A Rare Sketch of a Dublin Street Poet
(Image courtesy of the National Library of Ireland)
The tenement poets of 19th century Dublin are elusive beings, more likely to be mentioned in petty court cases than to be memorialised in portraits. That’s one reason why I am excited to bring you my first Find of the Month: what I believe to be a drawing of the blind Dublin street poet, Joseph Sadler.
This sketch, entitled Vendor of the Freeman’s Journal, is attributed to William Sadler III, born c1808, son of the more famous Irish landscape painter, William Sadler II (c.1782–1839). It’s in the Prints and Drawings collection at the National Library of Ireland, and dated between 1868 and 1880. The word SADLER appears under the sketch, looking more like a title than an artist’s signature; none of William Sadler’s other works have such a signature. It may be that William was intrigued or amused to immortalise a street seller with the same surname as himself, or perhaps the attribution to William is based on that SADLER beneath the sketch.
My research has shown that Joseph Sadler was remembered more as a newspaper seller in his later years than as a balladeer. He was apparently able to tell different newspapers apart by the feel and quality of the paper, and in this way could deliver the correct newspaper to the correct house along Arran Quay in the early mornings[i]. The Freeman’s Journal, with its nationalist stance, is likely to have been a particular favourite of the poet’s. It published one of his sardonic songs, The Orange Repealers, on the Dublin election of 1870, where Sadler makes fun of the Protestant Home Rule candidate, Edward King-Harman, placing his candidacy amid a series of improbables:
“Hurrah me boys, we’re gettin’ repeal,
‘Twill soon be at our door, sir,
The praties never again will fail,
And we’ll never have any more poor, sir.”[ii]
Joe Sadler’s sectarian view of King-Harman undoubtedly reflected the opinions of the poor, Catholic Dubliners to whom he sold his ha’penny ballad slips. The song makes fun of wealthy Protestants who were campaigning for Home Rule in Ireland, that is, the restoration of the Dublin-based parliament which had been abolished by the 1801 Act of Union. Other verses lampoon the ‘Orangemen’ who sought reform, slyly suggesting they would soon be attending Mass and celebrating the rebel dead. The Freeman’s Journal printed the lyrics as part of a letter in which a correspondent complained about Sadler’s rough treatment at the hands of the police when he sang the song on a street corner in the Liberties of Dublin[iii].
If Sadler enjoyed the Freeman’s Journal, he despised the Irish Times, which he refers to another song as ‘the lieing TIMES’[iv]. It is poignant that despite decades of selling his opinionated ballads on the streets, several reminiscences refer to him as a newspaper vendor, and make no mention of his writings and performances. Indeed, his wife Catherine’s death certificate in March 1890 gives her profession as ‘News Dealer wife’[v]. When Joseph died nine months later, in December 1890, at the South Dublin Workhouse, he was registered as ‘Joseph Sadlier’ and described as a widower, aged 70, from Island Street, with no recorded profession[vi]. Island Street was in tenements at the time, the 1901 census shows that a single room per family was the norm on the street[vii]. The death of the man who is credited with the drawing of Joe, William Sadler III, is registered on February 29th 1889. He is described as aged 85 (putting his birth c1804 rather than c1808 as the National Library suggests) of 38 Rutland Street Upper, Dublin[viii]: two Sadlers, both artists in their way, who died a year apart but lived worlds apart in Victorian Dublin.