Dunmanway Board of Guardians
IE CCCA/BG/83
On 25 May 1920 the workhouse infirmary was occupied by the military. Several meetings were subsequently adjourned owing to the military presence and the difficulty of securing a quorum. At the last meeting recorded in extant minutes, held on 20 November 1920, the clerk is asked to produce union books ‘at certain places as we shall specify’, meetings no longer being held at the workhouse. While the workhouse was not burned, unlike several other west Cork workhouses, patients and inmates were transferred elsewhere owing to the military occupation. For example, a letter dated 12 May 1921 noted in the minutes of Bandon Board of Guardians records the transfer of fever patients from Dunmanway to Bandon (BG/42/A/110). The Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act 1923 led to the abolition of the workhouse system, and its replacement with the formation of the county boards of health and public assistance. The workhouse fever hospital was designated a district hospital under the new system.
Content & Structure
Scope & Content The surviving records of Dunmanway Board of Guardians consist of minute books, forming a practically unbroken set from its first meeting in 1840 to 1920, although minutes for the final years of its existence have seemingly been lost. The minutes for the period of the Great Famine (1845-49) document its devastating effects on this part of West Cork. The West Cork region was one of the worst effected in Ireland, and although the Famine’s impact was less severe in Dunmanway union than in others, the minutes provide a vivid picture of the hardships of the time. Death, disease, emigration, and the financial difficulties of the union and the local population are the recurrent subjects. The minutes also document the relationship between the various West Cork Unions, and the rearrangements which occurred in 1849-50, as Clonakilty Union and other unions came into being. Later records document the increasing public health role of the board of guardians, with dispensary committees of management being created, dispensary services being provided throughout the union area, and services such as compulsory smallpox vaccination and local midwives being provided. Much information about the conditions of workhouse life, and of life for the poor of the area generally, may be gleaned from the minutes. The British Medical Journal report of 1895(referred to in the Administrative History) reveals the grim realities of maintaining workhouse and hospital services on severely limited means. There is much reference in later minutes to providing for destitute and deserted children. Political and nationalist resolutions occur more frequently in the final surviving records of the union, culminating in the decision to pledge allegiance to Dail Eireann in 1920. The difficulties arising out of the occupation of much of the workhouse by British military from 1920 probably contributed to the loss of some union records. Nonetheless, the extant volumes, with the three pre-1920 gaps in the main series filled by rough minute books, provide a comprehensive record of the poor law, and valuable insights into social history, in this small but interesting union.
Cork City and County Archives 2011
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