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Abstract
This article explores the juxtaposition of the 1853 Irish Industrial Exhibition in Dublin and the dramatic rise of department stores in the city during the same decade. It analyses the aims, structure and reception of the 1853 Exhibition within the context of the Irish industrial movement, the economic modernity of the post-Famine era and the dramatic changes to consumer culture which were occurring during the 1850s. The article takes as its focus the hitherto neglected ‘monster house’ controversy – conducted in pamphlets and public lectures – regarding the growth of Dublin's department stores. Coinciding with the 1853 Exhibition, the controversy rehearsed many of the same concerns regarding economic and social structures in Irish urban society in the wake of the Famine. Consideration of the ‘monster house’ controversy alongside the issues raised by the 1853 Exhibition allows a new perspective on the development of middle-class urban life in Dublin during the mid-nineteenth century.
Notes
1. See CitationMiller, The Bon Marché; CitationAdburgham, Shops and Shopping; CitationLancaster, The Department Store.
2. See Adburgham, Shops and Shopping, 138–40 for a discussion of Bainbridge's of Newcastle's claims to be the world's first department store, opened in 1841.
3. See CitationSaris, ‘Imagining Ireland’; CitationLitvak, ‘Exhibiting Ireland’; CitationDavies, ‘Ireland's Crystal Palace’.
4. See CitationTurpin, ‘Exhibitions of Art and Industries’.
5. Citation‘Censor’, A Letter on the ‘Monster House’ Series, 1–2.
6. See Adburgham, Shops and Shopping, 43. Adburgham points out, as evidence of the advanced stage of development of Bainbridge's store in Newcastle, that by 1849 it had twenty-three departments. This suggests that Dublin department stores were at least as diverse and highly developed as those in other major cities.
7. CitationEvelyn, The ‘Dublin Traders' Alliance’, 8–9.
8. Citation Thom's Directory , 1850, 698, 734, 745, 749.
9. ‘Censor’, A Letter on the ‘Monster House’ Series, 3.
10. CitationHancock, Competition between Large and Small Shops, 26–7.
11. CitationMcDonagh, Slater, and Boylan, ‘Irish Political Economy’, 218.
12. CitationMcDonagh, Slater, and Boylan, ‘Irish Political Economy’, 217; CitationHarrison, ‘Pim Brothers’, 243.
13. Hancock, Competition between Large and Small Shops, 12.
14. CitationAnon, The ‘Monster House’ System, 26.
15. CitationAnon, The ‘Monster House’ System, 22.
16. CitationAnon, The ‘Monster House’ System, 4–7.
17. Cited in Evelyn, The ‘Dublin Traders' Alliance’, 40.
18. ‘Censor’, A Letter on the ‘Monster House’ Series, 5.
19. Anon, The ‘Monster House’ System, 17.
20. Anon, The ‘Monster House’ System, 18.
21. Anon, The ‘Monster House’ System, 9.
22. Anon, The ‘Monster House’ System
23. Cited in Evelyn, The ‘Dublin Traders' Alliance’, 37.
24. Citation Thom's Directory , 1855, 1013.
25. Cited in Evelyn, The ‘Dublin Traders' Alliance’, 37.
26. Evelyn, The ‘Dublin Traders' Alliance’, 19.
27. Evelyn, The ‘Dublin Traders' Alliance’, 23–4.
28. Hancock, Competition between Large and Small Shops, 19.
29. Evelyn, The Dublin Traders' Alliance, 25.
30. Hancock, Competition between Large and Small Shops, 22.
31. Cited in CitationFoley, ‘Public Sphere and Domestic Circle’, 26.
32. CitationAbelson, When Ladies Go a-Thieving, 28. Abelson argues that ‘shopping became a main work activity of the middle-class woman … traditional female skills based on home production were replaced by the skills required to purchase factory-produced goods’.
33. Evelyn, The ‘Dublin Traders' Alliance’, 16.
34. Cited in Evelyn, The ‘Dublin Traders' Alliance’, 37.
35. Cited in Cited in Evelyn, The ‘Dublin Traders' Alliance’, 39.
36. See CitationMurphy, Abject Loyalty, 112–20, for a discussion of William Dargan's career and involvement with the Irish Industrial Exhibition.
37. CitationSproule, The Irish Industrial Exhibition of 1853, 27.
38. CitationSproule, The Irish Industrial Exhibition of 1853, v.
39. See Davies, ‘Ireland's Crystal Palace’, 253. Davies suggests that European manufacturers preferred to send their goods to the New York Exhibition also being held in 1853, due to the attractions of the larger and more prosperous American markets this would open for them.
40. Davies, ‘Ireland's Crystal Palace’, 249–50.
41. Davies, ‘Ireland's Crystal Palace’, 269.
42. Sproule, The Irish Industrial Exhibition of 1853, 9.
43. Lancaster, The Department Store, 17.
44. The Exhibition Expositor and Advertiser, 1 June 1853 (Week 4), 2.
45. Sproule, The Irish Industrial Exhibition of 1853, 34.
46. The Freeman's Journal, 24 October 1853, 1.
47. The Exhibition Expositor and Advertiser, 15 June 1853 (Week 6), 1.
48. The Freeman's Journal, 27 October 1853, 1, and Citation Thom's Directory , 1856, 922.
49. The Exhibition Expositor and Advertiser, 25 May 1853 (Week 3), 7.
50. See Miller, The Bon Marché, 29. Miller describes A.T. Stewart's ‘Marble Palace’, built in New York in 1846, as the most probable candidate as the first purpose-built department store in the world.
51. The Exhibition Expositor and Advertiser, 11 May 1853 (Week 1), 8.
52. The Exhibition Expositor and Advertiser, 11 May 1853 (Week 1), 8
53. The Exhibition Expositor and Advertiser, 11 June 1853 (Week 10), 1.
54. The Exhibition Expositor and Advertiser, 29 June 1853 (Week 8), 1.
55. Sproule, The Irish Industrial Exhibition of 1853, 21.
56. Anon, The ‘Monster House’ System, 10, 15.
57. Anon, The ‘Monster House’ System, 20.
58. Evelyn, The ‘Dublin Traders' Alliance’, 22.
59. The Exhibition Expositor and Advertiser, 27 July 1853 (Week 12), 2.
60. The Exhibition Expositor and Advertiser, 21 September 1853 (Week 20), 7.
61. Anon, The ‘Monster House’ System, 18.
62. Evelyn, The ‘Dublin Traders' Alliance’, 4.
63. See CitationKinealy, ‘Was Ireland a Colony?’, 48–65; CitationÓ Gráda, Ireland, 187–99.
64. Ó Gráda, Ireland, 193.
65. Hancock, Competition between Large and Small Shops, 9–10.
66. Kinealy, ‘Was Ireland a Colony?’, 53–4.
67. See CitationBallantyne, ‘The Sinews of Empire’, 145–61; Murphy, Abject Loyalty, xi–xxxiv.
68. See CitationFoster, Modern Ireland, 328. Even before his political conversion to the Home Rule movement, however, Sir Isaac Butt had supported economic protectionism for Irish industries, having published a pamphlet entitled Protection of Home Industry in 1846.
69. Miller, The Bon Marché, 26.
70. Miller, cited in The Bon Marché, 209.
71. Miller, cited in The Bon Marché, 213–14.
72. Ó Gráda, Ireland, 239.
73. Ó Gráda, Ireland, 250–1.