Cleansing Rural Dublin: Public Health and Housing Initiatives in the South

The slum condition in nineteenth-century Dublin is a well-documented feature of the citys past. As a result, much is now known of the overcrowded tenements and their poverty stricken inhabitants. However, yet another community existed in Dublin at this time, which also suffered the indignation of poverty and disease, yet little is known of their plight. These were Dublins rural poor, an agricultural community populating the townlands and villages of the wider county beyond the municipality. This pamphlet, while addressing the vital issue of public health in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Dublin, instead chooses the territorial boundaries of the South Dublin Poor Law Union as its geographical unit of study. Areas covered in detail include the parishes of Rathfarnham, Clondalkin, Tallaght and Crumlin. While a lot of the place-names are still familiar to todays reader, many more have since disappeared. As a study in local history it is concerned primarily with the lives