Guide to the Irish Loan Fund Records
What are the Irish Loan Fund Records?
The Association of the Irish Reproductive Loan Fund was set up by a committee in London in 1822 in response to a famine in the west of Ireland. The fund was created to provide small loans to the ‘industrious poor’ to help them purchase stock or equipment which would increase their productivity and improve their chances of surviving future famines.
The surviving records are held at The National Archives, Kew, England under reference T91 and include documents for the counties of Clare, Cork, Galway, Kerry, Leitrim, Limerick, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo and Tipperary, although some counties have far more surviving records than others.
How useful are these records?
If you are researching ancestors in the west of Ireland (Connaught and Munster) in the first half of the19th century, these records are potentially very valuable. An estimated 20% of the adult population of Ireland borrowed from a loan fund at any one time. Only a minority of records have survived. But, if there was a loan fund association where your ancestor lived, and records survived, there is a chance that your ancestor will appear in them.
Townspeople and poorer agricultural workers are included in the Irish Loan Fund Records, in contrast to the Tithe Applotment Books, which only include heads of households holding plots of land larger than one acre. A significant 20% of borrowers were female. These records can provide key clues about family relationships and enable you to build up a more complete picture of your ancestor’s life.
This guide includes:
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An introduction to the record set
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Step-by-step instructions on searching the records on Ancestry and FindMyPast
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A search strategy
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A spreadsheet listing the contents of the record set and
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A template to create your own research record, with an example
I hope you find this guide helpful. You will appreciate that it has taken a considerable amount of time to compile: if you find it useful, a voluntary donation can be made via this payment link. https://www.pcsgenealogy.com/_paylink/AZ50Dx5X
Thank you.
Guide to the Stepney Union Casebooks
What are the Stepney Union Casebooks?
The Stepney Union Casebooks are a record of over 1,000 persons who received assistance from the Stepney Poor Union in the year to 30 April 1889. They were transcribed by researchers employed by Charles Booth, to provide data for his Inquiry into the causes of poverty in London.
They are available to search, without charge, on the London School of Economics website:
https://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/stepney-union-casebooks
The Pauperisation Codes
These handwritten documents are not too difficult to read but, because they were compiled in order to extract statistical data about the persons concerned, Booth and his researchers created a coding system. This appears at the front of Volume A (BOOTH/B/162). It’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with these, or keep them to hand when searching the records. A transcription of the Pauperisation Codes appears on page 3 of this guide.
Navigating the record set
Navigating the records is straightforward but I found it very time consuming trying to locate a particular record, so I have created a step-by-step guide (pp.4-8), and index of the categories within each volume (p. 9) and a complete index of every case in all seven volumes, including the digital page numbers, which you can find on pp.10-39.
I hope you find this guide helpful. You will appreciate that it has taken a considerable amount of time to compile the index: if you find it useful, a voluntary donation can be made via this payment link. https://www.pcsgenealogy.com/_paylink/AZ50Dx5X
Thank you.