Identity Statement
Reference Code:
IE CCCA/BG/108
Title:
Kinsale Board of Guardians
Dates:
1839 – 1925
Level of description:
Fonds
Extent:
199 items
Context
Creator(s): Kinsale Board of Guardians
Archival History The records of the Kinsale Board of Guardians were deposited in the Archives in the early 1980s.
Administrative & Biographical History The Kinsale Board of Guardians was the governing body of Kinsale workhouse and poor law union. Kinsale Poor Law Union was established under the Poor Law (Ireland) Act, 1838. It was one of 16 unions in the overall County Cork area. Each union was centred on a city or market town and its hinterland, and this union area sometimes ignored existing parish or county boundaries. In this central town was situated the union workhouse (usually built between 1838 and 1852) which provided relief for the unemployed and the destitute. Kinsale workhouse opened 4 December 1841. The Board, which first met in March 1839, expressed grave reservations over the size of the proposed workhouse. It claimed that the capacity for 500 inmates was over twice that required, and called on the Poor Law Commissioners ‘either to increase the size of the union or to dissolve it altogether’. The board eventually accepted the planned workhouse, and, a few years later, acquired the use of other premises in Kinsale to allow it to accommodate numbers of inmates in excess of 1000 at the height of the Great Famine. Other premises used included Kinsale Fever Hospital, the old barracks, and the old gaol. Each workhouse was managed by a staff and officers under the charge of a workhouse master, who reported to the board. Overall responsibility rested with the union's board of guardians, some of whom were elected, and some of whom were ex-officio members appointed usually from amongst local magistrates. The board appointed its own inhouse committees, and received reports from workhouse officers and from dispensary district committees and district medical officers. It also made resolutions on internal and poor law matters and, sometimes, on wider political or social
Cork City and County Archives 2011
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