The start of September saw a walking tour organised by the Stoneybatter & Smithfield People’s History Project to mark the anniverseries of the 1913 Lockout and the collapses of two tenement houses on 2nd September 1913 which resulted in the death of seven people. The tour started at the statue of Jim Larkin on O’Connel st and proceeded via 6 stops to the site of the collapse where relatives of those killed laid wreaths. There was then the launch of a commermorative pamphlet and a social in the Cobblestone Pub.
The start of September saw a walking tour organised by the Stoneybatter & Smithfield People’s History Project to mark the anniverseries of the 1913 Lockout and the collapses of two tenement houses on 2nd September 1913 which resulted in the death of seven people. The tour started at the statue of Jim Larkin on O’Connel st and proceeded via 6 stops to the site of the collapse where relatives of those killed laid wreaths. There was then the launch of a commermorative pamphlet and a social in the Cobblestone Pub.
Below are photographs I took during the tour & launch and the text of the event announcement which explains what happened in more detail. I also include a link to the youtube playlist which will take you on of each stop on the tour filmed by the mysterious Rasher O’Reilly. At the end of the post you’ll find a couple of brief additional videos I shot on my phone of music played during the wreath laying and the social.
From the tour announcement
"On Tuesday 2nd September 1913, at approximately 8.45pm, two tenement houses at 66 and 67 Church Street collapsed. Debris from the collapse was strewn across Church Street and seven people were killed.
The tenements were substandard houses where some of Dublin’s poorest lived. Often entire families lived in one room. The seven people killed in Church Street were by no means the only people to die due to substandard housing, but they are among the most well-known. The collapse happened against the backdrop of the biggest trade union dispute in Irish history – the 1913 Lockout.
To mark the centenary of the Church Street tenement collapse, the Stoneybatter and Smithfield People’s History Project is hosting a weekend of events on 6th and 7th of September.
The weekend begins on Friday 6th at 6.30pm with a historical walking tour which will visit the key sites associated with the collapse and the Lockout. The tour meets at the Larkin statue on O’Connell and will visit some of the key sites of the Lockout, concluding with a ceremony at the memorial park on Church Street, which will be attended by descendants of some of those killed on that tragic night 100 years ago.
This will be immediately followed by the launch of our 32 page commemorative magazine on the collapse in The Cobblestone. The magazine will include articles on the collapse, how the tenements came to be, tenement life in early twentieth century Dublin and the momentous events surrounding the 1913 Lockout. The magazine will be launched by Jacinta Prunty, author of a number of studies of the Dublin slums including ‘Dublin slums, 1800-1925, a study in urban geography’. The launch will be followed by an evening of music and song in the backroom of The Cobblestone, with Dublin band Lynched.
On Saturday 7th we will host a slide show of original images from the tenements in 1913, which have been kindly supplied to us by the Royal Antiquarian Society of Ireland and at 5.00pm there will be a public talk on the Church Street collapse with guest speaker Chris Corlett, author of ‘Darkest Dublin The story of the Church Street disaster and a pictorial account of the slums of Dublin in 1913’. "
A lament played during the wreath laying
Lynched sing a traditional song from the area about resistance to military recruiting during WWI