The Name Has Been Changed

Gil & Macmillan has recently re-issued Kevin C. Kearns' oral history of Dublin Tenement Life. Documenting the lives of old folks who once lived in Europe's worst slums, it provides an amazing view of The Liberties.

Stately Georgian homes that once belonged to the Protestants of the Ascendancy gradually declined into incredibly blighted slums, with one house holding as many as one hundred people. Families of twenty lived in a single room in a building that was on the verge of collapse, crawling with bugs, and lacking in any facilities that did not exist in the 1820's. Think indoor plumbing, central heating, cooking stoves, and the like. To read Kearns' book is to spend a few hours in hell.

But Ireland is wealthy now, and The Liberties is undergoing a steady process of gentrification. New apartment buildings are springing up where tumbledown mansions once tumbled down. Literally. On top of some unfortunate occupants.

The old-timers quoted in the oral history spoke fondly of the Iveagh Market, where they bought second-hand rags to use for clothes and found the cheapest of food when they could afford even the most meager rations. Now there are plans to redevelop the long shuttered market, but this time around it will be trendy, high end and rather posh. A four star hotel might join the mix, settling into an area that was notorious for its gangs, grinding poverty and alcoholism.

You see, that's the little difficulty. Mention The Liberties and the first thing anyone thinks of is what the area was. Terrible reputation, The Liberties, and how can a developer market a high-class development if people associate the name with dirty, barefoot, rickety children clinging to the ragged shawls of their old-before-their-time mothers?

Why, you call the place something else, of course. And what says elite, world-class site, well worth the high price tag? The developers want to call the area the 'SoHo' district because it is located south of Heuston Station, or so they say. And should the naive think that Dublin's SoHo is like London's version or New York City's charming neighborhood, so much the better for the project.

As for the people who live in The Liberties now, those on the dole and the others who scrape by in menial work, will they be pleased with the changes to their neighborhood?

The people quoted in Dublin Tenement Life spoke of hard times that are nearly unimaginable. And they spoke of how much they missed their old haunts, the friendly neighbors and the atmosphere. Almost every single person who was interviewed actually missed the old Liberties, the slums, while forgetting the chronic illnesses, malnutrition and high mortality. They longed for the sense of community that they knew as children raised in poverty. All the improvements envisioned by the Dublin City Council will not restore that.