Content area
Full Text
James H. Murphy, The Politics of Dublin Corporation 1840–1900: From Reform to Expansion. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2020. 224pp. €45.00 hbk.
Meticulously researched, densely written and handsomely produced, Murphy's book is an excellent addition to existing literature in the field of local government. Much of this prevailing historiography uses the Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, as a starting point, often ignoring the period covered by Murphy, i.e. from the Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act, 1840, to the end of the century. The 1840 legislation reformed municipal government in the cities and boroughs. In Dublin, the power of the trade guilds had kept the Corporation exclusively in Protestant hands, but this changed with the 1840 Act and, especially, with the election of October 1841. Prior to this ground-breaking legislation, Dublin Corporation was bicameral – a fact that may come as a surprise to many. Murphy accurately describes the pre-1840 Corporation as ‘an arcane body which was oligarchical and to a large extent self-perpetuating’ (p. 15) Following the reforms, Corporation members were drawn from 15 electoral wards, with an alderman (who topped the poll) and three councillors. The electoral mechanism was convoluted. Every three years, half of the aldermen would face re-election, whereas one third of the councillors (one from each ward) faced re-election every year. Essentially, this gave councillors a term of three years, but aldermen a...