- 11 minutes ago
Come To Your Census - Season 1 Episode 2
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Short filmTranscript
00:20Here I am, surrounded by these hundreds and hundreds of boxes of facts
00:28about people's lives and their stories, their birthplaces, who they were married to,
00:36where they were from, what jobs they did.
00:39In effect, an entire country being gathered together.
00:44Among these boxes that are records of the new state saying who has survived
00:49after all these years of trauma, the 15 years that have passed since the last census
00:56undertaken by the British authorities. This is the first one that we, as an Irish people,
01:02are going to undertake ourselves. Let's have a look at what we are.
01:06In 1926, Ireland conducted its first census as an independent nation.
01:13One hundred years later, the National Archives have made that census
01:17freely available online across the world.
01:23For this series, six of us, including myself, Eileen Walsh,
01:28have been given the privilege of opening these books,
01:31and to reflect on some of the lives captured in those records a century later.
01:38One hundred years later, a study called the National Archives
01:53Six years later, the National Archives of the National Archives of the National Archives of the National Archives
02:13I'm looking here at a beautiful 18th century drawing of number 15 Francis Street, the footprint
02:21of which is across the way there, and that's the house that my people grew up in.
02:30My future grandmother, Ellen O'Neill, and her husband, Thomas O'Connor, went to live
02:36there, and I'm just very struck being here today at this vantage point overlooking the
02:45site, how they were actually living in a kind of living map of Dublin history, all in this
02:53little corner, this enclave of the great wider city.
03:01Author Joseph O'Connor's story starts on Francis Street in Dublin's Liberties, where his grandparents
03:09established the family roots.
03:12I would have been very aware as a child of my father's stories and songs and memories of
03:17Francis Street, how important a place it was to him, how grateful he was to have been
03:22brought up here.
03:27We are outside St. Nicholas of Myra Church, where my father was baptised, made his confirmation,
03:36communion.
03:37This was the church for my family.
03:40And in family stories of Francis Street, I must say, I often have a very clear picture
03:44of the place as an enclave of shops and little businesses, a place of great busyness and vivid
03:53life.
03:57The thing that interests me most to look into, I suppose, is that notion of the liberties as
04:02a separate place, that notion that there's something keyed into even the name of the liberties,
04:08that meant in an Ireland that became increasingly authoritarian and perhaps obedient, that there
04:14was this place where people said, liberty is part of our name, that's part of where we're
04:19from.
04:20And I'd like to know how true that is in the stories that were passed down to me.
04:32To date, we've spent over 1,000 days or 10,000 hours working on conserving the census.
04:44Joseph begins his search as one of the first to view the newly conserved records.
04:53So this has been conserved and digitised, but you're the first person to see it back
04:59in its book form.
05:05It's an emotional experience and I feel very privileged to be here as the first civilian
05:12to have the honour of touching these pages that in many cases people have written themselves,
05:17who never knew that one day we would be here looking at their stories.
05:25Mr. MacDonald was a biscuit maker.
05:27Their son was a coal worker.
05:30Here's James Rogers.
05:33He was out of work for five months.
05:39And here's Margaret Heenan, who was a laundress.
05:46William Henry Brown from Cavanagh, and he's married to Elizabeth Brown's Church of Ireland.
05:53Their children are Elizabeth, James, John and Williams.
05:58All the boys are apprentices in Guinness.
06:03John Cavanagh is a former soldier in the British Army.
06:08It's an amazing thing, looking at this, that all of the adults recorded here will have living memories of British
06:20occupation,
06:21war of independence and civil war.
06:24Mr. Keenan, an out-of-work coffin maker.
06:29He says, people must have stopped dying.
06:32People are having so much fun in the liberties.
06:39Broadcaster Louise Duffy returns to her hometown of Crossmalina,
06:43County Mayo, to explore her family's history in a region shaped by emigration.
06:50Where I grew up, there was an auntie beside us, an uncle beside us.
06:54Along our road, there was five houses full of cousins.
06:58Like 45 first cousins.
07:00So I think we never really needed to explore much further.
07:03There was enough of us.
07:04But there was a curiosity for sure about my father's grandparents,
07:08but we just didn't know much about them.
07:11So I'm going to ring my dad.
07:13He would have a much better idea of who was there on the night of the census in 1926.
07:18So I'll give him a shout.
07:24Hello Louise.
07:25Hi Dad, how are you?
07:27Very good.
07:28But I'm just wondering, do you ever know anything about that night
07:31or who was in the house on the night of the census in 1926?
07:35In Norris Street in Crossmalina,
07:37My grandfather, John and Mary, they had ten children.
07:40Wow.
07:41Five boys and five girls.
07:43Yeah.
07:44Two or three stayed in Ireland and the rest went to England.
07:47So out of ten children, only two or three stayed in Ireland.
07:51That's crazy.
07:53Yeah, two stayed in Ireland.
07:56Two stayed?
07:57Uncle Joe and my father.
07:59But my father did move to England, continued and stayed in Leith.
08:03Other than with World War II when the bombing started,
08:08they decided it got so bad in Leith and they moved back to Ireland.
08:12Wow.
08:12That's insane.
08:13I didn't know that.
08:17Is there anything you want me to find out when I'm exploring our heritage?
08:23Well, no, just actually, if you could go back to who was the first deputy
08:27that actually arrived in Crossmalina in Norris Street?
08:31I think we're not going that far back.
08:35So this is Earth Street.
08:37This is where my family were in 1926.
08:42Well, I know now that there was ten children in a small house.
08:47I want to know who else was around them.
08:49I want to kind of piece together what the day-to-day life was like.
08:53It's such a significant document and I think the significance of the future generations
08:58like we're doing right now, looking back and trying to learn more
09:01and piece together their history and their heritage.
09:09It's now Louise's chance to go through the census records for Crossmalina
09:15and the pages that record her family among them.
09:19This was the forms that they all filled out.
09:24I think we're kind of close to the street where my family were now,
09:27Crossmalina North.
09:29It's lovely, like I just love this town.
09:32It's just that community that's kind of built around the GAA and music.
09:37So many of my friends have stayed in Crossmalina.
09:40So it's still a really vibrant community, you know.
09:44Certain names are already jumping out.
09:46Families that, you know, are still in the town like we are.
09:49Marshes are a family that are still on that street.
09:52Robert Marsh is a blacksmith.
09:55Patrick Doyle and Nora Doyle.
09:57And he's a baker.
10:00Even after talking to my dad, just what his life was like
10:03and how important neighbours were to him.
10:05Beside him, his family, they were tailors.
10:08You know, there was lots of little shops along just one street.
10:12And everybody just found something to complement what was needed.
10:16And it all worked together.
10:19Maria MacDonald.
10:21She filled it out so beautifully.
10:25Winifred Fleming.
10:26And she's living with her four daughters and one son.
10:30Bridget Gallagher, a head of the household.
10:32She's 47.
10:34I've turned four pages and there's three female heads of the household.
10:40And now we're at my family.
10:44So this is John Duffy.
10:46When this was done, he was 75.
10:49So he was born just after the famine.
10:52Like, it's only generations ago.
10:54But, like, when we were growing up, it seemed like eons.
10:58My great-grandmother was 58.
11:01And then Joseph Duffy, Robert Duffy, that's my grandfather.
11:06It's kind of amazing just to think that was in their hands
11:09and that they gathered together to write this.
11:13My grandfather was 21, 17, 10.
11:17The daughters were 26, 22, 13, and 11.
11:20And my great-grandfather filled it out himself.
11:23James Duffy was the only son who didn't leave Ireland,
11:28who didn't emigrate.
11:29My grandfather emigrated.
11:31And eventually the rest of them will all leave.
11:34This is so enlightening to learn about this big family.
11:39These are the images that you'll see.
11:43It goes over to QA.
11:46And then we have a team over there that will make sure
11:49their quality is up to standard.
11:53Couldn't even tell you.
11:54Couldn't even start to tell you what we've done.
11:56It's just never random.
12:03Joseph is continuing to search through the census pages for Francis Street.
12:09This is an anthology of stories of what Dublin was like on that night a hundred years ago.
12:16And I feel those people whispering and I feel those facts pressing.
12:20And it's a lovely thing to be part of.
12:26Now I'm turning over to the summary form for Francis Street.
12:34So, things just got exciting.
12:42Number 15.
12:43The head of the house is Ellen O'Neill.
12:47That was my grandmother's name.
12:51And John O'Neill, who's 48, is a chimney cleaner.
12:58I know that if you're a Cockney, it's considered very good luck to have had an ancestor who was a
13:05chimney sweep.
13:06And I've just discovered that I literally do.
13:10We've Ellen O'Neill, who was 22 in 1926.
13:14I think that could be my grandmother.
13:17Who's a shop assistant.
13:18Yeah, clearly she's working in her mother's shop.
13:22That's my lovely grandmother to be.
13:25So it's amazing to see her.
13:29My grandmother was a hugely important person to me.
13:33How all our grandmothers were.
13:35She was the first adult who I ever remember using the word love to me.
13:41She was a word that she didn't hear much.
13:44And that's my memory of her as a person who loved love, family, connectedness, support, community.
13:52And she's still a very vivid presence in my life.
13:57So I had a kind of shorthand version of this story, which is that when Ellen got married, they went
14:07to Canada.
14:08And then when they moved back, they moved into this house.
14:11But she's not married yet.
14:12She's not married at this time.
14:14She's only 22.
14:16And I know she didn't get married till she was 25 or 26.
14:20But it's so lovely to think of her working there in the shop.
14:23And living with the parents and having their whole life ahead.
14:27And that I actually knew this woman.
14:30I knew this Ellen O'Neill.
14:34The feelings I have are not quite the ones that I thought, because I thought that I would have an
14:41awareness of the importance of this collection of information.
14:48And I do feel those things, but I actually feel something far more intimate, which is the kind of closeness
14:54with my own people from Francis Street and the Liberties.
15:11When you get to play somewhere like the National in London, and they talk to you about, you know, when
15:17you play the Olivier stage, it's only plays that talk to the gods that work on the Olivier stage.
15:24And I think, wow, we've grown up here with the Abbey, and all we do is talk to the gods.
15:32I want to find out more about the place I grew up, Quaker Road in Cork City.
15:37Luckily, I'm in a play with my sister Catherine, who knows far more about the history than I ever did.
15:42So I'm due to go into the census tomorrow.
15:46Yeah.
15:47And I know I'm going to be finding out about Quaker Road.
15:50Yes.
15:50And about Granda.
15:52What age do you reckon he was?
15:53Yeah, I think he was born in 1904.
15:55Right.
15:56So he'd be about 22.
15:57I mean, I forever remember him as an old guy with his three-piece suit and his trilby.
16:04His hat.
16:04You know what I mean?
16:05When he moved into Quaker Road, he obviously bought it as a small apartment or a little...
16:12Well, we'd add there would have been more of a tenement, I guess.
16:14It would be interesting to see if, in the census, he is in one of the rooms or if he
16:18has the lower floor.
16:19Yes.
16:20And then he moved in from the countryside.
16:23From the country.
16:23Because he was a country boy, wasn't he?
16:24Yeah.
16:24Now, he met his wife while he was on the trams.
16:29Yeah.
16:29So he was the bus, the tram conductor taking the money, you know, the tickets.
16:33Yes.
16:33He would have been a soldier by then.
16:34Oh, yeah.
16:35He was a soldier.
16:36He was known as the young boy soldier, so he was a soldier by 14 and 15.
16:40He died when he was in his eighties.
16:42And how old were you?
16:42Five or six?
16:43I was about six or something.
16:44Yeah.
16:44Because I remember being about 14 or 15.
16:47There is that brilliant story that we always grew up with.
16:50Granda had said that there was guns buried in the garden.
16:53Yeah.
16:54When there was work done on the family house.
16:57Yeah.
16:57But I think during the Civil War, there was an amnesty, so you had to hand back the guns.
17:01And if you were found with them after that, there was kind of, you know, a chance of being prosecuted.
17:05Yeah.
17:05So I think there was word of a gun up the chimney that was handed back.
17:09Oh, okay.
17:09And then he had buried the second gun in concrete in the garden so it wouldn't be discovered.
17:18I mean, they were always really poor, but everybody was.
17:23Everybody.
17:23You'd had Spanish flu.
17:25Yeah.
17:27And burning of cork.
17:28Like, it's devastating.
17:30Yeah.
17:30The effects of it.
17:32And you never think about, like, them walking around that city or seeing that city, that
17:37Cork city, you know.
17:37Yes.
17:38It must have had a big, it would have psychologically a huge effect on people.
17:41Yeah, yeah.
17:45Quaker Road is a very tight community.
17:49My mum raised a lot of the kids on that road, just from allowing other women to go back to
17:55work.
17:56My dad, as well, would have been hugely popular within the community.
18:01So we kind of, we learned an awful lot about family and connections and resilience and the network of leaning
18:10in on people.
18:15I think I'm really intrigued about turning my granddad into a man.
18:21Because for me growing up, he was always an old man.
18:25So I'm looking forward to seeing who he was as a young man and who he was as a person.
18:37Here we go.
18:38Oh, this is Quaker Road.
18:40And already, the cars who were a mechanic.
18:46He's from Estonia.
18:49That's incredible.
18:51And I wonder how they were treated on the road.
18:54Were they embraced into the community?
18:59This is 31 Quaker Road.
19:03Annie Maria Barrett.
19:06The head, the widow again.
19:08That kind of breaks my heart.
19:10And she's living with her sister-in-law.
19:12And then they've got a couple of boarders.
19:14Labour down the docks.
19:15Out of work.
19:17Out of work.
19:17Six months.
19:18Ah.
19:1955.
19:20Hard to be out of work at 55.
19:23At 39.
19:25That's a busy old house.
19:2613.
19:28In seven rooms?
19:31Yikes.
19:32Isn't that amazing?
19:34Parfrey.
19:35Oh.
19:37Gosh.
19:39When I was growing up, there was a very beautiful old lady called Mrs. Parfrey, who lived at 43,
19:47who would take me on a Sunday drive.
19:50It's kind of amazing.
19:5344.
19:55Nagel.
19:56Mother is 74.
19:58Daughter is 27.
20:02God, the intensity of living with your parent.
20:09I've written the play.
20:10I've got it going on in my head.
20:13Medical student.
20:14Again, very good.
20:16Cabinet maker look for jewelers and silversmiths.
20:20I mean, a customs and excise officer.
20:24For the distillery.
20:26I mean, for a road that felt like it was very working class.
20:32Very much, you know, everybody on an equal struggle.
20:36There's a lot of medical students.
20:37There's a lot of working for the post office and stuff as well.
20:41Like, it's kind of interesting.
20:46Guys, we're at 45.
20:49Oh.
20:50It's Nagel again.
20:5546.
20:58I'm missing Granda.
21:01I don't know.
21:02I suppose it would have been amazing to see Granda's name.
21:06Obviously, he hadn't moved in yet.
21:08Where was he?
21:13To get a deeper sense of what Cross Malina was like in 1926, Louise meets historian Sinead
21:20McCool.
21:22In Cross Malina today, I would think that you have a very similar life to what happened in
21:26the past.
21:27The centre being the church.
21:28You've got Gaelic football.
21:30You've got sports.
21:31You've got the helping of the neighbours.
21:33But you also have the difference of a slower pace of life.
21:37A lot more conversation.
21:39A lot more connecting between people.
21:40A lot more writing letters.
21:42A lot more receiving letters.
21:43There was nothing else.
21:44You know, we didn't have all of the distractions we do now.
21:47So there's a lot more connection really.
21:49Yeah.
21:50And I think one of the things that we have to remember of this time is the context of
21:54the time.
21:5620s is a very uncomfortable time for people because we have the period of the War of Independence
22:02and then into the Civil War, which obviously impacted Mayo.
22:05So there had been informers within the community.
22:08So that's changing the dynamic.
22:13When we think about it as being a sort of a peaceful community with your friends and family,
22:18the wider world is coming in and it's slightly threatening.
22:21Okay.
22:22But I wonder about, you know, the sense of leaving then, you know, and I'll take my grandmother,
22:28my great grandmother as an example as well.
22:30She had 10 children, nine of them emigrated.
22:33So I just wonder about that level of loss in her life.
22:40I think you have to remember that you have the letter, right?
22:43So you never lose them.
22:45Some people left and didn't communicate with home as in any family, right?
22:50But they had a pride.
22:52You can just imagine the conversation about my son's here, my daughter's here, they've got
22:59this job.
22:59So there was an element that when you left, you were going into a career that you could never
23:04get here.
23:05There were prospects, there was this idea that there was a good life.
23:11But they never lost that sense of place, of family.
23:15With a missing grandfather and none of our family living in number 45, I ring Catherine
23:21to work out where he might have been on the night of the census.
23:24Yeah, no, so we don't have him on the 26 census in Quaker Road.
23:30Johnny and Minnie were married and living in North Cork.
23:35And so maybe he's staying with them on the night of the census.
23:42I've talked to Catherine and Catherine spoke to my mother and they seem to think that he lived
23:50with his brother, Johnny, over on the north side of Cork, possibly the night of the census.
24:03I'm very nervous all of a sudden.
24:06O'Neill, Quinn, Breen, Egan.
24:12Okay.
24:13Minnie.
24:14Guys, Minnie's here.
24:16John, McCarthy, Head.
24:19What?
24:19But Patrick's not here.
24:24Where did he spend the night?
24:29No.
24:31Hang on.
24:34He's here.
24:36Because I got a fright, there's a Patrick McCarthy, but he's 80.
24:39Who's a border?
24:40Patrick McCarthy, border.
24:43And he's 22, single, hasn't met his wife yet.
24:52And he's a tram conductor already.
24:56Oh, that's amazing.
25:00So maybe he's with his own dad.
25:03So both of them end up with Johnny for that time.
25:07We know that Johnny went on to give Granda, Patrick, young Patrick, the down payment to start, start putting roots
25:18down.
25:20And lovely to think he started his journey.
25:23He's already started.
25:25He's on his way being on the trams.
25:27It won't stay single for long.
25:30So that's kind of nice to think he's on his way, which means I'm on my way.
25:38After looking at the returns for Francis Street, Joseph wants a broader sense of the area.
25:44He's meeting historian Liz Gillis, herself a daughter of the Liberties.
25:49This area was actually called the Liberties by King Henry II.
25:54You had the medieval city of Dublin, which was walled, and then you had the areas outside.
26:00And the reason that this area is given the title as a Liberty, they were independent of the medieval city.
26:07The Liberties, Main Street, Thomas Street, Francis Street, all of that area.
26:10It's like its own little entity.
26:13As for the people then who live here, they take that mentality on as well, where they are quite independent.
26:19Yeah.
26:21There's a great mix of people from day one that comes to the Liberties.
26:27And again, there's a reason for this.
26:29Breweries, distilleries, textile industry was huge, and it's a melting pot.
26:34If you look at the previous census, there were very significant numbers of Italian craftsmen who had moved to the
26:42Liberties.
26:42Well, we had an area known as Little Italy. They were coming from the 1800s, even before that.
26:47When Catholic emancipation is granted, there's just a building boom across this country of churches.
26:52But they need the experts.
26:54Skills, yeah.
26:55But then later on, it would be more people who are street vendors, cafes, ice cream parlours.
27:01It's just an interesting other little thing that the Liberties may have given to Ireland through its openness to people
27:07from other places.
27:10On the night of the census, there are 1,300 people living on Francis Street.
27:15It's a noisy, crowded, busy, colourful, vibrant place.
27:21This was one of the most densely populated areas in the city. It still is.
27:25It's because you had jobs, and good jobs.
27:29Like, anyone who lived in tenements, the women were so proud of their little area.
27:37Like, they'd be out cleaning the steps.
27:39Yeah.
27:39The Brasso had to be done. Like, they were spotless.
27:43At one stage, this street would have been just full of all the traders.
27:48This is like a memory window of people who are still with us.
27:52Of all of us, yeah.
27:53People who have passed against Tommy.
27:55That was my dad's best friend there. That's Tommy Cowboy, that I know.
27:58And that's Nathan is running his dad's staff there.
28:03One of the things that always struck me about my grandmother
28:07was there was nearly a list of words that she would not use about the Liberties.
28:13Yeah.
28:13Poverty was one.
28:15Destitution.
28:16They thought if you're from the Liberties, you're an aristocrat.
28:20The Liberties is seen as a disadvantaged, derelict, deprived area. No, it's not.
28:27What comes across from those pages is not, we are poor, we are victims.
28:33No.
28:33It's out. We are resourceful. We are positive. It's moving to see, isn't it?
28:38Oh.
28:38We could do with a bit of that maybe, a bit of that spirit.
28:43What is amazing about these records being released to the public, not behind a paywall, is that it democratizes history.
28:52Yeah, it's wonderful.
28:53It gives it to the people.
28:55It gives it back to the people who made it.
28:56And we can take ownership.
29:01Thank you very much.
29:03We light a candle for our ancestors.
29:05Yeah.
29:06Liberties' ancestors. God bless them. Right.
29:09You light one for mine, I light one for yours.
29:17After looking at the census for Quaker Road, I'm left with a number of questions. Historian Tomás Macanmara helps me
29:25to find out more.
29:26Something that I was really surprised at was, I suppose, the socio-economic mixture of people on one road.
29:32Yeah.
29:32That, I wasn't expecting. I was expecting it to be more manual labour, I guess.
29:38Ten years before the 1926 census, you would have seen a different reality.
29:43You would have probably seen more equality on the road.
29:45But that would have been equality of absolute poverty.
29:49And your granddad and your family, you know, aren't massively affluent, of course, but they're at the same time in
29:54a much more...
29:55They're reaching up, though, aren't they?
29:55Yeah, they are very much reaching up.
29:56And I think what that speaks to in the case of your granddad and his contemporaries would be a real
30:02determination when an opportunity comes to take that opportunity and to work really, really hard.
30:10Your granddad comes in from the country into the city.
30:13Yeah.
30:13What seems to be the case with your granddad, Patrick, is that when he begins working as a tram conductor
30:18in Cork City, he seems to have this incredible determination to get on, to try and build towards stability.
30:26So when he gets to that point in the late 1920s and does purchase 45 Quaker Road, it is an
30:33incredible moment.
30:34And he creates this stability and this anchor for the McCarthy family.
30:38Yes.
30:38That, of course, continues to this day for you.
30:41Yeah.
30:41I mean, a phenomenal achievement.
30:43But when you consider your granddad's background, he's from a Republican area, he's from a Republican family.
30:48And would that have played against him?
30:50Well, where it would have played against him is that he takes an anti-treaty position in the Civil War
30:55that is led by Tom Barry, you know, who's recognized as one of the most, you know, significant IRA leaders
31:00in the entire War of Independence, in the entire revolutionary period.
31:04For those people with an anti-treaty background, it was not a very welcoming state.
31:09Really?
31:09There are hundreds and hundreds of anti-treaty Republicans are forced to immigrate from Ireland as a result of their
31:15treatment by the Free State.
31:16There was huge recognition of your grandfather's role.
31:19And that's, of course, manifest very powerfully and very profoundly at his funeral.
31:24Yes.
31:24When he's given an IRA guard and their shots fired over his grave.
31:28Yeah.
31:28And again, that's not something that was afforded to everybody.
31:31And it's a really strong indication of how active and how committed of a Republican he was.
31:40I spend so much time working away, so coming home to Cork and to Quaker Road always feels special.
31:47It's the place that grounds me.
31:50Cork and Quaker Road is hugely important to my identity.
31:55It's very much who I am and what informs the work I do.
32:01My best friend, Emma Dewan, was the butcher's daughter at the top of the road.
32:05We babysat for John Lynch, who owned the shop at the end.
32:09So it was a very tight community.
32:13And, of course, the indomitable May Power, who lived here.
32:20But this is the wall that became our Wimbledon.
32:24That became, you know, Parky Keeve.
32:27It was everything.
32:29Much to her annoyance, I'm sure.
32:32Playing donkey up against it.
32:36Very lucky to have grown up in the house that my mother grew up in.
32:42And that her father bought room by room.
32:49A lot of this much of the garden was all pig pens, potatoes and salads and all that kind of
32:55stuff.
32:55And then his greenhouse was in the middle.
32:57And that's where he would graze his sheep.
33:00And at the end of the garden is the bath that my dad had to learn how to dip and
33:06shear.
33:09It was down here.
33:11I was sent to get him in for his dinner.
33:14And he wasn't in the bedroom praying.
33:16So I checked the garden.
33:18So I came down to the garden and he had taken a heart attack.
33:23And all I remember seeing were his wellies, his working wellies facing me.
33:27And his suit.
33:29But he had hit his head on a rock when he was trying to go into the sheep.
33:34And he died.
33:35He had died there.
33:36So I remember running back up the garden and seeing my mum through the slatted glass.
33:42And I was like, something's not right with Ganda.
33:47Yeah, so he was laid out in the house for three days.
33:49And I remember it being a very busy house of people coming and paying their respects.
33:53And everybody being very patriotic around it.
33:58I was probably seven, you know.
34:01But I remember being very minded.
34:02And being allowed very close to the coffin.
34:12Louise's father is showing her the place her grandmother came from.
34:15The small townland of Lahar Don.
34:19My mother went to school here.
34:21And her mother was a teacher in the school.
34:24You can see the dates there.
34:251907 to 2000 itself.
34:28She had a brother and a sister.
34:30And the family grew up there.
34:32They all went there?
34:33They never emigrated.
34:35No, they stayed around, yeah.
34:36Okay, okay.
34:37Yeah.
34:37Where is your dad's side of the family?
34:39Tin and the family and...
34:42Eight of them went there.
34:42Eight of them emigrated.
34:44Crazy, isn't it?
34:45To like London and...
34:46Leeds.
34:47Leeds.
34:48Leeds.
34:48My mother got married in England, in Leeds.
34:52Mm-hm.
34:52And their first child was born in the Americas.
34:55So then after that they moved back to Cosmelina.
34:58There you go.
34:59Yeah.
34:59Yeah.
34:59Yeah.
35:00And that's where it started.
35:01Yeah.
35:03I have the book from the census from Addergoo.
35:08My grandmother was ten when this was documented.
35:10This is a hundred years ago.
35:12But I sat on her knee.
35:13I spent the first three years of my life with her every day.
35:17She was a really, really kind lady.
35:19And she was Mary May, but she became Mary Duffy.
35:22But everybody in the town called her Mammy Duffy.
35:26So it's really beautiful to have a moment to look at her life.
35:31So they're here.
35:32She was one of three.
35:35And her dad was a farmer.
35:37John May, Ellen May.
35:39As farmers, they had 22 acres compared to the two acres of the Duffys in the town.
35:44So you just kind of get the sense that this would have been a harder life.
35:47And it might have been easier to live in the town.
35:49With everyone around you.
35:50With all that support.
35:55This is the Titanic village in Laredon.
35:57Just over the road from Cosmelina.
35:59In fact, my grandmother came from here.
36:04It just shows the amount of people that were constantly leaving these small villages.
36:09So this is just one small village and 14 people left on the Titanic.
36:14And all but three of them died.
36:18And it's just incredible for a small village that so many families were impacted.
36:26So now I have an opportunity to look at the overall sense of what's happening comparatively across 11 censuses from
36:331821 right up to 1926.
36:36It's stark reading from Mayo.
36:38It really is.
36:39Obviously, during the famine, there was a huge fall off.
36:42Immigration and death.
36:44And in Mayo, during those 10 years, we lost 29% of our population.
36:49But if you move over to 1926, we were still losing so many people.
36:54There was such a decrease.
36:55So if you look at it comparatively from 10 years from 1901 to 1911, three times more people had left.
37:02The rates of immigration had trebled.
37:05The only place that had increased in those years was Dublin city and county.
37:09And they went up 6%.
37:11Everywhere else was falling.
37:21There was a picture of the liberties as a place of immigrants.
37:27The Mushat brothers were the local chemists.
37:30Two Jewish brothers who came from Lithuania.
37:34The ice cream shop on Francis Street was Johnny Ray's.
37:38The owner was Giovanni Ray, who was from Italy.
37:42And here, living at number 56, High Street, we have the Sartini family.
37:51We turn the page and we have the Rocca family.
37:55And it's a great joy to see them here.
37:58I have a long time friend whose surname is Rocca.
38:02I didn't know that Bernice Rocca's ancestors were in the same book as mine.
38:09High Street is half a kilometre from Francis Street.
38:14Joseph is meeting a friend of over 40 years, Bernice Rocca, to share his findings from the 1926 census.
38:22My grandfather, Giudio, came to Ireland after the Civil War in 1922.
38:30His uncle was already here.
38:34He was only 16, I think, when he came over.
38:38I remember meeting you and having a sense that your family and my family might have been quite close, given
38:46that they're both from the city.
38:48Would you like me to show you the 1926 census?
38:52Yes.
38:53So we see that Joseph Rocca...
38:56Oh!
38:56So in the 1911 census, we have Mary.
39:01Yes.
39:01So you can see here that a very sad thing has happened.
39:05Joseph Giuseppe is listed as a widower.
39:09Mary sadly died.
39:11OK.
39:11I didn't know that.
39:12OK.
39:14So we have four lads living in the house.
39:17Joseph, John, Anthony...
39:19Yeah.
39:20...and Edidio.
39:21Edidio.
39:22Edidio.
39:23My grandfather, Edidio, and my grandmother, Agnes Conningham.
39:27Your grandmother?
39:28Agnes Conningham is my grandmother.
39:30Right.
39:30Well, there is a little love story now that we didn't know about.
39:35Yeah.
39:35I think they worked in the cafe.
39:37I think that's when my grandparents met.
39:40And they're living in the same house.
39:42Yeah.
39:42And love blossoms.
39:43I'm sure it was all very innocent and pure.
39:47I didn't know, looking at just the bare facts of this, that Agnes Conningham would actually
39:54end up marrying her.
39:56Yeah.
39:56That's an amazing thing to discover.
39:57They met quite early on.
39:58Yeah.
39:59She works there in the cafe as well.
40:05And the amazing thing is that 350 metres down the road, there's a young couple who have
40:12just met and fallen in love, Thomas O'Connor and Ellen O'Neill, who are kind of the same
40:19age as your grandad.
40:22Oh, yeah.
40:23So, it's theoretically possible that our grand...
40:27They walked past on the street.
40:28That they might have met.
40:31Who knows if my grandparents might have been in the cafe, but they certainly, they walked
40:37the same streets.
40:39So, 40 years ago, when we met and I had a sense that our families might have things in
40:46common, they actually did.
40:47And that's confirmed by the...
40:49That is amazing.
40:50...the 1926 census.
40:58The convent was a huge part of my life growing up.
41:01It's where I went to school and, as a young girl, remember the nuns as a strong, even scary,
41:07presence.
41:09For me, growing up, certainly Quaker Road was a mix of very different people all living close
41:16together.
41:18And then, you know, having the convent down the road and the convent slowly changing, too,
41:25from being such a kind of heavy weight over a community to it actually being an aging community
41:30of nuns.
41:34So, this is South Presentation Convent.
41:40I feel like I'm allowed to look behind the wall.
41:4542 women all living together.
41:48They're all so stripped of their individuality, aren't they?
41:53Because they're immediately just initials.
41:57MSOS.
41:59But really, who were they?
42:01All these initials, all these women possibly plucked from their families and a life chosen
42:09for them, really, to give up everything.
42:14Some amazing women, some amazing teachers that would have changed lives, but also a lot
42:19of, a lot of wasted, lonely women, I would think.
42:29We would have been brought down here on certain days to pay our respects to Nano Nagel.
42:37But it's funny coming back now, as a grown-up, because Sister Ambrose was a teacher.
42:42She was very lovely and a big supporter of acting.
42:49Their religious name is also there, but they get their full name back, which is lovely.
42:54But a life lived here, right?
42:56Professed 75 years.
42:58Phew.
43:00So, it's kind of amazing that they get their name back, because when we were looking through
43:05the census, the entire convent was marked with just initials.
43:12So, Sister M. M. P., or whatever, who now becomes, I can see, Mary Carol.
43:21But in religion, she was Sister Mary Peter.
43:34Before leaving the National Archives, Joseph wants to locate his grandfather, who he's not
43:40sure has met his future wife, Joseph's grandmother, yet.
43:44Then we come to number 142, where the head of house was William O'Connor, a wood-cutting merchant.
43:54And their eldest son is Thomas O'Connor, who's 22, and that's my grandfather, Thomas O'Connor.
44:01The beauty from number 15 met the handsome lad from number 142, and I wouldn't be here today
44:12if they hadn't.
44:16So, I'm touched to see that.
44:24We were sort of working roughly in alphabetical order, so when we hit Waterford, that was,
44:33it was kind of amazing.
44:34You really could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
44:37We have a map that we scratch out every time we finish a county, so we're slowly revealing
44:43revealing the green.
44:46We celebrate each county that we complete.
44:50We're done!
44:51Yeah!
44:52Ring that bell!
44:58My heart is sad and I am lonely
45:04For the only one I love
45:09When shall I see him?
45:13Oh, no, never
45:15Till we meet in heaven above
45:19It has given me an awareness of who we are and what my family had to go through
45:24in terms of immigration and how they lived 100 years ago.
45:30I've come from a place of thinking, there were tough times.
45:33Now thinking, you know, there was a lot of really special parts of their life that we
45:39would be envious of today, the sense of community, those family connections, the neighbourly connections.
45:48I can't wait to tell my daughters and bring them on this little journey and tell them about
45:52where they're from about 100 years ago and what life was like then.
46:07With a missing grandfather now found, I'm dying to show my sisters and mum what I've discovered.
46:14Census calling! Hello!
46:18So, the exciting thing was actually finding 45 Quaker Road, right, on the census.
46:23And where do you think he was on the night of the census if he wasn't here?
46:27Well, I think he was either over with Johnny in Mulgrave Road or he could have been in Patrick's Road
46:36with Dan.
46:37With Dan.
46:38They found there Johnny.
46:41Yeah.
46:42Brilliant.
46:42And Minnie McCarthy!
46:43Oh, my God!
46:44Yes!
46:45And what did you always say about Minnie?
46:47That she was older than Johnny.
46:49Years older than him, apparently.
46:51Well, apparently not!
46:53What?
46:54He's 40 and she's 40.
46:56Rita!
46:56That's great!
46:57Isn't that amazing?
46:59That's great!
47:00In my head she was a real old girl.
47:01A cougar.
47:02She was a cougar.
47:03She wasn't a cougar, Lance.
47:04I didn't think cougar either.
47:05What's disappointing is that there's no Patrick McCarthy here.
47:07So, when you turn the page, he's living next door.
47:13No way.
47:14In 15A.
47:16Ah.
47:17Next to John.
47:18Next to Johnny!
47:19Oh, I never knew that.
47:21Next to Johnny.
47:21Yeah.
47:22Yeah!
47:22So, Patrick is 22.
47:24Oh, my God.
47:26And he's single.
47:28Yeah.
47:29Then, what's even more amazing is that Patrick McCarthy Senior...
47:35His father.
47:36His dad.
47:37And Catherine McCarthy, his mother, are boarding with them.
47:43It's April, because by June, the father has died.
47:47That's on the gravestone.
47:48I'd say why the mother and the father came up...
47:51...and was staying with them.
47:53Yeah.
47:53I think the father wasn't well.
47:56Yeah.
47:56And he wanted to be buried in the city...
48:00Yes.
48:00...where they'd be near him to come to pray.
48:03Ah, yeah.
48:03Oh, I see.
48:04So...
48:05It is lovely.
48:06I'm surprised, like.
48:07I know.
48:08It's amazing.
48:08It's lovely, really, to know the roots, like, you know?
48:12Yeah.
48:18I didn't think I was that into finding out about the family tree.
48:22And then you start looking.
48:23And once you start looking, your interest is piqued.
48:27It's like Grandad before I knew he had a name.
48:29And suddenly, he's Patrick McCarthy.
48:32And it's beautiful, you know?
48:33It really makes me want to know more.
48:35And it just lets you see how important census is.
48:42For not just, like, historically, but emotionally finding out who we are.
48:46Who made us.
48:52I feel more passionately about the liberties than I did at the start of this project.
48:57I've seen in my own family part of that DNA, part of that inheritance of independence, doing things their own
49:08way,
49:08that I think my father got from his parents back in the liberties.
49:12I see it in him.
49:13I see it in my brothers and sisters.
49:16And delightfully, I have to say, I see it in my own children.
49:20It's been a thrilling, sometimes very moving experience, as well as one where I've learned a lot.
49:29I am not from the liberties, but I'm extremely proud to have it as part of my heritage.
49:39If you want to search your own family records, the National Archives have now released the 1926 census online.
49:46And it's freely accessible to the public in Ireland and across the world.
49:51I am not from the public in Ireland.
49:52I am not from the public in Ireland.
49:57I am not from the public in Ireland.
50:06I am not from the public in Ireland.
50:07I am not from the public in Ireland.
50:07I am not from the public in Ireland.
50:08I am from the public in Ireland.
50:09I am from the public in Ireland.
50:10I am from the public in Ireland.
50:10I am from the public in Ireland.
50:11I am from the public in Ireland.
50:12I am from the public in Ireland.
50:13I am from the public in Ireland.
50:15I am from the public in Ireland.
50:16I am from the public in Ireland.
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