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Product Description
Mary E. Daly offers a glimpse into daily life in Ennis, Co. Clare during the 1930s.
1930s Ennis: Hidden Lives reveals the extraordinary complexity of a small town in the west of Ireland, drawing on a rich array of sources, including the unpublished diaries and research notes kept by two American graduate students, Conrad Arensberg and Solon Kimball.
The streets of the town were home to those who fought in the War of
Independence and took opposing sides in the Irish Civil War. There were also
many veterans of World War I living in the town, as well asthe membership of
a strong labour movement.
Poverty, illness, unemployment and appalling housing conditions were
common. Jobs were scarce and often bitterly contested, pitting locals against
outsiders, married men against single men; different sides in the civil war.
Yet these divisions were bridged, in part, by a shared Catholicism, whose
ceremonies were a prominent part of life in the town. Although most people
were Catholic and native to the area, Ennis was permeated by minute social
distinctions, most evident in the social and sporting clubs. Many people
combined religious faith with a more critical attitude to clerical teaching.
The cultural politics of compulsory Irish and censorship are evident, but the
appalling condition of national schools and lack of opportunities to progress
to secondary education were greater challenges.
Family, status and respectability were fundamental. Many families
helped relatives who were in need to survive, but families often excluded those
who threatened its standing in the community: those with mental illness, TB,
or women who became pregnant outside of marriage. Yet a lively social scene
that included ‘all-night dances’ challenged stereotypes of a joyless society
controlled by church and state.
In 1930s Ennis: Hidden Lives Daly suggests that changes in local
government, health and welfare, and economic policy were more important
than the Boundary Commission, (1925) or removing the oath of allegiance to
the British Monarch (1932). This pioneering book, while focused on Ennis,
explores many themes that are relevant to the wider history of a burgeoning
independent nation in the 1930s.
320 PAGES. ILLUSTRATED
