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On the state
of the Kingstown
poor.
Public offices
filled by C.
Holiday.
\\xvi SOME NOTICE OF THE
forth fully the steps by which the railway company had
contrived to deprive the public of their access to the shore.
On the title page of Mr. Haliday's copy is a note in his
own hand (written the very year of his death): "This
Appeal procured for the Labouring Classes at Kingstown a
IVi-i' bathing place for women, now in course of erection at
Salthill, and one for men at the West pier." The last
effort of his pen was still pleading for the poor. It v;
letter to the Commissioners for the Improvement of Kings-
town, urging them to improve the dwellings of the poor of
that town.
He had personally visited many of the worst parts of it,
and found the cottages in want of sewerage and accommodations
necessary to cleanliness, health and decency. He
showed the Commissioners that they could make main
drains, and could compel the owners to make house drains
into these from the cottages, and even might obtain public
money for building cottages. The inspections were made
at various hours of the day and in the evening, and being
carried on in the face of a new visitation of cholera, his
family believed that he fell by disease caught
in the dis-
charge of his self-imposed public duty. While correcting
the proof sheets of this publication, he was seized with
illness, and carried from his study to his bed, and died in a
few hours. 1
But these publications of Mr. Haliday's, though they in-
dicate his public spirit and humanity, were only the pro-
ducts of the spare moments of his life.
His occupation as a merchant absorbed his day. He had his
counting house and his clerks to attend to. He frequented
1 The editing of this last work of
Mr. Haliday's was undertaken and
executed by Dr. Thomas M. Mad-
den. It is entitled, " A Statistical
Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition
of Kingstown, by the late Charles
Haliday, esq., M.B.I.A. Edited,
with some preliminary observations
on the connexion between the
sanitary defects of Kingstown and
the recent Epidemic Cholera, by
Dr. Thomas More Madden, M.R.I. A.
8vo., Dublin, pp. 33. John E.
Fowler, 1867.