Dublin’s Cow Pock Institution

And, now after all, let me mention a great discovery that has lately been made for the benefit and good of mankind in general, I mean the Vaccine Inoculation or Cow Pock, which is uniformly mild, inoffensive, free from pain or danger, either in old or young, and an infallible preventative of the small pox, it is never fatal nor yet contagious. The Small Pox has for 12 centuries, been destroying in every year, an immense proportion of the world. [Dublin Time-Piece, 1804]

Outbreaks of small pox in a district could result in fatalities of 20% of the population. It was known that dairymaids were immune due to their exposure to Cow Pox, a much milder disease. After Edward Jenner conducted an experiment where he exposed an eight year old boy to the cow pox pustules on the dairy maid Sarah Nelmes’ hand, and then deliberately exposed him to small pox, he published the results that the boy did not contract small pox, and thus cow pox was an effective vaccination. From the time of its publication in 1798, Jenner’s work became hugely influential in establishing national vaccination programmes. (The word vaccination comes from the Latin for cow, vacca.)

In Dublin, vaccination was available to children of the city in the Dispensary for the Infant Poor soon after Jenner’s publication. Following some extensive vaccination work in Cork, demand in Dublin quickly surged, and in January 1804 the Dublin Cow Pock Institution was opened on North Cope St (now Talbot St) to focus solely on vaccination for small pox. Children of the poor could attend on Tuesdays and Fridays from 11 – 3 pm.  Some archives for the Cow Pock Institution are held by the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, including a subscription book dating from 16^th March 1804. The process of securing “cow pock matter” for the purposes of vaccination needed funding, and as well as vaccinating children in the city, packets of fresh lymph were circulated to local dispensaries around the country as part of a nationwide vaccination effort. While vaccination was free for the poor, it otherwise incurred a charge, something which later became contentious. Medical practitioners and other dispensaries could apply to be supplied with packets of infection for half a guinea per annum, and Union Workhouses for a guinea per annum. All post relating to the Cow Pock Institution was free thanks to an agreement with the General Post Office; a letter exists in the National Archives from Dr Hugh Ferguson, apothecary at the Cow-Pock Institution to the government acknowledging the support that is “essential to the existence of their Institution“. The Cow Pock Institution relocated to beside the GPO in the 1860s.

(North) Cope St is hard to pin down. Its southside namesake in Temple Bar still exists, which can confuse searches. (North) Cope St is not on Rocque’s 1756 map of the city, nor Bernard Scalé’s update in 1773, but does appear on the 1798 plan of the city, now running along the north of Marlborough Bowling Green, extending from Earl St. By the time the Ordnance Survey men were mapping the city, a Dispensary is marked in the location, but by this stage it is now Talbot St, named after 2^nd Earl Talbot, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1817 – 1821. Thus (North) Cope St must be one of the contenders for street names with the shortest lifespan!

Cope St: Top left – Rocque (1756) shows Marlborough Green but no street; top right (1798) shows Cope St running on the north edge of Marlborough Green; bottom OS map (~1840) shows Dispensary marked but now Talbot St; Marlborough Green now gone

Reports of the progress of the Institution were published each year, and in its first year 1000 vaccinations were carried out, rising to 4000 by the end of the decade, along with 3500 packets distributed nationally. Vaccination capacity increased after 1815, when rural dispensaries/hospitals offered vaccination to poor people locally.  While the upper and middle classes generally engaged with the vaccination programme – infections among those classes became very low – it was more difficult to engage the working class and the poor. There was an uneasiness about being exposed to vaccination and a lot of misinformation about the dangers of vaccination, captured in a famous satirical cartoon of the time. Repeated publications and statistics were used to reassure the public about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine, and steadily more people became vaccinated. While there were continued outbreaks – 1500 people died from smallpox in an outbreak Dublin in 1878– their number and extent was much less thanks to ongoing vaccination.

Concern over the safety of vaccination was captured in this satirical cartoon by James Gilray, showing people morphing into cows

The Dublin Cow Pock Institution closed in 1877 when its duties were continued by hospitals. Ireland reported its last case of smallpox in 1907, and the World Health Organisation declared the complete eradication of the disease in 1980.

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Notes

• Elizabeth Malcolm and Greta Jones (1999) Medicine, Disease and the State in Ireland 1650-1940, Cork University Press.
• Samuel B Labatt (1809), “The Cow Pock Institution”, The Belfast Monthly Magazine, 2(8), 183-185.
• Archives area available at the RCPI, NAI, NLI, and the Wellcome Library.

Nighttown: Dublin’s Monto

The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an uncobbled transiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green will-o’-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of flimsy houses with gaping doors.

Ulysses, James Joyce

Entry under occupation for Maud Hamilton, 1911 Census (National Archives of Ireland)

In the 1911 Census, the occupation of two Dublin women is entered as prostitute. One was Maggie Boylan living as a boarder on Faithful Place, the other—whose original entry of “unfortunate” was amended by a clerk—was Maud Hamilton on Elliott Place. Both Faithful Place and Elliott Place were off Purdon St, now completely disappeared. At the time of the Census, it was a street running parallel to, and north of, Foley St.

Purdon St with Elliot Place and Faithful Place highlighted (OSi)

Foley St was called Montgomery St, and this gave the name to the small area just west of Connolly Station that was once one of Europe’s largest red-light districts: the Monto. The Monto came to prominence in the late nineteenth century, and lasted well into the twentieth century, until the new State, prompted by the Legion of Mary, effectively shut it down.

There is no specific boundary for the Monto, but it is considered to be within the boundaries of Gardiner St (to the left/west), Talbot St (to the south), Amiens St (to the east) and Gloucester St to the north. This map ca. 1840 shows many street names before they were changed. The red cross marks Montgomery St.

Oddly, my awareness of the Monto came about through a gift of the book Science and Technology in Nineteenth Century Ireland, which contains an essay by Tadhg O’Keeffe and Patrick Ryan. They write that there is little surviving of the Monto today, with streets, houses, and street names cleared away. They have used the Ordnance Survey maps of the city to trace the growth and decline of prostitution in this small area.

Why did the Monto come about? Early nineteenth century records suggest that prostitution was more prevalent on the south side of the city; with one of the city’s better known Madames, Margaret Leeson, setting up shop in Pitt St, now Balfe St, site of the Westbury Hotel (and the subject of this blog’s first post). In a second essay, O’Keeffe and Ryan propose three reasons why this small part of the north inner city became one of Europe’s most notorious red-light districts. Firstly, the area was far enough from respectable eyes to enable the containment of prostitution away from upper and middle-class residential districts. From the 1870s, there was no shortage of powers  available to the police to shut down brothels and arrest their occupants. But they were not used, and the area was openly acknowledged to have ‘open houses’ in a publication of high repute as Encyclopaedia Britannica. Ths is not to say arrests didn’t take place. Luddy reports the Dublin Metropolitan Police records: 2,849 arrests in 1838, 4,784 in 1856; and running at about 1,000 per year from the 1870s. A low of 494 was recorded in 1899.

Secondly, the area was a slum, meaning rents were low. And thirdly, and most likely crucially, the area was perfectly positioned next to Amiens St station, Dublin port, and Aldborough House. Amiens St likely provided plenty of young women from the country looking for work. The port and Aldborough house—converted from a school to a military barracks during the period of the Crimean war—provided plenty of clientèle along with the demand of locals.

Elliot Place, 1930s, from the Frank Murphy Collection (Old Dublin Society). Reporduced in Luddy and O’Keeffe and Ryan.

Keeping track of street names in the area is no mean feat. Looking at Rocque’s map from 1756, the area is mostly undeveloped. The extract from Rocque shows Mabbot St running roughly N-S, with “Worlds End Lane” running east-west along what became Montgomery St. O’Keeffe and Ryan suggest that this name indicates that even then, the area “had a long-standing reputation for the darker side of life.”

Rocque’s Map, 1756, showing Worlds End Lane and Great Martin’s Lane, which would become Montgomery St and Mecklinburgh St.

As the area began to be laid out in the mid-Georgian era, Great Martin’s Lane became Mecklinburgh St in 1765. Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburgh had married George III a few years earlier. This street ran through and beyond the Monto’s (loose) boundaries. Residents on the Upper part of the street, describing themselves as “respectable working classes”, lobbied to have the name changed so as to lose the association with the area, and this part of the street became Tyrone St in 1886. But just two years later, the residents in the Lower part had their street name changed to Lower Tyrone St. A medical student walking down Tyrone St in 1904 observed that “in no other European capital have I seen its equal. It was a street of Georgian houses and each one was a brothel”. The Upper and Lower Tyrone streets subsequently became Waterford St and Railway St in 1911, the latter name survives today.  Montgomery St had substantial slum clearances in 1905 and the street’s name was changed to Foley St, albeit with the same reputation. Mabbot St—immortalised by Joyce as the entrance to “Nighttown”—is now called James Joyce St. Are you keeping up?

The “other-worldliness” of the Monto, captured by Joyce in his expression of Nighttown is elaborated on by O’Keeffe and Ryan. This area of the city was the inverse of its surroundings; coming to life when Dublin slept, being run by women rather than men; public expressions in the most intimate of places.

Magdalen asylum in the Monto (OSi)

While the growth of the Monto may have been due to the turning of the cheek by the law, religious groups were not so unobservant. The all-male and Protestant White Cross Vigilance Association organised patrols from 1885, keeping watch outside “evil houses”. Bizarrely, the neighbours of brothel owners and prostitutes in the Monto were the nuns: the Sisters of Charity, who took over the Magdalen Asylum established on Mecklinburgh St in 1822.But it was the Association of Our Lady of Mercy (Legion of Mary), founded by Frank Duff in 1921 which had the greatest impact on shutting down prostitution in the Monto. Their actions included the persuading of women to leave brothels and take up paid employment elsewhere. The new State’s police force could no longer turn a blind eye and in the Spring of 1925, a large raid resulted in significant numbers of arrests. While this did not shut it down completely, activity petered out over the following years. Street clearances and renamings means that there are no physical marks on the landscape recording this district’s history; the only thing that remains is a white tiled cross on the back of a Magdalen building awaiting demolition and reconstruction.

White tile cross over a gateway on the back of the former Magdalen Laundry on Railway St (Google, 2014)

Notes

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• Tadhg O’Keeffe and Patrick Ryan (2009) At the World’s End: The Lost Landscape of Monto, Dublin’s Notorious Red-light District, Landscapes, I, 21-38.
• Tadhg O’Keeffe and Patrick Ryan (2011) Representing the imagination: a topographical history of Dublin’s Monto from Ordnance Survey maps and related materials, in Science and Technology in Nineteenth Century Ireland, Julia Adelman and Éadaoin Agnew (eds), Four Courts Press: Dublin.
• Maria Luddy (2007) Prostitution and Irish Society: 1800-1940, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.