaviour of Irish Landlords 1850–75’, Agricultural History Review 23 (1975), pp. 139–155. 50 D.S. MacNeice, ‘Industrial Villages of Ulster, 1800–1900’ in P. Roebuck (ed.) Plantation to Partition (Belfast, 1981), pp. 172–190. For a northern case study see M. Cohen, Linen, Family and Community in Tullylish, County Down 1690–1914 (Dublin, 1997) and in the south T. Hunt, Portlaw, County Waterford, 1825–1876 (Dublin, 2000). 51 For the beneficial effects of 1839 for one firm in its infancy see Caughey, Seize then the Hour, pp. 21–23. 52 M. Daly ‘The Development of the National School System, 1831–1840’ in A. Cosgrove and D. McCartney (eds) Studies in Irish History (Dublin, 1979), pp. 150–163. 53 H. Burke, The People and the Poor Law in Nineteenth Century Ireland (Littlehampton, 1987), p. 126. 54 Census 1841, p. xv. The 962 carpenters employed on the workhouses constituted only about 2.5 per cent of the carpenters in the country, much lower than the masons, which may imply the work was at an early stage and carpenters were to be hired in larger numbers subsequently when the stone work was complete and the joists, roof rafters, floors, doors, windows and partitions and other timber work would accelerate timber inputs. This return on building workers engaged on the poor law union projects also reveals that over 62 per cent of them were labourers, which is at least indicative of the numbers involved in the industry as a whole (since this figure was not recorded in the census). 55 A.R.G. Griffiths, The Irish Board of Works 1831–1878 (New York, 1987). 56 F. O’Dwyer, ‘The Architecture of the Board of Public Works 1831–1923’ in C. O’Connor and J. Regan (eds) Public Works: the Architecture of the OPW 1831–1987 (Dublin, 1987), pp. 10–16.


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57 J. Lee, ‘The Railways in the Irish Economy’ in L.M. Cullen (ed.) The Formation of the Irish Economy (Cork, 1969), pp. 77–87. Also see J. Lee, ‘The Construction Costs of Irish Railways 1830–1853’, Business History Review 9 (1967), pp. 96–109. 58 G.H. Kinahan, ‘Slates and Clays (Bricks etc.)’, Scientific Proceedings Royal Dublin Society, 6, Pt iii (1888), p. 70. He refers specifically on p. 93 to a slate quarry near Ashford, Co. Wicklow where ‘the proprietor, like many others, suffered from the great depression in trade of 1850 and subsequent years, during which the works were abandoned’. 59 Mitchell, British Historical Statistic, p. 464 for Great Britain 1801–1829 and p. 466 for UK 1826–1856. Also see footnote 13, p. 446 for evidence supporting the use of official prices as a guide to volume in this period by A.W. Flux and B.R. Mitchell. For brick index see B.R. Mitchell, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1971), p. 235. 60 Ibid. 61 Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, p. 464. However, in 1808, for example, both shared the problems of the curtailment of foreign supplies. 62 BPP 1826–7, xviii, Wood imported into Great Britain and Ireland. 63 J. Lee, ‘The Provision of Capital for Early Irish Railways’, Irish Historical Studies 16 (61) (1968), pp. 33–63. 64 P. Solar, ‘Shipping and Economic Development in Nineteenth Century Ireland’, Economic History Review 59 (4) (2006), pp. 717–742. 65 W.A. Thomas, The Stock Exchange of Ireland (Liverpool, 1986), pp. 146–150. For additions to rail lines see Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, p. 541. For joint stock companies see A. Burke (ed.) Enterprise and the Irish economy (Dublin, 1995), pp. 50–1. 66 Mitchell, Abstract of British Historical Statistics, p. 239. 67 L. Kennedy and P. Solar, Irish Agriculture: A price history from the mid-eighteenth century to the eve of the First World War (Dublin, 2007). 68 Dublin Builder, 15 January 1863, 15 July 1863. 69 1861 Census, pp. 454–459. 70 Irish Builder, 1 January 1880. 71 Irish Builder, 15 February 1889, 1 October 1890. 72 Mitchell, Abstract of British Historical Statistics, p. 239. 73 S.B. Saul, ‘House Building in England 1890–1914’, Economic History Review 15 (1) (1962), pp. 119–137. 74 F.H.A. Aalen, ‘Ireland’ and C.G. Pooley (eds) Housing Strategies in Europe 1880– 1930 (Leicester, 1992), pp. 132–163; Irish Builder and Engineer, 8 January 1910. 75 F. O’Dwyer, ‘The Architecture of the Board of Public Works 1831–1923’ in C. O’Connor and J. Regan (eds) Public Works: The Architecture of the OPW 1831–1987 (Dublin, 1987), pp. 28–30; M. Doherty, ‘Reviewing the Century’ in T. Brown, A. Gibney and M. O’Doherty (eds) Building for Government: The architecture of state buildings, OPW Ireland: 1900–2000 (Dublin, 1999), p. 13. 76 Irish Builder and Engineer, 1 September 1863. 77 The Irish Builder and Engineer, 15 March 1864, 1 January 1879, 18 May 1907. 78 The Irish Builder and Engineer, 9 January 1909, 25 June 1910, 3 January 1914 79 McLaughlin and Harvey, An Account of the Origin and Development of the Company from 1853 to 1983 (Belfast, 1983), pp. 4–38. By the turn of the century this building company employed about 1,000 persons and was expanding its operations to the south of Ireland and subsequently to England. 80 A. Burke (ed.) Enterprise and the Irish Economy (Dublin, 1995), pp. 46–49. 81 Cockerill, ‘The Construction Industry in Belfast 1800–1914’, pp. 740–1. 82 Aalen, ‘The Rehousing of Rural Labourers in Ireland under the Labourers (Ireland) Acts 1883–1919’, pp. 287–306.


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83 M. Fraser, John Bull’s Other Homes; State housing and British policy in Ireland 1883–1922 (Liverpool, 1996), pp. 304–13. 84 S.C. Moore, ‘The Development of Working Class Housing in Ireland 1840–1912’, (unpublished PhD, University of Ulster, 1986), in addition to tracing the development of housing policy this thesis also covers public and private working-class housing initiatives in Dublin, pp. 206–211. On philanthropy see F. Aalen, The Iveagh Trust: the first hundred years, 1890–1990 (Dublin, 1990). On Dublin also see Casey (2005), pp. 70–4 85 C. Ó Gráda, ‘The Beginning of the Irish Creamery System, 1880–1914’, Economic History Review 30 (1977), p. 289. 86 Irish Builder and Engineer, 2 January 1915. 87 Irish Builder and Engineer, 13 February 1904, 2 June 1906, 1 December 1906, 9 February 1907. 8 January 1910, 25 June 1910, 15 October 1910, 6 January 1912, 12 October 1912, 4 January 1913. 88 Irish Builder and Engineer, 14 February 1914, 15 August 1914 89 Irish Builder and Engineer, 1 January 1916, 28 December 1918, 3 and 5 January 1920, 25 September 1920. 90 See, for examples, C. Ó’ Danachair, ‘Semi-Underground Habitations’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society 26 (3 and 4) (1955–6), pp. 75–81; P. Flynn, ‘The Fourth Class House in 1841 and Later’ in G. O’Connell et al. (eds) Co. Clare Studies (Ennis, 2005), p. 255; Bell (1995–6), pp. 43–56. It is worth noting that in 1871 only 39,177 of the remaining fourth-class dwellings were made of mud or other perishable materials compared to 117,564 made of brick or stone, perhaps reflecting the great longevity of the latter (Census of Ireland 1911; General report, p. 66). 91 For the major quarries in different parts of Ireland see G. Wilkinson, Practical Geology and Ancient Architecture of Ireland (London, 1845) and The Irish Builder and Engineer, 19 0ctober 1907, 15 April 1911, 13 May 1911, 10 June 1911. 92 The Irish Builder and Engineer, 1 June 1887, 31 January 1920, 31 July 1920. 93 The Irish Builder and Engineer, 19 October 1907. 94 The Irish Builder and Engineer, 19 April 1919. 95 Conry, Carlow Granite. 96 The Irish Builder and Engineer, 9 March 1907. 97 C. Rynne, Industrial Ireland 1750–1930: An archaeology (Cork, 2006), pp. 149–165; G.W. Lamplugh, The Geology of the Country around Cork and Cork Harbour (Dublin, 1905), p. 109. 98 Lime was also used extensively in agriculture. The importance of lime production is evident from the fact that lime kilns, according to Rynne, remain Ireland’s most numerous industrial monuments of the past. (2006), p. 157. 99 S. O Maitiu and B. O’Reilly Ballyknockan: A Wicklow Stone Cutters Village (Dublin 1997), p. 3; W.P. Coyne, Ireland Industrial and Agricultural (Dublin, 1902), pp. 23–26; N.M. Ryan, Sparkling Granite: The story of the granite working people of the three rock region of county Dublin (Dublin, 1992). On Carlow see Conry, Carlow Granite. 100 Gibney, ‘Studies in Eighteenth Century Building History’, p. 190. 101 Caughey, Seize then the Hour, p. 20. 102 I would like to thank John Cockerill for this information. 103 Rynne, Industrial Ireland 1750–1930, pp. 149–165; G.F. Harris, Granites and our Granite Industries (London, 1888), pp. 97–102. Bessbrook granite was also exported to Britain for buildings, kerbs, paving sets in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Edinburgh Glasgow and elsewhere. On Mourne granite see J.S. Doran, Turn up the Lamp: Tales of a Mourne childhood (Belfast, 1980), p. 12 104 Cockerill, ‘The Construction Industry in Belfast 1800–1914’, pp. 122, 635–51; T. Breslin, The Claymen of Youghal (Cork, 2002), p. 21.


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105 G.W. Lamplugh, The Geology of the Country around Belfast (Dublin, 1904), p. 126. Builders sometimes became engaged in brick production to augment their own supplies; William Henry McLaughlin of McLaughlin and Harvey of Belfast, for example, were largely responsible for the establishment of the Laganvale Brickworks Company. McLaughlin & Harvey (1983), p. 4. 106 A. Gailey, ‘Bricks and Brick Making in Ulster in the 1830s’, Ulster Folklife 28 (1982), pp. 61–4. For case studies see J Cunningham, ‘Arney Brick and the Florencecourt Tile, Brick and Pottery Works’, Ulster Folklife 40 (1994), pp. 68–73; T. Cadogan ‘Belvelly Brickworks’, Harbour Lights: Journal of the Great Island Historical Society 1 (1988), pp. 31–40; D. Dowling, ‘Glenmore Brickyards: A forgotten industry’, Old Kilkenny Review 24 (1972), pp. 42–51. 107 For a case study of this nature see J.G. Delaney, ‘Brickmaking in Gillen’, Folk Life 28 (1989–90), pp. 51–62. For extensive trade in Athy and Tullamore bricks see Wilkinson, Practical Geology and Ancient Architecture of Ireland. 108 S. Roundtree, ‘A History of Clay Brick as a Building Material in Ireland (M. Litt., Trinity College, Dublin, 1999), p. 83. Roundtree (pp. 92–3) notes Athy brick was used extensively in suburban housing in Rathgar and Rathmines in the 1880s, in houses in Fitzwilliam Square and public buildings such as the post office in Athy and the Curragh Camp in Co. Kildare. 109 Ibid., p. 97. 110 T. Breslin, The Claymen of Youghal (Cork, 2002). There were two brickyards operating closer to Cork city in the early twentieth century, at Belvelly and Ballinphelic, but Lamplugh noted that brick making was not a major industry owing to the availability of local stone and a relative lack of good raw materials, Lamplugh, The Geology of the Country around Cork and Cork Harbour, p. 111. 111 The Irish Builder, 15 May 1871. 112 The Irish Builder and Engineer, 15 June 1885, 27 March 1902, 4 May 1907, 2 April 1910, 26 November 1910. Many of the military barracks in the city (and elsewhere in Ireland) were supplied with brick and terracotta work from the Kingscourt Brick and Terracotta Works in Co Cavan (established c. 1875). Kingscourt produced facing, wire cut and air bricks, ridge and floor tiles. 113 R. Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry (London, 1920), p. 150 114 Breslin, The Claymen of Youghal, p. 134. 115 The Irish Builder and Engineer, 19 April 1919, 22 October 1921. 116 H. Murphy, ‘The Drinagh Cement Works’, Journal of the Old Wexford Society 6 (1976–7), pp. 38–44; The Irish Builder, 15 January 1878, 15 August 1891, 8 October 1904. 117 Riordan, Modern Irish Trade and Industry, pp. 143–4; The Irish Builder and Engineer, 19 October 1918, 22 October 1921. 118 Gailey, ‘Changes in Irish Rural Housing 1600–1900’; p. 96. 119 Wilkinson, Practical Geology and Ancient Architecture of Ireland, pp. 28–32. 120 G.H. Kinahan, ‘Slates and Clays (Bricks etc.)’, Scientific Proceedings Royal Dublin Society 6, Pt iii (1888), p. 93. 121 The quarry closed in 1878 reopening temporarily from around the turn of the century to 1911 when a rockfall led again to closure. For a history of the quarry see D. Gwyn, ‘Valentia Slate Slab Quarry’, Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society 24 (1991), pp. 40–57. 122 The Irish Builder and Engineer, 1 December 1863, 1 March 1873, 13 February 1904, 19 April 1919, 22 October 1921; N. O’Cleirigh, Valentia, A Different Irish Island (Dublin, 1992), pp. 61–71. 123 Rynne, Industrial Ireland 1750–1930, p. 162. 124 The Irish Builder and Engineer, 1 May 1865, 1 March 1873, 1 September 1879, 15 September 1880, 1 September 1882, 21 March 1908. In the recession of 1879, Killaloe slate was unable to compete with Welsh slate in the Dublin market due to

Notes

125

126


127 128 129 130 131 132 133

239

high transport costs, while the fall off in local demand was as a result of agricultural recession. However, demand picked up towards the end of the nineteenth century. Rynne, Industrial Ireland 1750–1930, p. 165. For useful insights into the Irish slate trade and the problems of native producers see A.C. Davies, ‘Roofing Belfast and Dublin, 1896–98: American penetration of the Irish market for Welsh slate’, Irish Economic and Social History 4 (1977), pp. 26–35. The Irish Builder and Engineer, 1 January 1860, 1 February 1860, 15 April 1863, 15 December 1863, 1 March 1870. BPP 1871, xviii, Appendix to the report of committee E on the consumption of coal in the United Kingdom, p. 1285. Most factories and workshops were located in the same counties, which again may reflect the greater coverage achieved by the factory inspectors in areas with a heavier concentration of industry. BPP 1871, xviii, Appendix to the report of committee E on the consumption of coal in the United Kingdom, p. 1285. BPP 1910, lxxxiii, Summary of Returns.of persons employed in 1907: non-textile Factories, p. 789; BPP 1911, lxxxix, Summary of Returns of persons employed in 1907: Workshops, p. 1. Cockerill, ‘The Construction Industry in Belfast 1800–1914’, I have been influenced here by Cockerill’s views expressed through personal communications. On agricultural exports see P. Solar, ‘Irish Trade in the Nineteenth Century’ in D. Dickson and C. O’Grada (eds) Refiguring Ireland (Dublin, 2003), pp. 277–289. Between 1856 and 1900 almost 71 per cent of the nominal capital in new service companies registered in Ireland as joint stock companies were in firms located outside the six counties which subsequently became Northern Ireland. The latter region in contrast accounted for over 54 per cent of investment in industrial companies. See A. Burke (ed.) Enterprise and the Irish Economy (Dublin, 1995), pp. 46–7.

Conclusion 1 S. Royle, ‘Industrialisation, Urbanisation and Urban Society, c. 1850–1921’ in B. Graham and L. Proudfoot (eds) An Historical Geography of Ireland (London, 1993), pp. 260, 271; A.C. Hepburn, A Past Apart: Studies in the history of Catholic Belfast 1850–1950 (Belfast, 1996), p. 4; P. Solar, ‘Shipping and Economic Development in Nineteenth Century Ireland’, Economic History Review, 59 (2006) pp. 717–742; L.M. Cullen, An Economic History of Ireland since 1660 (London, 1972), pp. 160–2. 2 J.A. Jackson, The Irish in Britain (London, 1963), p. 25. 3 R. Munck, ‘The Formation of the Working Class in Belfast 1788–1881’, Saothar 11 (1986), pp. 75–89. 4 A. Bielenberg, ‘The Industrial Elite in Ireland’ in F. Lane and M. Luddy (eds) Politics, Society and the Middle Class in Modern Ireland (Basingstoke, 2009, forthcoming). 5 C. Clear, Social Change and Everyday Life in Ireland, 1850–1911 (Manchester, 2007), pp. 25–26. This otherwise excellent study of Irish social history gives a fleeting two pages to industry. 6 N.F.R. Crafts, British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1985). 7 A. Bielenberg and F. Geary, ‘Growth in Manufacturing Output in Ireland between the Union and the Famine:Some evidence’, Explorations in Economic History 43 (2006), pp. 119–152. 8 J. Lee, ‘The Railways in the Irish Economy’, in L. Cullen (ed.) The Formation of the Irish Economy (Cork, 1968), p. 87.


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9 R. Greene, ‘Industrial Decline in the Nineteenth Century’ in L. Cullen (ed.) The Formation of the Irish Economy (Cork, 1969), p. 94. For prices of corn in Britain see B. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 756–7. For Irish corn prices see L. Kennedy and P. Solar, Irish Agriculture: A price history (Dublin, 2007), pp. 131–141. 10 D. Johnson and L. Kennedy, ‘Nationalist Historiography and the Decline of the Irish Economy’, in S. Hutton and P. Stewart (eds) Ireland’s Histories (London, 1991), p. 26; R. Campbell, The Rise and Fall of Scottish Industry (Edinburgh, 1980), p. 19. 11 S. Pollard and P. Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry 1870–1914 (London, 1979), p. 57. 12 Linen Hall Library, Belfast, BPB 1874.18. Statement Concerning the Linen Trade of Ireland, p. 1. 13 W.A.G. Clark, Linen Jute and Hemp Industries in the United Kingdom (Washington 1913), pp. 14, 17. 14 BPP 1884–5, ix, Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Industries (Ireland), p. 644. 15 P. Ollerenshaw, ‘Problems of the European Linen Industry, 1870–1914’ in M. Cohen (ed.) The Warp of Ulster’s Past (New York, 1997), pp. 191–210. 16 D. O’Hearn, ‘Irish linen: A peripheral industry’ in M. Cohen (ed.) The Warp of Ulster’s Past (New York, 1997), pp. 161–190. 17 W.H. Crawford, ‘The Political Economy of Linen: Ulster in the eighteenth century’ in C. Brady, M.O’Dowd and B. Walker (eds) Ulster: An illustrated history (London, 1989), pp. 134–6. 18 D. O’Hearn, ‘Innovation and the World-system Hierarchy: British subjugation of the Irish cotton industry 1780–1830’, American Journal of Sociology C 3 (1994), pp. 587–621. 19 The First UK Census of Production (1907) BPP, cix 1912–13, pp. 19–21. 20 For trade returns in 1907 for example see Imports and Exports, Ireland, BPP 1908, xcix, pp. 2–69. 21 D. Johnson, The Inter-War Economy in Ireland (Dublin, 1989), p. 20. 22 A. Bielenberg, ‘What Happened to Irish Industry after the British Industrial Revolution? Some evidence form the First UK Census of Production’, Economic History Review 61 (2008), 820–841 23 There is no dedicated case study of any of the larger Irish linen companies in Belfast, or the larger engineering works, the largest tobacco company and the rope works in the city, some of which were among the largest works of their type in the UK and globally. Ireland, according to Shaw’s listing, accounted for 8 of the top 100 manufacturing employers in the United Kingdom in 1907 (if Combe and Barbour is included which was part of a larger combine), and only one of these has had a study undertaken on its business history (C. Shaw, ‘The Large Manufacturing Employers of 1907’, Business History 25 (1983), pp. 42–60). The list curiously excludes Guinness; see P.L. Payne, ‘The Emergence of the Large Scale Company in Great Britain 1870–1914’, Economic History Review 20 (1967), p. 539. For a more recent discussion on the British and US markets see L. Hannah, ‘Logistics, Market Size, and Giant Plants in the Early Twentieth Century: A Global View’, The Journal of Economic History, vol. 68 (2008), pp. 46–79. Appendix 5 1 For some useful comments on measurement see BR Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), p. 530. 2 The sharp rise in the middle years of the 1850s was probably due more to changes to the method of compiling the register, but there was also some growth in the output in this period.

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3 It was noted by the registrar general of shipping in 1852 that ‘There are no official records which show any other British-built vessels than those registered as British’ (BPP 1852, xliv, Number and tonnage of British ships in 1849, 1850 and 1851, p. 2).


Appendix 6 1 From 1854, responsibility for this register passed to the board of trade and in 1873 a central agency was established. N. Cox, ‘The Records of the General Register of Shipping and Semen’, Sources for Maritime History 11 (1972), pp. 168–174. G. S. Graham ‘The Ascendancy of the Sailing Ship 1850–85’, Economic History Review, 9 (1956), p. 79. 2 Since the data was not available, ships built for foreigners during 1914, 1915 and 1916 have not been included either in the Irish figures (if there were any), or in the UK totals in which the figure is likely to have been much lower than in normal years. 3 BPP, 1875, 73, Vessels Number and Tonnage of Sailing and Steam Vessels built at each port in the UK exclusive of vessels built for foreigners. 4 For a study of the great regional variety in boat building traditions in Ireland in this period see C. MacCarthaigh, Traditional Boats of Ireland: History, folklore and construction (Cork, 2008).


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Solar, P. ‘The Linen industry in the Nineteenth Century’ in D. Jenkins (ed.) The Cambridge History of Western Textiles (Cambridge, 2003), vol. ii. Solar, P. ‘The Irish Linen Trade 1852–1914’ Textile History 36 (2005). Solar, P. ‘Shipping and economic development in nineteenth century Ireland’ Economic History Review 59 (2006). Solar, P. and Durie A. ‘The Scottish and Irish Linen Industry Compared, 1780–1860’, in R. Mitchison and P. Roebuck (eds) Economy and Society in Scotland and Ireland (Edinburgh, 1988). Stewart, D. ‘Mills and Millers’ Old Limerick Journal 2 (1980). Stewart, M. Goodbody’s of Clara, 1865–1965 (Dublin, 1965). Sullivan, A.M. ‘Pierce’s of Wexford’ Journal of the Wexford Historical Society 16 (1996–97). Sullivan, W. The Economic History of Cork (Cork, 1937). Swift, J. History of the Dublin Bakers (Dublin, 1948). Takei, A. ‘The First Irish Linen Mills, 1800–824’ Irish Economic and Social History 21 (1994). Tann, J. Jones, G. ‘Technology and Transformation; The Diffusion of the Roller Mill in the British Flour Milling Industry 1870–1907’ Technology and Culture 37 no. 1 (1996). Thomas W.A. The Stock Exchanges of Ireland (Liverpool, 1986). Truxes, T.M. ‘Connecticut in the Irish-American Flaxseed Trade 1750–75’ Eire-Ireland 12 2 (1977). Truxes, T.M. Irish-American Trade, 1660–1783 (Cambridge, 1988). Vaizey, J. The Brewing Industry, 1886–1951 (London, 1960). Vaughan, W.E. and Fitzpatrick, A.J. (eds) Irish Historical Statistics: Population 1821–1971 (Dublin, 1978). Watson, M. ‘North Antrim Swing Ploughs,’ Ulsterfolklife 28 (1982). Weir, R. ‘The Patent Still Distillers and the Role of Competition’ in L. Cullen and T. Smout (eds) Comparative Aspects of Scottish and Irish Economic and Social History, 1600–1900 (Edinburgh, 1977). Weir, R. ‘In and Out of Ireland: The Distillers Company Ltd and the Irish Whiskey Trade 1900–939’ Irish Economic and Social History 7 (1980). Weir, R. The History of Distillers Company, 1877–1939: Diversification and growth in whisky and chemicals (Oxford, 1995). West, T. Malting the Barley: John H. Bennett the man and his firm, 200 years of malting barley in Ballinacurra (Midleton, 2006). Westropp, D. Irish Glass (Reprint, Dublin, 1978). Whelan, K. ‘The Catholic Parish, the Catholic Chapel and Village Development in Ireland’ Irish Geography 16 (1983). Whelan, K. ‘Settlement and Society in Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ Dawe G. Wilson Foster, J. (eds) The Poet’s Place: Ulster literature and society, essays in honour of John Hewitt 1907–87 (Belfast, 1991). Wigham, B. Rynne, C. ‘A life of usefulness’: Abraham Beale and the Monard ironworks (Blarney, 2000). Williams, J. Digest of Welsh Historical Statistics (Aberystwyth, 1985). Williams, R.A. The Berehaven Copper Mines (Kenmare, 1993). Workman and Clarke, Shipbuilding at Belfast 1880–1933 (Belfast, 1928). Wrigley, A. Continuity,Chance and Change: The Character of the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge, 1990)


Index

agriculture: construction and 161, 162; machinery 115–16; overview 3, 6; raw materials 176 Alexander’s mill 60 Almquist, E. 13 American Civil War 35–36, 46 American imports 56, 63–64 American market 14–15, 37, 42, 46, 51 Amie, L. 17 Anglo-Irish War 160 Arigna coalfield 109 Arigna iron works 112 Astle, John 152 bacon curing: competition 57; exports 55–56 baking 70–72 Bank of Ireland 93 banks 93 barley 79, 80, 85 Barnard, A. 84 Barnes, Thomas Addison 120 bartyes 110 Bastable, A.R.G. 108 bauxite 110 Beamish and Crawford 78–79, 81 beer 77–87; brewing partnerships 78; excise duty 78; imports 78; markets 77–78 beer duties 87 Behan, J. 2 Belfast: construction 163; distilleries 93–94; engineering 120–23, 124; engineering exports 125f; foundries 113; linen industry 18, 24, 31; machine exports 187t; milling capacity 62–63; overview 4; population 34; population growth 175; railways 118–19; sectarian

attacks 96; shipbuilding 130–37, 177; stone 167–69; tobacco 99 Belfast Mercantile Register 153 Belgian linen industry 47 Berehaven mine 110 Bessbrook Spinning Company 36, 39 Bibby Line 133 Bielenberg, A. 3 biscuit making 72–73 Blackburn, E. 2 blacksmiths 113–15 bleachers: bleacher numbers 31; engineering 121; excellence of 37; overview 177–78; power spinning 25–26; role of 16–18 Board of Works 158, 162 bogwood 146, 153 Boland’s Flour Mill 65 Bourke, A. 60 Bow St. Distillery 120 Boyd, John 25 Boyle, E. 37, 46 bread consumption 70–72 brewing: beer production 82t, 183t; decline in 84; engineering 124; expansion of 80–82; exports 79–80; sales 85; technology 85 brick making 168–70, 171 bricklayers 158 Brinny Mills 61 British Portland Cement Co. Ltd, 170 Brown shipbuilders 129 Brownlow, G. 17 Brunt, L. 62 butter manufacture 74–75, 163 cambric 28, 36 canals 169 Cannon, E. 62


266

Index

capital formation 173 capital, lack of 6 Caribbean market 14–15, 42 Carroll’s 101, 102 Carter, W.A. 30–31 Castlecomer Colleries Ltd. 109 Catholic Church 91–92, 155 cement production 170–71 cereal output 60 charcoal 111–12 church building 155 Clark, W.A.G. 37, 177 Clark, William 46 Clarke’s 100 Clarkson, L. 70 climatic advantages 37, 177–78 Clonard Foundry 126 Clooney’s 120 Clyde shipbuilders 132, 138–39 Co-operative Wholesale Society of Manchester 74 coach-building 113 coalmining 108, 111, 177; production 184t Coates and Young 131 Cockerill, J. 163, 169 Coffey still 90–91 Collins, B. 13 Combe, Barbour and Combe 124–25 Combe, James 124 Commission on Irish Industry 64 Committee on Timber Duties 150, 152 communications 1, 6 Condensed Milk Company of Ireland Ltd. 74–75 Condition of the Poorer Classes 27 Congested Districts Board 162 Connolly and Somers 83 construction see also timber industry: agriculture and 161, 162; capital formation 146, 146t; dwellings by category 153–55, 154t, 157; dwellings, first and second class 155, 156t, 161t; dwellings in the course of construction 164t; employment 173t; expansion in 150–51; inhabited dwellings 152t; makeshift dwellings 151; military expenditure 151; overview 7, 173–74; peaks and troughs 165; public investment 157–58; raw materials 166–73; technology 171–72; work force 158–59, 159t; workshops 172t copper ore 109–10, 111 Cork: biscuit making 73; brewing 78–80, 81; butter manufacture 74;

construction 151; copper ore 110; corn milling 66; engineering 120, 121; iron and metal works 113; limestone 167; military victualing 55; milling capacity 63; pubs 92; shipbuilding 129–30, 138; spirits 90; tobacco 99 Cork Distillers Company (CDC) 92 corn milling 58–70; competition 63–64, 66, 69–70; contraction of 68–69; corn supply 65–66; engineering 119, 123; exports 60; imports 59; steam power 59; technology 64–67, 119; tillage areas 58–59 cottier weavers 28 cotton industry 18, 33–34, 179 Coyne, W. 37 Crawford, M.E. 70 Crawford, W. 16, 28, 178 creameries 74–75, 163 Crosthwaite of Lucan 21–23 Cullen, L.M. 3, 150 culm 109 Currell, Daniel 31 damasks 36 Danish competition 56 Davidson, Alex 24 Davidson’s Bridge Mills 62 Davis family 67–68 Davis, R.P. 108 de-industrialisation 3, 4–5 deals 145–46, 150 Deane, Alexander 153 Denny’s 56, 57 Derry: sectarian attacks 96; shipbuilding 138–39; shirt making 45; tobacco 99 Dickson, D. 55, 151 Distillers Company Ltd of Scotland 95, 97–98 Distillers Finance Corporation 95–96 Ditt, K. 33, 47 Dolpin’s Barn Brick Co. 169 drapers 16 Drinagh Cement Works 170 Drogheda Brewery 81 Dublin: baking 72; biscuit making 73; brewing 79–80, 81, 82–83; brick making 169; construction 151, 154, 162–63, 164–65, 171–72; corn milling 67, 68; engineering 120; foundries 113; milling capacity 63; overview 4; pubs 92; railways 117, 118; shipbuilding 129, 138; spirits 90; tobacco 99, 100

Index


Dublin Brick and Tile Co. 169 Dunbar, Stewart & Co. 22 Dundalk Iron Works 117 Dunville Distillery 92 East Tyrone coalfield 108 economic development 176 education 6 embroidery 43 emigration 13 employment 179–80, 180t energy sector 6 engineering: demand for 119–26; output 126; overview 177; railways 116–19; specialisation 126 estate construction 155–56 Ewart, Sir William 46 excise duty 88–89 Fairbairn, Lawson, Combe, Barbour Ltd. 125 Fairbairn, William 123 Falls Foundry 124 female labour 13, 26, 29 finishing 12, 17–18 First World War: biscuit making 73; condensed milk 75; construction 164–65; engineering 125; flour consumption 64; shipbuilding 135–38 flax: inputs 48–50, 49t, 181t; spinning mills 21; state control of 51; supply of 12–13 flour consumption 64 Flux, A. W. 148 Food Control 57–58 food industries see also bacon curing; baking; biscuit making; corn milling: capital investment 160; demand 55; engineering 120; importance of 75–76; overview 103–4, 176 footwear industry 1 Forbes, A.C. 144 foreign trade, overview 3 foundries 111–15; employment 121, 122t; overview 120–21, 177 Foyle Shipyard 138 G & W Hayes 23 Gailey, A. 146, 153 Gallaher, Thomas 100 Gallaher’s 100–101, 102, 103 Geary, F. 3, 17, 26 George Baker and Company 73 German linen industry 33, 47, 48 Gilford Mill 22

267

Gill, C. 12 Glenravel mine 111 Gourvish, T. 77 Grand Canal Company 59 granite 167 Gray, J. 12–13 Great Famine: baking 71; construction 151, 157; milled cereals 59 Great Northern Brewery 81 Great Northern Railway 119 Green, E.R.R. 2, 4, 25, 176 Griffith, A. 108 Grimshaws 25 Guinness: competition 82–84; costs of 79; dominance of 77; exports 83; limited liability company 85–86; markets 80; sales 85, 86t; success of 87; technology 84–85 Guinness, Arthur 77 Guinness, Edward Cecil 85–86 Hall, R. H. 63–66 hand spinning 26–27, 36 Handloom Weavers Commission 23–24, 29–30 hardwoods 143–44 Harland and Wolff 132–35; employment breakdown 136t, 137, 138; output 138; work force 134–35 Hazelbank Spinning Mill 22 Hearne, J.M. 55 Hennessy 129 Herdman & Co 24, 25, 38 Hickson shipbuilders 132–33 Higgin’s Avoniel Distillery 94 Hind, John 24 Hive Iron Works 120, 129 hops 85 housing 34–35 Hudson, William 22–23 Hughes Bakery 70, 71 Immature Spirits Act 1915 95–96 Inchicore Works 117–18 The Industrial Resources of Ireland (Kane) 107–8 industrial villages 157 International Yeast Company 96 investment 160 Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) 74 Irish Builder 121, 162, 164, 167, 170 Irish Free State government 97 iron ore 111, 177

268

Index


iron pyrites 110 iron smelting 111–15, 114t, 126 iron works 132 Jacob and Company 73 James, K.J. 6, 28, 35–36 Jameson’s 89, 93, 120 John Clune Ltd 101 John Furlong and Sons 67 Johnson, D. 176 joint stock companies 160 Joseph O’Neill and Sons 101 Kane, R. 6, 107–8 Kay of Lancashire 23, 25 Kennedy, L. 176 Killaloe Quarry 171 labour costs 26, 43, 51 Labour Exchange Act 1909 162 Labourers’ Acts 162 Lagan Foundry 121 Lambkin’s 100 Land Acts 162 landlords 12 Latin American market 14–15, 42 lead 110 Lee, J. 6 Leinster: brewing 81–82; coalmining 108, 109; construction 157, 163; corn milling 67–68 Limerick: bacon curing 57; construction 151; corn milling 66–67; pubs 92; tobacco 99 limestone 167 Linen Board 12, 18, 21–22, 47 linen industry 11–19; capital investment 36; commercial centre 31; competition 32–33, 47; domestic market 12, 15–16, 47–48; engineering 121–23, 124; exports 11–12, 14, 15–16, 15t; exports as performance indicators 39–43; factory workforce 33–35, 34t; First World War 50–51; labour costs 26, 43, 51; linen mills 34t; marketing 46; markets 178; overview 3–6, 177–78; problems of 18–19; quality improvements 27–28; raw materials 48–50, 49t; spinning workforce 12–14, 17; technology 17–18; vertical integration 37–39, 38t; wet spinning 20–27; working conditions 34–35 Linen Merchants’ Association 42, 46 live exports 55–56 Liverpool 69, 73

locomotive manufacture 117–18 Londonderry Sentinal 45 Londonderry Shipbuilding and Engineering company 138–39 Lundy Foot and Company 100, 101–2 Lunham Brothers 56 Lynch, J.P. 137 Macardles 81 McCall, H. 23 McCann’s Bakery 72 McCutcheon, W.A. 2, 59 McKane and Co. 22–23 McKeown’s Ironworks 119 Mackie, James 125–26 McLaughlin & Harvey 163 maize 61–62 making-up trades 44–45 Malcomson shipbuilders 130 malt tax 79, 82–83 Manisty, Edward 117 marine engines 120, 129 Marshall, John 27 masons 158 Matterson’s 56 meat consumption 56 Midleton Distillery 92 military victualing 55, 73 Miller, John 120 millwrights 119–20 mineral wealth 6–7, 107–9, 111, 112t, 176–77 mining 108–9, 126 Mining Company of Ireland 108, 109, 171 Mitchell, B. R. 148 Mixing Act 1840 98 Model Mill 62–63 Mokyr, J. 3 Morton shipbuilders 129 mowers 115 Muckamore Bleachworks 39 Muggeridge 28 Mulholland family 24–25, 26, 38 Mulligan, W.H. 110 Munster: coalmining 108; construction 157, 163; engineering 120 Munster Bank 93 Murland Brothers 23 Murphy’s Brewery 81 Murray’s 100 Napoleonic War 55 nationalism 2 natural resources 107–9

Index


Neptune Ironworks 130 Nicholas, S.J. 46 Nicholson & Son 22–23 Northern Ireland: de-industrialisation 5; overview 2 Ó Gráda, C. 60, 71, 74, 97, 155 oats 60–61, 69–70 O’Brien, G. 2–3 O’Connell, Daniel 2 O’Dwyer, F. 158 O’Hearn, D. 5, 178–79 oil crisis 5 Ollerenshaw, P. 5, 6, 47, 50, 93 O’Malley, E. 4–5 O’Mara family 57 outworkers 43–44 paddle steamers 129 passenger liners 134 Pasteur, Louis 85 patent still 90–91, 93–94, 95 paviors 158 Peel, Robert 77 Phoenix Brewery 82 Phoenix Flour Mills 62 Pierce, James 115, 116 pigs 56–57, 58t pinafore manufacture 44 Pirrie, William 133, 134, 135, 137, 138 ploughs 115, 116 Pollard, S. 177 poor houses 158 Poor Inquiry 70 population growth 13, 16, 88, 143, 146, 165 pork exports 55–56 pot stills 91, 93, 94, 95 potato crop 57, 60 powerlooms 31, 32, 33t, 36, 37 Prior-Wandesforde, R.H. 109 proto-industrial theory 5, 13–14 provender milling 62 Provincial Bank 93 public buildings 157–58, 162, 164 putting out 43–44, 45–46 Quakers 73 quarries 166–68, 168t, 170–71 Queens University 168 railways: brick delivery 169; construction of 116–19; locomotive manufacture 117–18; market access 80; overview 176; timber industry 158

269

reapers 115, 116 Repeal Association 2 Report on Irish Revenue 89 Richardson Sons and Owden 38, 46 Rimmer, W.G. 26 Riordan, E. 69, 169 Robertson, P. 177 Robinson and Company 129 Ross and Walpole 121 Ross Island 109 Rowan’s 124 Royal Commission 95 Royal Irish Distillery 94 Russian Revolution 50 Russian spinning industry 32–33 Rynne, C. 109, 110 sandstone 167–68 Scotch Distillers’ Association 94 Scotland: distilleries 88, 91, 96; mineral wealth 176; spirits 95, 97 Scott family 45 Scottish warehouses 43 Scott’s of Omagh 61 Scrabo 167 Sefton & Company 43–44 Select Committee on Irish Industries 61 services sector 160, 164 sewing machines 45 Shaw’s 56, 57 shipbuilding: overview 138–40, 177; pre-industrial 128–32, 129t; tonnage launched 135t, 136, 139t, 189t, 191t; yards 131t Shipping and Navigation Act 1786 190 shirt making 43–45 silver 110 slate 170, 171 slavery 14 Slieveardagh colliery 109 smuggling 98–99 snuff 100, 102 soda bread 71 softwoods 144 Solar, P. 35, 47, 56, 71 spade mills 113–14 Sperling family 78 Spillane’s 100 spindles 32, 33t, 35 spinning: engineering 121–23; mills 21; overview 177–78; workforce 12–14, 17, 21 spirit duties 80


270

Index

spirits 88–98; blenders 94–95; capital investment 92–93; consumption 88, 91–92; costs of 88; decline in 95–96; engineering 120; exports 92, 95; illicit distilleries 89; legislation 88–90; mergers 95; production 97t; technology 90–91, 93 square timber trade 145–46, 150 steam engines 123, 124 Steam Flour Mills 62 steam navigation 79 steamboats 131 stone 166–67, 168t stone cutters 167 Swan and Hunter 139 Taylor’s 100 Temperance Movement 91 textile industry see also linen industry: capital investment 160; de-industrialisation 3; employment 199t; horse power 35t Thompson, Robert 24 threshing machines 115–16 Tillie, William 45 timber industry: domestic production 144–45, 152–53; duty 152; ethnographic studies 146; import lows 160–61; import peaks 159–60, 162; import statistics 147–49; imports 143–45, 146; imports by port 197t; imports (loads) 150t, 166t, 194t; technology 171–72 tobacco 98–103; consumption 98–99; exports 98, 103; retailers 100; technology 102–3 transport costs 176 Truxes, T.M. 14 Ulster: brewing 82; coalmining 108; construction 163, 165, 171; linen industry 178–79; overview 175; population 13; stone 168; timber industry 153 unionism 2 United Distillers Ltd (UDL) 95, 96, 97 United Kingdom: brewing 78, 84–85; foundries 121, 122t; linen market 15–16; production 97t; spirits 88, 92, 96–97 United Kingdom Distillers’ Association 94 University College, Dublin 162 Ure, A. 28–29

Valencia quarry 170 Victor Coates 120, 121, 124 Victoria Slate Quarries 171 Vitriol Island Works 17 Vulcan Foundry 120 Wakefield, E. 58, 98, 109 Walker, William 44 Wallace, T. 113 warehouse owners 43–44 Waterford: copper ore 110; engineering 123; food industries 55; pubs 92; shipbuilding 130, 138; tobacco 99 weaving: cottier weavers 28; overview 16–17; regional specialisation 28–29; vertical integration 37; weaver numbers 29–31, 30t Weir, R. 96 wet spinning 20–27 Wexford: agricultural machinery 115, 116; cement production 170; engineering 120; food industries 59, 67 wheat 60–61, 62, 70–71 Whelan, K. 5 Whiskey Trade Review 94 White shipbuilders 130 White Star Line 133 Wicklow 110 Wicklow Mining Company 108 Wilkinson and Turtle 43 Wilkinson, G. 170 Wills’ 102–3 Wilson, R. 77 windows 153 Wine Trade Review 94 Wolfhill Mill 24 woodlands 144–45 Workman Clark and Company 136, 137–38 world systems theory 179 yarn prices 36–37 yeast 85, 96 York Street Flax Spinning Company 39, 46 Youghal Brick Works 169, 170 Young, A. 26, 111 zinc 110

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