Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T04:40:15.868Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Residential Exodus from Dublin Circa 1900: Municipal Annexation and Preferences for Local Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2022

Silvi K. Berger*
Affiliation:
Associate at Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 7TJ, U.K.
Franco Mariuzzo
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 7TJ, U.K. E-mail: F.Mariuzzo@uea.ac.uk.
Peter L. Ormosi
Affiliation:
Professor, Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 7TJ, U.K. E-mail: P.Ormosi@uea.ac.uk.
*

Abstract

Dublin experienced a marked stagnation in population growth in the second half of the nineteenth century, accompanied by decaying infrastructure and poor public health. Historians have emphasized that this crisis was coupled with poor governance of the city of Dublin—manifested by eroding public services together with increasing tax burdens to counteract growing debt. This paper studies the municipal boundary expansion of Dublin in 1901, which occurred as a way to alleviate the city’s financial distress. It saw multiple relatively wealthy townships annexed by the city via royal order to increase Dublin’s tax base. Using a sample of census records matched to city streets, we show that wealthy residents and Protestant residents were more likely to leave annexed areas compared to areas that remained independent. Moreover, we offer anecdotal evidence that at least some of the wealthy Protestant households departing annexed townships sorted into jurisdictions that remained independent. Our findings offer support to arguments that the municipal annexation by the city of Dublin may have accelerated the decline of annexed areas in the early twentieth century and contributed to municipal fragmentation in metropolitan Dublin.

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We are thankful to Dan Bogart (the editor), Ann Carlos, and two referees for very helpful comments. We wish to thank Alan Fernihough for sharing with us the data he scraped from the National Archives. The data used for this paper, along with the relevant codes, and an Online Appendix, are available at https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/153681/version/V2/view.

References

REFERENCES

Berger, Silvi. “Residential Preferences in Dublin, in the Lead-up to Irish Independence.” Ph.D. diss., University College Dublin, 2014.Google Scholar
Berger, Silvi K., Mariuzzo, Franco, and Ormosi, Peter L.. “Residential Exodus from Dublin Circa 1900: Municipal Annexation and Preferences for Local Government.” Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2022-09-08. https://doi.org/10.3886/E153681V2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boustan, Leah P.Local Public Goods and the Demand for High-Income Municipalities.” Journal of Urban Economics 76 (2013), 7182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brady, Joseph. “Dublin at the Turn of the Century.” In Dublin through Space and Time, edited by Simms, Anngret and Brady, Joseph, chapter 5. Dublin, Ireland: Four Courts Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Brueckner, Jan K. Lectures on Urban Economics. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Corcoran, Michael. Through Streets Broad and Narrow: A History of Dublin Trams. Shepperton, UK: Ian Allen Publishing, 2000.Google Scholar
Craft, M.The Development of Dublin: Background to the Housing Problem.” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 59, no. 35 (1970): 301–13.Google Scholar
Daly, Mary E. Dublin, the Deposed Capital: A Social and Economic History, 1860–1914. Cork, Ireland: University Press Cork, 1984.Google Scholar
Dickson, D. “Death of a Capital? Dublin and the Consequences of Union.” In Proceedings British Academy vol. 107, 111–32. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Dilworth, Richardson. The Urban Origins of Suburban Autonomy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Ellickson, Bryan. “Jurisdictional Fragmentation and Residential Choice.” American Economic Review 61, no. 2 (1971): 334–39.Google Scholar
Filer, John, and Kenny, Lawrence. “Voter Reaction to City-County Consolidation Referenda.” Journal of Law and Economics 23, no. 1 (1980): 179–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammond, J.The Founder of Thom’s Directory.” Dublin Historical Record 8, no. 2 (1946): 4156.Google Scholar
Harris, Richard, and Larkham, Peter, eds. Changing Suburbs: Foundation, Form, and Function vol. 24. London: E & FN Spon, 1999.Google Scholar
Irish Times, various issues 1899–1900.Google Scholar
Norton, Edward C., Wang, Hua, and Ai, Chunrong. “Computing Interaction Effects and Standard Errors in Logit and Probit Models.” Stata Journal 4, no. 2 (2004): 154–67.Google Scholar
Gráda, Ó, Cormac. Ireland: A New Economic History, 1780–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Brien, Joseph. Dear, Dirty Dublin: A City in Distress, 1899–1916. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982.Google Scholar
O’Brien, R. Berry, ed. Home Rule, Speeches of John Redmond, M.P. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1910.Google Scholar
Pim, Joseph. “Municipal Government and Taxation.” Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland VI, no. XLVII (1875): 410–30.Google Scholar
Prunty, Jacinta. Dublin Slums, 1800–1925: A Study in Urban Geography. Dublin, Ireland: Irish Academic Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Tiebout, Charles. “A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures.” Journal of Political Economy 64, no. 5 (1956): 416–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Marco, Maas, Ineke, and Miles, Andrew. HISCO: Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2002.Google Scholar