The school opened as an all boys school on 17 October 1864, with 464 students pupils enrolled and numbers continued to soar. Research suggests that there were five ‘school rooms’ in total. Today they are known as classrooms. Records suggest that pupils were allocated as follows: [15]

School Room 1, age range 6 to 14: 135

School Room 3, age range 6 to 15: 103

School Room 4, age range 6 to 14: 130

School Room 5, age range 7 to 15: 86

Roll Records from the late 1800s

Roll Records from the mid 1920s [15]

The allocation process of the pupils in each school room would have been determined by ability rather than age, unlike present day. Pupils from the surrounding area of Westland Row would have been enrolled exclusively, maintaining the Edmund Rice philosophy of pertaining to the poorer community, and school registers indicate that Brothers continued to do so (see photograph). But as the city itself developed, ease of access to the city and ‘The Row’ developed also. The net was cast wider with the introduction of the Electric Tram Service in 1898 which allowed pupils to come from as far as Donnybrook and Blackrock. Up to the 1950s and 1960s, the net was cast even further afield as far as Drogheda and Gorey. [15]