REGARDING his call for the abolition of the Smithfield horse fair, Gerry Breen, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, might be interested in how his predecessors dealt with a similar situation. The famous, or infamous Donnybrook Fair was a scene of much horse trading but also lawlessness and mayhem. It was one of the longest lived of Irish institutions, being founded by a charter of King John in 1204.
The fair green straddled both sides of Donnybrook Road where it meets the Dodder. The city council was the recipient of the tolls collected at the annual sale of livestock and other goods which took place at the fair. When the city fathers ran into financial difficulties in 1698 the rights to the tolls were sold to a private individual and were eventually bought by the Madden family of Donnybrook .
The annual fair day was from time immemorial August 26th but the merrymaking went on for up to two weeks, or as the police claimed, until the money of the city’s apprentices and other fairgoers ran out. The people of the city thronged to the fair.
In 1841 the Maddens carried out what they called a “scientific calculation” of the numbers attending and counted 74,792 on one day – and this in a city which had a fraction of its present population.
Much business was carried out on the fairground during the day. Like Smithfield, the sale of horses was brisk. The city needed thousands of animals on an annual basis. When night fell, however, the ground became a scene of much drunkenness and debauchery. Prostitution was rife and the fights which broke out became notorious. A “Donnybrook” came to mean a free-for-all fight, still heard in some English-speaking countries. As the area of Donnybrook became a suburb of Dublin inhabited by the city’s burgeoning middle-class, the annual affront to its jealously-guarded respectability became a great nuisance. Something had to be done.
Various lord mayors of Dublin, as the city’s chief magistrate, took the initiative. An early target of the civic authorities was “Walking Sunday” the Sunday before August 26th, when thousands of Dublin’s citizens would stroll out to Donnybrook to see the extensive preparations for the fair. Many tents and booths were already erected and much drinking was indulged in. This was regarded as a violation of the Sabbath and the lord mayor of the day tried to curtail it.
The first serious and successful attempt to suppress “Walking Sunday” was carried out by lord mayor Richard Smyth in 1824. Subsequent lord mayors were not so energetic, but in 1837 William Hodges successfully curtailed the jollities of “Walking Sunday”.
However, there were consequences. Sixteen booth-owners issued writs against Hodges claiming he had acted illegally; a test case involving one of them, a John Brady, ended up before the Queen’s Bench. Although the lord mayor was vindicated, Brady declared himself a pauper and Hodges was landed with the £160 costs. Hodges appealed to the lord lieutenant to be rendered harmless for his attempt to preserve moral decorum, but was refused and he had to sustain the cost of his public-spiritedness out of his own pocket.
In subsequent years, various groups espousing morality and respectability attempted in vain to curtail if not abolish the fair. These included local committees, some chaired by evangelical members of the brewing Guinness family – the irony seemed lost on them. Quakers and Catholic supporters of the abstinence apostle, Father Mathew, were also prominent.
With the rise of what are generally called “Victorian values”, a policed society and resurgent Catholicism, the days of the “Humours of Donnybrook” were numbered. In 1855, a number of circumstances provided the opportunity for the lord mayor to act. The problem was that the fair was held by the ancient charter, royally-granted, and could not be touched.
However, the charter had come down by inheritance to the elderly and devoutly pious Eleanor Madden of Donnybrook. At this time also a new and energetic curate, Father Patrick Nowlan, had arrived in the parish (there is a plaque to his memory in Donnybrook church).
It was clear the only way that the fair could be ended was for someone to gain possession of the patent and then let it lapse. Nowlan went to work on his parishioner Miss Madden. The old lady was no push-over – the annual revenues obtained from booth-holders and tolls were quite lucrative. Much negotiation was engaged in. In the end the enormous sum £3,000 was agreed on.
A public subscription was opened by the lord mayor. It was supported by the city’s employers, the clergy of all denominations, including the two archbishops and the police establishment. With great difficulty the sum was collected by August of 1855 and it was publicly announced that the fair was ended. This arrangement was supervised by the police, who broke up any crowds attempting to assemble on the old fair green.
It was not quite the end however; a nephew of Eleanor Madden, Joseph Dillon, had an inn with a large garden attached in Donnybrook and he continued to hold his own version of the fair there. It could not be interfered with as it was held on private property. This was despite the enraged disapproval of his clergymen, the police and the whole moral establishment. It was even mentioned in the House of Commons and commented on by no less a person than Robert Peel.
This shadow of the former fair itself came to an end in 1866. In that year the police noted a few disreputable characters slinking into Dillon’s beer garden, some hiding portable wheels of fortune under their coats.
Up the street on the very same day was a resplendent scene. The great and the good were assembling in the shining new Catholic church of Donnybrook whose opening ceremony was being conducted by the city’s archbishop, Paul Cullen, Ireland’s newly-created and first cardinal. It was the old fair day, August 26th, deliberately chosen by the church authorities. Indeed the church was dedicated to the Sacred Heart in reparation for all the sins committed on the old fair green over seven centuries.
And so ended the great fair. Is there a lesson for today’s civic authorities? I am not sure. The street balladeers, however, lamented the passing of the old order. One composition ended with words which referred to the wooden contraption which was held in the police station at Coldblow Lane (now Belmont Avenue) to carry away the fallen who were rendered hors de combat on the fair green: “The station house at Coldblow Lane can shut its iron door/ And burn the well-known stretcher for Donnybrook’s no more.”