Francis Guy postal directory of the province of Munster is an exceptionally important book. It is one of the few detailed directories for Munster from this period, and records over 140,000 names in 1,183 pages.
There is a section for each county, beginning with a history and description of the county, followed by administrative office holders, judiciary, religions and clerics, fairs, markets, banks, education, legal, medical, institutions, newspapers, poor law unions, county and city establishments. This is followed by a full postal directory for every village and town in the county. This directory is structured by profession, and is similar to a trades directory, except that it also includes a full directory of farmers in the locality. The list for each place also includes all administrative officials and institutions (schools, churches, etc.) for that area. Each name also gives an address and profession. This is followed by a full alphabetical directory for the county that lists name, profession and address for each person.
The county sections that include a city area (i.e. Cork, Limerick and Waterford) have parallel postal directories and alphabetical directories for those cities as well as the county. Each county section finishes with some statistics, and also includes a number of unique illustrations.
The following list gives the number of pages and names recorded for each county:
Clare: 102 pages, 12,000 names
Cork city and county: 508 pages, 60,000 names
Kerry: 122 pages, 12,000 names
Limerick city and county: 174 pages, 22,000 names
Tipperary: 164 pages, 20,000 names
Waterford city and county: 113 pages, 14,000 names
Containing high quality scanned images of the whole of the original book, this CD is searchable, and bookmarked for easy navigation. Pages can be enlarged and printed out if required.
