Thanks for your informed and insightful commentary. You raise some very valid points. I agree that there are many more questions than answers; history can be maddening.

I wish that there was more information available; perhaps some valiant soul will some day take the names of every man in the battalion and do research in parish records and such, but I'm afaid that most of these brave men will remain ghosts to us. I agree than economics was a prime motivation to enlistment, for the Inniskillings in particular and the army and navy in general. But with no data regarding the economic staus of these individuals, and very little for Irish society of the day, I think that the "Housing" data is a useful substitute.

The same goes for "religion". A maddening lack of hard data, but "place of birth" combined with "religions by county" gets as close a swe are going to get. But I agree, there are gaps; there may well have been instances of "anonymity", bias, atc, but I think that we would all agree that the 1/27th was predominattely Catholic in the ranks. But I think there were Protestants as well; I would guess that there were numerous Presbyterians from Ulster. (By the way, by "Ulster" I mean Antrim, Armagh, Cavan, Derry, Donegal, Down, and Fermanagh.)

Per your suggestion, I'll look through Houlding and Glover regarding recruitment. There is still a mountain of work to be done on the economc/social/economic aspects of military history. I had better not mention this to my wife and kids....they'll be afraid that Dad is going to lock himself in the university library again.

Best regards and thanks.......Mark