Monto was the nickname for the one-time red light district in the northeast of

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. The Monto was roughly the area bounded by

Talbot Street Talbot Street (; ) is a city-centre street located on Dublin's Northside, near to Dublin Connolly railway station. It was laid out in the 1840s and a number of 19th-century buildings still survive. The Irish Life Mall is on the street. Locati ...

Amiens Street Amiens Street is a road in Dublin, Ireland, that runs from Memorial Road to North Strand. History The road was known as The Strand in the early 18th century. It was renamed after John Stratford, 1st Earl of Aldborough (Viscount Amiens) in 187 ...

Gardiner Street Gardiner Street () is a long Georgian street in Dublin, Ireland. It stretches from the River Liffey at its southern end via Mountjoy Square to Dorset Street at its northern end. The Custom House terminates the vista at the southern end, and th ...

and

Seán McDermott Street Seán McDermott Street is a street in northeast Dublin, Ireland. It is divided into Seán McDermott Street Lower (east end) and Seán McDermott Street Upper (west end). Located in the north inner city, it runs west-east as an extension of Cathal ...

(formerly Gloucester Street) in what would now be called

Summerhill Summerhill or Summer Hill may refer to the following places: Australia * Summer Hill, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney *Summerhill, Tasmania, a suburb of Launceston * Summerhill (Mount Duneed), a prefabricated iron cottage in Victoria Canada * ...

. The name is derived from Montgomery Street (now called

Foley Street Foley Street is a street in Dublin running from James Joyce Street to Buckingham Street Lower. It was formerly known as Worlds End Lane and Montgomery Street. History Initially Foley was known as Worlds End Lane or World's End Lane in the Georg ...

), which runs parallel to the lower end of

towards what is now Connolly Station. Montgomery Street is believed to have been named after Elizabeth Montgomery, who was married to

Luke Gardiner, 1st Viscount Mountjoy Luke Gardiner, 1st Viscount Mountjoy Privy Council of Ireland, PC (Ire) (7 February 1745 – 5 June 1798) was an Irish landowner and politician. Biography He was the son of Charles Gardiner by his wife Florinda, daughter of Robert Norman. His s ...

History

In its heyday from the 1860s to the 1950s, there were anything up to 1,600

prostitutes Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, non-penet ...

working there at any one time, with all classes of customers catered for. Dublin was reputed to have the biggest red light district in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

and its profits were aided by the enormous number of

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

garrisons in the city, notably the Royal Barracks (later Collins Barracks and now one of the locations of the

National Museum of Ireland The National Museum of Ireland ( ga, Ard-Mhúsaem na hÉireann) is Ireland's leading museum institution, with a strong emphasis on national and some international archaeology, Irish history, Irish art, culture, and natural history. It has thre ...

). According to legend, King Edward VII of England lost his

virgin Virginity is the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. The term ''virgin'' originally only referred to sexually inexperienced women, but has evolved to encompass a range of definitions, as found in traditional, modern ...

ity in the Monto while still the

Prince of Wales Prince of Wales ( cy, Tywysog Cymru, ; la, Princeps Cambriae/Walliae) is a title traditionally given to the heir apparent to the English and later British throne. Prior to the conquest by Edward I in the 13th century, it was used by the rulers ...

. Later, in the 1880s, the Prince, accompanied by his wife Princess Alexandra and their son Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence strolled unrecognised through the area, having slipped away from their bodyguards and walked through Dublin.

Residents

In Kevin Kearns' oral history collection ''Dublin Tenement Life'', he comments that many of the prostitutes in the Monto were unwed mothers who had been disowned both by their families and by their babies' fathers. Although middle-class Dubliners viewed these women as 'whores', the impoverished but devoutly Catholic residents of Monto tenements referred to local prostitutes as "unfortunate girls", and understood that they had often turned to prostitution as a last resort. According to Kearns, "By all accounts, the girls were typically young, attractive, and known for their generosity, especially to slum children". In an interview with Kearns, Mary Corbally, who grew up in a tenement on Corporation Street during the 1920s, recalled, "I don't feel any shame in coming from the Monto, but the reputation was there cause of the girls. We never heard the word 'Whores', never heard 'Prostitute'. Very rarely you'd hear of a brothel, it was a 'kip' and the madams we called them, 'kip-keepers'. But the girls were very good, they were generous. They were very fond of kids. If you went for a message for them you'd get a thruppence or a sixpence. If they seen a kid running around in his bare feet they'd bring him into Brett's and buy him a pair of runners... The girls were generous." Billy Dunleavy, who grew up in the Monto before, during, and after the

Irish War of Independence The Irish War of Independence () or Anglo-Irish War was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army (IRA, the army of the Irish Republic) and British forces: the British Army, along with the quasi-mil ...

, later recalled, "It was a hard life for them girls. They were really all country girls that got into trouble and that's where they finished up. A girl (unwed) with a baby, she was in trouble... from farmers' sons. There was a convent around there and they were put up in there for twelve months with the nuns. They had a hard time. Scrubbing floors and everything else and the nuns standing over them. Oh, the country girls got a hell of a time of it, that's why all the girls was, 'on the town'. That's where they finished up. Now the madams had them dressed up in good new clothes, that was the attraction." According to Kearns, "The madams, several of whom became legendary figures in Dublin folklore, were Dublin women. They were tough, shrewd businesswomen who ruled the roost in a strict maternal manner. They clothed their girls, housed them, and took a high percentage of their earnings. Many of the kip-houses also illegally sold drink which made it easier to part a man from his money... Several madams became quite wealthy, wore expensive jewels, owned cars, and even sent their children off to prestigious schools abroad. Some were possessive of their girls to the point of keeping them virtually housebound for periods."Kevin C. Kearns (1994), ''Dublin Tenement Life'',

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.sexual disease Sexually transmitted infections (STIs), also referred to as sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and the older term venereal diseases, are infections that are Transmission (medicine), spread by Human sexual activity, sexual activity, especi ...

s)? Smother them. When they had

syphilis Syphilis () is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium ''Treponema pallidum'' subspecies ''pallidum''. The signs and symptoms of syphilis vary depending in which of the four stages it presents (primary, secondary, latent, an ...

and all... ''incurable''! They used to be smothered. See, there was no such thing as pills at that time. They couldn't cure them. Smother them to take them out of their pain, or give them some kind of a needle. They were so far gone and at that time there was no cure. The hospital was built for that purpose. That's right. They wouldn't do them all, just an odd one. They'd be nearly dead before they'd do it." In an interview with Kearns, Johnny Campbell, who had been a legendary Monto brawler in his youth, "Now there were also mobs fighting against one another, animal gangs. There were four gangs that used to go against one another -

Stafford Street Stafford () is a market town and the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands region of England. It lies about north of Wolverhampton, south of Stoke-on-Trent and northwest of Birmingham. The town had a popu ...

, Ash Street, Sheriff Street, and here, the Monto. Most of the animal gangs was dockers, nearly all of them. The dockers were the toughest men in Dublin. Ah, they ''were'' because they were going through the mill themselves with the big guns of coal and everything. And, oh, my God, they could put away maybe twenty pints... The coal dust and all. Now there could be a big melee on a Saturday night near Paddy Clare's or Jack Maher's (pubs). There could be twenty men fighting. They'd have razor blades and iron bars and knuckle-dusters and flick knives and hooks off the bales for the dock work. And you might see a fella taking off his belt and start swinging it. Like McCauley, he was a ringleader in the Monto, and he got his eyes taken out by a fella named Browne who hit him with a belt, took his eyes out. Browne got nine months." Also according to Billy Dunleavy, "The kip houses were ordinary houses but you'd see the men going in and out, in and out. Oh, men'd come in with big cars and all. Big shots... businessmen, British soldiers, officers in the Army, British ''Generals''. Big shots! It was safe enough. Men wouldn't stay all night. But some of the girls would ''rob'' them. Got 'em drunk. Take his trousers away from him and take his money. And the kip-houses had bouncers - whore's bullies we called them - and if a man didn't give up his money he'd get a hiding."Kevin C. Kearns (1994), ''Dublin Tenement Life'',

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.IRA Ira or IRA may refer to: *Ira (name), a Hebrew, Sanskrit, Russian or Finnish language personal name *Ira (surname), a rare Estonian and some other language family name *Iran, UNDP code IRA Law *Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, US, on status of ...

activity during the

. Billy Dunleavy further recalls, "The IRA were the best men we ever had at that time. The Tans used to go around in the tenders with a wire over the top and if it was going by up there in

they'd (IRA) say, 'Get out of the way, ''quick''!' and they'd throw a

hand grenade A grenade is an explosive weapon typically thrown by hand (also called hand grenade), but can also refer to a shell (explosive projectile) shot from the muzzle of a rifle (as a rifle grenade) or a grenade launcher. A modern hand grenade genera ...

into the car. Now

Phil Shanahan Phil Shanahan (4 January 1928 – 5 February 2012) was an Irish hurling, hurler who played as a midfielder for the Tipperary GAA, Tipperary and Dublin GAA, Dublin senior teams. Shanahan made his first appearance for the Tipperary team during t ...

, he owned a pub over there on the corner, he was a great man and he used to hide them after they'd been out on a job. He had cellars and all the IRA men used to go there and hide their stuff. But nobody ''knew'' who an IRA man was. Oh, no, you wouldn't know who an IRA man was around here at that time at all. They were all very secret. They ''had'' to be that way. Your neighbour could be an IRA man. On a Saturday morning, this big fella, he used to give information - he was an ''informer'' against the IRA - and two men came around that morning and riddled him in the public house, riddled him with bullets. The IRA killed him. But they were good men and they wouldn't kill any innocent people." Following the

Anglo-Irish Treaty The 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty ( ga , An Conradh Angla-Éireannach), commonly known in Ireland as The Treaty and officially the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland, was an agreement between the government of the ...

(December 1921), the establishment of the

Irish Free State The Irish Free State ( ga, Saorstát Éireann, , ; 6 December 192229 December 1937) was a state established in December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. The treaty ended the three-year Irish War of Independence between th ...

(6 December 1922), and the withdrawal of the

garrison from Dublin, the financial viability of the kip-houses was severely damaged.

Campaign and Dublin Metropolitan Police raid

Between 1923 and 1925,

Frank Duff Francis Michael Duff, L.O.M. (7 June 1889 – 7 November 1980), known as Frank Duff, is known especially for bringing attention to the role of the laity during the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church as well as for founding ...

of the

Legion of Mary The Legion of Mary ( la, Legio Mariae, postnominal abbreviation L.O.M.) is an international association of members of the Catholic Church who serve it on a voluntary basis. It was founded in Dublin, as a Marian movement by the layman and civi ...

and Fr. R.S. Devane launched a campaign to close down the kip-houses and clean up The Monto. They received the co-operation of the Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, General

W.R.E. Murphy William Richard English-Murphy, DSO MC known as W.R.E. Murphy (1890–1975) was an Irish soldier and policeman. He served as an officer with the British Army in the First World War and later in the National Army. In the Civil War he was secon ...

. The campaign ended with 120 arrests and announced the closure of all the brothels following a DMP raid on 12 March 1925.

Post-1925 raid

However, kip-houses continued to exist in the Monto, long after the 1925 raid. This was enabled by both corrupt politicians and members of the

Garda Síochána (; meaning "the Guardian(s) of the Peace"), more commonly referred to as the Gardaí (; "Guardians") or "the Guards", is the national police service of Ireland. The service is headed by the Garda Commissioner who is appointed by the Irish Gover ...

, well into the 1950s. According to Billy Dunleavy, "The Guards knew what was going on, but they couldn't do anything. But if the kip-houses were selling bottles of stout the Guards could get the bottles and break them up. See, there were manholes out there, where the water goes down. And they'd (kip-owners) put the bottles of stout down the manhole when the police'd be coming. Now your bottle of stout at that time was only around eight pence but if a man brought a girl to Becky Cooper's kip they'd be charged about a ''pound'' for that bottle. The police knew where the porter's be hid and they'd raid and take them up and break them." These kip-houses included the "Cozy Kitchen" on

North King Street North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is ...

and "Cafe Continental" on

Bolton Street This is a list of notable streets in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, United States. A B C D E F G H Heath St. Route 64. (MTA Maryland) K L M N O P R Ramsay st S U W Y Numbered streets In Balt ...

, both of which were run by legendary Dublin madam Dolly Fawcett and remained open, enabled by corruption in the

, well into the 1950s. According to Northside resident Noelle Hughes, who knew Dolly Fawcett in her seventies, "The Cozy Kitchen" was located in the basement of a tenement house at 2 North King Street and was run by Dolly's son Stephen Fawcett until it closed down in 1957. Dolly's other son ran the Cafe Continental on Bolton Street.Kevin C. Kearns (1994), ''Dublin Tenement Life'',

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.Bolton Street Technical School. Hughes later recalled, "The girls would be around the place, at the counter, and a man would start chatting them up. They were mostly country girls up from the country, from seventeen into their thirties. They weren't high class prostitutes or anything like that, they were just ordinary commoners. I suppose they charged about two pounds. They'd bring the blokes off to a flat. Or take him around a laneway or around the back, somewhere like that. The whole neighbourhood know of this - the whole of ''Dublin'' knew about it cause the sailors off the ships used to go in there an awful lot. Men, they'd come from the docks and all over. It was mostly all outsiders cause the men in the tenements didn't have money." Hughes continues, "And the police raided it a couple of times but they got backhands. Oh, there was backhands going on all the time, paying policemen off. And there was a bit of an argument a couple times about closing it down but nothing ever materialised of it. And then it eventually closed up and the Fawcetts went off to England."

In popular culture

Folk songs

* The Irish

folk song Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be c ...

Monto (Take Her Up to Monto) "Monto (Take Her Up To Monto)" is an Irish folk song, written in 1958 by George Desmond Hodnett, music critic of the ''Irish Times'', and popularised by the Dubliners. Frank Harte was also known to sing the song. Lyrics Well, if you've got a wi ...

" was written by

George Desmond Hodnett George Desmond "Hoddy" Hodnett (25 February 1918 – 23 September 1990) was an Irish musician, songwriter and long-time jazz and popular music critic for the ''Irish Times''.The Dubliners The Dubliners were an Folk music of Ireland, Irish folk band founded in Dublin in 1962 as The Ronnie Drew Ballad Group, named after its founding member; they subsequently renamed themselves The Dubliners. The line-up saw many changes in personn ...

several years later. Irish singer

Róisín Murphy Róisín Marie Murphy ( , ; born 5 July 1973) is an Irish singer, songwriter, and record producer. She first became known in the 1990s as one half of the pop duo Moloko alongside English musician Mark Brydon. After the breakup of Moloko, she em ...

named her 2016 album '' Take Her Up to Monto'' in reference to the song. * Monto is also twice mentioned in the Irish folk song "

Waxies' Dargle "The Waxies' Dargle" is a traditional Irish folk song about two Dublin "aul' wans" (older ladies/mothers) discussing how to find money to go on an excursion. It is named after an annual outing to Ringsend, near Dublin city, by Dublin cobblers (w ...

". * It is referred to repeatedly in the Pete St. John song "Johnny McGory" (also popularised by The Dubliners). * Monto, Frank Duff, and the L.O.M. are also mentioned in the Peter Yeates song "Honor Bright", the story of the 1925 murder of a prostitute (Lizzie O'Neil) who used the pseudonym "Honour Bright". The song is sung at the top of Act Two of '' The Ferryman'' by Jez Butterworth as the Carney boys come in from the harvest. In 2019

Pierce Turner Pierce Turner (born June 1949) is an Irish singer-songwriter. After forming a duo with Larry Kirwan he went solo in the mid-1980s and has since released several albums. Biography Turner grew up in the port town of Wexford, where his mother ...

included a version on his collection of traditional songs, ''Vinegar Hill''.

Literature

* The Monto was immortalised as "Nighttown" in the "Circe" chapter of

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

's novel, ''

Ulysses Ulysses is one form of the Roman name for Odysseus, a hero in ancient Greek literature. Ulysses may also refer to: People * Ulysses (given name), including a list of people with this name Places in the United States * Ulysses, Kansas * Ulysse ...

'', in which protagonists

Leopold Bloom Leopold Bloom is the fictional protagonist and hero of James Joyce's 1922 novel ''Ulysses''. His peregrinations and encounters in Dublin on 16 June 1904 mirror, on a more mundane and intimate scale, those of Ulysses/Odysseus in Homer's epic poe ...

and

Stephen Dedalus Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce's literary alter ego, appearing as the protagonist and antihero of his first, semi-autobiographic novel of artistic existence ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' (1916) and an important character in Joyce' ...

visit a kip-house together. *

Catherine Ann Cullen Catherine Ann Cullen is the first Poetry Ireland poet in residence and is a writer. Biography Catherine Ann Cullen was born in Drogheda, County Louth. She has an M.Phil in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD from Middlesex U ...

has written a poem, "Monto Cross", on the subject of the Monto.

References

External links

The miracle of Monto? A chequered history, from prostitution to pilgrimages

Dublin Folklore - Monto Stories from Dublin, James Joyce, Night Town,Ireland
Researched by Terry Fagan, historian and tour guide.

''Monto Cross'', read by Catherine Ann Cullen
{{History of Dublin History of Dublin (city) Historical red-light districts in the Republic of Ireland Police misconduct in Ireland Prostitution in the Republic of Ireland