This is a scene from Mattersons tinned meat department in Limerick. At the time, tins would have been stamped as
Produce and Manufacture of the United Kingdom and were exported from Ireland as
Foreign and Colonial Merchandise.
This canned condensed milk factory run by Quebec natives, the Cleeve brothers, was also a big employer in Limerick
The textile industry required thousands upon thousands of hands to
create clothes, household items and anything else that could be woven,
stitched, sewn, pressed, moulded. It spanned the initial processing of
the textiles at central depots, as in this roughing of flax at
Ballynahinch in Galw
Tie-making at Atkinson’s Poplin Factory on the quays in Dublin:
… to the detail of creating fine brushes as at Varian’s factory in Dublin:
Pictorial record shows the Irish hard at work 100 years ago
Working Lives exhibition at the NLI exposes the conditions in which men, women and children toiled to survive.
THE IRELAND OF just over 100 years ago was a time of profound change.
The technological advances of modern Ireland may seem hectic and
beyond the wildest dreams of a turn-of-the-20th-century citizen. In
fact, the two decades in the run-up to the 1913 Lockout were filled with
industrial revolution, new industries and more and more demanding tasks
for the average worker.
The National Library of Ireland is running a striking chronicle of
our social history, Working Lives, at the National Photographic Archive.
Curated by social scientist and historian Mary Jones, it was opened
this week by Junior Heritage Minister Dinny McGinley and runs at the
Temple Bar venue until 31 March.
‘Big House’ servants, agricultural workers at harvest, linen mill
labourers, pork curers, biscuit makers, shipbuilders – an endless line
of toiling labourers have their work chronicled in vivid photography at
this exhibition.
The following photographs – reproduced here with kind permissions
from NLI – give a taste of the breadth of the 148 images on show.
There was a clear move from the precarious nature of agricultural
work in a country where most farm labourers were landless (In the 19th
century, says curator Mary Jones, 38 per cent of landowners were
Irish-born and held just 15 per cent of the land. The remaining 62 per
cent of landowners were not Irish, and had either bought their land
through enforced confiscation from the original owners or gotten it as a
gift “in recognition of service to the British Crown”.)
Life on the land for all others was harsh – as for this young boy taking part in turf-cutting in this desolate scene:
Towards the end of the 19th century, more than half of agricultural
land was under grass to provide feeding for livestock and there was
substantial tillage. Food manufacturing became an important part of the
export economy as well as domestically, and provided employment not just
in rural areas but in plants where these foodstuffs were produced –
breweries, meat factories, bakeries and so on.
This is a scene from Mattersons tinned meat department in Limerick. At the time, tins would have been stamped as
Produce and Manufacture of the United Kingdom and were exported from Ireland as
Foreign and Colonial Merchandise.
This canned condensed milk factory run by Quebec natives, the Cleeve brothers, was also a big employer in Limerick:
The textile industry required thousands upon thousands of hands to
create clothes, household items and anything else that could be woven,
stitched, sewn, pressed, moulded. It spanned the initial processing of
the textiles at central depots, as in this roughing of flax at
Ballynahinch in Galway…
… to the detail of creating fine brushes as at Varian’s factory in Dublin:
Tie-making at Atkinson’s Poplin Factory on the quays in Dublin:
Making a straw hat at the Wexford Hat Company:
Winstanley’s bootmakers was just one of many brands that became highly recognisable for their craftwork:
While large-scale and heavy industry also required intense labour,
both skilled and unskilled. This was the building of the Oceanic in
Belfast:
And men hard at work in a saw mill in Navan:
Children, unfortunately, were not absent from the workforce – note
the young boys on the left of this image from the Smyth & Co
trimming shop in Dublin…
And on a more organised level, children were co-opted into production
in industrial schools around the country. The exhibition features a
number of such scenes, including this one of sail-making at an
industrial school in Baltimore in Cork:
The exhibition features many more sectors of employment but also
charts the rise of the trade union movement, culminating in clamouring
for better conditions for workers and ultimately industrial action right
up to the Lockout 100 years ago.
A prophetic – and less well-known strike – happened in Waterford two years earlier. Mary Jones explains:
Much trade union organisation remained centred in the cities of Dublin
and of Belfast, but grew also in Waterford, Limerick and Cork, where
industries and trade councils had already been established.
At Pierce’s in Wexford, iron manufacture and casting dated from the
early 1800s. By the 1800s, they had won gold medals in Dublin, Cork and
Paris, with machinery exported to the British colonies and to Argentina.
Men employed at Pierce’s complained of low wages, lacked job security
and worked long hours. They had no representation in trade negotiations
as employers distributed profits amongst family and friends before
fixing the terms of payment amongst the 400-strong workforce. In 1890 a
two-day strike, with the Pierce workforce joined by workers from two
other Wexford foundries, led to the formation of the Wexford Fitters and
Turners Society.
By 1911, labour unrest across the Union and across Europe spread to
workforces. Workers from Pierce’s and two other foundries applied to
join the ITGWU. Four hundred workers were locked out from Pierce’s, and
similar numbers from two other foundries in the town. The strike lasted
six months.
Source
http://www.postcrossing.com/postcards/IN-29170http://www.postcrossing.com/postcards/IN-29170
London's Bonhams Fine Art Auctioneers is currently auctioning
rare photographs taken over 100 years ago in Tibet. The pictures were
photographed by British officer John Claude White during a military
mission to Tibet in 1903-1904. From NPR:
