Newly digitised minutes of Dublin City Council's first forty years of existence have been released online. At present, this handwritten collection of manuscripts, in which each volume was loosely 'chronologically' indexed by topic and/or name, is available as an image-only format at the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI), here. They are free to view.
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| The handwritten volumes contain indexes of the topics and people discussed at the meetings. Click image to search the collection. |
However, the collection was the subject a crowdsourced transcription project last week; this was organised by Dublin City Library and Archive and will result in a more user-friendly index in due course.
Following local elections, DCC held its first meeting in November 1841, when Daniel O'Connell was elected as Lord Mayor of Dublin. The minutes cover a significant period in Irish history, and the minutes deal with many major civic developments that improved living and social conditions for all strata of society.
These included the 1868 opening of the Vartry Reservoir, which dramatically increased the quality and quantity of the City's water supply (and still provides it to this day) and, from 1875, DCC-managed social housing projects for the working classes.