The Landlords and the Government--Public Meetings--Reproductive
Employment demanded for the People--The "Labouchere"
Letter--Presentments under it--Loans asked to construct
Railways--All who received incomes from land should be
taxed--Deputation from the Royal Agricultural Society to the Lord
Lieutenant--They ask reproductive employment--Lord Bessborough
answers cautiously--The Prime Minister writes to the Duke of
Leinster on the subject--Views expressed--Defence of his Irish
Famine policy--Severe on the Landlords--Unsound principles laid down
by him--Corn in the haggards--Mary Driscoll's little stack of
barley--Second Deputation from the Royal Agricultural Society to the
Lord Lieutenant--Its object--Request not granted--The Society
lectured on the duties of its Members--Real meaning of the
answer--Progress of the Famine--Deaths from starvation--O'Brien's
Bridge--Rev. Dr. Vaughan--Slowness of the Board of Works--State of
Tuam--Inquest on Denis M'Kennedy--Testimony of his Wife--A
Fortnight's Wages due to him--Received only half-a-crown in three
weeks--Evidence of the Steward of the Works; of Rev. Mr. Webb; of
Dr. Donovan--Remarks of Rev. Mr. Townsend--Verdict--The _Times_ on
the duties of landlords--Landlords denounce the Government and the
Board of Works--Mr. Fitzgerald on the Board and on the
farmers--Meeting at Bandon--Lord Bernard--Inquest on Jeremiah
Hegarty--The Landlord's "cross" on the barley--Mary Driscoll's
evidence; her husband's--_Post mortem_ examination by Dr.
Donovan--The Parish Priest of Swinford--Evictions--The _Morning
Chronicle_ on them--Spread and Increase of Famine--The question of
providing coffins--Deaths at Skibbereen--Extent of the Famine in
1846--Deaths in Mayo--Cases--Edward M'Hale--Skibbereen--The diary of
a day--Swelling of the extremities--Burning beds for fuel--Mr.
Cummins's account of Skibbereen--Killarney Relief Committee--Father
O'Connor's Statement--Christmas Eve!--A Visit to Skibbereen twenty
years after the great Famine.
As events progressed, the landlords of Ireland appeared to grow more and
more alarmed, not so much for the people as for themselves; and they
held meetings and passed resolutions, censuring the Government for the
mode which it had chosen of counteracting the Famine. The Government
and its organs returned the compliment by pointing out the inaction and
obstructive policy of the landlords.
At those meetings it was invariably one of the resolutions, that labour
should be employed upon productive works. The common-sense principle
contained in this expression of opinion could not be denied: it was,
indeed, the general opinion of the country; still every one felt that it
would require time to develop such works--the starving millions must be
fed, or at least the attempt must be made to feed them; they could not
wait for tedious preliminaries, and more tedious surveys, and no other
means existed to supply their daily food, but those afforded by the
Labour-rate Act.[174] But very early in the business, as soon as a
famine seemed imminent, it was urged by men of weight and character,
that reproductive works should and could be found for the people. Yes;
and it was a fatal error--it was worse than an error, it was a crime,
not to have adopted, at the earliest moment, the principle of
reproductive employment. At length the Government felt the force of this
logic, and did, although late, make an attempt to lessen the effects of
their own great blunder. On the 5th of October, the "Labouchere letter"
came out, authorizing reproductive works, the very thing the landlords
were agitating for; now that their agitation was successful, what did
they do? Nothing, or next to nothing, except that they opened a new
cause of disagreement with the Government about boundaries. In the
Chief Secretary's letter the Government followed the subdivisions of
electoral districts, as they had been doing before; the landlords
insisted on townland boundaries, and would not be content with--would
not act under--any other. Their opponents said this was merely to cause
delay; some even asserted it was an attempt to turn the whole system of
public works to their own private advantage; a contrivance of the
landlords, they said, to enjoy just so many jobs unmolested. The request
about the change of boundaries was not granted; and so the Labouchere
letter was not acted upon to the extent which it ought to have been. The
entire amount presented under the letter was £380,607, of which
presentments were acted on to the gross amount of £239,476. The sum
actually expended was about £180,000; and the largest number of persons
at any time employed was 26,961, which was in the month of May,
1847.[175]
Another demand which the landlords put in the shape of a resolution was,
that the Government should advance loans for the construction of
railways in Ireland. This the Government also refused, or rather, they
insisted on conditions that amounted to a refusal. They said proper
security could not be had for the advancement of the money; they
therefore resolved not to make any advances to Irish Railways, except in
the ordinary way, namely, by application to the Exchequer Loan
Commissioners, when fifty per cent of the subscribed capital would be
paid up. Could they not have made railways themselves, as they were
afterwards almost compelled to do by Lord George Bentinck, in which case
they would have had something for their money?
The landlords also made a demand which must be regarded as a fair one:
it was that all who received incomes from the land should be taxed for
the relief of the people. This was pointed at absentees, but still more
at mortgagees.
The Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland, a society mainly
representing landlord and aristocratic views, of which the Duke of
Leinster was president, took up, as became it, the great labour question
of the moment. A deputation from that body waited on the Lord
Lieutenant, on the 25th of September, and laid its views before his
Excellency. The members of the deputation open the interview at the
Viceregal Lodge by enunciating the good and sound principle, "that it is
the clear and imperative duty of the possessors of property in Ireland,
to avert from their poor fellow-countrymen the miseries of famine; and
that they, therefore, willingly acquiesce in the imposition upon them of
any amount of taxation necessary for that purpose." They go on to say,
that as a very large sum must be raised on the security of Irish
property, and expended upon labour, during the continuance of the
distress occasioned by the failure of the potato crop, the expenditure
of this sum upon unproductive works will increase the disproportion
already existing between labour and capital in the country; which
disproportion they look on as the main cause of the want of employment
for the people, and of the miserable wages they are sustained by.
Reproductive work, they continue, is the only work on which the labour
of the population ought to be employed, and plenty of such work was to
be found in every part of the country. It would improve the soil, and
return the ratepayers a large interest for the capital expended. The
Board of Works, they suggest, might be empowered to postpone the public
works ordered by the presentment sessions, whenever they saw fit, and
also to suspend the portion of money voted for that purpose on any
townland, and have it applied to the carrying out of reproductive works,
according to the requisition of the owners and ratepayers of such
townland; such works, in every case, to be approved of by at least
three-fourths of the ratepayers.
Lord Bessborough gave a short, and, of course, a cautious answer to the
deputation, saying that he would give his best consideration to the
proposal; consult the Government, and in a few days let them know the
result. The "Labouchere Letter," authorizing reproductive works, was the
response to this memorial of the Royal Agricultural Society. But it
received another answer, and that from the Prime Minister himself. The
question of productive and non-productive labour was so important, that,
some time after the publication of the Labouchere Letter, Lord John
Russell discussed it, in a communication addressed by him to the Duke of
Leinster, as president of the Royal Agricultural Society.
After a passing allusion to the deputation that waited on the Lord
Lieutenant, he at once takes the landlords to task. "It had been our
hope and expectation," he says, "that landed proprietors would have
commenced works of drainage and other improvements, on their own
account: thus employing the people on their own estates, and rendering
the land more productive for the future. The Act, [the Labour-rate Act,]
however, was put in operation in the baronies in a spirit the reverse of
that which I have described ... When the case was brought before the
Government by the Lord Lieutenant, we lamented the wrong direction in
which the Act had been turned; but admitting the necessity of the case,
and anxious to obtain the willing co-operation of the landlords, we
authorized the Lord Lieutenant to deviate from the letter of the law,
and gave our sanction for advances for useful and profitable works of a
private nature. But after having incurred the responsibility, I am sorry
to see that, in several parts of Ireland, calls are made upon the
Government, to undertake and perform tasks which are beyond their power,
and apart from the duties of Government." The political-economy Premier
then enunciates this principle: "Any attempt to feed one class of the
people of the United Kingdom by the Government, would, if successful,
starve another part--would feed the producers of potatoes, which had
failed, by starving the producers of wheat, barley, and oats, which had
not failed." He proceeds: "That which is not possible by a Government is
possible by individual and social exertions. Everyone who travels
through Ireland observes the large stacks of corn, which are the produce
of the late harvest. There is nothing to prevent the purchase of grain
by proprietors or committees, and the disposal of these supplies in
shops furnished on purpose with flour at a fair price, with a moderate
profit. This has been done, I am assured, in parts of the Highlands of
Scotland, where the failure of the potatoes has been as great and as
severe a calamity as it has been in Ireland.[176] There is, no doubt,
some inconvenience attending even these modes of interference with the
market price of food; but the good over-balances the evil. Local
committees or agents of landowners can ascertain the pressure of
distress, measure the wants of a district, and prevent waste and
misapplication. Besides, the general effect is to bring men together,
and induce them to exert their energy in a social effort directed to one
spot; whereas the interference of the State deadens private energy,
prevents forethought--and after superseding all other exertion, finds
itself, at last, unequal to the gigantic task it has undertaken."
Towards the end of his letter, the First Minister gives his views on
another point or two. "One thing," he writes, "is certain--in order to
enable Ireland to maintain her population, her agriculture must be
greatly improved. Cattle, corn, poultry, pigs, eggs, butter, and salt
provisions have been, and will probably continue to be, her chief
articles of export. But beyond the food exchanged for clothing and
colonial products, she will require, in future, a large supply of food
of her own growth and produce, which the labourer should be able to buy
with his wages."
There can be little doubt but the Premier intended this letter as a
defence of his Irish-famine policy. As such it is not very conclusive.
It is quite true to say, that the landlords should have exerted
themselves far more than they did, to employ the people in improving
their estates, by draining, subsoiling, and reclamation; which works
were sure to be remunerative, and at no distant time. But had they done
all this, Lord John Russell could take no credit to himself for it,
having done nothing to induce or compel them to do so. When he says he
expected it, he shows great ignorance or forgetfulness. The Irish
landlords, as a class, were not improvers of their properties before the
Famine;--how could he expect them to become so at such a crisis, when
many of them feared, with reason, that both themselves and the people
would be swallowed up in one common ruin? Besides, most of the wealthy
proprietors were Englishmen or absentees, who, with few exceptions,
never saw their tenants; took no friendly interest in them, but left
them in the hands of agents, who were prized by their employers in
proportion to their punctuality in sending the half-yearly remittances,
no questions being asked as to the means by which they were
obtained.[177] How could the Prime Minister pretend to think that such
men would rush into the midst of a famine-stricken people, to relieve,
employ, and improve them? He knew, or ought to have known, they would do
no such thing, except on compulsion, and there was no compulsion in the
case; he being, he said, for "willing co-operation" only. His government
has certainly a right to be credited with the praiseworthy attempt it
made to turn the labour of the Irish people to profitable work, but it
came too late for immediate practical purposes. Planning, surveying, and
laying out improvements take much time. The principle contained in the
"Labouchere Letter" should have been embodied in an Act of Parliament,
and reclamation of waste lands made compulsory, as had been advocated by
many. The publication of that letter was, no doubt, the confession of a
previous error, but it was also a concession to a present demand, and
with active hearty co-operation it could be still turned to great
advantage. Lord John is right in blaming the landlords for not making
use of the powers conferred by it. They, above all others, called the
loudest for reproductive employment, but when it was sanctioned, they
raised new difficulties about boundaries and other matters, which looked
very like a determination not to carry into practical effect the
permission granted, it may be fairly said, at their own request.
When Lord John says, that "any attempt to feed one class of people of
the United Kingdom by the Government, would, if successful, starve
another part," he is rather puzzling. One is tempted to think that he
originally wrote--"Any attempt to feed one class of people of the United
Kingdom _at the expense of another class_, would, if successful, starve
the latter," and that by some mistake of the writer or printer, the
words in italics were omitted. As the sentence stands in his letter, it
is strangely inexact. 1. In case one portion of the people had raised
more food than was required for their own wants--a most common case,
they would not surely starve by the fact of the Government buying their
surplus for another portion who were starving--no, but they would thank
the Government very much for buying it. There would be no danger of
their finding fault with the quality of their customer, provided they
got their price. 2. What are Governments for, if not for the good of the
people?--and the Government that sees millions of its people dying of
starvation, with none others to help them, neglect the very first duty
of a Government--the _salus populi_--unless they make all the efforts in
their power to relieve and save them. 3. Besides, to feed one part of
the people--the starving Irish people--is just the thing Lord John's
Government did attempt to do, although badly. There is, moreover, a
fallacy in calling the Irish people, in every instance, a class of
people of the United Kingdom, for they have often been, and still are,
treated as a distinct and separate nation, or class of people. In such a
case it is assumed that our interests and those of England and Scotland
are identical, whereas they are no such thing. We used to be legislated
for separately, and in many instances we are so legislated for to-day,
which need not be the case if Lord Russell's assumption were true.
Again: England is a great manufacturing country, whilst Ireland has no
manufactures; from the nature of things the interests of two such
peoples could not be identical, and yet Lord John Russell and many
others talk and write about Ireland as a portion of the people of the
United Kingdom, in the sense that we are partakers of the great material
prosperity that manufactures have brought to England, which is supposing
that a fair proportion of the manufactures of the United Kingdom are
established and flourishing in Ireland: but so far from this being the
case,--so far from Lord John's political ancestors having supposed the
interests of England and Ireland to be identical, they never ceased,
until by a code of unjust and tyrannical commercial laws, they destroyed
all the manufactures we had, in order, as they avowed, to encourage the
same manufactures in England. What position did we then occupy as a
class of people of the United Kingdom? Where were Lord John's wonderful
free trade principles then? The time had not come for them. No; but when
his countrymen had monopolized our manufactures by shameful
prohibitions; when England had become supreme as a manufacturing nation,
and when she wanted cheap bread for her artizans and markets for her
wares, then arose the anti-Cornlaw League; then, but not till then, did
Free Trade become the only saving gospel with enlightened English
politicians.
Lord John speaks of the corn in the haggards of Ireland. There was, I
believe, much corn in some of them, at the time he addressed his letter
to the Duke of Leinster. Why did not the Government buy it, instead of
sending to America and Malta for Indian corn and bad wheat? Had his
lordship ascertained, before he wrote, how many of the stacks in Irish
haggards _had the landlord's cross upon them for the rent_, like poor
Mary Driscoll's little stack of barley at Skibbereen? _It stood in her
haggard_ while her father, who resided with her, died of starvation in a
neighbouring ditch![178]
About the middle of November, the Royal Agricultural Society again
approached the Queen's representative in Ireland by memorial. It was not
this time for leave to commence reproductive works,--that had been
already granted; they came now to prove that reproductive works could
_not_ be undertaken under the provisions of Mr. Secretary Labouchere's
letter. They assure his Excellency that the letter gave them much
satisfaction; that, on its appearance, they directed their immediate
attention to the introduction of reproductive works in their respective
districts; but on account of one or more of the reasons they were about
to lay before him, their opinion was, that, in the majority of cases, it
was "impossible" to carry out his Excellency's views in the manner
required by the Letter: 1. Because it was scarcely possible to find
works in any electoral division of such universal benefit as would
render them profitable or reproductive to all owners and occupiers in
such divisions.[179] 2. Because by the terms of the letter, _drainage
in connection with subsoiling_ appeared to be the only work of a private
character allowed as a substitute for public works, whereas, in many
districts, this class of work was not required, whilst others, such as
clearing, fencing, and making farm roads, were. 3. Because, in case of
works, the cost of which was to be made an exclusive charge on the lands
to be improved, as specified in the letter, it was necessary for the
just operation of the system, that each proprietor should undertake his
own portion of the sum to which the electoral division would be
assessed, and unanimity, so essential on this point, was seldom
attainable. For instance, townlands were chiefly in the hands of
separate proprietors, of whom many were absentees, whose consent it
would be almost impossible to obtain; others were lunatics, infants,
tenants for life, in which cases impediments existed to the obtaining of
the required guarantee; others again were embarrassed; some, too, might
prefer the work on the public roads to private works, and their
opposition could counteract the wishes of the majority. 4. In practice
it could not be expected, that a proprietor would submit both to the
direct charge incurred for drainage or other improvement of his
property, and likewise to that proportion of the general rate, which
would be cast upon him by the refusal of other proprietors to undertake
their own portion. Such a state of things would not only involve the
enterprising proprietor in a double expense, but would, in precisely the
same proportion, relieve his negligent neighbours from their allotted
share of the burthen.
The memorialists, therefore, prayed that each proprietor, or combination
of two or more proprietors, who might be willing to charge their
proportion of the rate for employing the poor upon any particular land
to be improved thereby, should be relieved to that extent, from the
payment of rate, and that the works so to be undertaken should not be
confined to drainage or subsoiling, but might include all works of a
productive nature, suited to the wants of the locality for which they
were proposed, provided only, that such works should meet the
approbation of the Board of Works.
This carefully prepared memorial was met by a refusal, the reasons given
for which do not seem very cogent; the real reason, in all probability,
not having been directly given at all; the impossibility of supervising
townland improvements, with such care as to avoid the malversation and
misapplication of funds, having, it is reasonable to suppose, great
influence on the decision of the Government. The reasons given by Lord
Bessborough for the refusal were: 1. That he saw great practical
difficulties would be attendant on any attempt to carry the
townland-boundary plan into execution; and--2. That he also believed it
would be inconsistent with the primary object of the Poor Employment
Act, which, he said, was meant to meet, as far as possible, the present
exigency of the season, by providing sustenance for the destitute,
through the means of labour, in the most available manner of which the
circumstances of the case would admit. In giving the option of
reproductive work, his Excellency said he had taken upon himself "a
responsibility;" but that the option was conceded with as little
departure as possible from the spirit of the measures sanctioned by
Parliament; whereas the adoption of the townland, instead of the
electoral division, would, in many cases, lead to the greatest
expenditure, where the amount of destitution was least. Perhaps his
Excellency gave his real reason, when he concluded with something
stronger than a hint to the Royal Agricultural Society, which comprised,
as he said, the leading gentry of the country. He calls upon them to
discharge their duties in their various localities, and to avoid or
prevent the misapplication of the funds given for the relief of the
really destitute. He cannot, he says, forego the opportunity of
expressing an earnest hope that they will, in their various relief
committees, lend their aid to the Government in resisting a practice
which, he has reason to fear, has very extensively prevailed--namely,
"that of allowing persons, who are by no means in a destitute condition,
to be employed upon the public works, thus depriving the really
distressed of the benefit which was intended for them, as well as
withdrawing from the ordinary cultivation of the soil the labour which
was essential to the future subsistence of the people."[180]
The latter part of the answer means just this: that the landlords were
already turning the public works to their private gain, by getting
numbers of their well-to-do tenants, often with their carts and horses,
upon those works, in order to obtain their own rents more securely; a
practice of which they were repeatedly accused by the Board of Works'
people; and that, therefore, if townland boundaries were conceded, the
landlords would have increased power, and a still greater amount of the
same kind of jobbing would be the inevitable result.
It is not surprising that at this period society in Ireland was shaken
to its foundations. Terror and dismay pervaded every class; the starving
poor suffered so intensely, and in such a variety of ways, that it
becomes a hard task either to narrate or listen to the piteous story; it
sickens and wrings the heart, whilst it fills the eyes with the
testimony of irrepressible sorrow. To say the people were dying by the
thousand of sheer starvation conveys no idea of their sufferings; the
expression is too general to move our feelings. To think that even one
human creature should, in a rich and a Christian land, die for want of
a little bread, is a dreadful reflection; and yet, writes an English
traveller in Ireland, the thing is happening before my eyes every day,
within a few hours of London, the Capital of the Empire, and the richest
city in the world.
O'Brien's Bridge is a small town on the borders of Limerick, but in the
County Clare. The accounts received from this place during the first
half of October were, that nothing could restrain the people from rising
_en masse_ but an immediate supply of food. On one of the admission
days, one hundred and thirty persons were taken into the Scariff
Workhouse, out of six thousand applicants! Scariff is the union in which
O'Brien's Bridge and Killaloe are situate. Of Killaloe, the Rev. Dr.
Vaughan, afterwards Bishop of the Diocese, wrote, about the same time,
that there was some promise of fifty or sixty being employed out of six
hundred. The Relief Committee, of which he was a member, had to borrow
money on the stones broken by the poor labourers for macadamizing the
roads, in order to pay them their wages. Being paid, they were
dismissed, as the Committee could not, in any way, get funds to employ
them further. "We are a pretty Relief Committee," exclaims the reverend
gentleman, "not having a quart of meal, or the price of it, at our
disposal." He adds, with somewhat of sorrow and vexation of spirit:
"When those starving creatures ask us for bread, we could give them
stones, if they were not already mortgaged."
Employment was not, and, with the appliances in the hands of the Board
of Works, perhaps, could not be given rapidly and extensively enough for
the vast and instant wants of the people. Hunger is impatient, and the
cry of all men--loudest from the South and West--was one of despair,
mingled with denunciations of the Government and the Board of Works for
their slowness in providing work, and, if possible, still more, for
their refusal to open the food depôts. "I am sorry to tell you," writes
the correspondent of a local print, "that this town [Tuam] is, I may
say, in open rebellion. They are taking away cattle in the open day, in
spite of people and police.... They cannot help it; even if they had
money, they could not get bread to buy." Works were often marked out for
a considerable time before they were commenced. At a place called
Lackeen, in the South, they were in that state for three weeks or more,
without any employment having been given. If this goes on, writes a
resident of the locality, there must be an increase of coroners, and a
decrease of civil engineers. "It is coffins," says another, "must now be
sent into the country. I lately gave three coffins to bury some of the
poor in my neighbourhood." This was bad enough; but a time was at hand
when the poor had to bury their dead without coffins.
Three weeks had scarcely elapsed from the day on which the labourers
engaged on the Caharagh road had shouldered their spades and picks, and
marched to Skibbereen, when an inquest upon one of them laid open a
state of things that no general description could convey. A man named
Denis M'Kennedy was employed on those works. He was found dead on the
side of the road one day, and a coroner's inquest was held upon his
remains in the historic graveyard of Abbeystrowry. The evidence will
tell the rest. Johanna M'Kennedy, the wife of the deceased, was the
first witness examined. She said her husband died on Saturday, the 24th
of October, and had been at work on the Caharagh road _the day he died_.
He had been so engaged for about three weeks before his death. He did
not complain of being sick. She explained to the coroner and the jury
what they had had to support them during the week, on the Saturday of
which her husband died. Her family was five in number. She had nothing,
she said, to give them on Monday; and then the poor woman varied her
mode of expression by saying they had nothing at all to eat on Tuesday.
On Wednesday _night_ she boiled for her husband and the family one head
of cabbage, given to her by a neighbour, and about a pint of flour,
which she got for a basket of turf she had sold in Skibbereen. On
Thursday morning her husband had nothing to eat. She does not account
for Friday; but on Saturday morning she sent him for his breakfast less
than a pint of flour baked. Poor creature! she had but a pint for the
whole family; but in her loving anxiety to sustain her husband, who was
trying to earn for them, she only kept "a little" for the children. "The
rest was sent to him," said Mrs. M'Kennedy, through her choking grief,
"but it was too late; before it arrived he was dead." Thus, through the
whole of that, to her dreadful week, she had for her family of five
persons about half a weight of potatoes,[181] small and bad, which were
given to her by a kind neighbour, Mick Sweeney (God bless him, she said,
for he often relieved us), two pints of flour, and one head of cabbage.
It is no great marvel that the man who was trying to work on his share
of such provision was dead on Saturday. In M'Kennedy we have a specimen
of the people to whom the Board of Works insisted on giving task work.
"For the three weeks he was at work," said his wife at the inquest, "he
got two shillings and sixpence, being one week's pay." There was a
fortnight's wages due to him the day he died. "Even if his hire was
regularly paid," she added, "it would not support the family; but it
would enable us to drag on life, and he would be alive to-day."
Jeremiah Donovan, the steward of the works at Caharagh, deposed that
M'Kennedy was at work the morning of the day on which he died. On that
morning he saw the deceased leave his work and go to the ditch-side;
seeing him stop so long, he told him to return to his work. He did not
return, but said to deponent, "How can a man work without food?--a man
that did not eat anything since yesterday morning." Deponent then
handed him a bit of bread. He took it in his hand and was putting it to
his mouth when it fell from him. He died in two or three hours after.
His pay was eight pence a day.
The Rev. Mr. Webb, incumbent of Caharagh, then volunteered a
statement--hear it, ye rich, who have not that mercy and compassion for
His poor, which the God of all so strictly requires at your hands,--"I
have been told by some on the road," said the Rev. gentleman, "that this
poor man has frequently divided amongst the labourers his own scanty
food."
There were two physicians at the inquest, of whom Dr. Donovan was one;
having made a _post-mortem_ examination, no disease was discovered that
could account for death. There was no food in the stomach or small
intestines, but a portion of raw, undigested cabbage. The physicians
said they had seen hundreds of dead bodies, but declared they had never
seen one so attenuated as that of M'Kennedy. The representative of the
Board of Works, when asked to explain why it was that a fortnight's
wages was due to M'Kennedy, said, that the money was sent to the wrong
pay-clerk. It had really come, but through some mistake, had been sent
to Mr. Notter, and was by him expended in payment of his own district,
when it should have been paid on the Caharagh line. "But these stories,"
he added, "received in gossip, are turned against the Board of Works."
It is not very clear what this official meant by stories, but there is
one thing plain enough in the matter: Mr. Notter's men must have been in
arrear of their pay as well as those on the Caharagh works, or there
could be no opportunity of expending the Caharagh money upon them. If
Mr. Notter had got his own money together with the Caharagh money, he
certainly would not require both remittances. There is another thing
pretty obvious too: if the money had been directed to the overseer of
the Caharagh works, Mr. Notter would not be justified in paying it away
to his workmen. In reference to the flippant pertness of the Board's
officials, the Rev. Mr. Townsend, the incumbent of Abbeystowry, said:
"We have here M'Kennedy's death and the cause of it sworn to. That
evidence proves that our people are dying by the ditch-side for want of
payment of their hire. We take no such statements, sir, on gossip, nor
shall we be told we do." The jury returned the following verdict: "We
find that the said Denis M'Kennedy, on the 24th day of October, in the
year aforesaid, at Caharagh, in the county aforesaid, died of
starvation, owing to the gross negligence, of the Board of Works."
The _Times_, commenting on Lord John Russell's letter to the Duke of
Leinster, said: "We in England consider it the first duty of the
landlord to provide extraordinary employment to meet extraordinary
distress; we do not wait until an Act of Parliament converts a duty into
a necessity. In Ireland, even with special facilities, it has been very
sparingly and tardily done."[182] This remark about Irish landlords has
much truth in it. They took every means of shifting responsibility upon
the Government; they lost no opportunity of publicly declaring and of
endeavouring to prove that the duty of employing the people rested with
the Government and not with them: then, when the vast system of Relief
Works which sprang up under the hands of the Government in two or three
short months did not prove perfectly satisfactory, it became quite the
fashion with the landlord class to denounce the Board of Works, and
through it the Government. To be sure there was much reason for this,
but the landlords, of all others, had no right to cast the stone; for,
in the interests of truth and justice it must be said, that the
Government made some efforts to save the people, whilst the landlords as
a body, made none whatever. Their views were put in a striking manner
at a meeting of landowners and farmers held at Aghada, in the County
Cork. Mr. Fitzgerald, a landowner, attacked the Board for doing
unprofitable work. They had, he said, a staff of incompetent officers,
who were, moreover, absurdly numerous, there being, he asserted, an
officer for every workman in the works at Whitegate. The reply to this
attack is obvious enough. If the Board of Works were doing unprofitable
work, they could not help it, they were compelled by Act of Parliament
to do it; and when the Government enabled the country to undertake
profitable works, where were the landlords? They were in conclaves here
and there, elaborating objections to the Government plan, instead of
affording aid to carry it into execution; they seemed to make it a point
to throw obstacles in its way, and certainly showed anything but a
disposition to make it a success. Very likely, the Board of Works had
too many officers; doubtless they could not all be competent, or even
trustworthy persons, there being ten or eleven thousand of these raked
together from all quarters in three months. Mr. Fitzgerald next attacked
the farmers for not employing the workmen. In fact, according to him,
every class of the community had responsibilities--was called on to make
exertions and sacrifices to save the people from famine, except the
landlords--the owners of the soil of the entire kingdom. He expressed
his opinion, that the proper way to begin the business of the meeting
was, to pass a vote of censure on the Board of Works and send it to the
Lord Lieutenant. The Chairman, Richard G. Adams, thought Mr.
Fitzgerald's suggestion a good one. So it was, from the landlord's point
of view; it being their policy to turn attention away from themselves
and their shortcomings, and make the Board of Works the scapegoat of all
their sins. Mr. Fitzgerald proceeded: the farmers, he said, were banking
their money. He had cut out of the _Times_ the article on the increase
of deposits in the Irish Savings' Banks, which he intended to have read
for the meeting, but he had unfortunately mislaid it. No matter, there
could be no doubt of the fact. No one present opened his mouth in
defence of the unfortunate Board of Works, but a Mr. Kelly took up the
cudgels for the farmers. He said, few farmers in that district had money
to put in Savings' Banks, but if the farmers had hundreds, as was
asserted, surely the gentlemen ought to have millions. When the
gentlemen complained of want of means, no wonder the farmers did the
same. There was not, Mr. Kelly maintained, enough of corn in the
haggards of the country to last until the 1st of June,--
Mr. Fitzgerald: The haggards are in the Savings' Banks.
Mr. Kelly: You will find them in the pockets of a great many landlords.
I don't say in yours.[183]
In Bandon there was a somewhat similar meeting. Lord Bernard, who
presided, told his hearers in solemn accents that the Government was
awfully responsible for not either assembling Parliament, as they were
called upon to do, or at least providing effectively for the relief of
the people. His lordship recommended the suspension of the Poor Laws as
a measure that would be advantageous at the present emergency!
Undeveloped though the poor law system was in Ireland at the time of the
famine, it still afforded much relief in many places. It is hard to see
what Lord Bernard hoped to gain from the suspension of the Poor Laws
during the famine, unless exemption from his own share of the rates.
Turning over the public journals during this period is the saddest of
sad duties. It is like picking one's way over a battle-field strewn with
the dead and dying. "Starvation and death in Dingle;" "Deaths at
Castlehaven;" "Death of a labourer on his way to the Workhouse;"
"Coroner's inquests in Mayo;" "Four more deaths on the roads at
Skibbereen." Such are specimens of the ghastly headings that lie before
us. One of those deaths at Skibbereen calls for more than a passing
word; it is that of Jeremiah Hegarty. As in M'Kennedy's case we have
here what is seldom attainable, an account of the evidence given at the
inquest upon his remains. He was a widower and lived with his married
daughter, Mary Driscoll, at Licknafon. Driscoll, his son-in-law, was a
small farmer. He had a little barley in his haggard, some of which he
was from time to time taking privately out of the stack to keep himself
and his family from dying of starvation, although Curley Buckley, his
landlord's driver,[184] _had put a cross and keepers on it_.
Mary Driscoll, daughter of the deceased, being examined, deposed that
her father eat a little barley stirabout on Saturday morning, but had
not enough; "none of us," she said, "had enough. We all lived
together--nine in family, not including the infant at my breast. My
father went to work; my husband worked with him; three pints of barley
meal was the only thing we had from Thursday before. _I had no drink for
the infant,_" she said; by which, I suppose, the wretched being meant
the nourishment which nature supplies to infants whose mothers are not
in a state of starvation; "it ate nothing. On Thursday we had nothing
but a quarter weight of _Croshanes_.[185] We had but a little
barley--about a barrel, and, God help us, we could not eat any more of
that same, as the landlord put a cross on it, I mean it was marked for
the rent." She here gave the name of the landlord, on being asked to do
so. He wanted, she said, to keep the barley for the last rent, £2 17s.
She simply and frankly acknowledged they had been taking some of it, but
their condition was such that it melted the heart of the landlord's
driver, Curley Buckley, who told them "to be taking a little of it until
the landlord would come." The poor Driscolls were not bad tenants, they
owed their landlord _the last rent only,_ but they were responsible for
another debt. "We owed," Mary Driscoll said, "ten shillings for the seed
of the barley; we would sooner die, all of us, than not to pay. Since a
fortnight," continued this wretched woman, in her rude but expressive
English; "since a fortnight past, there was not one of us eat enough any
day."
Driscoll, the husband of the last witness, was examined. He said: "If
he" (meaning the deceased) "was paid the wages due to him for working on
the road, it would have relieved him, and he might be now alive; but,"
he added, "even if we had received the money, it would be hardly
sufficient to keep us alive." Referring to his own case, he said he was
but one day working on the road, and that he was six weeks looking for
that same.
Dr. Donovan had made a _post mortem_ examination. He found the stomach
and upper part of the intestines totally devoid of food. There was water
in the stomach, but nothing else. Want, the doctor said, was the
remote--exposure to the cold the immediate--cause of death. The jury
found that the deceased, Jeremiah Hegarty, met his death in consequence
of the want of sufficient sustenance for many days previous to his
decease; and that this want of sustenance was occasioned by his not
having been paid his wages on the Public Works, where he was employed
for eight days previous to the time of his death.
Instead of providing employment for the tenants on their estates, which
the Premier, and his commentator, the _Times_, looked upon as a mere
ordinary duty, many Irish landlords began to evict for non-payment of
rent. The parish priest of Swinford concludes a letter, detailing the
sufferings of his people, thus: "One word as to the landlords. There are
several owners of land in this parish (Kilconduff), but not one of them
resident. We made an effort to create by subscription a fund for the
purpose of keeping a supply of provisions in Swinford, to be sold to the
poor in small quantities. The non-resident landlords were applied to,
but not _one_ of them responded to the call. They are not, however,
idle. Their bailiffs are on the alert, distraining for rent, and the
pounds are full."[186] In the County Sligo, thirty families were evicted
together by one landlord; they must have been one hundred and fifty
individuals in all. They were somewhat in arrear. But in other cases the
corn was distrained in the beginning of October for rent falling due the
previous May. This, in the second year of the Famine, meant eviction,
purely for the sake of clearing the soil of its human incumbrances.
A portion of the English press, but a very small one, sympathised with
those miserable beings who were cast out of their dwellings to perish by
the roadside. The _Morning Chronicle_, in one of its leaders, thus dealt
with the subject: "We shall here state at once our opinion, in plain
terms, respecting this clearing system, by which a population, which has
for generations lived and multiplied on the land, is, on the plea of
legal rights, suddenly turned adrift, without a provision, to find a
living where there is no living to be found. It is a thing which no
pretence of private right or public utility ought to induce society to
tolerate for a moment. No legitimate construction of any right of
ownership in land, which it is for the interest of society to permit,
will warrant it. We hold, at the same time, that to prevent the growth
of a redundant population on an estate is not only not blameable, but it
is one of the chief duties of a landowner, having the power over his
tenants which the Irish system gives. As it is his duty, so it is, on
any extended computation, his pecuniary interest. He is to be commended
for preventing over population, but to be detested for tolerating first,
and then exterminating it."
As the year 1846 wore on to its close, the Famine deepened in intensity,
and every day extended itself more and more. The cold, which was very
severe in December, became its powerful auxiliary. Wherever the blame is
to rest--at head-quarters in Dublin, or with the clerks at the
works--the irregularity with which wages were paid by the
representatives of the Government, caused terrible suffering and
innumerable deaths. Many of those recorded at this period occurred from
the taking of food by persons who had been without it for a long time.
"Carthy swallowed a little warm milk and died," is the simple
announcement of one man's death from starvation; but, with slight
variations, it might be given as the record of thousands of deaths as
well as Carthy's.
The means of providing coffins for the victims of famine was becoming a
serious question, as the survivors in many a poor family could not now
attempt to purchase them, as the outlay of a small sum for a coffin
might be the cause of further deaths from starvation in the same family.
At a meeting in Skibbereen, in the beginning of December, Dr. Donovan
said that, since his return from Glandore that morning, he had been
followed by a crowd of applicants, seeking coffins for their deceased
friends; and he had, he said, just visited a house in the Windmill,[187]
where he saw two dead bodies lying, awaiting some means of burial. His
opinion was, that they were on the eve of a pestilence that would reach
every class. "And," said a gentleman, interrupting, "when I asked a
presentment for coffins at the sessions, I was laughed at." Dr. Donovan
continued: The case of a man named Sullivan was a most melancholy one.
His children began to drop off without any apparent disease, after they
had entered the Workhouse. From scarcity of beds, the father and
son--the latter being sick and weakly--had to sleep together; and one
morning the son was found dead alongside of his father, while another
child died in the mother's arms next day. He (Dr. Donovan) had asked
Sullivan why he did not tell him his children were sick. His answer was,
"They had no complaint." Mr. D. M'Carthy said it would be for the
meeting to consider whether they should not pronounce their strong
condemnation upon the conduct of an official in the town, who, with
starvation staring them in the face, would not give out a pound of food
except at famine price, though he had stores crammed with it. "He'd give
you," said Mr. Downing, "for £17 a-ton what cost our paternal Government
£7 10s."
Dr. Donovan, writing to one of the provincial journals at this time,
says: "Want and misery are in every face; and the labourers returning
from the relief works look like men walking in a funeral procession, so
slow is their step and so dejected their appearance."
The South and West were the portions of the country in which the Famine
committed its earliest ravages; but before the close of 1846
considerable parts of Leinster and Ulster were invaded by it, and deaths
from starvation began to be recorded in those comparatively wealthy
provinces. In Maryborough, a man named William Fitzpatrick died of
starvation in the beginning of December. He and his family were for a
considerable time in a state of destitution. He tried to earn or obtain
food for them, but without success. At the inquest, his wife said that,
when she pressed him to eat such scanty food as they could occasionally
procure, he often said to her, "Eat it yourself and the children." A
kind neighbour, having heard how badly off this poor family was, gave an
order for some bread; but, as occurred in so many cases, this act of
Christian charity came too late. Fitzpatrick was unable to eat, and so
he died. At Enniskillen, a poor girl, who had been sent for Indian meal,
fell down near her dwelling and expired. She had not gone out more than
eight or nine minutes, when she was discovered lifeless, and clutching a
small parcel of Indian meal tied up in a piece of cloth. In parts of
Ulster, the applications for employment on the Government works were
very numerous; in one parish alone (Ballynascreen) there were sixteen
hundred such applications. In West Innishowen, within twelve miles of
Londonderry, twelve persons died of starvation in one week.
Thus had the great Famine seized upon the four Provinces before the end
of 1846; Munster and Connaught, however, enduring sufferings which, in
their amount and terrible effects, were unknown to Leinster or Ulster.
In the West, Mayo, up to this time, had suffered most, which, from its
previously known state of destitution, was to be expected; in the South,
Cork seems to have been the county most extensively and most fatally
smitten. This, however, may not have been actually the case. Clare and
Kerry suffered greatly from the very beginning, but their sufferings
were not brought so prominently before the public as those of Cork.
This county had many and faithful chroniclers of her wants and
afflictions--a fact especially true of Skibbereen. That devoted town and
its neighbourhood were amongst the earliest, if not the very earliest,
of the famine-scourged districts; and their story was well and feelingly
told by special correspondents, and, above all, by Dr. Donovan, the
principal local physician, whose duties placed him in the midst of the
sufferers. There can be no doubt that even at this comparatively early
period of the famine, parts of Connaught, especially Mayo, suffered as
much as Skibbereen, but the results were commonly told in briefer terms
than in parts of the South. "More deaths from starvation in Mayo;"
"Dreadful destitution in Mayo;" "Coroners' inquests in Mayo." Such are
the headings of brief but suggestive paragraphs, during the latter part
of November, and all through December. Many of the Mayo inquests may
have been the occasion of more dreadful revelations than even those of
Skibbereen, but they did not receive the same extensive and detailed
publicity. Here are two or three starvation cases from that county.
Patrick M'Loughlin, in the parish of Islandeady, was ordered by the
Relief Committee a labour-ticket, in consequence of earnest
representations as to his starving condition. He did not get the ticket
for five days, he, his wife and five children not having a morsel of
food in the interval. Having at length obtained the ticket, he produced
it, and went to labour on the Public Works. He got no pay for the first
three days, and in the meantime his wife died from actual starvation.
Being unable to purchase the timber for a coffin in which to bury her,
poor M'Loughlin held over the remains for upwards of forty-eight hours;
but yet anxious to earn what would give her decent sepulture, and at the
same time procure food for his children, he went each of the two days
her remains were in his cabin to labour, and spent the night in
sorrowing over his departed wife. At length the story came to the ears
of the parochial clergy, one of whom immediately furnished the means of
interment, and she was consigned to the grave _at night_, in order that
the survivors might not lose the benefit of M'Loughlin's toil on the
following day.[188] Bridget Joyce, a widow with four children, was found
dead in a little temporary building, which had been erected in a field
to shelter sheep. One of the children was grown enough to give some
attention to her dying mother, but had nothing to moisten her parched
lips but a drop of water or a piece of snow. The woman died, and so poor
were the people of the locality, that for want of a few boards to make a
coffin, she remained uninterred for eight days. There is a melancholy
peculiarity in the case of a young lad named Edmond M'Hale. When he had
been a considerable time without food, he became, or seemed to become,
delirious. As his death approached, he said from time to time to his
mother--"Mother, give me three grains of corn." The afflicted woman
regarded this partly as the mental wandering of her raving child, and
partly as a sign of the starvation of which he was dying. She tried to
soothe him with such loving words as mothers only know how to use.
"_Astore_," she would say, "I have no corn yet awhile--wait till
by-and-by;" "Sure if I had all the corn in the world I'd give it to you,
_avour-neen_;" "You'll soon have plenty with the help of God." A
neighbouring woman who was present at the touching scene searched the
poor boy's pockets after he had died, and found in one of them three
grains of corn, no doubt the very three grains for which, in his
delirium, he was calling. Many of the deaths which happened are too
revolting and too horrible to relate; no one could travel any
considerable distance in Mayo at this period without meeting the
famine-stricken dead by the roadside.
Still it would be hard to surpass Skibbereen in the intensity and
variety of its famine horrors. Dr. Donovan, writing on the 2nd of
December, says: Take one day's experience of a dispensary doctor. It is
that of a day no further off than last Saturday--four days ago. He then
proceeds with the diary of that day: his first case was that of Mrs.
Hegarty, who applied to him for a subscription towards burying her
husband and child; the doctor had not prescribed for them, and he asked
why he had not been applied to; the answer was as in other cases--they
had no disease, and he could be of no use to them. His second case was
that of a boy named Sullivan, who came to him for some ointment for his
father. This application was somewhat out of the usual course, ointment
being a peculiarly useless thing as a remedy against famine. There was,
however, need of it. The boy's grandmother had died of fever some days
before, and his father and mother, with whom she had resided, took it
from her. The neighbours were afraid to go into the fever-house, but
some of them, kindly and charitably, left food outside the door, and
candles to wake the corpse. The mother struggled out of bed to get the
candles in order to light them. She succeeded in doing so, but from
weakness she was unable to stand steadily, so she reeled and staggered
towards where the corpse was laid out, and with the lighted candles set
the winding sheet on fire: the thatch caught the flame; the cabin was
burned down, and the parents of this miserable boy were rescued with the
utmost difficulty. They got more or less burned, of course, and the
ointment was therefore required for them. Having escaped death from
fire, they almost suffered death from cold, as they were left four hours
without the shelter of a roof on a bitter December day, all being afraid
to admit them lest they should catch the contagion. The doctor's third
case happened at midnight, being called on duty to the workhouse at that
hour. It was about a mile from the town--something less perhaps. Halfway
on his journey he found a man trying to raise a poor woman out of the
dyke. He went to his assistance, and found the woman paralyzed with
cold, and speechless. Locked in her arms, which were as rigid as bars
of iron, was a dead child, whilst another with its tiny icy fingers was
holding a death-grip of its mother's tattered garment. Her story was
short and simple, which she was able to tell next day: she had made an
effort to reach the workhouse, but sank exhausted where she was
discovered.
After a while the effects of famine began to manifest themselves in the
sufferers by a swelling of the extremities. Perhaps the severe cold
caused this or increased it. However that may be, experience soon taught
the people that this puffy unnatural swelling was a sure sign of
approaching dissolution.
When the cold weather had fairly set in, it frequently happened that the
straw which composed the bed, or the excuse for a bed, occupied by
members of a family dying of fever or hunger, or both combined, was,
piecemeal, drawn from under them and burned on the hearth to keep up a
scanty fire. It was felt, we may presume, that the dying could not
require it long, and those who had still some hopes of life were
famishing as much from cold as from hunger. An eye-witness, describing
such a family in Windmill-lane, Skibbereen, one of whom had already
died, thus writes: "The only article that covered the nakedness of the
family, that screened them from the cold, was a piece of coarse packing
stuff, which lay extended alike over the bodies of the living and the
corpse of the dead; which seemed as the only defence of the dying, and
the winding sheet of the dead!" The same writer says: "In this town have
I witnessed to-day, men--fathers, carrying perhaps their only child to
its last home, its remains enclosed in a few deal boards patched
together; I have seen them, on this day, in three or four instances,
carrying those coffins under their arms or upon their shoulders, without
a single individual in attendance upon them; without mourner or
ceremony--without wailing or lamentation. The people in the street, the
labourers congregated in town, regarded the spectacle without surprise;
they looked on with indifference, because it was of hourly
occurrence.[189]
The statements in the public journals about the effects of the famine in
and about Skibbereen were so new and appalling that many people thought
them greatly exaggerated. Finding this feeling to exist, and perhaps to
some extent sharing in it, Mr. Cummins, a magistrate of Cork, proceeded
to Skibbereen, to examine for himself the state of things there. He was
not only convinced but horrified. He published the result of his visit
in a letter to the Duke of Wellington, in which he begged that exalted
personage to call the Queen's attention to the fearful sufferings of her
people. Convinced that he was destined at least, to witness scenes of
real hunger and starvation, Mr. Cummins informs us that he took with him
as much bread as five men could carry. He began his inquiries at a place
called South Reen, in the parish of Myross, near Skibbereen.[190] Being
arrived at the spot, he was surprised to find the wretched hamlet
apparently deserted. There was no external appearance of life--silence
reigned around. On entering some of the cabins he soon discovered the
cause. He was at once confronted with specimens of misery, which, he
says, no tongue or pen could give the slightest idea of. In the first
cabin he entered he found six famished, ghastly skeletons, to all
appearance dead, huddled in a corner on a little filthy straw, their
sole covering being what seemed a piece of ragged horsecloth; their
miserable shriveled limbs were hanging about as if they did not belong
to their bodies. He approached them in breathless horror, and found by a
slow whining moan that they were alive--four children, a woman, and what
had once been a man--all in fever. Mr. Cummins met other cases as
fearful, more especially one similar to that described by the writer
quoted above, where a corpse was lying amongst the surviving members of
the family, sharing their straw bed and their scanty covering.
At a meeting of the Killarney Relief Committee, the Earl of Kenmare
being in the chair, the parish priest, the Rev. B. O'Connor, made a
statement, which, except as an illustration of the unprecedented misery
to which the people had sunk, I would hesitate to reproduce. He said: "A
man employed on the public works became sick. His wife had an infant at
her breast. His son, who was fifteen years of age, was put in his place
upon the works. The infant at the mother's breast," said the rev.
gentleman, amid the sensation of the meeting, "_had to be removed_, in
order that this boy might receive sustenance from his mother, to enable
him to remain at work." Another poor woman, the mother of eight
children, when dying of want, was attended by the Rev. Mr. O'Connor. She
made her last request to him in these words: "O Father O'Connor, won't
you interfere to have my husband get work, before the children die."
"In December, 1846, matters seemed to have come to a climax, and on the
evening of the 24th [Christmas Eve] I witnessed a scene which scarcely
admits of description. On that day a board was held at the Workhouse,
for the admittance of paupers. The claims of the applicants were, in
many cases, inquired into, but after some time the applicants became so
numerous, that any attempt to investigate the different cases was quite
useless, and an order was then given by the members of the Board
present, to admit all paupers, and at least to give them shelter, as but
little food was to be had. I shall never forget the scene which I that
night witnessed: mothers striving, by the heat of their own persons, to
preserve the lives of their little ones; women stretching out their
fleshless arms, imploring for food and shelter; old men tottering to the
destination where they were to receive shelter. The odour from the
clothes and persons of those poor people was dreadfully offensive, and
the absence of active complaints clearly showed that in many the hope of
restoration was not to be expected. On my visiting this scene next
morning, eleven human beings were dead."[191]
Some twenty years after the famine-scourge had passed away, and over two
millions of the Irish people with it, I visited Skibbereen. Approaching
the town from the Cork side, it looks rather an important place. It is
the seat of the Catholic bishop of Ross, and attention is immediately
arrested by a group of fine ecclesiastical buildings, on an elevated
plateau to the left, just beside the road, or street, I should rather
say, for those buildings are the beginning of the town; they consist of
a cathedral and a convent, with very commodious schools, and a pretty
gothic chapel. On the other side of the way is the schoolhouse, in shade
of which the military were concealed on the day the Caharagh labourers
invaded Skibbereen. A short distance beyond the town, the wooded hill of
Knockomagh, rising to a considerable height, overhangs Lough Hyne, one
of the most beautiful spots in Ireland. Some miles to the westward lies
the pretty island of Sherkin, which with Tullough to the east, makes the
charming little bay of Baltimore completely landlocked. Out in front of
all, like a giant sentinel, stands the island of Cape Clear, breasting
with its defiant strength that vast ocean whose waves foam around it,
lashing its shores, and rushing up its crannied bluffs, still and for
ever to be flung back in shattered spray by those bold and rocky
headlands. The town of Skibbereen consists chiefly of one long main
street, divided into several, by different names. This street is like a
horse-shoe, or rather a boomerang, in shape. Coming to the curve and
turning up the second half of the boomerang, we are almost immediately
in Bridge-street, a name well known in the famine time; not for anything
very peculiar to itself, but because it leads directly to the suburb
known as Bridgetown, in which the poorest inhabitants resided, and where
the famine revelled--hideous, appalling, and triumphant. Bridgetown is
changed now. In 1846 it contained a large population, being not much
less than half a mile in length, with a row of thatched houses on each
side; when the Famine slaughtered the population, those houses were left
tenantless in great numbers, and there being none to reoccupy them, they
fell into ruins and were never rebuilt. Hence instead of a continuous
line of dwellings at either side, as of old, Bridgetown now presents
only detached blocks of three or four or half-a-dozen cabins here and
there. Coming towards the end of it, by a gradual ascent, I accosted a
man who was standing at the door of his humble dwelling: "I suppose you
are old enough," I said to him, "to remember the great Famine?" "Oh!
indeed I am, sir," he replied, with an expressive shake of his head.
"Were there more people in Bridgetown and Skibbereen at that time than
now?" "Ay, indeed," he replied, "I suppose more than twice as many."
"And where did they all live--I see no houses where they could have
lived?" "God bless you, sure Bridgetown was twice as big that time as
it is now; the half of it was knocked or fell down, when there were no
people to live in the houses. Besides, great numbers lived out in the
country, all round about here. Come here," he said, earnestly; and we
ascended the road a little space. "Do you see all that country, sir?"
and he pointed towards the north and west of the town. "I do." "Well, it
was all belonging to farmers, and it was full of farmers' houses before
the famine; now you see there are only a couple of gentlemen's places on
the whole of it. The poor all died, and of course their houses were
thrown down." "And where were they all buried," I enquired. "Well, sir,"
he replied, "some of them were buried in the old chapel yard, near the
windmill; a power of them were buried in Abbeystrowry, just out there a
bit, where you are going to, but--" he suddenly added, as if correcting
himself--"sure they were buried everywhere--at the Workhouse over--in
the cabins where they died--everywhere; there was no way, you see, to
bring them all to Abbeystrowry, but still there were a power of them,
sure enough, brought to it."
My informant was quite right about my going to Abbeystrowry. I had
already enquired the way to it, and had learned that it was half-a-mile
or so beyond Bridgetown. I wished my interesting informant good evening,
and pursued my walk. Coming to the highest point of the road beyond
Bridgetown, a very charming landscape opened before me, made up of the
Valley of the Ilen and the agreeably undulating country beyond it. The
river at this place is wide and shallow; but, judging from the noble
bridge by which it is spanned, it must be sometimes greatly swollen. The
evening was bright and pleasant; the sun had gone far westward, and the
effect of his light, as it played on the scarcely rippled water, and
shone through the high empty arches of the bridge, standing like open
gateways in the shallow stream, made me pause for a moment, to take in
the whole scene. It was during this time that I discovered, immediately
beyond the river, the object of greatest interest to me--the object, in
fact, of my journey--the churchyard of Abbeystrowry. There was the spot
in which a generation of the people of Skibbereen was buried in a year
and a half! Those places in which poor humanity is laid to rest when
life's work is done have been always regarded as holy ground; cities of
the dead, solemn and suggestive. But this was more; in its lonely
seclusion, in its dark and terrible history, it was exciting in its
impressiveness. In the still sunlit evening, wooed to rest, one could
imagine, by the gentle murmurs of the Ilen, its little clump of gnarled
trees grouped around its scanty ruin was a picture of such complete
repose as to make the most thoughtless reflective. I entered.
Immediately inside the gate, a little to the right, are those monster
graves called by the people "the pits," into which the dead were thrown
coffinless in hundreds, without mourning or ceremony--hurried away by
stealth, frequently at the dead of night, to elude observation, and to
enable the survivors to attend the public works next day, and thus
prolong for awhile their unequal contest with all-conquering Famine. A
difficulty arose in my mind with regard to the manner of interment in
those pits. Great numbers, I knew, were interred in each of them; for
which reason they must have been kept open a considerable time. Yet,
surely, I reflected, something resembling interment must have taken
place on the arrival of each corpse, especially as it was coffinless.
The contrivance, as I afterwards learned, was simple enough. A little
sawdust was sprinkled over each corpse, on being laid in the pit, which
was thus kept open until it had received its full complement of tenants.
To trace one's steps, slowly and respectfully, among the graves of those
who have reached the goal of life in the ordinary course, fills one with
holy warnings; to stand beside the monument raised on the battle-field
to the brave men who fell there, calls up heroic echoes in the heart,
but here there is no room for sentiment; here, in humiliation and
sorrow, not unmixed with indignation, one is driven to exclaim:--
O God! that bread should be so dear,
And human flesh so cheap.
Although thus cast down by earthly feelings, divine Faith raises one up
again. Divine Faith! the noblest and brightest, and holiest gift of God
to man; always teaching us to look heavenward--_Excelsior_ in its theme
for ever. And who can doubt but the God of all consolation and mercy
received the souls of his famine-slain poor into that kingdom of glory
where He dwells, and which He had purchased for them at so great a
price. Even in their imperfections and sins, they were like to Him in
many ways; they were poor, they were despised, they had not whereon to
lay their head; they were long-suffering, too; in the deepest pangs
which they had suffered from hunger and burning thirst (the last and
most terrible effect of hunger), they cursed not, they reviled not; they
only yearned for the consolations of their holy religion, and looked
hopefully to Him for a better world. It is one of the sweetest
consolations taught us by holy Faith that the bones now withered and
nameless in those famine pits, where they were laid in their shroudless
misery, shall one day, touched by His Almighty power, be reunited to
those happy souls, in a union that can know no end, and can feel no
sorrow.
FOOTNOTES:
[174] "It cannot be too strongly lamented, the opportunity which has
been lost for the present, of adopting reproductive employment; but it
is not now a question of productive or non-productive employment, it is
a question of life or death to those famishing and destitute, anxiously
waiting for the means of procuring food.... A general and well-digested
Drainage Bill, applicable to Ireland, cannot be hastily prepared; if so
it may be again a nugatory one, and it is _some great_ measure, and
_great_ expenditure for some years to come, under a Drainage and
reclaiming of waste lands Bill, that is to be of permanent and effectual
relief to this impoverished country."--_Mr. Lambert of Brookhill's
letter to the Lord Lieutenant, October 4th_.
[175] Irish Crisis, p. 68.
[176] If the word of a Scotch farmer may be accepted, this seems a great
exaggeration. Mr. Hope, of Fentonbarn, at the monthly meeting of the
Haddington Farmers' Club, said, lately: "It was only _after_ the great
disaster of 1845 that potatoes began to be grown to any extent in
Scotland."--_Irish Farmers' Gazette for 16th Nov., 1872, p. 399_. But
Lord John was only too glad to praise the Scotch at our expense.
[177] Some time ago, an English gentleman, who is an Irish landlord, and
one in no bad repute either, was told that, for reasons detailed to him,
he ought not to continue a certain agent in his employment: he
answered--"I do not care for all that--he gets me my rent."
[178] See Inquest on Jeremiah Hegarty, p. 263.
[179] This view differs considerably from that put forward in the
Memorial of the 25th of the previous month, in which the Society tells
his Excellency, "that, from their experience as the Royal Agricultural
Improvement Society of Ireland, they are confident that every part of
this country affords the opportunity of at once employing the rural
population in the improvement of the soil, and of returning to the
ratepayers a large interest for the capital expended, and thus providing
an increased quantity of food and certain employment for the working
classes in future years."
[180] Letter to Edward Bullen, Esq., Secretary to the Royal Agricultural
Society.
[181] A _weight_ of potatoes in the South of Ireland varied from 21 to
23lbs.
[182] _Times_ of 13th November.
[183] See pp. 214 and 215.
[184] A driver or bailiff is a man employed by Irish landlords to warn
tenants of the rent day, serve notices upon them, watch their movements,
see how they manage their farms, play the detective in a general way,
and supply useful information to the landlord and his agent. They are
regarded with pretty much the same feelings as tithe-proctors were,
until that historic class became extinct. They are called drivers by the
people, because one of their duties is to drive tenants' cattle off
their lands, that they may be sold for the rent. When a peasant wishes
to speak politely of this functionary he calls him "a kind of under
agent." "There are many parts of Ireland in which a _driver_ and a
_process-server_--the former a man whose profession it is to seize the
cattle of a tenant whose rent is in arrear, the latter an agent for the
purpose of ejecting him--form regular parts of the landlord's
establishment. There are some in which the driver, whether employed or
not, receives an annual payment from every tenant." _Journals,
Conversations and Essays relating to Ireland. By Nassau William Senior,
Second Edition, vol. 1, p. 33._
[185] An Irish word, so given in the report, but more correctly
_Creacan_ or _Criocan_. It is used to express anything diminutive, when
applied to potatoes, it means they are small and bad.
[186] Letter of Rev. B. Durcan, P.P., Swinford, Nov. 16, 1846.
[187] The Windmill is a bare rock, or collection of rocks, which is used
as a Fair-field. It overlooks the town. It derives its name from the
fact that a windmill had been formerly in use there. Hence, several
lanes leading to it are called Windmill Lane.--_Letter from Rev. C.
Davis, Administrator of Skibbereen_.
[188] Letter of Rev. K. Henry, P.P., Islandeady.
[189] Special Correspondent of _Cork Examiner_, writing from Skibbereen,
14th December, 1846.
[190] The first case of death, clearly established, as arising from
starvation, occurred at South Reen, five miles from the town of
Skibbereen. The case having been reported to me, as a member of the
Relief Committee, I procured the attendance of Dr. Dore, and proceeded
to the house where the body lay. The scene which presented itself will
never be forgotten by me. The body was resting on a basket which had
been turned up; the head reclined on an old chair; the legs were on the
ground. All was wretchedness around. The wife, miserable and emaciated,
was unable to move, and four children, more like spectres than living
beings, were lying near the fire place, in which, apparently, there had
not been a fire for some time. The doctor, of course, at once
communicated with the Committee."--_Letter of Mr. M'Carthy Downing,
M.P., to the Author._
[191] MS. Memoir of his famine experiences, by Dr. Donovan. "Up to this
morning, I, like a large portion, I fear, of the community hooked on the
diaries of Dr. Donovan, as published in _The Cork Southern Reporter_, to
be highly coloured pictures, doubtless intended for a good and humane
purpose; but I can now, with perfect confidence, say that neither pen
nor pencil ever could pourtray the misery and horror, at this moment, to
be witnessed in Skibbereen." _Mr. Mahony, the artist of the Illustrated
London News, in his letter from Skibbereen to that journal, Feb. 13,
1847, p. 100._