Rising homelessness drives demand for St Vincent de Paul services
Dublin, 27 February 1922 – The crisis of homelessness in Dublin was revealed yesterday at a well-attended public meeting in support of the St Vincent de Paul Free Night Shelter.
Held in the Oak Room of the Mansion House, the meeting heard that 1921 was the busiest year in the history of the night shelter, with admissions climbing to a record high of 30,361, up from 16,786 in the 1920 and an average of 14,459 during the preceding years.
The number of free meals supplied in 1921 totalled 47,607, up from 26,801 the year before.
Edward Byrne, the Archbishop of Dublin, who presided over the meeting, described the extraordinary growth of the night shelter from its humble beginnings in a store in Little Strand Street. Due to increasing demand, it was decided to build new premises which now stand on Back Lane, built at a cost of around £6,000.
Sir Andrew J. Horne told the meeting that if it wasn’t for the shelter, the 30,000 people who availed of its services in 1921 would have had to resort to the workhouse with the burden falling upon the ratepayers of the city.
On the reasons for last year’s spike in admissions, Horne said that prices had increased enormously in 1921 and that every country town in Ireland was experiencing large-scale unemployment. He speculated that this may be due to the fact that a large number of farmers reduced the amount of land under tillage they had been compelled to keep during the Great War. The effects could be seen in January, February and March when there was little work to be done in the fields and men came into the towns increasing the unemployment there.
A subscription list was opened at the meeting with the Archbishop of Dublin heading it with a contribution of £200.
[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
