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00:01In 1926, Ireland conducted its first census as an independent nation.
00:08One hundred years later, the National Archives have made that census freely available online across the world.
00:17For this series, six of us, including myself, Eileen Walsh, have been given the privilege of opening these books
00:25and to reflect on some of the lives captured in those records a century later.
01:00Before it is digitised and made available online, the 1926 census is stored in a room.
01:071,300 boxes documenting nearly three million names.
01:13The entire country in one room. It's very odd.
01:18So this is Leitrim. So these are the L's. Kilkenny.
01:26And every single person who lived in the country at the time is written on a line in here somewhere.
01:33Every single person.
01:35This is the first time we would have filled out these forms as an Irish state.
01:44Most people in the country will have family on these pages that they would have known and they would have
01:52loved and they would have, you know, had as part of their lives.
01:57Amongst these boxes, one of us wants to look inside the entries for Cork City.
02:03Mick Lynch is Britain's most recognisable trade union leader.
02:07Born in London to Irish parents, he credits his father for shaping his sense of social justice and fairness.
02:15I got a passion from my dad. He was always a bit of a fighter.
02:19He was very committed about what trade union is and what solidarity is.
02:24You know, I wouldn't like to let him down on that score. So that's why we kept going.
02:29I know you were only sort of 16 when your dad died.
02:32So you probably didn't, you know, get a chance to know much as an adult.
02:36But I was just wondering what you're hoping to sort of find out when you go back to Cork.
02:40I want to find out about Gunpowder Lane, which is quite an evocative place, the place he was born.
02:45I'm told it was very run down, probably called slums now.
02:51And also, my dad was called Jackie Lynch, and there was another fellow from across the river, across the river
02:58Lee, called Jack Lynch, who became the Taoiseach.
03:01I want to see why their lives developed in different ways.
03:07They always used to refer to Ireland as home. They didn't say, you're going back to Cork, you're going back
03:11to Cross McGlynn.
03:12They say, are you going home? But we were London. It's quite a strange thing.
03:16I suppose we had more of a London Irish identity than a British identity, which is still true.
03:20They were very patriotic in the naive sense of just being very devoted to the country.
03:27But my mother also said Ireland never did anything for me.
03:31And my dad, as far as I can remember, never expressed any interest in going back to Ireland.
03:39Down this way is where I used to live, which is an area called the Warwick Estate, which we moved
03:44into in 1962.
03:47We were living in the flat just across the road there, in the lower one.
03:52There were seven of us in there, four of us in the bedroom, and my sister had her own one,
03:56and my mum and dad had their bedroom.
04:01So this was the back of the estate. When we were kids, this was all open.
04:04It's always smaller than you imagine.
04:07You know, when we were kids, this seemed like a great big playground for us.
04:13Irish people here had their own churches, their own schools, their own music, their own pubs and all the rest
04:18of it.
04:19So we were a distinct element in the working class, but we weren't a separate element of the working class,
04:24if you know what I mean.
04:25And I think that was one of the strengths of London and many British cities, that Irish people could come,
04:31you could get work, and you could live a life that maybe you couldn't live in either.
04:36My dad liked the community.
04:39I think he was affable, I think he was fairly popular, but I never really knew him as a man,
04:44so I was always a child.
04:46For me, he's more of a myth, I suppose.
04:54Jack Lynch, the Taoiseach, went on to the highest office of the state and very high profile.
05:00While half a million people of my dad's generation and half a million people of the next generation, every ten
05:05years, Ireland was sending most of its people abroad, or very many of its people abroad.
05:10It had to shed people, and they shed them all over the world, which is now called the Diaspora.
05:16I don't even know what Diaspora means, but apparently I'm part of it.
05:33I wasn't sure what to do.
05:38It's hard to do than I had to do.
05:40This is not what to do.
05:44It's hard to do.
05:45It's hard to do!
05:46My God said, I've been there with a son of the story.
05:48I can't do it.
05:49You have to go to the next meeting,
05:51and then the next meeting is Gormla Niúrishg.
06:05I've been reading Gormla Niúrishg about Gormla Niúrishg.
06:12I've been reading the book that Gormla Niúrishg
06:15In the day there were always a place where you could run and come and get a bike and get
06:22a bike.
06:23And the Father had to drive in a different way.
06:25I made a war into a city for a while.
06:31I made a city in a city.
06:34It was a city and a city was resumed by a city that had been a big change in that
06:38city.
06:40I'd like to talk to you later.
06:41There's a lot of places where you're looking at the streets.
06:47And I'm going home to the streets.
06:50There's a lot of people going on.
06:54There's no place to go to the streets.
06:57But I'm just looking for a lot of people.
07:00I'm looking for a lot of people.
07:02I'm looking for a lot of people.
07:03And there's a lot of things like that.
07:07It's all over the place and it's all over the place.
07:12That's the day of Roshan's life.
07:15I don't know.
07:18I don't know.
07:21I don't know.
07:22That's the day of Roshan's life.
07:33I don't know.
07:35Girmla is with her brother, Lachlin,
07:38to learn more about their family's townland.
07:41She's not here.
07:42And she's not here.
07:44She's not here.
07:44She's not here.
07:46She's a great man.
07:51She's a great man.
07:51And she's a great man.
07:53And she's not here to go.
07:58My wife is here.
08:02And she's the only person.
08:06So I grew up with her brother.
08:07And her father is still here.
08:11She's a good girl
08:12and the chapel.
08:13And her mother and her father –
08:13She's a great girl and my mother.
08:15And we're married.
08:20Her father is married.
08:21She has been married.
08:24My girl, I am a mother-in-law,
08:26What do you think?
08:28And I think it's important to me.
08:32Yes.
08:33And my boss.
08:37Yes, yes.
08:38He's a boss.
08:39It's like fear, fear.
08:41Well, I don't know what to do.
08:53I don't know.
08:54I don't know what to do.
08:56They didn't understand how to do it.
08:59They just wanted to have a great experience.
09:00And the great thing is,
09:02it's like the gallery,
09:04which was a great place.
09:06Because it was a bit of a business
09:08to get it done.
09:10Yes.
09:13I wanted to know
09:14how to give up
09:15the work that was being done.
09:20It was a good place.
09:20He was a good place
09:22that was the last call.
09:26The last call was the last call.
09:28And the last call was the last call.
09:31I didn't want to hear that.
09:34I had to say,
09:35I was a little more careful than I was.
09:38I just felt like I was like,
09:44I was like a good one.
09:45And I was like,
09:47look.
09:48I don't want to give up.
09:49And I was like,
09:50And that's me!
09:50And I said, yes, I am.
09:53Yes?
09:53And yes!
09:54I wasn't for a while.
09:56My daughter was pregnant.
09:58The National Archives is undertaking a major task,
10:07carefully restoring and preserving the 1926 census,
10:11bringing this fragile piece of Ireland's history to life.
10:15We have 2,496 bound volumes of census forms that we need to conserve prior to digitization.
10:27That's over 700,000 forms.
10:30We're very conscious that with each page we lift and conserve, it's holding somebody's story.
10:39And Mick Lynch is one of the first people to look inside those books.
10:44He wants to see the census pages for his father's home, Gunpowder Lane, in Cork City.
10:52Well, you develop these pictures, don't you? I've never seen an actual photograph.
10:58Yeah, I've got a picture of these fairly poor, poor-conditioned housing.
11:05But they did continue living there for quite a while.
11:07People may have been very loyal to it and loyal to their neighbours and the community that they were in.
11:16There are many people that have got seven and eight people living in the household.
11:23They all seem to be Roman Catholic and none of them seem to have the Irish language from what I
11:29can see.
11:31They're all two-room houses.
11:36It's very obviously working class. You can only go by the occupations.
11:39Many of the people are labourers, out of work for six months.
11:43And that seemed to be fairly common.
11:46A key labourer, Dennis Regan, out of work for four years.
11:51So it must have been fairly hard.
11:53And wages would not have been high in a period where there's plenty of people out of work and looking
11:58for work.
12:01Now, here we have Lynch.
12:03So there's seven people, six children and a mother, Annie Lynch, who's my grandmother.
12:11And she was 41 years and 10 months.
12:13And her eldest daughter was 23, which is Mary, my auntie Molly.
12:20And she was helping her in the house.
12:22My uncle Paddy, who's 15 and a half, more or less, but already working as a leather sorter.
12:30Everybody else is still a school child, I suppose.
12:36And my dad, John Lynch, on this form, he was three years and eight months.
12:41And it says at this time, both parents alive.
12:45Which doesn't correspond with my understanding.
12:49I thought my grandfather had died in 1925.
12:55It says widow.
12:59But that's a bit of a conundrum.
13:02On hand to help Mick is Zoe Reid, the National Archives' keeper of manuscripts.
13:08It's got down that both parents are alive.
13:11I know that that's not true, so...
13:13Yes, and obviously, Annie's put herself down as a widow.
13:16Yeah.
13:17So it is slightly inaccurate.
13:19Now, have you noticed anything else about the form that doesn't look as it perhaps should?
13:24So here you have, this is the guard, and so it was James Moraine, and he's given his guard a
13:30number.
13:30Yeah.
13:31And here you have Annie Lynch.
13:34So it says, I declare that this schedule is correctly filled up to the best of my knowledge and belief.
13:40Signature of the household, Annie Lynch.
13:43But there is a little mark, which is a cross, and it says her mark.
13:51So that would probably mean that she couldn't have filled this in because she was illiterate or couldn't write, at
13:56least.
13:57So the guard filled out the form, and he made a couple of mistakes.
14:01OK.
14:02Well, he's under pressure.
14:03He's under pressure.
14:04Should have been out arresting people, not filled it in forms.
14:07But I mean, it's just, it's a lovely, it tells so many, it tells so many stories.
14:12She was quite a character, I'm told.
14:15She was from another age, I think.
14:17Even by the time the 60s came around, she looked and would have appeared like somebody from a different era
14:23entirely.
14:26And I suppose existing in a world where you don't speak, you don't read and write would have been a
14:31challenge.
14:32But I don't think that stopped her from being quite a high profile person in that district.
14:38What I think as well as a three year old with only one parent and limited prospects,
14:45because you know what's coming after the, at the end of the 20s is the Great Depression.
14:51It would have been a struggle, I should think.
14:53And he did say to me, you know, it was a struggle.
14:57The only person that stayed in Ireland and in Cork was Molly, the older daughter.
15:02They all left, which was the nature of the, of Cork City at that time.
15:09I want to see the area.
15:10I understand that it's, it was cleared a while ago, but there may be some remnants of it.
15:15I mean, maybe I have to find out what it was actually like.
15:21Well, it's an unusual struggle for freedom in Ireland because you had people who were not ideological.
15:27From my reading, they didn't seem to have a vision of what Ireland was going to be.
15:32It became an even more conservative country than it had been before under the British state,
15:38which is quite a remarkable achievement, really.
15:41You get independence and you actually, in some ways, take the country into an economic decline.
15:57Dermot Bannon is returning to a place very close to his heart.
16:02Modelligo, County Waterford.
16:05This is my granny's house.
16:08When I say house, I always saw it as a shop.
16:10There used to be a HB ice cream sign out here and it was permanently left out here
16:14because granny's shop was open all the time.
16:17She was an integral part of the community when I was growing up.
16:20She was Modelligo.
16:21That's what she told me.
16:25This is where my dad grew up.
16:26So this is my dad's home place.
16:29When I think of old rural Ireland and what it was like and the kind of community and how people
16:36were,
16:37this for me was like a bridge to that.
16:40We came down here for every summer.
16:43This is where it all started.
16:44We still tell stories about, did you steal from granny's shop?
16:47I stole from granny's shop.
16:48What did you rob?
16:49I robbed everything.
16:50You know, so I would have spent a huge amount of my childhood down around here
16:54and in Dungarvan, which is a couple of miles that way.
16:57And in Capa Queen where I had other cousins, which is a couple of miles that way.
17:04When we kind of look back in time, we talk about the big grand towns, we talk about the tenements.
17:10But if you took a cross section through this town of what I think is a very average Irish town
17:16for a hundred years ago, what was it like?
17:22Dermot is beginning his search through the 1926 census, one of the earliest snapshots of an independent Ireland.
17:30In these pages, he hopes to uncover the character and personality here as it was a century ago.
17:37This is Barrick Street.
17:38A lot of those houses have been demolished and that was the kind of, the town edge.
17:43It would all be in very small houses.
17:46Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.
17:51Guess how many rooms?
17:53Fourteen people living in a four-roomed house.
17:56It's a very, very, very busy street.
18:00They're all working locally as well.
18:02They're all labourers either on farms or they're working in the bacon factory.
18:05This is Thomas McCarthy.
18:07His eldest daughter is nine.
18:09The youngest is one.
18:11And he's retired.
18:12Oh, look, he's sixty-six.
18:15God almighty, he got busy later on in life, didn't he?
18:19This, for me, is now an opportunity to start to put names and people and families to the buildings.
18:33We'll go to Main Street.
18:36An insurance agent and a carpenter and a housekeeper said these would have been a well-to-do family.
18:42Licensed Fintner.
18:43So this is a business owner.
18:4647 years, Thomas Griffin.
18:48Here's the next page, another licensed Fintner.
18:50Twelve rooms.
18:51So they must have kept people as well.
18:54Wow, do you know, actually, I started on Barrick Street.
18:58Within a one-minute walk, the houses, the businesses are so much bigger.
19:02It's like there's two separate classes living cheek by jowl.
19:05Like, here's four people living in a twelve-roomed house next to twelve people living in a four-roomed house,
19:12like, three steps away.
19:20Dermot meets up with local historian Kevin McCarthy to get a better sense of what Capacuin was like 100 years
19:27ago.
19:28Capacuin was a very busy town in 1926.
19:32Things like the railway and the river would have been hugely important here.
19:36So for centuries and centuries, we were a river port.
19:40We used to export and import goods from Bristol particularly.
19:44Yeah.
19:45What the railway also did was it brought visitors.
19:48It brought tourism in a way that probably never happened before.
19:51The big employer in situ in the town was certainly the bacon factory.
19:56Capacuin bacon factory, Capacuin bacon factory, Capacuin bacon factory.
20:03Built by the Keane family.
20:06Keane's were, I'm going to say, homeless in 1926, actually, because Capacuin house, the home of the Keane's, had been
20:12destroyed by fire in 1923.
20:15The irregulars set fire to it because Sir John Keane had been deemed pro-treaty.
20:22Four kids, well they're not kids, they're 26, 20.
20:27I'm surprised, just looking through here, we kind of think this, you know, older kids living at home is a
20:35kind of a contemporary phenomenon.
20:37But there's an awful lot of single kids still living at home with parents back in 1926.
20:45Four, five, six kids.
20:47How many rooms?
20:52This says 15.
20:54That can't be right, can it?
20:58Fifteen rooms.
21:01Keane's, that's the Keane's.
21:03That's John Keane.
21:05Ah, so these aren't kids at all, these are servants.
21:09So this is, this is the big house.
21:11And this really does stand out when you're, when you're, when you're looking through the book.
21:16There was an industrial school in Capacuin.
21:17Yeah, if you look there, yeah, right beside the railway station.
21:19It was right in the centre of the town.
21:21Yeah, yeah, that would have opened in the 1870s.
21:23So the industrial schools are a legacy from our British past.
21:28But the irony is that in 1926, there were more kids in Ireland in industrial schools than there were in
21:34the whole of the United Kingdom,
21:35which had a population at least seven times greater than us.
21:42In search of Gunpowder Lane, Mick is retracing the streets of Cork, where his father would have walked as a
21:49child.
21:51So we're on the corner of 98th Street, which was Hospital Lane.
21:55Into the buildings behind here was Gunpowder Lane and a few other lanes.
21:59My dad used to speak about it when he was a youngster.
22:02And this whole area was where he grew up and where he scrabbled around and tried to emerge from whatever
22:08life court gave him and, and came to us.
22:11But yeah, it's, it's fairly evocative, I think.
22:19First impressions are that the, the, the lanes were obliterated.
22:23I don't know if, if the housing was that, that decrepit or they just reached their end life.
22:39I've got an iPad with, er, an old map of the area.
22:42And Gunpowder Lane would have run directly across here.
22:46And we think number 10 on the census would have been somewhere dead in the middle.
22:50The front doors would have been where I am here.
22:52And then the houses would have gone that way up towards Bandon Road.
22:57So that's about as close as I can get.
22:59I think, er, we found it.
23:04But these council or corporation flats that came up are now, ironically, looks like they're getting ready for demolition.
23:11So they didn't last that long.
23:16So my dad on the census would have been three years and eight months just coming up to four.
23:21In some senses, he was a free state baby, I suppose.
23:24He was born in August 22, and the free state finally got crystallized in December, I think, of that year.
23:31So he was born into what was supposed to be a new island.
23:33But I'm not, I'm not sure it delivered that for him.
23:37It delivered, you know, migration.
23:39But maybe that was what he wanted to do.
23:40It's easy to blame the state, it's easy to blame circumstances, but some people want to go, don't they?
23:46And that's the, you know, there's always a motivation like that to see what the world's like outside.
23:54It's a shame that heritage has been lost.
23:56So in Cork City, you'd never know that Gunpowder Lane was there and the other lanes that were around.
24:01So that's a bit of a shame.
24:03We've got a lump of tarmac instead of a landmark that we might have, might have had to preserve that
24:08bit of history.
24:24Of course, I'm not sure what this is.
24:27We'd never know this before.
24:29The neighbourhood is very much, no matter how it is, no matter how hard we can.
24:32It's just a struggle.
24:32It's just a struggle.
24:32The people who you're in England, they're in England, not in England.
24:37So in Cork City, you know, we've got to make a difference.
24:38We're not interested.
24:38I can't be interested.
24:39Every day we've been part of a country's family.
24:40It's just a struggle for us, like we know everything.
24:40...2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3.
24:45But I had to say...
24:48...I was born in the last year...
24:52...and in the last year.
24:54I was born in the last year.
24:56Cougar, cougar, cougar, truer, cougar, cougar...
25:00I was not...
25:03...for my father...
25:05...from the first one.
25:06I was interested.
25:07And I think it's a great time for me to be a part of my family.
25:14It's a great place.
25:16Farmer and home duties.
25:19And I don't want anyone to do anything else.
25:22And I think it's also assisting farm work.
25:25Assisting on brother's farm.
25:27Assisting on father's farm.
25:29It's a great place to be a part of my family.
25:38And I think it's a great place to be a part of my family.
25:43And I think it's a great place to be a part of my family.
25:47Five acres.
25:50Ten acres in the middle of my family.
25:53Eight acres.
25:55Nine acres.
25:57Eleven acres.
26:05Heso.
26:12One acres.
26:13Eight acres.
26:14Three acres.
26:16Seven acres.
26:20Heso.
26:21Three acres.
26:22And I think I'm going to the land.
26:22I think that's two acres.
26:23Meantle that may be.
26:23Two acres.
26:24Five acres.
26:25Five acres.
26:27Six acres.
26:28I wish you had to do that.
26:33In the UK.
26:34And what are you doing?
26:36I wish you had to.
26:39This is my dream.
26:42I have the dream of the world.
26:45I have the dream of the world.
26:46And I have the dream of the world.
26:51Because you are the dream.
26:54I have the dream of the world.
26:58Oh, that's not the same thing.
27:02I'll tell you, Lillian, I'll tell you.
27:04That's not the same thing.
27:06Because that's not the same thing.
27:13I'll tell you later.
27:14I'll tell you later.
27:30I'll tell you later.
27:35I'll tell you later.
27:43I'll tell you later.
28:06What would you say?
28:19You're not alone.
28:22Are you always mad at you?
28:24What did you say?
28:25I hate them.
28:26I hate you.
28:26What happened?
28:27What happened to you?
28:27What happened to you?
28:28I've never had a perhaps same situation.
28:29For me, I'm not a person who's in touch with me.
28:40I have a privilege to meet myself...
28:46I also have a privilege to meet myself.
28:50I was in my office.
28:53And I was here in my office.
28:58And I was there to be a living room
29:03in my house.
29:06And I thought...
29:09I didn't have anything to do with my friends.
29:12I thought I didn't have anything to do with my friends.
29:18and I'd like to thank you for being here.
29:28Mick has arranged to meet with his cousins
29:31to discuss what he has discovered in the census records about their family.
29:36So we've been looking at the census from 1926, as you know,
29:41and this is the result for our family in Gunpowder Lane.
29:44All the people that we expected to be there are there,
29:48which is good news, I suppose.
29:50So your mum, Mary Lynch, my Auntie Molly, is there,
29:54and then my dad, John, who's known as Jackie to all of us,
29:59he was just under four years old.
30:01Annie Lynch, Annie McSweeney.
30:03We've got a couple of still pictures of her.
30:06It's later in her life, I imagine it's in the 60s.
30:09She looks like she's from another age compared to us.
30:11She is.
30:12Even in 1966, she's from another...
30:14Did you feel that she was like that, or did you feel she was more of a real person
30:19rather than just a picture that you'd get?
30:20No, she was a real person, a very real person, very well-spoken, very well-read.
30:27She taught me how to read, and I was sat in the reading about four and a half.
30:32Yeah, but at this time, she wasn't able to read herself.
30:35Yeah, but she learned.
30:36She learned later.
30:37She learned later.
30:37She did.
30:38That's remarkable.
30:38And she had the life in times of Daniel O'Connell.
30:45Really?
30:45Which was that thing.
30:46Yeah.
30:46I always remember it.
30:47But she went on to learn to read later.
30:49Oh, she was a great reader.
30:51That's tremendous.
30:56What was that like as a community?
30:58It was brilliant.
30:59There was no kid in there who was short of food coming out of school.
31:03Yeah.
31:04Somebody came up with it, even if it was only a slice of bread.
31:07Did you get a sense that it was a struggle, or did you...?
31:10It was a big struggle.
31:11I mean, everybody struggled to make.
31:13Yeah.
31:13Make money, you know.
31:15But in some ways, the community made up for that.
31:17They did.
31:18Everybody, as I said to everybody, helped one on the road.
31:21But now, this is all former...
31:24They've knocked it down in the 60s, all of this block here that you lived on.
31:28But our history and the struggles of your mum and yourselves and granny and all these people on there,
31:34there's no mark.
31:35All we've got to remember our family is a lovely family.
31:37They just ran it on completely.
31:39Yeah.
31:50It's hard to really explain just how much is involved.
31:55I think the general public, they'll open a beautiful image,
31:59they'll be able to download a lovely colour PDF,
32:01but they won't realise how many hands have been through the cataloguing,
32:05the conservation, the digitisation.
32:09Dermot Bannon continues to explore the census records for Capa Quinn,
32:14the place he's using as an example of a typical Irish town in 1926.
32:20Mary O'Brien, 57, widow.
32:23Before the census, there was World War I, there was the Spanish Flu,
32:29there was War of Independence, and then there was the Civil War.
32:33It's not surprising that there's a lot of people described as widows,
32:38but to see it written down on page after page after page that they were widows upon widows upon widows.
32:48It's very weird because there's life here, there's life in these pages,
32:55and it kind of commands a respect.
32:57Maybe it's the fact that it's handwritten.
33:00Sometimes it's the handwriting catches you as unusual, or a word jumps out.
33:08It's the human element for me, looking at it, looking at these people, looking at their jobs, where they worked.
33:15For me, the thing that would make me stop would be, you'd see lists of names, pages and pages and
33:21pages,
33:21and you'd say, what's that, and these would be institutions, they would be military barracks,
33:27or mother and baby homes, orphanages.
33:32So, this section here is for the industrial school in Capequin,
33:38which was, there was industrial schools all over the country,
33:41so I suppose this is a slice of what a part of Ireland was like everywhere.
33:46What's different about this census compared to the previous census,
33:50because previously, everybody was just a number.
33:53This now has got names.
33:57Wow, God.
34:00This is, these are all the borders.
34:04So, five, six, six, six, eight, six, five, eight.
34:10God, they're tiny.
34:14I don't know why I just thought in an industrial school they would be teenagers,
34:18they're not, they're like, they're five and six.
34:23They're from Tipperary, Waterford, Waterford City, Tremor, Dengarvan, Carrick, in Tipperary.
34:31Father is dead, mother is dead, father is dead.
34:35Both parents dead.
34:40God, there's a guy here and both parents are alive.
34:47And he's in an industrial school.
34:49And, well, like, he's five.
35:10It's...
35:12Why?
35:17To have the names written down here and their ages
35:20and where their parents are
35:25and where they came from.
35:27It tells so much.
35:29Why was Dennis Murphy, who is from Sligo,
35:34with both his parents still alive,
35:38sent to an industrial school at the age of four?
35:42You don't even send kids to school at four anymore.
35:47God almighty.
35:50Richard Costello, two years of age.
35:55In an industrial school, God, he could barely walk.
36:03Girmla wants to discover whether her home in Unloughanbyog
36:07shares the same history as other parts of Ireland's Atlantic coast.
36:11She visits the town of Carnagh, set in a remote corner of Connemara.
36:18She came from something like a door.
36:22And there's a company that comes from us as an extension.
36:24And there isn't some kind of money, so...
36:28...I didn't say it's going to be for shopkeeper for the olden.
36:35It's not the big part that you were thinking.
36:35Are you in the shopkeeper for the olden?
36:37She doesn't know that you're not trying to sell it, but it's not an olden.
36:40I've ever heard that olden a lot of money...
36:43...if you're in the middle of Monk.
36:45and we would have to be a good person...
36:49...and do this work?
36:57What do you mean?
36:59I want to know that I had to be in the hospital...
37:02...with the hospital, even if you're in the hospital...
37:06...with the hospital, you don't have to wait...
37:08...if there's a lot of people who are in the hospital.
37:12That was not a huge tragedy.
37:19We people are living in Seattle for a while.
37:23We are able to touristy.
37:25We are not ready to visit against stopgarden.
37:25It's been long and long.
37:31There's a lot of people.
37:36There's a lot of kids.
37:37There's no idea.
37:39There's no way of doing that.
37:40There's no way of doing that.
37:41It's the same thing that we have to do in our lives.
37:44It's the same thing that we have to do in our lives.
37:59I was very proud of them.
38:01I was very proud of them.
38:03But I didn't know how to write a book.
38:05that's all so good.
38:07How did we do that?
38:11Well, there was a shortage of people,
38:13as it was said.
38:15It was not black.
38:17It was a lot of women
38:17and women,
38:18black people,
38:19and yet the haben
38:24That is what we're talking about, there are some other things.
38:28There are some other things that we can do.
38:31If you're a member of Tiskin, I can't do anything.
38:35I mean, I was gonna talk to you about Tiskin.
38:38I was trying to talk a little bit more about Tiskin.
38:40I was trying to talk to you about Somali.
38:46I was trying to speak to them all.
38:48I'm trying to talk to you about Tiskin.
38:50There was a car in the new year of the year and the price of one year.
38:57There was a car in the new year.
39:00But I remember right there, there was a new commission in the new year,
39:05and it was a new year after the year.
39:08It was like a new year.
39:11It was like a new year, and it was like a new year.
39:14It was like a new year.
39:16And now that the doctor is talking to her two-year-old,
39:19she's going to have it.
39:20So I don't know if I can't really tell her.
39:22Let the people come and see her,
39:24and have her heart and heartache, or something like that.
39:26We have to have an answer to that.
39:29And now we have to take care of our children,
39:31and we have to take care of our children,
39:34and we have to take care of our children,
39:37and we have to take care of our children.
39:40On the throne,
39:43well, I remember telling you,
39:44for you, that's how I feel,
39:47I'm glad when you hear me.
39:51I'm glad you didn't have any background,
39:54but I like the one.
39:55I can't think of any of the people
39:55that I made my life anymore.
39:55I feel like I've had the name of my father.
40:05And I've got my mind before it.
40:08When we met the most women in the Arctic...
40:12When it comes to the Arctic...
40:15...it's not even the worst in the country...
40:16...it's never been the worst in the country...
40:19...or when we were out of the country...
40:22...I didn't know when I was pregnant.
40:23I didn't know when we were pregnant.
40:25It would have been a very many years...
40:28...but it would have been the most...
40:30...in the most important part of it.
40:38Mick wants to find out about another Cork man that shares his father's name,
40:43former Taoiseach Jack Lynch.
40:45So this is the entry for the north side of the city,
40:50and this one is around Shandon Church.
40:54So we'll look at number one, where the head of the household is Daniel Lynch.
41:00And there are, in total, 11 people living in this house.
41:05And his occupation was as a tailor.
41:09This is a very good hand, you can tell.
41:12Daniel Lynch has written this himself.
41:13It's definitely not the hand of the enumerator.
41:17It seems to be fairly prosperous.
41:20They've got two in-laws living with them, who are quite elderly.
41:23Neither of those work for a living.
41:26There are 11 people, and they've got five rooms,
41:30which is a bit better, but no less crowded, I would have thought,
41:33with all of the children are all at school.
41:36The oldest son, Timothy Lynch, who's nearly 16, is still at school.
41:41I don't think that would have been the case for the Lynches in Gunpowder Lane.
41:45So if all of these other children went on to secondary education,
41:49they would have perhaps had better chances in terms of staying in Ireland and making a life here.
41:56So we're at Jack Lynch's house, and there's a couple of plaques.
42:00And, of course, most people will know he was a great sportsman for Cork.
42:05Six All-Ireland titles, and he became the Taoiseach on two occasions and a government minister.
42:11And I think I'd say that there's a different house to the one we imagined down in Gunpowder Lane.
42:18I do think the key difference can be seen, the levels of wealth and then the levels of aspiration
42:26that his family must have had.
42:28It's great that it's memorialised and there's plaques here,
42:31and Cork people are very proud of what Jack Lynch achieved.
42:35I'm proud of him as well, I think, as a son of Cork in some ways.
42:42I think what my parents are very proud about is they kept us on the straight and narrow,
42:46which I suppose is what Annie Lynch did for her kids.
42:50So my kids have got an opportunity that my parents didn't have for university and all of that.
42:55But I think it's important to remember there's a lot of stuff about migration
42:59in Ireland, in Britain, in Europe and globally.
43:02But all those migrant people are trying to give themselves and their descendants,
43:07their families and their communities, an opportunity.
43:09And I think we've got to remember that.
43:16Girmla is sharing the 1926 census entries with her aunt,
43:21whose father appears on the form.
43:24And I think she's been a part of the 1926 census.
43:30Oh, yeah.
43:31So she's not going to say that.
43:33She's not going to say that.
43:34Mm-hmm.
43:35And she's been a part of the 1926 census.
43:40And I think she lost her daughter's daughter.
43:41But she's probably not going to say that.
43:45She's been a part of the 1926 census.
43:46No, no.
43:46What did you say?
43:49In 1928.
43:51I didn't know how to get rid of it anyway.
43:53I didn't know how to get rid of it.
43:57And then...
43:58How did you say that in Belgrade?
44:01How did you say that?
44:03In 1929.
44:06In 1929.
44:07It was a miracle.
44:09Oh, it was a miracle.
44:12Yeah.
44:12And then...
44:14I did it.
44:15He was a miracle.
44:18How did you say that?
44:20In 1946.
44:22I don't know how to get rid of it.
44:23My son was a miracle.
44:24I was a miracle.
44:26Yes.
44:26He was a miracle.
44:28He was a miracle.
44:29And I didn't know what to do.
44:31He was a miracle.
44:34But I don't think I'm going to do anything wrong with that.
44:42That's it.
44:43So, do you remember that?
44:45Yes, yes.
44:47Do you remember that?
44:48Yes, yes, yes.
44:51I remember that.
44:53I remember that.
44:55I remember that.
44:56I remember that.
44:59I remember that.
45:01I was like, I'm going to get a little bit of a little bit.
45:05I'm going to get a little bit of a little bit.
45:07I was going to get a little bit of a little bit of a little bit.
45:13Capcuin is a beautiful town.
45:15It's got all of the components that make up a very, very typical Irish town.
45:23It has the factories, it has the shops, it has industry, it has commerce, it had the mill, it had...
45:29the landlord.
45:32But it also had the industrial school.
45:35This was Ireland of 1926.
45:39Like, it was how...
45:43It was how children were cared for by the state.
45:50Well, it's been a good experience getting the hands on the records and seeing firsthand what was going on.
45:57It's great to hear that somebody who couldn't fill in the census form themselves,
46:01was able to get themselves literate late in life.
46:04Was able to read to people and teach them some lessons in life and use all her experience.
46:12Maybe that is a sign of progress.
46:16But I do feel what was reinforced that the Free State didn't get on initially with what they needed to
46:22do.
46:22And it took a very long time to get this country moving, to address the needs of the common people,
46:27which what, from my point of view, is what the national struggle should have been about.
46:33A census should be about taking a record of where you are, a sense check of where you are at
46:39the minute,
46:40getting some data about the problems,
46:42and then it should be about getting some answers to those problems and moving the country forward.
46:48But I'm not sure the one in 1926 achieved that aim.
47:00And I'm not sure the one in a country's fault.
47:05I am not sure the one in a country you have ever seen and the other in the country,
47:11but it will be important to the people that are all asking,
47:13I don't know if you are all friends of the people like that,
47:13I know that you are not too interested.
47:16But I don't know if you are the one in and the other in a country you are,
47:21I had to say, oh, I was like, oh, my God.
47:24I was like, oh, my God.
47:24I didn't know what to do with my family.
47:29But I was like, oh, my God.
47:33I didn't know anything.
47:35I was like, oh, I'm like, oh,
47:39I'm like, oh, my God.
47:40Oh, my God.
47:45I'm like, oh, my God.
47:49I was like, oh, my God.
47:52In the next episode, yours truly,
48:11along with author Joseph O'Connor and radio
48:14presenter Louise Duffy, get our own look at the 1926 census.
48:19Join us as we uncover some of the stories hidden in those records
48:24and maybe learn something new about ourselves along the way.
48:33If you've been affected by any of the issues raised in this programme,
48:37you can find a list of help and support services at rte.ie forward slash support.
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