About the Blog

Welcome to the Irish Workhouse Museum Blog. This is where you can follow our journey to develop the first museum in Ireland which is dedicated to the material culture of the Irish workhouse system. It is also where we post our latest workhouse related research.

The Irish Workhouse Museum is committed to exploring the way in which the Arts can make history more accessible. We are delighted to host numerous exhibitions and events throughout the year. This  blog will let you see behind the scenes, read interviews with the artists and much more.

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The Workhouse in Fiction

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Image from the 1968 movie Oliver! ‘Please sir, can I have some more?’ Most of us know this iconic line from the 1968 film version of Oliver! The quote has embedded itself in pop culture, cropping up in memes, advertisements, comedy sketches and cartoons. However, how many of us know that the line is a criticism of the meagre food quantities supplied to workhouse children? In fact, Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist as a rallying cry against child poverty and the failure of the workhouse system. He based this view on his first hand observations as a newspaper reporter. What he saw went into his books and shocked  his audiences. He was accused of gross exaggeration and even outright fabrication. His rebuttal was the tell people to go see for themselves, which they did. What they witnessed was all the proof he needed. Before we leave Dickens, it is interesting to note a slight connection with Irish workhouses. Oliver Twist was first published as a serial 1837–39. This period a
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The Finnish Famine Exhibition

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-The Finnish Famine-    An Interview with Dr. Andrew Newby on his current exhibition at The Irish Workhouse Centre How did this exhibition come about? In 2012 I was pleased to receive an Academy of Finland Award to work on a five year project to compare the Irish and Finnish famines. This exhibition came out of that project. It travelled to Ireland to be displayed in The National Famine Museum at Strokestown but then migrated to the National University of Ireland, Galway. Just when I thought the exhibition had to return to Finland, I was delighted when the opportunity arose for it to be displayed at The Irish Workhouse Centre. How did you get involved in researching the Finnish Famine? I first heard about the Finnish Famine in 1997 from a Finnish Student. Being Irish and specifically a Mayo man, the topic of famine struck a chord with me. The fact that 1997 was the anniversary of Black ‘47 meant that famine research was already on the radar. I visited Finland in ’
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Workhouse Farms in Ireland

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Mangel Wurzel-a popular vegetable grown in Irish workhouses   For a long time, the 'work' in Irish workhouses was thought to exclude farming. However, recent research shows that many Irish workhouses had farms. Due to irregular or no account keeping, it is hard for us to piece together a picture of what farming was like in a workhouse setting. However, what we can do is look at a snap shot of figures from parliamentary documents.* These documents reveal a surprising fact. Out of the 163 workhouses across Ireland, only 37 had no land under cultivation. Over half of these 37 are from the second wave of building. Workhouse building in Ireland took place in two waves. There were the first 130 which were planned as a complete set to provide relief for 1% of the Irish population. Then the crisis resulting from potato blight led to 33 extra workhouses being hastily built. These were needed due to chronic overcrowding and it seems that acquiring farmland was the least
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