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Irish Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
The people who gave Ireland back part of its past
The recent announcement that the Virtual Treasury project , with its mission to recover archival records lost in the fire that wrecked the Public Record Office (PRO) at the start of the Civil War in 1922, has retrieved 60,000 names from the pre-famine census records that were destroyed, garnered much national and international interest. Boldly imaginative and ambitious, this project was conceived by Dr Peter Crooks of Trinity College Dublin in 2015 and has involved great effort on the part of archivists and historians to locate material in Irish and international archives. An all-island collaborative research endeavour, it involves millions of words being 'linked and reassembled from copies, transcripts and other records scattered among the collections' of numerous archives, including as far away as Australia. A project supported by the State, it is a reminder of Ireland's leading role in digitising and making accessible archival sources, previously underlined by the success of the digitisation and free access to the 1901 and 1911 census returns. Crooks has maintained that the Virtual Treasury project is guided by the spirit of Herbert Wood, the deputy keeper of the PRO, which was established by the Public Record Act (Ireland) 1867. Wood saw the archival records as belonging to the public, not academics: 'The history of a country is founded upon its archives, and the preservation not only of its public but also of its private documents'. He was devastated by the incineration of the priceless records in 1922, as 'the Irish Record Office is starting again like a new country almost without a history'. The project to recover 'seven centuries of Irish history' Listen | 24:57 In 1930, Wood spoke of 'how the body of public records may be reconstructed from duplicates or copies which may be found in other repositories or which have fortunately been printed ... to the numerous literary searchers, who, for over half a century, have been seeking material for their studies in the Record Office, we must be grateful, for much of the result of their research has appeared in print, and thus copies of many a document have been preserved ... It will be a useful and interesting work for some student to wade through all the Irish antiquarian publications and note any copies of public records appearing in those publications.' READ MORE Almost a century on, that work is being embraced with gusto and it is a cultural achievement to be admired. Another relevant spirit in this context is that of Robert Dudley Edwards, UCD professor of modern Irish history from 1944 to 1979, who devoted much of his career to raising archival awareness and whose work and complex personality are uncovered in detail in a new book by his granddaughter Neasa MacErlean, Telling the Truth is Dangerous: How Robert Dudley Edwards Changed Irish History Forever . Dudley Edwards was no saint and the book underlines how he could at times be disputative, inebriated and cruel, but he was an inspiring teacher and had an exceptional sense of purpose and public service. He spent much time traversing the country building awareness of the need to preserve local and national and personal and private documents. As someone centrally involved in building the framework for the academic study of history, he emphasised the importance of proper training and methodological soundness for historians and established the archives department in UCD. [ Black Death, Newgrange and the American Revolution: a virtual trove of Irish history rediscovered Opens in new window ] He was equally aware of the importance of extending the reach of history and archives beyond the confines of the university. Exactly 50 years ago he was vocal about the need for proper archives legislation in Ireland, as in its absence 'historians will necessarily have to rely on British archives for the last word' on Irish history. The answer to his plea eventually came with the National Archives Act of 1986, implemented just before his death in 1988. It is striking how the preoccupations and central messages of both Wood and Dudley Edwards continue to resonate, especially during this era when there is, in some quarters, such a cavalier and dangerous distortion of history and contempt for evidence, and where skewed and selective accounts of the past are weaponised, with devastating results. Dudley Edwards and his generation of historians were particularly mindful of that danger given that they came to public prominence during and after the second World War. In addition, some of the Irish historians of that era who studied in Britain before returning to Ireland, were, as noted by Robert's son Owen, also a historian, 'in a state of boiling rage at the ignorance of Irish history among English historians'. Dudley Edwards was happy, however, to invite British historian Herbert Butterfield to Dublin 80 years ago to deliver a lecture. Butterfield outlined what should be the essential mission of the historian: 'seeking only to make human understanding more profound'. That task is not the preserve of the professional historian; it is relevant to anyone who takes the past seriously.
Irish Times
30-06-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Worldwide interest expected as 19th-century Irish census records recovered and put online
The fire that destroyed the Public Records Office during the Irish Civil War also destroyed 700 years worth of records. Chancery records detailing British rule in Ireland going back to the 14th century and grants of land by the crown along with thousands of wills, title deeds and parish registers were incinerated when a fire broke out in the grounds of the Four Courts, which held the PRO, on June 30th, 1922. By common consent the worst loss of all was the pre-famine 19th-century census records. In an act of unparalleled archival vandalism the British authorities had destroyed the 1861 and 1871 census records so that they could not be used for the 'gratification of curiosity'. The 1881 and 1891 censuses were pulped during the first World War because of the shortage of paper. The British saw the censuses as purely a numbers game, not a valuable archive for future research. That left the pre-famine censuses of 1821, 1831 and 1841 still intact, but these were almost entirely destroyed in the fire. READ MORE The Virtual Treasury project was set up to try to recover as many of the lost documents as possible. Hundreds of thousands of documents have been retrieved where copies have been found in archives elsewhere, but the census records were always the priority. Thanks to years of work on the part of Brian Gurrin, the treasury's population and census specialist, some 60,000 names and counting have been recovered from 19th-century censuses. Four volumes from the 1821 census survived the fire, including the entire records for the Aran Islands, and have been in the National Archives of Ireland since. The Aran Islands was entirely Irish-speaking at the time, but the names are all recorded in English. They were available previously on microfilm, but that necessitated a visit to the National Archives. 'Brian's detective work has given them a whole new lease of life,' said Zoë Reid, the keeper of manuscripts at the National Archives of Ireland. They have now been digitised. Other copies have been found from diligent genealogists who would copy census records for research purposes. 'We talk about 60,000 names, but there are many, many more to go in. We haven't finished the process,' said Mr Gurrin. Virtual Record Treasury co-director Ciarán Wallace added: 'When we go to county libraries as part of a roadshow, the first question is, 'have you found the census yet?'. We have put a huge effort into finding anything we can of the censuses,' he said All the census names have been looked at individually and entered by hand. No machine learning or AI was used. All the census data has been consolidated in the population portal. Everywhere that a name or names have been recovered is denoted with a pin where users can zoom in to reveal the details. The interest is not only within Ireland. Tens of millions of people, especially in the United States, are descended from 19th-century Irish emigrants. Half of all visitors to the virtual treasury come from abroad. The census records are part of 175,000 new historical records that will be available from Monday, June 30th, the 103rd anniversary of the Public Records fire. The project has been led by Trinity College Dublin and supported by the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport and the National Archives of Ireland. Also included in the release is the Age of Revolution portal which includes contemporary accounts from the Irish House of Commons about the American revolution and the 1798 rebellion, five million words of Anglo-Norman (1170-1500) Irish history translated into English and more than 10 million words on governing Ireland in the dramatic years following Cromwell's death. Virtual Record Treasury academic director Dr Peter Crooks described the recovery of 60,000 census names as a 'tremendous achievement. What we have uncovered after years of painstaking archival work will help families across the world trace their story deeper into the Irish past.' He added: 'The scale, scope and significance of these materials is remarkable. They will be of huge interest to anyone exploring Ireland's story as a global island.'
