How many people lived in the town of Ballina County Mayo Ireland in 1823?

JudyStreet

How many people lived in the town of Ballina County Mayo Ireland in 1823?

Áine Ní Donnghaile

Although the 19th-century censuses have been lost, the statistics were extracted before the censuses were destroyed, and there are books with very precise details of population by location. There are ebooks online.

LegacyUser

I can't find an answer for 1823, but I found an estimate for a few years later.

 

 

"The population of Ballina at the beginning of the Great Famine has been estimated at about 7,000 and the workhouse which was built to accommodate 1,200 - 1,400 people was vastly overcrowded during the famine years." from:

https://www.mayo-ireland.ie/en/towns-villages/ballina/ballina-historical-tour.html

 

According to Wikipedia, "The Great Famine or the Great Hunger, was a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1849. "

 

Is this a close enough time period to help you with your question about population?

 

John Curran

The population of Ireland is an interesting thing to look at. Ireland is one of the few countries in the world that has seen major reduction in population over time, principally due to the Irish Famine in the middle of the 1800's when a large proportion of the population starved to death, and many others emigrated to England, Australia and United States.

 

Wiki gives the population of County Mayo over the years from 1801 to 2016 as shown below. The population of Mayo today at around 130,500 is only one third of what it was in the 1840's then it peaked at around 388,900.

 

Ballina is the second largest town in County Mayo. Its population today is around 10,200, which is about 7.82% of the overall population of County Mayo. If we assume that the population of Ballina was also at 7.82% of the population of Mayo in 1823, which I would admit is a pretty broad assumption, that would suggest that Ballina, in 1823, could have a population of around 22,900 people.

 

Mayo Historical Population*

Year Pop.

1801 225,799 

1811 231,798 

1813 267,668 

1816 251,334 

1821 293,112 

1831 366,328 

1841 388,887 

1851 274,499 

1861 254,796 

1871 246,030 

1881 245,212 

1891 219,034 

1901 199,166 

1911 192,177 

1926 172,690 

1936 161,349 

1946 148,120 

1951 141,867 

1956 133,052 

1961 123,330 

1966 115,547 

1971 109,525 

1979 114,019 

1981 114,766 

1986 115,184 

1991 110,713 

1996 111,524 

2002 117,446 

2006 123,839 

2011 130,638 

2016 130,507 

 

*Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Mayo#Demographics

 

JudyStreet

Thanks for the info/////////