Dunshaughlin Work House

John:

You may have seen this article on the Dunshauglin Workhouse. The Navan library has Guardian Minute books but it is not clear if any records are available for people who were admitted and discharged from the workhouse. You may want to e-mail the Navan library.

Roger McDonnell

 https://www.workhouses.org.uk/Dunshaughlin/#:~:text=The%20new%20Dunshau….

Roger,

Thank you for your reply.  I have previously seen this information, which seems to confirm that actual names of work house inmates were not recorded.

As far as the trustees or guardians were concerned, actual numbers of inmates and changes in numbers were considered more important.

I was - literally - shocked to read somewhere else that around 1,000 former work house inmates had been burried in a field behind the workhouse.

Intriguingly - this very week - a BBC Radio 4 "Open Country" programme broadcast involved local people in England 'reclaiming' the identities of similar forgotten inmates buried in a burial field behind a workhouse in Bath. The local council had redesignated the area from a burial fields to an open space in the 1970s, which - I have to say - seems to me to have been enormously disrespectful.

For anyone who might be interested in setting up a similar project for Dunshaughlin or any of the other Irish workhouses, the programme can be heard at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0016pvz. 

I wonder how many of the 1,000 or so former inmates buried behind the Dunshaughlin Work House had their identities recorded?

Famine burial ground  behind old Workhouse has blessing of the graves of those interred here every year.