In Catholic Dublin (continued).

Chapter XVI.

In Catholic Dublin

We are not concerned in this chapter with the small and fashionable section of Roman Catholic Dublin which can boast of society as estimable as can be found in any city in the world, but with the struggling and the poor. It is five o’clock in the afternoon of Sunday, in September 1901, and I am in the Phoenix Park. Pale women in hundreds are struggling up the slope from the main gate in Parkgate Street, either on the footpaths of the main road or through the People’s Gardens, with infants in their arms and smoking husbands by their sides, or clutched at hand and skirt by toddling youngsters requiring to be towed.

The electric tram has stopped outside the gate, not permitted to come farther; not permitted to carry those gasping, weak-loined mothers and those pale infants up the hill into the fresh air, where the grass and the trees make it so pleasant to rest. The Government is willing to let the trams into the park, but the popular press unanimously oppose the concession in the alleged interests of a score or two of jarvies. The Phoenix Park, and all its beauties, the plain of the Fifteen Acres, the Furry Glen with its lake, the view of the salmon-weir from the Magazine bluff, and the many prospects of the winding, placid Liffey, and of the blue Dublin mountains, are all therefore inaccessible to those hundreds of poor Dublin mothers and their infants, to whom the Park might be such a priceless boon; and to those lazy or tired Dublin artisans; and those pale-faced Dublin girls with their wealth of glossy hair, all of whom would gladly pay a penny for the tram.

It is such a long walk up the hill to the Phoenix Column, past the front of the Viceregal Lodge, to that central space midway in the main road, where those three great houses, tenanted by the Government’s three chief officials in Ireland - to wit, the lord-lieutenant, the chief-secretary, and the under-secretary - front each other, occupying the best portion of the Phoenix Park. Such a long uphill climb from Parkgate Street for men, and above all, for women, who have had scant rest and no good air for six days! Yet this middle-space, where the official lodges stand, is only half-way to the Castleknock Gate, and having reached it, you have not seen half the Park.

It is five o’clock on a September Sunday afternoon, as I have said. The Park is in the vicinity of the Parkgate Street Gate - that is to say, the portion of it between the Zoo and the gate, including the People’s Gardens - is full of people. All the rest of the eighteen hundred acres, glen and plain, is deserted, except by some dozens of young couples, by many bicyclists, by several groups of boys at play, or by dust-raising outside cars with wild students and gay young shopmen, who can afford to pay the expiring race of Park jarvies, bound for Knockmaroon and the Strawberry Beds.

A band is playing in the Hollow between the People’s Garden and the Zoo. The green sward under the noble elms is alive with humanity - men, women, youths and children. The soldiers’ scarlet, the constabulary men’s black, the girls’ many-coloured dresses and glorious hair of various hues, the white clothing of the children, all are spread out beneath my eyes, and form a living picture which cannot be surpassed.

I am looking down at it from the high-road at the gates of the People’s Gardens. The lugubrious notes of “Just Before the Battle, Mother,” wail their melancholy dirge from cornet, flute, trombone, and flageolet, and the sadness of the popular tune fills the Hollow. Dance-music of our own, Irish, devil-may-care variety follows quickly. And then the martial American air, “John Brown’s Body Lies Mouldering in the Grave,” splits high heaven with its brazen strains.

Meanwhile the urchins scramble on the sward, the men lie smoking on the slopes of the Hollow, the women sit at rest with anxious eyes upon the infants. That is Sunday afternoon at its best in poor Catholic Dublin. It is the best outdoor Sunday sight to look upon in Dublin for one who loves the people. Grass, clouds, blue ether, trees, deer, cattle, flowers, gravelled walks, lakes, smooth-shaven lawns; and music, bending the mind towards gayer and more romantic, if not higher, trains of thought; and, best of all, people, abundance of people, of all ages everywhere the eye may chance to turn! If you want to see our Catholic Sunday at its worst go down into the purlieus of the city, into the public-houses; into the tenement houses, into the pro-cathedral region.

But here, even in the Park, and without descending into the purlieus, you may see some of the worst manifestations of the Irish character in free-play, those traits which have given us a bad name in every clime. Churlish bigotry, impious language are in full swing close at hand. Can this be true? Come, let us test it.

Walk fifty paces with me from the Hollow, and take your stand at the Gough Monument on the main road. Two or three virtuous-looking, bare-headed men and some quietly dressed ladies are standing in a group on the grass preaching the self-sacrifice of Christ and the salvation He bought for all mankind by his death. Or perhaps they are singing a hymn in soft, clear-ringing voices in praise of God who made the blue vault under which they stand; in praise of God who caused those giant elms round about them to grow; in praise of God who holds in the hollow of His hand those dappled deer, those grazing cattle, those boys and girls romping on the steps of the Wellington Monument, this great Park itself, this Atlantic-girt island of Ireland, the whole earth, and countless worlds besides.

But mark the four massive and judicial-visaged Dublin policemen. They stand close beside the group who raise their voices in praise of God. And mark the crowd of 50 or 60 youths, aged from 15 to 20, who are shouting and swearing, and foaming at the mouth, and speaking filth into the faces of those healthy-looking, fearless praisers of God. Hearken with horror to language as vile as ever re-echoed in the worst slum in the pro-cathedral parish og Dublin which is being hurled at those earnest, inoffensive preachers and hymn-singers who praise God, the All-Bountiful. Could anything evince a lower degree of civilisation?

You look up at the blue sky and wonder that fire does not fall from blast and blast those young curs who thus bark at men and women for daring to stand in the open air and sing a hymn in plain English in praise of that God who gives breath to their lungs, and endows them with a mind to ennoble their sin-beset bodies. You wonder that God does not strike down those human yelpers of sinful languages, and you can only say with resignation, as the dying President M’Kinley said, “It is His way.”

Those snarling youth are Catholic boys, our fellow-religionists, fellow-citizens and fellow-countrymen, the descendants of saints and scholars. They are not devils’ spawn; they are not Hottentots. There are not many men in Dublin, I rejoice to say, vile enough to act so intolerantly. Is there one adult disturber amongst them? If there be, then the exception proves the rule. There are a few groggy-looking fellows and a cantankerous, well-clad elderly man.

Where are the priests? They are disporting themselves all over the city, and no one ever yet heard the conduct of those Dublin men and boys condemned by priest or monk in church or school. A serious word from the priests would stop the degrading display which is witnessed in the Park every Sunday by so many strangers - to our national discredit. But that serious word is never spoken. Indeed, the sort of doctrine which the Catholic youth learn from the pulpits whenever they chance to hear a sermon at mass, is calculated to make them bigots. I do not impute it to any individual priest, secular or regular, that he would directly incite to violence in any concrete case, but the trend of our priests’ preaching is to perpetuate enmity between us and other Christian denominations. Father Wheeler, a Jesuit, and a quiet kind of man, is reported as exclaiming at Harold’s Cross:-

“Far be it from me to make use of exaggeration or to stir up bad feeling, but it is a fact patent to all that there exists in the city an odious system by which, through the medium of unlimited wealth, people are endeavouring to lead the children of the wretchedly poor from the Catholic faith. Let them try and realise what a fearful temptation was placed in the way of the very poor!” [Freeman, Feb. 19, 1902.]

While Father Kane, another Jesuit, is widely reported as holding forth thus in Gardiner Street [Irish Catholic, Feb 22, 1902.]:-

“It is the old Church that has an actual mission; It is the old faith that is a living fact. Hence they could listen to no new prophets, and they would simply, absolutely and remorselessly brand as false any teaching that denied the old faith.” Referring to the” so-called Reformation,” Father Kane is reported as saying: “It was a reformation of divine authority to teach in order to suit the whims of private judgment or the insolence of free thought; a reformation of spiritual authority in order to make Parliament an arbiter of divine dogma, and to make bishops the creatures of a king; a reformation of sacred vows to God *in order to let loose vicious monks and nuns; *a reformation of holy marriage in order to admit of adultery; a reformation of fasting in order to suit the glutton; a reformation of penance in order to suit the profligate; a reformation through which flowed the poison and corruption that had been festering within the Church; a reformation that sought to justify its existence by blotting out more than a hundred years of Christmas history; a reformation that ignored or laughed at Christ’s promise to His apostles that to the end of ages they should not err; a reformation that snapped its fingers in the face of the living and told the millions of martyrs, virgins, confessors, doctors, in whose lives since Calvary the Gospel light had shone amidst the darkness, that they were swindlers, fools, or knaves. And why? Because an apostate monk who lived with a runaway nun, and who boasted that he could tell the brew of any beer in Germany, chose to be rebellious as well as bad: and because in England a king, adulterer and murderer, wanted to put away his wife and marry his mistress.”

Such imputation only lead on to suspect the chastity, sobriety, and general perfection of the preacher who, when he was thus calumniating Martin Luther, was speaking to a crowded church. And I can imagine - for I have often attended that church - how the denizens of that most decadent part of respectable Dublin heaved a sigh and congratulated themselves as they left the church upon being within the true fold. It is amazing how social decay ever goes hand in hand with clerical fatness. The only concern in that district which is prospering is the Jesuit’s establishment at Gardiner Street. They have recently doubled or trebled the size of the residential quarters to provide, it is alleged , for fugitive French Jesuitry. Everything else in the neighbourhood but their religious emporium is going down. Mountjoy Square, and the grand streets adjoining it, are in the hands of people at the present moment who are several degrees lower than those who inhabited that locality thirty years ago. But the Jesuits and their church flourish with increasing vigour as the locality decays. About three o’clock every afternoon you will notice a number of mysterious priests in black broadcloth emerging from the residence-house attached to this Jesuit church one by one. I have often marvelled at the number of them who come forth about that hour of the afternoon and proceed to disperse themselves all over the town, visiting Catholics who are well off; in furtherance of their objects. They are the most persistent and the most successful, and, at the same time, the most undemonstrative of all the mendicant Orders in Ireland. The loud-voiced Dominican, who tries to rival them in this locality of Dublin, finds himself outstripped in every branch of religious commerce by the Jesuit.

When a Jesuit dines in a house where the company are not completely under his domination, or where Protestants are present, I notice that nothing can exceed his patience and humility. He never misses a chance of inculcating the extreme poverty of himself and his Order upon those with whom he associates on terms of intimacy. He has been known, after being entertained at dinner at a well-to-do Dublin Catholic’s house, to ask the hostess for a penny or twopence to pay his tram-fare back to Gardiner Street. The Jesuit Society has, perhaps, more strings to its bow than any other community of priests in Ireland. They have, for instance, a man to cater in a mild way for sincere temperance people. They have *bon-vivants *to please those who are fond of wine, good living and good stories. They have abstemious, ascetic-looking men to win their way into the confidence of ladies, who go in for the religious cult, and who may be presented by those ladies to their friends in power at the Viceregal Lodge, the chief-secretary’s lodge, or the castle. They have burly, stentorian Jesuits to orate and fume in remote country districts, when they are invited by the local parish priest to give a retreat or a mission. In a word, the Jesuit body can be all things to all men and all women. They may be - and it is not admitting much - better educated that the general run of the religious Orders in Ireland; but they are, perhaps, on that account all the more objectionable, and all the greater drag upon the country. Whenever there was trouble in Ireland the Jesuit was always found absent or invisible. During the land agitation, for instance, nobody ever heard the Jesuits raising their voice in the interests of peace. They were in their burrows like moles. But in the confusion which followed the death of Mr. Parnell, and when politics were at a very low ebb in Ireland, the Jesuits came forth to glean.

Father Kane’s hearers listened complacently to the oft-told calumny about the first reformers and the low suggestions which accompanied it. Our priests complain if they are accused of immorality by Protestant writers and speakers in England. Why, then, should they rake up such low scandals about the men who risked life and property to save North Europe from the sensual clutch of the Popes? I do not myself believe that any cause can be advanced by singling out the failings of individual men and women for objurgation. I object to such methods when employed against our priests. I also object to them when employed by our priests against our Protestant fellow-citizens to excite the passions of the lower classes.

Martin Luther, the reviled, must have been even a greater wonder-worker than I regard him, if, being a friar, and wishing to marry a young lady who happened to be a nun, and solely to accomplish his own personal gratification, he succeeded in making all North Europe cast off the papal yoke, and by the religious and mental emancipation thus won, revolutionised the entire condition of the world for the better. For it is to the Protestantism, or the free-thought in religion then established, that we owe everything of progress and improvement which has been achieved since. Should a Jesuit take it into his head to elope with one of the nuns next door to his chapel in Gardiner Street, I venture to say no such world-reforming consequences would follow. I certainly should not fasten upon the incident as an argument against the Jesuits. If I attack institutions, my attack will always be grounded upon fundamental principles and general consequences, not upon the failings of individuals.

I do not impute to Father Wheeler or Father Kane responsibility for such a reprehensible occurrence as the following by no means exceptional incident reported recently in the police news of the popular Dublin press:-

Police constable 66 D, charged B. C., an apprentice to the provision trade, with throwing a stone at a preacher of the Plymouth Brethren, who were holding an open-air religious meeting at the Gough Statue, Phoenix Park, yesterday. Mr. Mahony imposed a fine of 20s. The defendant, in default of payment, to go to prison for 14 days. [Evening Herald.]

Nor for another and worse crime, far removed from the scene of the stoning in the Phoenix Park, but in another quarter of the city of Dublin, where the population is almost exclusively Catholic, and, to a great extent, poor and ignorant. If they take the low view of the religious basis on which the Reformation enunciated in Father Kane’s sermon, can the poor actors in those disgraceful scenes be said to be doing more than practising in their way the gospel preached from their pulpits? What feeling save one of loathing can the poor Catholics have for the ministers of a Reformation which reformed “the sacred vows to God in order to let loose vicious monks and nuns”; which reformed “holy marriages in order to admit of adultery”; which “told the millions of martyrs, virgins, confessors, doctors, in whose lives since Calvary the Gospel light had shone amidst the darkness, that they were swindler, fools, or knaves”; and which took place solely “because an apostate, who lived with a runaway nun, chose to become rebellious as well as bad, and because in England a king, adulterer, and murderer wanted to put away his wife, and marry his mistress”? How can the little Catholic boys and girls of the street-side, whose surroundings are so low and sordid, be blamed for anything they do, if under the influence of such teaching? Let the following case give an instance of what is, perhaps,*** ***being done on the Sabbath afternoon in the heart of Dublin, while the scenes which we have described are going on in the Phoenix Park:-

“To-day, in the Police Court, before Mr. Swifte, seven boys, of ages varying from eight to 16 years, were charged by Inspector Holohan and Constable Finn (76 A) with being members of a crowd of boys who were, on Sunday evening last, guilty, as alleged, of wantonly throwing stones or missiles on the public thoroughfare in Lower Clanbrassil Street, to the danger of the public. They wore further charged with having on the same occasion seriously assaulted the Rev. Mr. S., Rector of St. L.’s.

“The Rev. Mr. S. deposed that on Sunday evening last he was returning home from service in St. L.’s to his residence. He was accompanied by a gentleman. They were followed by a crowd of about 20 boys. The crowd began to follow them at the top of Malpas Street. Some of the boys were bigger than those in the dock. There was shouting and jeering and booing, apparently directed at witness and his friend. He did not hear what was said. About Daniel Street the young lads closed up, and he was struck on the head with a stone, and on the leg and back with some missiles. He was crippled by the blow on the leg. The blow on the head was severe, and the next day witness was bleeding on the nose as the result, he believed, of the blow on the head. He was still in the doctor’s hands. He was unable to follow the boys. The gentleman who was with him did. When witness came up with him he was holding one boy. Witness advised him to let him go. The boys again began to jeer, but ran when they saw the police. He did not identify any of the boys.

“Constable Finn deposed that he was on duty near Clanbrassil Street on Sunday evening between 8 and 9 o’clock in plain clothes. He saw a number of boys at the corner of Williams’ Place; they were shouting and booing and hissing, and throwing squibs. He saw the Rev. Mr. S. and another gentleman standing in the midst of them. The boys ran when they saw witness. He ran after them down Bonny’s Lane. He recognised the six boys in the dock as having been in the crowd. He believed the Rev. Mr. S. was the object of the booing. There were 16 or 20 boys.

“J. O’N. deposed that he saw a crowd of boys around the rev. gentleman, shouting, booing, and hissing. There were men and women in the crowd also. He saw things thrown at the clergyman.

“Mr. Swifte said the evidence disclosed an offence of a very reprehensible character. In view of the age of the defendants, he did not wish to commit them absolutely to jail, more especially *as there appeared to have been adults behind the boys *encouraging them in their action, a fact which he thought was a very regrettable feature of the case. He would fine M. 20s., with the alternative of going to prison for 14 days. He should also find bail in the sum of £5, or go to jail for another 14 days. All the boys, except M., who was fined £1, were ordered to find bail in £5, or go to jail for 14 days.” [Evening Telegraph, November 30, 1901.]

The clergyman, be it noted, did not identify any of the prisoners, nor was he the prosecutor even, though he was so brutally treated; and the magistrate, being himself a Protestant, dealt leniently with the case, perhaps for that reason. Contrast this behaviour with the tenderness of the English police in guarding the susceptibilities of the Catholic minority in England from the slightest hurt at the hands of Protestants.

That outbreak of public violence and disrespect to Protestant clergymen in the streets of Catholic Dublin was, I regret to say, by no means an isolated one. A violent assault on an elderly Protestant clergyman on the public road outside Kingstown took place shortly before this on a Sabbath afternoon, and the delinquents were punished by the police magistrate. I have credibly informed that a gross outrage was put upon a clergyman of the Church of Ireland not many hundred yards from the scene of this disturbance of the peace which I have just recorded. The name of the clergyman was mentioned to me, and he is a man singularly inoffensive in his appearance and manner, so much so that it amazes me than even the most misguided of our poor people should by guilty of such an outrage. It appears the clergyman was passing through one of the old streets in the liberties of Dublin, within the last 12 months, on the way home from one of the Protestant cathedrals to his own home, when a big, rough, probably a slaughter-house, man rushed out of an unoccupied shop flourishing a cow’s windpipe or entrails in his hand, all fresh and blood-stained, and this degraded scamp cast the butcher’s offal round the neck of the clergyman. The clergyman, an elderly man, seeing no redress in the vicinity, and fearing, not without some justice, that his life was in danger, fled from the locality. The incident was reported to the parish priests, but no action was taken by them; nor did they seem to realise that such an outrage was not only a disgrace to themselves, but that it reflected the gravest discredit upon our city.

Indeed but for the police of Dublin there would be no check upon such conduct. Our Dublin people are, it is true, naturally tolerant and fair-minded, and such instances of bigotry are only to be found in the lowest quarters of the city. But those are the quarters in which the priests claim the most paramount authority, and from whose inhabitants they exclude most rigorously all possibility of enlightenment, whether from the better-class Catholic laity or from the Protestants. Every well-meant attempt to improve the condition or enlighten the darkness of the denizens of these Catholic districts at once raises the ire of the priests, and the *tocsin *of danger to the faith is sounded from the altars. But the public may be assured that the respectable lay Roman Catholics of Dublin condemn such exhibitions of bigotry even more strenuously than our Protestant fellow-citizens; and if they had any voice in the religious government of the Dublin parishes such occurrences would meet all the public odium they deserve. But, were authority divided between the clergy and the laity in the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no such crimes to record; for the average Catholic layman earnestly desires to live at peace with his brethren of all denominations.

Let us now devote some attention to the pro-cathedral parish of Dublin, some of whose parishioners direct their property to be sold out to pay for masses, like “Anne Roe, widow, deceased,” who made her will on the 26th of March, 1902, and died on the following day. She “bequeathed £50 to the Magdalen Asylum, Drumcondra; £50 to the same asylum in Gloucester Street; and, after paying all expenses, gave the remainder of the purchase money of No. 5 Hutton’s Lane, Dublin, to the parish priest of Marlborough Street Cathedral for masses to be celebrated publicly in Ireland.” [Freeman, May 28, 1902.] Let us see how little effect those richly-endowed, profitably-worked, nun-managed Magdalen asylums have upon the female immorality of Catholic Dublin.

Still** **continuing to interest ourselves in poor Dublin, let us now travel a little distance to the southward, from the scene of our Jesuit’s discourse in Upper Gardiner Street. Let us walk down the hill from Mountjoy Square, along that once noble thoroughfare known as Middle and tower Gardiner Street. Fifty years ago this street was inhabited by professional people and other rich residents, and every house had its carriage, its coachman, and its butler. Today this imposing stretch of street has sunk to the condition of a street of tenement houses, inhabited not alone by the lowest class of society, but by the tramp and vagrant, and mendicant classes.

The area around it, but more especially between it and Buckingham Street to the east, is what I shall call the Mecklenburgh Street area; and it constitutes, perhaps, the greatest blot upon the social life of Dublin and of Ireland. There is no such area in London, or in any other town of Great Britain, that I ever saw or heard of. Within this area the trade of prostitution and immorality is carried on as openly as any branch of legitimate business is carried on in the other portions of Dublin.

The principal houses devoted to immoral traffic, in this region, are as attractively panted and fitted up on the outside as, let us say, private hotels or houses which are legitimately licensed for the sale of drink in the principal streets of the city. Their doors are open night and day. There is no attempt at subterfuge. The names of their keepers are in Thom’s Directory as openly as those of our professional men. In fact the trade is as well recognised in this part of Dublin, as I have said, as any other branch of business carried on in the Irish capital. I have often heard it said - and I do the police the justice of repeating it - in explanation of this fact that the authorities advisedly, and with the consent of many of our leading citizens, regard this territory as an imperium in imperior. They consider it better that the immorality of Dublin should be all concentrated into that one area.

And I have heard it adduced that, at a time many years distant, when the immoral quarter of Dublin was at the south side of the Liffey, in a place called French Street, and when a clearance was made of those who lived by the trade out of that street, the result was that the immoral class thereupon spread itself all over the city to the annoyance of the respectable people. I see no reason to doubt that statement. At that time the area of Dublin was much more circumscribed than it is at present. There were at that time practically no suburban areas; and, therefore, I do not believe that such a result would be found to follow from dispersion at the present day. I think it right to state these circumstances as an explanation of the fact that our Dublin lay authorities have not seen their way to take effectual measures to stamp out the trade carried on in the Mecklenburgh Street area; and why the principle divide et impera has not been applied. But, seeing the strength of the sacerdotal organisation in Dublin, it is the priests who should take the initiative.

This area of Dublin is, in fact, what the Japanese call a *Yoshiwari, *with this difference, that the *Yoshiwari *in Japan is licensed by the State, and under the charge of the State, and that the State holds itself responsible for the safety of the lives of the people who enter it. Such people must give their names and addresses before going into the Yoshiwari. Nor are the denizens of the Yoshiwari allowed to leave it. Here in Dublin our Yoshiwari is not under State supervision, but yet it is a district apart from the rest of the town, and well known to every resident in Dublin as being devoted to the nefarious practices carried out within its area. And the denizens of our Yoshiwari are free to issue forth at their pleasure to roam through the city. So much, then, as to the position of those who are charged with the legal administration of the city with regard to this *Yoshiwari *of Dublin. Their conduct in regard to it has met with the tacit approval of the corporation and citizens of Dublin; because, as I have said, it is believed that if the police should, as they are empowered to do, disperse by prosecution the denizens of this area, the entire town would suffer. I do not think so, for the reason I have stated; and therefore do not agree with that view.

I think Dublin has so much expanded since the days of the abolition of French Street, that no similar recurrence would now be likely to take place. Since it seems to be accepted as a necessary part of our social system that every city must have its quota of fallen females, I do not propose to take up the untenable position that Dublin should be without a share of misguided women. But I take up this position, that our city should not swarm with them, and that things should not be made comfortable for them. I think our ideal of morality should not be so extremely low as it is. And I think that it is the bounden duty of every clergyman to exert himself to lessen the number of our fallen women, to save those who are engaged in living by their immorality, and to warn the young against the perils that exist. I think it is his duty to visit and advise, and to prevent by every moral means in his power the free exercise of this degrading trade. It is upon him, and not upon the municipal and police authorities, that first responsibility in this matter rests.

I say fearlessly that the clergyman who stands by while such a region as the Mecklenburgh Street area flourishes and thrives before his very face, is guilty of a dereliction of duty. I say that the existence of such a district is a reproach and a disgrace to the clergymen of all denominations who are territorially responsible for it. It is well known that nearly nine-tenths of the denizens of this region are Catholics, and that the region itself is in the parish of the Catholic pro-cathedral, for which the Catholic archbishop of Dublin is directly responsible in the eyes of the public. The bishop, are we not told, is the divinely appointed custodian of “faith and morals”? That is why the bishop must control the new Catholic University! What account, then, can the bishop of this area give of his stewardship? Is he satisfied with the morals of his flock? I say, while admitting his personal integrity, that the existence of this area is a disgrace to Dublin Catholics and to him as our divinely appointed guardian. I say further that I do not believe Dubliners are so depraved as to cause any necessity whatever for the existence of such an immense and densely peopled immoral reservation in our midst.

Nor are the only crimes committed within this district those of fornication and adultery. I find that from year’s end to year’s end robberies, garrotings, brutal assaults - yea, and even murders - are committed, not only by the denizens of the locality and their associates upon one another, but upon strangers in our city who are enticed into those precincts. Is it not right, then, that some one, even the least worthy amongst Dubliners, should raise his voice for the credit of Dublin? In many cases strangers drawn into this district, frequently under the influence of drink, are robbed of vast sums of money, and frequently even of the very clothes they wear. Often times we read that they are violently assaulted, and more than once they are known to have been killed. I have seen the police swear in court that they carry their lives in their hands in those streets at night-time. It is often said that no compassion should be felt for the people upon whom such evils fall. It is alleged that they themselves put themselves in the wrong by going into this area, and that therefore they merit any-thing, even loss of life, which may befall them. But I cannot hold with that contention, while I by no means palliate the acts of the people who extend their custom and patronage to such an area. It is contrary to all civilised usages that a man should be robbed and assaulted within the precincts of a civilised city like Dublin. If such a place is suffered to exist and thrive, the community is responsible for all consequences accruing from its existence. It is particularly odious -that strangers, ignorant of the habits and customs of the town-sailors paid off after a voyage, horse-dealers, and cattle-dealers away from home, and commercial travellers, to mention a few recent instances-should be so treated.

How could any stranger, for instance, be aware of the following facts concerning “the district of the city of Dublin which lies between the Liffey, Sackville Street, Great Britain Street, Summer Hill, and Amiens Street”? I quote from a circular issued about this region in July 1901, and signed by “W. J. Clarke, D.D., Highfield Road, Rathgar, late rector of St. Thomas’s parish, chairman; E. Robinson; A.M., 6 Gardiner’s Place, rector of St. Thomas’s parish; William Proctor, 28 Kenilworth Square, Rathgar, United Free Presbyterian Church, hon. secretary; John Connell, A.M., 2 Gracepark Gardens, Drumcondra, rector of Drumcondra and North Strand, hon. secretary.” The abominable district is in the Protestant parish of St. Thomas, and the next adjoining Protestant parish is that of North Strand. This explains why the late rector and present rector of St Thomas’s parish and the rector of North Strand busy themselves in this matter.

The denizens of the immoral area are nearly, if not quite, nine-tenths Catholic. But the Catholic clergymen refuse to co-operate with the signatories to this circular in any movement to reclaim the area. I myself attended mass for five years at the pro-cathedral in Marlborough Street. Unlike the vast majority of the congregation, I frequently waited to hear the sermon preached at that place of worship. I can truthfully say that I never heard a word said against prostitution from the pulpit. Nor did I ever hear of any practical effort made by the priests of Marlborough Street or by the Jesuits of Gardiner Street to improve the criminal condition of that savage district.

I remember when I was a boy that there was a street of this description in the city of Cork known as North Street. It abutted Lavitt’s Quay, close to Patrick’s Bridge. I used to see the women of that street bare-headed and bare-breasted, in coloured dresses, disporting themselves at the quay end of the street, within sight of Patrick’s Bridge, the most central point of the town. But I also remember that the priests of Cork at that time rose up, and, with the co-operation of the landlords of the street, evicted the entire population of North Street. There was a great deal of ostentatious formality, it is true, about the proceeding, such as religious processions through the street, blessing of the houses from which the women had been evicted, and so forth; but credit must be given for the fact that the street no longer exists, and that there is now no *Yoshiwari *in Cork; at any rate, if there is, it does not obtrude itself upon the ordinary spectator as North Street did of old.

The circular to which I have referred, and which is now before me, dealing with our Dublin Yoshiwari goes on to say:- “The district was known to be the haunt of vice and sin, but few knew the awful depths to which very many of our fellow-citizens living in it had sunk. Alas I we know now that the sad, harrowing scenes depicted are not only true, but should be portrayed in even darker colours. Something of the moral depravity of the district may be gleaned from the fact that there are about 100 houses of ill-fame, and over 500 known prostitutes **in it. According to the police statistics for 1899, nearly one-third of the whole criminal cases, or 10,416 out of 35,974 in the Dublin Metropolitan Police district came out of that area… . They give, however, but a faint idea of the prevailing vice and immorality. One high in authority, whose testimony is worthy of the highest respect, said lately, ‘I know well the moral condition of all the large cities in the United Kingdom, and in none of them does the social evil prevail to such a large extent, or is it carried on so openly, as in Dublin.”’

What a character that is to give of the pro-cathedral parish of Catholic Dublin! How vain and empty are our boasts about Irish virtue in the face of such a damning condition of things! Whom can we expect to believe our self-glorification, except interested flatterers of the priesthood, engaged in trying to create

Government positions for themselves by means of priestly aid in Ireland? The circular goes on to say:-

“The Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Pile, Bart,, visiting lately the district with the view of improving it, said, ‘I never could have believed such an immoral district existed in the city. It is a disgrace to the Churches of all denominations to allow such a state of things to continue.”’

Sir Thomas Pile is not a Catholic. Were the visitor to our *Yoshiwari *on that occasion a Catholic lord mayor he would have been afraid to make such a statement in view of the fact that Archbishop Walsh himself is the parish priest of the area. Sir Thomas Pile, to his credit, did not hesitate to make the statemnt. It now comes within my province, in this book dealing with the conditions and relation of priests and people in Ireland, to take the risk of bringing home the responsibility for the degraded condition of the Catholic nine-tenths of the population of that area - who are my fellow-religionists, and for whom I feel - to the proper parties. It may be that I am unwise in my generation. So be it. I still think that it is right to tell the truth, and to fearlessly state what one believes to be the cause-and, above all, the removable cause

• of evil to one’s fellow-countrymen. It is therefore, a sense of duty, as well as a sincere love for the city of Dublin in which I have lived so long, that induces me to deal at such length with this question. I believe that the Mecklenburgh Street area is a centre of corruption, and of the lowest morality, which diseases the entire island, out even to Malin Head, Clew Bay, and Berehaven.

The circular, under consideration, continues:-

“Are we, the citizens of Dublin and suburbs, as we have done in the past, going to shut out eyes to the magnitude of the evil, and content ourselves with showing we cannot be held responsible, seeing we really have little knowledge of that part of our city? … Something ought to be, and must be, done adequate to the extent and flagrance of the evil. In one direction action has been taken. About two years ago the Protestant local clergy, along with several laymen, asked the Roman Catholic clergy of the cathedral, Marlborough Street (seeing about 80 per cent of the outcatsbelong to their Church), if they would co-operate with them in dealing with this great evil. A negative answer was given.”

Thus the praiseworthy efforts of the energetic Protestants were slighted and discountenanced by the Catholic ministers of religion, who, to use their own well-known phrase, “have the spiritual charge” of nine-tenths of the degraded inhabitants of this degraded area! It is, I find, a never-failing characteristic of that species of unpractical Christianity, commonly known as “practical Catholicity,” that vice flourishes side by side with, it wherever it is to be found. This degraded area, inhabited by, who live by this lowest of all trades, and lower men who live upon the earnings of those women, and who act as their bullies and protectors, contains numbers of respectable, “practical Catholics,” whom you will see crowding into all the masses at the pro-cathedral. You will see hundreds of them standing *outside *the edifice bareheaded, while the collectors walk about amongst them rattling their collecting-boxes, thus complying with the precept of the Church, which orders them to go to mass under penalty of mortal sin, on all Sundays and “holy days of obligation.” What enlightenment is there for them in such procedure? Yet, that is all of religion and all of Christian teaching which those poor people receive! Those who are *within *the edifice hear the mumbling of the distant priest, the tinkling of the bell. They remain for 20 or 25 minutes, herded together like animals, coughing, sneezing, and expectorating; some of them thumping their breasts and turning up the whites of their eyes, others of them fingering rosary beads, others squeezed close to the rails of the side altar, one perhaps out of a dozen reading a prayer-book; all eagerly impatient for the brief, formal mass to be over, so that they may act out again into the light and the fresh air. Many of the denizens of Mecklenburgh Street, who live by prostitution, we may be sure, take full advantage of the privileges of the confessional; and a great many of them, I have no doubt, manage to die with all the consolations of their religion, “fortified by the rites of Holy Church,” as it is put.

What hope can there be for a country where such doings as this are sanctioned and regarded as the ordained law of God? What hope can there be for a country whose leading people, both clerical and lay, are parties to such an institution as this? There can be but one end to it, and that end is approaching every day before our eyes. It is the end which has fallen upon Southern Italy, and upon Spain. It is the end which has inevitably come for every nation that surrendered itself to such courses. The signs of the end are a decreasing population; and a remnant of people still left in the country who are becoming more degenerate and more helpless year by year, sinking deeper and deeper under the mental slavery of the rule of the monk. Should not the desertion of that creed of mental slavery by the self-respecting and the thoughtgul amongst the emigrant, when they leave Ireland, which Father Shinnors, the Oblate, admits to be in full swing, help us at home to realise our unenviable position? Such deceitfulness to God and to self, such a surrender of conscience, responsibility, and mind** **itself to a selfish priesthood lead surely to degeneracy and decay, and to the level of the poor Italian “dago.” Decadent, idle, rich people, who revel in every indulgence, including the luxury of religion, may amuse themselves with priestcraft if they will; but the honest, hard-working, good people who form the backbone of the United Kingdom and the United States, if they mean their children to advance, cannot afford to submit to it. What Ireland wants - and what I hope it may yet find in Catholicity - is a religion which can be applied, with the result of strengthening the character, to every incident of a man or woman’s daily life. Mere form will not, must not, suffice any longer; and a present proof of its inefficacy is supplied by this Mecklenburgh Street area, where so many of those who conform are steeped up to the lips in everything that is lowest of the vices that debase humanity. Those poor people are neither good for king nor country; but - and it is a very large “but,” for it covers everything in this book - they seem to be good for the priests! The signatories to the circular finally go on to say:-

“Not to be daunted, some of the Protestant clergy and friends - having already taken over the control of the midnight mission and house of refuge for outcasts - determined to take more aggressive steps by way of carrying the Gospel to our unfortunate sisters in those haunts of sin… . For six months two ladies have been engaged in this very trying and difficult work. Between 200** **and 300 separate teas have been given to women who came into the mission. Prayer has been engaged in and counsel given.”

All praise be to those two ladies, and to the men who are working with them. They are the sort of people who are stoned in the Phoenix Park on Sunday. They are the sort of people whom, forsooth, their stoners are taught to look upon as worshippers of an apostate monk and a degenerate nun, who lived together in a life of fornication. Is it not heart-rending that the priests of Ireland, stoled and surpliced in their pulpits, can utter such strife-breeding calumnies, live in comfort in the midst of all the sin and misery which surrounds their residences, and preach such a gospel of disunion and degradation with the acquiescence of the Roman Catholic laity of our so-called island of saints and scholars? Oh, weak, blind, Catholic Ireland, whose nominal patriots, tied to the apron-string of the priests, are never done crying out:-

“On our side is Virtue and Faith,

On theirs is the Saxon and Guilt!”

This midnight mission, this oasis in a desert of vice, I find, is situated at 81 Lower Tyrone Street. The name reminds me that our Dublin Catholic Corporation’s contribution to the reclamation of this unhappy swamp consisted in changing the name of the street from “Mecklenburgh Street” to “Tyrone Street”! They changed *the name, *but they left the *thing *as it was. It is true that, in this area, the corporation are at present building a block of artisan dwellings as the outcome of the visit to the district by Sir Thomas Pile, in 1899, referred to above. And it will be an interesting experiment to watch; for it remains to be seen whether the *Yoshiwari *will corrupt the inhabitants of the artisan dwellings, or whether the inhabitants of the artisan dwellings will reclaim the sinners of the *Yoshiwari. *A minority of good people are always likely to fall when surrounded by a vicious majority. Therefore no sensible person who could procure a house or a room in any respectable part of Dublin would be wise in remaining in this *Yoshiwari *district. But if the wisdom of the corporation experiment is open to question, what can we think of the action of the Catholic priests who built an expensive National School right in the heart of this *Yoshiwari, *some years ago? They might have placed their school in a healthy position within five minutes’ walk of where it stands, and the mere getting of the children out of the infected area during school-hours would in itself have been a blessing to them. But instead of doing so, the priests planted their schools right in the middle of the houses of ill-fame. And children from semi-depraved localities, and, indeed, from homes which are not depraved at all-for there are many respectable poor condemned to live in this unholy ground - are brought by the force of circumstances to attend this school in this outrageous locality. As for thinking that the poor children who attend this school are at all improved by its establishment, beyond, perhaps, learning how to write letters and read print, such a hope must be out of the question. Close beside, almost within the very region, but by no means in so vile a situation, are the Education Board’s National Schools, known as the Central Model Schools. The teachers in those central schools are for the most part Catholic, but the schools are unsectarian, and there is therefore a fair sprinkling of respectable Protestant children attending them. Was it to prevent the poor Catholic children of this awful area from getting such wider enlightenment as would fall to their lot from attendance at the unsectarian, well-managed Central Model Schools that the new St. Patrick’s Schools were built in Tyrone Street, to rivet those children in the degraded area where they were so unfortunate as to have been born? Let the reader realise for himself the truth of my statements and inferences from the following report:-

“To-day, in the Northern Police Court, before Mr. Mahony, during the hearing of a charge of criminal assault on a little girl, it was mentioned in evidence that she was living in a respectable street off Middle Gardiner Street, and that she was sent to school to a National School in Lower Tyrone Street. Mr. Mahony strongly commented on the fact that the clergy and the National Board of Education permitted the existence of a school *in such a shockingly immoral locality, and that little girls were sent *to *school in such a vile place. *His worship said the school was in the centre of *one of the worst plague spots in Ireland, *and yet it was under the aegis and *guardianship of the clergy *and the National Board. Children going to school had to pass several immoral houses, and in the centre of them all was this ‘St. Patrick’s National School.’ He thought it was monstrous, and that such a state of things was likely to pollute, morally speaking, even a police barrack, to say nothing of a National School Police Constable 142 C said that the school was attended by about 200 children, and they could not pass to or from the schools without seeing a great deal of bad conduct and hearing bad language.” [Evening Telegraph, November 18, 1901.]

Instead of that Tyrone Street School, therefore, doing good in the locality, it is doing harm; instead of its establishment reflecting credit upon the priests who built it, it reflects discredit upon them. If its foundation had been followed up by a personal effort on the part of the priests to reform the locality and its inhabit-ants, then the school might, perhaps, be in its proper place to-day. But no determined, general effort of the kind ensued. The locality is going from bad to worse, year after year, until at length our Protestant fellow-citizens, always ready to step into the breach, have been forced to draw public attention to the condition of affairs existing in the Catholic pro-cathedral parish. I do not think it necessary to my purpose to appal the readers of this book with a long list of revolting cases occurring in this awful place. I wish, and I intend, this book - and this chapter - to be read by ladies, who have as much responsibility as the men of Dublin in this matter. The human act, or infirmity, which is at the foundation of all the dreadful scenes of idleness, vice, debauchery, and misery in this area is a natural act. It is the result of the sensual, benighted condition of our people that it should have been magnified into one of the worst indulgences and vices by which humanity is scourged. As it is upon women that the worst punishment falls, so it is upon women that the noblest duty devolves of putting a stop to the iniquities that are perpetrated in connection with this weakness of humanity. I believe that it is by the help of pure, sensible women that this crime will be brought within the limits of rational discussion, and finally wither under the searchlight of common-sense. I do not believe that men alone are capable of dealing effectually with it. Therefore it is, holding such views, that I consider the action of the two ladies who have attached themselves to this Tyrone Street mission, as heroic in the extreme. It is conduct indeed worthy of the golden age of Christianity. I do not know who they are, but I wish there were thousands of ladies ready to do and dare what they have done and dared in that midnight mission in Tyrone Street.

I shall give one other instance of the work and surroundings of these Catholic National Schools in Tyrone Street, miscalled after St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. The streets mentioned in this case are all in the area with which we are dealing:-

“Yesterday, in the Northern Divisional Police Court, before Mr. Mahony, M. E. F., Lower Gloucester Street, and J. H., Lower Gloucester Street, both of whom are between *13 and 14 years of age, were charged, in custody, by Constable Costigan (79 C) with the larceny of a saw and chisel, which they were alleged to have taken from a girl named N. *M., Lower Gardiner Street, and to have pawned in a pawn office in Upper Buckingham Street.

Constable Donohue (70 C) stated that between twelve and one o’clock one night last November he found the two prisoners *in an open hall *in Lower Gloucester Street. He conveyed them to their homes.

School Attendance Inspector Dowd was examined, and stated that the girl F., who was in the fifth class, had been at school only three days during the past year. The girl H., who was in the fifth class, had attended school on 24 days during the past half-year.

Mr. Mahony asked what school they went to.

“Inspector Dowd - Tyrone Street School.

“Mr. Mahony said that perhaps it was as well that they did not attend more frequently at Tyrone Street School.

The father of the girl H. said he could get no good of his daughter. She remained out at night, and he believed *this was because she went to Tyrone Street School. *He thought it was a very bad thing to have a school there.

“Mr. Mahony - I think so too. I agree with you. I have said so before. It is a public disgrace.

“The stepmother of the girl F. stated that the latter pawned the boots off’ her feet on several occasions, and that she remained out at night.

“Mr. Mahony said that both girls should go to Monaghan Reformatory for five years.” There, as we know, the Sisters of St. Louis will get £25 each per annum for them. “He was glad to say that he adopted that course with the approval of the father of one of them in order that they should be removed from the possibility of being sent to *that school in Tyrone Street *if for no other reason. That place *was a centre of pollution for the children *of the north side of the city. Mr. Brady, solicitor, said that school ought to be closed and another site procured. There was a proposal to erect artisans’ dwellings there, but that would only contaminate the artisans. That was the idea about the Montgomery Street area. Mr. Mahony said that upon the a admission of the parents of the girls their depravity was considerably due, and in the opinion of the father of one of them it was altogether due, to being educated at the Tyrone Street School.”

Arising out of the inspector’s statement that one of those little girls only attended school three days out of the whole year, let me say that it was only after long hesitation that the Dublin Corporation decided to adopt the Compulsory Education Act; and they did so without any encouragement from the priests of the city, who pooh-poohed it, and, wherever they could safely do so, opposed its adoption. But in a city containing so many members of the Reformed Church, and, indeed, where the Catholics themselves, comparatively speaking, are enlightened and fearless, the priests dare not openly denounce the Act, as they did in other parts of Ireland, where the Catholic laity are less independent.

I find it stated in a circular issued by the Council of the Evangelical Alliance, whose office is close by at Lower Abbey Street, that in their opinion “parents in too many cases are relieved of the duty of maintaining their children, and, in fact, profit by their own misconduct.” I do not mean to say that this remark applies in the specific cases which I have just given; but it is undoubtedly a fact that, not alone do Dublin parents seek to get rid of the responsibility of rearing their children, but they are encouraged to do so by the priests, monks, and nuns who run the Catholic reformatories, orphanages, and industrial schools, and who receive a State capitation fee for every child that they can entice within the portals of these places. It is a long concatenation of iniquity, indeed; and sometimes I feel inclined to regret that I ever took it upon myself to follow up the countless links of the chain of bondage under which Ireland is languishing. But I must pursue my weary way in the hope that I may trace that chain to its very beginning, help to wrench it from its position, and do my part to free my native land.

This circular further states that:-

“Children who have been educated for years at the public expense fall into crime for want of protection after leaving institutions in which they have been trained.”

I have often heard it said that the children, boys and girls, who come out of those industrial schools are helpless weaklings, as a rule, who are unable to stand alone. The sum of Dublin vice and crime - of which the existence of this dreadful area in our city is the chief but by no means the only evidence - totted up thus in contrast with other Irish cities in the year 1897: serious offences, per 10,000 of the population - Dublin, 72; Cork, 12; Belfast, 7!

And the Council of the Evangelical Alliance state, referring to this awful area.

In one district of the city, not exceeding one-sixth of its area, there have been 6,291 arrests within eight months.”

Take the following paragraph, one out of many in the Dublin papers, as an instance of the low value which is set upon human life in this region:-

“Early this morning a man, clearing a gutter grating in Seville Place, found a bulky parcel stuffed into a recess, and on opening it found it contained the body of a new-born infant wrapped in a much worn piece of calico.” [Evening Telegraph, August 21, 1901.]

“A flow’ret crushed in the bud,

A nameless piece of Babyhood.”

The domestic life of this region may be imagined from the report of the following case:-

“A rough-looking fellow, named M. H., was charged in custody of Police Constable 83 C, with having committed an aggravated assault on his mother at her residence, in Mabbot Street, on the previous night. It appeared from the evidence of Mrs. H. that the prisoner, who does not live with her, came to her house, and assaulted her with a chair, which he smashed on her head, afterwards kicking her savagely. On the previous occasion he broke all her teeth, beat her husband, and got up in the night and threatened the latter’s life with a knife and fork. He had also received three months’ imprisonment for assaulting the police. The prisoner admitted the assault on his mother as described. He said it was too little for her, as she had no supper ready for him. Mr. Mahony imposed a sentence of six months’ imprisonment.” [Evening Mail.]

The following case will further serve to illustrate the social life of this region; this intensely Catholic region, which is surrounded on all sides by churches and convents, whose bells go clattering on Sundays, and whose pulpits ring with libels on the first reformers, the most fearless and best of men:-

“In the Police Courts to-day (before Mr. Wall, K.C.), a man, named M. G., Upper Tyrone Street, was charged on remand, in custody of Constable 36 C, with assaulting his wife and step-daughter on Monday last. Accused struck his wife and kicked her on the head, while he knocked down his step-daughter with a blow of a sweeping brush. The girl in her evidence said her stepfather was an idler. She supported the family. His worship then read out the prisoner’s record, from which it appeared that he began his criminal career on 31st March 1858, when he got six calendar months. On the 2nd December of the same year he got another six months. On the 19th June 1861 he got a similar sentence, and shortly after the expiration of that he got three years for larceny. For attempting to pick pockets he was sentenced to 12 months, and on the 7th of June 1870 he got seven years’ penal servitude. On the 2nd November 1883 he got another seven years for larceny. Previous to that, he had got, in 1882, two months for assault. On the 7th of the fifth month in 1891, three calendar months for larceny; in 1896, one month for a similar offence; in 1897, for illegal possession, two calendar months; in December last, six calendar months, and he was convicted three times for minor offences.” Then the magistrate said, “You assaulted this poor girl in a savage manner, and you also attacked your wife. For the assault on the girl you will be kept in prison for two months, and for the assault on your wife one month.” [Evening Telegraph, October 9, 1901.]

This man’s career of crime will give us some idea of the class of people who inhabit the Mecklenburgh Street area. But it must not be imagined that either prostitution or criminality in Dublin are exclusively confined to this area. If this disgraceful district and its population were completely lifted out of the city, there would be left behind half-a-dozen areas in Dublin, whose conditions are so bad that our Irish capital would still be far worse than even a low average British city, and far worse than any other city in Ireland. And, as in dealing with the Irish drink question, so also in connection with this sensual vice, as practised in Ireland, it is necessary for us to remember that it is the ignorance and the mental distraction of the people who indulge in it that make it so particularly bad for them, and so loathsome a feature in our social system. Admitting that there are irregularities, and that there is vice of a similar kind in the English and Scotch towns, it is not so debasing, because the people who indulge in it are, as a rule, engaged in some kind of business, and they do not surrender themselves wholly to criminality and vice. The entire moral character is not vitiated. Self-respect is not quite lost.

I do not palliate the vice. I do not even agree with those who believe in the necessity for its existence as an element of modern society. I do not condone it, even to the limited extent and in the controlled form in which it may be found in England and Scotland. But I say that there is the same difference between the evil consequences to the nation resulting from this vice in Great Britain and the consequences resulting from the same vice as practised in Ireland, as there is between the results of drunkenness in Great Britain and drunkenness in Ireland. In Ireland, owing to their want of character and absence of habits of industry, the people allow themselves to be completely mastered by drink. They abandon themselves to it with a gusto; and their lives are those of slaves. It is the same in the case of this sexual vice. There is no industry concomitant with the low morality of those low parts of Dublin we are dealing with. There are many parts of Great Britain with a low moral tone, but one always finds that there is some industry being carried on in those morally low localities. And therefore the people in those localities in England, while they sin against themselves and the community, do, nevertheless, contribute something to the maintenance of society by their work.

Idleness, ignorance, and, above all, want of that practical Christian knowledge possessed by the people of Great Britain and the United States, are the radical but remediable defects which leave our Irish poor so utterly helpless in the combat with this or any other vice. There is no city in North Europe which so reeks with derelict young people of both sexes as does Dublin. Girls of any age, between 12 and 20, are to be found in scores, healthy, active, in good condition, but poorly clad, swarming about our street pavements in the daytime. What becomes of them has often been a mystery to me and to many others. They are all Catholics; and, despite all our institutions, their number seems to be increasing instead of decreasing.

Let me give one instance of the efforts which are made to recruit the houses of ill-fame in this Mecklenburgh Street area from other portions of the city, and of the daring and effrontery of the criminals. In September 1901 a respectable child disappeared from its parents’ abode at New Bride Street. The papers were full of the mysterious disappearance of the child; and, for some time, no clue could be obtained as to its whereabouts. It was taken from its home in broad daylight by a woman who lived in a house of ill-fame at Elliott Place, which is probably the worst of the many bad streets in the Mecklenburgh Street area. Let the reader decide what the motive of the abduction was

“Yesterday, in the Southern Divisional Police Court, before Mr. Swifte, a dissipated-looking woman was put forward, charged by Court Sergeant Tanner, 13 A, with having kidnapped a child, aged 3 years and 9 months, from its parents’ residence, on Tuesday morning. The greatest interest was taken m the proceedings, and the court was crowded.

“Sergeant Tanner deposed that he arrested the prisoner on the charge of having kidnapped the child which she had with her. The prisoner admitted having taken the child, and brought it to Elliott Place, where she kept it on Tuesday night. He made inquiries, and was informed that the woman and child stayed on Tuesday night at Elliott Place, which is a house of ill-fame.

“The child’s mother deposed that at half-past eleven o’clock on Tuesday morning she saw her child in the hall, and shortly afterwards missed her. She did not see the child again until the police brought it to her on Wednesday evening.

A girl, aged ten years, stated that on Tuesday morning she saw the prisoner in the hall of the house, where both she and the stolen child’s family resided. She afterwards saw the prisoner having the child placed on a seat in front of the buildings. Witness went into her house and came out soon afterwards and found that the woman and child were gone.

“Miss M. M. stated that while standing at her shop door on Tuesday she saw the prisoner and the child walk past. She had known the child previously. The prisoner wore a blue mackintosh with a cape, and *was dressed like a nurse. *Mr. Swifte sent the prisoner for trial.” [Freeman’s Journal, September 20,1901.]

Not only do we find this woman, well dressed in her “blue mackintosh with a cape,” presenting the outward appearance of a nurse, with plenty of money to hire a cab, thus carrying off a respectable child in the light of open day, but we find her also in company with, and engaged in intercourse with, two little girls of the derelict class I have referred to, whom she encounters on the street side, and whom she charges with having stolen her purse.

“The solicitor who appeared for the defence said this was one of the most audacious cases he ever heard of. Here was a well-known woman of bad character, who had the audacity to accuse these two children of snatching her purse, containing five shillings. To give appearance to herself when she made the charge she had a very well-dressed child in her arms-a child which subsequently proved to be the identical child which she had kidnapped. The result was that the girls were remanded. The woman had been charged on Monday for loitering, and she had the impudence to tell the chief magistrate that she would go to America immediately with her brother-in-law.” The charge was dismissed.

This abandoned woman was “loitering” on Monday - prowling about the city - and was let off by the magistrate; but she resumes her quest on Tuesday, captures this child, and takes it home to her lair in Elliott Place in a cab; meets the two other girls on Wednesday, and, through them, is brought into contact with the police once more.

Some days afterwards the woman was tried before the recorder on the charge of abduction, and the following is the report of the proceedings, from which it will be seen that the recorder adds his testimony to that of the police magistrate, Mr. Mahony, and of Sir Thomas Pile, Bart., ex-lord mayor, as to the state of things existing in the Mecklenburgh Street area in the pro-cathedral parish, describing the place as “one of the most dreadful dens of immorality in Europe.”:-

“To-day, in the Recorder’s Court, F. P. was indicted for having, on the 17th September, feloniously taken a certain child. The prisoner was undefended. The recorder said it was an atrocious case to contemplate, the kidnapping of this little child, and the bringing it to this terrible den of infamy in which she lived. The prisoner was at once found guilty.

The Recorder said he looked upon this thing as perfectly awful - to take this child from its respectable home, from its mother’s residence, and bring it to one of the most dreadful dens of immorality in Europe.

He was not, however, quite satisfied as to what could have been the object of the prisoner.

Mr. Campbell said that the only thing that might be suggested on the part of the prisoner was that if she had intended to extort money or anything of that sort she would not have gone down to the police courts.

The Recorder said, under all the circumstances he could do no less than sentence the prisoner to 12 months’ imprisonment, with hard labour.” [Evening Telegraph, September 26, 1901]

The child was not taken with the intention of extorting money as ransom from the parents; neither was it taken with intent to murder. Let the considerate reader piece the facts of this case together:-This woman of 45 years, emerging from the awful locality in which she carries on her trade, spending the Monday in loitering about Dublin, and coming into contact on Tuesday with a respectable child of four years of age whom she kidnaps, and on Wednesday with those two street-side girls, against whom she brings a charge of theft. Was that charge of theft made with the object of coercing those girls also to accompany her? and was it persevered in by her as a matter of necessity, having once been entered upon? It is something to be thankful for that the police seem to have had their eye on her proceedings throughout. Her encounter with those young girls, taken in conjunction with the facts reported in that other case, where the two girls, Fanning and Hill, aged between 13 and 14, were found by the constable at one o’clock at night in an open hall at Lower Gloucester Street, gives us a lurid insight into the abandoned condition in which the young Roman Catholic girls of this district are allowed to grow up. We may gather from the report of the Midnight Mission that in the case of some, at least, of the girls in those houses of ill-fame they have to be detained forcibly as prisoners - which would be creditable to the girls. But it proves that it would therefore be a matter of prime importance to their keepers that the girls should be procured while very young, so as to achieve their complete subjection.

The luxuriant growth of such a jungle of crime is a danger, not alone to Dublin, but to all Ireland. It would be the proper duty of the Councils and local Boards throughout the country to call for its abolition, instead of passing resolutions worrying railway companies, demanding university endowments for priests, Catholic chaplains for the navy, and acting as cat’s-paws for the bishops and priests. It would be a greater gain to Ireland to achieve the reformation of Mecklenburgh Street area by the exertions and teaching of the Catholic clergy and laity, than the greatest imaginary advantage which the most intense Nationalist hopes for from the granting of Home Rule.

“Political rights,” says Dr. Smiles, “however broadly framed, will not elevate a people individually depraved.” And again, “Political morality can never have any solid existence on a basis of individual immorality.” The most deplorable fact connected with the continued existence of such a luxuriant crop of individual crime and misery in Dublin is that it should flourish in a preserved ground without opposition, and side by side with the enormous army of priests and nuns who overspread the Irish capital. Many benevolent Protestants, taking a superficial view of this problem of Dublin misery, imagine that the swarming communities of friars and nuns exist for and result in the relief of the poor and the improvement of the erring. Unhappily it is not so. Nay, I, a Catholic, am forced to the conclusion, to put it squarely and roughly, that these communities result in the perpetuation of poverty, and idleness, and sin; and that the existence of all this penury, indolence, and vice is appealed to as evidence to prove the necessity for the communities of friars and nuns.

There is a softness in our Irish character, and a leaning towards those who idle; a sentiment which, at first sight, may appear estimable, but which works out badly for the community. It is to it that we must attribute the vast sums of hard-earned money which are yearly bestowed upon priests and nuns; and, in equal degree, it is to this Irish trait that we may attribute the donation, leakage, or expenditure of money which supports the vagrant and criminal idlers of the city. The home-keeping Irishman has never succeeded in getting himself sufficiently far away from the clutch of idleness and degeneracy to feel perfectly safe from them; and therefore he sympathises with those who are victims to such vices. The Englishman, on the contrary, having for centuries been out of touch with those failings, has come to the conclusion that there is no necessity in human nature for a man to succumb to them, and his heart is hard against those who fall a prey to vice and indolence’ on that account.

There are thousands of hard-working men and women in Dublin, but for one hard-working, honest man, you will find several semi-idlers and several complete idlers. How they all live is a standing mystery, and a perplexing problem to every serious man who suffers his mind to dwell upon it.

But how all the priests and nuns flourish in such wealth and luxury is a greater mystery still. For, as we shall see, there is not a city in North Europe so overrun by male and female religious as the city of Dublin.

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