Abstract
Nineteenth-century Dublin and Edinburgh were “stateless capitals”; they were no longer home to parliaments but still had many of the characteristics of a capital city. This article begins to explore the idea that the stateless capital constitutes a particular type of city. It analyses philanthropic activity to assess how middle-class life in each city was affected by their positions as stateless capitals. In particular, it examines the significance of the close interactions between central state and philanthropy that helped to shape stateless-capital status in early nineteenth-century Dublin but not Edinburgh. It argues that central state intervention in Dublin did not dampen the vibrancy of associational culture, but it did politicize philanthropy, reducing voluntary organizations’ ability to mediate social conflict. More seriously, the provision of parliamentary grants to Dublin’s charities damaged the city’s image, making it appear unable to perform basic urban functions. This was in sharp contrast to Edinburgh’s image as Scottish metropolis.
London and Edinburgh pay for the maintenance of their own poor; but the Government kindly stands foster-father to the paupers of Dublin, and has granted L29,000 per annum, or L800,000 since the Union, to do for that shewy [sic] what it should have done for itself!
1
The Edinburgh-based newspaper the Scotsman sharply criticized the annual grants awarded to several of Dublin’s charities by the Westminster parliament and asked why Dublin, a metropolitan city, did not support its own philanthropic institutions. Although the newspaper was broadly sympathetic to Irish causes, the Scotsman maintained a disapproving attitude toward the practice of bestowing grants on charities in Dublin. 2 The parliamentary grants that Dublin’s philanthropic bodies received were begun by the Irish parliament before the British–Irish Union of 1801, but they were continued by Westminster as part of the Union settlement. 3 The provision of these annual grants made post-Union Dublin unique in both an Irish and a British context, and they helped to define the city’s place within the nineteenth-century United Kingdom.
Dublin became a “stateless capital” in 1801, as the city maintained many metropolitan functions despite losing its parliament, a position it shared with post-Union Edinburgh. 4 Graeme Morton’s seminal Unionist Nationalism explored nineteenth-century Edinburgh’s ability to maintain its role as Scottish capital by being home to Scotland’s highest law courts, national-level Church institutions, and prestigious voluntary organizations. 5 Dublin’s metropolitan position has never been the subject of a similar study, though the Scotsman’s comments suggested that Dublin’s experience as stateless capital differed from Edinburgh’s, and this was in part related to the parliamentary financing of philanthropic activity in the city. To better explore differences between these cities, and to help further our understanding of stateless capitals as a type of city, this article will compare the relationship between charitable organizations and state bodies in early nineteenth-century Dublin and Edinburgh. 6 This focus may help to raise questions, not only about power and authority within the nineteenth-century United Kingdom, but also about cities that shared a similar position in other jurisdictions such as the “secondary capitals” of the Habsburg Empire. 7
Ciarán Wallace has already demonstrated some of the value that can be gained from comparing Dublin with Edinburgh. Drawing on Morton’s ideas about the relationship between Edinburgh and Westminster, Wallace focused on the final years of Dublin’s membership of the United Kingdom and used urban history to explore the reasons for the emergence of the Irish Free State in 1922. 8 He argued that in contrast to their counterparts in Scotland, Irish nationalists did not see the U.K. central state as legitimate. These nationalists used voluntary associations as an alternative focus for their allegiance, but, unlike Scotland’s “unionist nationalists,” this associational culture was “in search of a state” to give their loyalty to. This produced tensions in Dublin that were only resolved with the creation of an independent Irish central state toward which the city’s nationalists felt allegiance. However, as Alvin Jackson indicated, this was not an inevitable consequence of the British–Irish Union, and we must give more attention to how the situation Wallace described arose. 9 To better understand the complex processes involved in the creation and maintenance of legitimacy, one must give more attention to state structures and their relationship with wider society.
Wallace explored the years after 1898 when systems of local government were virtually identical in Dublin and Edinburgh. This was not the case in the first half of the nineteenth century when, in principle at least, Edinburgh’s middle classes were granted a greater role in that city’s local government institutions than their Dublin counterparts. Even more crucially, each city maintained a different relationship with Westminster and Whitehall. Dublin sent MPs to Westminster, but the closing of the Irish parliament was not accompanied by the dismantling of the administrative complex at Dublin Castle, which continued as the center of government in Ireland until 1922. Headed by the monarch’s representative, the Lord Lieutenant or Viceroy, “the Castle” also had numerous ceremonial functions associated with the viceregal court. There was no equivalent to this in Edinburgh, even after the establishment of the Scottish Office in 1885, nor did Westminster and Whitehall intervene as overtly in nineteenth-century Edinburgh, as they did in Dublin. 10 These differences helped to create significant contrasts between the cities’ experiences of stateless-capital status.
This article examines differences in how Dublin and Edinburgh experienced being a capital between the mid-1820s and the beginning of the Irish and Scottish famines in 1845. This time period was characterized by much debate about the relationship between the central and the local state as seen in contemporary discussions about municipal reform and the Poor Law. 11 The article will use philanthropy, and in particular the provision of state aid to charitable organizations, as a lens through which to explore the social and cultural impacts of being a stateless capital on each city. It provides an opportunity for reflection on what being a center of national governance and administration meant for citizens’ lives in post-Union Dublin and Edinburgh.
Although charitable institutions were generally established as voluntary ventures, their attempts to respond to social problems obliged them to interact with government bodies, and indeed some can be rightly considered to have played a significant governance role. 12 These organizations occupied a junction between the middle classes and the state; hence, their analysis can shed light on the ways in which state bodies affected interactions among a city’s middle-class inhabitants.
Charities often aimed to encourage paternalistic bonds between rich and poor; but, since the publication of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America at least, associational philanthropy has also been recognized as an activity that could improve social relations among philanthropists themselves. Therefore, to get an insight into how the differing nature of state–charity relations in Dublin and Edinburgh affected middle-class life in each city, it is worth briefly revisiting the ideas of R. J. Morris.
Although frequently referenced by historians in the 1990s and early 2000s, Morris’s ideas about urban associational culture have been often misinterpreted, limiting reflection on their value in different contexts. 13 For Morris, nineteenth-century voluntary organizations could inadvertently improve social relations among those otherwise at odds. Morris maintained that this could occur even when different groups, such as opposing religious denominations, had established their own exclusive associations. Many of these voluntary organizations used similar management structures and ways of communicating with the wider world, such as through public meetings. Morris argued that this created a sense among members of any organization that members of all such associations operated according to the same procedures and principles. 14 That is, there was a sense that many organizations were “playing by the same rules.” These voluntary associations did not eliminate the conflict, but they helped to defuse it by highlighting underlying shared values about how such associations should work.
Morris primarily applied his arguments to urban areas in Scotland and the North of England. Like many historians, he tended to focus on the “constructive” nature of voluntary activity, especially its role in reinforcing shared identities. 15 A few scholars have, however, emphasized that voluntary associations have exacerbated conflict in specific contexts such as that of Weimar Germany, and historian Martyn Powell has recently called for an investigation of all of the effects of associational culture on Irish society, whether “positive” or “negative.” 16 This article’s exploration of the impact of state aid on Dublin and Edinburgh will, among other things, allow it to analyze how differing kinds of state–charity interactions affected the ability of voluntary organizations to defuse or promote conflict.
A useful method for gauging the effects of voluntary organizations is to employ the concept of “civil society.” Sometimes used for normative purposes and sometimes as an analytical tool, civil society remains a highly contested concept, and its popularity in urban history has ebbed and flowed. 17 While acknowledging the difficulties associated with the use of any contested term, this article will indicate that “civil society” can provide a succinct way of discussing the complex effects of voluntary associations on nineteenth-century cities.
The renewed scholarly interest in the concept of civil society that occurred in the 1990s tended to focus on voluntary activity. Since then, the term has been most frequently used to denote the collection of voluntary associations in a particular place. The ways in which the concept of civil society has been utilized, however, often implies more than this, and indeed the term is sometimes used explicitly, and most usefully, to mean a specific type of society. 18 A civil society is one in which voluntary organizations enable that society to manage conflict between different social groups. In recent years, whether it has been employed for descriptive or normative reasons, civil society has been connected with the management of diversity and the reduction of conflict based on ethnic, class, or other differences. It is not a society in which difference is eliminated or total “social harmony” is achieved, rather it is a society in which means have been found to lessen conflict. A town with a strong civil society is a town whose associational culture allows it to cope with its intrinsic diversity. 19
This article, therefore, adopts this approach and employs “civil society” to refer to a society in which voluntary organizations help to ease social tensions. By contrast, terms such as “associational culture” and “associational activity” will be used when referring simply to a city’s collection of voluntary organizations or their practices, without reference to the associations’ broader social effects. Employing the concept of civil society in this way promotes reflection on the impact of voluntary organizations on the town as a whole. It will therefore enable this article to shed greater light on the impact of state–charity interactions on Dublin and Edinburgh, and to learn more about the cities’ differing experiences as stateless capitals.
The Philanthropic Landscape
The residents of early nineteenth-century Edinburgh frequently celebrated their city’s position as capital of Scotland. As well as being home to national law courts and Church institutions, part of this metropolitan role was to be a capital of charitable provision. 20 Dublin’s residents, on the contrary, sometimes described their city as “a metropolis for the poor, not the rich,” but in emphasizing this they too recognized Dublin’s position as a major provider of philanthropy both locally and nationally. 21 There were some significant socioeconomic differences between the cities in the early nineteenth century; Dublin was larger, while Edinburgh was more affluent. 22 Yet, they were both supplied with sufficient wealth, middle-class inhabitants, and concerns about disease, “immorality,” and “ignorance,” to fuel much charitable endeavor. This can be gauged from city almanacs which, while not providing an exhaustive listing of charities, reflected the scale and scope of associational philanthropy in both cities. In 1824, the leading almanac for Dublin listed seventy charitable organizations operating in that city, while its Edinburgh counterpart for the year listed fifty two. By 1845, these numbers had jumped to 132 and 91 respectively, and included medical hospitals and dispensaries, poor relief organizations, missionary societies, Magdalen asylums, and charity schools. 23
Edinburgh and Dublin were both scenes of intense religious contests, but their disputes were of a different character. Sectarian conflict in Dublin was primarily between Catholics, sometimes supported by liberal Anglicans, and conservative Anglicans. Religious tensions in Edinburgh, on the contrary, tended to be between different Presbyterian groups. These occurred within the Church of Scotland itself and between the Church and dissenting Presbyterian denominations. 24 Since most of those involved in these conflicts shared a common doctrine, they often still agreed on matters related to philanthropy, such as the kind of religious instruction that should be given to charity school children, a source of much division in Dublin. 25 Philanthropy in Edinburgh was certainly not immune from sectarian controversy, but such contests did not dominate charity to the same extent as in Dublin. Yet, although religious disputes fuelled the foundation of increasing numbers of denominational charities in Dublin, Catholic philanthropic associations used similar administrative methods to those used by their Anglican counterparts, as well as by their Presbyterian equivalents in Edinburgh. 26 The ways in which charities in either city presented themselves to the public would have been familiar to philanthropists in both.
As noted, however, a major difference between the cities was their charities’ contrasting relationships with state bodies. A few of Edinburgh’s educational charities received one-off or short-term grants from the Educational Committee of the Privy Council, but parliamentary funding was much more common in Dublin where annual aid was given not only to the charity schools that constituted the Irish national education system (established in 1831), but also to other kinds of philanthropic institutions such as medical hospitals. Dublin Castle was frequently involved in administering this aid, and the decision to make a grant was often taken by senior Castle personnel. 27 This reflected Dublin’s unique relationship with Westminster, which distinguished the city from other Irish, as well as British towns. It also highlighted how a contrasting type of relationship between charitable institutions and central government structures made Dublin a different kind of stateless capital than Edinburgh.
There was, on the contrary, a particularly close relationship between local government and philanthropy in Edinburgh. Edinburgh Town Council helped to administer some of the city’s most prestigious charities including George Heriot’s Hospital, a boarding school (founded 1628), and Trinity Hospital, a poor relief institution (founded 1461). 28 Dublin Corporation was represented ex officio on the management of the charitable boarding school, the King’s Hospital until municipal reform in 1840, but overall its role in philanthropy was limited. 29 Edinburgh Town Council was also reformed seven years earlier than Dublin Corporation, which resulted in a closer connection between it and the city’s middle classes, allowing them a greater role in Edinburgh’s prestigious charities. There were similar contrasts between the other local government bodies that aided philanthropy in each city. The Edinburgh Police Commissioners, who helped to found and manage a small number of Edinburgh’s charities, were partly elected on a property franchise. By contrast, the City of Dublin Grand Jury which made half-yearly presentments to public institutions and infrastructural projects in the city, including to several hospitals, was impaneled from substantial local property owners by the Sheriff who was in turn appointed by central government. This restricted local middle-class participation, and as a result few Catholics served on the Grand Jury before its dissolution in 1851. 30
Undermining or Promoting Associational Activity?
In February 1842, the recently appointed Tory Lord Lieutenant Earl de Grey commissioned an inquiry into why some Dublin charities were receiving parliamentary assistance (see Table 1 below). De Grey argued that this investigation was necessary not only to safeguard public funds but also to protect charities themselves, claiming that “there can be no question that public grants, injudiciously bestowed, have a tendency to check private benevolence.” 31 This stemmed from broader laissez-faire attitudes that claimed such assistance created dependency, whether among relief recipients or the charities themselves. 32 It also raised questions about fundraising and whether aid from the central state damaged rather than benefited charities’ financial health.
Parliamentary Grants to Charities Investigated in 1842.
Source: 1842 (337) Charitable Institutions (Dublin); 1842 (389) Charitable Institutions (Dublin), Copies of the Reports of George Nicholls on the Foundling Hospital and House of Industry, Dublin (n.p., 1842). This table does not include every central state–assisted charity in Dublin—national schools, for example, do not feature; it does, however, indicate the range of assistance provided.
Overall, the effects of receiving grants were multifaceted and ambiguous, and government aid sometimes improved the finances of the charities that received it. In spite of fears that state aid would promote dependence, many institutions continued to make significant efforts to raise funds from elsewhere after receiving a grant. One of the most innovative was the Rotunda Lying-In Hospital whose managers constructed and continuously renovated assembly rooms that they hired out to those wishing to hold balls, meetings, and other events. 33 The Rotunda’s managers reported to the 1842 inquiry that their Hospital was becoming less dependent on parliamentary funding over time. They noted that in its early years the Hospital had received over £3,000 per annum from the state, but due to their fundraising efforts they now only needed £1,000. The managers suggested that if state assistance was continued for just a little longer the Hospital would be in a position to survive permanently without it. 34 This was never fully achieved; though by 1860 the Hospital’s annual grant was £700 and remained at that level until the end of the Union. Throughout this period the institution continued to receive many donations, as well as funds from the rooms and from other sources. 35 Similarly, the Meath Hospital received large bequests and donations after it began receiving annual grants in 1827. 36 In fact, the Lock Hospital, which treated women suffering from venereal disease, was the only one of Dublin’s state-aided medical hospitals that did not receive funds from other sources.
Although much less common, parliamentary funding in Edinburgh was characterized by similar trends. State assistance to Edinburgh’s schools generally took the form of one-off building grants given on condition that a specific sum also be raised by voluntary means. This encouraged donations for charitable education in places where there were insufficient funds to support the full costs of building a new school. 37 Similar fundraising conditions were set when the Scottish Missionary Society (SMS) received state assistance for school building in Jamaica in the 1830s and 1840s. In the first year of the grant, the Society had to raise £750 in order to receive £1,500; the next year it had to raise £500 in order to get £800. 38 On the surface such aid appeared to take a heavy toll on the charity’s finances. By 1844, after several years of receiving parliamentary grants the SMS’s annual report indicated that “there has been a great falling off in the Funds during the past year. They have not been so low for upwards of a quarter century”. 39 A closer look, however, indicates that there was no clear link between receipt of state funds and declining donations. Parliament had begun to reduce the value of the annual grants before 1844. Moreover, the SMS had financial problems before it received state aid, which had hampered its attempts to expand operations in Jamaica. In fact, the charity was only able to augment its work on the island because of the grants. 40
Nor is there evidence that central state aid prevented the formation of charities in Dublin. As noted, the city’s rich and vibrant philanthropic associational culture continued to flourish, and many new charities opened during these years including the City of Dublin Hospital, Baggot Street (founded 1832); the Coombe Lying-In Hospital and Dublin Ophthalmic Infirmary (founded 1829); and the Victoria Asylum, Charlemont-Street (founded 1839). 41 In practice, state assistance was more likely to fuel the development of philanthropic activity in the city than restrict it. Many of the charities that received parliamentary grants would have been unable to serve as many people without state funds, and some might have ceased to exist entirely. 42
Even without a requirement to raise a specified amount of voluntary income, receipt of an annual parliamentary grant helped some charities to attract donations. Entries for state-funded charities in Dublin’s almanacs frequently acknowledged that the institution received a grant, and their managers used this to demonstrate that the government trusted them and endorsed their aims. In 1832, the Mendicity’s annual report noted that some MPs had attempted to secure some taxation revenue for their charity. The report did not express an opinion on the desirability of this measure, but it did recognize that the proposal was a demonstration of confidence in their organization: Your Committee could not but feel that this recognition of the usefulness of your institution, and of the safety and benevolence of the principles upon which it is conducted, accompanied by the testimony so generally borne in its favour [sic] by many Honorable [sic] Members upon the first introduction of the bill into the House, were circumstances highly gratifying to those who had devoted their time and attention to the management of your Institution.
43
The regular receipt of even a small amount of state money could also make a charity appear stable and worth donating to. In 1847, the government attempted to withdraw parliamentary grants from several Dublin hospitals, provoking protest. The resultant campaign attracted widespread support from medics, local government bodies, and MPs, and was successful in ensuring the grants continued. One of the campaigners, John Vereker, argued that the grants encouraged donations because they appeared to secure the future of the charities in receipt of them. 44 Morris has stressed the value of the ephemeral nature of nineteenth-century voluntary organizations, arguing that this gave them a flexibility to allow groups to work together without being forced to remain associated for ever. 45 For contemporaries living in what was often an unpredictable urban world, however, longevity may have sometimes been more attractive than flexibility. Aiding a charity’s long-term survival helped to ensure donations would go to the intended cause.
Central state funding was much less prestigious in Edinburgh, partly because there was no “Castle” with which funding could be connected. In Dublin, even bureaucratic activity gained a certain glamor when it was associated with the monarch’s representative. Occasionally though, central state funding was praised by Edinburgh commentators as demonstrating justified recognition for a worthy educational charity. For example in 1841, the Scotsman commended the Privy Council’s grant to a nondenominational school in Slateford on the outskirts of Edinburgh. 46
Yet, while receipt of parliamentary grants was sometimes welcomed, and was often of substantial financial benefit to the charities, contemporaries were not always comfortable with such assistance. The rest of this article explores some of the difficulties arising from such aid. It will be seen that the contrasting state structures that helped to define stateless-capital status in each city, particularly the greater level of central state intervention in Dublin, ensured these difficulties were more significant there than in Edinburgh. This in turn created further contrasts in how each city experienced capital status.
Civil Society and the Politicization of Philanthropy
State assistance aided the growth of Dublin’s philanthropic organizations playing a significant part in maintaining a vibrant associational culture in the city. The grants also helped to improve the reputation of an Irish administration that in the early nineteenth century frequently operated through coercive legislation. 47 We cannot, however, conclude that greater central state funding ensured that civil society was stronger in Dublin than Edinburgh.
The creation and maintenance of civil society involves a series of complex and interacting processes. The number of voluntary organizations operating is a factor in determining the strength of civil society, but the “quality” of the associational activity must also be considered. Frank Trentmann has claimed that while there were more voluntary organizations operating in Britain in the twentieth century than there had been in the nineteenth century, the associational culture of the former was “thinner.” He suggested that unlike nineteenth-century associations, which were outward looking and aimed to influence their whole societies, twentieth-century voluntary organizations were usually single-issue lobby groups aimed at encouraging government to adopt particular policies, and this contrast weakened civil society. 48
In practice, radical differences between nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, not least the democratizing potential of the welfare state, suggest that we should be wary before we draw significant conclusions based on comparisons between them. Discussing the contrasts in the nature of state–charity relations in early nineteenth-century Dublin and Edinburgh allows the impact of central state aid on the development of civil society to be explored while still giving attention to the necessary context.
The availability of state grants partly diverted the attention of Dublin’s charities away from the city’s middle classes and toward Dublin Castle. This was far from a complete redirection of charities’ fundraising efforts. A brief perusal of any high-circulation Dublin newspaper reveals that many of the city’s state-aided charities invested heavily in communicating with the public. State-assisted charities also used reports and public meetings to plead their cause in the same way as voluntary organizations throughout Britain and Ireland did. 49 Yet, the availability of state finance and the Castle’s presence in the city encouraged the managers of some philanthropic institutions to spend significant time and effort applying to the Irish administration for assistance, sometimes unsuccessfully. 50 Charities in receipt of state aid were required to frequently furnish Dublin Castle with details of their expenditure, and correspondence between charities and Dublin Castle also grew markedly during the many official inquiries into poverty, philanthropy, and education conducted in this period. 51 Developments from the 1830s onwards, including the advent of the Irish national education system, drew the attention of many more charities toward Dublin Castle and other central state bodies.
There was simply no equivalent source of secular central state funding for philanthropic organizations in Edinburgh, and no institution that drew the attention of charities away from the middle-class public in the same way as Dublin Castle did. This process did not always weaken civil society. The late 1840s and 1850s campaigns to retain the parliamentary grants attracted people from across Dublin’s political and religious spectra, and demonstrated that, occasionally, lobbying Dublin Castle could have a unifying effect on the city’s middle classes. On balance, however, the gravitation of philanthropic organizations toward the central state diminished charities’ ability to ease social tensions by politicizing philanthropic activity.
Competition between charities for grants encouraged Dublin’s charities to be seen as political rivals, rather than alternative, if less acceptable ways of providing the same kind of services. Hence, state funding weakened charities’ ability to act in the way Morris suggested. Religious groups competed for patronage to obtain a declaration of government favor, and a particularly burning issue was which educational charities would receive support, because education was believed to shape the moral welfare of the “rising generation.”
State funding for educational philanthropy was characterized by intense religious conflict throughout the United Kingdom in the early nineteenth century. 52 In Dublin, these tensions had a more definite party-political edge than in Edinburgh, where divisions within the Church of Scotland greatly complicated partisan allegiances. 53 The Church Education Society for Ireland (CES), for example, which was established in 1839 as an Anglican reaction against the nondenominational national education system, was greatly shaped by the political environment, and the organization deliberately stirred up significant religious controversy to get state funding. Tories’s return to power in 1841 encouraged the CES to launch an unsuccessful campaign against the national system, and in 1845 the charity (again unsuccessfully) lobbied the Tory government for a grant. 54 Their lobbying activities involved repeated public criticism of the religious “errors” that CES members believed the national system’s religious policies promoted. 55
At the first annual meeting of the Society, Rev. Robert Daly argued that the national schools “helped to bind the system of darkness upon the Roman Catholic people of Ireland by keeping them under clerical control.” To counter this, he encouraged the CES to set up a model school to train teachers able to “compete with the masters of the National Board.” 56 This was just one of a long line of controversies related to central state funding of Dublin-based educational charities. Lobbying from Catholics and liberal Protestants had earlier resulted in the withdrawal of parliamentary funding from a variety of Protestant charities in the 1830s including the Association for Discountenancing Vice, as well as the ostensibly nondenominational Kildare Place Society, which had been accused of proselytism. 57
The development of a single national educational system made such controversies particularly severe in Dublin, but the granting of aid by the Privy Council’s Committee on Education also produced conflict in Britain. 58 This occurred even in Edinburgh where allusions to such controversy were made when the managers of Slateford Nondenominational School wrote to their local United Associate Synod minister W. Thomson for advice about applying for Privy Council funds. 59 Thomson, who was well informed about the application process, emphasized in his reply that he warmly welcomed the school’s submission, because most grants had hitherto been given to schools associated with “the greedy mace of the Church, to be expanded in the Erection of Edifices placed under her exclusive controul [sic], so as to serve for hotbeds of Churchism & intolerance.” 60
Dublin’s Catholic educational charities resembled their Protestant counterparts throughout the United Kingdom in their willingness to apply for assistance from the central state. As a result, they had to present their work in language that government bodies would recognize. This may have promoted a basic sense of understanding across the United Kingdom that was broad enough to include Catholics. Yet state funding also amplified sectarian tensions in Dublin, serving to remind the city’s religious groups of the issues that divided them.
Parliamentary funding in Dublin also exacerbated conflicts about medical charity, which was usually a less inflammatory form of philanthropy. Medical institutions that received grants were sometimes accused of bowing to political pressure. This came to a head during the 1844 “button war,” a controversy in which those wearing repeal badges in support of the recently imprisoned Daniel O’Connell were allegedly refused entry to a variety of public institutions. The issue was raised and connected with philanthropy at meetings of the Loyal National Repeal Association in Dublin. At one such meeting in July 1844, prominent repealer and medic Dr. Nagle claimed that the Talbot Dispensary, which was part of the state-dependent House of Industry, had been involved in turning away the button-wearers: At . . . the Talbot dispensary, which is maintained at the public expense and is a government institution, directions were given to the porter not to admit for medical relief any persons wearing a Repeal button . . . . It would be satisfactory to ascertain whether such orders emanated from the government or from one of the medical men exclusively . . . . From the government he expected nothing noble or generous . . . but he was most anxious . . . to keep his noble profession pure and unsullied, by any base or degrading innovations that could mar its utility and convert it into a weapon of persecution against unfortunate and heart-broken creatures who happen to bear about on their persons that external mark of their internal woe and their fallen condition.
61
Nagle’s suggestion that the Tory government was using the provision of aid to medics or medical institutions for partisan purposes indicated again how such assistance could politicize philanthropy and lead to a weaker civil society in Dublin than in Edinburgh.
A note of shame can be detected in Nagle’s reference to the “fallen condition” of the Dublin poor. By highlighting the existence of destitution, philanthropy had the potential to damage the reputation of any town; Nagle, however, specifically connected this shame to the absence of an Irish parliament. His concerns reflected what was the most serious consequence of parliamentary assistance: that state funding of charities undermined the legitimacy of governance in Dublin. Although many of Dublin’s philanthropists defended the grants and sought the Lord Lieutenant’s patronage, there was a sense that all was not as it should be. This was not simply a result of Victorian penchants for voluntarism; fondness for voluntary activity did not mean that all official intervention in charities was condemned. It was the type of state body involved that mattered. This was apparent in the Scotsman’s discussion of this issue in 1829. As well as revealing some bitterness at parliament’s neglect of Edinburgh, the newspaper highlighted what it believed was a moral problem. It argued that charities such as Dublin’s Female Orphan House “should be left to private contributions,” but it did not condemn all forms of government funding. 62 The newspaper argued that local government grants, raised from local property, were a satisfactory way of assisting philanthropy: it proposed that instead of funding charities itself, central government should pass legislation enabling local government bodies to raise money for voluntary organizations.
In 1842, the newspaper again highlighted Dublin’s dependency on parliamentary grants and contrasted this with the norm of local funding: If Ireland has been hardly treated and stinted in justice, she has, in recompense, been pampered with immunities and grants of public money. It is wonderful how many institutions in Dublin are supported by Government which the inhabitants of other towns provide for by local assessment.
63
A similar point was made by the Edinburgh Police Commissioners in an 1836 petition to government. They complained that parliament assisted “the House of Industry, the Foundling and other Hospitals of Dublin,” while Edinburgh, despite sharing many of Dublin’s metropolitan problems, received nothing. 64 The Commissioners argued that parliament should grant funding to local government rather than to Edinburgh’s charities, implying that they might aid philanthropic institutions with any funds they received if they deemed it necessary.
Not surprisingly, the Scotsman, a campaigning liberal newspaper, warned of the potential for corruption that might arise from direct grants to charities. The newspaper, however, acknowledged that some institutions that benefited from government aid were well-managed, and overall, it was much more concerned with making a broader moral point. By complaining that Dublin’s inhabitants were not taking the correct approach to philanthropy, it was suggesting that the city had become dependent and degraded and it connected Dublin with Irish stereotypes of mendicancy and poverty. Indirectly this was also a way of promoting civic pride in Edinburgh, highlighting how that city was at least striving to support its poor, even if in practice these efforts often faltered. It also implied that Dublin, by relying on others to support its institutions, was failing as a city.
This was a moral problem that Dublin’s middle classes were acutely aware of, in spite of their attempts to protect parliamentary funding. Like their counterparts throughout the United Kingdom, they valued self-reliance highly, and they too thought that local government should play a significant role in charity. In principle, they also believed that local government intervention was more acceptable than central government interference. This was highlighted by Dublin surgeon John McDonnell, one of the key contributors to the 1847 campaign to retain the grants. He claimed that “the grant in question is at complete variance with the sound principle that each locality should support its own charities.” 65 Arguing that parliamentary funding was only justified because Dublin occupied a unique position as a poor but metropolitan city, McDonnell classified voluntary donations and funds from local government together as more acceptable sources of income. When local government became involved in philanthropy, there was still a sense that the community was managing itself but this was not so when central government intervened.
A broad range of opinion in Dublin acknowledged that the support of charity was a proper role for local government, though the existence of such views was sometimes obscured by sectarian animosity. In 1839, in an unsuccessful, eleventh-hour attempt to prevent the opening of the municipal franchise to Catholics, the die-hard Protestants who controlled Dublin Corporation wrote an address “to the Protestants of the United Kingdom” appealing against the enfranchisement of Catholics. They argued that if Catholics were permitted to become members of the Corporation, [t]he Lord Mayor will be President of Popish Schools-will be the Chairman at the meetings of Popish religious societies-will lay the first stone of Popish Chapels-will throw the weight of his influence-that is to say the weight of the influence of a British Magistrate into the scale with whatever is Popish, and therefore “idolatrous and damnable”
66
In addition to spectacularly illustrating the anti-Catholic prejudices of Corporation members, this statement also clearly highlights that philanthropic patronage was considered part of the Lord Mayor’s duties.
This view was shared by the reformed Corporation. In 1846, for example, the Corporation lobbied parliament to have its powers increased to match those of its English counterparts. One of the Corporation’s stated grievances was its loss of the King’s Hospital, which had been removed from its control during the municipal reform process to protect the school’s Anglican ethos. 67 The reformed Corporation’s interest in regaining control of the King’s Hospital indicated that this majority liberal and Catholic body believed it important that it should play some role in the city’s philanthropic institutions. Despite the hostility of many members of the reformed Corporation to their predecessor, they agreed that in principle local government bodies should support local philanthropy.
In practice, it took several decades for the reformed Dublin Corporation to build up significant connections with the city’s charities, and they never rivaled those of Edinburgh Town Council (see below). This was partly due to limitations of the Corporation’s authority; it was not until 1851 that the Corporation gained the powers previously held by the City of Dublin Grand Jury to make presentments to medical charities. A tradition of parliamentary funding, coupled with religious tensions, made central grants a safer option while the Corporation remained unreformed. This set a pattern of state provision for philanthropy in Dublin that ultimately lacked legitimacy.
Although a local government body, the City of Dublin Grand Jury’s connections with medical charities were controversial. The Grand Jury’s presentments to the well-respected Jervis-Street and Mercer’s Hospitals were not resented, but overall it was believed that the body allowed unpopular charities to survive by removing their reliance on donations. 68 It was not the principle of local government funding that was at issue, rather it was the exclusionary nature of the Grand Jury in which Catholics were afforded little influence. Even the controversial Irish Poor Law with its partially elected Boards of Guardians was initially more popular among middle-class Catholics than the Grand Jury. A speaker at a meeting of the north Dublin Anglican parish of St Mary’s in July 1839 welcomed the possibility that the soon-to-be operational Poor Law would displace the Grand Jury’s medical role: “The workhouse system would provide medical inspectors for the poor, and there would not be money wanted from the grand jury.” 69 A broad range of middle-class opinion in Dublin thought that local government funding of charities was legitimate in principle, but because of delays reforming the institutions through which it would happen, it remained problematic in practice, which increased the incentive to bypass local government through continued reliance on parliamentary grants.
By contrast, Edinburgh presented one of the most striking examples of a close relationship between local government and charity in the nineteenth-century United Kingdom. The Lord Provost of Edinburgh was involved in the management of three times as many charities as their counterpart the Lord Mayor of Dublin. 70 Edinburgh Town Council heavily influenced the city’s most significant medical charity, the Royal Infirmary. Not only was a place reserved for the Lord Provost on the Infirmary’s management, but the Council indirectly controlled some of the hospital’s income since every year the Infirmary requested the Council’s permission to hold its annual “church door” collections at all places of worship in the city. This allowed the Council to exert pressure on the charity, and in 1840, after the Council had published criticisms of the Infirmary’s exclusive administrative structures, the hospital gave subscribers a greater role in governance. 71 The Infirmary had been under pressure to make such alterations since 1817, yet it was not until the Town Council demanded it that the hospital’s managers were prepared to change.
The Council also helped to administer some of the city’s most prominent charitable organizations, notably Heriot’s Hospital a particularly wealthy and influential charity. 72 Indeed, the association with such a successful institution encouraged others to entrust the management of charities to Edinburgh Town Council. Places were reserved for local government representatives on the management of the Institution for Relief of Incurables, founded in 1805, and the Council also administered Edinburgh’s Bell’s Fund. This was a share of the bequest of educationalist Andrew Bell, and the Council employed it to support two schools in the city. 73 Bell was an Anglican cleric, and the fact that his bequest was entrusted to Edinburgh Town Council, which was patron of the city’s Church of Scotland churches, reflected and enhanced the legitimacy of local government intervention in philanthropic activity in Edinburgh to a greater extent than in most British towns, never mind Dublin. 74
The Town Council’s role in Heriot’s Hospital allowed the Council to further extend its influence over the city. After Corporate reform, Heriot’s governors secured new legislation that enabled them to use some of the trust’s funds to establish a series of day schools or “Foundation Schools,” the first of which was opened in 1838. As Richard Rodger has noted, the Foundation School buildings mimicked the original Heriot’s architecture, providing a visible demonstration that the charity’s influence was spreading throughout Edinburgh. 75 By extension, this also further highlighted the Council’s role in philanthropy, and how this was shaping the whole city.
The earlier advent of municipal reform increased the sense that Edinburgh’s middle classes were playing a role in local government–assisted philanthropy, even though the municipal franchise was quite limited. Hence, Edinburgh appeared to have not only a vibrant, but also a locally controlled associational culture. By contrast, the delay in Corporate reform in Dublin provided space for the central state to intervene in issues such as education. This interference lacked legitimacy, and it may have even partially hindered the ability of charity to promote shared values. When reformed local government intervened in philanthropy, the ability of charities to promote the shared values of the town was maintained, because these local government bodies represented the town itself. When the central state tried to promote philanthropy, it seemed as though values were being imposed from outside, something repugnant to commentators from across Dublin’s political spectrum.
The Measure of a City
Both repealers and unionists complained about the negative impacts that they believed Union with Britain had had on Dublin. 76 Although the grants were begun by the Irish parliament before the Union, discussion of the Union settlement provided further opportunities to emphasize the negative effects of parliamentary funding, as that settlement had guaranteed such funding for twenty years to compensate Dublin for the loss of its parliament. This ensured that the discussion of parliamentary aid was constantly connected with Dublin’s apparent inability to manage itself. 77 For both unionists and repealers, the fact that Dublin did not rely completely on its own resources to fund charities suggested that there were severe problems with the way Dublin was governed. For both, Dublin appeared to be very far from the ideal of a self-governing urban society.
The authors of the 1842 report, MP George Alexander Hamilton and bankers David Charles La Touche and John Barlow, all supported the Union.
78
Yet they claimed that, partly as a result of the Union, Dublin was not capable of fully sustaining the kind of philanthropic institutions required by a large urban center: [B]ecause in London, and the other large towns in England, private charity may have been found amply sufficient for their public charitable institutions, it by no means follows that in Dublin, where the poor are so numerous, and the rich comparably so few, it would be reasonable or just to expect from her citizens an extent of liberality which neither their numbers nor circumstances could fairly warrant.
79
Dublin was not fully fulfilling its functions as a city, in the ways that large English towns were.
Indeed, according to the authors, the English towns were models which, with the temporary continuation of parliamentary aid, Dublin could emulate. If the grants were not maintained, they claimed as follows: Dublin would . . . be prevented, under any circumstances . . . from being placed in the same creditable position as the great towns in England, where the hospitals, being unconnected with the poor-law system, are amply supported by the liberality and charity of the inhabitants.
80
They did not make this argument simply to ensure Dublin’s inhabitants would not have to spend more on philanthropy. La Touche and many of his family members were heavily involved in charitable fundraising in the city. They genuinely believed that short-term grants could aid the charities’ long-term success. 81 The enthusiasm with which the authors discussed the English situation, at a time when conditions in many large English towns were attracting increasing criticism, reflected how critical Dublin’s position was believed to be. Repealers too favored retaining the grants, though they claimed that the money was paltry compensation for the damage caused by the Union. 82
Although both camps defended the grants, the language they used to do this indicated that they believed such aid was far from ideal. The grants emphasized Dublin’s dependency, the city appeared to be unwilling to alleviate its problems through local efforts, in a way that Edinburgh apparently was. Much of this was about impressions; destitution was endemic in Dublin, but relative levels of distress were not the central factor that distinguished the two stateless capitals in the eyes of contemporaries. When the Scotsman criticized the parliamentary grants in 1842, Edinburgh’s residents were becoming increasingly aware of severe deficiencies in their city’s Poor Law institutions. 83 The newspaper’s main concern was not destitution, but the role and position of national capitals within the United Kingdom. The number of charities in Dublin that were not in receipt of parliamentary assistance probably exceeded the total number of philanthropic organizations operating in Edinburgh, but contrasting state–society relations meant that Dublin appeared much less independent than Edinburgh in the eyes of its inhabitants and other commentators alike.
This article has said little about the quality of relief that charities provided, and its discussion of the problems caused by central state funding does not imply such finance interfered with the institutions’ ability to provide for the poor. State funding may in some special cases have even enabled philanthropic organizations to focus more on those they served by reducing their need to pander to the whims of middle-class donors. Dublin’s Westmoreland Lock Hospital, for example, was provided for entirely by parliament, allowing the city’s middle classes to avoid supporting those they thought especially reprehensible.
Geoffrey Finlayson has indicated that, even in the early nineteenth century, some British commentators became increasingly skeptical about the ability of voluntary funding to solve all of the problems that it was applied to. 84 However, providing an adequate service was often not the only or even the most important aim of middle-class philanthropists, how their city interacted with state bodies was also of central concern. This was especially significant in the stateless capitals of Dublin and Edinburgh, where the ability to govern one’s own city was seen as essential in a national metropolis. This view was shared by the middle classes from across the religious spectrum, whether Catholic, Episcopalian, or Presbyterian. Nor were perceptions of Dublin’s problems simply a reflection of nationalist concerns about a lack of Irish independence. Like their unionist counterparts, Dublin’s nationalists also believed that urban governance in the city lacked legitimacy.
In practice, Dublin had a vibrant associational culture, and while parliamentary aid, by politicizing philanthropy, ensured that civil society was weaker there than in Edinburgh, charity did help to promote a basic level of common understanding among Catholics and Protestants. Indeed, this may help to explain why nineteenth-century Dublin was spared the large-scale sectarian violence of the kind that frequently marred life in Victorian and Edwardian Belfast. R. J. Morris’s ideas about the “constructive” impact of associational culture can therefore be partially applied to Dublin, albeit not nearly to the same extent as in the Scottish metropolis. Philanthropy, however, also adversely affected perceptions of Dublin and made it appear to be quite a different place from Edinburgh.
Contrasts in the institutional structures that characterized each of the stateless capitals deeply affected both. The existence of Dublin Castle, in particular, made Dublin unique in both an Irish and a U.K. context. While it served as a reminder of British power in the city, it was prestigious enough for moderate Irish nationalists to repeatedly protest against British attempts to remove the Lord Lieutenant. 85 These contrasts raise questions about how the experiences of Dublin and Edinburgh compared with cities such as Pest, Buda, and Pressburg/Bratislava in the Habsburg Empire, or with colonial capitals outside Europe. To what extent was social and cultural life in these cities shaped by the administrative systems that bound them to the larger empire? This article has indicated that as a type of city, the “stateless capital” is worthy of more attention. By using the examples of Dublin and Edinburgh, it has also indicated, however, that the positions and experiences of individual stateless capitals were not identical. To achieve an in-depth understanding of such cities and the middle-class inhabitants who dominated their politics and culture, we must examine the interactions between society and state institutions in all their intricate and complex detail.
Footnotes
Author’s Note
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, as well as Enda Delaney and Roseanna Doughty who read earlier drafts of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article draws on research supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number 1356122]; the Jenny Balston Scholarship; the Justin Arbuthnott British-Irish Fund; and the Cluff Memorial Studentship.
