Dublin Directories

I’ve posted a few details in reply before, but just to make to lookup offer official… I can check various Dublin Directories, mostly Thom’s from 1848 to the mid 20th Century which include Street and Trade Index listings for Dublin city and county. The Street listings for the city can also help locate exactly where a particular address was located (in conjunction with historic and modern maps) – e.g. see image from the 1865 listing below, showing numbers 2 to 6 running south on the east side of Grafton street between the junctions with Nassau St. and Adam Court.

As well as Dublin city Thom’s includes listings for various towns in county Dublin, and also Bray / Little Bray. The listings are often not as detailed as the listings for the city, e.g. street listings only show for larger towns. As a sample see images and some transcripts from the County Dublin section of Thom’s 1848 here

Not everyone is listed in these directories, e.g. you will not usually see a listing for someone that was a labourer or living in a tenement or small cottage, and in addition not all the streets are included so while there’s a full listing for ‘important’ streets like Grafton Street, smaller side streets and lanes often are only mentioned as a junction off a main street or a listing similar to ‘seven houses in tenements’ or ’24 small cottages’. The later directories include more names and streets – e.g. Thom’s 1943 is more than three times the volume of the 1848 edition.

Also included in Thom’s are other sections covering lists of names and residences for all of Ireland of Priests/Ministers (CofI, RC, Presbyterian, Methodist etc), Magistrates, Attorney/Solicitors, Barristers, Medical Practitioners etc, and also officials (boards of PLUs, registrars, Medical Officers & Registrars etc) for Municipal Towns, Boroughs and Counties.

Other directories I can check include Pettigrew & Oulton 1834 & 1840 (see images for the street listing for these here ), and several Watson / Treble Almanacks between 1783 and 1829.