In the Dark

Following yesterday’s post about the 1926 Irish Census I fell down a metaphorical rabbit hole following a request from a former colleague (who happens to be Jewish) to help find a relative of his who lived in Dublin at the time of the census. I found the person, which was nice, but was then sent this article  about an unrelated lady called Estella Solomons who was on the rebel side in the Easter Rising and helped the cause by hiding weapons in her garden.  It turns out that there was a significant Jewish presence in Dublin back then. In the North Side, around Portobello, there was an area dubbed ‘Little Jerusalem’.

I hadn’t heard of Estella Solomons before yesterday but she was a significant artist whose work was featured in an exhibition at the National Gallery in Dublin in 2022 (which I did not see). There is also a Wikipedia page about her. I found the above self-portrait online. I find it very striking.

Estella Solomons was born in 1882 and died in 1968 at the age of 86. She was 34 at the time of the Easter Rising and would have been 44 at the time of the 1926 census. I did find her in the online census but her age is recorded as 40. She married the poet Seumas O’Sullivan in 1926 but she is listed as “single” on the census form, so presumably they married later in the year.

There are two other women at her 1926 address, both servants, so she was obviously quite well off, but no sign of her husband.

More surprisingly Estella’s sex is given in the 1926 census as Male. She is in the 1911 census too, but recorded there as Female. I did consider the possibility that she might have been living as a man, but that does not fit with other details of her life. I think it is just a mistake.  Such records are not entirely free from errors.

I think this an example of the sort of confusion historians have to contend with when looking at historical documents!