Nineteenth Century

The early nineteenth century was a disturbed period in the county with the agrarian violence of the Rockites in the early 1820s and the Tithe war in the 1830s. In the city a long campaign to end the hegemony of the corrupt, self-serving Corporation was successful with the municipal reforms of 1842 and 1853. The latter measure ended the anomaly of having the Georgian city governed by Commissioners rather than the Corporation. The major reform of local government in 1899 had greater impact in the county with the establishment of a democratically elected Council to replace the Grand Jury but the city was given the status of a county borough.
 

A major development of church building occurred both by the various Protestant denominations but particularly by the Catholic Church, which saw a cathedral erected in the city and new churches in virtually every parish as well as reorganisation of structures and rapid increase in the numbers of priests and religious. The latter congregations established a wide network of schools in the city and county. Both the constitutional and physical force strands of nationalism had support with the former expressed through strong support for O’Connell, Butt and Parnell while the latter saw a Fenian uprising in Kilmallock and the election of John Daly as Mayor on three occasions. Given the importance of agriculture in the county there was widespread support for the Land League and the campaign for the abolition of landlordism, often led by local catholic priests. A notable example was the use of the Plan of Campaign on the O’Grady estate near Bruff in the 1880s. By the early twentieth century, most of the land had been acquired by the tenants and the pattern of family farms firmly established. The co-operative creamery movement, pioneered in Dromcollogher in 1889, was an important economic and social development.