Dispensary and Registrar's Districts
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 10:52 am
In all that has been written about the confusing proliferation of administrative subdivisions in Ireland, I have read very little about Dispensary and Registrar's Districts. These were a layer between the Poor Law Union and the District Electoral Division. Experienced researchers will be familiar with them as the Registrar's Districts which appear at the top of birth, marriage and death certificates. Less experienced researchers will be confused by the fact that the familysearch.org Irish Civil Registration Indexes database and the General Registrar's Office indexes use the term `Registration District' as a synonym for `Superintendent Registrar's District' or `Poor Law Union'.
Those of us researching in Clare are lucky to have the Clare County Library's Townland Index at http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... wnland.htm which shows the `Reg District' to which each townland belongs. (It would be even nicer if we could filter than index by Reg District!) Neither the Index to the Townlands and Towns, Parishes and Baronies of Ireland 1851 (reprinted Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company 1984) nor the online equivalent at http://www.thecore.com/seanruad/ includes Registrar's Districts.
County directories (offline and online) are the best places to look for lists of `Dispensary and Registration Districts'. For example, The Limerick City and Counties of Clare and Limerick Directory 1891-'2 printed by H. & E. Ashe, 15, Upper Cecil Street, Limerick lists the Dispensary and Registration Districts in the then Poor Law Union of Scarriff as Annacarriga, Feakle and Mountshannon (with the population of each also noted).
The striking thing about the Dispensary and Registration Districts is that they frequently took the names of what are now otherwise obscure rural locations rather than the names of significant towns or villages, for example in Clare, Annacarriga, Coolacasey/Coolycasey or Craggaknock.
The ancient town of Killaloe is in the Registration District of Annacarriga, which is not even a townland (see previous discussion at
http://www.ourlibrary.ca/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=458). Coolycasey [sic], Craggaknock East and Craggaknock West are townlands. The part of Sixmilebridge on the Limerick (eastern) side of the O'Garney River is in Coolacasey Dispensary District.
Each Dispensary and Registration District had a dispensary, which appears to have been the local office to which informants had to travel in order to register births and deaths. The local clergy may also have had to make this journey frequently in order to register marriages which they had performed. In large districts, some people may have lived ten miles or more from their dispensary, a long enough journey when the main mode of transport was often the ass and car. Thus it should not be a surprise that registrations were often late - so late that the date on the certificate is wrong, with birthdates often appearing to be later than christening dates. (The spiritual incentives of the time made the christening a far more urgent priority than civil registration.)
A recent query by an American cousin prompted me to carry out a rather tedious manual search of Griffith's Valuation for the dispensary for Craggaknock Dispensary and Registration District, which I found in the part of the village of Mullagh in the townland of Finnor More.
The dispensary in Annacarriga can likewise be found in Griffith's Valuation in the townland of Ballyheefy in the parish of Ogonnelloe.
I will leave it to others with greater local knowledge, more patience, more ingenuity or more time on their hands to tell us where the dispensary in Coolacasey was located!
\pw
Those of us researching in Clare are lucky to have the Clare County Library's Townland Index at http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... wnland.htm which shows the `Reg District' to which each townland belongs. (It would be even nicer if we could filter than index by Reg District!) Neither the Index to the Townlands and Towns, Parishes and Baronies of Ireland 1851 (reprinted Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company 1984) nor the online equivalent at http://www.thecore.com/seanruad/ includes Registrar's Districts.
County directories (offline and online) are the best places to look for lists of `Dispensary and Registration Districts'. For example, The Limerick City and Counties of Clare and Limerick Directory 1891-'2 printed by H. & E. Ashe, 15, Upper Cecil Street, Limerick lists the Dispensary and Registration Districts in the then Poor Law Union of Scarriff as Annacarriga, Feakle and Mountshannon (with the population of each also noted).
The striking thing about the Dispensary and Registration Districts is that they frequently took the names of what are now otherwise obscure rural locations rather than the names of significant towns or villages, for example in Clare, Annacarriga, Coolacasey/Coolycasey or Craggaknock.
The ancient town of Killaloe is in the Registration District of Annacarriga, which is not even a townland (see previous discussion at
http://www.ourlibrary.ca/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=458). Coolycasey [sic], Craggaknock East and Craggaknock West are townlands. The part of Sixmilebridge on the Limerick (eastern) side of the O'Garney River is in Coolacasey Dispensary District.
Each Dispensary and Registration District had a dispensary, which appears to have been the local office to which informants had to travel in order to register births and deaths. The local clergy may also have had to make this journey frequently in order to register marriages which they had performed. In large districts, some people may have lived ten miles or more from their dispensary, a long enough journey when the main mode of transport was often the ass and car. Thus it should not be a surprise that registrations were often late - so late that the date on the certificate is wrong, with birthdates often appearing to be later than christening dates. (The spiritual incentives of the time made the christening a far more urgent priority than civil registration.)
A recent query by an American cousin prompted me to carry out a rather tedious manual search of Griffith's Valuation for the dispensary for Craggaknock Dispensary and Registration District, which I found in the part of the village of Mullagh in the townland of Finnor More.
The dispensary in Annacarriga can likewise be found in Griffith's Valuation in the townland of Ballyheefy in the parish of Ogonnelloe.
I will leave it to others with greater local knowledge, more patience, more ingenuity or more time on their hands to tell us where the dispensary in Coolacasey was located!
\pw