The number of arrests for drunkenness and for crimes and offenses which
may be attributed to liquor have been decreasing in Ireland for several
years. In 1902 in all Ireland, 80,054 men and 11,163 women, making a
total of 91,217, were arrested for drunkenness. In 1906 the figures were
68,656 men and 8,606 women, making a total of 77,262. This is a decrease
of 11,398 men and 2,557 women and a total decrease of 13,955 in four
years.
In 1902 one person out of forty-eight was arrested for drunkenness in
Ireland, in 1906 one in fifty-eight, which is a decided improvement; but
think of 8,000 and 11,000 women being arrested for drunkenness!
The number of arrests for assault during the year 1907 in all Ireland
was less than ever before, being only 16,055, in comparison with 24,027
in 1896, 22,065 in 1900, and 16,666 in 1904, while the number of persons
arrested for disorderly conduct decreased from 90,233 to 77,262 during
the same years. There is a terrible side to the picture. Of the women
arrested for drunkenness in Ireland last year more than one thousand
were under twenty-one years of age, 118 between sixteen and eighteen
years of age, while 156 were over sixty.
The Sunday law is pretty well enforced, and during the last year,
outside of the five principal cities, 2,289 persons were arrested for
its violation. That is about the average for the last ten years.
In Dublin there has been a decided falling off in the arrests for
drunkenness on Sunday; the total in 1898 was 1,280, while in 1907 it was
only 404. The number of arrests for drunkenness on Sunday in Cork
decreased from 265 to 193 during the same period, and those in Belfast
from 537 to 434.
In the city of Dublin alone 1,772 women were arrested for drunkenness in
1907 and 2,941 men. In 1904, 1,976 women were arrested for drunkenness.
I don't suppose there is any city in the world where there is so much
drunkenness among women as there is in Dublin, except it be Glasgow and
Edinburgh, although the number of drunken men arrested is not so much
larger than the average in other cities of Europe and the United States.
And what is even more lamentable, the public is so hardened to the
repulsive spectacle that it does not attract as much curiosity as the
appearance of an ordinary drunken man upon the streets of Chicago or New
York. Women stagger from the doors of saloons along the sidewalks with
disheveled hair and disordered garments without attracting any attention
whatsoever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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