Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 24 January 2013

“Technical Memories (Part 41) – O’Rahilly’s Lament”

 “I have no use for ideas in themselves- they must be translated into life or literature. Too many of us are quick on the uptake but might be slow on the output” (Professor Alfred O’Rahilly, 10 October 1927, lecture to the members of the Economic and Literary Society of the Cork Municipal School of Commerce).

Professor O’Rahilly’s lecture in one sense gives an insight into his personal thoughts on the problems of the Irish Free State. Indeed, much of what he noted in his lecture has echoes in any age of Irish history, no mind in his time. Some of his ideas are thought provoking at any rate to refer to especially in building the story of the more social theory side of technical education in Cork. In his lecture entitled “Efficiency” he noted that he was not much of a believer in brains, which he had found “did not count for very much in life at all”. He believed in character, grit, will power, and ‘spunk’. He believed not so much in the man but in his capacity for getting out what was in him. He commented that most people only owned a very small bit of themselves, and that bit they had no control over. He noted that he had met printers to carpenters, who were as good “as any man”, but they lacked power of concentration. Some people he noted “just go along with half minds on the jobs”. What was required he commented was to be all there- the majority of the people, he believed, were “half-witted and need to have their minds mobilised for the work in hand”.

Professor O’Rahilly had seen much change in Ireland in years previous to his lecture. He had led Irish delegations to the International Labour Organization conferences in 1924, 1925 and 1932, and took on a conciliatory role in trade union and employers disputes in Munster. Standing as a candidate in the Cork Borough for Cumann na nGaedheal, he was elected to the 4th Dáil at the 1923 general election. He resigned in 1924. He had became Registrar of University college Cork in 1920, and held the post until 1943 when he became President of the University. He spent a year, in 1927, at Harvard studying social and political theory. Indeed he had a huge interest in adult education as advocated by one of his biographers Denis O’Sullivan in 1989. O’Rahilly would in time set up an adult education programme that extended university education in social and economic subjects to a much wider audience.

In his 1927 lecture O’Rahilly noted that the primary motive force in life should be religious and social. In a country like America he observed that the “mere exercise of power seemed to be an end in itself and seemed to enable them to be efficient in a sense. Through the mere exercise of power they were looking for money, enjoyment, Ford cars, and pictures”. He did not think that was desirable and it was not very applicable to a “poor country” like Ireland.

Referring to obvious cases where a sense of social obligation was not sufficiently present, O’Rahilly went on to instance the Irish political system, about which there was a great deal of discussion at that time. He noted: “In a lot of ways we must only admit we deserve it; we know we have not been carrying out these things with the high sense of public duty that we should do…Our obligations should not be to the candidate for the position, but to the people he is going to serve who are very often poor people. Their bounden duty was to vote for the man who was efficient but very little of that was found in the country…They [politicians] had a solemn obligation to the public and to the poor but they had little consciousness of it. The first thing necessary was the motive force that would drive them on and give them something to live for”. However, he followed this up by commenting that the “social sense cut both ways”. Those elected had also got to live and work in the country; They were not unique. They were not sports or supermen. They were not capable of working in isolation from their party fellows; “Even Newton or Einstein had first to master the accumulated store of knowledge and only by piecing together what other men had thought and done”.

In a wide ranging lecture, Professor O’Rahilly found that a great number of Cork men were receptive to new ideas. With a strong theme of what Americans were doing in America, he finished up his delivery speaking about the national diaspora and their potential; “let us not forget that the greatest of them all are the millions of our kith and kin beyond the seas…we have got to close up our ranks and make a united appeal; I do not mean a begging expedition…they are willing to organise on the other side, and there are three or four big business men who would gladly place their services at the disposal of their country if asked, but they never were”.

To be continued…

Wanted: looking to talk to people about their memories who attended the “Crawford Tech”, c.1930-c.1970, contact Kieran, 087 655 33 89

Caption:

675a. Professor Alfred O’Rahilly, UCC (source: Boole Library, UCC)

Kieran’s our City, Our Town Article, 10 January 2013

“Technical Memories (Part 39) –Guiding the City’s Future”

“In this world of change, no city can remain for long in a stationary condition. Either it must be in a state of expansion, alteration or deterioration…it is the highest degree desirable that there should be in existence a wisely prepared town plan, which will not only guide its future growth, but also so control its existing mass that no change can be made except by way of improvement (Cork: A Civic Survey, 1926)”

In December’s column, I highlighted the work by the committee of the Crawford Technical Institute in heading up the compilation of the report Cork A Civic Survey in 1926. In this survey, three clearly dilapidated housing areas of Cork are mapped out- one west of Shandon Street, the north western corner of the city centre island, and the property to the south west of St Finbarr’s Cathedral. All three except parts of the northern area were older parts of the city. The survey noted that there was not that much dilapidated property in the island to the east of North Main Street but those houses should be cleared out at the earliest opportunity, and no housing rebuilding under taken in the area. The space should be fully allocated for shopping and business purposes. The survey also questioned whether residential rebuilding should take place in the low lying and flood prone neighbourhood of Henry Street and Grattan Street.

In the city there were 12,850 houses inhabited by 15,469 families, giving according to the total population about five persons in a family and an average of six persons per house. A large proportion of the population was crowded into tenements and small houses. The number of tenements was 719 with 2,928 families. The tenement population was around 8,675. Nearly one-ninth of the total population lived in tenements and on average 12 families could live in a house meant for one family.

In the Civic Survey classification, under first class tenement structures 2,499 people or 839 families lived in 194 houses, which appeared to be structurally sound; they were not in good repair but were capable of being put in good repair. Under second class tenements, 6,114 people or 2,038 families lived in 512 houses, which were so decayed or so badly constructed as approaching the borderline of being unfit for human habitation. Under third class tenements 222 people or 61 families lived in 13 houses unfit for human habitation, and incapable of being rendered fit for human habitation. In the small house category, there was 9,649 people living in 2,329 second class houses. There were 211 people living in 54 third class houses.

The survey acknowledged that the redistribution of people was so large that it might naturally take years to accomplish (which it did). It was hoped that the progress would be more rapid than in Liverpool where it took 20 years to demolish and rebuild a similar number of houses. One of the chief aims of the survey was that the rebuilding should not be done piecemeal as a series of isolated schemes, but as part of a general scheme of town planning and redistribution of the population.

The survey outlined that one of the opportunities was the availability of land on the south of the river for re-housing as well as for an extension of the city bounds. During the compilation of the Survey, the City Commissioner Philip Monahan as well as his city engineer Stephen Farrington and Cork architect, Daniel Levie engineered and designed the start of a new slum clearance programme. Capwell Road comprised 148 houses of short terraces of four houses set at 16 houses per acre. The homes were mainly four-roomed. In the summer of 1925 the Capwell site was acquired by Cork Corporation by deed of transfer from Richard Morgan. By Christmas 1925 20 men were employed on relief work for 2/3 weeks clearing the site, preparatory to the actual building. On 14 May 1926 11 tenders were received for the Capwell development, ten from local builders and one from a Dutch firm of builders. Fifteen of the houses were built by the Cork Builders Worker’s Guild and 144 were built by Messrs. Meagher and Hayes. By 25 February 1928 the scheme was complete and money was deposited towards purchase of the Capwell houses. Under the housing scheme £14,000 had been received. The 148 occupiers are listed in a document in the Cork City and County Archives. The money received from Capwell was devoted to the development of another housing site at Turners Cross and the announcement was made that it was expected that tenders for the building of 150 more houses would be invited.

The architect for the Turners Cross developments and those to come that were connected with Cork Corporation, Daniel Levie played an active part in the Cork Civic Survey of 1926. He was a member of the Munster Fine Arts Council for many years. He was also a founder member of the Cork Rotary Club. His firm’s collection of drawings was subsequently acquired by the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, and is now in the Cork City and County Archives.

To be continued…

Caption:

673a. Civic Survey map of heavy slum areas in Cork, 1926 (source: Cork A Civic Survey, 1926)