British Army Recruiting: Irishmen and Ireland
Ireland was not the most fertile recruiting ground for the British Army. As shown in the graphic below, recruitment in Ireland was nearly always lower than in the other nations of the United Kingdom.
War Office Sources: British Army Reports, 1874,
1884, 1898, and 1904-1876 [C. 1323]; 1886 [C. 4570]; 1899
[C. 9426]; 1905 [Cd. 2268]; Annual Report of the Inspector-General of
Recruiting for the Year 1899, 1900, [Cd. 110].
Though young Irishmen in Ireland were less apt than others to join the British Army, the number of Irish-born in the army throughout the Middle and Late Victorian Eras was always disproportionately greater than Ireland’s share of the United Kingdom's population. This was because a large number of Irish-born who resided in Scotland and England enlisted. As shown in the following graphic, the extent of Irish over-representation in the British Army declined throughout the late 19th Century. By Bloomsday, Irish representation in the British Army was proportionate to Ireland's share of the United Kingdom's population. Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, the Irish were under-represented in the army.
Sources: Edward M. Spiers, The Army and Society 1815-1914 (London: Longman, 1980); War Office, General Annual Report on the British Army for the Year Ending 30th September, 1906, 1907, [Cd. 3365]. Note: 1900 ratio based on 1899 recruitment data as the army did not tabulate nationality during the Boer War years.
On Bloomsday, there were many locations throughout Ireland where a young man could enlist. Recruiters were available in cities and towns of the 3 headquarters offices of the recruitment districts, the 8 depots of the Irish regiments, 25 militia barracks (the militia permanent staffs recruited for the regular army as well as the militia), and 14 barracks that quartered regular army units. Note that on June 16, 1904, Leitrim and Louth were the only counties that did not have a recruiting facility.
Source: Monthly Army List, July 1904.
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