School Resource Packs: Cork 1912-1918

Resource Pack 4: 1914 Suzanne R. Day

3 Cork City & County Archives: Through War and Rebellion: Cork 1912-1918

The Do cument Board of Guardians Reference BG/69/A/140 p.485

All Boards were subject to the overall control of the Local Government Board of Ireland (these days it is the Department of the Environment) in Dublin Castle which was the headquarters of British Rule in Ireland until January 1922. The document is the minutes from the Cork Borough Board of Guardians (Cork City) discussing a letter from the LGB about the condition of the children’s ward as a result of Susanne Day’s campaign.

Instructions: 1. Read through the document. 2. Highlight the names of people, sentences, or words you do not understand. 3. Highlight any words you cannot read. 4. Fill in the recording sheet supplied and attach it to the document.

5a. Optional: ‘The Amazing Philanthropists’ was a novel written by Susanne which describes the same events and the build up to them. The linked extracts give further details of the conditions in the Workhouse and Susanne’s views of the people on the board, the role of women in politics and her attitude to the poor among other things. Read through the extracts and write Susanne’s story in your own words saying what you think of the people involved including Susanne. Students may also use Day’s 1912 article ‘The Workhouse Child’ , deploring the ‘Oliver Twist’-like conditions prevailing. 5b. Optional Starting with the links below, study and write about workhouse life for children 5c. Optional Starting with the links below, explore Day’s career as a writer, her activities as a suffragette, and her work as an ambulance worker in the First World War. What can we learn about the changing role of women in society, public life, and the cultural world of this period? Eg, Cork’s suffragettes, women and the Abbey Theatre, Irish women and World War I 6a. Optional : The list of the Board of Guardians for Cork in 1913 (below) taken from Guy’s Directory of 1913 gives the names and addresses of the members of the board. See if you can find them in the manuscripts of the 1911 census. You can attempt all of them or your teacher may split them up for you. Write a short paragraph including at least ten facts about each family. Don’t forget to look for the same family in the 1901 census as this will give you a lot more information about the people making decisions in Cork at that time. From the Household returns you should be able to find out a lot about the family, (religion, age, number of children, literacy, illnesses, position in family etc.) and from the House and Building returns you should be able to tell a lot about the kind of house they lived in. From the Outhouse return you can even tell if they kept chickens or how they heated their houses. Susanne Day’s 1911 return can be found here. How does she actually spell her name? 6b. Optional: Contrast these details with the information provided about the inmates of the Workhouse in the 1911 Census recorded in Houses 1.1 and 1.2 of Knockrea townland 7. Store the completed work as directed by your teacher.

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