Ever since the Virtual Treasury of Ireland project launched, genealogists around Ireland and the disapora have been hoping that secret caches of 19th century census material would come to light. Initially, they said “don’t be ridiculous” but slowly, the tune started to change. At present, the Virtual Treasury has recovered over 157,000 names from these censuses. They have more to come which are not yet processed.
If you’re not familiar with the scope of the Virtual Treasury, then a good place to start is my talk on it for Rootstech last year, which is available to watch for free on their website.
There are multiple ways to explore the census material such as browsing the file structure from VRTI CEN to a particular year. You can also go straight to the Population Portal.
From there, select each census and navigate through province, county, barony, civil parish down to townland.
You can also just type in a place name to the main search box and see what comes up.
Earlier this year, I got wind of a new secret cache of material relating to Malahide in Co. Dublin, where I grew up (but sadly not where my ancestors came from). Last night, I attended a lecture hosted by Malahide Historical Society where Dr Brian Gurrin (census supremo for the VRTI) detailed an amazing find, along with David Rafferty and Chris Walker who were instrumental in bringing the material to light.
Newly Recovered Censuses for Malahide
The Royal Irish Constabulary kept copies of the 1871, 1881 and 1891 censuses for the area (including parts of neighbouring Portmarnock and Kinsealy). Given their role in the community, it’s not surprising they kept notes on people. They did not extract every category of information on the census but it seems to be a complete list of everyone from 1871 and 1881, with extracts from 1891. Here’s the details on how this material was recovered, which is on the website.
All told, we are looking at about 4000 names!!! Brian is still adding material and hopes to complete it in the next couple of weeks. The detail in this is simply fantastic because it’s not just a copy of the census return. There’s two versions of the 1871 census so the tabular format references additional content compiled from both. The RIC policemen updated these records with details such as “died 1878” or “gone to America” or that a person had moved to a different part of Dublin. Brian has done some of the cross-referencing for us, as you can see here in the observations column.
The Virtual Treasury has also made available the images of the original notebook, which are searchable. The original was there last night so I took a couple of photographs, but the scans in the VRTI are of very good quality.
This is a huge find and I can’t help but wonder if there are more records to be found that were kept by RIC men. Brian Gurrin said last night that he didn’t think he would ever see such a find and it’s unlikely we’ll get such treasure in such volume for another part of the country. Certainly, the possibility of other RIC records of this kind being found should be explored. I cannot wait to research my next Malahide project with this additional material.
Gutted I missed this talk as it looks brilliant. It would have been excellent to see the actual notebook in real life. Thanks for sharing and bringing it to our attention. The VTRI is an underused resource that is improving all the time.
What a fantastic discovery and it raises a glimmer of hope that such records by the RIC are available elsewhere! A very fruitful event! Sorry to have missed it.
Doesn’t it just?!