ABSTRACT
In 1927 the Commission on Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor including the Insane Poor documented the extent and capacity of the publicly funded Irish healthcare system. According to its findings, Ireland had a functioning, albeit crumbling, network of publicly funded county infirmaries, and a network of poor law union hospitals and associated dispensaries. What it also conveyed was that engagement with the poor law or workhouse system was heavily gendered, and both age- and class-orientated. The 1851 Medical Charities Act placed the system firmly under the auspices of the poor law, which, after the Great Famine 1845–1852, had several traumatic connotations with death and diseases in the popular mindset. In this essay I outline the reasons for poor engagement that range from the competing influences of traditional medicine to regionality and discuss how urban and rural behaviours differed. I contend that a combination of traditional practitioners, coupled with Famine associations, had an indelible impact on attitudes towards this flawed social welfare system, especially in rural Ireland. As such, this chapter complements the work of Sneddon on magical healing, Buckley on institutions and Walsh on the history of psychiatry.
