Dublin reformed : the transformation of the municipal governance of a Victorian city, 1840-1860

Abstract

This thesis investigates the reform of Dublin Corporation and its activities from 1840 until the early 1860s. Nineteenth-century Dublin in particular has been overlooked in Irish historiography and, consequently, in general urban histories. The two main works on Dublin are Hill’s Patriots to Unionists (1997) and Daly’s Dublin: The Deposed Capital (1985). Hill covers Dublin city politics from the seventeenth-century until 1840, during which time Protestant freemen in effect controlled the city, while Daly explores Dublin from 1860 until the early twentieth-century, a period throughout which a large portion of Protestants had settled in the suburbs and Catholic nationalists dominated the city council. Dublin in the period between 1840 and 1860 has never been fully researched.