The teaching of bookkeeping in nineteenth-century Ireland

Peter Clarke

Accounting History Review, 2008, vol. 18, issue 1, 21-33

Abstract: A pioneering paper by O hOgartaigh, C. and O hOgartaigh, M. (2006) 'Sophisters, economists and calculators': pre-professional accounting education in eighteenth-century Ireland, Irish Accounting Review 13, no. 2: 63-74, suggests that the teaching of bookkeeping in hedge schools in Ireland during the eighteenth century is indicative of a pre-professional period of accounting education. The objective of this paper is to extend the time period and to investigate, using a combination of primary and secondary sources, the teaching of bookkeeping during the nineteenth century and primarily within the national schools that were established in 1831. This paper argues that a knowledge of bookkeeping was an important attribute for gaining employment and therefore an important source of social mobility for Irish Catholics during this period. Also, the knowledge of bookkeeping (together with a familiarity with the English language, on which this teaching was based) would have been a valuable resource for some of the five million people who emigrated to England and America during the nineteenth century.

Keywords: Ireland; history; accounting; bookkeeping; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09585200701824732 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:acbsfi:v:18:y:2008:i:1:p:21-33

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rabf21

DOI: 10.1080/09585200701824732

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting History Review is currently edited by Stephen Walker

More articles in Accounting History Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().