Hidden Dublin by Frank Hopkins

Author:Frank Hopkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978 1 85635 725 8
Publisher: Mercier Press

Damer died at an advanced age in 1720 and the following obituary appeared in Whalley’s Newsletter on 11 July of that year, which contradicted Swift’s view of him: ‘On Wednesday last Mr Joseph Deamer [sic] died at his house in Smithfield upwards of ninety years of age, with not above £340,000, and last night was interred in St Paul’s church in Oxmantown Green attended by a numerous train of gentlemen’s as well as by hackney coaches … I knew him upwards of fifty years, and though his fortune was all his own acquiring I believe that it was every penny got honestly. His purse was open to all he believed to be honest or where he thought his money secure …’

He had the reputation of being a miser but it emerged later that Damer had given away a great deal of money to deserving causes during his lifetime and funded several charities in the city. He was a member of the Unitarian Church and he funded a charity school attached to the Unitarian church on Stephen’s Green. This establishment was called the Damer School in his honour and it continued to receive funding from his estate until well into the twentieth century.

Damer also established a house of refuge at 27 Parnell Street for the destitute Protestant widows of St Mary’s parish. The refuge catered for twenty widows, housing them in their own rooms and providing them with a weekly allowance of food, fuel and a small amount of spending money.

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