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‘Horrid’ and ‘infamous’ practices: the kidnapping and stripping of children, c.1730–c.1840

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

James Kelly
James Kelly*
Affiliation:
Dublin City University
*
*School of History and Geography, Dublin City University, [email protected]
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Abstract

Among the abuses experienced by children in Ireland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, kidnapping and stripping stand out both for what they reveal of the changing nature of the manner in which children were preyed upon and contemporary attitudes to children and child welfare. Though it is misleadingly presented as evidence of the existence of a vibrant trade in ‘white slaves’, children were not only kidnapped so they could be ‘sold’ in the crown’s Caribbean and American colonies. They were also targeted domestically for a variety of pursuits in which children laboured – among which begging and chimney sweeping stand out. In any event, the diminished visibility of child kidnapping after the 1780s suggests it was not pursued actively thereafter. Children continued to be targeted, but the primary object of those who did so was to strip them of the clothes and jewellery they wore in order to realise the monetary value of these goods. Pursued primarily by female offenders, the fact that a majority of the reported incidents occurred in Dublin, Belfast, Limerick and Cork indicates that it was first and foremost an urban crime. Its identification attests both to the vulnerability of children to exploitation, and to the active engagement of adults in that exploitation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 162 , November 2018 , pp. 265 - 292
Copyright
© Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2018 

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References

1 Journals of the House of Commons of the kingdom of Ireland (21 vols, Dublin, 1796–1801), v, 117; Irish legislation database, 1692–1800, available at: http://www.qub.ac/uk.ild

2 Only one of these initiatives (17 Geo. II, c. 4) made it to the statute book. Efforts in 1739, 1743 (2) and 1747 failed to come to pass.

3 Commons’ jn. Ire., v, 117, 128.

4 Because kidnapping was denominated a misdemeanour by common law, those found guilty were liable only to be fined, imprisoned or to a spell in the pillory.

5 The bill was read and committed on 29 January, but it did not emerge out of committee: Commons’ jn. Ire., v, 132, 134; Irish legislation database, 1692–1800.

6 See Kelly, James, ‘Infanticide in eighteenth-century Ireland’ in Irish Economic and Social History, xviii (1992), pp 5–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; idem, ‘Responding to infanticide in Ireland, 1680–1820’ in Elaine Farrell (ed.) ‘She said she was in the family way’: pregnancy and infancy in modern Ireland (London, 2012), pp 189–204.

7 Foyster, Elizabeth, ‘The “new world of children” reconsidered: child abduction in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century England’ in Journal of British Studies, lii, no. 3 (July 2013), pp 691–692 Google Scholar ; Plumb, J. H., ‘The new world of children in eighteenth-century England’ in Past & Present, no. 67 (1975), pp 64–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

8 The primary source of information on the kidnapping of children in Ireland for the purpose of trafficking them to the colonies, and the practice of stealing children in order to deprive them of raiment, is the newspaper. Most press reports provide only the most basic information. Moreover, because these offences generally only made it into the public sphere when a perpetrator was caught in the act or subjected to popular sanction, it is not possible to establish how pervasive they were. The partiality of the press’s coverage must also be borne in mind. The press mirrored the increasing tendency of the respectable to feel and express outrage at child stealing in all its forms but was seldom forthcoming in respect of the biographies or motives of those who engaged in the practice. It also had the effect of giving greater authority to financial/economic motives than was the case in reality.

9 This is not to suggest it was not pursued in the seventeenth century. Indeed, it is not improbable that children figured among those ferried to Barbados and other West Indies islands prior to the cessation of the Cromwellian policy of transportation pursued in Ireland and the inauguration of registration procedures in London and Bristol in the 1650s. Work done on the Bristol registers is also revealing of the presence of Irish adults in the licensed trade in indentured servants thereafter, though this is as revealing of the underdeveloped nature of the Irish emigrant trade until the early eighteenth century: Souden, David, ‘“Rogues, whores and vagabonds”? Indentured servant emigrants to North America, and the case of mid-seventeenth-century Bristol’ in Social History, iii, no. 1 (1978), pp 23–41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Kirkham, Graeme, ‘Ulster emigration to North America, 1680–1720’ in H. T. Blethen and C. W. Woods (eds), Ulster and North America: trans-Atlantic perspectives on the Scotch-Irish (Tuscaloosa, Al., 1997), pp 77–117 Google Scholar .

10 Foyster, ‘The “new world of children” reconsidered’, pp 680–91.

11 Freeman’s Journal, 14 June 1781, reporting ‘a citizen’s letter’ complaining of ‘the kidnapping [of] young people for the service of the West Indies Isles’.

12 MacRaild, D. M. and Neal, Frank, ‘Child stripping in the Victorian city’ in Urban History, xxix, no. 3 (Aug. 2012), pp 431–452 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ;

Evening Mail [London], 13 Sept., 15 Oct. 1802, 19 Apr. 1805, 15 Jan. 1806, 24 Jan. 1831, 19 Jan. 1839, 16, 25 June, 8 Nov. 1841.

13 Belfast News Letter, 30 Mar. 1739. The issues addressed in this section are also discussed in Kelly, James, ‘“This iniquitous traffic”: the kidnapping of children for the American colonies in eighteenth-century Ireland’ in Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, ix, no. 2 (Spring 2016), pp 233–246 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

14 Dublin Evening Post, 13 Mar. 1733.

15 Kirkham, ‘Ulster emigration to North America, 1680–1720’, pp 77–117; Truxes, Thomas, Irish-American trade, 1660–1783 (Cambridge, 1988), chapter 7 Google Scholar ; Dickson, R. J., Ulster emigration to colonial America, 1718–1775 (London, 1966)Google Scholar , chapter 4; Lockhart, Audrey, Some aspects of emigration from Ireland to the North American colonies between 1660 and 1775 (New York, 1976), chapters 4, 5 and 6 Google Scholar ; Bankhurst, Benjamin, Ulster Presbyterians and the Scots Irish diaspora, 1750–1763 (Basingstoke, 2013), chapters 1–3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Kelly, James, ‘Transportation from Ireland to North America, 1703–89’ in David Dickson and Cormac Ó Gráda (eds), Refiguring Ireland: essays in honour of Louis Cullen (Dublin, 2003), pp 117–120 Google Scholar ; Roger Ekirch, A., Bound for America: the transportation of British convicts to the colonies, 1718–1775 (Oxford, 1990), pp 24–25 CrossRefGoogle Scholar , 46–7, 83–5.

16 Meaders, Daniel (comp.), Eighteenth-century white slaves: fugitive notices, volume I: Pennsylvania, 1729–1760 (Westport, Ct., 1993), pp xi, 507 Google Scholar and passim; Hibernian Journal, 30 Apr. 1781.

17 A report from the Lords committees appointed to enquire into a pernicious practice … of removing foundling children from one parish to another (Dublin, 1730).

18 Roger Ekirch, A., Birthright: the true story that inspired Kidnapped (New York, 2010), pp 61–73 Google Scholar ; G. E. C[okayne]., The complete peerage (13 vols in 14, London, 1910–40), i, 115–16; Memoirs of an unfortunate young nobleman returned from a thirteen year slavery in America (London, 1743); Clarke, Norma, Queen of the wits: a life of Laetitia Pilkington (London, 2008), p. 184 Google Scholar ; Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, ed. A. C. Elias jr (2 vols, Athens, Ga., 1997), i, 175–6.

19 Munster Journal, 6 Sept. 1750; Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, 2, 4 Sept. 1750.

20 Munster Journal, 20 Sept., 1, 15 Oct. 1750.

21 Ibid., 1 Oct. 1750.

22 Freeman’s Journal, 20 July 1765, 26 Mar. 1768.

23 Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, 2 Oct. 1750; Munster Journal, 4 Oct. 1750. It may be noted that there was no Irish equivalent to the posters pasted by schoolmasters in Paris in 1750 advising parents to ensure their children were accompanied en route to and from school; this was prompted by a scare that children were being targeted for abduction by the police and watch: Farge, Arlette and Revel, Jacques, The rules of rebellion: child abductions in Paris in 1750 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 10 Google Scholar .

24 See below pp 278–82; Pue’s Occurrences, 9 Aug. 1757; Dublin Evening Post, 5 Aug. 1779.

25 Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, 15 Sept. 1750; Munster Journal, 17 Sept., 15 Oct. 1750.

26 Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, 15 Sept. 1750; Dublin Morning Post, 21 Oct. 1790, 16, 23 June, 5 July, 28 Aug. 1791; more broadly on the issue of controlling public space see Griffin, Emma, England’s revelry: a history of popular sports and pastimes, 1639–1830 (Oxford, 2005), chapter 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and passim; and Kelly, James, Sport in Ireland, 1600–1840 (Dublin, 2014), chapter 1 Google Scholar , for an attempt to apply this concept to Ireland.

27 Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, 15 Sept. 1750; Munster Journal, 17 Sept. 1750; Dublin Morning Post, 5 July 1791. This claim was circulated, still more influentially, by Arthur Dobbs in 1730: An essay on the trade of Ireland (2 vols, Dublin, 1731), ii. 47. See also Laffan, William (ed.), The cries of Dublin drawn from the life by Hugh Douglas Hamilton, 1760 (Dublin, 2003), p. 106 Google Scholar .

28 Munster Journal, 29 Jan. 1750; ‘An act to provide for begging children, and for the better regulation of charity schools, and for taking up vagrant and offensive beggars in the city of Dublin and liberties thereof …’ (23 Geo. II, c. 11).

29 Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, ed. Elias jr, i, 559; Belfast News Letter, 17 Aug. 1753.

30 Belfast News Letter, 16 Aug. 1768.

31 Belfast News Letter, 16 Aug. 1768, 26 Sept. 1769.

32 See above pp 265–7; Freeman’s Journal, 26 Mar. 1768.

33 Tryal of Neale Molloy, esq., Vere Molloy, his wife, at a sitting of his majesty’s Commission of Oyer and Terminer, and general gaol delivery for the city of Dublin, the 10 December 1762 (Dublin, 1763); Kelly, ‘Responding to infanticide’, pp 200–01.

34 Shoemaker, Robert, The London mob: violence and disorder in eighteenth-century England (London, 2004), pp 216–217 Google Scholar ; Belfast News Letter, 16, 28 Aug. 1768; Freeman’s Journal, 26 Aug. 1768.

35 Hibernian Morning Journal, 27 Apr. 1775.

36 Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 9 Aug. 1764.

37 Finn’s Leinster Journal, 28 Aug. 1773.

38 Freeman’s Journal, 31 Dec. 1774; Belfast News Letter, 19 Apr. 1768; Finn’s Leinster Journal, 1 June 1774.

39 One may cite instances in which children were ‘taken’ up or targeted which are best interpreted as opportunistic street crimes rather than kidnappings: Freeman’s Journal, 21 July 1770; Finn’s Leinster Journal, 28 Aug. 1773.

40 See Dickson, Ulster emigration to colonial America, 1718–1775, pp 60–81; MacMaster, Richard K., Scotch-Irish merchants in colonial America: the flaxseed trade and emigration from Ireland, 1718–1775 (Belfast, 2009), pp 230–259 Google Scholar .

41 Freeman’s Journal, 14 June 1781.

42 Freeman’s Journal, 28 Apr. 1781; Hibernian Journal, 30 Apr. 1781.

43 Freeman’s Journal, 28 Apr. 1781; Hibernian Journal, 30 Apr. 1781; Hibernian Chronicle, 30 Apr., 3 May 1781.

44 Hibernian Journal, 27 Apr. 1781; Hibernian Chronicle, 30 Apr. 1781.

45 On 2 June, of a ‘genteel’ woman, caught with three children ‘about seven years old’ in George’s Street, Dublin, was also believed ‘to be a kidnapper’: Hibernian Chronicle, 4 June 1781.

46 As note 43.

47 Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 8 Aug. 1782.

48 Kelly, James, ‘The resumption of emigration from Ireland after the American War of Independence’ in Studia Hibernica, xxiv (1984–8), pp 61–88 Google Scholar ; idem, ‘Scarcity and poor relief in eighteenth century Ireland: the subsistence crisis of 1782–84’ in Irish Historical Studies, xxviii, no. 109 (May 1992), pp 38–62; Raymond Refaussé, ‘The economic crisis in Ireland in the early 1780s’ (Ph.D. thesis, Trinity College, Dublin, 1982).

49 Kelly, ‘The resumption of emigration’, pp 90–3.

50 Salinger, Sharon V., ‘Colonial labor in transition; the decline of indentured servitude in late eighteenth-century Philadelphia’ in Labor History, xxii, no. 2 (1981), pp 165–191 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; eadem, ‘To serve well and faithfully’: labor and indentured servants in Pennsylvania, 1682–1800 (Cambridge, 1987).

51 Dublin Morning Post, 12 May 1785; Freeman’s Journal, 12 May 1785.

52 Freeman’s Journal, 16 May 1786.

53 Ibid., 3 Apr. 1787.

54 Ibid., 15 May 1787; Volunteer Evening Post, 15 May 1787; Dublin Evening Post, 28 Apr. 1787.

55 Volunteer Evening Post, 24 May, 2 June 1787.

56 25 Geo. III, c. 17; Dublin Morning Post, 12 May 1785, 17, 19 Apr., 27, 29 May 1788, 11 Aug. 1791.

57 Freeman’s Journal, 3 Apr. 1787, 9 July 1791; Volunteer Evening Post, 17 May 1787; Dublin Chronicle, 17 May 1787; Belfast News Letter, 22 May 1787; Kelly, ‘The resumption of emigration’, pp 81–6.

58 Cullen, Louis, ‘Problems in and sources for the study of economic fluctuations, 1660–1800’ in Irish Economic and Social History, xli (2014), p. 18 Google Scholar ; Dublin Morning Post, 23 Sept. 1788, 5 Oct. 1790.

59 Dublin Morning Post, 21 Oct. 1790, 5 July 1791.

60 Freeman’s Journal, 15, 17 May 1787; Volunteer Evening Post, 15, 17, 24 May 1787.

61 For example, Freeman’s Journal, 12 May 1785; Volunteer Evening Post, 19 May 1787.

62 Volunteer Evening Post, 17, 19 May 1787; Freeman’s Journal, 17 May 1787.

63 Volunteer Evening Post, 2 June 1787; Dublin Chronicle, 2 June 1787.

64 Dublin Evening Post, 3, 19 May 1787.

65 Volunteer Evening Post. 28 Apr., 2, 9, 19 May 1787; Belfast News Letter, 24 July 1787.

66 Freeman’s Journal, 15 July 1788, 29 Sept. 1789; Belfast News Letter, 4 July 1788; Ramsey’s Waterford Chronicle, 6 Oct. 1789.

67 Volunteer Evening Post, 24 May 1787; Hibernian Journal, 4 June 1794; Finn’s Leinster Journal, 7 June 1794.

68 Salinger, ‘The decline of indentured servitude’, pp 165–91; Reece, Bob, The origins of Irish convict transportation to New South Wales (Basingstoke, 2001)Google Scholar , passim.

69 Freeman’s Journal, 9 July 1791.

70 Finn’s Leinster Journal, 7 June 1794; Kelly, ‘“This iniquitous traffic”: the kidnapping of children for the American colonies’, pp 243–6.

71 Volunteer Evening Post, 9 June 1787.

72 Dublin Morning Post, 31 Mar. 1785.

73 Munster Journal, 17 Sept., 15 Oct. 1750; Universal Advertiser, 14 May 1757; Pue’s Occurrences, 9 Aug. 1757; Dublin Evening Post, 5 Aug. 1779; Freeman’s Journal, 20 July 1765, 31 July 1770, 21 Sept. 1780; Foyster, ‘The “new world of children” reconsidered’, p. 676; MacRaild and Neal, ‘Child-stripping in the Victorian city’, p. 435, n. 23.

74 Dublin Morning Post, 28 Apr. 1787, 15 May 1788, 5 June 1794.

75 See, for example, Dublin Morning Post, 12 May 1785; Dublin Evening Post, 28 Apr., 4 Sept. 1787; Volunteer Evening Post, 2 June, 19 July 1787; Clonmel Gazette, 13 Nov. 1788; Hibernian Journal, 21 Aug., 23 Oct. 1789, 16 May 1791; Exshaw’s Gentleman’s and London Magazine, October 1787, p. 559.

76 The youngest identified was one, and the oldest eight: Hibernian Journal, 22 Aug. 1792; Dublin Morning Post, 15 May 1788.

77 Dublin Morning Post, 3 May 1785, 8 Apr., 15 May, 21 June, 22 July 1788; Freeman’s Journal, 7 June 1787; Exshaw’s Gentleman’s and London Magazine, Sept. 1787, p. 502, October. 1787, p. 559; Belfast News Letter, 17 July 1788; Clonmel Gazette, 13 Nov. 1788; Dublin Weekly Journal, 10 Apr. 1790; Hibernian Journal, 21 Aug. 1790, 16 May 1791, 19 June 1795.

78 Volunteer Evening Post, 2 June 1787. Another ‘little girl’ who was also ‘decoyed’ in 1787 had to endure ‘the woman every moment threatening her life’: Dublin Evening Post, 2 Aug. 1787.

79 Dublin Morning Post, 3 May 1785.

80 Hibernian Journal, 21 Aug. 1789.

81 Ibid., 5 Apr. 1790.

82 Volunteer Evening Post, 5 July 1787; Young, Arthur, A tour in Ireland with general observations on the present state of that kingdom made in the years 1776, 1777 and 1778, ed. Constantia Maxwell (Cambridge, 1925), pp 186–187 Google Scholar . See, more generally, Dunlevy, Mairead, Dress in Ireland: a history (Cork, 1999), p. 136 Google Scholar .

83 Dublin Morning Post, 26 June 1788, 1 Nov. 1791; Hibernian Journal, 6 May 1791, 19 June 1795.

84 Hibernian Journal, 18 July 1794.

85 Belfast News Letter, 2 Aug. 1822. A decade later, in 1833, a meeting of the friends and supporters of the Mendicity Institution was informed that the clothing the society donated to the poor could be pawned for 8d.: Dublin Morning Register, 2 Feb. 1833.

86 A point vividly illustrated by the anecdote relayed by William Drennan, the Dublin-based doctor, of the parents of twins encountered begging on the streets of Dublin, who responded to the suggestion of a would-be benefactor that they must keep the children looking poor ‘as their profit from them lay in their beggary’, which could not be pursued successfully if they were well dressed: The Drennan-McTier letters, ed. Jean Agnew (3 vols, Dublin, 1998–9), ii, 393–4.

87 Foyster, ‘The “new world of children” reconsidered’, passim. Most of the examples of ‘child stealing’ that inform this observation date from the nineteenth century: see Dublin Weekly Register, 28 Aug. 1819, 1 Sept. 1827, 30 Apr. 1842; Mayo Constitution, 27 Aug. 1829; Newry Telegraph, 24 July 1832; Dublin Monitor, 29 Dec. 1838; Kilkenny Journal, 27 Nov. 1844; Dublin Evening Packet, 16 July 1861.

88 Freeman’s Journal, 1 Oct. 1789; Dublin Morning Post, 1, 13 Dec. 1791; Saunders Newsletter, 16 Aug. 1826; Roscommon and Leitrim Gazette, 19 Aug. 1826; Dublin Morning Register, 5 Aug. 1836; Dublin Evening Packet, 23 July 1839; Limerick Reporter, 30 July 1839; Dublin Weekly Register, 26 Aug. 1848; Foyster ‘The “new world of children” reconsidered’, p. 679.

89 Volunteer Evening Post, 9 June 1787; Hibernian Journal, 15 June 1791; Dublin Morning Post, 18 June 1791; Freeman’s Journal, 28 Mar. 1801.

90 This is the phonetic rendering in English of the Irish term ‘liocht shiul’, which literally translates as walking people; it’s more colloquial rendition is ‘strolling beggar’.

91 Belfast News Letter, 17 July 1788. It has not been established if McBeagh was tried, but the suggestion in a subsequent news item that she was not prosecuted, possibly because she was ‘insane’, lends itself to the conclusion that nobody was sanctioned for this murder: Dublin Chronicle, 5, 26 July 1788.

92 As note 91; the discovery some three miles from Downpatrick, County Down, in 1791 of ‘the mangled bodies of two infants’ in a ‘patched bag, apparently a beggar’s’ might be referred to in this context, but it is preferably seen as a case of infanticide: Dublin Morning Post, 7 May 1791. For the situation in England see, MacRaild and Neal, ‘Child stripping in the Victorian city’, pp 446–9.

93 Exshaw’s Gentleman’s and London Magazine, Sept. 1787, p. 502; Hibernian Journal, 21 Aug. 1789; Dublin Morning Post, 8 Apr., 15 May, 21 June 1788; Foyster ‘The “new world of children” reconsidered’, pp 675–6.

94 See James Kelly, ‘A most inhuman and barbarous piece of villainy’: an exploration of the crime of rape in eighteenth-century Ireland’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, x (1995), pp 78–107; for a contemporary example of such a sexual assault see: Volunteer Evening Post, 2 June 1787. Saliently, the girl assaulted was aged eleven; for the case of Mary Neal see: Dublin Morning Post, 17 Apr., 1, 3, 5 July, 2, 20 Dec. 1788; Whelan, Fergus, God-provoking democrat: the remarkable life of Archibald Hamilton Rowan (Dublin, 2015), pp 42–45 Google Scholar .

95 Kelly, ‘A most inhuman and barbarous piece of villainy’, pp 78–107; Dublin Morning Post, 2 Feb. 1790.

96 Adults were occasionally targeted, and, because this generally involved recourse to violence, some were left ‘naked and senseless’: see Dublin Morning Post, 23 Sept. 1788, 8 Oct., 11 Dec. 1790, 1 Dec. 1791.

97 Dublin Morning Post, 22 July 1788, 6 Mar., 14 Aug. 1790.

98 Ibid., 12 May 1785, 8 Apr., 15 May, 21 June, 22 July 1788; Dublin Chronicle, 2 June 1787; Volunteer Evening Post, 2 June 1787; Hibernian Journal, 23 Oct. 1789. The most notable exception to this was the ‘child’ of Sir V[esey] C[olclough], M.P. for County Wexford, who was ‘decoyed by a female wretch, and stripped quite naked’ in September 1787: Dublin Evening Post, 6 Sept. 1787.

99 Kelly, James, ‘The abduction of women of fortune in eighteenth-century Ireland’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, ix (1994), pp 16–17 Google Scholar , 25–67.

100 Dublin Morning Post, 31 Mar. 1785, 3, 12 May 1785; Freeman’s Journal, 7 June 1787; Volunteer Evening Post, 2 June, 19 July 1787; Belfast News Letter, 24 July 1787; Dublin Evening Post, 28 Apr. 1787; Ennis Chronicle, 13 May 1800; Hibernian Journal, 20 Mar. 1805; Finn’s Leinster Journal, 27 Aug. 1808.

101 Dublin Morning Post, 12 May 1785.

102 Meaning ‘gutter’ or open sewers.

103 Dublin Morning Post, 31 May 1785, 6 Mar. 1790; Freeman’s Journal, 4 Jan. 1787, Dublin Chronicle, 6 Mar. 1790; Hibernian Journal, 11 June, 28 July 1790, 22 Aug. 1792, 4, 6 June 1794, 19 June 1795; Finn’s Leinster Journal, 27 Aug. 1808.

104 In this it possessed something in common with the public’s intolerance of abuses in brothels, which also was more manifest in the 1790s: see Kelly, James, ‘“Ravaging houses of ill fame”: popular riot and public sanction in eighteenth-century Ireland’ in D. W. Hayton (ed.), Ourselves alone? Religion, society and politics in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 2016), pp 84–103 Google Scholar .

105 Walker’s Hibernian Magazine, Sept. 1787, p. 559; Dublin Chronicle, 26 July 1790; Hibernian Journal, 16 May 1790, 18 July 1794.

106 Ramsey’s Waterford Chronicle, 12 Oct. 1787; Tim Carey, Mountjoy: the story of a prison (Cork, 2000), p. 12; Exshaw’s Gentleman’s and London Magazine, Oct. 1787, p. 559.

107 Dublin Chronicle, 3 Dec. 1791; Hibernian Journal, 16 May 1790, 5 Dec. 1791; Dublin Weekly Journal, 21 May 1792.

108 For example, in August 1792 a ‘wretch found means to escape’ from ‘the mob’ that intended ‘to deliver her to the police’: Hibernian Journal, 22 Aug. 1792.

109 Hibernian Journal, 21 Aug., 23 Oct. 1789; Ennis Chronicle, 25 Nov. 1790.

110 Hibernian Journal, 11 June 1790; 6 June 1794.

111 Ennis Chronicle, 13 May 1800; Freeman’s Journal, 23 Aug. 1800, 28 Mar. 1801.

112 Ennis Chronicle, 13 May 1800; Wells, Roger, ‘The Irish famine of 1799–1801: market culture, moral economies and social protest’ in Andrew Charlesworth and Adrian Randall (eds), Markets, market culture and popular protest in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland (Liverpool, 1996), pp 163–193 Google Scholar .

113 Cullen, L. M., An economic history of Ireland since 1660 (London, 1972), chapter 5 Google Scholar .

114 This is not to deny that other motivations were also at play in a minority of cases. The actions of ‘a middle aged woman’ who, in 1809, ‘took away a female aged seven weeks’ from Thomas Street to 46, Great James Street, where she ‘dressed the child, and has not been heard of since’ was evidently prompted by issues other than securing access to the monetary value of the child’s clothing: Freeman’s Journal, 26 Aug. 1809.

115 Foyster, ‘The “new world of children” reconsidered’, pp 669–70.

116 Ó Gráda, Cormac, Ireland: a new economic history, 1780–1939 (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar , part 2; Joel Mokyr and Cormac Ó Gráda, ‘Poor and getting poorer? Living standards in Ireland before the Famine’ in Economic History Review, xli, no. 2 (May 1988), pp 209–35.

117 Hibernian Journal, 20 Mar. 1805; Finn’s Leinster Journal, 27 Aug. 1808, 12 Aug. 1812 citing an undated issue of Cork Chronicle; Freeman’s Journal, 26 Aug. 1809, 27 Apr. 1811, 20, 30 May 1815.

118 Ramsey’s Waterford Chronicle, 25 Sept. 1817; Saunders Newsletter, 21 Aug. 1824; Dublin Morning Register, 26 July 1827; Drogheda Journal, 28 July 1827.

119 Dublin Morning Register, 1 Dec. 1824.

120 54 Geo. III, c. 101; Foyster, ‘The “new world of children” reconsidered’, p. 674. It is pertinent in this context to observe that Leonard McNally had drawn attention once more in 1811 to the absence of a ‘provision’ to sanction those who engaged in ‘child stealing’ (Freeman’s Journal, 27 Apr. 1811), and that the situation in Ireland contrasted with that in Scotland. When Rachel Wright of Armagh was convicted at Glasgow circuit court of judiciary in 1809 of stealing a child, the death sentence delivered in accordance with Scottish Law was commuted to ‘transportation for life’: Paul Carter (ed.), Pardons and punishments: judges’ reports on criminals, part 5, 1806–1811 (HO 47/38–48) (List and Index Society, no. 347) (Kew, 2012), p. 102.

121 Freeman’s Journal, 27 Apr. 1811.

122 Ibid., 20 May 1815, 27 Feb. 1819, 11 Dec. 1828; Dublin Weekly Register, 13 Mar. 1819; Dublin Evening Packet, 17, 31 July, 11 Dec. 1828.

123 Dublin Evening Post, 19 July 1825; Dublin Evening Packet, 15 Jan. 1829.

124 Saunders Newsletter, 5 Aug. 1826, 24 Mar. 1830; Dublin Evening Packet, 17 July 1828, 25 Mar. 1830.

125 Based on a metropolitan sample of 13 cases in the 1820s; 9 in the 1830s; 5 in the 1840s and 6 in the 1850s.

126 Saunders Newsletter, 18 Sept. 1830; Dublin Morning Register, 7 June, 31 Dec. 1839, 30 Mar. 1842.

127 Dublin Morning Register, 29 Sept. 1841; Freeman’s Journal, 29 Sept. 1841.

128 Freeman’s Journal, 22 Mar., 30 Apr., 2 May, 8 Aug. 1853, 10 July 1854, 7 Dec. 1860, 22 June 1861, 26 Mar. 1862.

129 Royle, S. A., ‘Workshop of the empire’ in S. J. Connolly (ed.), Belfast 400: people, place and history (Liverpool, 2012), pp 199–236 Google Scholar ; MacRaild and Neal, ‘Child stripping in the Victorian city’, pp 443–4; Evening Mail [London], 16, 25 June, 8 Aug., 8 Nov. 1841; Dublin Weekly Register, 19 Jan. 1839.

130 Belfast News Letter, 19 Nov. 1822.

131 Belfast News Letter, 1, 2 Aug. 1822, 7 Oct. 1828, 1 May, 28 Aug. 1829; Belfast Commercial Chronicle, 8 Oct. 1828; Brian Griffin, The Bulkies: police and crime in Belfast 1800–1845 (Dublin, 1997), pp 78–9.

132 Belfast News Letter, 7, 17 May 1833, 10 May 1837, 16, 25 Oct. 1838, 3 Sept. 1839, 29 Sept. 1841, 20 Nov. 1846, 5 Nov. 1847, 31 Aug. 1849, 26 July 1850, 16 Apr. 1852, 22 Aug. 1860; Northern Whig, 29 May, 10 July, 20 Oct. 1838, 19 Oct. 1839, 25 Oct. 1842, 10 Feb. 1849, 19 Jan. 1856, 5 May 1858, 10 Sept. 1860; Northern Star, 25 Oct. 1838, 4 Nov. 1847; Belfast Commercial Chronicle, 21 Nov. 1846; Belfast Protestant Journal, 16 Jan., 6 Nov., 25 Dec. 1847; Banner of Ulster, 1 Nov. 1850, 22 Feb., 22 July 1853; Belfast Mercury, 18 Jan. 1856, 20 Oct. 1857, 22 Jan. 1858.

133 Northern Whig., 10 July 1838, 2 July 1844; Belfast News Letter, 5 Aug. 1869.

134 Banner of Ulster, 9 Feb. 1849; Northern Whig, 10 Feb. 1849; Belfast News Letter, 25 Aug. 1869; for examples of the involvement of juveniles see: Belfast News Letter, 6 Aug. 1847, 20 Apr. 1859, 26 May 1860; Northern Whig, 11 Oct. 1856; Belfast Mercury, 16 Oct. 1857.

135 Belfast News Letter, 22 June 1824.

136 The Constitution or Cork Advertiser, 12 May 1831, 23 July 1835; Galway Patriot, 17 Sept. 1836; Dublin Morning Register, 28 Feb. 1837; Cork Constitution, 18 Dec. 1856, 5 Nov., 31 Dec. 1857.

137 Finn’s Leinster Journal, 12 May 1827; Kilkenny Journal, 17 Apr. 1850; Galway Vindicator, 22 Sept. 1852.

138 Dublin Weekly Register, 8 Aug. 1829; Limerick Chronicle, 9 Apr., 13 Aug., 19 Sept. 1836, 19 Mar. 1842; Limerick Reporter, 19 Feb. 1850.

139 Limerick and Clare Examiner, 8 Feb., 21 June 1851, 9 Oct. 1852; Limerick Chronicle, 8 Feb. 1851, 10 Aug., 24 Dec. 1853, 2 May 1855; Limerick Examiner, 27 Nov. 1852, 18 Apr. 1855; King’s County Chronicle, 26 Dec. 1855.

140 Limerick Reporter, 25 Mar. 1856; Limerick Chronicle, 30 Sept. 1857.

141 King’s County Chronicle, 26 Dec. 1855.

142 MacRaild and Neal, ‘Child stripping in the Victorian city’, pp 449-50; for a smattering of references to the practice post-1840, see Freeman’s Journal, 29 Sept. 1841, 1 Oct. 1845, 22 Mar, 2 May, 8 Aug. 1853, 10 July 1854, 7 Dec. 1860, 22 June 1861, 26 Mar. 1862, 2 Sept. 1864; Belfast News Letter, 5 Nov. 1847, 26 July 1850, 20 Apr. 1859, 22 Aug., 7 Dec. 1860.

143 Farge and Revel, The rules of rebellion, pp 16–17.

144 Plumb, ‘The new world of children’, pp 64–93; Dublin Morning Post, 27 Sept., 1794; Ennis Chronicle, 19 Mar. 1801; James Kelly, ‘Educational print and the emergence of mass education in Ireland, c.1650–c.1830’ in James Kelly and Susan Hegarty (eds), Schools and schooling, 1650–2000 (Dublin, 2017), pp 34–71.

145 Joseph Robins, The lost children: a study of charity children in Ireland, 1700–1900 (Dublin, 1980), pp 25–37; Dublin Morning Post, 3 Feb., 3 Mar., 2 Apr. 1792; Blaquiere’s 1797 figures are: 7,807 deaths in the ‘infant side’ of the hospital, 1,987 deaths in the country and 2,847 children unaccounted for: Dublin Weekly Journal, 13 May 1797 reporting debate in the House of Commons, 8 May 1797; Third report of the commissioners of Irish education inquiry (London, 1827), p. 5.

146 Milne, Kenneth, The Irish charter schools, 1730–1830 (Dublin, 1997)Google Scholar ; MacDonagh, Oliver, The inspector general: Sir Jeremiah Fitzpatrick and the politics of social reform, 1783–1802 (London, 1981)Google Scholar .

147 Hibernian Chronicle, 2 June 1783.

148 Farge and Revel, The rules of rebellion, chapter 4, and passim; above p. 278.

149 Return of outrages reported to the Constabulary Office … 1850 (Dublin, 1851), p. 9 (National Archives of Ireland, Chief Secretary’s Office, ICR/1).

150 Freeman’s Journal, 8 Apr. 1777, 9 Oct. 1780, 12 July, 25 Aug. 1781; Belfast News Letter, 27 May 1788; Dublin Morning Post, 1 Jan. 1791, 10 July, 4 Sept. 1794.

151 Dublin Morning Post, 29 May 1788; Belfast News Letter, 17 Feb., 2 June 1789, 6 Apr. 1792, 2 July 1841; Finn’s Leinster Journal, 25 Oct. 1788; Freeman’s Journal, 27 Oct., 1812. I wish to thank Gabrielle Ashford and Elaine Farrell for their guidance on a number of points, and Marnie Hay and Ríona Nic Congháil whose initiative spurred me to inquire into this subject.