Poverty in the 18th-19th centuries was strongly correlated with poor health outcomes like high infant mortality rates. Wealthier families had better access to healthcare and lived longer. The development of hospitals, medical institutions, and dispensaries helped improve public health, while the rise of banks and paper currency expanded access to financial services. However, banking crises still occurred and exposed people to risks of financial ruin. Overall, the documents discuss how health and wealth were intertwined, with poverty bringing illness and wealth enabling better access to medical care.

1. Is fearr an tsláinte
ná na táinte
Is health better than wealth?
Waterford County Archivist
Joanne Rothwell

2. Is it better to be healthy than
wealthy?
It requires a certain amount of wealth to
be healthy
Poverty brings illness and disease
Wealth can also bring illness
The two conditions are intimately
entwined and it can be hard to separate
them enough to judge whether one or
the other wins out on points
This is the job we are undertaking in this
lecture series

3. Poverty and Health
 Edwin Chadwick's Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring
Population of Great Britain which was published as a report of the Poor
Law Commissioners in 1842
 "More than half the children of the working classes die, and only one-fifth of
the children of the gentry die, before the fifth year of age," and he estimated
that "The probable duration of life of a miner who had attained 40 years of
age may not be, and we have reason to believe is not, half of that of the
agricultural ranks who had attained the same period.
 "An epidemic of smallpox raged at the end of the year 1837," he declared,
"and carried off up- wards of 300 persons; yet of all this number I do not
think there was a single gentleman, and not above two or three tradesmen.“
 Frank H. Hankins ". . . under existing conditions, some selective impor-
tance must be attached to infant mortality. The poverty of the parents,
which is obviously the most important environmental cause, is itself
primarily due to the inferior physique and intelligence of parents. While one
must admit that there is doubtless an enormous number of unselected
deaths among infants, he must also admit that in a crude and rough way
infant mortality as a whole is biologically selective”

4. WAGES AND FEES
 1820s Average labourers wage was 6d per day
 1836 carpenter 1 shilling per day
 1840 carpenter 2 shillings 8 ½ pence per day. Yearly income c.
£60 per year
 Rent of land of labourers “cottiers” worked out in labour
 25 December 1852 Lismore Workhouse Qtly salaries – J.E.
Currey MD salary as MO £12:10, David Barry, apothecary
£8:15. Nurse £3:13 and Weaver £2:12
 1867 average annual income £10 to £26. Highly skilled
labourers average £1pw. Low skilled 14 shillings pw. Irish
incomes half those of England and Scotland
 1870 – wages ranged from 7 to 10 shillings
 30 June 1875 Richard O’Reilly M.D. Lismore Workhouse
quarterly salary £25

5. Programme
Introducing Institutions to Health and
Wealth: the birth of banks and health
services
Gorging and Gout: health and the
disposable income
Dis-ease and Disease: the tonic
Chronic Conditions in Health and
Wealth

6. 18th and 19th Centuries
Age of Enlightenment
Science and Technology
Revolution
Cottage Industry to big industry
Same holds true when it comes to the
fields of health and of finance

7. HEALTH: BARBERS TO SURGEONS
 Guild of Barbers in Ireland received a royal charter in 1446 –
included surgeons, wig-makers and apothecaries (pre-dates
London and Edinburgh)
 Guild dissolved in the 1840s
 Surgeons originally trained by apprenticeship
 c.1620 Trinity statues required a Doctor of Medicine “...be present
at three anatomical dissections”
 1654 Fraternity of Physicians (later Royal College of Physicians)
founded connected to Trinity
 14 June 1710 “...ordered that ground be laid out at the South east
corner of ye Physic Garden sufficient for erecting a laboratory and
an Anatomical Theatre therefor” Cost £100. Opened 16 August
1711
 1729 College of Physicians required that a candidate batchelor be
examined in (1) Anatomy, (2) Materia Medica, Pharmacy and
Botany, (3) Chemistry and (4) Pathology
 1784 – Royal College of Surgeons Ireland founded

8. WATERFORD HOSPITALS
 Holy Ghost Hospital – a dissolved monastery purchased at
the Reformation in 1545, enlarged in 1741 and 1743
 County and City Fever Hospital – for contagious diseases
established in 1799 (2 attending physicians and one
resident apothecary)
 Dispensary for Diseases of the Eye and Ear – founded 1831
 Lying-in Charity – Queen Street visited women at their
own residences
 Leper Hospital –founded 13th century, closed mid-18th
century and re-opened as a General Infirmary. 1839
recognised as a School of Surgery
 Dispensary – including a fever hospital for typhus
Dungarvan founded 1819
 Dispensary – Portlaw 1835 Dr. James Martin employed as
Resident Surgeon

9. Physicians and Surgeons
http://www.waterfordcountylibrary.ie/en/famil
Thomas Barry, Main Street, 1846
Edward Paoli Drew, 1846,1856
John Smith, 1846, 1856
Pierce Heally, 1856, 1881
Gabriel Redmond, 1881 (Medical Officer at
Cappoquin Dispensary)
www.rcpi.ie College Registers 1692-
www.rcsi.ie 1784 onwards

10. Workhouse Fever Hospitals
Poor Law Unions (1838) – Dungarvan,
Kilmacthomas, Lismore and Waterford. Carrick-on-
Suir and Youghal Unions served part of Co.
Waterford
Each Workhouse had a Fever Hospital and a
resident Medical Officer
Under the Medical Charities Act, 1851the PLUs
were further divided into Dispensary Districts with
a Dispensary (Doctor’s residence/surgery) staffed
by a Dispensary Doctor. 22 in Co. Waterford
Visits to the Dispensary were by ticket
Proof of lack of means was required

11. KILMEADEN
DISPENSARY PLAN
Copyright
Waterford
County
Archives

12. TALLOW – APPEAL COPYRIGHT WATERFORD COUNTY ARCHIVES

13. Means – the rise of banks and paper
currency
 Banks were individual and family run businesses – national
banks from end of 17th century onwards
 Bankers notes – receipts for money lodged in their hands
 Bank of Ireland Royal Charter 1783
 1815 Trustees Savings Bank
 Hibernian Joint Stock Bank 1824 (RCs)
 Provincial Bank of Ireland 1825
 1826 Amalgamation of Irish and English currency
 National Bank of Ireland 1834
 Agricultural and Commercial Bank of Ireland 1834 (1836)
 1861 Post Office Savings Bank

14. Front Back
Richard Musgrave Promissory Note

15. PROMISSORY NOTE:
JOSEPH WARD
COPYRIGHT WATERFORD COUNTY ARCHIVES

16. DELAY IN PAYMENT –
COPYRIGHT WATERFORD COUNTY ARCHIVES

17. MARY MCNEMARA
COPYRIGHT WATERFORD COUNTY ARCHIVES

18. BANKING CRISIS
 William Colville, Esq., Director of the Bank of Ireland, before a Parliamentary Committee in 1804
 " I remember perfectly well, that in 1753, the circulation of paper in Dublin from the private bankers was
so general and extensive, that in receiving £1,000, there was not £10 of it in gold at that time. I
remember that exchange was near three per cent above par; the consequence of which was, that the
bankers of Dublin, of whom there were as many as at present, if not more, were in competition with one
another to send their specie over to London, and to get bank bills at four per cent. above par, bringing a
clear profit to that extent. The consequence of this shewed itself in the succeeding year; all the banks
failed except Messrs. Latouche‘s house, and Sir William Newcomens under the name at that time of
Gleadowe and Co. ; and these two banks paid off their entire paper : there followed a total annihilation of
bank paper in Ireland at that time…but the result was, that multitudes of people were ruined ; the
convulsion was exceedingly severe, many tenants threw up their lands, and there was no person
connected with the three Southern provinces of Ireland that did not suffer either immediately or
remotely”
 1733 Act for the relief of the Bank of Samuel Burton and others (1700-1733)
 1755 An Act passed for the relief of the creditors of the bank lately kept by William Lennox
and George French, of the city of Dublin. The above bank was carried on in Dublin from
1751 to 1755, when both the partners absconded. As their creditors were numerous, and
the ordinary mode of legal settlement difficult and expensive, this Act was passed to afford a
more speedy remedy.
 3rd March 1797 Bank of Ireland suspended its cash payments
 1820 Banking Crisis
 1820-1830s Runs on gold. Linked to O’Connell and Irish nationalist movement

19. Munster Bank Ltd
 Munster Bank established October1864
 1870 Munster Bank merged with La Touche private bank in Dublin
 Local branch network - small towns
 Focus on agricultural community - farmers
 High ratio of lending to deposits
 25 January 1883 William Shaw “...that some of the Directors are largely overdrawing their accounts
without security and that the Bank is in a very serious position now with those Directors. I now assure
you here publicly that there is not the slightest foundation for any such statement…”
 July 1884 Shaw resigned and announced that £75,000 be moved from reserves to Bad and
Doubtful Debts account
 20 November 1884 Shaw filed a claim of £40,000 for services to the bank since 1884 in the
Court of Chancery
 26 June 1885 Dublin shareholders case against directors. Shaws statement in January “as false
a statement as had ever been made”
 11 July 1885 Munster Bank failed – Bank of Ireland refused to honour its cheques due to it
being over its £400,000 overdraft
 Robert Farquharson manager of Dame Street Branch absconded with £90,000 on 24 July.
Since 1880s he had been rifling the banks accounts
 Shaw and “crony” directors bankrupt – shareholders lost all capital

20. MUNSTER AND LEINSTER BANK LTD.
2 days after the closure of the Munster at a public meeting
presided over by the Mayor of Cork Shaw claimed he could
get the bank back with a loan of £200,000 in London on
bank’s securities
 A committee was formed to re-establish the bank
 Support sought from Munster inhabitants – Duke of
Devonshire in particular was approached for support
 Local people became shareholders £5 shares
 Munster and Leinster Bank established 19th October 1885.
Cork, Dublin and 9 other branches
 1894 Waterford and Lismore branches added
 1899 Waterford County Council moved from Provincial Bank
to Munster and Leinster Bank at its first meeting

21. CONCLUSION
Development of institutions to improve public
health
Development of institutions and much
broader interaction of people with banking
and with savings and investment
Development of new technologies and new
advances in health and wealth
Disposable Income – what do people do?