Local Government in Nineteenth-Century County Dublin

The Grand Jury

David Broderick

Much has been written about the politics and government of nineteenth century Ireland at a national level. Yet the point at which government touched the lives of most people was the local. Over the course of the nineteenth century new local government structures, especially the grand jury, replaced the older parishes. In addition they acquired many duties in addition to the responsibility for roads and bridges that they had held in the eighteenth century. Tramways, gaols, aspects of public health, including dispensaries, and compensation for malicious injuries all came within the ambit of the grad juries. This study shows how one grand jury, that for County Dublin, faced the challenges presented by the expansion of their duties and how it rose to those challenges in making County Dublin a better place to live in the course of the nineteenth century.