Historian Felix M. Larkin, a trustee of the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers Society, has given the opening Dublin charities & homelessness lecture at Christ Church Cathedral in the Irish capital. Larkin was the Society’s chairman from 2012 to 2016. His lecture is reproduced below the series poster. Consider making a contribution to the Society. MH

We are gathered in what is probably the oldest part of Dublin, just up from Wood Quay and adjacent to Dublin Castle – and if you exit at the back of the cathedral and walk down Lord Edward Street and Cork Hill, past City Hall, the first turn on your right after City Hall is Palace Street, one of Dublin’s shortest streets. No. 2 Palace Street is one of Dublin’s iconic buildings. For nearly 140 years, between 1855 and 1992, it was home to a charitable society with the strangest of names, the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers Society. The façade of this eighteenth-century building still bears, in deeply incised lettering, the legend ‘Sick & Indigent Roomkeepers Society, founded A.D. 1790’. The Society boasts that it is Dublin’s oldest surviving charity.

First, a word of explanation about our name. ‘Indigent’ means poor, while the word ‘Roomkeepers’ in the eighteenth century referred to tenants, sometimes entire families, who lived in one room of a house – in other words, tenement dwellers. Some people have asked me from time to time if we were a charity for impoverished members of the hospitality industry, innkeepers and the like. But no, ‘Roomkeepers’ in the original meaning of the word were those who lived in one room in a tenement – poor, but not perhaps the poorest of the poor.

As recorded in the History of the City of Dublin, by Warburton, Whitelaw & Walsh, the Society was founded by ‘a few individuals in the middle ranks of life [who], inhabiting a part of the town where the population was poor and crowded, had daily opportunities of knowing that many poor creatures who were unable to dig and ashamed to beg expired of want and were often found dead in the sequestrated garrets and cellars to which they had silently returned’. The part of Dublin referred to was the area of Charles Street West behind Ormond Quay, in the parish of St Michan.

At the inaugural meeting of the Society on the 15 March 1790, the founders – Samuel Rossborough, Laurence Toole and nine others – resolved to form a society ‘to be called the Charitable Society for the Relief of Room-Keepers of all Religious Persuasions in the City of Dublin’. For the first three years, the Society confined its activities to the parish of St Michan and gave relief in the form of potatoes, bread, meal, straw, fuel or money as circumstances dictated. However, according to Warburton, Whitelaw and Walsh, ‘the Charity soon attracted public notice and support’ and it expanded its geographic reach.

Our principal founder, Samuel Rossborough is commemorated by a memorial tablet on the east wall of St Michan’s Church, in Church Street. The original memorial was unfortunately damaged in severe weather and became dislodged from the wall, fell to the ground and broke beyond repair – but, conscious of our long and distinguished history, the Society was determined to restore it. The new memorial, which was fashioned by the sculptor and letter-cutter Tom Glendon, was dedicated by Archdeacon Pierpoint in 2014. It is an exquisite piece of work.

Expanding its activities beyond the parish of St Michan in 1793, the Society re-organised itself into four separate divisions under the direction of a central committee – the Barrack and Rotunda Divisions on the north side of town, and the Workhouse and St. Stephen’s Green Divisions on the south side. Committees of trustees were drawn from residents of each area to be responsible for distributing relief at a local level. The divisional monthly meetings were normally held in local public houses –‘respectable taverns’, as the annual report for 1842 put it – and from 1809 to 1841 the central committee would meet in the Royal Exchange, now City Hall. The Society later used rented premises in Dame Street, and in 1855 purchased the building in Palace Street.

The Society attracted regular subscriptions and some substantial donations from affluent benefactors. Another major source of income was charity sermons. By 1823 charity sermons for the benefit of the Society were arranged bi-annually: one in an Anglican church at the end of April, the other in a Catholic church at the beginning of December. This reflected the non-denominational character of the Society. From the outset (as we have already seen), the Society has been non-denominational; it helps people of all creeds and of none.

Remarkably in the 19th century, some Catholic and Protestant clergy worked together to alleviate poverty in Dublin – though without the support, and sometimes with the open hostility, of the institutional churches. Thus, Father John Spratt, born in Dublin in 1796 and associated with Whitefriar Street church in Dublin for most of his priestly life, was for nearly 40 years honorary secretary of the Society. Father Spratt was the subject of a fine biography by Professor Fergus D’Arcy, published in 2018. D’Arcy highlights in that biography – and I quote – “how interconfessional or ecumenical [Spratt] was, uniquely for his age … out of step with his Cardinal Archbishop [Paul Cullen] and with a Church that was now coming into its own dominance”. Father Spratt happily cooperated with ‘Protestants of all confessions’ in his philanthropic work – and also in the temperance movement. He was a remarkable figure in Dublin in the middle years of the nineteenth century and a mark of his distinction is that he is buried in the O’Connell circle in Glasnevin cemetery. Whitefriar Street church is his monument: he built it in the 1820s.

Father Spratt’s philanthropy was complemented by what D’Arcy calls ‘his abiding commitment to political liberalism’. He was a staunch supporter of O’Connell and his movements for Catholic Emancipation and Repeal of the Act of Union from the 1820s to the 1840s, and he was a leading figure in amnesty campaigns for the Young Irelanders in the late 1840s and the Fenians in the 1860s – though not in sympathy with the extremism of the Fenians, who he dismissed as ‘the ardour and inexperience of youth’. He died in 1871.

The practice in the first half of the nineteenth century of holding divisional meetings of the Society in public houses was to change following the first visit of Fr Theobold Mathew, the leading figure in the temperance movement, to Dublin in 1840. According to the 1842 annual report, ‘since the great temperance movement began, many with the best of intentions objected to such places of meeting’. The Society, under the auspices of a ‘House Committee’, began to seek a permanent residence and ultimately secured No. 2 Palace Street for £355 at auction in 1855. The trusteeship of the house, which numbered the Provost of Trinity College, the aforementioned Father Spratt, Colonel D.C. La Touche (of the banking family), and Benjamin Lee Guinness, gives us a telling picture of the Society’s high-status patronage at this time. Guinness had even given £50 towards the purchase of the house.

The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of rampant poverty, and the post-Famine migration into Dublin from the provinces added to the numbers liable to turn to the Society for assistance. From 1863 the Society decided to use the Palace Street house not only as a venue for meetings but as a central point for the distribution of relief. Being easily accessible, it also became a valuable place of contact with the public – both with benefactors and with applicants for relief. Weekly pay-out queues at the Society’s door could be accommodated, with assistance in kind distributed in the form of coal, potatoes, etc. Monetary assistance was given to purchase items such as delft, glass, and fruit and vegetables, or to retrieve items from pawn shops, especially tools. In a similar vein, spinning wheels and sewing machines were provided – all in keeping with the core principle of helping people to achieve self-sufficiency, which continues to be a core principal of the Society today. The provision of decent clothing was another priority, so that the applicants could present themselves decently so as to secure work. Boots and clothing were offered for children to enable them to attend school.

In the twentieth century, the expansion of the city boundaries to include areas such as Drumcondra, Clontarf, Pembroke, Rathmines and Rathgar meant that the Society had to redefine the area of its activities to one that would be manageable having regard to the resources available to it. Accordingly, it was decided in the 1930s to restrict its activities to the boundaries of the ‘Old City – that is, between the two canals. In more recent times, given the decline in the numbers of people residing in the inner city, the Society has widened its remit to cover the city and county of Dublin.

In the 1970s the practice of visiting the poor in their homes by members of the divisional committees was discontinued, and in 1976 it was decided to centralise the administration with one committee of trustees and a single chairman. Up to that time the Society had continued to distribute relief, both in kind and in cash, through divisional committees – as it had done since 1793. Now we restrict our activities to making cash grants in response to applications for assistance submitted to us by social workers in State agencies and other relevant bodies.

Throughout the 1970s, the Society’s premises in Palace Street were under constant threat of a Compulsory Purchase Order by Dublin Corporation. This was, needless to say, strongly opposed by the Society. However, the lack of funds necessary to maintain the premises forced us finally to sell the building in 1992. It was purchased and later expertly restored to its original use as a family residence by the eminent architectural historian, Peter Pearson. Peter is also a distinguished artist – and indeed one of his most evocative paintings is of the house. The house was sold by Peter some years ago, but happily is still a family residence – and it stands today proudly displaying the Society’s name on the front facade and protected under a preservation order. Following the sale of the premises to Peter Pearson, the Society moved initially to leased accommodation first in Lower Leeson Street, then in Upper Leeson Street and now in Fitzwilliam Square.

No. 2 Palace Street, with which the Society is so inextricably linked, has had an interesting history – with many incarnations. It was built for a wine merchant, John Nott, around 1770, with compensation he received from the Wide Streets Commission after he was displaced from his property on account of the creation of nearby Parliament Street. Palace Street itself was developed following the same Commission’s guidelines for building height and width, and was constructed in an elegant Georgian style. Deeds show the house was bought by Robert Emmet’s family in 1795. Their interest in the property may have stemmed from its strategic location: the comings and goings to and from Dublin Castle could be observed. A silk business and later a military tailor occupied the house during the early nineteenth century. Interesting artefacts related to this period came to light during the work on the building in the 1990s which Peter Pearson undertook, including remnants of cloth found under the floorboards, scorch iron marks from the tailoring activities, large pewter inkwells resembling Puritan hats in shape, and a pair of children’s shoes.

The Society, as I mentioned, is now based in Fitzwilliam Square – and continues the good work which it has done since 1790 of providing assistance to the people of Dublin without distinction of religion, race, gender or politics. The need for the assistance which we are in a position to give is as great as ever. To perhaps a surprising extent, the types of poverty which the Society’s founders identified and tried to address through the establishment of the Society in 1790 continue to be a priority – namely, poverty due to illness, unemployment, addiction and other unforeseen circumstances.

A core principle of the Society remains to target assistance towards helping people who are experiencing temporary difficulties and need once-off assistance that will make a sustainable difference to the life and well-being of the individuals or families in question and will enable them to be self-sufficient again – in other words, people who find themselves in temporary difficulty, perhaps because of an unpaid bill. People can rack up big arrears on electricity, gas and other bills. That is one instance of where we can help: if we clear the bill for them, they are back on their feet again. Otherwise they might never get out of debt. We can also help with education expenses – especially where students with a good track record may be struggling to pay fees or need a laptop to pursue their studies, and dropping out of education could ruin their prospects. We also favour cases where a number of bodies are cooperating in a single project and ask the Society to contribute to a funding plan where there is a small shortfall. These are the kind of targeted, once-off, small-scale assistance that we aim to give – and I think that emphasis is unique to the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers Society.

In recent times, a particular focus has been on helping people to purchase furniture and other household necessities when they are moving from homeless accommodation into unfurnished housing and need additional resources to make it fully habitable. The housing crisis in Dublin has been an area of great concern to the members of the Society’s board, today’s trustees. The extent of the crisis is widely recognised, and the Society has direct evidence of it through the very large number of applications we receive for assistance with housing.  As a matter of policy, we have not assisted with rent arrears for many years, and in recent years we have had to cease giving assistance towards rental deposits or rent in advance for the first month of a private sector tenancy. We were being deluged with applications for such deposits and advances of rent – to the extent that, if we had agreed to all of them, the resources of the Society would quickly have been exhausted. Reluctantly, but necessarily, we decided to refuse all such applications. The rationale for this is that, by accepting these applications, we are only making good a deficiency in public policy on housing; the housing crisis needs to be addressed at political level, and it is not appropriate for a small charity like ourselves to become involved.

The particular problem that gave rise to so many applications to the Society is that, whereas rent supplement is paid in arrears, most private sector landlords insist on rent being paid in advance; we were asked to bridge the gap. There is no reason why the relevant government authorities should not address this issue: it involves no net additional payments from State sources, but is simply a question of the timing of a payment which will eventually be made. We concluded that it was wrong to continue to apply the Society’s limited resources to cover this anomaly. We made representations to the relevant authorities about this, but to no avail. However, as previously noted, we continue to help with home start-ups – by providing assistance for essential furniture, floor covering and white goods.

As stated earlier, the Society accepts applications for assistance submitted by social workers in State agencies and other relevant bodies. The Society has granted over €100,000 in assistance in the last calendar year – mostly in relatively small amounts per application. The total number of beneficiaries was about120, giving an average grant of assistance of approximately €800. Our experience is that small amounts of assistance are often more efficacious euro-for-euro in relieving distress than larger sums, and it is extraordinary how even a modest amount of assistance can alter a person’s circumstances. It will get them over a hump – back on an upward spiral towards self-sufficiency, rather than a downward one.

The financial challenges which the Society faces today are similar to those which other charities are experiencing at this time. It is more difficult than ever to raise money, and investment returns are very low, though the Society continues to attract a very gratifying level of donations and bequests. The Society also benefits from an annual church collection in a number of centre city Catholic parishes, courtesy of the Archbishop of Dublin. Like a lot of other charities, the Society was very adversely impacted by the banking crisis which led to the crash of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ in 2008. The Society had invested a large proportion of its considerable capital in Bank of Ireland and AIB shares – a strategy that would have been seen as safe and sensible, yielding high levels of dividend income to fund our work – but the moneys were lost in the crash. I detect no remorse on the part of the bankers for the damage that they did to charities like ours, but I often think I would like to see bankers kneeling in sackcloth and ashes doing penance for their sins in front of our former premises in Palace Street.

To raise some additional funds, the Society has recently launched a print and greeting cards featuring the painting of the Society’s former premises at Palace Street by Peter Pearson. He generously granted permission to the Society to make reproductions of his painting as a means of fundraising. All proceeds from the sale of the print and cards go towards funding the work of the Society, and the print and cards can be purchased via the Society’s website.

Bishop Donal Roche, Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, formally launched the print and cards on 12 November last in Dublin’s Mansion House. The former Lord Mayor, James Geoghegan, kindly sponsored the launch. There was special significance in that, for previous Lord Mayors of Dublin have been closely associated with the Society. For much the nineteenth century the Lord Mayor was an Honorary Trustee of the Society and took the chair at its annual general meetings – as Daniel O’Connell did in 1842 when he was Lord Mayor. In 1936 Alfie Byrne as Lord Mayor broadcast a Christmas appeal on Radio Éireann. There used to be a Christmas appeal broadcast on Radio Éireann every year on behalf of the Society.

We are grateful to Bishop Roche, himself a native of Dublin, for his support of the Society. In his remarks at the launch of the print and cards, he noted that the Society had been ‘a trusted brand over three centuries’ and he praised it for continuing to fulfil its core mission of helping Dublin-based homeowners, renters and others to maintain a dignified standard of living. He said: ‘Anyone can fall on hard times and many individuals and families in Dublin are struggling. Budgets are tight and unexpected events such as serious illness and inability to work can throw an individual or an entire family off balance. Roomkeepers tries to bridge the gap when the unforeseen happens or when already complex situations reach a tipping point. By enabling people to get their lives back on track following disruption due to illness, abandonment, or job loss, Roomkeepers provide once-off stop-gap funding that other agencies cannot meet.’ That sums us up to perfection.

I am honoured to have served as a trustee of the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers Society since 2008 and as its chairman from 2012 to 2016; as a historian, being associated with such a venerable body has always meant a lot to me. There is also great satisfaction to be had from the work that we do. I often feel overwhelmed by the problems that we come across – the sheer scale of human misery that we encounter in the applications we receive – but the flip side of that is knowing that, however inadequately, we can do some good, something to relieve some of that misery.  The proud motto of the Society is: ‘Serving the poor of Dublin since 1790, and still serving’ – and we hope to go on serving for some time to come, up to and well beyond our 250th birthday in 2040.