The publication of the 1926 Census last weekend has seen people across the country explore the lives of their forebears, and muse on how much the country has changed in the last century. The release also offers a glimpse of what life was like here in Galway 100 years ago.
The latest historical census was released on Saturday, April 18 under the 100-year rule, which sees census and similar records sealed for a century to protect the privacy of the individuals enumerated. This was a landmark publication for several reasons, not least that it was the first census organised under the auspices of the newly independent Irish Free State.
A census was conducted in Ireland every 10 years from 1821 to 1911, but for various reasons only those of 1901 and 1911 survive in their entirety. Meanwhile, the 1921 Census was cancelled in Ireland due to the ongoing War of Independence. All of this means that the 1926 Census was the first census undertaken in Ireland in 15 years, and is also one of just three complete censuses available to genealogists, historians and other researchers.
A population in decline
Census 1926 reports compiled by the Central Statistics Office record a total of 169,366 people living in Galway in 1926, comprising 88,481 males and 80,885 females. This number marked a significant decline since a population peak in 1841, the last census before the Great Famine, when 440,198 people were recorded as living in Galway.
The population fell precipitously to 321,648 by 1851 before slowing to a steady decline. By 1911 Galway’s residents numbered 182,224, and dropped by just under 13,000 in the years leading up to the next census in 1926.
By comparison, Galway’s population in 2022, the most recent census year for Ireland, amounted to 277,737, comprising 136,934 males and 140,803 females.
How Galway people made a living
Unsurprisingly, by far the most common occupation in Galway in 1926 was farming - 24,525 people listed themselves as farmers, with a further 27,782 listed as sons, daughters, or other relatives assisting on a family farm. Meanwhile, just 312 people throughout Galway worked in food manufacture, including 149 in baking and biscuit making.
The job descriptions of Galwegians from a century ago demonstrate a world in the midst of change, most notably in the area of transport. There were 44 saddlers in Galway city and county, and 33 people described themselves as cartwrights, coachbuilders or wheelwrights. By contrast, there were 165 motor mechanics.
A total of 202 people - including one woman - were employed as drivers of horse-drawn vehicles, while a further 377 were drivers of motor vehicles.
Despite having in excess of 700 kilometres of coastline, there were just 17 boat and barge builders in County Galway in 1926.
Some 258 people were employed on Galway’s rail network, including 30 locomotive engine drivers. The Galway-Clifden railway, which by then had been operating for three decades and would continue for another nine years before being shuttered in 1935, would have contributed significantly to the health of the rail industry here.
In telecommunications, Galway had six telegraph operators and just two telephone workers. The Marconi transatlantic telegraphy station in Clifden had closed in 1925, though by the following year Galway still had a total of 1,655 people working in transport and communications in the county.
There were a total of 84 doctors in Galway, including 11 women. There were also 45 medical students and a total of 122 professional students, presumably mostly in Queen’s College Galway (now University of Galway ).
Galway also boasted 495 publicans, 35 hairdressers, eight actors, 49 typists, and 14 people who described themselves as either journalists or authors.
Shining a spotlight on institutions
Galway also had 144 laundry workers, including 80 women who were recorded, by their initials only, in the Magdalene Laundry that stood at the foot of College Road. The women, who ranged in age from 20 to 76, came mostly from Galway and the west, though some were from further afield including one woman who was born in Aylesbury.
The map facility that features on the National Archives of Ireland’s 1926 Census website allows browsers to search the map, both by electoral area and with a focus on the many institutions which existed in the Ireland of the early 20th century.
By far the largest institution in Galway in 1926 was St Bridget’s Hospital in Ballinasloe, then known as the Ballinasloe District Lunatic Asylum, which listed a total of 1,512 patients and 143 staff.
Galway Gaol, which continued operating on what is now the site of Galway Cathedral until 1939, housed just 19 prisoners on Census Night 1926.
The Bons Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam opened in 1925 and is not among the institutions listed on the Census map. The institution, which was in the townland of Toberjarlath in Tuam, recorded 154 residents, including 12 staff and at least 70 babies and young children.
Industrial schools
St Joseph’s Industrial School in Salthill listed 210 boys, the majority of whom had lost at least one parents. There were also nine Christian Brothers resident in the school, along with five other lay staff. St Anne’s Industrial School, meanwhile, listed 85 girls resident, along with five Sisters of Mercy nuns.
In Letterfrack, there were 163 boys recorded in St Joseph’s Industrial School, along with seven Christian Brothers and a further seven lay staff. The Census return includes children as young as seven years old listed as farmers, waiters, and shoemakers.
St Joseph’s Industrial School in Clifden town, which catered mainly for girls, had 97 girls living in the school on Census Night, along with 16 staff members. Two women were also listed as visitors.
St Bridgid’s Industrial School in Loughrea listed 112 girls, while in St Joseph’s Industrial School in Ballinasloe, there were 83 girls listed as inmates.
The 1926 Census was the first census where Irish people were asked to list their townland as well as their county of birth. This level of detail was not provided for the residents of the country’s many institutions, though most were listed by their town of origin.
The 1926 Census is available on the National Archives website.
