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were also there, and there is a familiar ring about the constant advertisements for domestic servants, who need not apply unless they can furnish reliable “characters”.

      This, and much more, went to make up the bi-weekly issues of the News-Letter and through it all ran the serious purpose of Francis Joy and his sons – the provision of reliable information and the dissemination of the new and liberal ideas in political thought. So, when in 1775 the American colonies embarked on what was to be their momentous struggle for freedom, the proprietors were ready to advocate their cause “with the most undaunted zeal”6 to the great annoyance of their contemporary the Dublin Mercury which burst into the following scurrilous verse:

      On the accounts published in the Belfast Journal, relative to the present state of America.

      The puritan-Journal, Impress’d at Belfast,

      Exhibits the printer’s complexion and cast:

      Whose partial accounts of each public transaction Proclaim him the infamous tool of a faction.

      From worthy old Faulkner [Faulkner’s Journal, Dublin], to give him his due,

      Nought issues, but what is authentic and true;

      Each foreign report and domestic relation

      Approv’d and admitted on good information.

      But … [Joy] the low scribe of a party quite frantic

      With zeal for their brethern across the Atlantic

      Discreetly and piously chuses to tell

      No tidings, but such as come posting from hell.

      Thence furnished with news, it is easy to guess,

      Why nothing but falsehoods proceed from his press;

      Of which he is sure to have constant supplies,

      Who still corresponds with the father of lies.7

      That the News-Letter was voicing the growing opinion in the town is evident from the report of a meeting held on Nov. 1775,

      when a motion was made and seconded (and passed unanimously) that an humble address be presented to His Majesty from the merchants, traders, and other principal inhabitants of the town of Belfast, stating their grievances and apprehension resulting from the present unnatural state of things: their concern, as members of the British empire, for its present disturbed and endangered state: their feelings, as men, for the horrors of civil war now in America: their hopes in the royal mercy for a speedy termination of these: and their prayers for a restoration of the old constitutional system [a reference to the Massachusetts Government Act].8

      Henry Joy was one of the 240 signatories to this address.

      There were many in Belfast who appreciated the deep issues involved, and as the American struggle continued and political independence was finally achieved, the effect on the minds of the rising mercantile class was very great.

      Ulster sympathy in the American struggle was aroused, in part by commercial interests. Her people had already suffered from the self-centred policies that Britain was now inflicting on the colony, and, furthermore, the extensive linen business that Ulster had developed with the eastern seaboard of America was now threatened with dislocation and possible ruin.

      But alongside of these commercial ties the people of the North of Ireland had a strong human connection with N. America. Throughout the 18th century as England, in her own interests, successively destroyed the Irish woollen, silk and glass industries, which, in point of fact, were almost exclusively in the hands of English and Scottish settlers, emigration had been continuous and thousands of workers from Ireland were forced to find new homes in America.

      Moreover, as the century wore on large sections of the employing classes were forced, by continued economic and financial distress, to leave the country. A report published by the Belfast News-Letter in 1773 deplores this increasing emigration, stating that in the previous two years over 17,000 persons had departed, and estimates that “the North of Ireland has in the last five or six years been drained of one fourth of its trading cash and the like proportion of the manufacturing people. Where the evil will end remains only in the womb of time to determine.”9

      Such disruption of industry resulted in continuous suffering amongst the poor in town and country. Lack of work in the country districts – and practically all the spinning and weaving was done in rural areas – meant a ceaseless drift of labourers into the town in search of employment, and beggars and destitute people roamed the streets of Belfast. Early in the century provision had been made by act of Parliament for the erection of work houses from public funds in Dublin and Cork, but else-where in Ireland the care of the poor, entirely dependent on voluntary initiative, was extremely haphazard.

      In 1752 steps had been taken by the Sovereign and leading citizens of Belfast to form the Belfast Charitable Society and to inaugurate a fund to build “a poor House and Hospital and a new Church in or near the town of Belfast,”10 an ambitious scheme for the still small community. Lotteries, then as now hailed as a means of producing quick money, were found in this instance to have disappointing results, indeed to have landed the promoters in serious financial complications, partly owing to the skilful manipulation of the lottery market by Dr. Mosse who was at that moment building the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin. Not until 1767 were the members of the Society in a position to set out their plans and to request Lord Donegall, to whom all the town belonged, to make over to them the site already promised “on the North West side of the road leading to Carrickfergus … the most convenient place for erecting the intended Buildings, and where they will be most ornamental to the Town of Belfast.”11 By now the care of the destitute was so urgent that the idea of a hospital and church had been abandoned.

      Henry and Robert Joy were leading members of the Charitable Society from its early days. Henry’s name is constantly found in connection with the raising of funds – during one gloomy period he was asked to send a messenger every morning and evening to wait upon certain subscribers until outstanding sums were produced – and, when the time came, the lease from Lord Donegall was made out in his name as representing the Society. Later he was appointed one of the “Key Carriers” entrusted with the three keys necessary to open the Society’s chest, the Board directing that the chest itself should be kept in his house “in the small closet adjoining his dining room.”12 The firm of H. & R. Joy undertook the printing and distribution of lottery tickets.13

      Meanwhile Robert worked in other directions. Plans of poorhouses and infirmaries were sought from Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow but failed to give satisfaction. Robert, as he pondered on the requirements of the new institution, set about drawing a plan for himself, though, with the reticence of an amateur, he would not produce it to the committee. Nevertheless some members, seeing it privately, were much impressed. It was then decided that an “Architect of Eminence” should be consulted, and “resolved that Mr. Robt. Joy be requested to take with him to Dublin the three plans now delivered in, & such other drawings as are now in his possession, and lay the same before Mr. Cooley, for his examination, with directions to choose out of those four the Plan which he shall most approve of.”14

      Thomas Cooley, then at the height of his fame, received Mr. Joy, studied the plans and amended one of them – at a cost to the Society of six guineas. But doubts persisted and were finally resolved by the unanimous adoption of Robert Joy’s own drawing. We may perhaps regret that a great master of Irish Georgian architecture was not permitted to leave his mark on this northern town, and that his design for the Poorhouse has long since passed into oblivion; but as we survey Robert Joy’s simple but beautiful building, the front of which remains exactly as he conceived it, we stand amazed at the extraordinary ability, versatility and public-spirited endeavour of its originator. In the words of David Boyd, later a schoolmaster in the institution,

      All labour’d freely in the bless’d employ,

      But the most active Mr. Robert Joy;

      He took to Dublin with th’ utmost respect,

      The various plans, [that] the skilled Architect

      Might

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