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Come To Your Census - Season 1 Episode 1
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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
00:26and to reflect on some of the lives captured in those records a century later.
01:00Before it is digitized and made available online, the 1926 census is stored in a room.
01:08Thirteen hundred 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.
01:51And they would have loved 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 recognizable 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. It would probably be 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.
03:48We were living in the flat just across the road there, in the lower one.
03:53There were seven of us in there, four of us in the bedroom, and my sister had her own one,
03:57and 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. I think he was affable, I think he was fairly popular, but I never really
04:44knew him as a man.
04:45So I was always a child. For 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.
05:34I'm talking about Diaspora.
05:38A lot of people in this country, they are also dying in this country, which is some of the people
05:41that I've ever had to gather together.
05:45As a matter of hours, they've been paying for them to come and talk and have to remember,
05:45They're all so good.
05:46They've been and more, quite a bit after they're cold in their life,
05:46I'm not even after them, they're going,
05:48They're all so good.
05:49It's been a long time for a long time to go to Gormla Nihúrishq.
06:05I've been working with Gormla Nihúrishq and English,
06:11but I think that when Gormla Nihúrishq
06:15in the winter, there's no way to go to Gormla Nihúrishq
06:20to get to the home of Gormla Nihúrishq
06:23and the influence of the Gormla Nihúrishq
06:25and to the extent it's been aadiq
06:28we were coming home.
06:31When we left out this town
06:31we were trying to be a part of Gormla Nihúrishq
06:34and the Gormla Nihúrishq
06:35to see this was a great movie.
06:40The first thing I listen to is
06:41I was coming to the school so, yes, you would think of something.
06:47And I was trying to do my own school.
06:50I was like, I really loved a lot of people,
06:52and I don't say anything,
06:54but I didn't believe my father was doing the other day.
06:57And I kept on worrying about it.
07:00I wasn't even being lazy.
07:02I was just being lazy.
07:04And I don't think I was going to believe it,
07:08and I was on a time to FEMA.
07:12Thank you so much for being here in Loughlin.
07:15I don't know what to say.
07:18I don't know what to say.
07:21I don't know what to say.
07:25Thank you so much.
07:28Thank you so much for being here in Loughlin.
07:36Girmla is with her brother Loughlin to learn more about their family's townland.
07:40That's not true.
07:42And I don't know where to say anything about her.
07:46Yes.
07:49She's a old man, and she's a young man.
07:53And she's a young man and he's a young man.
07:58That's right.
07:59That's right, yeah.
08:02And that's why I was young.
08:05Is it sees a woman like Brittups, Amy .
08:10Is she young to become an citizen?
08:13Because her mother, her mother, the mother.
08:17And I what she said, we don't hear her.
08:21She would live here, and would kill me.
08:25I think it's true.
08:28Is it our relationship to my Yemeni?
08:32Yes.
08:33I was in trouble, but I was the boss.
08:37I was the boss and I was the boss.
08:40It was a good time.
08:45I was the boss.
08:47I was all upset and I was like,
08:53I don't have to do anything.
08:57I do the same.
08:59I do the same.
09:00I think it's always a good thing.
09:02It's always a good thing.
09:06But I think it's not a good thing.
09:09It's a good thing to do.
09:11And I think it's not a good thing.
09:13I've never been able to do this.
09:17I wanted to do this.
09:18I was just a good thing.
09:20A good thing to do
09:22...and the last one was to be lost.
09:26There was no one to be lost.
09:28But there was no one to be lost.
09:31I was not sure that I was able to get the rest of my life.
09:38I was in the middle of my life.
09:41I was in the middle of my life.
09:45And I was not there.
09:47I was not there.
09:49And I was in the middle of it.
09:50I was a woman who's young and the married she Constitution but because she's young.
09:54I'm young and but I'm young and I'm young and I'm young.
09:59I'm she's young.
10:02The 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-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-brim houses.
11:36It's very obviously working class. You can only go by the occupations.
11:40Many of the people are labourers, out of work for six months.
11:44And 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.
12:04So 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.
12:59So 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.
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.
13:26And so it was James Moraine, and he's given his guard a number.
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.
13:48And 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.
14:38Well, I think as well, as a three year old with only one parent, and limited prospects, because you know
14:46what's coming after the, at the end of the 20s is the Great Depression.
14:52It 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.
15:16I 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.
15:28From 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, which is quite a
15:40remarkable achievement, really.
15:41You know, you 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 because granny's
16:15shop was open all the time.
16:17She was an integral part of the community when I was growing up.
16:20She was Modelligo. That's what she told me.
16:25This is where my dad grew up. So 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, this for me was like a bridge to that.
16:41We came down here for every summer. This is where it all started.
16:44We still tell stories about, did you steal from granny's shop? I stole from granny's shop. What 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 Quinn, 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
17:17for 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.
17:36This is Barrick Street. A lot of those houses have been demolished.
17:41And that was the kind of the town edge. It 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. They're all labourers either on farms or they're working in the bacon factory.
18:06This is Thomas McCarthy. His eldest daughter is nine. The youngest is one.
18:11And he's retired. Oh, look, he's 66.
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. So 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 12-roomed house next to 12 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, it 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.
20:04Built 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
20:13destroyed 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, that can't be right, can it?
20:5815 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, and this really does stand out when you're, when you're, when you're
21:14looking through the book.
21:16There was an industrial school in Capacuin.
21:17Yeah, if you look there, yeah, right beside the railway station.
21:20It was right in the centre of the town.
21:21Yeah, yeah, that would have opened in the 1870s, so the industrial schools are a legacy from our British past.
21:27But 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, which 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, into the buildings behind here was Gunpowder Lane
21:57and 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, er, and tried to emerge from
22:08whatever Life 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 lanes were obliterated, er, I don't know if, if the housing was that, that
22:27decrepit or they just reached their end life.
22:39I've got an iPad with, er, an old map of the area, and Gunpowder Lane would have run directly across
22:45here.
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, and then the houses would have gone that way up
22:55towards Bandon Road.
22:57So that's about as close as I can get, I think, er, we found it.
23:05But 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 crystallised in December, I think, of that year.
23:31So he was born into what was supposed to be a new island, but I'm not, I'm not sure it
23:35delivered that for him.
23:37It delivered, you know, migration.
23:39But maybe that was what he wanted to do.
23:41It'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, so in Cork City you'd never know that Gunpowder Lane was there,
23:59and the other lanes that were around.
24:01So that's a bit of a shame, we've got a lump of tarmac instead of a landmark that we might
24:06have,
24:06might have had to preserve that bit of history.
24:17Gormla is keen to learn more about the poverty and immigration that shaped life in Connemara.
24:25That's what you know about it.
24:27It's like a very old lady.
24:29It's such a very old lady.
24:33Here's the新', Mary.
24:33So I'm wondering if that's what she was going to do.
24:37And I remember the young lady.
24:37Number of rooms occupied by each family.
24:40Do, tri, tri, tri, tri, tri, tri, tri, tri, tri, do, tri, do.
24:45But I would say,
24:48when I looked at the women's women's youth,
24:54there'd be a lot of women
24:55about Bougar, Bougar, Bougar, Bougar...
25:00I would not have to say
25:03that there were many women
25:06who were the women.
25:08And I would say
25:09that they were the women
25:11who were working on their women
25:12I have a lot of people in my life.
25:15I have a lot of people.
25:17Farmer and home duties.
25:19And I don't want anyone to do anything else.
25:22And I want to talk about assisting farm work.
25:25Assisting on brother's farm.
25:27Assisting on father's farm.
25:30I want people to live in the world
25:35in the world and in the world.
25:38And I want people to live in the world.
25:43I want people to live in the world.
25:48Five acres.
25:50Ten acres.
25:51Eight acres.
25:55Nine acres.
25:57Eleven acres.
25:58I want people to live in the world.
26:03Her search has become personal.
26:05She is now turning to her own family records.
26:09שים.com
26:12We're not talking to us.
26:16We don't know.
26:18We're not talking to you.
26:20We don't know who that is.
26:21We're not talking to her.
26:24We're not talking to us.
26:27So, you want to introduce yourself.
26:29I don't want to see my own work in my life.
26:34And I want to see my own work in my own life.
26:38That's why I'm going to be here.
26:41I'm going to be there.
26:43I'm going to be here to be here.
26:47And I'm going to be here to be here.
26:51Then I want to be here to be here.
26:54She's all coming here.
26:59She's not too bad at all.
27:02She's not going to lie in front of the woman.
27:05She's not being criticized.
27:06She's not going to lie at all.
27:10Well, let's go again.
27:19I don't want to go to Granadine anymore.
27:31She said, I don't want to go to Granadine anymore.
27:43I don't want to go to Granadine anymore.
27:48I'm going to go to Granadine.
27:50I'm going to go to Granadine.
28:05I'm going to go to Granadine.
28:09I'm going to go to Granadine.
28:21I don't want to go to Granadine anymore.
28:28I was going to go to Granadine.
28:31It's not my fault, it's not my fault.
28:41But it's a privilege to be here.
28:46It's a privilege to be here...
28:48...and I have a privilege to be here.
28:54And...
28:55...when I was in my home...
28:58...I've been here with the family...
29:03...when I was in my home.
29:06And I just...
29:09...I've been here...
29:10...as I've been here...
29:12...but I've never been here...
29:12...I've never been here...
29:14...I've been here...
29:15...and I've been here...
29:18...and I've been here...
29:29Mick has arranged to meet with his cousins
29:31to discuss what he has discovered in the census records about their family.
29:37So we've been looking at the census from 1926, as you know,
29:41and this is the result for our family in Gunpowder Lane.
29:45All the people that we expected to be there were 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 is known as Jackie,
29:58to all of us, he was just under four years old.
30:01Annie Lynch, Annie McSweeney, we'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,
30:16or 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 very real person, very well-spoken, very well-read.
30:27She taught me how to read,
30:29and 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 did.
30:38That's remarkable.
30:39She had the life in times of Daniel O'Connell.
30:45Really?
30:45Which was that thing.
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.
30:57What 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.
31:04If somebody came up with it,
31:05even if it was only slice of bread, they couldn't...
31:07Did you get a sense that it was a struggle, or did you...
31:10It was a big struggle.
31:11It meant everybody struggled to make...
31:13Yeah.
31:13Money, make money, you know?
31:15But in some ways, the community made up for that.
31:17Yeah, they did.
31:18Everybody, as I said to everybody, helped one on the road.
31:21But now, this is all former...
31:24They knocked it down in the 60s.
31:25All of this block here that you lived on.
31:28Our history and the struggles of your mum and yourselves and granny
31:33and all these people on there, there's no mark.
31:35All we've got to remember our family is a lumber plumber.
31:38They just ran it on.
31:39Yeah.
31:39Yeah.
31:40Yeah.
31:41Yeah.
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,
32:06the conservation, the digitisation.
32:10Dermot 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,
32:43that they were widows upon widows upon widows.
32:48It's very weird because there's life here.
32:51There's life in these pages.
32:55And it kind of commands a respect.
32:58Maybe it's the fact that it's handwritten.
33:01Sometimes it's the handwriting catches you as unusual,
33:05or a word jumps out.
33:09It's the human element for me.
33:11Looking at it, looking at these people,
33:13looking at their jobs, where they worked.
33:15For me, the thing that would make me stop would be,
33:18you'd see lists of names, pages and pages and pages,
33:22and you'd say, what's that?
33:23And these would be institutions,
33:25they would be military barracks,
33:27or mother and baby homes, orphanages.
33:32So this section here is for the industrial school in Capquinn,
33:38which was, there was industrial schools all over the country.
33:41So this is a slice of what a part of Ireland was like everywhere.
33:45What's different about this census compared to the previous census,
33:51previously, everybody was just a number.
33:53This now has got names.
33:57Wow, God.
34:00This is, these are all the borders.
34:05So 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
34:17they would be teenagers.
34:19They're not, they're like, they're five and six.
34:23They're from Tipperary,
34:26Waterford, Waterford City,
34:28Tremor, John Garvin, Carrick in Tipperary.
34:31Father is dead.
34:32Mother is dead.
34:33Father is dead.
34:35Both parents dead.
34:40God, there's a guy here now
34:42and both parents are alive.
34:47And he's in an industrial school.
34:49And, well, like,
34:52he's five.
35:09It's...
35:11It's...
35:12Why?
35:17To have the names written down here and their ages and where their parents are and where
35:26they came from, it tells so much.
35:29Why was Dennis Murphy, who is from Sligo, with both his parents still alive, sent to
35:39an industrial school at the age of four?
35:43You don't even send kids to school at four anymore.
35:47God almighty.
35:50Richard Costello, two years of age, in an industrial school, God, he could barely walk.
36:03Girmla wants to discover whether her home in Nann-Lokh-en-Biogh shares the same history
36:09as other parts of Ireland's Atlantic coast.
36:12She visits the town of Carna, set in a remote corner of Connemara.
36:18She was a shopkeeper from Miload, and she was in Nann-Lokh-en-Biogh.
36:24And she didn't have a car, so I didn't have a shopkeeper from Nann-Lokh-en-Biogh.
36:35Don't go in anywhere, she did not even have a shopkeeper from Nann-Lokh-en.
36:39A homekeeper had been gone from Nann-Lokh-en-Biogh to Nann.
36:43She doesn't know how to drive her off in Nann-Lokh-en-Biogh.
36:49And I didn't have to be healthy with her, but she doesn't know how to drive her off.
36:57Do you have any horses to see?
36:59You know, she's only certain horses in the morning, having an opportunity to do a fun,
37:03and it's hard to climb up.
37:04I hope that you're able to get your interest in your life.
37:06I hope that you're not going to make a mistake.
37:12I hope that you're not going to do this.
37:18I hope that you are today.
37:19I won't give up.
37:22But I hope that you're in the future.
37:25You're in the future.
37:27You're in the future.
37:28I was a part of my school and I was a part of my career and my life was very
37:35proud of my friends.
37:37I was a part of my life, my friends, and my friends, I was very proud of my friends.
37:59I was a kid who was a kid.
38:02I was a kid who was a kid.
38:02And I was a kid in the classroom,
38:03but when I was a kid,
38:07I would say to myself
38:08that I was able to play
38:09a lot of things.
38:11Well, I was a kid
38:12I was a kid
38:15I was a kid
38:15I was a kid
38:17I was a kid
38:21and I was a kid
38:23I was a kid
38:25and I'd say
38:27I was a kid
38:28I was a kid
38:31It's like
38:32it's like
38:33I was a kid
38:33I was a kid
38:33I was a kid
38:34I was a kid
38:34I was a kid
38:35I was a kid
38:53When the FWC was on the floor, they'd be free of the price to pay.
38:57They'd pay for $5,000.
39:00But when Rudy became a former Canadian Commission,
39:05and then they'd be in the office,
39:07they'd have to pay attention.
39:09And if you don't pay attention to him,
39:11then they'd pay attention and there'd be a bubble.
39:16They'd pay attention to the doctor's office,
39:20so they'd pay attention to him.
39:22let Pablo come and see and have nothing left with it and everything.
39:26We're still doing them.
39:29And we have started in a row and we are now back in a row.
39:35We're doing my own dream of having people on the island.
39:40The riot.
39:43We're being here to our closely and I'll be happy with you,
39:47and be glad to be here at the next year.
39:50Oh, that's right. That's the most important part.
39:55When I was a kid I would have been there in the family,
40:01and I would have never done this before.
40:05And I would have never done that.
40:08But I would have never done that.
40:09But I would have never done that before the family,
40:10However there is a question from the first one.
40:12When it comes to the first place,
40:15not until the first place�らい was there
40:18or when it returned to the first place
40:20or the last place,
40:22they were there as a teacher
40:24and they were there as a group of women.
40:28I just wanted to talk about something
40:30about my mother and her mother.
40:33I didn't want to leave.
40:34we have asked you. Mick wants to find out about another Cork man that shares his father's
40:42name, former Taoiseach Jack Lynch. So this is the entry for the north side of the city
40:50and this one is around Shandon Church. So we'll look at number one where the head of
40:56the household is a Daniel Lynch and there are in total 11 people living in this house
41:05and his occupation was as a tailor. This is a very good hand. You can tell if Daniel Lynch
41:12has written this himself. It's definitely not the hand of the enumerator. It seems to
41:18be fairly prosperous. They've got two in-laws living with them who are quite elderly. Neither
41:24of those work for a living. They're 11 people and they've got five rooms which is a bit better
41:31but no less crowded I would have thought. All of the children are all at school. The oldest
41:37son Timothy Lynch who's nearly 16 is still at school. I don't think that would have been
41:42the case for the Lynches in Gunpowder Lane. So if all of these other children went on to
41:48secondary education they would have perhaps had better chances in terms of staying in
41:53Ireland and making a life here. So we're at Jack Lynch's house and there's a couple of
42:00plaques and of course most people will know he was a great sportsman for Cork. Six All-Ireland
42:06titles and he became the Taoiseach on two occasions and a government minister and I think I'd say
42:13that there's a different house to the one we imagined down in Gunpowder Lane. I do think
42:19the key difference can be seen. The levels of wealth and then the levels of aspiration that his family
42:27must have had. It's great that it's memorialised and there's plaques here and Cork people are very proud
42:33of what Jack Lynch achieved. I'm proud of him as well I think as a son of Cork in some
42:40ways.
42:42I think what my parents are very proud about is they kept us on the straight and narrow which I
42:47suppose is what Annie Lynch did for her kids. So my kids have got an opportunity that my parents
42:53didn't have for university and all of that but I think it's important to remember there's a lot of
42:58stuff about migration in Ireland, in Britain, in Europe and globally but all those migrant people
43:04are trying to give themselves and their descendants, their 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 whose father appears on the form.
43:24So we're a great song that you know these five days?
43:30So I was going to have to be a big one. We've got to be a big one. We've got
43:39to be a big one.
43:41If you're a big one and a big one. They do not have to be a big one. We've got
43:46to be a big one.
43:46So they're not going to be the first thing. No, no.
43:47Well, I think it's the first one.
43:51Yes, it was a relic, anyway.
43:53So, it was like that.
43:57And then...
43:58Have you ever been in Belgrade? Have you ever been there?
44:03It was 1929.
44:061929.
44:07It was a Smile as Miracle.
44:09It was a Smile as Miracle.
44:12And then, it was...
44:15Yes, 1930.
44:16It was 1929.
44:18Come on...
44:19How did you get that flag?
44:2046.
44:22It was a Smile for me, and many...
44:24they were Mike and Mary.
44:26So, they were Mike and Mary in college.
44:311130.
44:32They were friends, they were 13, they were 14 or something.
44:35And it was difficult to do.
44:42So...
44:42How are you?
44:43I thought you were not afraid of anything.
44:45It was 100%.
44:46I'm going to speak to you.
44:48Yes. Yes. Yes.
44:51I was very careful.
44:53I'm not going to talk about it.
44:55I'm not going to talk about it.
44:58I'm going to talk about it.
45:01I'm going to talk about it.
45:03I'm not going to talk to you.
45:05It's kind of a beautiful village.
45:07How do you feel?
45:08It's like the wild it is.
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.
45:39It 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 was able to get themselves literate
46:03late 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 and it took a very long time to get this country moving.
46:25To address the needs of the common people, which what, from my point of view, is what the national struggle
46:31should 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, getting some data about the problems, and then it should be about getting some answers to those problems
46:45and moving the country forward.
46:48But I'm not sure the one in 1926 achieved that aim.
46:59When did so, before I began a year later, my life was moving to sleep and moving to sleep.
47:10I was not sure the people of the country were living in their lives, but I was not sure the
47:17people of the country were living in the same prioritize.
47:20and I was like, you know, I have to move away.
47:24I was not a man who was not used to it, I was a man who was a man.
47:29But I was like, I'm going to do it again.
47:32And I'm not going to be able to do it,
47:35because I was like, I'm going to come forward to the next year.
47:45And I'm going to show you how to do it.
47:46And I'm going to be right back,
47:48It's been a long time since the 19th century.
47:53It's been a long time for a long time.
48:171926 census.
48:19Join us as we
48:21uncover some of the stories hidden
48:23in those records, and maybe
48:25learn something new about ourselves
48:27along the way.
48:33If you've been affected by any of the
48:35issues raised in this programme, you can find
48:37a list of help and support services
48:39at rte.ie forward slash
48:41support.
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