Kevin C. Kearns. Dublin Pub Life and Lore: An Oral History. Dublin, Ireland: Gill & Macmillan,
1996. 288 pp. $15.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-57098-164-7.
Reviewed by Scott Haine (University of California Santa Cruz and Holy Names College)
Published on H-Urban (March, 1999)
This is a vivid oral history of one of the great urban
public drinking establishment cultures of the world, the
Dublin pub. Kevin C. Kearns, professor of cultural geography and social history at the University of North Colorado at Greeley, is eminently qualified to undertake this
study. Already notable for his oral histories of Dublin
street and tenement life,[1] he now turns his sights on
the next logical urban space: the pub. To place his oral
history of the past eighty years in context, he provides
much important historical information on the evolution
of pubs over the past four centuries. While Frank McCourt’s recent Pulitzer Prize winning memoir Angela’s
Ashes provides a harrowing account of the damage drink
and pub life can create,[2] Kearns balances that account
with his essentially positive view of pub life.
sult is the recent Bottle, Draught & Keg, An Irish Drinking
Anthology, edited by Laurence Flanagan (Dublin: Gill &
Macmillan Ltd., 1995.) Kearns’s book will be essential for
all historians and sociologists interested in urban sociability and social interaction.
The book, however ambitious, does have weaknesses.
Although the introduction and first chapter provide a
good historical background, they are sketchy and repetitive. Kearns begins his history in 1600 without providing
an explanation for this point of departure rather than an
earlier one. His overview of the evolution of the numbers of Dublin pubs is excellent. In 1650 Dublin had 4,000
families and 1,180 pubs, a much higher density than was
found in later centuries, apparently (no data are given for
later centuries). By 1750 the term “public house” had beAt the heart of the book are the oral histories he come common and was subsequently shortened to “pub.”
conducted. Over the course of three summers in the It would have been interesting to know the history of the
late 1980s and early 1990s, Kearns tracked down more term “local,” another common term for the pub.) By 1760,
than fifty old-time publicans, many just a few months the number of pubs had reached 2,300. In 1791, with
before their death. He has also discussed pub life with a the creation of spirit grocers, the numbers of drinking
large number of “regulars,” the executive director of the places increased further, and these places, because they
Dublin Licensed Vintner’s Association, and a few women also sold food, provided a socially acceptable place for
(who had not been regulars) as well. In this book he has women to drink. The number of spirit grocers swelled
included interviews with twenty-one publicans–whose throughout the nineteenth century until by 1877 Dublin
ages ranged between 86 and 45 (six in their 80s, seven supported 310 of the 641 in the entire country.
in their 70s, five in their 60s, two in their 50s, and one a
By 1800 the number of pubs had grown to 3,000 and
mere 45). The richly detailed reminiscences of these para nascent temperance movement had emerged in Dublin,
ticipants in and around the pub reveal the centrality of
growing in influence until the potato famine in the 1840s
pubs to urban history.
diverted attention to sheer survival. Nevertheless, the
Kearns amply documents the rich popular culture and influence of temperance may well have persuaded the
folklore that Irish pubs have generated. As he notes, Irish Recorder of Dublin in the 1850s that the city had a sufwriters from Sean O’Casey to James Joyce to Brendhan ficient number of pubs and that in the future a new pub
Behan have drawn heavily on pub life as inspiration for could open only when an existing pub closed. The resulttheir literature. (An excellent supplementary text to con- ing stabilization in the number of Dublin pubs greatly
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increased their monetary value: 500 percent jump between 1858 and 1878. The Recorder’s policy became law
when the liquor licensing laws of 1872 and 1902 not only
capped the number of pubs but also required good moral
character.
Kearns delineates well the various types of pubs (both
legal and illegal) that flourished between the late nineteenth century and the 1940s. The lowest illegal type
of pub was the shebeen, basically a room in a tenement with some marker, such as an oil lamp, to indicate its existence. Shebeens made much of their money
As the value of pubs rose, so did the stature of the
on Sunday mornings when pubs were closed for church.
publicans. Often their male children became priests or
Speakeasies were pubs or shebeens that stayed open afdoctors. In the 1890s, twenty of Dublin’s sixty alderman ter hours. An alternative to speakeasies were the pubs rehad served behind the bar and some of them later were served for travelers, known as bonafides, on the outskirts
elected to parliament. Kearns provides valuable evidence of Dublin, often patronized by Dubliners themselves late
from parliamentary and police inquiries into pubs. In on Saturday night. Shebeens often posted scouts at street
the late nineteenth century, during a controversy over
corners to give warning of any police in the neighborSunday closings, the police watched 210 pubs and found
hood. Kip houses were combination pubs and brothels.
that 46,257 patrons (overwhelmingly working class) en- Other pubs specialized in such illegal activities as gamtered between 2:00 and 8:30 p.m. A Select Committte of bling or betting on horses. Between the 1930s and the
the House of Lords on Intermperance in 1876, although 1960s, Dublin also became famous for its singing pubs
it found a strong connection between poverty and pub and some literary pubs.
attendance, nevertheless leaned sympathetically towards
the pub as one of the few means of “escape” available to
The heart of the book is the masterful delineation of
the poor and decided that this “safety valve” made their pub culture and social life. Kearns describes the publilives much less barren.
can’s role in all its facets: the providing of drink, the sociability, the moral and even financial support for such
Only at the end of Kearns’s second chapter do we rites of passage as births, christenings, first commulearn that today Dublin has only 775 pubs. Information nions, weddings, wakes, and burials. He also persuaon the shifting number of pubs between the 1850s and the sively shows the strong similarity between the role of the
1980s–data admittedly difficult to ferret out–would be
publican and that of the priest. Indeed, as one publican
valuable here. His historical chapter could also have been
notes, “a publican years ago was Jesus Christ.” Kearns
strengthened by exploring accounts in Dublin newspa- is equally detailed and evocative on the connection bepers, diaries, and notorial and court records.
tween drink and work among dockers, street merchants,
Kearns’s superb chapter on pub culture and social life and artisans. Pubs were centers of strikes and political
provides a masterful introduction for the subsequent two activity, especially the activity of the IRA. He shows how
chapters of oral history. Allow me to provide here a public drinking and sociability could turn these public
brief overview of the main points of both his analysis spaces into intimate private places and how the regulars
and the interviews. The staff of the pub usually com- often became a “family” in which it was impossible to
prised a porter, an apprentice, and a barman. Appren- hide secrets from one another. Indeed, the publican seltices, who generally became publicans themselves, came dom needed the police the pub for rowdy behavior befrom the country counties of Tipperary, Cavan, and Lim- cause the regulars would not allow any disturbance in
erick. Starting at the age of fourteen or fifteen, they their “house.” Kearns is also superb on the gender restriclived upstairs above the pub with the publican’s family, tions, reporting that the only women allowed to violate
working ten or more hours a day with little pay and few this male preserve were grandmothers (who were conholidays. They graduated to barmen as they displaying sidered “beyond sin” due to their age) and street vendors
their “art” at drawing a pint and chatting with customers. who could swear and drink on a par with the men. He
Porters worked in the basement, washing bottles, haul- concludes by pointing out that equality and democracy
ing kegs, and bottling beer. Despite the hope of eventual were at the basis of pub sociability. In these spaces ordisocial mobility, barmen frequently went on strike. After nary people had a freedom of speech and behavior that
failing in the 1919, 1922, and 1927 strikes, the barmen fi- they felt in virtually no other spaces in society.
nally won concessions in 1955 by forcing Guinness, the
After World War II many of these colorful institutions
major brewer, to intercede for them with the publicans. declined or were abolished. Shebeens were essentially
(Porters, lacking the identity and solidarity of the bar- wiped out when urban renewal removed many of the tenmen, apparently never had any luck with strikes.)
ement complexes. Bonafides were abolished in 1960, and
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the singing and literary pubs succumbed, due in part to
the influence of television. In addition, many pubs ripped
out their Victorian or Edwardian interiors in favor of a
“modern” decor. One publican interviewed dubs this period of the 1950s and 1960s as “the age of formica”; another laments that pubs have become “factories for drinking.” (Ironic in view of Le Corbusier’s definition of the
modern home as a “machine for living.”) One of the few
positive changes that Kearns finds in this post-1945 era
is that pubs now allow women as regulars. No longer
are Dublin pubs a male “utopia.” Kearns provides valuable testimony from wives who had to wait for their husbands at home or outside the pub before these places became integrated by gender. Nevertheless, the Dublin pub
clearly remains a vital social institution (indeed, perhaps,
more so than its counterparts in London or Paris). In fact,
Kearns cites statistic showing that 94 percent of the beer
consumed in Ireland today is consumed in pubs; in America, 80 percent is consumed in the home. Despite the few
shortcomings I have noted Dublin Pub Life and Lore is one
of the best recent contributions to the growing number of
books on drinking establishments around the world.[3] I
can only hope that it inspires many researchers to head
out into this still largely uncharted terrain of urban sociability and vitality.
Ltd, 1994), and Stoneybatter: Dublin’s Inner-Urban Village
(Dublin: Glendale Press, 1989).
[2]. Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
[3]. See for example Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good
Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty
Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get
You Through the Day (New York: Paragon House, 1989
and New York: Marlowe and Company, 1997), an innovative sociological perspective on the function of cafes,
pubs, and bars. Harold B. Segel, ed., trans., and intro. The
Vienna Coffeehouse Wits 1890-1938(West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1993, and 1995 paperback)
is an excellent collection of literary work about cafe life.
Also see Madelon Powers, Faces Along the Bar: Lore and
Order in the Workingman’s Saloon, 1870-1920. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998) for a superb new historical study of American pubs; and W. Scott Haine The
World of the Parisian Cafe: Sociability Among the Working Class (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1996 and 1998 paperback) for my own contribution. Also
see Perry Duis, The Saloon: Public Drinking in Chicago
and Boston, 1880-1920, (Urbana and Chicago: University
of Illinois Press, 1983) for an intriguing comparison and
contrast with Powers.
Notes
Copyright (c) 1999 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This
[1]. See Kearns’ works Dublin Street Life and Lore: An
work may be copied for non-profit educational use if
Oral History (Dublin: Glendale Press, 1991), Dublin Tenement Life: An Oral History (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other
permission, please contact [email protected].
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Citation: Scott Haine. Review of Kearns, Kevin C., Dublin Pub Life and Lore: An Oral History. H-Urban, H-Net
Reviews. March, 1999.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=2879
Copyright © 1999 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for
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