The Catholic Church and investor capitalism in late-nineteenth century Ireland

ABSTRACT

The Catholic Church embarked upon an ambitious project of property development in the nineteenth century that transformed the Irish built environment and landscape. People responded energetically to fundraising drives for churches, convents, monasteries and welfare-focused institutions. The acquisition of significant property and substantial capital by the Irish Catholic Church was a major source of its power, which continued into independent Ireland. Much of this wealth came to the Catholic Church through bequests, donations, and returns on investment, which were managed by the relevant dioceses and orders. This article focuses on the episcopacy of Archbishop William Walsh of Dublin during the 1880s and 1890s to understand the way in which the management of the archdiocese of Dublin’s financial resources shaped the social, economic, and political development of Ireland’s capital city. By focusing on the management of one of the most significant bequests under Walsh’s supervision – the Egan Bequest – a complex story of religion, investment and infrastructure building is revealed. This activity helped produce a model of investor capitalism that shaped Dublin in ways that remain contested to this day.

KEYWORDS:

• Catholic Church
• Dublin
• investment
• property
• Philanthropy
• bequests

Precisely what the Irish Catholic Church owns and in what sense it owns it has become a potent issue in recent years. The intense controversy surrounding the siting of the proposed new National Maternity Hospital on land originally belonging to the Religious Sisters of Charity in Elm Park in Dublin, where it would be co-located with St Vincent’s Hospital, is representative of wider debates about the Church’s divestment of substantial property portfolios and about the evolving terms of its relationship with state-funded welfare services. The NMH/St. Vincent’s case is itself a legally complex situation. The 300-year leasehold arrangement which has been recently settled upon is subject to dispute, the government claiming it amounts to ownership and means no religious ethos can influence what happens in the hospital, feminist and other protestors arguing that the land still belonging, ultimately, to a secular trust set up by the religious order leaves room for doubt as to whether full reproductive services will always be offered on site.¹ Greater legal minds than ours will continue to tease out the implications of this ownership structure for the future,² but the point ought to be made that this situation and all its complexity is historically rooted in the Catholic Church’s entanglement not just with welfare services, which historians have well documented,³ but also with capitalism in late modern Ireland, which has had considerably less attention.

Certainly, we know that acquisition of significant tranches of property and substantial amounts of capital by the Catholic Church and its various dioceses, parishes and orders, particularly in the nineteenth century, was both a consequence of the Church’s cultivation of lay piety, and a cause of its ongoing power in independent Ireland.⁴ Historians have debated the degree to which the Church was thereby either a drain on, or a spur to, growth in the wider economy in late modern Ireland, but the terms of this debate, as Liam Kennedy heavily implied, were rather tendentious. Measuring the aggregate influence of an institution as diffuse as the Catholic Church on the economy as a whole may be next to impossible even if adequate national data existed.⁵ This article therefore takes a different approach to the question of the Irish Catholic Church’s historic relationship to capitalism, by focusing on a defined set of property and capital transactions within the Dublin archdiocese at the end of the nineteenth century, and placing them within their wider cultural and social contexts. By the time of the episcopacy of Archbishop William Walsh, we argue, the archdiocese had begun acting as something of a financial hub, acquiring money from lay donors – much of it from business, investment, and property-based wealth – and disbursing it according to a particular social ethos. This grew health, welfare and charitable infrastructure in the city, but also saw some surprising forays into other investments that helped to shape the development of the city and its economy in myriad important ways.

William Walsh, who had been a professor at Maynooth since the age of 26 and president since 1880, became archbishop of Dublin in 1885 and remained so until his death in 1921. Politically, Walsh was well-known for being sympathetic to Irish nationalism, and economically he was an original thinker and an influential advocate of bimetallism.⁶ Dublin, during the 36 years of his tenure, was a city of immense and increasing contrasts. The flight of wealth that created and grew the plush suburbs of Rathmines, Blackrock, Monkstown, and so on, also saw the spread of inner-city tenements, with the city, infamously, having the worst housing conditions of any United Kingdom city by the early twentieth century.⁷ Almost as a matter of course, the role of archbishop conferred on Walsh a relationship with both ends of this socio-economic scale. On one hand, he was head of the institution whose various religious orders ran a vast and growing network of educational, welfare and health institutions that sought to tackle poverty, and although in most cases he had limited direct oversight of these institutions, he was frequently called upon to lend his name to committees and fundraising drives on their behalf. More significantly, we argue, Walsh, like his predecessors and successors, was a magnet for wealth. The archbishop of Dublin attracted vast sums of money in small donations, but large bequests from Dublin’s wealthy Catholics also formed an important part of the archdiocese’s income, and represented a capital resource that the archbishop was able to deploy both in relieving poverty, and in shaping the economy of the city more generally.

In this respect, the Church was, at a granular level, a full participant in capitalist development as defined by historian Jürgen Kocka, albeit capitalist development with a Catholic inflection. According to Kocka, capitalism incorporates a series of economic behaviours that display certain characteristics. First, actors are empowered to make economic decisions by virtue of their property rights. After this, markets are used as the main way to allocate and coordinate resources, which are in turn primarily directed to increase profits on investments. The drive to accumulate profit is an impetus behind capitalist development. Finally, capitalism needs a logic that looks beyond the economy and forces its way into other social relations.⁸ The Catholic inflection stemmed from a tradition of Catholic social teaching developed in the late nineteenth century. Pope Leo XIII’s papal encyclical Rerum Novarum appeared in 1891 as a response to the abuse of workers by unfettered capitalism, and as an attempt to forestall the popularity of socialism and communism that promoted class conflict and attacks on private property.⁹ Both capitalism and socialism posed a threat to the welfare of the family according to Pope Leo’s analysis. Therefore, a reformed capitalism that preserved private property, but which demonstrated a concern for worker and family welfare offered an alternative paradigm to the contemporary iniquities driven by concentrations of wealth. In Ireland, this led to concerted intellectual efforts to chart a middle course between socialism and individualistic capitalism.¹⁰

The Catholic Church played an important role in shaping the character of economic development in late nineteenth-century Dublin. The archdiocese of Dublin became an influential economic actor as a recipient of considerable property and wealth derived from wills. These resources were increasingly directed back onto the market by the Church towards a wide range of investments with the aim of making a profit that, first and foremost, enabled funding of a series of welfare and charitable institutions under its management. This was an investment model that charities in the nineteenth century were increasingly adopting as investment in the stock market became a more widespread practice generally.¹¹ The archdiocese of Dublin’s investments thus promoted a social good that accorded with Catholic values and aimed to use wealth generated by capitalist pursuits to alleviate the poverty that Rerum Novarum acknowledged could result from markets free of moral considerations.¹² However, as we show, the disbursement of these economic resources into the marketplace was itself shaped by a financial class that coalesced around the archbishop. Stockbrokers, bankers, legal experts, and politicians offered their advice (often at a commission) and used their outsized influence with Archbishop Walsh to aid their own financial and business interests. In this respect, the Church became embedded in, and helped to inflate an emerging form of financial capitalism in Ireland.

Archbishop Walsh and the Dublin Artisans Dwelling Co

To read the fundraising material of the Catholic Church in the late nineteenth century is to perceive an institution that consistently claimed to be in need of money, in part because it was perpetually expanding, both in terms of infrastructure and personnel. Fresh injections of cash were continually required to sustain that expansion. To be sure, much of the money raised in collections, subscriptions, bazaars, lotteries, and appeals of other sorts was raised for specific purposes: starting new institutions, clearing debts on existing church buildings and so on. But surviving financial accounts for dioceses and religious orders around the country also suggest that large capital sums that fell into the hands of church leaders, including nun’s dowries and bequests from wealthy lay people, were routinely put to work.¹³ Huge sums of money were cannily invested to ensure that a return on capital was established, potentially in perpetuity. There existed plenty of investment opportunities in Dublin at the end of the nineteenth century. By focusing on some of the investments made by the Archdiocese of Dublin during Archbishop Walsh’s tenure, we can see how the Church serviced and maintained a growing collection of welfare commitments – hospitals, schools, reformatories, asylums – but also shaped the ways in which the city of Dublin developed.

One investment opportunity related to Dublin’s housing crisis. The Victorian period had seen the increased use of the stock market to finance philanthropic ventures. The rise of so-called Model Dwelling Companies (MDC) saw investors use the limited liability business form to finance housing for the poor. These MDCs sought to demonstrate that no contradiction existed between private profit-making and the promotion of social welfare objectives. Property construction needed a large capital outlay that exceeded what could be raised in donations and only by offering a safe return on investments were willing investors forthcoming.¹⁴ In Dublin, concerns over the quality and quantity of housing available to the capital’s working classes saw the emergence of a new philanthropic housing development company – the Dublin Artisans’ Dwelling Company (DADC). The passage of the Artizans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Acts in 1875 and 1877 saw Dublin Corporation play a more interventionist role in the improvement of the city’s housing and public health situation. The Corporation promoted slum clearances and their replacement with new modern housing developments provided by partners in the private sector.¹⁵ This new approach to housebuilding provided an opportunity for the DADC to play a leading role in this work in the late nineteenth century. The DADC was a commercial enterprise that paid dividends to shareholders of around four per cent. The Artizans’ Dwellings Act of 1875 provided loans to companies to undertake slum clearance.¹⁶ Founded in 1876 by a group of largely Protestant businessmen and industrialists, the DADC constructed houses for families in full-time employment and aimed to offer these at affordable rents. From the 1870s throughout the 1890s, the DADC built predominantly two- and three-bedroom cottages and houses in the Coombe, Pimlico, Harold’s Cross, Rialto, and Stoneybatter.¹⁷

Despite the professed aim to build houses that could be occupied at affordable rents, the costs associated with land purchase combined with the pursuit of a profitable rate of return to service the dividends of shareholders increased costs. For example, on the first DADC housing project in the Coombe, the price paid for the land and compensation for incumbent property owners by Dublin Corporation quickly grew. The area was originally valued at £11,134, but this was revised up to £14,421. The price continued to climb as existing property owners challenged the price and nine individual cases of property purchase were referred to juries who awarded huge increases in the price to be paid by the Corporation. For example, one dairy owner and greengrocer received a valuation for his property of £479 from the arbitrator, but this increased to £1,350 following a reassessment in front of a jury. As Jacinta Prunty noted, “the sacredness of private property, even if tumbledown and seriously endangering the health of occupants and neighbours, had to be respected.”¹⁸ The Corporation acquired and cleared the site in the Coombe for £24,367 and granted the ground for development and management to the DADC for 10,000 years at a peppercorn rent for the first two years and after that at £200 per annum. They expended £27,000 and built 120 houses of four classes.¹⁹

The DADC proved to be a significant player in Dublin’s housing market as it built 3,415 new houses by 1925, which accounted for over half of all private housing constructed since 1870.²⁰ In common with other philanthropic housing ventures in the late-nineteenth century, a focus on generating profits restricted the potential beneficiary of the new housing to an ideal member of the respectable working classes.²¹ The DADC mostly offered rents at a range of 2s 6d and 6s. per week, which meant the tenants they attracted tended to come from the higher echelons of the working classes and lower middle classes. From a shareholder’s point of view, the returns of their investment proved to be safe and stable as demand for housing remained high throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The DADC’s promise to generously serve shareholder interests, combined with spiralling costs due to payment of exorbitant compensation to landowners, meant the ambition to solve the housing crisis by the start of the twentieth century proved elusive.²²

Despite confessional differences with the Board of Directors, the guarantee of a safe return on shares saw Archbishop Walsh invest archdiocesan funds into the DADC. Among the first shareholders were Edmund Dwyer Gray of the Freeman’s Journal, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, James Whiteside, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Richard Chenevix Trench, and the earls of Meath and Pembroke.²³ Sir Edward Guinness was the trustee of the company the year Walsh made his investment, with the Board of Directors including the Liberal politician William Findlater and the Irish industrialist Sir Richard Martin.²⁴ Edward Spencer, the DADC Secretary, wrote to Walsh who had applied for 100 shares. The DADC had “now closed on 3 sites, and shall be glad to receive the amount due on allotment, £200, or if you prefer it the full amount of the shares, £1,000.”²⁵ On 19 November 1888 Walsh transferred the first £200 instalment. In April 1896, Walsh invested in another 50 DADC shares bringing the total value of shares possessed by the Archdiocese of Dublin to £1,500.²⁶ Such holdings brought an annual share dividend of 4.5%, or £67 10s., which was both a relatively high return, and one that proved safe and reliable.²⁷ The latter factor, as we will see, tended to be a key concern for Walsh and Catholic Church investors more generally, where high-risk shares tended to be avoided.

However, the archbishop’s choice of an investment in this housing enterprise is noteworthy for another reason too. Investment in the expansion of housing stock was mutually co-constitutive with another key objective of the Catholic Church, which was the continued growth of its spiritual and material property portfolio. The accelerated construction of churches and convents throughout the nineteenth century saw the Catholic Church fashion a prominent infrastructure of devotion and religious worship.²⁸ In turn, religious interventions both drove and responded to processes of urban development, which left an imprint on Dublin’s landscape. The burst of housebuilding activity in the late-nineteenth century helped to drive the expansion of the Catholic Church’s property portfolio. Archbishop Walsh alluded to this fact in a speech delivered to a public meeting held on Aughrim Street in January 1907. The purpose of the meeting was to initiate a public subscription drive to pay off a debt of £7,000 incurred on doubling the size of the parish’s Church of the Holy Family. Originally constructed thirty-three years previously, the capacity of the original church proved inadequate to serve the growth in the local population that occurred in the intervening years. According to Walsh the changes required either the construction of a new church or expansion, and it was decided that the latter option provided the most economical approach. Such changes proved necessary because

not only have new houses, and rows of terraces of houses, been springing up year after year along the old thoroughfares of the district, but new roads, new thoroughfares, have been opened up and have been built almost as rapidly as they were opened. The number of new houses that have thus been built here has long since had to be counted, not by the hundred, but by the thousand.²⁹

The DADC played a leading role in driving the growth in housing units across the city, and the company played a particularly central role around the Aughrim Street area. In 1891 the DADC constructed 200 new dwellings on Aughrim Street and a further 60 in 1894. They erected another 400 new dwellings in the neighbouring area around Manor Place between 1901 and 1907, with more local houses still under construction in the years immediately afterwards.³⁰ The DADC’s impact on the Aughrim Street area was transformational and prompted a response from the parish. More houses required more space for worship and as an investor in the DADC, the Catholic Church was partly responsible for driving this change. Its ownership of 150 shares meant it remained a relatively minor partner in such a process, but symbolically at least the archdiocese was linked to the financial dynamics shaping Dublin’s urban landscape. A related consequence of this growth of urban housing in Dublin is that it continued to act a spur to the Church’s long-standing mission to expand its devotional infrastructure. As Walsh admitted in his 1907 speech “the building of those new streets of houses [was] … one of the most notable of the many causes that have contributed to the notable increase in the population of this district and to the consequent need that has arisen for the work of church-building.”³¹

The Egan bequest

The £1,500 invested by Walsh in the DADC, although by no means an insignificant sum, merely scratches the surface of the resources at his disposal. It is apt at this point to trace the source of some of the investment capital available to the archbishop of Dublin. Since the Charitable Bequests Act of 1844 and the Roman Catholic Charities Act of 1860 had made it easier for Catholics, lay and clerical, to leave property and capital directly (and legally) to the Church,³² the archdiocese of Dublin, in particular, had been in receipt of a number of very large bequests. For example, a Miss Ellen Cruise left £42,000, seemingly derived from property wealth, to charitable causes in her will when she died in 1856, giving legacies of between £250 and £3,000 to a series of Catholic convents and institutions (St. Vincent’s Hospital got £1,000), which sums were to be invested and the dividends paid to the institutions every six months. The archbishops of Dublin and Armagh (at that time Paul Cullen and Joseph Dixon) and the president of Maynooth (Laurence Renehan) were the trustees charged with investing these sums, which the will specified should be made in government securities, and with distributing the dividends, although the testator dictated that they choose other suitable churchmen to manage the trust after their own passing.³³ In 1876, Bridget O’Brien left an even more impressive £77,000 in a similar fashion, with Cullen, his successor Edward McCabe, and another priest acting as trustees. O’Brien’s wealth, according to probate records, was already based on an extensive investment portfolio, comprising shares in government securities, Bank of Ireland, and railway stocks in the UK and France; but unlike Cruise, she stipulated that her bequests be spent on acquiring land for, and building an orphanage and school for the poor, which eventually emerged as the O’Brien Institute in Marino.³⁴

Numerous such examples, most concerning rather more modest amounts of money, can be found in the copies of wills housed in the Dublin Diocesan Archive, illustrative of the fact that a significant amount of the capital available to archbishops of Dublin for investment in shares and in land came directly from such sources. A pertinent question, however, is where the vast personal wealth represented in some of these wills itself originated from. This section will therefore concentrate on answering this question for one especially large legacy, that of Charles Egan, who died in 1870, again during Paul Cullen’s episcopacy. Egan also directed most of his considerable fortune towards the Catholic institutions and charities of Dublin, via the model of an investment trust.

Charles Egan and his two brothers, Thomas and James, were woollen merchants, their business and residence based at 14–15 High Street in Dublin,³⁵ next door to St. Audoen’s Catholic Church, where Charles at least was a regular attendee. Charles did not leave much of a mark on the historical record in life, but what is extant suggests a committed Catholic. Newspapers tell us he was somewhat active in O’Connellite politics within St Audoen’s parish in the 1830s/40s,³⁶ and that he was a reliable contributor, in cash and in kind, to a variety of Catholic funding drives. For example, he was among the first to subscribe to a monument to the late Archbishop Murray in 1852,³⁷ was a named person to whom donations towards the Harold’s Cross Female Orphanage could be sent,³⁸ and acted as a collector after charity sermons in St Audoen’s Church.³⁹ Yet after the death of his last brother James in 1866,⁴⁰ Charles appears to have become a serial donor, with his name frequently appearing on published subscription lists.⁴¹ Notably, in September 1867, he was thanked for sending “a dozen champagne” to the patients at St. Vincent’s Hospital.⁴² Champagne aside, even at this late stage of life he was largely not a distinctive public presence in the ecosystem of Catholic charity. His monetary and other support was steady but unflashy, in the sense that while he very regularly gave to a broad range of institutions, he gave relatively small donations of £1 and 10 shillings, which did not necessarily distinguish him from the many others named on those lists who gave in similar amounts.

This unobtrusiveness changed markedly with his death. Egan died on 3 February 1870 at his residence in High St. According to a short death notice, he was 75 years old, “the last of the firm of C and J Egan” and was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.⁴³ In private correspondence among the hierarchy, speculation grew as to where his reputedly large fortune might go.⁴⁴ Egan’s solicitor later made it clear that Cardinal Cullen had known of Egan’s intentions towards Catholic charities well before the latter’s death, although he had refused to personally visit Egan and urged him, via the solicitor, to take care of his relatives as a priority before giving anything to the Church.⁴⁵ In the end, Egan’s will, dated 7 September 1868, left assets worth over £160,000. This is, conservatively, about £16 million in today’s money. After individual gifts ranging from £30 to £300 were given to relatives and servants, £5000 was given to Cardinal Cullen, with £4000 of that to go to the Mater Hospital to help build a new wing, and £1000 to remodel the exterior of St Audoen’s Church. Gifts of £100-£300 were set out for certain institutions, including St Vincent’s Hospital, North William Street Orphanage, and Cabra Deaf and Dumb Institute.⁴⁶ Everything else was designated to a Trust, headed by Cullen (and his successors), with well-to-do Catholics (and their heirs) to act as the other trustees: Sir James Power of Power’s whiskey fame, Valentine O’Brien O’Connor, merchant and railway company chairman, Patrick Sweetman, from a brewing family, and Thomas Laffan Kelly, deputy governor of the Bank of Ireland.

Egan’s instructions to the trustees were ostensibly very clear. They were to dispose of all property and other assets in whatever manner produced the best sale price, and then “lay out and invest” the resulting cash and any other residual after debts and legacies were paid. While the will gives no indication as to the constituent parts of Egan’s fortune, a sale catalogue produced on behalf of the trustees in 1876 indicates at least part of the property portfolio upon which Egan’s immense wealth was based. Twenty lots were sold through the Landed Estates Court, encompassing multiple houses and plots of land in Dublin, as well as in counties Offaly, Kildare, Carlow, Kilkenny, Galway, Limerick and Tipperary. The property outside Dublin amounted to well over 3,400 acres and included “some of the best lands” in Co. Kilkenny, land around Limerick Junction railway station, and holdings with “a gentlemanly residence” near Lough Derg and “a first-class mansion” (Dunmurray House) in Kildare. The Dublin lots amounted to over 133 acres, and included a large freehold on which five houses on St Stephen’s Green, eight on Hume Street, and twelve houses on Ely Place were situated, as well a freehold on Talbot Street containing nine houses, and several strips of tenanted land abutting the River Liffey either side of Kingsbridge (Heuston) Railway Station.⁴⁷ Descriptions of the provenance of some of the holdings suggest that Charles’s late brother James was integral to the acquisition of this property in the 1850s and 1860s, including through the Encumbered Estates Court.⁴⁸ Sold on the 4^th of July 1876, the property realised an enormous sum of money: £42,620 in total.⁴⁹ This, of course, was only about a quarter of the publicly declared Egan fortune, and cash, along with substantial tranches of stocks and shares of various kinds (many also derived from James) are likely to have made up the remainder.⁵⁰ It also seems likely that Egan’s residence on High Street was either given or sold to the parish of St. Audoen’s, since the presbytery, built in 1885, now stands in its place.⁵¹

We know also that more than £11,000 was eventually assigned to relatives who disputed the terms of the will on the basis, it was claimed, that Charles’s brother James had not died intestate in 1866 as was assumed, but had actually made three different wills before his death, none of which now seemed to be extant.⁵² (Without any will, James’s wealth went directly to his last living brother Charles.) This dispute had delayed sale of the properties above – they had originally been advertised in 1872⁵³ – and was an on-running saga in the press and the courts, as John O’Keefe, a first cousin once-removed of the Egan brothers, continued to agitate for a larger share of their legacy. At one point, O’Keefe had his solicitor write an open letter to the trustees asking that they produce James Egan’s will, and Cardinal Cullen and the other trustees were at another time accused in the court of probate of destroying the document.⁵⁴ John O’Keefe got no joy and was still offering a reward for recovery of James Egan’s will as late as 1893.⁵⁵ However, a copy of a will made by James Egan in 1849 is contained in the Egan will files in the Dublin Diocesan Archives. Whether it was kept from O’Keefe deliberately or turned up later, it would not have satisfied him, since James Egan wanted to leave him £100 (the same amount Charles left him) and similar or smaller amounts to other relatives and to a series of Catholic charities, some of which overlapped with Charles’s beneficiaries. Indeed, the vast bulk of James’s fortune, according to this errant will, was to go to his brothers, or in the event that they pre-deceased him, to St. Vincent’s Hospital.⁵⁶ Evidently the brothers were of one mind.

Although Charles Egan’s bequest therefore attracted a good deal of litigation and must have caused some consternation for the trustees, when all legal cases were settled it proved a reliable income-generator for the charities and institutions specified. In contrast to James’s 1849 will, which simply bequeathed assets and cash directly to the charities he specified, Charles’s will instigated a more complex set of arrangements, reflective of the brothers’ increased wealth and property portfolio by the late 1860s, and perhaps also of an increased interest in investment on the stock market by that point. James had, by the time of his death, thousands of pounds invested in government securities, and railway and canal stocks, according to Charles’s solicitor.⁵⁷ Charles’s setting up of an investment trust from which the beneficiary charities could derive long-term dividends may therefore have reflected an updated understanding of the financial system. The will itself appeared to be silent on precisely what stocks and shares the trustees should invest in, but a later document in the Walsh papers indicates that “parliamentary stocks or public funds” were preferred, with the trustees given “power to vary” within those parameters. (This certainly tallies with the shares that we know James and Charles Egan already had.) From the dividends paid on any investments, 13 charities, also given initial legacies in the will, were to benefit from annual pay-outs, which in 1912 stood at around £5,000 total or £445 per charity per year.⁵⁸ By the 1890s, Walsh, as head of the trustees of the Egan fund was therefore in control of a very large capital sum which disbursed considerable amounts of money to multiple charitable and welfare institutions annually, and the protracted legal challenges to the Egan bequest ensured that anyone who regularly read the probate court columns in the press was well aware of the fact.

The relationship between the archdiocese of Dublin and Dublin corporation

The fact that Archbishop Walsh administered trusts such as Egan’s meant the archdiocese possessed significant financial clout. This was a fact known to individuals who were close to the archbishop. Walsh, because of his office, was well-connected among Dublin’s Catholic professional class, and financial advice was forthcoming from a range of personal connections. The market for stocks and shares grew increasingly institutionalised in the nineteenth century with investments and market co-ordination apparently becoming a more impersonal activity. Despite this change when it came to sharing financial knowledge and informing potential investors of opportunities, the human factor proved significant. An individual’s networks still played an important role when it came to the business of investing money and trust remained an important currency.⁵⁹ Of especial significance to this story of the Catholic Church’s financial influence over Dublin’s social and economic development was such a relationship between Walsh and Thomas Sexton.

Sexton, an MP and financial expert, served for two terms as Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1888 and 1889. He presided, as mayor, over a Dublin Corporation heavily in debt, partly due to a shortfall in income over previous decades instigated by the flight of wealthier citizens to townships such as Rathmines. Sexton’s major achievement as Lord Mayor saw him restructure Dublin Corporation’s debts in a manner that managed to save the city around £70,000 a year.⁶⁰ He skilfully used his joint role as an MP and Lord Mayor to great effect and pushed through three pieces of legislation that had a transformative effect on the financial powers of Dublin Corporation. First, in a September 1888 meeting of the Corporation convened by Sexton, the Lord Mayor laid out his plans for “a new and comprehensive scheme for the consolidation of the city debts, and the consequent diminution of the city taxes.” The debt stood at £1,167,000 and Sexton proposed the creation of a sinking fund, under which the debt could be cleared over a period of 60 years. Consequently, he proposed that “a local Bill be promoted in Parliament, for the purpose of giving effect to the scheme.”⁶¹ The resultant legislation, described by the Freeman’s Journal as “Mr. Sexton’s Act,” was officially the Municipal Local Bills (Ireland) Act. This Act provided Irish municipalities with the power to bring their own Bills to Parliament if they funded the costs themselves.⁶²

Using this Act, Sexton immediately set about promoting two further pieces of legislation that would allow Dublin Corporation to slip from its chains of indebtedness, while importing powers from Dublin Castle to the local elected representatives. Sexton raised two bills, which he pursued tenaciously and successfully through the House of Commons as an MP and then enacted as Lord Mayor. The 1889 Dublin Corporation Loans Act provided the Corporation with the power to convert their municipal debt into stock that could be purchased as bonds with a 3.25% return.⁶³ The second piece of crucial legislation Sexton promoted ended up as the 1890 Dublin Corporation Act. In a tribute paid to Sexton by his fellow councillors, it was stated that this latter Act empowered the Corporation to “take steps for the much-needed architectural improvement of the city, for the better housing of the working classes, for further sanitary reforms, and above all, it provides at long last for the collection by the municipality of its own taxes.” For this reason, councillors concluded, Sexton deserved the thanks of all citizens as well as the Corporation “of which he is the most distinguished member.”⁶⁴ As Mayor, Sexton quickly arranged a municipal bond drive that he promised in September 1888 and this immediately alleviated the debt strain on the public finances, and created the opportunities for the corporation to act in a more interventionist fashion to improve the city’s infrastructure. Sexton’s tenure at the head of the Corporation proved to be one that had an influential legacy. However, for any such scheme as devised by Sexton to work, it required investors who were able to buy these bonds. The archbishop of Dublin proved to be a ready and willing partner.

This partnership did not come about by accident. Central to Archbishop Walsh’s ability to effectively carry out his role as a financial manager was the coterie of trusted advisors and financial experts who provided guidance. These included stockbrokers, bank managers, politicians and members of boards of trustees appointed to manage large assets such as the Egan bequest. One such trustee was the distiller James Talbot Power, son of the aforementioned John, who presumably inherited the role from his father in line with the terms of Egan’s will.⁶⁵ Talbot Power assisted Walsh as a trusted financial advisor during the 1880s and 1890s, especially when it came to ensuring that the Egan monies were being dynamically invested in ways that shaped changes to the city of Dublin. At some point in late 1889, following the first issue of Dublin Corporation stock which was valued at £500,000, Walsh decided that it would be prudent to transfer the funds of the Egan bequest away from the 2.75% Government securities in which it was bound, to the more profitable 3.25% Dublin Corporation stock launched under the leadership of Sexton. At £180,000 this amounted to 36% of the overall share offer. The municipal bonds were more lucrative, deemed to be a safe investment, and remained consistent with Egan’s will that monies should be bound in public stock. The significance of Walsh’s decision to invest made its way into the public realm, with the Freeman’s Journal approvingly reporting on the uptake of Dublin stock by its citizens, remarking that “a large sum has been invested by trustees of various charities, including the Egan Trust Funds, and by this means about £900 a year has been added to the income of the charities.”⁶⁶

The administration of a significant bequest like the Egan trust reveals intimate details about the way in which a model of financial, municipal, and religious, capitalism intertwined. In an illuminating letter to the Archbishop, Talbot Power outlined that the stockbrokers Messrs O’Donnell and Fitzgerald sold the £183,612 14s 4d worth of Government stock. This left Talbot Power “happy to inform your Grace that a profit of about £9,000 has been made upon that transaction.” However, following the removal of the stockbroker’s usual commission the actual amount realised for investment into Dublin stock was £177, 843 14s 10d. The work of stockbroker to the archdiocese clearly paid well, and because of this Messrs O’Donnell and Fitzgerald felt they could generously refund the commission of £229 10s 6d back to the Egan account as well as subscribing £100 to benefit of the Jervis Street Hospital. Talbot Power made the decision to mark the donation “‘anonymous’ feeling that they will be remunerated by the ½% allowed them by the corporation.” This feeling was justified by the roughly five-and-a-half thousand pounds the stockbrokers received on the transaction. He further used the gift to bring the amount invested in Dublin Corporation to £178,000.⁶⁷ Talbot Power’s missive also casts light on the way in which elements of the Irish banking sector benefitted from the proximity to the archdiocese of Dublin and sought to favourably accommodate the Church’s custom. Mr Filas, manager of the Munster and Leinster Bank, decided to cover the expenses incurred by Walsh and the Trustees on the purchase of £1,000 of the stock on behalf of the bank’s board. With this “refund” Talbot Power stated “we shall pay up Solicitor’s costs, the Deeds appointing two Trustees and the balance can be divided amongst the 13 Residuary Charities”. Talbot Power concluded that, as a result, “the increase of annual income amongst the 13 charities will be nearly £900 per annum.”⁶⁸

Having received the substantial investments into his drive to liquidate the Corporation’s outstanding debts and fund new local government projects, Sexton looked to build on this achievement. In April 1890, Sexton wrote directly to Walsh from Westminster seeking further investment in the next phase of the municipal bond drive to liquidate the city debt and fund a series of expansionary projects. Although no longer Lord Mayor, Sexton remained central to the liquidation of the city’s debts as the Chairman of the Stock Committee. Sexton welcomed Walsh’s “assurance of co-operation as regard to the issue of stock in lieu of the fraction (about one-third) of our city debt now remaining unconverted.” He continued that

we should find it of practical value to … count upon certain applications being made and … beg to inquire if your Grace would let me know, in confidence, what amounts of trust funds, under the control or within the cognisance of your Grace are likely to be converted in the stock and whether the Blayney Fund will be rendered available for the purpose.⁶⁹

The Blayney Fund was another series of bequests, left by merchant Hugh Blayney, to fund 15 charitable institutions. The sums were more modest than Egan’s, valued at around £450.⁷⁰ Clearly, Sexton was aware of specific pots of money under the stewardship of the archdiocese of Dublin that could help meet the Corporation’s needs while satisfying Walsh’s aim to make a necessary profit to reinvest in the charitable institutions for which he maintained responsibility. Sexton followed up his initial inquiry on 20 October writing:

I am about to draw up the prospectus of the supplementary issue of City Stock to complete the redemption of the debt. It would be of practical value if I were enabled to form any view of the sum your Grace would be likely to invest in the issue.⁷¹

He followed up a week later, presumably following the transfer of some money into Dublin stock, with an appreciation of “the readiness and goodwill with which your Grace’s powerful help is afforded to us of the Corporation in the important undertaking of completing the conversion of the civic debt.”⁷²

Thomas Sexton clearly pinned his new economic strategy for Dublin on his awareness of financial resources that existed in the city and which could be fruitfully exploited. Sexton’s close relationship with Walsh reflected a shared interest in the advancement of Irish Nationalist political objectives, but also their interests segued into the economic sphere as shown by their concern for the resolution of financial matters in order to effect social reform. One of Sexton’s final public meetings as Lord Mayor concerned the erection of new municipal housing, the regulation of existing housing, and the necessity to undertake a complete system of drainage in the city boundaries. Archbishop Walsh and Cardinal Manning of Westminster sent letters of support to the meeting. The latter expressed his “great pleasure” in the knowledge that “you are vigorously taking in hand the work not only of improving but also of erecting the dwellings of those who live by labour.” Walsh complemented these comments with his disappointment at being unable to attend the meeting whose “object … is one that has many strong claims on any support that I can give to it.” Besides that, Walsh stated he “should have been glad to associate myself with … the last public act of a Mayoralty always to be looked back to as memorable in the annals of our city.”⁷³

Walsh did offer Sexton and Dublin Corporation plenty of financial support. The investment in city stock of money held in trust by the Archbishop bore fruit immediately. Dublin Corporation used the influx of money to embark on ambitious capital-intensive projects. These included public housing developments independent of private developers like the DADC; the transfer of ownership of the public lighting infrastructure from the Dublin Consumers’ Gas Company into municipal hands; and the Corporation embarked on land reclamation projects.⁷⁴ The amount Walsh invested in the DADC was dwarfed by the amounts he placed at the disposal of the Corporation, but both investments were guided by the same dual concern. Primarily, Walsh had an obligation to maintain archdiocesan welfare organisations by assuring a steady stream of regular dividends on capital sums bequeathed to his and his predecessors’ care. But secondarily, Walsh clearly aimed his investments at helping to support organisations concerned with tackling social, economic, and moral problems associated with housing stock in the city. The case of the Egan fund showed how important Church monies were to the public purse and the expansion of municipal activities.

Conclusion

Emmet Larkin once argued that the ability of the Church to borrow money from banks was one factor that fuelled the expansion of Catholic infrastructure in this period and symbolised its growing economic strength at the expense of the wider economy.⁷⁵ We look at this evidence rather differently, to argue that the Catholic Church’s increasing embeddedness in a much wider financial system of investor capitalism, was significant both for itself and for Ireland’s economic development more widely. Archbishops of Dublin in the late nineteenth century saw enormous sums of money pass through their hands. This was money that was donated by people located right across the social spectrum, from Charles Egan’s enormous bequest to the widow’s mite. Much of this money built the churches, convents and other institutions that constituted the city’s infrastructure of Catholic worship and welfare, and was intended for that exact purpose by the people who gave to stand-alone church-building appeals or bequeathed specific legacies to particular welfare institutions. But by the end of the nineteenth century the passage of this money from the donor’s pocket (or, increasingly, bank account) to expenditure on such projects was becoming much less direct. Large capital sums in the archdiocese’s possession, whether acquired in a single donation or an accumulation of multiple smaller sums, were increasingly being invested in stocks and shares, with the dividends calculated to provide an income stream over decades to come. The fact that by the end of the nineteenth century a large part of the Catholic Church’s built infrastructure was already in place, and there was therefore less need for immediate expenditure of large sums of money to build, and more need for steady income to maintain institutions was no doubt one factor in this development, as Larkin himself noted.⁷⁶

But the trusted advice of a growing Catholic middle-class interest, and particularly of a coterie of Catholic bankers, businessmen, solicitors, and political figures, was also enormously influential in shaping the financial activity of the archdiocese of Dublin. This was a class, as the biography of the Egan brothers shows, which was itself increasingly alive to stock market investment, allied with property and land ownership, as a source of wealth creation for themselves. The differences in the resources and instructions in James Egan’s 1849 will, and those in Charles Egan’s 1868 will show a growing attachment to stock market investment among the Dublin business class. While the gains that the Egans made in this new financial activity ultimately went largely to the Church, others of their class, men like Sexton and Talbot Power, clearly saw an opportunity in the increasing cash reserves that the Church had as a result of such bequests.

From Archbishop Walsh’s point of view, investment of the funds at his disposal was primarily about guaranteeing a long-term income that would help maintain the tapestry of Catholic welfare institutions across Dublin, as was also the priority for the likes of Egan, Cruise and O’Brien when making their bequests. Many of these institutions, the ubiquitous St. Vincent’s Hospital included, form part of Dublin’s and Ireland’s health and welfare network to the present day, and are a visible symbol of the Church’s historic importance and absorption of capital. However, the very considerable financial clout of the archbishop of Dublin could also, as the likes of Sexton, and evidently Walsh himself, realised, make him something more than a steward of resources for his own institution’s direct benefit. His decision, under advice from lay people like Sexton and Talbot Power, to invest parts of the capital under his control in expanding the city’s secular infrastructure was significant. In doing so he helped to foment the reinvigoration of Dublin Corporation following decades of indebtedness and to increase housing stock in the city. This represents a more hidden historic contribution of the Catholic Church to Ireland’s economic development, and demonstrates the extent to which the Church was not, as Larkin argued, a block on capital investment and economic growth in nineteenth-century Ireland, but a means through which capital was circulated to more socially useful investments.

Amintore Fanfani once pointed out that,

Religion may influence life in general, and economic life in particular, in one of two ways – either as a doctrinal system or as an organization. These two aspects of religion are frequently confused … relations between capitalism and the Catholic religion must not be confused with the relations between capitalism and the Catholic Church as an organization.⁷⁷

While drawing a distinction between the two – doctrine and organisation – is not always easy, there is, nevertheless, utility in trying to disaggregate them for our purposes. In terms of managing funds and property, doctrine plays an important role certainly, but the doctrinal interpretations of individuals like Archbishop Walsh and his trustees are shaped by legal obligations contained in documents such as bequests and charitable foundations. This could lead to criticism of social injustices perpetuated by capitalism in the late-nineteenth century as exemplified by elements of Catholic social teaching. Certainly, the investments made by the archdiocese of Dublin that helped recapitalise local government so that it might fund its public work schemes, all while maintaining a portfolio of its own Catholic charities, might well have accorded with charting a middle path between unfettered capitalism and the threat of class conflict fuelled by socialism. However, intention and outcomes do not always align. The case of Walsh’s investment in fin de siècle Dublin shows how efforts to promote Catholic influence and fund development projects aimed at a wider common good, revealed that the Church as an organisation was very much bound up with an ongoing project to shape the social and material aspects of the city. While the influence of the Catholic Church within Irish society has declined in recent decades, the consequences of its economic decisions still reverberate in ways that shape Ireland’s political culture.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. “The maternity hospital land war: a battle between principles and pragmatism,” Business Post, May 15, 2022; “Protesters call for state ownership of new maternity hospital,” Belfast Telegraph, May 14, 2022; “Does the government claim that NMH 299-year lease is effective ownership stack up?,’ Irish Times, May 11, 2022.

2. Enright, “‘Phantom Catholic threats’ and haunted legal futures: reading the deal over Ireland’s National Maternity Hospital”, Nursingclio.org, August 11, 2022; and Enright, “Benefactors and friends”, 151–69.

3. Cox, “Institutional space,” 673–707; Ó Corráin, “Catholicism in Ireland, 1880–2016,” 726–64; Barrington, Health, Medicine, and Politics in Ireland; and Barrington, “Catholic Influence on the Health Services,” 152–64.

4. Larkin, “Economic Growth”

5. Larkin, “Economic Growth”; and Kennedy, “Roman Catholic Church and Economic Growth,” 45–60.

6. Doyle, “The Irish Land Question,” 1–24.

7. Galavan, Dublin’s Bourgeois Homes.

8. Kocka, Capitalism: A Short History, 21–24.

9. Palacios, Catholic Social Imagination, 35–36.

10. See Beatty, “Problem of Capitalism”; and Doyle, “The Clergy, Economic Democracy and the Co-operative Movement”

11. Baker and Collins, “The governance of charitable trusts,” 162–83; and Johnson, Making the market.

12. The contemporary efforts of other religious organisations, notably the Salvation Army, to temper what were regarded as capitalist excesses went much further. See Strange and Roddy, “Banking for Jesus” Meanwhile other Protestant denominations directly appropriated the mechanisms and language of the stock market in funding themselves: see Short, “Investments in the Kingdom of Christ.”

13. Larkin, “Economic growth,” 869.

14. Maltby and Rutterford, “Investing in charities”; and Morris, “Market Solutions for Social Problems”

15. Prunty, Dublin Slums, 122.

16. Brady and McManus, Building Healthy Homes, 13.

17. O’Riordan, “Dublin Artisans’ Dwellings Company”.

18. Prunty, Dublin Slums, 125.

19. Prunty, Dublin Slums, 125–7.

20. Prunty, Dublin Slums, 176–7.

21. Maltby and Rutterford, “Investing in charities,” 273.

22. Brady and McManus, Building Healthy Homes, 65.

23. O’Riordan, “Dublin Artisans’ Dwellings Company”, 159.

24. DADC, Book of Reports, Half-years ending 31^st December 1876 to 31^st December 1896, Irish Architectural Archive (IAA), DADC Papers, 79/26.2/3/2

25. Edward Spencer, Secretary of DADC, to Archbishop Walsh, 13 November 1888, Dublin Diocesan Archives (DDA), Walsh Papers, Folder Laity, 1888.

26. Dublin Artisans Dwellings Co Limited Register of Shareholders, 1876–1938, IAA, DADC Papers, 3/1/1

27. See entry for year ending 31 December 1897 in DADC Share Ledgers Registers of Members, 1896–1932, IAA, DADC Papers, 3/2/2

28. NicGhabhann, “A development of practical Catholic Emancipation”

29. “Aughrim Street Church,” Evening Telegraph, January 28, 1907, DADC Newspaper Cuttings Book, IAA, DADC Papers, 2/4/3.

30. O’Riordan, “Dublin Artisans’ Dwellings Company”, 179–182.

31. “Aughrim Street Church,” Evening Telegraph, January 28, 1907, DADC Newspaper Cuttings Book, IAA, DADC Papers, 2/4/3.

32. Donovan, “The denominational character.”

33. Last will and testament of Miss Ellen Cruise (1856), DDA, Wills Collection C; and “Charitable bequests,” The Dublin Gazette, July 22, 1856.

34. Thomas J. Ryan, Analysis of will of Bridget O’Brien (1876), DDA, Wills Collection M-O.

35. Thom’s Irish Almanac, 1513

36. In the sense his name appears on lists making various demands and collecting for the O’Connell Compensation fund “Saint Audoen’s parish – the O’Connell compensation fund,” Freeman’s Journal, November 28, 1839; “St Audoen’s parish,” Freeman’s Journal, December 4, 1840; “St Audoen’s parish,” Freeman’s Journal, November 8, 1841. After O’Connell’s death his name (and sometimes that of his brothers) also frequently appeared on petitions published to encourage “aggregate meetings of the Catholics of Dublin.” “Sympathy with the Pope,” Freeman’s Journal, January 4, 1860

37. The Nation, March 13, 1852.

38. “Donations will be most gratefully received,” Freeman’s Journal, March 8, 1851; and “St. Clare’s female orphanage,” Freeman’s Journal, March 2, 1867

39. “At a meeting held … ,” Freeman’s Journal, December 21, 1853

40. NLI Will calendar, http://www.willcalendars.nationalarchives.ie/reels/cwa/005014889/005014889_00411.pdf

41. For example, in spring 1867 alone, Egan donated £1 towards CBS Synge St £1 to the Deaf and Dumb Institute at Cabra, and 10 shillings to a testimonial for the curate of St Audoen’s, making him, in all cases, one of several dozen who did so (or indeed gave more). “Thanks after sermon,” Freeman’s Journal, March 8, 1867; “Testimonial to the Rev. C.P. Nolan,” Freeman’s Journal, April 10, 1867; “Catholic Institution for the Deaf and Dumb,” Freeman’s Journal, April 13, 1867

42. “St. Vincent’s hospital,” Freeman’s Journal, September 13, 1867; “St. Vincent’s hospital and dispensary,” January 22, 1868; “Acknowledgements,” January 29, 1869

43. “Deaths,” Freeman’s Journal, February 5, 1870.

44. Edward McCabe to Cardinal Cullen, February 7, 1870; February 10, 1870, Cullen papers, DDA, 321/7/III/9 & 10

45. Testimony of Egan’s solicitor at the court of probate in 1870 suggests as much. “Court of Probate” Freeman’s Journal, December 15, 1870

46. Last will and testament of Charles Egan (1868), DDA, Wills Collection D-F.

47. “Rental and particulars of most valuable fee-simple, freehold and leasehold estates, situate in the counties Killkenny, Tipperary, Limerick, Galway, Queen’s County, Kildare, Dublin and City of Dublin” (1876), Landed Estates Records, National Archives of Ireland, via Ireland, Encumbered Estates, 1850–1885 database, ancestry.com.

48. Ibid.

49. “Landed estates court,” Leinster Express, July 8, 1876.

50. “Court of Probate,” Freeman’s Journal, December 15, 1870

51. Presbytery of St. Audoen’s Church, Buildings of Ireland, https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/50080536/saint-audoens-roman-catholic-church-high-street-dublin-8-dublin

52. “Landed estates court,” Leinster Express, July 8, 1876.

53. “In the landed estates court, Ireland,” Leinster Express, April 27, 1872

54. “To the executors of the late Charles Egan,” Freeman’s Journal, May 19, 1875; “Court of probate,” Freeman’s Journal, December 1, 1876.

55. “£5000 will be paid,” Irish Daily Independent, June 10, 1893.

56. Will and codicil of James Egan (1849) DDA, Wills Collection D-F.

57. “Court of Probate,” Freeman’s Journal, December 15, 1870

58. Trustees of Charles Egan, September 14, 1912, DDA, Wills Collection D-F.

59. Taylor, “Trust, friends, and investment;” Knight, “Reading the ticker tape”

60. Murphy, Politics of Dublin Corporation, 178.

61. “The Lord Mayor’s Financial Scheme,” The Nation, September 15 1888.

62. “Editorial” Freeman’s Journal, October 16, 1888.

63. “Dublin Corporation Redeemable Stock,” Cork Examiner, November 18, 1890.

64. “Editorial” Freeman’s Journal, September 20, 1890.

65. James Talbot Power, Census 1901, http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Dublin/Ballybrack/Carmenhall___Leopardstown/1316743/ [accessed 12 July 2022]

66. “The City Stock,” Freeman’s Journal, December 9, 1889.

67. James Talbot Power to Archbishop William Walsh, March 5, 1890, Dublin Diocesan Archive (DDA), Walsh Papers, Box 246, 1890 – Laity Correspondence.

68. Talbot Power to Walsh, March 5, 1890, DDA, Walsh Papers, Box 246, 1890 – Laity Correspondence.

69. Sexton to Walsh, April 12, 1890, DDA, Walsh Papers, Box 246, 1890 – Laity Correspondence.

70. Last will and testament of Hugh Blayney (1877), DDA, Wills Collection A-B.

71. Sexton to Walsh, October 20, 1890, DDA, Walsh Papers, Box 246, 1890 – Laity Correspondence.

72. Sexton to Walsh, October 27, 1890, DDA, Walsh Papers, Box 246, 1890 – Laity Correspondence.

73. “The Housing of the Working Classes,” The Nation, January 4, 1890.

74. Cullen, “Provision of working and lower-middle class housing”; Dickson, Dublin, 379–424; McManus, “Blue Collars, ‘Red Forts’, and Green Fields”; Muldowney, “Responses to the Housing Crisis”; Minutes; Minutes of Evidence given at the arbitration held in the arbitration Room of the Four Courts, Dublin on 6^th, 7^th, 8^th and 9^th October, 1890, between the Alliance and Dublin Consumers’ Gas Company and the Corporation of Dublin to settle the amount to be paid by the Corporation to the Alliance Gas Company for the Purchase of the Public Lighting Plant of the City; also Appendices showing original cost of plant &c. and extract from the award of the arbitrators (Dublin: Dollard Printinghouse, 1891).

75. Larkin, “Economic Growth,” 866.

76. See note 13 above.

77. Fanfani, Catholicism, 2–3.