Page 64 - Simply Vegetables Autumn 2020

Irish Section
The RDS Winter Show, Dublin 1909
For this edition of the magazine I decided to do some research on the history of exhibiting vegetables at shows in Ireland. This proved to be a much more difficult task than I had anticipated. Exhibiting vegetables as part of Agricultural shows has a long history in this country dating back over 200 years and even information about individual shows could fill a book.
Due to limitations on travel and time available I focused in on one show the now defunct RDS (Royal Dublin Society) Winter Show in Ballsbridge Dublin. For this article I researched the Show Catalogue
of the RDS Winter Show held from 8th to 10th December 1909, it would be of some interest to the general reader as to how while things have changed other aspects of it are still the same today.
The show catalogue runs to over one hundred and twenty pages. It includes details of Classes of everything from Cattle to Eggs. The closing date for entries is 1st November. Grain and Vegetables were exhibited in the still extant Central Hall,
the present day venue for events like the annual BT Young Scientists and Technology exhibition. There are pages of very detailed rules and regulations; these included some surprising ones. Rule 32 states ‘Smoking
in the halls is strictly prohibited’ which I wouldn’t have expected to see a hundred years ago.
The Vegetable classes are judged on the first day, the judges are named as J.Pimlot, Dept of Agriculture Dublin and Frank Robertson with Stewards Joseph O’Reilly and C.S. Dodd, who were to be recognised by their red badges, with a blue border. Rosette’s were 1st Red, 2nd Blue, 3rd Yellow and 4th Green.
There are only a dozen classes for vegetables. The highest amount of entries is Class 62 - Swede Turnips there are
72 entries in this class alone. Eleven of
the Exhibitors have titles, e.g. The Earl of Wicklow, Duke of Leinster; the list includes just two women. One interesting name
on the list is Brother Jarlath Edwards, Mountbellew Agricultural College, which
is still up and running. The first prize in
this class is £1. A rough approximation
of the value of £1 in today’s money is approximately £70 or €75, but its buying
power at that time would have been much greater as labourers wages in Dublin around that time were only about 20 shillings a week.
Class 67 is for
‘Carrots – White or
Yellow Belgian, 6
roots’. The next class,
No. 68 is for ‘Red Carrots’. The prize money for this class is considerably lower First 15 shillings (75p), second 10s, third
5 s and 4th 3s. 3 shillings isn’t bad when put against the average weekly wage for
a female shop assistant in drapery at the time, about 7 shillings a week. This class has the smallest entry, just five exhibitors. The competitors are geographically well spread out across the whole island: Mrs Dring, Co. Cork, Thos Davidson, Wexford, Patrick Lyons Clare, Sir R. Palmer, Rush Co. Dublin and A. Warnock, Tyrone.
There is a separate potato section which features six classes, with another separate set of rules, exhibits can be disqualified if the variety is the wrong shape or in the wrong category, as well as the competitors name and address the variety of the exhibit is also listed. There are 12 tubers per entry.
Class 70. Potatoes , Coloured, Round or Oval Shape, Early or Mid- Season Variety features varieties such as Red Champion, Irish Queen, North Pole and Irish Rose (thought to be similar to Rooster), with competitors from Kildare, Limerick, Cavan, Wexford and one Hon Miss Katherine Plunkett Ballymascanlon, Dundalk, Co. Louth,(1820-1832) a member of the Irish aristocracy who later featured in the early editions of the Guinness Book of Records, as the oldest human ever who’s age could be verified by written records. She was already aged 89 in 1909, so even
100 years ago there were competitors of very great ages.
Class 74 has
21 varieties
listed that
sound more
like a list of
racehorses were
including
Scotch Langworthy, Conquering Hero, The Factor and Highlander. Mr JM Tweedie exhibits Golden Wonder, which is still popular. A Colonel Vincent from Castleconnell, Co. Limerick, exhibited a variety called Cigarettes!
The RDS Winter Show back then was very much associated with the upper classes and didn’t continue after the 1914-18 Great War. The Livestock and Machinery only Spring Show lasted until 1992 and the RDS Horse Show continues (although it’s cancelled
this year for the first time since 1940). The RDS continues to run an allotments awards scheme, which has been won by our own John Warren.
Entries at the RDS Winter Show of a hundred years ago were generally from Upper class landowners coming up from the country. The following year 1910 saw the establishment in Dublin of the Vacant Lands Cultivation Society by a group of ten people including Alfie Byrne MP at Westminster
for Dublin Harbour ( later nine times Lord Mayor of Dublin and TD for Dublin North
East) and Sarah Harrison (the first female member of Dublin
Corporation. The society sought land in or close
to the city to rent out in plots to the working class of
Dublin. By 1916 allotments
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