Dance Hall Act Feb 1935

  “The Public Dance Halls Act”
   - an article from Edwina Gukian, dated 19 Feb 2025
 

  Translation of “An Diabla Sans Halla Damhsa”:

      "The Devil in the Dance Hall"
 

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On this day 90 years ago a way of life changed for the people of Ireland, "The Public Dance Halls Act" was signed into law on the 19 February 1935.  
 
This meant that you could no longer gather people together to dance without - a dance license, ie you could no longer organise house dances, or crossroads dances, or dances in local halls, ie there could no longer be a form of public dancing whatsoever unless you applied for a license, and paid the fee AND were approved by a judge. If you did not comply, you were prosecuted; people in authority were entitled to oppose, which usually meant the Gardaí and the parish priest.
 
"The Irish" are an exceptionally social race, we live for the weekend, to come together to drink, dance, play music, and connect. The Irish of the early 1900s were no different, this act had serious implications on Irish society. 
 
Houses, halls and rural crossroads became heavily monitored by church and state for any illegal dancing.  Homes were raided, musicians’ instruments thrown into the fire, dance platforms driven over and families names blackened from the pulpit.

Thankfully, it wasn’t all doom and gloom, as “the people” still found ways to have secret house dances and hired look-out boys to watch the roads when the dances were on. My grandad told me that he was playing at a house dance outside Boyle one night, the look-out boy came racing in to say the priest was on the way, when he burst in the door everyone had the instruments up in the loft and were all on their knees saying the rosary!
 
The 1935 Dance Hall Act forced dancing into a controlled environment under the watchful eye of state and church where they ensured lots of room was left between dancing couples’ bodies – ie space “for the holy spirit” to pass.  "Traditional Irish céilí dances" were solely allowed – definitely not any “disrespectful” foreign dances “Set dancing” being one of those foreign dances …
 
The roaring ‘20s jazz music and dance scene in New York made its way to Ireland’s dance halls by the 1930s and were fairly embraced.  Foxtrot, swing, shim sham, lindy hop… and with that, dance halls soon became the clerical obsession. They claimed degenerate dance halls were the curse and ruin of the country.  All-night dances were filled with evil, temptation and sin. People who arrived to these dances from outside the parish in motor cars were scoundrels of the lowest type. Apparently “the devil himself" appeared in several dance halls across the country, sweeping women off their feet with devilish charm and foreign footwork. 
 
Women attending unlicensed dance halls and illegal dances underwent extreme public scrutiny for their presumed immodest dress, public smoking, how they danced and who they socialised with at these unsupervised events. Modern women were widely believed to be a threat in public spaces. The public shaming was not confined to the Catholic church but formed a wider culture of complaint from all classes of society and gender.
 
Only 9 days after the 1935 Dance Hall Act became law, contraception was made illegal under the Criminal Law Amendment Act. Both the Dance Hall Act and contraception ban came from the same Carrigan Report recommendations. 
 
The 1935 Dance Hall Act is still an active law in Ireland today. 

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​Related article on Jimmy Gralton

​A Leitrim man born in 1886, whose life became one of the most controversial stories in 20th-century Ireland, he became the only Irish-born citizen ever to be deported from Ireland.

He grew up in Effrinagh, emigrated to America twice, and returned home in the early 1930s with big ideas about community, education, and freedom. On his own land he built the Pearse–Connolly Hall, a tin hall where locals could dance, learn, debate politics, take classes, play music—basically, a place where working people finally had a space that was theirs, outside the control of Church or State. 

​That freedom didn’t sit easily with the conservative forces of the time.  The hall had an attempted bombing, shots fired through the window when a dance was on, it was condemned from the pulpit along with all that entered it, and eventually it was attacked and burned to the ground on Christmas Eve 1932. 

Gralton himself was labelled a radical, a communist, a danger, “an undesirable alien”. In 1933, without ever being charged with a crime, he became the only Irish-born citizen ever deported from Ireland. He was put on a ship back to America and never allowed home again. To this day, no official records survive explaining the true legal basis for his deportation.

To many, Jimmy Gralton represents resistance, community spirit, and the working-class people’s fight for cultural and social freedom. His hall may be gone, but the story of the man who built it, the people who stood with him and all they believed in still resonates in the music, dance and community of Effrinagh today.


Edwina's creation of "The Gralton Big Band" is a salute to this Leitrim legend.

Featuring: Cathy Jordan • Ryan Molloy • Stephen Doherty • David Doocey • Matthew Berrill • Jim Higgins • Conor Caldwell • Brona Graham • Ben Castle 


Edwina's project "The Devil in the Dancehall" was been funding by the Arts Council of Ireland.

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