On Thursday, March 12th, 1925, dozens of members of the new Garda Síochána based in Dublin’s Store Street descended on an adjacent square-mile warren of laneways and streets known as the Monto.
On orders from Dublin Castle they raided the brothels and “kip-houses” around midnight, making 120 arrests of mainly women in a dramatic signal of the demise of what was then the largest red-light district in Europe.
The following Sunday, in a display of Catholic church power in the fledgling State, hundreds of priests and members of the newly founded Legion of Mary walked in procession from the nearby pro-Cathedral to Montgomery Street – the heart of the Monto.
Watched by thousands of onlookers, the devout carried rosary beads, singing hymns and praying. Their procession was headed by someone carrying a large, wooden crucifix. They stopped at brothels en route, pinning pictures of the Sacred Heart to doors.
Frank Duff, senior civil servant and founder of the Legion of Mary in 1921, affixed the crucifix to a 20ft boundary wall bisecting the area.
“This was the ‘solemn blessing’ of the Monto, cleansing the area and keeping it clean for future generations,” local historian Terry Fagan says.
“The madams [who ran the brothels] hadn’t feared the British state, but by 1925 holy Catholic Ireland was coming about. They knew the writing was on the wall. They had to reconcile with that.”
Duff had co-ordinated the “solemn blessing” with his ally in Dublin Castle, Garda Chief Commissioner General William Murphy – an early example of Church and State in lockstep.
In an area bounded by modern-day Talbot, Amiens, Gardiner and Seán McDermott streets, the Monto in its heyday between 1850s to 1920s was the workplace of about 1,600 women at any one time, Fagan says.
“The Monto is romanticised these days,” he says, citing references in James Joyce’s Ulysses and the bawdy folk song Monto (Take Her up to Monto), written in 1958 by Irish Times journalist George Hodnett.
“But the women who worked here went through hell. Most had come from poverty in the country. The madams were absolutely ruthless and pimps [security guards] carried lead pipes and cut-throat razors.
“If they got pregnant they were tossed out, no use any more. If caught holding money back they could have their faces slashed so no man would look at them again.
“The majority of people in the area had nothing to do with the brothels. They called the women the ‘poor unfortunates’.”
The area took its name from Montgomery Street, now Foley Street, which was named after Elizabeth Montgomery, who married to Luke Gardiner, 1st Viscount Mountjoy, in the 1700s.
“The brothels were in four categories,” Fagan says. “The first-class houses were like lovely gentleman’s clubs. They had carpets, velvet curtains, paintings on the walls, gramophones and the finest wines. Then the second-class houses, third-class and the shilling houses where you’d have been drinking methylated spirits.”
Fagan details fascinating histories of the area, including Mrs Dunleavy, the ‘midwife of Monto’, “who delivered the babies of Monto no matter who the woman was”, and the contribution of the women to “fight for Irish freedom”.
“Many of the Monto’s clients were British soldiers. The women were gleaning information from them and would feed it into Shanhan’s – a famous IRA pub in the heart of the Monto. They got no medals or pensions. A lot ended up in Magdalene laundries or in one of Duff’s hostels.”
The brothels brought money and ancillary work into the area, Fagan says, and this was missed.
“There was a whole economy around the brothels. There were cleaners, the brothels had to be stocked with food and drink. Children in the area were sent for messages,” he says.
“In the end, the madams still had their money-lending, their shops, and they sold their properties. After 1925 they became pillars of society. They and the pimps, who had been carrying lead pipes and cut-throat razors, were carrying rosary beads and leading in the 1932 Eucharistic Congress less than a decade later.”
Terry Fagan’s walking tours of the Monto can be arranged via X and Facebook: @LifeTenement and Monto Walking Tours
