A list of those who contributed to the funds of the House of Industry

This list contains the names, street addresses and amount donated to the funds of the House of Industry in Belfast in 1834. In the preceding year the House of Industry had supplied 794 women with flax (& the majority also with wheels and reels) to be able to carry on a trade. The organisation also provided 626 families with rations (potatoes, soup, coals and meal) and gave 38, 408 people bread & in many cases soup (averaging 54 children and 62-116 adults per day). Finally they ‘took up’ 264 ‘medicants (beggars) and vagrants’.

Peter Higginbotham is his excellent resource www.workhouses.org states that:

A House of Industry ‘for the suppression of mendicity and the promotion of industry among the poor’ was established in Smithfield in 1809 and supported by voluntary contributions. The unemployed poor were set to work at occupations such as weaving, spinning, knitting, and net-making and their earnings were supplemented by donations of food and clothing. According to Samuel Lewis's 1837 Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, the House also ‘assists poor housekeepers, relieves strangers and forwards them to their destination, supplies deserving mendicants with food and punishes the refractory, accommodates industrious families with small loans or occasional grants, and has diffused great benefit over this populous town, in which it has entirely abolished mendicity.’

This index was input by David Keane & Ronnie Hastings.