Limerick

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Limerick, city in the south-western Republic of Ireland, county borough of county Limerick, at the head of the estuary of the Shannon River. Limerick is one of the major ports of Ireland. The chief industries produce flour, textiles, lace, and food products. The city is divided into English Town, on King's Island; Irish Town, which includes the oldest part of the city (dating from the 9th-century Norse settlement), and lies to the south of the river; and Newtown-Pery, to the south of Irish Town, dating from 1769. The city received its charter in 1197. Population (1991) 75,436.

The earliest date that we can trace the Dickson family back to is the early 19th century. So it is clear that the following events will have had some impact upon the William Dickson and his ancestors. The family seems to have remained in Ireland until the early 20th century, so this period is condensed here.

The American Revolution awakened much sympathy in Ulster, especially among the Presbyterians, who, being disqualified from holding office, desired a general emancipation including that of the Roman Catholics. In 1778 the Irish Parliament passed the Relief Act, removing some of the most oppressive disabilities. I Limerick, because the regular army was absent a militia unit, the Limerick Union was formed, converting with another militia a year later to form the Loyal Limerick Volunteers.

Meanwhile the Irish Protestants, alarmed by the French who had entered into an alliance with the Americans, formed military associations of volunteers in the early 1790's. The Limerick City Regiment was established in 1793, and 1798 they were engaged with French-Irish forces at Collooney, Co. Sligo.

The principles of the French Revolution found their most powerful expression in Ireland in the Society of United Irishmen, which organised the rebellion of 1798. The people rose in Wexford and even though insufficiently armed, they made a brave fight. At one time Dublin was in danger, but the insurgents were defeated by the regular forces at Vinegar Hill. A French force of 1100 landed in Killala Bay but this was too late to provide effective assistance.

The British prime minister William Pitt, the Younger, thought that the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland together with Roman Catholic emancipation was the only remedy for Roman Catholic rebellion and Protestant tyranny in Ireland. By a lavish use of money and distribution of patronage, he induced the Irish Parliament to pass the Act of Union, and on January 1, 1801, the union was formally proclaimed. Owing to the opposition of George III, however, Pitt was unable to make good his promise of emancipation for Roman Catholics.

The history of Ireland after the union was principally concerned with the struggle for Irish civic and religious freedom and for separation from Great Britain. Hardly had the union been established when dissatisfaction in Ireland gave rise to the armed outbreak of July 23, 1803, under the Irish patriot Robert Emmet. The uprising was easily suppressed, and for some time no further armed revolts occurred. In 1823 the Catholic Association was founded, which demanded, and finally obtained, complete Roman Catholic emancipation in Ireland. In 1828 Roman Catholics were permitted to hold local office, and in 1829 they were allowed to sit in Parliament. Around this time the lace industry was started in Limerick when a Charles Walker of Oxfordshire brought to Limerick over twenty four girls as teachers in 1829. The industry was very successful, employing at one time some 900 women and exporting to Britain, though initially the industry as such was short lived, and after 1842 the quality of goods slowly declined until by 1870 the exports were known as poor quality exports. Fortunately rescue came from a surprising source when the sisters of the Good Shepherd Convent founded a lace training school in 1888, and continue the tradition to this day.

Poverty in Limerick, as in the rest of Ireland, was severe and poverty continued to get worse as the century progressed and the population of the city expanded from approximately 40,000 at the end of the 18th century, 42,825 in 1802, 59,045 in 1821 to 66,554 in 1831. A description penned in 1834 described this scene " ... in the old town, below the vestiges of antiquarian interest are to be found the poor in more and deeper destitution in Limerick, than in any other place I had yet visited. I entered upwards of forty abodes of poverty; and to the latest hour of my existence, I can never forget the scenes of utter and hopeless wretchedness". Along side this the city expanded physically with huge investment in both commercial and domestic housing concentrated in Newtown Pery.

Low wages resulted in families who could rarely afford to rent more than one or two rooms for themselves and their families. Consequently many of the old buildings degenerated into the terrible slums described above, and so families moved into the buildings at the lower end of Newtown Pery, creating multiple occupancy abodes.

A contemporary description of Limerick written by W.M. Thackery in 1843 describes the Newtown Pery district of Limerick in the following way " ... you are, at first, half led to believe that you had arrived in a second Liverpool, so tall are the warehouses and broad the quays: so neat and trim a street of near a mile which stretches before you. But even this mile-long street does not, in a few minutes, appear to be so wealthy and prosperous as it shows at first glance: for of the population that throngs the streets, two fifths are bare footed women, and two fifths more ragged men: and the most part of the shops which have a grand show with them, appear when looked into, to be no better than they should be, being empty make-shift looking places, with their best goods outside.

Here, in this handsome street too, is a handsome clubhouse, with plenty of idlers you may be sure, lolling at the portico; likewise you see numerous young officers, with very tight waists and absurd brass shell-epaulettes to their little absurd frock coats, walking the pavement - dandies of the street. Then you behold troops of pear, apple and plum women, selling very raw, green looking fruit, which indeed, it is a wonder that anyone should eat and live ..."

Between 1845 - 9 there was "the famine" which brought migrants from the country-side into the city such that by 1852 Limerick was described thus by a traveler John Forbes" ... being now in a large city in one of the most Catholic districts of Ireland ... I visited two of the Catholic Chapels, St. Michael's and St. John's ... during the time of service. Though they were large, I found then not merely crowded but literally crammed with people ... and the chapel yard in both places were half filled with people. One of the priests of St. John's told me after the service, that there might be perhaps 3,000 persons in the chapel and its court, the Parish itself containing probably from 12,000 to 15,000 Catholics. The census of 1871 recorded that 88.5% of the city were Catholics.

The major building of the mid-19th century was St John's Cathedral, which was started in 1856. The cathedral was originally started as a replacement for the parish church of St John, however it was decided at an early stage to make it the cathedral church of the Diocese. The spire at 280 feet (86 mtr.) is the highest in Ireland. It was opened for worship in 1861 and shortly after John Dickson & Catherine Fitzgerald married in 1865.

By 1865 the Fenian movement was in full swing and thousands of Irish men were members and preparing for action to bring about home rule. A strength of the movement was its ability to draw support from those who had emigrated to both Britain and the U.S.A. and not unlike later years activity, the special function of the American body was to aid the Fenians toward a military struggle. There was a large population of American military officers, having been trained and gained experience in the civil war, who were able to lend support to activity designed to lead to home rule for Ireland. However, there is some indication that internal disagreements eventually led to the promise of physical supplies of arms to Ireland being abandoned. Whatever had happened, the cat was out of the bag, and the British government now forearmed were prepared for a Fenian struggle, which when it came in 1867 was suppressed, and its leaders condemned to prison.

In the last 35 years of the 19th century many ecclesiastical and agrarian reforms were effected in the country. Agitation for Home Rule, however, assumed a leading place in Irish politics. The cause found a champion of great ability in the Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell. At that time, also, many secret societies were working for the establishment of an Irish republic. As early as 1867 the more extreme members of these societies, calling themselves the Invincible, had started an abortive rebellion in counties Dublin and Kerry. In 1882 the same revolutionaries were responsible for the murder of the British chief secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick Charles Cavendish, and the under-secretary, Thomas Henry Burke, in protest against the Coercion Act of 1881, which gave the lord lieutenant of Ireland power to arrest any person on mere suspicion of treason, intimidation, and the like. The Crimes Act, which was passed soon after the dual murder, made the provisions of the Coercion Act more stringent. In England, Prime Minister William Gladstone attempted to resolve the Irish question by a Home Rule Bill, which he formally introduced in 1886. The bill would have given the Irish Parliament the right to appoint the executive of Ireland, although the taxing power was still supposed to be retained by the British Parliament. Parnell accepted the bill, but it was greatly opposed in Ulster and in England and did not pass the House of Commons. Gladstone introduced another Home Rule Bill in 1893, but it failed to pass the House of Lords.

During the last quarter of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century two new forces developed in Irish life that to a large degree stood apart from political and religious struggles: the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, inaugurated in 1894, and the Gaelic League, founded in 1903. The former aimed to do in the economic field what the latter attempted to do in the intellectual, that is, to rehabilitate Ireland from within. In 1902 the Irish political leader and journalist Arthur Griffith founded the Sinn Fein, which became a political party in 1905. At first an organisation to promote Irish economic welfare and to achieve the complete independence of Ireland, Sinn Fein became the most important political party in the country and a leading force in achieving ultimate independence.

Irish liberation from British rule was achieved as the result of a struggle extending over several centuries and marked by numerous rebellions. That "England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity" was the oldest principle of Ireland's long resistance to the British.

The Easter Rebellion, an uprising of Irish nationalists in Dublin on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, was doomed to fail, in part because of limited support from the Irish people. Britain's overreaction, however, including the execution of 15 Irish nationalist leaders, set the stage for the nationalist group Sinn Fein to replace Home Rule as the dominant political party. Founded in 1902 by Arthur Griffith, a Dublin journalist, Sinn Fein now called for Ireland to become a republic independent of Great Britain and for an end to the partition movement of the Protestant north. In the 1918 election, Sinn Fein candidates won 73 of the 106 seats allotted to Ireland in the British Parliament.

In January 1919 the Sinn Fein members of Parliament met in Dublin as the Dáil Éireann, or national assembly. They proclaimed Ireland's independence, and formed a government with Eamon De Valera as president. There followed guerrilla attacks by Irish insurgents, later called the Irish Republican Army (IRA), on British forces, particularly the Black and Tans, an auxiliary British police force. These attacks and British reprisals became an ugly war in which hundreds of people were killed.

In December 1920 the British Parliament enacted the Government of Ireland Bill, providing one parliament for the 6 counties of the Protestant north (Northern Ireland) and another for the remaining 26 counties. The people of Northern Ireland accepted this limited home rule, and elected a separate parliament in May 1921. Efforts to implement the new government in the other 26 counties served only to solidify Sinn Fein's position. The guerrilla war ended with a truce on July 11. Negotiations between representatives of the Dáil and the British government of Prime Minister David Lloyd George produced a treaty signed on December 6, 1921, whereby the 26 counties would become the Irish Free State within the Commonwealth of Nations, with a status equal to that of Canada and a modified oath of allegiance to the British monarch. The Dáil ratified the treaty on January 15, 1922, by a vote of 64 to 57. De Valera, who opposed the treaty, resigned as president of the Dáil and was replaced by Griffith. Michael Collins, another Sinn Fein leader, became chairman of the provisional government.

Shannon, river, rising at the foot of Cuilcagh Mountain in the northern part of the country, and flowing about 354 km (about 220 miles) to the Atlantic Ocean between Loop Head and Kerry Head. The longest river in the British Isles, it forms an estuary about 97 km (about 60 mi) long below Limerick, to which it is navigable by a chain of locks for vessels up to about 900 metric tons. North from Limerick, the Shannon is navigable for most of its length for small craft. Canals connect the river with the Irish Sea at Dublin. A hydroelectric power station on the river is located at Ardnacrusha, near Limerick.

Dublin (Gaelic Baile Átha Cliath, "Town of the Ford of the Hurdles"), capital, county borough, and seaport of the Republic of Ireland, county town of county Dublin, in Leinster Province. It is at the mouth of the Liffey River, on Dublin Bay, an inlet of the Irish Sea. The city is linked by ship services with Cork, Ireland; Belfast, Northern Ireland; and various ports in England, Scotland, and France. It is also served by railroads that provide connections with important points in Ireland.