On November 23rd, 1913, the Parisian newspaper Le Miroir carried a large photograph of two young boys sleeping on the street in the doorway of a well-appointed shop. Their legs are intertwined – one of them has boots on but the smaller boy has bare feet. The scene is not Paris. The caption says: La Misère à Dublin. The housing crisis in the Irish capital had acquired international notoriety. Even by the standards of a century ago, it was scandalous that children should be homeless and that whole families had to live in single rooms. The existence of such squalor was a disgrace – to the British authorities and to the Irish Party politicians who dominated local government. For those who wanted...
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