Distribution of the Census forms across Ireland
In the weeks leading up to Census Day, Sunday, 2 April, over 4,000 census enumerators across Ireland distributed the large blue census forms to every household. As they moved from house to house, the enumerators listed every head of household before leaving the form to be filled in. The enumerators were members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. In Dublin, 160 members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police helped with the process of distributing and collecting the forms.
According to the local press in Dublin, this was a sensible move. The police were considered underemployed and had expert knowledge of localities and personalities, as well as experience in filing reports, which would help them carry out their task correctly.
Filling out the form correctly was deemed a task that “leaves little room for mistake by person of ordinary intelligence,” according to newspaper editorials. Nonetheless, this census included a more detailed list of questions than before, leading what the Freeman’s Journal called ‘professional humourists’ to make fun of the difficulties presented.
Differences between Irish and British Census Forms
The census form for Ireland differed from that distributed in Britain. The Irish form included a question asking the religion of every person in a household, which was not included in the British form. It also sought to ascertain the number of Irish speakers in the country, while in Britain, a similar question was asked of Welsh speakers. Additionally, the Irish form asked whether people could ‘Read and Write’, ‘Read Only’, or ‘Cannot Read’, a question not asked in Britain. As one Irish newspaper noted, “why it should be so is not easy to understand.”
Suffragette resistance to the Census
Before this could be considered, however, there was an unprecedented challenge to overcome. The ongoing failure to secure the vote for women had led the Suffragette movement across Britain and Ireland to engage in a covert campaign, resulting in suffragettes refusing to fill out and return the census forms. The Irish press carried letters in the last week of March, both for and against the campaign. One suffragette wrote that it was ridiculous that though women could be taxed just as men were, when it came to voting, they were classed as political nonentities alongside infants, criminals, and lunatics. Refusing to fill out the census form was a protest that was, another argued, “constitutional and eminently ladylike.”
On Saturday night, 1 April, the committee of the Irish Women’s Franchise League held a meeting in the Antient Concert Rooms in Dublin. When a policeman entered and enquired if the women intended to hold a meeting again the following evening, he was told there was no such intention. However, they had requisitioned a number of aeroplanes and submarines to avoid filling out the census. It was illegal to refuse to fill out the census form; it could only be avoided if one was not in the country.
In the Freeman’s Journal the following week, it was reported that women had not, of course, taken to the seas or skies to avoid filling out the census. The paper also remarked that the mooted all-night driving parties and picnics in the Dublin mountains had not taken place either.
Notable women who boycotted the Census
Women did refuse to fill out the census form, however. These included Anna Haslam, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, and Louie Bennett, for whom no returns can be found. The Freeman’s Journal offered some sympathy to enumerators in the wake of the boycott by suffragettes, saying: “The enumerator whose duty it will be to address questions to the ladies who have taken up arms in the evasion movement is not exactly to be envied.”
Weather on Census Day
This was a wise decision. A cool north-easterly breeze blew across Dublin Bay and into the city on the morning of 2 April 1911. Later in the day, as the wind strengthened and became more northerly, it carried with it squally showers, though mostly the day was fair and cold. All told, it was not the weather for picnicking.
A typical Sunday in Dublin
Sunday, 2 April 1911, passed off in much the same way as any other Sunday in Dublin. It was a day defined by the formal demands of religious observance. Dublin was a quiet place on a Sunday, even for those who did not believe. The shops and theatres were closed, and only a few events took place. There was, for example, an exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy on Lower Abbey Street, which required the payment of an entrance fee of 1s.
A number of preachers were speaking in Dublin on that day. The Rev. Thomas O’Brien had come from Cork to preach a special sermon to appeal for donations from the Catholics of Dublin for St. Mary’s Training School in Stanhope Street. That institution had been founded in 1811, and 100 years later was home to 113 young girls, many of whom had been orphaned. In the course of the sermon, Fr. O’Brien outlined how the nuns of Stanhope Street trained the girls in laundry and sewing before securing positions for them in wider society once they came of age.
Also preaching in the city on that day was the Jesuit, Fr. Robert Kane, who was into the fifth of his extended series of Lenten lectures. Fr. Kane drew a huge crowd to St. Francis Xavier’s church on Upper Gardiner Street to hear him preach about the ‘Sores of Society’. For their part, the Protestant churches of Dublin were holding an appeal to raise money for the Board of Religious Education, which organised daily and weekly instruction in religion for children across the city.
Sport offered a limited escape to Dubliners, but even this was curtailed by religion. Traditions of sabbatarianism meant that rugby, soccer, horse racing, golf, and other sporting events had been played on Saturday as usual. That weekend, there had been an international match of sorts in the city when the British Army in Ireland XI played the British Army in England XI in a soccer match at Dalymount Park. Saturday had also seen a full round of rugby club matches and local golf tournaments.
On Sunday evening, the Grocers’ Assistants’ Society staged the third round of their billiards competition. By and large, however, this and every other Sunday was a day when the Gaelic Athletic Association dominated the sporting life of the city. The usual round of hurling and football league matches were played in grounds all across Dublin. The highlight was the Dublin County championship matches played at the new ground on Jones’s Road (later renamed Croke Park in 1913).
Collecting the Census forms
Collection of the census began on Monday, 3 April, with all forms eventually forwarded to Charlemont House on Rutland Square. Here, the Census Commissioners for Ireland, led by Sir William Thompson, the Registrar-General, and Edward O’Farrell, the assistant under-secretary for Ireland, had established a system for dealing with them. Almost 200 specialist workers, including 100 boy assistants, were engaged in the work of tabulation.