Life in 1916 Ireland: Stories from statistics

Photo: Woman and 3 children outside thatched cottage, probably Ahascragh, Co. Galway

• Nearly 10% of housing units in 1911 had ten or more rooms, which is a very large house, compared with 2.8% in 2011.
• Of the 66,662 housing units in Dublin in 1911, 14,518 (21.8%) had ten or more rooms, compared with 1.6% in 2011. T2.2 shows that there were 23,977 one room dwellings in Dublin in 1911, or 36% of the total.
• Thus Dublin in 1911 was very much a place of extremes for housing –  21.8% of dwellings were large homes and 36% were one room tenements.
• Over 10% of all housing units had ten or more rooms in 1911 in Cork, Wexford, Kilkenny, Wicklow, Waterford, Kildare and Carlow.
• Less than 5% of housing units had ten or more rooms in 1911 in Mayo, Leitrim and Roscommon.
• In 2011 just 2.8% of all dwellings had ten or more rooms and this proportion was relatively stable across the country with the exception of Dublin where just 1.6% were in this size category.
• In the 1911 Census, perishable units were houses principally built of mud or other perishable material and had only one room and one window. In the 2011 Census, perishable units described accommodation such as caravans or other mobile or temporary structures. There were 66,328 units in the 2011 Census which were 'not stated'.
• Here is a link to the 1911 Census return for the Whelan family who lived in Leeson Park in Dublin. This is the link to the House and Building return from B1 which showed that the family occupied a house with 20 rooms. Here is the link to the National Archives page for this Census return.

Photo: Street view, Summerhill, Dublin City

• There were 51,451 one room dwellings in Ireland in 1911 and nearly half (47.6%) had three or more persons living in the dwelling. In contrast, of the 23,058 one room dwellings in Ireland in 2011, less than 10% had 3 or more persons living in the dwelling.
• 23,977 of the one room dwellings in Ireland in 1911 were in Dublin, with most of these located in Dublin City, (see table 2.3).
• There were also large numbers of one room dwellings in Cork (4,055), Donegal (2,735) and Mayo (2,558).
• More than half the one room dwellings in Ireland in 2011 (13,769) were located in Dublin.
• The next table shows more information on one room dwellings in Dublin and includes a link to 1911 Census return for a Dublin family living in 1 room. However there were families outside Dublin also living in one room, this is the link to the 1911 Census return for the Foley family of four people who were living in one room in Kinsale, Co. Cork. This is the link to the National Archives page for this Census return and here is the link which shows the house and building return which shows that this family lived in one room.

Photo: Tenement interior, The Coombe, Dublin

• There were 21,133 one room dwellings in Dublin City in 1911. These tenements were home to 69,796 people, or 23% of the population of Dublin City. (See Table 1.1 for data on population by county.)                                                        
• Close to a quarter of the population living in Dublin City in 1911 lived in a tenement.
• See here  for a link to the 1911 Census return of the Cunningham family of 8 people who livied in a one room tenement in Dublin in 1911. The link to the National Archives website page which shows the Census data for this family is here. The "House and Buliding Return" from B1 here shows that this family of 8 people, (occupying household number 24 on form B), lived in one room.

Photo: Bride Street, Dublin City

Photo: 3 men digging potatoes in a field

• The coding system used to code occupations in the Census changed completely between 1911 and 2011 and also there were huge changes to the kinds of occupations that people do over this time period and for these reasons it is very difficult to make accurate comparisons in terms of occupations between 1911 and 2011.
• However some points are worth noting when looking at persons at work by broad occupation groupings in 1911 and 2011.
• In 1911 nearly half of workers were in Agriculture in comparison to just 4.9% in 2011. 
• Just over a quarter (26.8%) of workers in 1911 worked in Manufacturing jobs compared to 8.6% in 2011.
• One in ten workers in 1911 worked as a domestic servant. In 2011 only a few thousand people were working as a domestic servant, less than 0.3% of those at work. (Census 2011 shows 4,858 people working as a housekeeper (domestic and non-domestic) which is just  0.3% of those at work.)
• The Professional group of occupations accounted for 8.8% of all workers in 1911. By 2011 this area of work had more than quadrupled and the two groupings of Professional, Technical and Health workers and Clerical, Managing and Government workers accounted for just over 40% of all workers.
• The Commercial group of occupations in 1911 covered 5.6% of workers and included Insurance, Banking, Transport and Communications, and Retail and Wholesale trade. In 2011 there were 2 occupation groups which would cover broadly similar occupations, namely Sales and Commerce and Communication, Warehouse and Transport workers which together accounted for 21.5% of all workers.

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Photo: Mitchers, 4 young boys with school attendance officer and bicycle, 1910

• Out of the total population in Ireland in 1911,  over three-quarters could read and write.
• A small number, 3.2% or 99,759, could read only while 8.3% or 260,694 were illiterate. 
• The balance of the population , 406,155 persons, is probably composed mainly of children who had not yet started at school as the population in 1911 aged under 5 years was about 307,000.
• The illiterate rate, (the percentage who were classified as illiterate), was lowest in Dublin at 3.8%.  Other counties where the rate was less than 6% were Kildare, Tipperary, Laois, Limerick and Kilkenny.  
• The highest rates of illiteracy in 1911 were found in Donegal at (16.8%), Galway at (15.3%),  Mayo at (14.6%) and Waterford (11.1%).
• At the level of provinces, illiteracy rates were lower in Leinster (5.7%) and Munster (7.4%) and higher in Connacht (12.4%) and Ulster (12.7%).
• See a 1911 Census return here which shows that the three members of the Cahill family in this household in Galway could read and write. See here for the link to the National Archives page for this Census return.

Photo: Woman seated at doorway with 2 children, 1912

• In 1911 the vast majority (85.4%) of people in Ireland had been born in the county in which they were living on Census day. By 2011 this proportion had dropped to 61.4% illustrating that the population of Ireland today is much more mobile than 100 years ago.
• In the 1911 Census of Population 10.3% of people were born in another county in the Republic but in 2011 this proportion had increased to 20.8%.
• Less than 1% of the Irish population was born outside the islands of Ireland and Britain in 1911 but by 2011 this proportion had increased strongly to 11.2% illustrating the important part played by inward migration in recent times in Ireland.

• There have been big changes in the religious composition of the population between 1911 and 2011.
• In 1911 9.9% of the population was Protestant (Church of Ireland, Presbyterian or Methodist) compared with 3.6% in 2011.
• Just under 90% of the population in 1911 described themselves as Catholic and by 2011 this proportion had dropped to 84%.
• Over 20% of the population in 1911 was Protestant in counties Wicklow, Donegal and Monaghan while the proportion in Dublin was 19.3% and in Kildare it was 17.5%.
• Close to 20% of the population in 1911 was Protestant in Dublin (19.3%), Cavan (18.2%) and Kildare (17.5%) while about one in ten was Protestant in Carlow and Laois. 
• By 2011 Wicklow, Cavan and Monaghan had a Protestant population of just over 7% while the figure for Donegal was 8.5%.
• (See Appendix 1 for the text of the Census of Population question on Irish from 1911 and 2011.)

Photo: Nurse visiting a family, Arranmore, Co. Donegal

• 17.6% of the population in 1911 could speak Irish and this had increased to 40.6% by 2011.
• The proportion who could speak Irish in Leinster in 1911 was very low at just 3.5%. 
• In contrast, about one fifth of the population in Ulster and Munster could speak Irish while over a third in Connacht spoke Irish.
• More than half of the population in Galway spoke Irish in 1911, which was over 5 percentage points higher than in 2011.
• High proportions could speak Irish in Counties Mayo (46.1%), Kerry (38%), Donegal and Clare (35.2%) and Waterford (28.4%).
• The link here to 1911 Census form shows the O'Leary family in Glengarriff, Cork, where the parents could not read or write but both could speak Irish and English. The eldest two of the five children living in the house could also speak Irish and English. See here for the link to the National Archives page for this Census return.