The streets of Dublin

By Juliana Adelman

I was very excited to delve into Lief Jerram’s Streetlife: the untold history of Europe’s twentieth century.  Unlike pretty much everyone I’ve talked to, though, I was rather disappointed.  In fact, I still haven’t finished it.  I could see what Jerram was trying to do.  I liked the writing and the integration of material.  But for me the book wasn’t really getting to the heart of the matter.  Jerram repeatedly asserted the importance of the street in history without really discovering what the street IS.  In fact, the book is really urban history rather than much to do with street life per se.  What makes things happen in one street and not in another?  We all know that some streets ‘feel’ different to others and that landing into a foreign city can throw off our personal radar that detects which streets are friendly and which are dangerous.  But Jerram wasn’t really interested in this, as far as my reading of the first few chapters could gather.  He was merely asserting the importance of the space or place in which history happens.  No one with even a passing acquaintance with historical geography could find this argument novel.  I’m sure Jerram fans will pepper the comments section with complaints that I am completely wrong based on the last two chapters of book.  So fire away and I promise to go back and read them.

My knowledge of the historiography of the twentieth century is admittedly limited.  Ninteenth-century historians seem to have been far more interested in street life, perhaps because of the evocative picture of vice and decay that can be found in many primary sources and in Charles Dickens’ extensive output.  Victorian London, in particular, has been the subject of numerous volumes devoted to its underworld and to the varieties of urban life it housed.

I’ve been trying to get a feel for the streets of nineteenth-century Dublin.  Interestingly, it is the street life of twentieth-century Dublin that has perhaps attracted the most attention.  (Christiaan Corlett’s Darkest Dublin and Kevin C. Kearn’s numerous books are just a few examples).  I think what has continued to fascinate people is the persistence of a kind of poverty and depravation that had begun to disappear from most cities in Western Europe.  I am certainly not the only person fascinated with the look and feel of the city’s streets.  There is more to street life than poverty and I think Dublin’s streets deserve a nuanced historical treatment.  Here are a few interesting resources that I’ve gathered together (some of them I’ve already mentioned in recommendation columns) that you might enjoy.

One of the Come Here To Me! blog gang has been photographing and looking at Dublin’s alleys and lanes.  There are some great posts to be found here.

I’ve mentioned the Lifescapes project before, but it’s really worth checking out.  There are great little snippets of audio and video with Dublin residents about their experiences of life during WWII and just about olde Dublin in general.

The Dublin City Library and Archive has begun a project called the Dublin City Sports Archive to collect and archive reminiscences related to sport.  They have begun with Shelbourne Football Club.

The Dublin City Council has a page specifically devoted to historical maps that they have scanned for viewing.