The war effort was imposing much greater burdens on the city. As in 1915, the British military authorities requisitioned all hay crops within ten miles of Dublin for its cavalry regiments and transport corps. On this occasion, however, the move was accompanied by a government order that allowed the Army Council to fix maximum prices. While provision was made for releasing unused fodder, the process proved slow and cumbersome. As early as July the Dublin Chamber of Commerce was complaining of shortages.13
Even more affected than business was the city’s health. The secretary of the corporation, Fred Allan, an old IRB man,14 wrote to the military authorities ‘in the strongest terms’ on the matter. He told the corporation that
during the present hot weather it is highly important that the portion of the City cleansing work which most vitally affects the public health, viz., the house to house removal of refuse must be efficiently maintained, and it would be extremely serious if, through either a deficiency of proper foodstuffs or the enforced use of inferior material, any large proportion of their stud were put out of action.
The fodder shortage remained a problem throughout the war, adding to the general air of resentment against the army. The fact that thousands of tons of hay were stored openly for the army at the docks while horses and cattle in the city starved only inflamed public opinion. On 1 August 1916, 1,400 tons of fodder, worth £11,200, were destroyed by fire, along with lorries worth £125 11s. As four ricks were set alight simultaneously, and the hay had been thoroughly pressed and dried, spontaneous combustion could be ruled out. This meant that the cost of compensation under the malicious damages legislation fell on the corporation.
Fortunately for the ratepayers, there were no further serious incidents, but complaints continued to be voiced to the military authorities about their purchasing policies. In December 1917 Colonel McCullagh, the officer responsible for fodder collection in the Dublin area, told a delegation of city councillors that he had checked that very week and found that large quantities of hay had been released by the army for sale. If it could be shown that private suppliers were abusing their position he would cancel their licences and offer the forage to the city and commercial customers at military rates. For their part the city councillors urged the army to extend the catchment area from a ten-mile radius of the city to twenty-five miles to allow military fodder targets to be achieved faster and the balance of the crop to be released onto the market.15
Beyond business needs and those of the corporation, the most pressing requirement for fodder came from the city’s dairies. There were five hundred of these, with 7,500 head of cattle, represented by the Cow Keepers’ and Dairymen’s Association. Members ranged in size from relatively large businesses to small dairies such as that of Todd Andrews’ parents and even smaller enterprises dependent on one or two animals to keep their owners from penury. Besides fodder, the cowkeepers had enjoyed access to cheap feed in the form of waste from the city’s breweries and distilleries. Guinness’s brewery found its overseas customers, including the Prussian cavalry, cut off by the outbreak of war. The closing of these markets helped increase the flow of feed to the Dublin market, and, true to its tradition of civic responsibility, the Guinness brewery continued to supply what was prime material at pre-war prices. This helped keep the price of milk at pre-war prices until the summer of 1916.
However, in the long run there was an inexorable decline in the supply of feedstuffs as a result of the production of beer and spirits. The replacement of Asquith by Lloyd George as Prime Minister at the end of 1916 accelerated state intervention in the drinks industry and the economy at large. In December the Dublin distilleries, which had been ordered in August 1916 to cut their already reduced output by a further 30 per cent, were taken over completely by the Department of Munitions. From then on they concentrated on the production of industrial alcohol for the war effort. Beer production had already fallen by 7 per cent in the first two years of the war, but now it tumbled rapidly, from 3.53 million barrels in 1914 to 3.28 million in 1916 and to 1.46 million in 1919, only 59 per cent of production in 1914. Employment in the distilleries and breweries had fallen by 50 per cent by 1917.16
From the summer of 1916 onwards the city’s cowkeepers had no option but to bid on the open market for fodder, much of it of inferior quality. Higher costs and reduced output caused milk prices to rise from 3d to 4d a quart in October. This was a relatively small increase compared with other staples. Retail prices generally had increased by about 150 per cent by the middle of 1916 and would reach 240 per cent by 1919. However, the increase in milk prices struck a nerve, as the poverty of many Dubliners made them heavily dependent on milk as one of the cheapest and most efficient sources of nourishment. Children were the most dependent of all, and the city’s infant mortality rate, already the highest in the United Kingdom when the war began, at 141 per thousand, rose to over 155. As the Minister of Food Control, Lord Rhondda, told a Baby Week conference in Dublin, more British babies died of disease, malnourishment and neglect in 1915 than men on active service in France and Flanders. He believed that infant mortality in a city such as Dublin, where infants accounted for a fifth of all deaths, could be halved by better nutrition and hygiene.17
If a major cause of infant mortality was the poor quality of milk, the fines were paltry. The chief medical officer of the city, Dr Charles Cameron, said after a tour of the dairies that ‘many were so situated and managed that the chances of milk being uncontaminated are remarkably slight.’ It was commonly accepted not only that hygiene in the dairies was poor but that milk sold before 10 a.m. or after 4 p.m. was routinely adulterated, as the food inspectors rarely worked outside office hours.18
At its meeting on 9 October the Dublin Trades Council denounced the cowkeepers as members of ‘a criminal class’ conspiring to rob the public. A Milk Prices Order introduced in November only aggravated shortages, as Dublin dairies followed the example of their Belfast counterparts and began selling milch cows for the export market to Britain. In November the corporation’s Public Health Committee debated buying milk in bulk from rural creameries to supply at subsidised prices in the city. But market pressures were such that the corporation was forced to offer 1s 2d a gallon to rural dairies, and even then it was relying on a large measure of good will, because British bulk buyers for the dried-milk industry were already offering up to 1s 8d to meet War Office contracts.19
The price of other staples, such as sugar, meat, eggs, potatoes and tea, rose far faster than milk. Tea was one of the worst-affected items, because it had to be imported on ships that ran the gauntlet of mines and German submarines. The price doubled from 3d a pound in 1914 to 6d a pound by 1916 and would rise even faster in 1917 when the German submarine campaign was stepped up.
The Irish Sea attracted relatively little submarine activity before the introduction of the convoy system in 1917, because of the richer pickings in the North Sea, the English Channel and the Western Approaches. There had been some serious incidents, most notably in January 1915 when the Leinster, one of the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company’s mail boats, had a narrow escape east of the Kish Bank on a home run from Holyhead. Its luck would hold out almost to the end of the war; but smaller, slower steamers and fishing boats were not so lucky.
At first German submarine commanders allowed crews to take to the lifeboats before sinking vessels, but attitudes hardened as the war progressed and allied counter-measures made it dangerous for submarines to linger on the surface. The sinking of vessels such as the 3,839-ton Hartdale with the loss of two lives in March 1915 and of the 2,114-ton Aguila with the loss of three lives in April paled before the almost 1,200 lives lost when the Lusitania went down off Galley Head, Co. Cork. Part of the cultural collateral damage for Dublin was the loss of Sir Hugh Lane, a passenger on board. He was not only the director of the National Gallery but had left a bequest of his priceless impressionist paintings to the city. Unfortunately the codicil to his will had never been witnessed, and ownership of the co
llection would be a matter of controversy for decades.
Meanwhile many of the Lusitania’s survivors were brought to Dublin. The Irish Times, which had confidently predicted that ‘any steamer of moderate speed which gets fair warning can escape’ a German submarine, had to revise its opinions after the loss of the Lusitania, and it published advice from the Admiralty that British ships should not scruple about sailing under neutral colours to increase their chances of survival.20
The British government had moved quickly to pre-empt a collapse of the maritime insurance business by underwriting 80 per cent of potential shipping losses, but the cost of Irish imports was nevertheless bound to rise. By 1917 premiums would increase by almost 50 per cent for relatively new vessels but had almost doubled for the older ships that were the mainstay of the Irish mercantile marine.21
If higher tea prices were a hardship, the shortage of coal threatened an already ailing economy. When members of the Irish Association of Gas Managers assembled for their annual general meeting in City Hall they denounced British contractors, merchants and ship-owners for ‘availing of their position as monopolists to make huge profits out of the opportunities afforded them by the war.’ The behaviour of the ship-owners was singled out as ‘very unpatriotic.’ They had gone one better than the mine-owners and railways by raising freight prices even faster than the price of coal. While coal was 80 per cent dearer in August 1916 than in August 1914, shipping freight rates were 229 per cent higher. What was particularly galling for the association was that the Price of Coal (Limitation) Act (1915) had not been applied to Ireland, although Irish municipal gas companies were still locked in to price control mechanisms based on pre-war legislation that meant they could not pass on the costs.22
When it convened after the rising, Dublin Corporation, hardly a socialist gathering, passed a motion proposed by Alfie Byrne calling on the British government to place all shipping under state control, ‘so as to limit the monstrous and utterly indefensible prices charged for coal and food, which is being caused by the extraordinary freights charged by companies who are making vast fortunes out of the War.’23 The high prices were also fuelled by an increase of 75 per cent in handling charges for stevedoring companies by the Dublin Port and Docks Board and a 10 per cent increase for shipping lines in 1916. At the same time dredging operations were scaled back, and there was a moratorium on purchasing new equipment.
In the new year, dissatisfaction with the performance of the board led city councillors to call for legislation so that the Port and Docks Board could be elected directly by the ratepayers rather than dominated by business interests. However, the Irish Independent accused the councillors of ‘impertinence’ and said they had ‘made a muddle of every important undertaking … attempted during the last twenty-five years.’ The lack of a response from the government suggested that it concurred.24
When the Ministry of Shipping eventually granted Byrne’s wish in late 1917 by taking over control of the industry, it placed the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company under the direction of the London and North-Western Railway. There was outrage at the following meeting of the Port and Docks board. No-one was louder in his denunciations than Alderman Byrne at ‘the only Irish company they had’ being put under the control of its main British rival. Representatives of the company assured the board that it was all for the best, as the company could no longer afford to pay the insurance premiums needed to cover the loss of vessels, cargoes, passengers or crews. They had no fears about loss of trade, because of the insatiable demand for Irish livestock and other agricultural exports by Britain.25 Regrettably, their optimism proved ill-founded, and it was the beginning of the end for the world’s oldest steamship company.
The primary reason that prices of essential items, such as insurance and fuel, continued to rise was that priority had to be given to war industries and to the armed forces. If coal supplies in 1916 were ‘a trickle of the peace time supply and the city faced the perpetual fear of a coal famine,’ supplies would fall by a further third in 1917 and another quarter in 1918. The reduction in 1918 was due to the withdrawal of coastal steamers for use by the Admiralty. This affected coal shipments to the south of England as well, but only by 17 per cent, because road and rail traffic in England could make up much of the difference.
The Admiralty’s decision reinforced the feeling in Dublin that the city was being discriminated against by the British establishment. A meeting of Dublin Corporation in March 1918 passed a motion protesting against ‘the unfair proportion of reduction applied to Ireland as opposed with S. England.’ The same motion called for the Public Health Committee to be given powers to investigate the hoarding of coal and food by householders and businesses. Unionist and ratepayer elements on the corporation joined with UIL nationalists, Sinn Féin and Labour in ‘demanding that adequate shipping be secured for Dublin to allow the city’s trade to continue’ and ‘proper protection for all Dublin-trading boats.’ When P. T. Daly added that they should ‘take immediate strong action’ if fuel shortages caused the loss of further jobs in the city, Alderman Dinnage, leader of the unionist group, concurred.26
These difficulties still lay ahead when the corporation received another unpleasant reminder of the burdens of war at its meeting on 7 August 1916. A letter from Lieutenant-Colonel A. Welby, secretary of the statutory committee for the implementation of the Naval and Military War Pensions Act, demanded to know why the corporation had not established a scheme for making various contingency payments to the dependants of servicemen for loss of income due to enlistment, death or injury. He pointed out that Belfast and Cork had already established schemes and that Dublin County Council was in the process of doing so. Dublin Corporation was given a month to follow suit.
So far the administration of these emergency payments had been done by voluntary bodies, but these could no longer cope with the volume of claims. The government had taken over the responsibility for making all payments and voted £6 million to put the administration of the scheme on a more uniform and structured basis. The need for a more efficient system was vital in ensuring that would-be recruits were not discouraged by worries that dependants might have to wait weeks for separation allowances to be processed. There was also a need to show that war widows and men returning disabled from the war were not suffering undue hardship.
The statutory committee recommended that, in taking over the duties of the voluntary agencies, the corporation should co-opt some members of the latter to the new body. In fact it was quite precise on membership: besides the Lord Mayor and eight members of the corporation it proposed
two persons (one a lady) nominated by the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families’ Association, two persons nominated by the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Help Society (one a lady), two persons nominated by Local Representative Relief Committees (one a lady), two persons from the Irish Automobile Club, and four persons from local Labour organisations.27
The inclusion of women nominees from so many bodies illustrated their increasing role in the war effort.
Nowhere were women more needed for war work than in nursing; but the pay for staff nurses set by the military authorities was only £40 to £45 a year, less than that of an unskilled labourer. Many nurses in Dublin earned even less, and in some country areas pay as low as 11s 6d a week was reported. In contrast, a doctor entering military service received an officer’s commission and was paid at least the Royal Army Medical Corps rates and often significantly more, depending on qualifications and experience. Attempts within the profession to set up a nursing register to improve training standards and pay had been disrupted by the war; but such was the demand for nurses that the Queen Alexandra Imperial Military Service and Joint War Committee advertised in Ireland in late 1916 for women aged between twenty-five and thirty-five, single or widowed, with at least three years’ training in a large civilian hospital, with the promise of an annual ‘clothing and cloak’ allowance of £8 to £9 to top up their pay.28
The Irish Nurse
s’ Association and Irish Matrons’ Association, which tended to share the same leadership, lobbied the Lord Lieutenant and the British government strongly for a system of statutory training and registration. They frequently did so in conjunction with their English counterparts, with whom they enjoyed a love-hate relationship during the war. A relatively large proportion of Irish nurses came from a Protestant middle-class background, which probably helped account for a strong affinity with the war effort. There was also a growing realisation that the high losses of potential marriage partners in the war meant that many nurses would have to be economically self-sufficient in the long run, and their pay and conditions should reflect this.29
The Matrons’ Association sought to promote these concerns without overtly challenging the British authorities. Its members held much the same views on many issues. For instance, it condemned the shooting of Edith Cavell by the Germans as a spy,30 and it supported a proposal from Lady Fingall, in her capacity as president of the Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Association, to have a woman inspector appointed to monitor separation women and war widows to ensure that they were not cohabiting. These inspections served the dual purpose of reassuring men at the front that their wives were being morally policed and saving the exchequer money by not supporting ‘fallen’ women.
The Irish Matrons’ Association also affiliated to the National Union of Women Workers, the main campaigning body in Britain for working women in a wide variety of occupations during the war. This helped to significantly widen the association’s views on women’s issues. This wider view of the world fuelled the association’s growing resentment at attempts by their British counterparts to dictate policy, including proposals that Irish nurses should go to London to sit qualifying examinations. There was widespread anger when a plan was unveiled for establishing a British College of Nursing in which Ireland would have only six of the thirty-six places on the board. Irish matrons would have none of it. ‘Patriotic Irishwoman’ wrote in the May 1916 issue of the British Journal of Nursing: ‘Nurses are mostly strong loyalists, although I know patriots who are not, and it is because it is so difficult for the English to understand the Irish, and to realise their real feelings and convictions, that there has always been trouble in governing them.’
A City in Wartime Page 20
