Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of Irish society at the time of the Union with Great Britain in 1801. It considers the political changes introduced by Grattan’s parliament at the end of the eighteenth century and reviews the main social divisions within Ireland, based crucially upon land ownership, religious affiliation, language and education, as well as the different circumstances facing the aged in the cities compared with the countryside.
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Notes
- 1.
See (i) Population Estimates, 1672–1813, W.E. Vaughan and A.J. Fitzpatrick, Irish Historical Statistics: Population 1821–1971, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 1978, p. 2 and (ii) G. FitzGerald (2013). Irish Primary Education in the Early Nineteenth Century: An Analysis of the First and Second Reports of the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, 1825–1826. Royal Irish Academy Monographs, no.2. RIA, Dublin, p. 43.
- 2.
These are the cities Dickson has described as the top of eighteenth-century Ireland’s urban hierarchy (Dickson 1989: 179).
- 3.
Rates of cohort survival from mid-life into old age between the years 1821 and 1841 were not surpassed at any time during the rest of the nineteenth century (see Appendix 3, p. xxx).
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Gilleard, C. (2017). Ireland at the Time of the Union. In: Old Age in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58541-7_1
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