In 2014, the director Ken Loach released Jimmy’s hall.Footnote 1 The film, based on actual events, centred on Jimmy Gralton, who emigrated to the United States in 1909, but returned to Ireland to fight in the War of Independence. Gralton, who moved back to the U.S. after the conflict, returned to Ireland for a second time in 1932, to help his mother with the family farm in Leitrim. On his return, Gralton re-opened the Pearse-Connolly hall in Effrinagh for dancing and other activities. Owing to local popularity, as the film suggests, Gralton and ‘the hall’ were quickly targeted by the Catholic church. Gralton was eventually deported from Ireland on the pretext that he was an American citizen. The film implies that Gralton was persecuted for his communism, but also for encouraging jazz music and foreign dancing in Ireland. The church, in combination with the state, is depicted as possessing a pervasive power over political and social life in Ireland.
Rarely does film conform to historiographical orthodoxy, but Jimmy’s hall presents something of an exception. The major themes and ideas in the film largely correspond to the currently accepted interpretation of dance halls in Irish historiography. To summarise this briefly, control over dancing has been understood as part of the expanding influence which the Catholic church was able to exert over Irish society, both at a practical level of observance and an ideological level at which notions of morality were shaped.Footnote 2 To a lesser extent, the role of nationalist associations, especially the Gaelic League, has also been emphasised, because they aimed to exclude foreign music, which they also associated with immorality, from Ireland. The Irish state, in its legislative, judicial and bureaucratic arms, has been seen as an ally of this effort to promote a moral, national culture. This interpretation of dance halls in 1930s Ireland, advanced by Helen Brennan, Barbara O’Connor, Jim Smyth and Valerie Austin, has also been supported by local studies, such as Catherine Foley’s work on north Kerry.Footnote 3
The Public Dance Halls Act, 1935 (hereafter P.D.H.A.) has been presented as the culmination of efforts by the Catholic church and the state to control dancing. Brennan has suggested that the 1935 act offered the church virtual monopoly control over dance halls in Ireland.Footnote 4 Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, likewise, argued that the P.D.H.A. facilitated a move from communal dances held in farmhouses to dances held in parochial halls under clerical supervision.Footnote 5 The narrative on dancing has also fed into wider studies of modern Irish society. Powell et al., in their study of youth policy, claimed that the P.D.H.A. was part of a broader trend in which ‘Young people’s leisure time was to be monitored in a certain kind of Catholic public sphere’.Footnote 6 This concept of a ‘Catholic public sphere’ has found numerous expressions in the work of historians and sociologists. Tom Inglis has claimed that Irish Catholics experienced a ‘systematic process of socialisation’, while Smith has posited the idea of a ‘containment culture’ to describe the moral order enforced by church and state.Footnote 7 The P.D.H.A. can be located within a series of laws and official reports apparently aiming to promote a containment culture, including the Censorship of Films Act, 1923, the Censorship of Publications Act, 1929, and the report of the Carrigan Committee (1931). As Diarmaid Ferriter has argued, Irish historiography has often been more concerned with what ‘People were supposedly not permitted to do as opposed to what they actually did.’Footnote 8 This is certainly true of much scholarship on film and literature in Ireland, which has focused primarily on censorship.Footnote 9 Historians of dancing have followed the general tendency in Irish historiography by focusing on control and reinforcing the idea of a ‘Catholic public sphere’.
There are exceptions to this general trend, however. Separate studies by David Fowler and James Donnelly highlighted the limits of clerical influence on the behaviour of young dancers. Donnelly noted, in relation to Galway, that young dancers often paid scant attention to the moral pronouncements of Bishop Michael Browne on commercial dance halls.Footnote 10 Fowler, in a wide-ranging study of youth culture in Britain that discussed dance halls specifically, concluded that ‘Youth seem to have been a lot freer in the south of Ireland during the 1920s and 1930s’.Footnote 11 The P.D.H.A., according to Donnelly and Fowler, was far from draconian, and Donnelly has argued that it was even interpreted as a ‘failure’ by many clerical proponents.Footnote 12 These works provided valuable critiques of the narrative on dancing and cultural practices noted above, but their discussions of dance halls formed only part of their broader studies. Recent research has also raised some valuable questions. Barbara O’Connor highlighted issues worthy of further consideration, such as health and safety concerns, and the agency of dancers to disobey church and state regulations.Footnote 13 Two recent unpublished theses, Paula Vallely’s study of the Monaghan–Armagh border region and Sean Shanagher’s study of the Elphin area in Roscommon, also asked pertinent questions of the accepted narrative. Vallely, for example, did not find a clerical monopoly on dancing, but rather showed that the vast majority of dance halls were non-parochial.Footnote 14 Shanagher demonstrated that ‘modern’ dances and foreign music, if anything, increased in popularity following the P.D.H.A.Footnote 15
This article will develop some of the arguments that have been made by recent scholarship. First, it will argue that the control commonly attributed to the Catholic church has been over-emphasised. It will query whether dancing moved predominantly to parochial halls after 1935, and will also ask whether efforts to regulate the morality of dancers were effective. Secondly, the article will emphasise two factors that have not received sufficient attention to this point. Health and safety considerations, mentioned by O’Connor, played a considerable part in shaping dancing regulations from 1935.Footnote 16 The role of local communities appears to have been significant in shaping dance hall regulations, but this role has not received specific attention. The article will draw on the recent scholarship mentioned above, but will also utilise primary material that has been overlooked. In particular, it will reference material held in Department of Justice records. In September 1938, the department requested Garda superintendents in all districts to collect, and report on, licences granted in that year, and more generally to comment on the effect of the P.D.H.A.Footnote 17 At the same time, the Department of Justice also collected information on the conditions stipulated in licences by district justices within their district court areas.Footnote 18
This material, of course, does pose certain difficulties. The Garda reports, in particular, often provide opinions rather than factual evidence. The real benefit of both collections, though, is the breadth of information they provide across the entirety of the state; the Garda reports, for example, contain responses from 114 superintendents, each with responsibility for a separate district. These sources, therefore, allow us to posit national trends, as well as to distinguish for regional peculiarities, which had not been possible in the local studies undertaken by Vallely, Shanagher and Donnelly. The article is limited primarily to the years immediately after the P.D.H.A., 1935–38, which are considered by the Garda reports, but will also draw on later material, such as Flann O’Brien’s well-known 1941 article on dance halls in The Bell.Footnote 19 Dance halls are offered as a case study that might suggest new insights and questions for research on twentieth-century Irish social history more broadly. Dancing, along with other cultural and social practices, have, rightly, been understood as limited and circumscribed by the influence of the Catholic church. The intense and sometimes myopic focus on the power of the church and Catholic moral teaching, however, might have obscured other factors that also deserve consideration. New source material, such as that discussed in this article, offers a fresh means of approaching the question of church and state control over cultural practices.
I
The Public Dance Halls Bill was introduced by the Fianna Fáil administration in June 1934 and passed into law in February 1935, receiving the support of Fine Gael and Labour, the two main opposition parties.Footnote 20 Smyth claimed that, following the passage of the P.D.H.A., it became ‘Practically impossible to hold dances without the sanction of the trinity of clergy, police and judiciary’, but, there is little evidence for this in the act itself.Footnote 21 The legislation gave authority to local district justices to grant or deny dance licences and to apply restrictions to them at licensing sessions throughout the country. One must ask, of course, how the legislation was interpreted and implemented. Shortly after the passage of the act, Justice Lavery, speaking in Cavan, stated that ‘When he found a clergyman in charge of a hall it was not necessary for him to make restrictions and he would simply grant the licence.’Footnote 22 Justice Gleeson, in Clare, was recorded as saying that: ‘In any parish in which a licence was granted for a parochial hall under the supervision of the clergy he would not grant a licence for any other building in the same parish.’Footnote 23 The granting of licences to church-run halls has been viewed as the overwhelming trend adopted by district justices following the 1935 legislation.Footnote 24 Ó hAllmhuráin has argued that in Clare, where Justice Gleeson was resident, the P.D.H.A. marked a transition in the location of dancing, from the familial to the parochial domain.Footnote 25 While it is evident, nationally, that there was a move away from the home or barn dance in the 1930s, it is not clear that, across the country, dances moved only into parochial halls.
The 1930s and after did witness a growth in parochial hall building. The Catholic Young Men’s Society and Muintir na Tíre had both dedicated themselves to a programme of parochial hall construction by the late 1930s.Footnote 26 Stephen Rynne even claimed that ‘in the muddled mind of the public Muintir na Tíre [was] often mistaken for a hall-building association’.Footnote 27 Some scholars have assumed that parochial halls replaced commercial ones, but there is evidence that the number of commercial halls may also have expanded. Indeed, the number of commercial halls was sufficient for moral campaigner, Richard S. Devane, to pen an article in 1938 lambasting their effect on Irish youth and claiming that they were ‘the source and font of passions for wild and giddy, whirling pleasures’. He blamed them for the recent increase in emigration.Footnote 28 Dance licences, unfortunately, do not distinguish between parochial and commercial halls. Vallely has demonstrated, however, that along the Monaghan–Armagh border there is little evidence that parochial halls pre-dominated following the P.D.H.A. Out of a total of forty-six halls near the border, Vallely recorded thirty-four as ‘secular’, three as ‘unknown’, and listed only nine as parochial halls.Footnote 29
In the Gardaí circular reports, we find incomplete but significant commentary on the ratio of parochial to commercial dance halls. Indeed, these reports appear to be the only reliable source of information on the national picture. Superintendents suggested that the move towards parochial dance halls was not universal across Ireland. In Kildare district, Superintendent Flynn claimed that parochial halls were ‘rapidly falling out of the picture from the point of view of dancing, the commercial dance hall being substituted’.Footnote 30 In Mayo, commercial dance halls certainly predominated over parochial-run halls. Chief-Superintendent O’Halloran, of Mayo region, numbered the county’s dance halls at ninety- five, eighty of which he described as commercial premises and fifteen as parochial-run halls.Footnote 31 Indeed, the surfeit of commercial halls in Mayo was noted as a problem by all superintendents in their reports. P. Heydon, of Castlebar district, claimed that ‘It was wrong to do away with country house dances and give commercial halls the monopoly.’Footnote 32 J. Dunning, of Swinford district, echoed Heydon’s comments and suggested ‘that the Act be amended to permit of public dancing in dwelling houses’.Footnote 33
Some areas, such as parts of Wexford and Carlow, appear to have had a preponderance of parochial halls. Enniscorthy and Gorey districts reported, for example, that all halls within the two districts were parochial-run.Footnote 34 Superintendent Chambers of Muine Bheag district in Carlow, likewise, reported that both halls within his remit were run by parochial committees.Footnote 35 In other regions, such as Galway, there appears to have been relative parity in the number of commercial and parochial halls. In Ballinasloe district, six of ten halls, and in Athenry four of seven halls, were described as parochial.Footnote 36 In general, it was rare for a district not to have had at least one commercial hall, even if parochial halls tended to dominate in that area. In Boyle, Roscommon, for example, seven out of eight halls were described as parochial, but there was one commercial hall.Footnote 37 It is not always clear who owned the commercial halls. Garda circulars frequently refer to halls being owned by local publicans, often in close proximity to their public houses.Footnote 38 In rural areas halls may frequently have been owned by a local farmer, who saw an opportunity to profit from a disused barn or shed.
The division between parochial and commercial halls, moreover, does not capture the full complexity of the issue. In addition to such premises, very many halls were operated by associational clubs, political parties, or trade unions. In many areas, such halls seem to have predominated. The majority of clubs in Vallely’s study were neither strictly commercial nor parochial, but run by associations.Footnote 39 Superintendent Jackson, of Ballyconnell district, Cavan, likewise located along the border, claimed that many halls in his area were run by associations, including the Orange Order, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and Fianna Fáil, and that these existed alongside parochial and commercial halls.Footnote 40 Associational halls, of course, were not limited to the border area, but were common across the country. In Blarney district, two halls were run by local G.A.A. clubs, two by Fianna Fáil party branches, and one by a Harrier Club, with only one parochial and one commercial hall in the area.Footnote 41 While we can definitively state that, in the 1930s, familial and communal dances declined, we cannot say that dancing moved solely under parochial control. It seems reasonable to assume that dances were held in the structures available in the local area whether they were parochial, associational or commercial.
Licensed halls were not the only locations in which dances were held. Licences could also be granted for dance platforms, which remained popular into the 1940s.Footnote 42 In some areas communities continued to hold unlicensed dances in barns or houses, and the Gardaí were required to police this illegal activity.Footnote 43 Dances could be held without a licence, however, if attendees were not charged for entry and were asked to attend via invitation. This form of invitation-only dance may have been an important means of maintaining communal identity among minority groups, especially Protestants. Department of Justice files do not provide much information on specifically Protestant dances or dance halls. Vallely has highlighted that in Monaghan, a county with a large Protestant population, certain halls were clearly associated with the Protestant community, including Orange Order halls.Footnote 44 In areas where the population was more diffuse it seems likely that invitation-only dances were organised.
As well as ownership, we must consider what type of supervision was normal in parochial, commercial and associational halls. The Garda reports revealed that, occasionally, some form of parochial supervision was exercised even over halls that were commercial or associational. Indeed, some superintendents suggested that such supervision was encouraged by the owners of commercial halls in an effort to cultivate an image of respectability.Footnote 45 For dance hall owners it made good business sense that their hall was seen to be approved by the local priest. It is not clear, however, that this practice was generally adopted across the country, and, indeed, some superintendents made it clear that no such parochial supervision was established in their districts.Footnote 46 It is very difficult to provide a rounded assessment of the supervisory power of the clergy because of a lack of material, but also because of regional, and even parish, variation. Foley has argued that in north Kerry priests had extensive powers of supervision and, on occasion, even chased dancers from halls.Footnote 47 Vallely’s study of Monaghan–Armagh does not support this thesis, however, with one interviewee claiming that the influence of the church over dancing was ‘largely over-hyped nonsense’.Footnote 48
Even in parochial halls supervision could often be lax. Many superintendents noted that profit was an over-riding concern for both parochial and commercial halls.Footnote 49 Superintendent Heaphy, of Buncrana district in County Donegal, claimed that parochial committees and priests could often lapse in their supervisory role for the ‘purpose of raising funds for church restoration’.Footnote 50 As Heaphy’s comment suggests, frequently parochial committees supervised dance halls rather than priests themselves, and many superintendents make it clear that supervision by parochial committees was more common.Footnote 51 It was not always the clergy who supervised dance halls, therefore, but also members of the local community. The question of local community involvement in dance halls will be addressed later in the article. For now it suffices to note that supervision was not always, or even often, exercised by clergy. Additionally, the level of supervision, it appears, varied depending on the region or the parish concerned. We cannot draw uniform conclusions in relation to the level of supervision or the number of parochial versus commercial halls in a locale. The picture is complicated and certainly we cannot say that there was a uniform national trend.
In addition to the ownership and supervision of dance halls, it is important to consider how dancers behaved. Immorality was frequently decried from pulpits and by newspapers, but what effect did such denunciations have on the behaviour of dancers?Footnote 52 Immorality, it was often argued by moral campaigners, was promoted by foreign ‘jazz’ music and dancing. In 1929, for example, the Gaelic Athletic Association complimented its ban on foreign sports with a ban on foreign dances.Footnote 53 Theoretically, at least, no G.A.A. club could organise any entertainment where foreign dancing was permitted. District justices were often happy to support such moves against imported immorality by stipulating in licences that a certain number of dances be ‘Irish’. District Justice Walsh of Donegal asked that a reasonable number of dances would be ceilidhs, while District Justice Forde in Galway made the required provision more concrete by demanding that half of all night dances were to be ceilidhs.Footnote 54 Flann O’Brien satirised this tendency in his article on dance halls, published in The Bell in 1941: ‘Some district justices have a habit of taking leave of their senses at the annual licensing sessions. They want Irish dancing and plenty of it … They believe that Satan with all his guile is baffled by a four-hand reel and cannot make head or tail of the Rakes of Mallow.’Footnote 55
Many district justices sought to encourage Irish dancing in their areas, but this did little to curtail the popularity of foreign dances and jazz music. Dancers sought out the new and contemporary forms. The actual ratio of Irish to non-Irish dances was estimated by O’Brien to have been roughly 1:20 because, he claimed, Irish dances were almost incompatible with contemporary consumer demands: ‘The foxtrot and the Fairy Reel are mutually repugnant and will not easily dwell under the same roof.’Footnote 56 Superintendent J. Kelleher, of Tralee district, claimed that dance hall attendees in his locality paid no attention to the Irish/non-Irish question. Kelleher suggested that the number of dancers was directly relatable to the quality of the band playing; it was a ‘question of getting the best value for money’.Footnote 57 Ceilidhs were generally seen as unfashionable. Julia Griffin, who lived in Athlone during the 1930s, remembered that her preference for Irish dances put her firmly in the minority: ‘All the rest of the boys, and my sister, they preferred what was called the modern dance, the waltzes and the quickstep.’Footnote 58
O’Connor has sought to distinguish between ballrooms in urban areas, which she claims played modern music, and the smaller rural halls, which played traditional music.Footnote 59 It is questionable, however, if the division was clear-cut. In 1938, Chief Superintendent Ó Dubhthaigh, of Waterford–Kilkenny district, claimed that ‘Even in rural areas a taste has been developed for the modern types of dancing … and for up to date music’.Footnote 60 The penetration of modern ‘jazz’ music into remote areas is also suggested by the reaction against ‘jazz’. The anti-jazz campaign in Leitrim saw 3,000 people marching against foreign and degenerate music in Mohill in 1934.Footnote 61 Shanagher’s study of Elphin confirms the popularity of modern music and dances, even in rural locations. 90 per cent of advertisements for dances placed in the Roscommon Herald in 1930 promoted modern forms and, by 1940, this figure had risen to 93 per cent of advertisements.Footnote 62
Ballrooms in urban areas certainly offered a more refined and elegant atmosphere than many rural halls; O’Connor has characterised them as ‘utopian spaces’.Footnote 63 This does not mean, however, that modern music, often labelled as ‘jazz’, was not played in rural dance halls. Ceilidhs were still performed but they were gradually declining in popularity through the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, it was not until the 1960s that there was a significant revival in Irish dancing. Shanagher demonstrated that in 1960, 20 per cent of advertisements promoting dances in the Roscommon Herald were for ceilidhs.Footnote 64 Some district justices sought to promote Irish dances, but many showed little concern over the type of dance performed. In 1935, for example, when applying for a dance hall licence, the Gaelic Athletic Association in Waterford claimed that they would hold only old-fashioned waltzes and ceilidhs.Footnote 65 The district justice who granted the licence informed the association that it could ‘dance whatever dances they wished’.Footnote 66 Even some of the most demanding licences, for example those set by Justice Forde in Galway, allowed half or more of dances to be non-Irish.Footnote 67
Allied to fears over foreign dancing were fears regarding the consumption of alcohol, which could also lead to immorality. Many district justices applied stipulations banning the sale of alcohol in dance halls. How far was the consumption of alcohol actually reduced by such regulations? A number of Garda superintendents noted the futility of banning the sale of alcohol at dance halls. Superintendent Murray, of Gorey district, and Superintendent Glynn, of Sligo district, both noted the tendency for consumers to leave the dance hall in order to purchase alcohol in a nearby pub.Footnote 68 Many superintendents noted the proximity of dance halls to public houses, and the frequent tendency for the local publican also to own the local dance hall. Superintendent Bergin, of Naas district, suggested that many such publicans ‘serve drink indiscriminately, even to persons who are already intoxicated’.Footnote 69 There is no overall consensus in relation to alcohol prohibition in the Garda reports, as some superintendents suggested that the regulations had generally reduced the level of consumption. Many, however, took the opposite view, suggesting that the 1935 act encouraged increased alcohol consumption. W. P. Quinn, chief superintendent of Tipperary district, noted: ‘The absence of a bar to sell intoxicating liquor has caused persons who incline to drink to bring intoxicants with them and it has been suggested that this type of conduct leads to more abuses than were intoxicants openly sold in a bar at the dance.’Footnote 70 Chief Superintendent MacCartaigh, of Longford and Westmeath district, claimed that the banning of alcohol actually caused greater problems: ‘The signs of intoxication are less notable at dances where intoxicating liquor is allowed for sale.’Footnote 71 MacCartaigh stated that dancers were far more likely to become intoxicated when they were forced to leave the hall and quickly ingest alcohol at a nearby pub.Footnote 72
Flann O’Brien claimed that ‘Nearly every male who goes to the dances likes drink and takes plenty of it’, commenting with admiration on the ‘craft of going out for twenty separate drinks to a pub 400 yards away without ever appearing to have left the hall at all’.Footnote 73 Women, as well as men, appear to have flouted the prohibitions on alcohol consumption included in many dance hall licences. E. A. Reynolds, chief superintendent of Bray district, noted that while previously women would not purchase alcohol at a bar owing to the shame of drinking in public, the fact that the consumption was secretive meant that they felt much freer to have a drink.Footnote 74 Reynolds claimed that ‘Women will not leave the dance hall for the purpose of obtaining drink in convenient public houses’, but they would take a drink from men in the hall.Footnote 75 Superintendent MacCartaigh, referenced above, noted that as long as alcohol consumption was secretive there was little check on the amount women were consuming. ‘Females, who desire a drink, as a rule, will not stay too long at a dance hall bar’, he stated, but they would happily accept alcohol from other sources.Footnote 76 From the reports of the superintendents involved in policing the dance halls we have considerable evidence that the consumption of alcohol was not reduced by the 1935 act. Indeed, in a number of locales the prohibitions on alcohol appear to have increased consumption.
The regulations introduced by district justices to prevent ‘moral lapses’, therefore, appear not to have been as rigorously enforced as previously believed. Catholic campaigners, along with the Irish state, were not always able to enforce their vision of morality. It should not be assumed, however, that dance halls were loci of immorality, as many campaigners claimed. The Garda circulars are generally in agreement on this issue; the conclusion appended to the circulars stated: ‘The tendency to blame public dancing as a primary cause of the alleged lowering of the standard of public morality is not well founded and is not borne out by the facts as known to officers.’Footnote 77 While many superintendents highlighted cases of sexual crimes or ‘immoral actions’ that had occurred in their area, few could relate them to dance halls, and even then often only tenuously. Even superintendents who were convinced that there had been a ‘degradation of morals generally during the past 20 years’, as Chief Superintendent M. O’Loinghsigh, Wexford region, claimed, did not believe that dance halls were responsible.Footnote 78 The chief superintendent of Kerry region noted that officers in the area had ‘found couples to admit that on their way home from dance halls they adjourned to hay-barns where misconduct occurred’. He went on to state, however, that ‘We have got similar admissions from young men and women who were on their way home from a Mission.’Footnote 79
II
The current historical interpretation of dancing in 1930s Ireland requires considerable nuancing. It is not the case that dancing moved exclusively into the parochial domain following the passage of the P.D.H.A. Indeed, it appears that in many parts of the country there was a spread of commercial dance halls. Neither can it be claimed that the moral vision of anti-dance hall campaigners was fulfilled, as foreign dancing maintained its position and expanded in popularity, and alcohol consumption was not reduced. While clerical control over dancing, at practical and moral levels, has been over-emphasised in Irish historiography, other aspects of the history of public dancing have not received significant attention. The article will now discuss the importance of health and safety concerns in understanding dance hall regulations, and will then turn attention to the role of local communities in shaping regulations on dancing.
P. J. Ruttledge, minister for justice, when he introduced the second reading of the Public Dance Halls Bill to the Séanad, stated: ‘Many dance halls are considered by the authorities to be quite unsuitable for the purpose, and it is deemed necessary that power should be given to the Garda Síochána to supervise and have some control over them.’Footnote 80 Ruttledge was referring to the physical layout and structure of halls. Conor Maguire, the attorney general, raised the same concern and used the same language in the Dáil, claiming that ‘Public dancing is organised for profit in places which are quite unsuitable for the purpose.’Footnote 81 In the years preceding the introduction of the act in 1935, and thereafter, very many dance halls across Ireland caught fire and were often completely destroyed. To provide just a few examples, a dance hall near Kanturk in Cork was destroyed by fire in June 1932; in April 1933 a hall in Abbeydorney, Kerry, was, likewise, completely gutted, as was another hall in Ballycotton, Cork, in December of that year.Footnote 82 These fires appear to have been accidental, but many halls were also deliberately set on fire. One of the most interesting cases, in this regard, involved a hall at Castlemaine, in Kerry, which was burned to the ground in June 1933.Footnote 83 It became apparent, the following year, that the fire was started deliberately and had been set by one Edward Flynn, who was in the employ of George Boyle and Thomas Knightly, owners of a rival dance hall in the locality. Flynn claimed that he received a total of £2 5s. to burn down the rival hall.Footnote 84 Irish society was very aware of the potential effect of a fire in such structures after the Drumcollogher fire in 1926, in which forty-eight people died following a blaze in a temporary cinema.Footnote 85
The connection between fire and dance halls was clearly established in the public mind, and there was public concern about the poor condition of many dance halls, especially in rural areas. O’Brien described the typical rural hall in his article: ‘Most of the halls I have seen are old school-houses or new timber structures with a tin roof … Light is provided by large paraffin lamps suspended from the roof, less frequently by incandescent paraffin installations on the walls.’Footnote 86 Vallely claimed that in many halls in the Monaghan–Armagh area, paraffin oil was spread on the floor to make it slippery and, therefore, better for dancing.Footnote 87 Fire damage was not confined to such evidently ill-suited facilities, however. A hall in Monkstown, described by the Irish Press as a ‘comparatively modern place’, caught fire in October 1934 and was only saved from destruction by the proximity of the Dún Laoghaire fire service.Footnote 88 In part, the P.D.H.A. aimed to improve safety features and overall facilities for dancers attending halls. Of the seven matters district justices were asked to consider when granting a licence, five related to the suitability and safety of the hall, that of the surrounding area, and dancing facilities in the area.Footnote 89 The physical health and safety of the dancer was considered as important as their moral and spiritual safety.
Many district justices believed that the need to assess the suitability of the physical location and layout of the hall were paramount considerations when deciding on licences. District Justice Little, for example, demanded prior to the granting of a licence that he be satisfied as to the ‘floor space, height and ventilation’ of the hall, and that ‘sanitary office and cloakrooms’ be provided, as well as, suitable ‘firefighting appliances’.Footnote 90 Such demands from district justices seem to have been quite common. If licences were granted to premises lacking in adequate facilities and consumer safeguards, many justices required that alterations would be made for the licence to be renewed at the following session. Superintendent Murray, of Gorey district, reported that one hall in Ballymoney had closed the previous year as it had failed to make adequate alterations to improve its physical structure.Footnote 91 Murray also recorded that the Gardaí in his district intended to oppose the renewal of a licence for Spencer’s Hall in the upcoming session for similar reasons.Footnote 92
According to Garda reports filed before 1938, much police work involved assessing the structural safety of the buildings in which dances were held, rather than the moral behaviour of the dancers attending. Many reports provided detailed outlines of a dance hall’s structure and facilities.Footnote 93 When asked to offer his opinion on dance halls in Waterford city, Officer P. Kilroy stated that six out of seven halls were unsuitable from the viewpoint of consumer safety and facilities.Footnote 94 Kilroy noted that, in the Royal Dance Hall, ‘There was only one exit in the building.’Footnote 95 He, likewise, objected to the Redmond Hall because of a lack of exits, and the absence of gentlemen’s toilet facilities. For similar reasons he opposed licences for four further halls in Waterford city, stating ‘In two cases the dance halls are located over garages in which are stored petrol and other combustibles.’Footnote 96
In the Garda circular replies many superintendents emphasised the importance of safety regulations. Superintendent O’Neill of Gort district recommended that ‘no hall or place be licensed until the requirements of the Public Health Acts are first complied with’.Footnote 97 O’Neill objected to Gardaí assessment of safety standards, as they lacked the requisite qualifications to do so.Footnote 98 Instead, he suggested that a ‘qualified engineer and local sanitary authority’ be asked to inspect each hall prior to the granting of a licence.Footnote 99 Chief Superintendent Doyle, likewise, stated that only ‘experts’ should be allowed to decide on issues such as ‘structural soundness’.Footnote 100 Such comments suggest that the Gardaí took the regulations regarding the safety of consumers seriously, even if the Gardaí often felt inadequate when judging the facilities or structural integrity of a dance hall. The introduction of the P.D.H.A., of course, did not rectify the standards of dance halls across Ireland overnight. Superintendent Heron, of Newport district, highlighted one of the problems limiting the potential efficacy of the 1935 act. ‘In country halls a lower standard of facility can be accepted’, he claimed, noting how difficult it was to insist on safety standards when the facilities were inadequate.Footnote 101 Superintendent Murphy, of Mohill district, expressed concern that a number of halls in his area were corrugated iron structures, but doubted that better facilities could be made available.Footnote 102 In remote rural areas demanding particular features, especially fire safety provisions, was often not feasible. While this was the case, it should be evident that safety provisions were a significant aspect of the P.D.H.A. and the subsequent regulations instituted by district justices.
Dance halls could also be viewed as dangerous places for reasons apart from poor fire safety. In 1934, many dancing spaces became battle zones in the conflict between League of Youth and Fianna Fáil supporters. Halls and dance platforms in Donegal, Cavan, Tipperary, Mayo and Cork appear to have been targeted because the League of Youth or Fine Gael had held dances there previously or because they had scheduled future dances.Footnote 103 This was part of a wider conflict between Fianna Fáil and the League of Youth, relating primarily to the economic policies introduced by Fianna Fáil during the Economic War.Footnote 104 While the majority of attacks were perpetrated against League of Youth dance spaces, the League did carry out some acts of retaliation against Fianna Fáil. In urban areas, especially Dublin, dance halls were often associated with working class ‘animal gangs’. Fights between different gangs over ownership of a particular hall were commonplace, according to oral history testimony collected by Kevin Kearns.Footnote 105 Neither political attacks, nor gang fights, were mentioned in the debate over the P.D.H.A. legislation. It is reasonable to assume, however, that they had some impact on the thinking of T.D.s, especially the political attacks that occurred in 1934, in the months leading up to the passage of the act.
We can also suggest that, in the wider public consciousness, dance halls were associated with hazards, either in the form of fire or fighting. The P.D.H.A. sought to address some of the physical safety problems associated with dance halls, and judges and Garda officers often devoted most attention to their structure and safety features. This does not mean that the state took no interest in the moral health of dancers. The following section will demonstrate that limiting ‘moral lapses’ was a concern for district justices and Garda superintendents. It will suggest, however, that attention should be directed to local communities and their fears, as much as it should focus on Catholic church control.
Many district justices applied restrictions on dancing licences to limit how far someone could travel to attend a dance hall. These restrictions ranged from a two-mile radius to a ten-mile radius and were most common in western counties, especially Mayo, Limerick, Clare and Kerry. Restrictions on how far someone could travel to attend a dance hall were also applied in other parts of the country, including Waterford, Cavan, Monaghan and Kildare.Footnote 106 Travel restrictions were not enforced in all areas or by all district justices. Justice McCann, in the Galway region, for example, refused to apply such restrictions claiming they were ‘against the liberty of the subject’.Footnote 107 Limits were also often placed on ‘sitting out’, referring to dance hall attendees leaving the hall to sit outside the premises, often in cars. In 1932, the Gardaí were given powers to inspect activity inside motor vehicles. Prohibitions against ‘sitting out’ were often introduced alongside travel restrictions, but were also applied even in districts without travel restrictions. In Meath and Donegal, for example, prohibitions on ‘sitting out’ were enforced without corresponding limitations on how far someone could travel to the dance.Footnote 108
Travel restrictions such as these could seem baffling, especially in rural areas where travelling distances of five or more miles was commonplace. Comments made by district justices may help to explain why such restrictions were put in place. District Justice Cahill, when refusing the licence for a dance hall at Eyrecourt in 1936, cited as justification the fact that ‘some of the people attending there were undesirable characters who came from outside parishes’.Footnote 109 As this suggests, not only were travel restrictions applied, but occasionally, licences were not granted to stop ‘undesirables’ travelling to rural areas. Justice Johnson, in the same year, at a licensing session in the Lispole, Kerry district, explained his decision to impose a three-mile distance restriction: ‘Because “buchoes” in motor cars from Tralee were frequenting these dance halls.’Footnote 110 Those travelling to the dances were presented as ‘undesirable elements’ or ‘buchoes’, in colloquial parlance. The Garda circulars provide significant commentary on the necessity of introducing travel restrictions. Peter Fahy, superintendent of Sligo district, claimed that dance halls provided a meeting place for ‘undesirable people’.Footnote 111 ‘There would be no problem if dancing could be permitted only for people in the local area’, Fahy argued.Footnote 112 Superintendent Flynn, of Kildare district, made the link explicit when he stated: ‘The District Justice imposed an area limit, to prevent undesirables from outside areas, who were chiefly the cause of trouble, from being admitted.’Footnote 113
The Garda circulars, as was noted above, generally suggest little evidence for the supposed connection between sexual offences and dance halls. This trend changes, however, when an ‘undesirable’ outsider figure was discussed. Superintendent O’Reilly, of Bray district, stated that in his area there had been no problems whatsoever, except for a hall in Newtownmountkennedy, run by one John Egan, who ‘ran cheap dances for busloads of people from the poorer quarters of Dublin City’.Footnote 114 The only case of immorality that he highlighted in his report occurred at this hall.Footnote 115 He claimed to have received ‘complaints from local people of persons fornicating in the fields in the vicinity’, after dances had been held in the hall.Footnote 116 Many superintendents highlighted particular ‘problem’ dance halls catering for outsiders. Superintendent Breathnach, of Dungarvan district, mentioned Poke Amusement Hall, Killineen, as persistently troublesome.Footnote 117 He highlighted the problem that ‘People have come from Waterford City and Carrick-on-Suir to dance in the hall’ and claimed that rumours had circulated that as many as ten girls were seduced by alleged outsiders.Footnote 118
The regulations against ‘sitting out’ were an important corollary to the travel restrictions. Both aimed to protect the local community from undesirable outsiders. While the level of car ownership in Ireland was low in the mid-1930s, comparative to other European countries, dancers frequently rented or even, perhaps, stole cars. Chief Superintendent Fahy noted: ‘It is a common practice for young people living in towns to hire cars and travel long distances to dances held in remote areas, and it is not unusual for them to visit more than one rural dance in one night.’Footnote 119 Indeed, one scene in Jimmy’s hall depicts the arrival of a group of ‘outsiders’ to the dance hall by motor car, where they encountered the immediate opprobrium of the local priest.Footnote 120 Superintendent Ua Ceallaigh, of Letterkenny district, suggested that the willingness to travel resulted from the availability of motor transport and a changed mindset among young people. While in the past travelling to a dance hall may have involved a day’s journey and corresponding loss in income, he claimed, ‘Today attendance at such a dance is looked upon as a matter of course.’Footnote 121 Dancers would also travel to halls by bicycle. Oral history interviewees claimed that cycling fifteen to twenty miles to a dance hall or cinema was commonplace.Footnote 122 The fear of outside individuals or groups travelling long distances may have been exaggerated, but it does not appear to be a wholly fictitious one.
The conclusion appended to the Garda circulars claimed that outsiders were ‘less sensitive to public opinion as to their conduct in the areas in which they are not known and in the absence of such a restraining influence excesses are likely to occur’.Footnote 123 The parents of local dancers had the most to fear from ‘outsiders’. Their daughters could be tainted by an unwanted association and, if they became pregnant, this posed greater problems still. In a context where arranged marriages and the payment of dowries were common, the threat of the outsider could be a menacing one for many communities.Footnote 124 It is reasonable to assert, therefore, that the impetus for travel restrictions came from local communities. District justices, when applying restrictions, often referenced the particular difficulties that were reported by residents near the dance halls in question.Footnote 125 These restrictions, of course, also had to be enforced by the local community itself because Garda officers could not monitor all rural dance halls. Local clergy may have enforced the travel restrictions, but it seems more likely that community groups took the lead. As was noted above, parochial committees more commonly took responsibility for supervision, rather than the local priest. It is very doubtful that travel restrictions were applied to the letter of the law. Could someone prove how far they had travelled? The distance travelled to attend the dance could be exaggerated or reduced depending on the perceived threat posed by the attendee. There is an element of speculation here, of course, but it seems more appropriate to view travel restrictions as mechanisms for local community control over dance halls rather than strictly enforced legal stipulations.
III
The P.D.H.A. did more than simply facilitate indirect clerical control over the leisure time of young people. As this article has shown, dancing was not confined to parochial halls and neither was the nation’s youth forced into ceilidhs, as has often been claimed. Instead, it appears that the popularity of modern, imported forms of music and dance was increasing in the 1930s, as, perhaps, was the consumption of alcohol amongst dancers. It is certainly possible that local priests in certain areas were enforcing strict supervisory control over dancing, but there is no evidence that this extended to a national or even regional level. It is equally possible, as the article has suggested, that local communities assumed a supervisory role and enforced dancing restrictions for the purpose of safeguarding their own areas. The influence of local communities has been overlooked previously, however, as have the importance of health and safety regulations following the introduction of the P.D.H.A. The act did not immediately improve the structural quality of dance halls, but it represented an effort by the state to assume authority and responsibility for the safety of its citizens.
The lacunae in the historiography of dance halls in early twentieth-century Ireland, which have been highlighted here, are emblematic of gaps in Irish historiography more generally. There has been a tendency to stress the uniqueness of the Irish experience, especially in relation to the influence of the Catholic church. In regard to cinema and literature in Ireland, historians have largely focused on censorship and control, using official documents and the writings of moral campaigners. The top down approach has led, almost naturally, to an emphasis on the distinctiveness and harshness of the Irish experience. Yet in other European nations, we can witness similar fears over new cultural forms and similar efforts to control them.Footnote 126 Britain was often blamed as an exporter of foreign and degenerate music to Ireland. Even in supposedly liberal Britain, though, we can highlight similar fears over jazz music and dancing, and efforts by the government to crackdown on these new cultural forms, such as that attempted by William Joynson-Hicks in the 1920s.Footnote 127 Structures to regulate morality were common to both the Catholic and Protestant churches on both sides of the border, as Leanne McCormick and Ian d’Alton have suggested.Footnote 128 Focusing on the unique nature of Catholic Ireland can be problematic, therefore, as often the similarities to other European contexts are more striking. There is significant scope for further research into cultural and consumer practices in independent Ireland, especially those that shed more light on the actual experience of cinema-going, reading, dancing, and shopping, for example. Further research in these areas might present a picture that is more complicated and multi-faceted than is currently accepted.
