Ferguson’s Hillsborough Flight
The most immediate change came on 1 January, when the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908 began to operate in Ireland. For qualifying men and women aged seventy or over, it provided a non-contributory weekly payment from public funds. A person with yearly means of no more than £21 could receive the full five shillings a week; smaller payments were available up to an income of £31 10s. The sum was modest, and the threshold of seventy was high even by contemporary standards. Nonetheless, this was money paid as a legal entitlement rather than charity offered by a landlord, family, parish or Poor Law authority.