Herbert Wood, 1860-1955
(National Archives of Ireland)
See centenary biographical account at https://www.academia.edu/41278716
Although a 'Decade of Centenaries' is in
progress (https://www.decadeofcentenaries.com),
insufficient attention has been drawn to the fact that the year 2019
saw the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Herbert
Wood's Guide to the
Records Deposited in the Public Record Office of Ireland
(HMSO, Dublin 1919). Wood was a dedicated civil servant but a somewhat
self-effacing man who somehow managed to evade inclusion in either the Dictionary of Irish Biography
or the Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography
(oversights which are hopefully in the process of being corrected, but
for the present see the writer's biographical account of Wood at https://www.academia.edu/41278716).
Although most of the original Public
Record Office of Ireland (PROI) holdings listed by Wood would be
destroyed during the Civil War in 1922, there is more to his Guide than a mere
catalogue of lost records. Herbert Wood was born in Trinity Square,
London, on 6 September 1860, the son of an Irish-born surgeon, William
Wood, and Jane Mary Jeffries. In 1884 Herbert Wood joined the staff of
the PROI in Dublin, which repository had been founded in 1867 with the
aims of accumulating, arranging and cataloguing the official archives
of Ireland.
In the early 1900s Wood was assigned the
task of
preparing a 'general guide to the records of Ireland' to aid users of
the PROI. World War I delayed completion of the project and Wood's Guide was finally
issued in 1919. To mark the centenary of its appearance, this important
work was republished online in February 2019 by the present writer,
with a prefatory analytical essay (https://bit.ly/2V5jp3V,
3rd item, 30 MB download; the prefatory essay alone is accessible at https://www.academia.edu/38482627).
In the introduction to his Guide, Wood
sketched the history of the public records of Ireland, noting the
'great vicissitudes' they had undergone, including periodic losses of
some records due to theft and fires. Wood concluded proudly that the
'centralisation of the public records in one building has been attended
with excellent results', perhaps not foreseeing possible dangers posed
by such concentration.
As is well known, in June 1922 most of
the contents of the PROI were destroyed in the Four Courts complex
during the Civil War which followed Irish independence. Debate
continues over whether occupying anti-Treaty forces or attacking Free
State forces were most to blame for this catastrophe, but it is clear
that in the fury of internecine conflict neither side was greatly
troubled by the loss of archives.
Wood had been appointed Deputy Keeper or
head of the
PROI in 1921 and despite the destruction of 1922 he continued to serve
in that position until he retired in 1923. In several articles
published in the decade after 1922 Wood itemised surviving copies,
abstracts and published versions of the destroyed records. Wood
returned
to England and died in Bath in 1955, maintaining during his later years
an interest in Irish public records and the work of archival
reconstruction.
From the genealogist's point of view the
worst loss in 1922 was
undoubtedly that of most of the pre-1901 census returns. The censuses
of 1821-51 were among the records burnt in the PROI in 1922, but the
censuses of 1861-91 had in fact been destroyed earlier as a result of a
bureaucratic misjudgement. Some fragments of the 1821-51 censuses
survived and can be searched on the National Archives's website, as of
course can the full censuses of 1901 and 1911, which were not deposited
in the PROI until after 1922 (http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie).
This reminds us that a considerable
quantity of public records was not lost in 1922 because they had never
been deposited in the PROI. Prominent among these are the records of
the Valuation Office (local taxation), the Ordnance Survey (maps) and
the General Register Office (births, marriages and deaths), all
commencing in the nineteenth century.
The transfer of the records of the
Valuation Office and the Ordnance Survey to the National Archives of
Ireland is already well advanced. Digitisation of these records is also
proceeding, with the printed Griffith's Valuation
accessible via Findmypast (https://www.findmypast.ie,
pay-to-view) and Ask About Ireland (http://www.askaboutireland.ie,
free). Manuscript pre-Griffith valuation records are accessible on the
National Archives website (https://www.genealogy.nationalarchives.ie),
while post-Griffith records are still held by the Valuation Office and
are in process of digitisation.
Historic and modern maps are freely
viewable at the Ordnance Survey’s website (https://geohive.ie).
GRO records of births, marriages and deaths again are of prime
importance to genealogists, and despite legends that they were
'destroyed in the Four Courts' or even 'in the Custom House', they have
survived intact and can now be searched online at the free government
website Irish Genealogy (https://www.irishgenealogy.ie).
Many surviving Church of Ireland parish registers are held by the
Representative Church Body Library and are also in process of
digitisation (https://www.ireland.anglican.org/about/rcb-library/online-parish-records).
The records of the Registry of Deeds
survive intact from 1708 onwards, and while an official digitisation
programme is under way, images of indexes and deeds can currently be
viewed at the Mormon FamilySearch website (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/185720).
Another great archive is that of the Irish Land Commission, which dates
in main from the late nineteenth century, but is held in Portlaoise
where it is very hard to access and urgently needs to be digitised.
While of more historical than
genealogical importance, it should be noted that the records of the
Office of Public Works are now located in the National Archives of
Ireland. Fortuitously, a substantial portion of the records of the
Chief Secretary’s Office had been retained in Dublin Castle and
therefore survived. These include Rebellion Papers from the 1790s and
Chief Secretary's Office Registered Papers from 1818, now transferred
to the National Archives of Ireland and with the latter in process of
digitisation (https://www.csorp.nationalarchives.ie).
The second great archival repository on this island, the Public Record
Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast, holds much pre-1922 material of
relevance to the ‘south’ of Ireland, in addition to ‘northern’ portions
of valuation and some other national records (https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni).
Cover of online republication of Wood's Guide, accessible at https://bit.ly/2V5jp3V (30 MB download)
As the hundredth anniversary of the
destruction of the PROI approaches, the Beyond 2022 project
based in Trinity College Dublin plans to digitally reconstruct the
repository, but its publicity to date does not sufficiently stress that
this project can only be partial in scope due to the scale of
destruction of records in 1922 (https://beyond2022.ie). Trinity
has indeed shown that substantial portions of certain archives
can
be reconstructed successfully, eg, the medieval Irish Chancery Rolls (https://chancery.tcd.ie)
and the seventeenth-century Down Survey (http://downsurvey.tcd.ie).
However, Beyond 2022 strangely
fails to give sufficient recognition to prior digitisation work by
other parties - see the projects
listed and linked above and indeed the writer's republication of Wood's
Guide.
Beyond 2022 is sometimes vague about what exactly was lost in the PROI
in
1922: 'The household records from the national censuses from 1841 to
1891 were lost forever in 1922' (https://beyond2022.ie/?page_id=1049#preview,
accessed 9 December 2019). As noted above and as genealogists in
particular will be well aware, fragments of the 1821-51 censuses
survived 1922, while the 1861-91 censuses were destroyed by government
order after compilation and thus were never lodged in the PROI.
In summary, the loss of archives in the
PROI in 1922
was indeed terrible, but perhaps not as total in all areas as is
sometimes thought. It is a salutary fact that the lack
of regard for public records shown in 1922 has not entirely
disappeared, as demonstrated by the current crisis in the National
Archives of Ireland in terms of underfunding, understaffing
particularly in relation to trained archivists, information technology
deficiencies and lack of space to receive records (Fórsa trade union
report, https://www.forsa.ie/national-archives-creaking-under-pressures).
It is puzzling that government can allocate €2.5 million to Beyond 2022
(https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/1205/1097086-beyond-2022-public-records)
without adequately supporting the National Archives, which is without a
serving permanent Director at the time of writing.
Wood’s Guide to the Records Deposited
in the Public Record Office of Ireland is crucial to
understanding which archives were lost forever in 1922 and what has
survived in original, copy or fragmentary form. Wood’s Guide
is indeed a template for archival reconstruction in the digital age,
although this task should be approached making fair allocation of
resources and taking due account of the full
range of knowledge and skills necessary for its successful completion.
13 December 2019
This is an independent webpage maintained by Sean J Murphy, who can be contacted by email at sjbmurphy1951@SPAMOUTgmail.com (remove 'SPAMOUT').
Copyright © 2019 Sean J Murphy, Centre for Irish Genealogical and Historical Studies, Carraig, Cliff Road, Windgates, Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland. This work may be freely stored on library systems for reader use and reproduced offline for fair personal and educational use, with proper acknowledgement.