Famine in the Valley

Famine in the
Valley
By
Edmund O’Riordan
"Extreme distress prevails in the district lying between
the Galty and Knockmealdown mountains."
Tipperary Free Press (Jan. 1847)
Famine in the Valley
By
Edmund O’Riordan
First Published 1995
Second Edition Published 1997
This Online Edition 2010
© Edmund O’Riordan and individual contributors
Only known photo of Clogheen Workhouse. Picture shows entrance
buildings. Taken by Pete Weber in 1932. House was burned by
Republican forces in 1922.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1
Political Climate
1
Chapter 2
Social Climate
9
Chapter 3
Pre-Famine Clogheen
19
Chapter 4
Poor Law and Workhouse 25
Chapter 5
Famine Years
43
Chapter 6
Black ’47
59
Chapter 7
Aftermath
83
Bibliography
91
Notes
92
i
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the following people in the
production of this book: My family; Rose Cleary, Dept of Archaeology, U.C.C.;
Mary Guinan Darmody, Local Studies Dept., Tipperary County Library; Mark
McCarthy of U.C.C. and Karol DeFalco for taking the time to read advise and
encourage.
iii
Introduction
It is no exaggeration to say that during the Great Famine of 1845-51, the GaltyVee-Valley was a microcosm of the country as a whole. Here was good land, great
wealth, and large scale food production. Here also was to be found poor land, great
poverty and starvation; landlords and tenants, castles, workhouses, fever hospitals,
paupers’ cemeteries, evictions and emigration.
The Galty-Vee-Valley in South-west Tipperary is that area of land lying to the
north of the Knockmaeldown Mountains and to the south of the Galty mountain
range, bounded on the west by Mitchelstown, and extending eastwards towards
Knocklofty, near Clonmel. It approximates closely to the barony of Iffa and Offa
west which contained in the 1840s, the following parishes: Ardfinnan, Ballybacon,
Cahir, Derrygrath, Molough, Mortlestown, Neddans, Newcastle, Rochestown,
Shanrahan, Templetenny, Tubrid, Tullaghmelan, Tullaghorton and Whitechurch.
This was the area that became known as the Union of Clogheen after the
introduction of the Poor Law Act in Ireland in 1838. Kilbehenny in County
Limerick was also part of Clogheen Union.
Due to a lack of famine folklore at a local level, it is necessary to turn to
official records in order to construct a picture of the valley in 1845, and to try to
understand how it was affected by the famine. To enhance that understanding it is
also necessary to look at Ireland, and more specifically at the Galty-Vee-Valley in
the years prior to the famine. Despite the lack of folklore it is hoped that this book
will succeed in depicting the Great Famine as a human tragedy and not just a
historic event, because the famine is about people and not just statistics. It is about
the men, women and children who travelled the roads we travel, who worked the
land we work, and who lived and died in the countryside we see around us.
This book reflects, in some instances, the bitterness felt in Ireland when
remembering the famine. To pretend that this bitterness never existed would be a
betrayal. The famine was ‘only’ 150 years ago. It must be borne in mind however,
that it was indeed 150 long years ago. When the finger of accusation is being
pointed, let it not be forgotten that the targets of that accusation are also dead and
gone, and in the past.
This book is dedicated to the memory of the children of Clogheen Union
Workhouse.
E.O’R June, 1995
Chapter 1 Political Climate
The final years of the eighteenth century in Europe were dramatic and
turbulent. These were the years that saw the French Revolution; war between
France and Austria; the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte; and France declaring war on
Britain, Spain, and Holland. In Ireland, events were no less turbulent, no less
dramatic than elsewhere in Europe. This was the era of Grattan, Flood, Curran,
Thomas Addis Emmet, and Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen. A failed French
invasion of Ireland was followed in 1798 by the famous ’98 insurrection, and this
set the scene for the infamous Act of Union of 1800.
The British Government had determined that the Irish Parliament should be
abolished, and that there should be legislative union between the two countries. It is
almost inconceivable that a parliament could, or would vote itself out of existence,
but this is what the Act of Union entailed. Despite massive opposition and petitions
containing over 700,000 signatures, the Act of Union came into being in 1800.
Declarations of opposition were made county by county, and it is worth noting that
the county Tipperary declaration was signed by Lord Lismore, one of the major
landlords of the Galty-Vee Valley.1 This episode in Irish history has been described
as “a shameful story of corruption and treachery”, and inspired the following lines
from John O’Hagan (1822-1890):
“How did they pass the Union?
By perjury and fraud,
By slaves who sold their land for gold
as Judas sold his God...
How thrive we by the Union?
Look round our native land:
in ruined trade and wealth decayed
see slavery’s surest brand;...”2
With the passing of the Act of Union, Ireland and England were deemed to be
sister countries, and would be ruled directly from Westminster. Ireland returned
100 members to the Westminster Parliament each term, but the loss of an
independent parliament in College Green was to have far reaching consequences
for the Irish people, when in 1845, they were faced with starvation and extinction
during what has become known as The Great Famine.
One of the inducements offered to Ireland when the Act of Union was being
procured was immediate Catholic Emancipation. This was not now forthcoming.
1
Second Series of Reports of the Loyal National Repeal Association of Ireland.
( Dublin. 1840. p.34)
2
Martin McDermott (editor), Songs and Ballads of Young Ireland , ( London,
1896, p.10)
1
Indeed it was said that George III would have abdicated sooner than allow Prime
Minister Pitt to grant any relief to the Catholics. Eleven days after the Union had
become law, Pitt resigned.
In the Westminster parliament, Henry Grattan’s almost annual attempts to have
a relief act considered kept the Catholic question to the fore, and after Grattan’s
death in 1820, the cause of emancipation was continued by Daniel O’Connell, a
young barrister from County Kerry. At this time, Catholics were not allowed to
hold a seat in Parliament, but O’Connell, in a move that was typical of his genius,
discovered that while he could not hold a seat, there was nothing to prevent him
from being elected. In 1828 he was returned to the House of Commons for County
Clare. O’Connell refused to take the Oath of Supremacy, which contained the
words:
“ ... that the sacrifice of the mass, and the invocation of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, and other saints, as now practised in the
Church of Rome, are impious and idolatrous.”3
Within a year, Catholic Emancipation had been granted. That Act of 1829, together
with the Relief Act of 1793, gave religious and civil liberty to Catholics.
Greatly encouraged by his success with Catholic Emancipation, O’Connell now
devoted himself to the repeal of the Act of Union, but it was not until 1840 that the
Repeal Association was formed. In 1843-44 O’Connell began to convene huge
meetings all over Ireland. They were described by The Times as “monster
meetings” at which men were not counted in thousands but hundreds of thousands.
Lecky, the historian, described them as follows:
“They usually take place upon Sunday morning, in the open
air, upon some hillside. At daybreak the mighty throng might
be seen, broken into detached groups, and kneeling on the
greensward around their priests, while the incense rose from a
hundred rude altars, and the solemn music of the Mass floated
upon the gale and seemed to impart a consecration to the
cause. O’Connell stood upon a platform, surrounded by the
ecclesiastical dignitaries and by the more distinguished of his
followers.
Before him the immense assembly was ranged, without
disorder, or tumult, or difficulty, organised with the most
perfect skill, and inspired with the most unanimous
enthusiasm. There is perhaps no more impressive spectacle
than such an assembly, pervaded by such a spirit, and moving
under the control of a single mind.”4
3
Thomas D’Arcy McGee, History of Ireland , vol.2., (London,18--?,p.384
4
W.E.H. Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, (1903, vol.1, p236)
2
P.S.O’Hegarty, in his Ireland under the Union says:
“ It is literally accurate to say that in these years, the whole
male adult nationalist population of Ireland gathered at these
meetings, and cheered for Repeal.”5
O’Connell wanted a meeting to be held in each county, and he wrote to Charles
Bianconi, Mayor of Clonmel:
What the deuce is Tipperary doing? What the deuce is
Clonmel doing, and especially, what is it’s valiant
Corporation doing? ... And now my good friends, is it not a
crying shame that your noble county should remain in such
apathy when all the rest of Ireland is rousing itself into a
combined effort for Repeal. I want a Repeal meeting either at
Clonmel or Cashel or Thurles. I want to see from 60,000 to
100,000 Tipperary men meeting peacefully and returning
home quietly, to adopt the petition and organise the Repeal
rent.”6
On June 3, 1843, The Nation newspaper carried a report of O’Connell’s progress. It
stated:
In Cork, in North and South Tipperary... some hundreds of
thousands have ‘met in order and separated in order’... They
marched in silence, without mob shout, or loose walking, or
any disorders...Let the people continue thus labouring,
contributing, organising. Let no man be content while there is
in his parish a single man who has not sent his name and
shilling to the Association. Let no Repeal Warden rest easy
till there is in his parish, a band and a Temperance Reading
Room...”
The Repeal Warden for the Parish of Clogheen and Burncourt was appointed on the
29 May,1843. Reverend Father James Hickey of Lisfuncheon received his
Certificate of appointment at a meeting in the Corn Exchange Rooms, Dublin.
On the 14th October, 1843 Daniel O’Connell was arrested and charged with
sedition and conspiracy. He was found guilty, and sentenced in February, 1844. He
applied for a new trial, and while waiting for a decision on this he travelled to Cork
where he stayed for a short time before returning to Dublin. At that time, the mailcoach road from Dublin to Cork, via Clonmel, passed through Clogheen. (The
5
P.S.O’Hegarty, A History of Ireland under the Union, 1801-1922, ( London,
1949, p.138)
6
Ibid., (p.119).
3
present road from Clogheen to Ballylooby, which is still referred to as the ‘New
Line’ had not yet been constructed, and coaches from Cahir to Clogheen travelled
Figure 1 Repeal Warden Certificate
via Tubrid and Ballyboy.)7 On Wednesday, April 10, 1844, Daniel O’Connell
arrived in Clogheen. He was accompanied by William Smith O’Brien who was
7
4
1840 Ordnance Survey Map and local folk tradition.
shortly to take over as leader of the Repeal Association when O’Connell was
committed to Richmond Prison. The Tipperary Vindicator of April 13, reported the
visit under the heading “Address of the Clergy and people of Clogheen to the
Liberator.”
“ At the town of Clogheen, which lies in that magnificent
valley of Tipperary, which expands between the wild
magnificence of Galteemore and the mountain ridge of The
Galtees, and the wild majestic lonely ridge of the
Knockmaeldown mountains, a most interesting address was
presented to him by the two clergymen of the town, ...and an
immense body of the people of the town and the romantic
district of the country...such an address, and breathing such a
spirit, would be of course gratifying to him in any county of
Ireland, but it must be peculiarly delightful to him as
presented in Tipperary.”
The address had been adopted at a meeting of the parishioners of Clogheen, held on
the 9th April, with the Rev. Dr. Kelly P.P. in the chair. The address was in the
usual format of the time, and was filled with glowing tributes:
“Illustrious Sir-, We, the inhabitants of the town of Clogheen,
beg leave respectfully to approach you with hearts filled with
gratitude, for your unexampled exertions in the cause of your
suffering country, with admiration of those brilliant talents
you have brought to the prosecution of your labours, and with
a well founded hope that ere long your heaven-directed
energies to procure the Repeal of the detestable Act of Union,
will be crowned with complete success,” etc., etc.
O’Connell then thanked the people for their address, which he said was “flattering
and consolatory”. He urged the people to keep the peace at all costs, and he said
“...the Catholic clergy are with me in keeping the peace of Ireland”. It was this
desire for peace that was later to cause O’Connell’s split with the Young
Irelanders, who advocated more militant methods of gaining Repeal. Before
leaving Clogheen, he again thanked the people “... for cheering me on my way to
prison, and be assured that wherever I may be, in the cell or on the sod, I will
everywhere be the steady and persevering friend of Irish nationality.”
While Daniel O’Connell and the Repeal movement dominated the political
arena in the years immediately preceding ‘The Great Famine’, there were other
issues which dominated the political scene at different times during those years. Up
to 1829, freeholders with a valuation of forty shillings or more were entitled to
vote, and as they could be expected to vote in accordance with the landlords’
wishes, the landlords created immense numbers of such small landowners. The
threat of eviction, or a huge increase in the rent, was usually enough to ensure
compliance at election time. However the 1826 election showed that the landlords
could not always control these votes and it was decided to abolish them. It was the
5
forty-shilling freeholders of the Beresford estates and the Devonshire estates, in
Counties Waterford and Cork, who, by electing Mr. Villiers Stuart to the seat long
held by the Beresford candidate, showed the way of Emancipation to O’Connell.
But on the same day as the Emancipation Act was passed, the vote for the Fortyshilling freeholders was abolished. It was a cause of much criticism of O’Connell,
but it must be said that the raising of the franchise to ten pounds was outside of his
control.
In the 1830’s, the Irish Tithe War dominated. ‘Tithes’ were a tax of one tenth of
a tenant’s total income from his crops, and had to be paid by all tenants, both
Catholic and Protestant, to the local Protestant minister. The obligation on Irish
Catholics to pay this tax naturally caused great unrest and frequent riots,
necessitating the involvement of the army. Finally, a general strike against the
payment of tithes was called, and it was so successful that in the year 1838, one
year after Victoria came to the English throne, the tithes were converted into a
charge on the landlords instead of the tenants. The landlords immediately raised the
rent to offset this charge, but the tenants did not feel it to be as inequitable as the
tithes, and it was seen as a great victory to have removed the tithe-proctor from
their lives. The struggle against the payment of this tax had been going on for
generations. It was partly because of his opposition to the tithes that Fr. Nicholas
Sheehy had first come under the notice of his enemies. Before taking up his
appointment as Parish-Priest of Shanrahan-Ballysheehan-Templetenny (ClogheenBurncourt-Ballyporeen) in 1759, he had ministered in Newcastle where he urged
non payment of this money, as there were no Protestants in the district. On a
trumped up charge of murder, and by the use of false witnesses, Fr. Sheehy was
found guilty and was executed on the 15th of March 1766. His remains lie in
Shanrahan cemetery. On a similar charge, and using the same evidence, guilty
verdicts were brought in against James Farrell, Edmund Sheehy of Lodge, and
James Buxton of Kilcoran. The three were hanged in Clogheen on the 3rd May,
1766.
In 1833, Tipperary was represented at Westminster by Richard Lalor Shiel, and
Cornelius O’Callaghan of Shanbally Castle, Clogheen. Cornelius O’Callaghan was
of the Lord Lismore family. He was replaced in 1835 by Richard Otway Cave. By
1845 Tipperary County was represented by R.A Fitzgerald and Nicholas Maher,
both Catholics, and both repealers which would seem to indicate a certain amount
of success for O’Connell’s Repeal movement. It is difficult to see how elections to
an English parliament could have held any interest for the small landholders of
South Tipperary. Because of the open vote system, whereby one voted publicly,
those who had votes had to vote in accordance with the landlord’s wishes. The vast
majority of the population however were precluded from voting by virtue of their
poverty.
6
7
Figure 2 Shanbally Castle. Home of Lord Lismore
Chapter 2 Social Climate
“Thus you have a starving population, an absentee
aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition, the weakest
executive in the world. That is the Irish Question.”
Benjamin Disraeli.(1844)8
Long before ‘The Great Famine’ of 1845-50 extreme deprivation and starvation
were well known to the poor of Ireland. In some areas less than one in twenty
people had work of any kind, and unless a family had access to a plot of ground to
grow potatoes, they starved. A few days work per year for a farmer would pay for a
cabin, which could be erected on a half-acre potato plot; the rent for the plot was
paid at harvest time. If the potato crop failed however, the tenant lost his supply of
food for the year, while the landowner lost part of his income. The cabins were
crude affairs with mud floors, and sometimes no windows or chimneys. It is even
true that the pig slept in a corner of the room. These structures were heated by turf
fires, a supply of turf being readily available to the inhabitants of the Galty-Vee
Valley, which extended from the Galty Mountains on the north side, to the
Knockmealdowns on the south. Despite the fact that the mountains were abundant
in turf, payment had to be made to the landlord. Those same turf-bogs were also a
source of turf-mould, and the Resident Magistrate of Cahir-Clogheen-ArdfinnanBallyporeen, Major Beresford William Shaw, gave evidence to the Devon
Commission in 1844, of the extent of the “ malicious taking of the covering of the
mountain--I mean turf mould...”9. He told the commission that the mould was used
as manure, and was taken by people who had no land and sold for ten pence a load
to the local farmers. He further stated that the people who bought it were in no
doubt as to where it came from. It was obviously highly regarded as a manure as it
was “frequently brought from a considerable distance.” From Apri1, 1843 to Sept,
1844 Lord Lismore suffered 230 cases of theft from his mountain, while Lord
Glengall experienced 210 cases. At Ardfinnan petty sessions there were 678 cases,
344 of which were dismissed, and at Cahir 225 of the 553 cases were dismissed.
The reason for these dismissals was that the attorney for the defendants disputed
the ownership of the mountain in question. Major B.W. Shaw claimed that “they
draw 500 loads for the one that they are convicted upon. Beyond Newcastle you
see the roads crowded with carts all day.” The Major finished his evidence by
referring to “the immense pauper population under this mountain [The
Knockmealdowns]” It was suggested to him that the turf mould might have been
8
Benjamin Disraeli, House of Commons Speech, quoted in Concise Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations, (London, Second edition,1981.)
9
Evidence of Major Beresford William Shaw to the Commissioners of the
Devon Commission, (no.852)(At Cashel, 1844).
9
used as payment for the potato patch, but Major Shaw did not know if this was
true.
In a statement to the Devon Commission, Edwin Taylor, an agent to Lord
Lismore, noted that:
“The farms generally are too small to enable farmers to make
animal manure. Generally speaking, the farms are held in
such small divisions, that a farmer can keep but one cow and
horse.”10
Taylor lived at Clashaphooka house, and the area that he was in charge of
extended ten miles around Clogheen. He told the Commission that he was trying to
improve agriculture in the area by the introduction of drainage systems, crop
rotation, the use of clover, and the distribution of grass seed to the local farmers.
Because the farms were small, averaging 13 acres, and farm yard manure was not
available, the farmers would go to Youghal in order to draw home loads of
seaweed to satisfy the demand for manure for the land. Even though the average
size was 13 acres, the following table from Professor William Smyth shows that a
large number of occupiers were in the 1-5 acre bracket.
Table 1
Acres
Number of Holdings
1-5
128
5-30
300
30-50
64
50-100
25
100-200
8
200+
2
Size of Holdings in Clogheen Burncourt Parish (1835)
The average rent of land was from £2 to £2.5s per acre, but potato ground was
making up to £10 per acre. Leases were the exception rather than the rule, and
unless the tenant had great trust in his landlord, this was a hindrance to
improvements being made on the farms. Edwin Taylor told the Devon Commission
that Lord Lismore allowed a rent reduction to assist in any draining that was done
on his estate. It is quite understandable that land-holders were reluctant to carry out
10
Evidence of Edwin Taylor to the Devon Commission,(no.843)(At Clogheen)
10
improvements in the absence of a lease, especially if one considers the following
reply of Mr. Taylor’s
“I endeavour to consolidate farms as much as I can, to
promote thereby a respectable tenantry, who of course
cultivate the lands much better than the cottier.”
It can be seen from this quotation that Mr. Taylor wasn’t above evicting the
smallholders, even though he claimed that if he did evict an “ honest, industrious
person paying his rent satisfactorily” he would try to place him on another farm
equally as good as he held before.11 Not all were so lucky, and very often evictions
took place in which families were thrown onto the side of the road.
When Mr. Taylor ‘consolidated’ farms, he would have probably been aiming to
create what in those days (1840’s) would have been large farms, that is, farms over
thirty acres. The land on these farms was generally fertile and suited to both
pastoral (grazing) and arable (crops) farming. Small farmers were those in the 5-30
acre bracket, while the vast majority of those who worked on the land were the
‘cottiers’ referred to above by Edwin Taylor. These were the people who had to
hire extra land from other farmers in order to survive.
The population of Ireland had been increasing dramatically in the early decades
of the nineteenth century, as can be seen from the following table.
Table 2
Year
Population
1801
4,937,000
1811
5,795,000
1821
6,802,000
1831
7,767,000
1841
8,199,000
Early Nineteenth Century Population Figures
Source; The over-taxation of Ireland, Hon. Edward Blake, M.P. 1897
Indeed, there are suggestions that the population in 1841 was even higher, due
to the fact that the census takers could not possibly have discovered all the people
who lived on the mountains, in the bogs, and even in caves on the seashore. There
are reports of ‘good’ landlords making provision for their tenants during the dark
11
All of Edwin Taylor’s evidence presented here is from the Report of the
Devon Commission ( witness no.843, at Clogheen.)
11
days of famine, only to find that they had innumerably more tenants on the estate
than they had thought.
Because of this almost doubling of figures in forty years, the demand for land
became ever greater; and consequently smallholdings became ever smaller as
occupiers divided small farms among their children. There was no alternative.
Failure to divide property would have condemned their sons and daughters to a life
of vagrancy. Begging was commonplace and conditions appalling. In 1842-43, a
German traveller named Kohl wrote of his visit to Ireland:
“The fields adjoining the cabins are in the most disorderly
state, and evidently tilled in the most negligent manner; they
are usually without any fences...To him who has seen Ireland,
no mode of life in any other part of Europe, however
wretched, will seem pitiable. The Irish appear altogether
without form or shape... Except their rags, they have no
national dress, their buildings are neither built nor arranged
after any national plan, but as if thrown together by chance.
As the Irishman clothes himself in rags, picked up here and
there, so he has for a chair, now a block of wood, now a
barrel. We have all this in Germany, it is true, among our
beggars and poor...but with us and other nations, lawless
beggary is only the exception. In Ireland on the contrary it is
the rule. Here is to he seen a people of beggars, the wealthy
alone forming the exception.”12
It is unlikely that Kohl’s statement is entirely true. Even among the poor, there
would have been different ‘classes’, different ‘grades’ of poverty, so to speak. At
the lower end were the vagrants; then the labourers who had occasional work, and
lived in makeshift cabins or huts. A better off agricultural labourer would have
seasonal work, a secure patch for his potatoes each year, and a cow. The poorer
labourers existed by becoming vagrants themselves, and taking to the roads
between the sowing of the crop and the harvesting. They had no livestock.
In the early years of the nineteenth century, the Napoleonic wars ensured good
prices for agricultural produce, but with the ending of the wars in 1815, the prices
fell. Some historians see this period as having a greater effect on Ireland than the
‘Famine’ itself, as it led to major agricultural disruption. While the prices fell, the
rent for the land remained high, and farmers with moderate holdings were reduced
to poverty as a result. Very often, these high rents were sent by the land agents to
England, where the absentee landlords sometimes lived. A large proportion of Irish
land was under the control of middlemen. These middlemen rented their land from
the landlords, and sublet it at enormous profit to their own tenants, and they were
merciless in their endeavours to collect the rent. This was one of the consequences
of the Act of Union, because over 100 of the best landlords had moved to London
12
J.G.Kohl, Ireland, (London 1844, p.47).
12
with their families, in order to be located near the parliament where they held their
seats. Their Irish estates were now just a means of securing a seat at each election,
and guaranteeing a substantial annual income. While the quality of Irish landlords
varied drastically, very often it was the middleman who was the tyrant in the
landlord’s absence.
At the time of the Devon Commission, according to the witnesses, the south
Tipperary area was relatively quiet, and free from agrarian unrest. Evictions were
still taking place, but the people were not reacting as violently as they had reacted a
few years earlier, or as violently as they would react a few years later. The GaltyVee Valley had seen violence in 1827, when the murder took place in Ardfinnan,
of a man named Barry who had taken over a local farm, following an eviction. For
that crime, five men were hung on the green in Ardfinnan, on 9 April 1827. Canon
Burke, in his History of Clonmel, notes that “Four of the five men hung at
Ardfinnan for the Barry murder- James Byrne, Philip Lonergan, Thomas Bryan,
and John Green- were beyond question innocent.”13
Punishment for other crimes was also harsh, and in March, 1844, Sarah Kelly
“a nymph of the pave” was sentenced to seven years transportation for stealing a
twenty-five pound bank order from an army officer at Cahir Barracks.14 A less
serious case at the Petty Sessions in Ballyporeen resulted in an important decision
being made in 1845. Captain Edward Bagwell, and Captain Isaac Warner, officers
of the Third Dragoon Guards, stationed at Clogheen Barracks, were charged with
shooting game, namely snipe, at Kilcaroon, without permission. Mr. Barry of
Clogheen defended, and after his submission the case was adjourned while legal
opinion was sought. At a later court, the case was dismissed, as the Solicitor
General had ruled that “Snipe were not game”.15 Around the same time, at
Clogheen Petty Sessions, Henry and Charles Langley were charged for their part in
a “riotous and savage assault on a poor and unoffending Repealer.”16 Between
them, the two ‘Gentlemen’ were fined three pounds.
Meanwhile, the Devon Commission was still taking evidence in South
Tipperary, and Michael O’Brien of Ballyboy, Clogheen took the stand. He had
1000 acres of land, principally in dairy and grass, with some tillage. As a director
of a bank in Mitchelstown, and as a farmer, he felt he had a good knowledge of the
area. Per Irish acre, he said that 80 barrels of potatoes could be expected, but “they
mostly use lime where they should use dung.” It was his opinion that the land was
excellent wheat land that was capable of producing ten barrels per acre, but it was
averaging only six: “ the land is worn out, they do not manure. “17 Of course this
13
Canon W. Burke, History of Clonmel, p.211
14
Tipperary Vindicator, (newspaper, March 16,1844.)
15
Ibid., (January 25, 1845).
16
Ibid., (July 3, 1844).
17
Evidence of Michael O’Brien to the Devon Commission, (no.836,Clogheen)
13
lack of manuring was due to a lack of farmyard manure, and despite their using
vast quantities of it, turf mould is a soil conditioner and not a fertiliser.
Patrick Welsh of Newcastle gave evidence to the Commission on the 26
September, 1844. He was agent to about 1,000 acres, and a great deal of mountain
land. “The rate of wages” he said, was “eight pence without diet - some are giving
ten pence”. A cabin was costing one pound per year without a garden. Potato land
was nine to ten pounds per acre in his district, and it had to be paid for in advance.
In this way the owner of the land was guaranteed his money regardless of the crop
at harvest time.18
The Devon Commission has been described as a landlords commission because
it did not interview any small tenants or cottiers, but some years after the famine,
evidence was given at the famous trial of John Sarsfield Casey, known as ‘The
Galty Boy’, by Michael Regan of Skeheenarinky, and Denis Murphy from the
same area. Michael Regan held forty-seven acres of rocky mountain which his
father had held before him. He first remembered it as a grassy heath. His father,
together with Michael and Michael’s brother had reclaimed the land with no help
from the landlord. They” dug it with spades and crowbars, and blasted rocks many of which they buried.” He was fifty years old and together with his father,
had built his own house. To improve the reclaimed land they used lime: “My father
had to bring the limestone in panniers on a horse’s back, and the roads were very
steep and rugged. The land in some places was fair enough, in others it was bad
and very rocky. It is a light soil. I have grown oats, a very bad crop, sometimes two
acres, sometimes one. I have twelve in family, myself, my wife, and ten children.”
For food they had “Potatoes, stirabout and bread.”19
Denis Murphy lived in a one roomed cabin “too far up the Galtees”. He could
remember living on the land since 1821, and his father had it before him. At that
time the land was in a poor state, consisting of “heath that grew up to my knees.”
When he was asked how they reclaimed the land, he replied:
“ To go to the limestone quarry that was on the low land, and
to fill, my lord, a little donkey-car; to fill about six cwt.; to
drive on until we began to get against the steep hill; to unload
a portion until we get into another cliff; to unload a portion
again, and in the long run you would not know what colour
was the horse, only white, like the day he was foaled, with
sweat, and, upon my oath, there would not be more than one
cwt. when it reached the kiln. To reclaim this barren mountain
we had nothing but a spade and a pickaxe, and we had to get
gunpowder to blast the rocks. .20
18
Evidence of Patrick Welsh to the Devon Commission, (no.833, Clogheen)
19
Report of Trial of John Sarsfield Casey , (Dublin, 1877, PP. 51-53.)
20
Ibid.
14
When asked about the stones on the land, he noted the following:
“Upon my oath man, there are stones bigger than the bench
the Chief Justice is sitting on. A crowbar should raise them,
and a stout man with an iron sledge in his hand, and the
greatest bulk of a man had enough to do to make quarters of
three big rocks in a day, and indeed my lord, it was not on
Indian meal stirabout he could do it.”
Upon being asked what they did with the heath once the stones were removed, he
stated:
“To dig it with a spade, and turn it into the ground, to come
then with the quicklime burnt in the kiln, and to shake a little
dust of that on it.”21
And so it went on, all along the mountain. Both mountains. Desperately trying to
create farmland out of the mountainside. Desperate for land to grow crops to feed
the ever increasing population.
Ironically the dramatic increase in the population of Ireland at the time was
attributable in no small way to the humble potato. It was the staple diet for millions
of people, and supplemented with milk its value as a food is unquestioned. It was
easy to grow, it was cheap, and the people considered themselves well off if they
had enough potatoes to eat. They expected little else. This lack of expectation
meant that there was very little to stop young people from getting married and
starting a family. Large families were the norm. The ‘trivial expense’ of children
was more than offset by the security they offered a couple as future workers. A
couple did not need to save for anything. A cabin cost very little, and furniture was
not even considered. A ‘Select Committee on the state of Ireland’ was told by
Daniel O’Connell that the poor had nothing that would deserve the name of
furniture, that it was a luxury to have a box to put anything into; their bedding was
nothing but straw, and their food was potatoes and sour milk, or potatoes and
water. When he was asked if the poor had any means of purchasing potatoes when
their stocks ran out, he replied: “Money is an article that the Irish peasant knows
exceedingly little of.”22
For reasons such as these, as already stated, young people got married and
tended to have lots of children. Perhaps it was because of their children that people
preserved their cheerfulness. Many commentators of the time remarked on the
cheerful disposition of the people, which is remarkable when their circumstances
are considered. In the summertime, if they had enough food to sustain them, they
danced at the crossroads, played music, and told stories. Certainly they were poor,
at times hungry, and badly dressed, but these deprivations were, together with their
21
Ibid.
22
P.S.O’Hegarty, Op.Cit., (p. 385)
15
religion, a common bond. They also had their national game of hurling. Arthur
Young who toured Ireland at the end of the eighteenth century, spent some months
at the Kingston estate in Mitchelstown, and had seen hurling been played in the
area. He described it as “the cricket of savages” 23 As his observations were made
many years before the founding of the Gaelic Athletic Association, his description
might not have been too wide of the mark, but while people of today might find his
words amusing, it is a good indication of the fitness and strength of the players
who probably had nothing to eat but potatoes and milk. Young also commented on
the number of pigs in the towns and villages of the Galty-Vee Valley, and he noted
humourously that the children and the pigs rolled together in the mud. Not alone
did the children share the mud with the pig which, Young noted, was beginning to
be kept out of doors in some places, but they shared the same food source as well.
Both were raised on potatoes.
Main crop potatoes were stored in pits in the ground throughout the winter and
spring, but from April until the harvesting of the early crop, the people very often
starved. Failure of the crop was a regular occurrence. In The Great Hunger, Cecil
Woodham Smith notes that there was a general failure in 1800. In 1807, half the
crop was lost through frost. In 1821 and 1822, the potato failed completely in
Connaught and Munster. Similar reports were made in 1830 and 1836, and 1837
brought extensive failure throughout Ireland.24 The early 1840’s were no better and
so it came as no surprise and caused no great alarm when the early reports of
failure started to come in, in 1845.
Despite the absence of leases, the dependence on potatoes as a food, the lack of
fertilisers, low stocking levels, and the problem of subdivision, farmers with larger
holdings were, in the first decades of the 19th century, beginning to build more
comfortable houses. Many of the small stone houses with thatched roofs, a kitchen,
a parlour and two bedrooms, that were to become so common in the Irish
countryside, date from this period. They were in a farmyard setting, surrounded by
the cowhouses, stable, dairy, cartsheds and fuelsheds. These sheds often had a loft
overhead in which the labourer might live, sometimes with his family. As the
population continued to multiply it was common for a farmer to convert one of his
outhouses to accommodation for one of his sons when the son got married. This
seeming prosperity was achieved by loans from the banks in Clonmel and
Mitchelstown, and the more benevolent landlords would sometimes provide
tenants with slates and timber. The servicing of loans was possible as long as the
local mills continued to flourish and purchase the wheat - which was being grown
on a larger scale than ever before - and as long as the markets paid good prices for
the butter, eggs and pigs. In the earlier years of the nineteenth century, there were
restrictions on the sale of butter, and only certain large centres such as Clonmel
23
Arthur Young, A Tour in Ireland with general observations on the Present
State of that Kingdom,
‘Manners and Customs’ ( 1780, p.147)
24
Cecil Woodham Smith, The Great Hunger , (Penguin edition 1991, p.38)
16
and Tipperary were allowed to have a butter market. From 1830 onwards this law
was rescinded, and smaller towns such as Clogheen opened their own butter
markets, with buyers from as far away as Waterford and Cork attending at the town
every Tuesday, buying the firkins from the local farmers. Through these markets,
an inextricable link was established between the rural community of the Galty-Vee
Valley and the towns and villages through which they sold their produce.
17
Chapter 3 Pre-Famine Clogheen
Samuel Lewis’s Parliamentary Gazeteer of Ireland, 1846 notes that a large
trade in agricultural produce was being carried on in Clogheen, mainly for export,
and more than 80,000 barrels of wheat were purchased annually in its market. It
was made into flour of superior quality, and sent by land to Clonmel, and then
down the River Suir to Waterford,25 by barge, where it was loaded onto ships for
England. At this time, the town of Clogheen had seven flour mills, which were
powered by fourteen water wheels. Corn and flour were not only exported
downriver from Clonmel, but also through the small but busy port of Youghal in
County Cork, and it was because of this connection with Youghal that the Vee road
to Lismore was constructed, with a branch to Cappoquin. The original road passed
right beside Baylough, but with the introduction of the extra traffic, larger carts
carrying much greater loads, it was necessary to find a new, less steep route to the
gap through the Knockmaeldowns. The new road was a wonderful feat of
surveying and engineering in that its greatest rise is one in thirty feet. Local
tradition has it that the Vee road was constructed during the ‘Great Famine’, but
the Ordnance Survey map of 1840 would seem to contradict this. It may well have
been part of an earlier relief scheme, and it is quite possible that it was upgraded as
part of the famine relief works of 1846-47.
Because of the mills in Clogheen, and the increased prosperity of the larger
farmers, there had been a general upgrading of the road network in the Galty-Vee
Valley. Funding for these improvements was sanctioned at the Presentment
Sessions, which were attended by local magistrates and cess payers. Further
funding came from the many toll-gates erected along the way. One such toll-gate
was at Ballyboy cross between Clogheen and Castlegrace. Others were at
Glencallaghan, (manned by a Mr. Keating), and Kilcaroon (manned by Mr.
Quirke.) These toll-gates or turnpikes as they were called do not seem to have
lasted beyond the middle of the nineteenth century. Other improvements in road
communication at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth
century include the making of the ‘Top-Road’ between Cahir and Mitchelstown,
and the widening of the bridge at Clogheen over the River Tar. A glance under this
bridge shows clearly that the original was only half the width of the present bridge.
The retailers and business people of the towns depended to a large extent on the
custom of the country people. The agricultural labourers and small landholders
would have been occasional visitors to the shops, but the larger farmers would
have been counted among the ‘good’ customers. In Clogheen the traders would
have sought the custom of the army barracks, the mill-owners houses (Cooleville,
Clashleigh, Glenleigh, Castlegrace), and the other great houses in the area such as
Clashaphooka, Parson’s Green, etc., etc. The Fever Hospital at Cockpit Lane, the
25
Samuel Lewis
19
dispensary at Lower Main Street, the Bridewell (which stood on the east side of the
present chemist shop, the constabulary barracks (which was the building on the
west side of Eamonn Keating’s pub, and is now Mrs. Cutlers), and Shanbally
Castle, the home of Lord Lismore, all ensured a comfortable living for the many
assorted shops in the town. They included bakers, blacksmiths, butchers, grocers,
tailors, nail makers, pawnbrokers, drapers, a number of pubs, and several boot and
shoe makers.26 There was a considerable amount of employment available in the
town for a few years with the building of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church, the Union
Workhouse, and the National School. The Fever Hospital at Cockpit Hill had been
built at an earlier period by the Clogheen Charitable Association, which was
founded in 1811.
For many years a Catholic Church had stood in Clogheen at a site now
occupied by Fr. Sheehy Terrace. It is fitting that the terrace should boast the name
of Fr. Sheehy, as he would undoubtedly have celebrated Mass at that church on
many occasions.27 In the 1830’s (following a fire) the church was deemed to be too
small for the ever increasing population and a site for a new church was chosen
where the present St. Mary’s now stands. Where the church bell and the Calvary
Crucifixion scene can be viewed today, there once was a public quarry.28 It was
from here (and other local quarries) that the limestone was hewn for the building of
the new church in the late 1830’s. St. Mary’s was built to its present size in 1864.
The Military Barracks which was built in 1769 on Butler’s Field, now Lios
Mhuire, claimed to own fifteen feet outside its perimeter wall. In 1842 the Board of
Ordnance threatened legal action against the following: Rev. Fr. Casey for a wall
in front of the church and another at the rear; Miss Anne Sargint whose house was
at the southwest corner of the barracks; D. McCraith for a wall in the field at the
rear; and Mr. E. Taylor for a row of trees planted on the west side of the barrack
wall; all of which properties encroached on Government ground. Later in the year,
the Board of Ordnance discovered to its dismay that the original documents
transferring rights of ownership to them, from the landlord Mr. Cornelius
O’Callaghan, had not been properly executed, and so the threat of legal action was
withdrawn. Cornelius O’Callaghan had by this time become Lord Lismore. The
rent for the Ordnance ground was ‘one peppercorn’, which was a nominal rent used
in cases where no money was charged, but a rent had to be charged for legal
reasons. It appears that the decision to erect the barracks in Clogheen was taken in
1764, and was a direct result of the Whiteboy action in the area. Previous to that
26
Slater, Slater’s Directory of Munster, 1846, p. 173.
27
Local tradition; name of street on O.S. map, i.e. ‘Chapel Lane’; name of field
(on deeds held by Mr and Mrs Peter Jackson at Cooleville), i.e. ‘Chapel Field’.
28
File number: WO 44/582 p.8, and p11., Public Record Office, Kew, England.
(The East gateway of the barracks, which can still be seen on the wall, was
rendered obsolete by the quarry.)
20
time, the troops that had occasion to visit the area were quartered on the local
inhabitants.
The Protestant Church of St. Paul was built in 1845-46, to replace the church
that used to stand on the Bella Hill, opposite O’Briens farm. The church at the
Bella Hill is said to have been dismantled and the stone used in the construction of
St Paul’s. The National School system had been started in 1831, and by the mid
1840’s many villages had a national school. A letter to the Tipperary Vindicator
had urged that such a school should be built in Clogheen:
“Nowhere are so many children to be met with, so backward
in literary requirement, nor no place would they be tolerated
to grow up and remain in so rude and uncultivated a state of
nature as they are here [Clogheen], without some respectful
effort to have been made by at least a few humane, well
disposed and charitable persons to commence building an
institution, to be conducted by a Catholic, in which
knowledge would be imparted that would dispel their
darkness and rescue them from their abject state of
ignorance... The landed proprietor [Lord Lismore] will on this
occasion, as well as on the like former ones, be equally liberal
of gift and donation,...there is a handsome sum made up of
the contributions of the parishioners on hand for it some years
past, together with much material, consisting of a large heap
of stones and lime mortar.”29
The stone plaque over the door of the garage opposite the hospital shows that
Clogheen had its National school by 1846. Clogheen did have a Parochial school
long before the National school was built, but it was unusual for Catholics to attend
this school.
A school is marked on the 1840 Ordnance Map at the Square in Clogheen. This
was probably a ‘Pay Daily’ school. At these schools the pupils brought a penny per
day as payment for the schoolmaster, and this in fact was a form of private
education, and thereby only available to those who could afford it. The larger
farmers from the centre of the Galty-Vee Valley would have sent their children to
this school, while the children from the smaller farms, which tended to be near the
mountains and the poorer land, had no access to education. Despite a charity
school making an appearance for a short time in the 1840’s,30 these were the people
who suffered most when they had to emigrate, and found that only the most menial
jobs were open to them.
It was on these poor farms too that the Irish language lived on for many years.
“According to the census of population Iffa and Offa West was the only barony in
29
Draft of original letter held by Mrs. S. Harper, Lisfuncheon, Clogheen
30
Slater’s Directory
21
County Tipperary where Irish had remained the language of the majority in
1851.”31 There are many references in correspondence of the time to Irish being
spoken by the ‘common people’. English was now the language of the ‘better off’,
the language of commerce, and the language of politics. Indeed, all of Daniel
O’Connell’s meetings were conducted through English. It was the language of the
Church, and now it was the language of the schools. People who spoke their native
language were made to feel inferior, and so the parents sent their children to school
to learn English. On the poorer farms the children’s labour was needed at various
times of the year, and for this reason they got little if any education. Very often
too, the parents were ashamed to send their children because of the lack of decent
clothes. If they had gone to one of the early National Schools they could have
learned to recite poems like the following:
“I thank the goodness and the grace
Which on my birth has smiled,
And made me in these Christian days
A happy English child.”32
It is difficult to imagine that the quiet peaceful town of Clogheen was once a
thriving, busy milling town. It has a history of milling that goes back to the early
seventeenth century, but it was the mill-owning Grubb family that really saw the
potential of the area as a milling centre, with a rich hinterland available to grow the
crops, and rivers available to provide adequate power for the mills. Thomas
Vowell, who was adjutant of the Clogheen Volunteers in 1781, had purchased in
1784, the Garter Inn at Coole(ville) from one Daniel Keefe, (who may have been
the Daniel Keefe who gave evidence on behalf of Fr. Sheehy at his trial in 1766.)
Vowell built a mill there, and in 1794, he sold it to Samuel Grubb, a merchant of
Clonmel.33 Over the next several decades, the Grubbs built mills at Cooleville,
Flemingstown, Clashleigh, and Castlegrace. At Clashleigh they also built a
brewery, and the little road which leads to Clashleigh and the old mill is still
known as Brewery Lane. At Mount Anglesbey the Wade family had a flour mill, as
did the Murrays at Glenleigh. Fennells had a mill at Rehill, and did not purchase
the Manor Mill at Glenleigh from Murrays until the 1840’s.
The mills depended on two things other than a supply of wheat; water-power
and manpower. The Galty-Vee Valley provided both. Water-power came from the
Rivers Tar and Duag, and in the case of Wade’s mill at Mount Anglesbey, and the
Manor mill at Glenleigh, water power was derived from the Glounliagh stream,
which gives its name to Glenleigh house.
31
T. Jones Hughes, ‘ Landholding and settlement’, Tipperary,History and
Society. Dublin, 1985.
p. 343
32
33
P.S.O’Hegarty, op. cit., p.395
From documents held by Mr and Mrs Peter Jackson at Cooleville, Clogheen.
22
As the number of mills grew, so too did the number of workers needed to work
them. Slater’s Directory notes that “The corn mills of Messrs. Grubbs are very
extensive, employing great power and a considerable number of hands.”34
Clogheen gradually grew in size as houses were built to house the influx of
workers, and shops were opened to supply them. The mill-owners’ houses also
provided employment, both in the house and outdoors, to gardeners, coachmen,
and tradesmen of all description.
The heavily laden mill-carts going to Clonmel and Youghal, the Bianconi
coaches ferrying passengers and mail to and from Cork and Dublin via Clonmel,
and the daily traffic of the farmers coming to the town for supplies, meant that
there was a constant flow of traffic in and out of the town. There was a weekly
market for butter, eggs, potatoes and fowl, and at times turf, along with a monthly
pig market, and four fairs every year.
Not only did mid nineteenth century Clogheen look different than it does today,
it also sounded different; from the noise of the mills; the ringing of hammers on
anvils; the trundling of carts; the excited voices of children; the agitated voices at
market, to the sounds of wheelwrights, nailmakers, carpenters, and shoemakers at
work. The town would also have smelled different, due to the many animals on the
streets, the blacksmiths forges, and the smell of stale porter from more than a
dozen pubs. It was bustling, busy, full of life, full of people; almost every house on
Main Street was a shop of some kind, while the smaller streets overflowed with
inhabitants. Chapel Lane, (now Mountain View), had houses on both sides, unlike
now, when all traces of the houses on the west side of this street no longer exist.
Similarly Pound Lane (Convent Road) and Cockpit Lane (Cooldevane Road) both
had many houses and business premises that are long since gone. So, the people
from the country, side by side with the people from the towns and villages,
struggled to make a living, or to simply exist, because the vast majority of the
people in the Galty-Vee Valley were endowed in poverty. However, whether they
were well to do, struggling, or absolutely poverty stricken, all of these people, who
were our ancestors, together had to face the oncoming curse of ‘The Great
Famine’.
34
(Slater, 1846)
23
Chapter 4 Poor Law and Workhouse
Forced to see them, day by day
Snatch our sole resource away,
If returned a pittance be;
Alms ‘tis named, and Beggars we.
John O’Hagan.35
In the decades following the Act of Union of 1800, dozens of Commissions and
select committees had sat and reported on the state of Ireland. All had highlighted
the rapidly increasing population, the lack of employment, and the wretched living
conditions of the poor. All had warned of disaster and starvation. It was recognised
that a country that depended solely on potatoes as its source of food was facing
serious catastrophe if the crop failed. Already the people were living on meal
during the months of June, July, and August, while they waited for that years crop
to come in. Attempts had been made by concerned people to relieve the poor.
Thousands of pounds had been collected in London and Dublin during years of
particularly great distress, but associations throughout the country, such as the
Clogheen Charitable Association, were unable to cope with the huge numbers of
paupers in need of relief in the 1830s.
England already had a Poor Law System in place, and it was decided to send an
English Poor Law official to Ireland to see if a similar system could work here.
George Nicholls spent six weeks in Ireland and his report was accepted and acted
upon. Many people, including Daniel O’Connell were against the English system
of Poor Law being applied here. A commission set up in 1833, advised in 1836,
against the English system. It did not suit Irish conditions or temperament. Instead
it was recommended that work should be provided in schemes such as draining
bogs, reclaiming wasteland etc. The people of Ireland wanted work, not charity.
However, the Government had made up its mind. Concern had been growing in
England at the growing number of destitute Irish emigrating to England looking for
work. It was argued that Ireland should support its own poor. After the Poor Law
was passed, a system of rates would he applied to property, and these rates would
be used to build and run the workhouses. The irony was that the collection of rates
from the already hard-pressed tenants created new poor, and pauperised those that
were already poor. In essence the system of rates involved the poor being asked to
provide for themselves. This provoked Daniel O’Connell into stating:
“ When I found that it would devour Irish capital, that it
would not procure employment for the people, and that the
money used was chiefly to be swallowed up by Poor Law
35
John O’Hagan:
‘ Famine and Exportation’ , Songs and Ballads of
Young Ireland., ( London, 1896, p.178)
25
Commissioners, by Chaplains, by building workhouses, and
by all the machinery necessary to work it, I opposed it in
every way I could.”36
There is no doubt, however, that some system of Poor Law was needed.
In 1838, Thomas Drummond, the Under Secretary at Dublin Castle, infuriated
the magistrates and landlords of Tipperary, when, in a letter to Lord Donoughmore,
who was both a major landlord of the Knocklofty-Newcastle area, and Lieutenant
of the county, commented on: “the serious outrages that were occurring in Ireland,
but most frequently in Tipperary”, and these were due, he said, to the treatment the
people were receiving from the landowners. “Property has its duties as well as its
rights” he went on, and he wrote that he had discovered
“from returns furnished by the Clerk of the Peace for
Tipperary, that the number of ejectments in 1837, is not less
than double the number in 1833. The deficiency of a demand
for labour, and the want, as yet, of any legal provision against
utter destitution, leave this humble class, when ejected,
without any certain protection against starvation,”37
Despite the advice of people like O’Connell, and despite the report of the 1836
commission, the British system of Poor Law was introduced in Ireland in 1838.
Once again the lack of a Dublin Government was sorely felt by the Irish people.
Men who were elected to represent Lancashire, Sussex, Cornwall, Derbyshire, and
Shropshire etc., were once again to decide the fate of the Irish poor from such
places as Skeheenarinky, Burncourt, Clogheen, Newcastle, Ardfinnan,
Ballyporeen, Cahir and Araglin.
Ireland would be divided into 130 Unions, each with a workhouse to be
governed by a Board of Guardians. Some of the Board members would be elected
by the rate payers, while others were ‘Ex-Officio’ Guardians, and were appointed
by the Poor Law Commissioners. The Board would have responsibility for building
and running the workhouses. Poor Law Unions usually had a radius of about ten
miles and contained several electoral divisions, with a market town in each Union
chosen as the centre for the workhouse. Clogheen was one such town, and the
Union it served was known as Clogheen Union. The first meeting of the Clogheen
Board of Guardians was held at Clogheen courthouse on March 18th, 1839. The
Ex-Officio Guardians present were Edwin Taylor and John Chaytor.
36
37
C.M. O’Connell, Life of O’Connell, (1864, Vol. II, pp. 613-14.)
Barry O’Brien: Thomas Drummond, (pp. 272-287).
26
The Elected Guardians present were:38
Edmond O’Mara,
Cahir.
Michael Keating,
Cahir.
Pierse Donnell,
Killemly, Cahir.
Francis Mulcahy,
Neddins.
Thomas Mulcahy,
Rathmore.
Patrick Walsh,
Lacken.
Edmond Walsh,
Garryduff.
Maurice Casey,
Shanbally, Clogheen.
Edward Butler,
Kilroe.
John Mulcahy,
Corrabella.
James Prendergast,
Newcastle.
Samuel Grubb,
Clogheen.
James Mulcahy,
Rehill.
Edmund Sheehy,
Barnora.
Bryan Phelan,
Lisfuncheon.
Eugene O’Neill,
(No address given)
Thomas O’Brien,
Kilbeheny.
At later meetings the Ex-Officio Guardians included; William Quinn, Samuel
Barton, Joshua Fennell, George Fennell, and Lord Lismore.
Now that the Guardians had been chosen, one of their first tasks was to appoint
a Clerk of the Union, and having interviewed five candidates, Jeffrey Keating of
Ballysheehan was appointed at a salary of forty pounds per year. One of the
conditions of employment was that he had to live in Clogheen. The National Bank
of Mitchelstown was chosen as Treasurer, but a few months later, because of their
refusal to open an office in Clogheen, the Mitchelstown bank was replaced by the
Clonmel Bank.
One of the provisions of the Poor Law Act was that a Valuation Survey should
be made in each Union, and Thomas Heffernan was appointee as Valuer. He was to
be paid one penny for each acre valued. Not more than four hundred acres were to
be valued in any one day, and guides were to be employed to assist the valuers at
38
Minute Books of the Clogheen Union Board of Guardians.(County Library,
Thurles.) [Separate references not given for Minute Book material.]
27
1s.6d per day. John O’Donnell, clerk to the valuators, was called before a meeting
of the Guardians to answer charges that he wrote the words ‘Tory’ and ‘ Disturber’
beside certain names in the rate-book. He had to give an undertaking not to do so
again under pain of losing his job. Next to be appointed were the Parish Wardens.
These were:
James O’Donnell and John Cusack, Cahir.
Christopher Baggot and Walter Baggot, Ardfinnan.
William Wade and Alex Mahony (Shanbally), Shanrahan.
William Connor and Timothy Casey, Templetenny.
Timothy Callaghan and Michael Connors, Rochestown.
John Lonergan and Edmund Carrigan, Neddins.
Thomas Tobin and John Burns, Tullamelan.
James Fennessy and Edward Heffernan, Tullaghorton.
Richard Casey and John Hally, Mullough.
Edward Ryan and James Williams, Tubrid.
James Connolly and William Walpole, Whitechurch.
Patrick Conway, Mortlestown.
Patrick Wall and Daniel Connors, Derrygrath.
James Prendergast and William Fogarty, Newcastle.
William Walsh and James Miles, Ballybacon.
John O’Mahony and Walter McCarthy, Kilbehenny.
Edmund Lonergan, Ballysheehan.
An application was made to the Exchequer Loan Commissioners for six
thousand and two hundred pounds for the purpose of building a workhouse in
Clogheen. At a meeting held in August 1839, on a motion of John Mulcahy and
seconded by William Butler, it was unanimously resolved that the most eligible
site for the workhouse was “that part of Browning’s Hill, now in the possession of
John Collett.” It was further stated that this site had a never failing supply of water,
and a fall to the river for its sewer.
One month later, on a motion of Lord Lismore, and seconded by Samuel
Grubb, the decision of where to site the workhouse was changed, and it was
resolved that “a site near Murrays’ Mill (Glenleigh), and now pointed out, is a far
preferable one to that originally agreed on, and that the Poor Law Commissioners
be respectfully requested to order their architect to inspect the site now proposed,
that the building may be at once commenced.” For a map of the site, 6s.6d was
paid to Jeremiah McCraith. The loan, to be repaid over twenty years, was
28
sanctioned, and the construction of the workhouse began for the “reception,
employment, classification, and receipt of destitute poor persons therein.” By
March 1840, George Wilkinson, the architect responsible for the erection of the
nations 130 workhouses, reported that 64 were under construction
Mill owners William Wade of Mount Anglesbey, and Patrick Murray of Glenleigh
were paid twelve and ten pounds respectively as compensation for the land on
which the workhouse was being built. Henry O’Brien received 30s. They later
complained that “their land was sustaining considerable injury” so a wall was built
around the workhouse site.
Vaccination Districts were established, and for each vaccination carried out, the
doctors were to be paid 9d. They were; Dr. John O’Brien, Ballyporeen; Dr.Clarke,
Clogheen; Dr. Temple, Ardfinnan and Newcastle. The valuation of the Union
continued and took up much of the Guardians time. Mr. Fennell ordered that the
mills should be revalued as the board had decided that the original valuation was
too low. They also placed a very high valuation on the turnpikes, but this was
29
successfully contested in court. Finally the valuation of the entire 137,106 acres
was completed and a rate of 5d. in the pound was struck. Pat Wheatley was paid
12s for posting up notices to that effect around the Union.
Despite a misunderstanding between Mr. Jones the building contractor and
Mr. Anderson the Clerk of Works, which caused work to be suspended for a time,
the Guardians were now able to turn their attention to the mammoth task of fitting
out the house, and the appointment of staff. The first Master of Clogheen Union
workhouse was Richard Donohue. His sureties were Cornelius Ahern of Clogheen
and Thomas Griffith of Ballyporeen. His salary was forty pounds per year. The
Matron was Mary Roche, on a salary of twenty-five pounds per year. The Medical
Attendant was Dr. Gallogly at forty pounds per year, and James Cleary was the
porter at ten pounds per year. The first nurse was Ellen Dunn, but she was replaced
a short time later by Bridget Power of Clogheen. The salary for the nurse was eight
pounds. Rev. James Kelly was the Chaplain at a salary of forty pounds per year.
The Master and Matron were ordered to visit Tipperary workhouse which was
already open, to “acquaint themselves with their duties”.
Tenders were invited for supplies and fittings and furniture etc., and the
Guardians examined samples of merchandise sent in by hopeful suppliers.
Anything that was not up to standard or that was overpriced was sent back.
Nothing could be purchased without the Board’s approval, and every purchase had
to be proposed and seconded. The following list of items chosen at random from
the minute books shows the enormity of the undertaking.
Frieze Jackets
5s.5½ d. each.
Waistcoats
2s.8d. each.
Trousers
5s.2d. each.
Bolsters
9d. each.
Bedticks
4s.2d. each.
Sheeting
6s.6d. per pair.
Mens Linen shirts
1s.101/2d each.
Boys Linen shirts.
1s. 0½. each.
Womens Linen shifts
1s.1d. each.
Joseph Fitzgerald of Cahir was appointed contractor for shoes on condition that he
put a row of nails around the edges of the soles of both the men’s and women’s
shoes.
30
Men’s shoes
4s.4d. per pair.
Women’s shoes
3s.3d. per pair.
Flannel waistcoats
1s.11½d. each.
Flannel petticoats
2s.6d. each
Linsey Woolsey wrappers
2s.8d. each.
Linsey Woolsey petticoats with loops made of canvas doubled,
with canvas waistband;
2s.3d. each.
Cotton petticoats
1s.2d. each.
Girls’ frocks of blue Chambray
1s.4½d. each.
Wooden trays
3s. each.
Commodes
8s.6d. each.
6 Wheelbarrows
12s. each.
6 Shovels
2s.6d. each.
2 wrought-iron baskets for boiling potatoes
£7.0.0. each.
6 three-pronged dungforks with ash handles
1s.8d. each.
Breadknife and stand.
1 two-pint ladle for stirabout
1s.3d.
1 one-pint ladle
1s.
Scraper for stirabout
2s.
Scraper for soup
2s.
Ladle for skimming
2s.
salt boxes, fireraker, poker, quart tins, pint tins, iron spoons, twelve mops with
handles, twelve scrubbing brushes, six hearth brushes, 200 chamber utensils, 6
lamps, 4 ceiling lamps, branding irons for marking the property of the House, small
scales and weights, large scales and weights for yard, measures, bellows, fire irons,
fenders, 12 coal-boxes, 12 iron pots, 3 handbarrows, 3 boxbarrows, boardroom
tables(six pounds each from Thomas Houlahan of Cahir), presses, tables, 2 chests
of drawers for Master and Matron, 24 elm chairs for the boardroom, one and a half
tons of oaten straw from William Keefe of Gormanstown at £2 per ton, (to fill the
bedticks for the paupers), 2 bedsteads at 30s. each for the Master and Matron, and
70 lbs of best quality feathers for each bed for the Master and Matron. Other items
included men’s canvas aprons, 200 brass hooks, locks for stores, a large oatmeal
bin, (7½ feet long, and three feet deep, made by Pat Dobbins,) 12 clotheslines and
12 cradles.
31
Denis McCraith was appointed contractor for Newport coal at 22s.6d. per ton.
Sixty tons were ordered. Michael Mullowney of Duhill supplied six spinning
wheels at 5s each. Food contracts for the house were normally for a period
specified, usually three months, and the first of those contracts was awarded to
William Cleary for the supply of bread which cost 6d. per 41b loaf. Patrick Murray
was given the contract for new milk at 8d. per gallon, and William Mahony was
the appointed supplier of oatmeal which cost £14 per ton. Maria Jackson supplied
stamps, and Mrs Wade supplied yellow soap at 31s. per cwt., and tallow candles at
5s.10d per dozen. Thomas Grubb of Clonmel was asked to submit his price list for
medicines.
On the 7 March 1842, the final preparations were being made in anticipation of
the opening of the house at the end of the month. It was decided to have entrance
gates of round iron, and the piers of the gateway were to be of brown stone. The
Sun Insurance Company received £5.3s.1d. for the insurance on the building and
the contents which now included workhouse clothes to the value of £800.
On the 29 June 1842, the first paupers were admitted to the Clogheen
workhouse. In order to reduce the risk of cross-infection between incoming
paupers and those already in the house, the entrance buildings of the workhouse
were situated some distance in front of the main building. The entrance building
contained the tramps’ ward and the probationary ward, as well as the Board-room,
the Clerk’s office and the porter’s room. To the rear of the building was the
punishment cell and the privvies. The left hand side of the house was for females,
and the right hand side was for males. The Master’s quarters and the Matron’s
quarters were in the centre of the house, affording them access to the wards at all
times. On admittance, the paupers were examined by the Medical attendant in the
probationary ward, and then they were washed and dressed in the workhouse
clothes. Their own clothes were washed, fumigated, and stored until the owner was
leaving the house.
Conditions were deliberately harsh and far less comfortable than life on the
outside, in order to ensure that only the truly destitute sought relief. There was no
outdoor relief given by the Board of Guardians by order of the Poor Law
Commissioners. One of the most inhuman aspects of the workhouses was the
segregation rule which was strictly imposed on families entering there. They were
divided into the following categories; Males over 15, males 2 to 15, females over
15, females 2 to 15, and children under 2. Mothers could keep children under two
with them, and they were allowed access to the under sevens, and with the
permission of the master, parents could occasionally meet older children. In Marita
Conlon McKenna’s children’s book about the famine, Under the Hawthorn Tree,
young Michael says,
“But Eily, the workhouse! I’d be split from you and Peggy,
and we’d all be separated from mother and father. Dan
32
Collins told me the places are full of disease and that you can
hear the people screaming when you walk by!”39
As well as being separated from their immediate families, contact with relatives
outside the house was impossible as visitors were strictly forbidden. It was also a
strict rule that any man, whose wife and family were admitted, was obliged to
lodge himself in the workhouse. Deserted families were numerous and a reward
was offered to anyone with information as to the whereabouts of any man who had
abandoned his wife to the Poorhouse.
The diet of the inmates was boring to say the least, but it was obviously better
than what they had before they had been admitted. All able-bodied adult male
paupers received 7 ounces of oatmeal and ½ pint of new milk for breakfast, and 1
lb of household bread and a half lb of new milk for dinner. Adult female paupers
who were employed at washing or hard labour received the same as above, while
other female paupers received 1 ounce of oatmeal and ¼ lb of bread less. Children
aged 2 to 9 years were given 3 ounces of oatmeal and ½ pint of new milk for
breakfast, the same for dinner, and 4 ounces of bread for supper. Children under 2
years; 12 ounces of bread and 1 pint of new milk per day. This was the diet in June
1842, but when potatoes were in season, and therefore inexpensive, they were
given to the paupers in place of oatmeal and bread, even for breakfast. Tenders
were invited on a regular basis, and Denis Mulcahy was declared contractor for
potatoes at 7s.6d. per barrel (21 stone).
The Master and Matron and other officers had a meat allowance every day. The
inmates had a meat allowance on Christmas Day. So while the paupers ate bread
and oatmeal, and slept on straw beds, the officers of the house slept on feather beds
and ate meat every day.
The comfort of the buildings themselves left a lot to be desired, and had
actually been designed with economy in mind. The instructions given to Wilkinson
the architect stated that “The style of building is intended to be of the cheapest
description, compatible with durability and effect is aimed at by harmony of
proportion, all mere decoration being studiously excluded.”40 Many of the rooms
were dark and unventilated and in 1842, the Medical Officer, Dr. Gallogly
requested that the Guardians should sanction the work of ventilating the infirmary.
In 1843, it was decided to install windows in the dormitories. The chimneys were
inefficient from the start and needed constant cleaning. Joseph Higgins had the
contract for cleaning the chimneys, but in spite of this constant cleaning, the rooms
were smokey.
Many of the decisions taken by the Board were subsequently overruled by the
Commissioners in Dublin, and this caused great resentment among the Guardians;
so much so that they decided to look at the legislation to see if they could become
39
Marita Conlon McKenna, Under the Hawthorn tree
40
Pat Feeley, Nationalist newspaper, ( Clonmel, 25 April,1992.) p.26
33
independent of the Commission. Fortunately they were unable to do so, because
when the time came to pay back the loan on the workhouse it was found that the
Union was unable to do so. In April 1843 it was resolved “ that it appears to this
board that there are no funds with which to sustain the paupers in the house, that
even if the amount of rates now in progress of collection were all paid, the Union
would be in debt to the sum of thirteen pounds, eight shillings and sixpence.” It
was “impossible to collect a new rate owing to the distressed state of agriculture.”
No more paupers were to be admitted and the Guardians were considering
discharging able-bodied paupers. The running of the workhouse for 312 days had
cost £3,200
34
Figure 3 A Typical Workhouse Similar to that of Clogheen Union
Picture used with kind permission of Tipperary County Library
35
The collecting of rates was an ongoing problem. The tenants already had to pay
a tax to the County (county cess), and the rent to the landlord. This they found
almost impossible, and now they were being asked to pay rates to the Union. Many
just could not meet this new demand on their meagre resources, and as a result
found themselves facing prosecution. One of the Guardians wondered, what was
the use of “rate collectors calling on poor tenants when he has not a penny to give
without pledging his bedclothes.” It was not just the tenants who were prosecuted
for not paying their rates. The Earl of Glengall, for example, was summoned for
refusing to pay the rates on Cahir Military Barracks. The case was dismissed
however when the Guardians were unable to prove in Court that the Earl of
Glengall was liable for the rates on that property.
Being in the workhouse was a hugely traumatic experience for the pauper
children. They were away from familiar surroundings, away from their homes,
squalid though they may have been; they were separated from their families, and
now they had what was for many of them, their first experience of school. Richard
Burke was the first schoolmaster, on a salary of £15 per year. Mary Nowlan was
the first schoolmistress. They were both ordered to go to Dublin at their own
expense, “to be trained at the National Education Model School.” However the
Model School was so busy educating teachers for the many new National schools
around the country that the teachers of Clogheen Workhouse School had to wait
until after Christmas to get a place there.
This is the first mention of Richard Burke in connection with Clogheen Union
workhouse. He later became Clerk of the Union, and later still he obtained a higher
position in Waterford. When in Clogheen, Burke lived with his wife Joanna at
Main Street, in the building now occupied by the Co-op store. It was to here, in
March 1862, that he sent a parcel containing medicine for his wife. This medicine
was to cost her her life, and ultimately cost Richard Burke his life, as he had laced
the medicine with Strychnine. Following an inquest in Clogheen courthouse he was
arrested and later brought to trial in Clonmel. He was hanged on the 25th August
1862.41
However in 1842,the school in Clogheen workhouse was foremost in Richard
Burke’s mind, and he ordered supplies of 300 quills, 16 reams of paper, 4 pint jars
of ink, 72 slates, 100 slate pencils, 24 inkstands, and 16 desks, each to be 8½ feet
long and 3½ feet wide. For those children over the schoolgoing age an attempt was
made to teach them new skills, and for that purpose a tailor and a shoemaker were
hired. The shoemaker was Joseph Nelson who was probably related to William
Nelson of Barrack Hill,42 Clogheen, just one of the many shoemakers listed in the
41
42
Slater’s Directory 1846.
Anne Lanigan, ‘The Workhouse Child’ in Thurles: The Cathedral Town p.68
36
trade directories for those years. Joseph Nelson received 8d. per day and rations,
and as well as instructing the boys, he had to repair the shoes of the workhouse.
For the girls, domestic service was all that was available, though there is
reference in the minute books to wool being bought and the girls being put to work.
It would appear that the Commissioners felt that the girls’ future lay in being
servants. Anne Lanigan in ‘ The Workhouse Child in Thurles’ notes that both the
Poor Law and the Education Commissioners condemned the “concept of teaching
workhouse children sewing crafts of such specialised intricacy. Their destiny lay in
common domestic service. Therefore ‘rough household duties should occupy the
first rank’ in their industrial training.”43 Boys too were sent out of the house to
work, and it was common for people to apply for young workers, though this
practice was to become more prevalent in the years after the famine, as the need for
workers grew. For the lucky ones this meant a place to live, as they were all too
often orphans, and a few pennies a month. For many others however, it was
nothing more than slavery.
The highlight of the week for the young children was surely going for a walk in
the country. The master and mistress had been ordered “to take the children
entrusted to their care out into the country three times a week for the benefit of
their health”, and every year since then, over 150 years ago, the children of
Clogheen have been taken for walks by their teachers on those same roads.
One of the problems for the Guardians was in deciding who should be admitted
and who should be refused. Very often women with their children were dismissed
when it was discovered that their husbands were alive contrary to the wives
declarations that they were widows. Anybody infringing the workhouse rules was
also in danger of dismissal or of spending time in the ‘refractory cell’. Another
punishment inflicted by the Board was a cut in the food allowance for the week. In
March 1843 Mary Brien was detected in an attempt to remove a petticoat from the
house, and she was “deprived of her milk allowance” until the following Saturday.
All able bodied paupers were required to work, the women in the house being
obliged to do all the cleaning and laundry. The matron was directed to “employ the
big schoolgirls in keeping their dormitories in order, and that on each Tuesday the
washing of the clothes of all the schoolgirls be performed by them.”
It seems outrageous that the Guardians of an institution that had been set up for
the relief of the poor of the area, should have set themselves up as moral arbiters
but that is what they seem to have done in some cases, and in January 1843,
Margaret Walsh and her two children were discharged “in consequence of her
representing herself as married which is not the case”.
As a cost cutting measure in the same month, it was resolved that “ ½ pound of
potatoes be deducted in future from each meal of every inmate of this house “, but
the master reported at the end of the month that he had tried the new diet, and
43
Ibid., p.74
37
found it insufficient for the support of the inmates. It was agreed to restore it to
what it had been previously.
A letter from the Poor Law Commissioners in January 1843, instructed the
Guardians to see to the enlarging of the Idiot Wards, as Clonmel Lunatic Asylum
was only accepting violent lunatics. The Medical Officer reported that he was
treating many cases of Scarlatina and Measles in the house, and he was “authorised
to appropriate the attic dormitories in the main house to the temporary
accommodation of the sick.”
1843 was a bad year for Jeffrey Keating the Clerk of the Union. An accusation
was made against him by one of the Guardians: “The persons I accuse in my letter
to the Poor Law Guardians are Jeffrey Keating for immoral conduct in the
boardroom with Ellen Cahill, and James Cleary the porter for allowing him to sleep
in the boardroom at night.” The accusations were investigated by the board and it
was Jeffrey Keating’s painful duty to have to record in the minutes that he himself
was to be dismissed. The case against the porter was not proven. The new Clerk of
the Union was Henry Langley. Slater’s Directory of 1846 lists Henry Langley as
being resident at Parson’s Green, Clogheen.
It was a strict rule of the Poor Law Commissioners that the workhouses should
make no attempts at religious conversion, and that the religious needs of the
inmates should be catered for. This normally meant having a Catholic and a
Protestant Chaplain. An application was made on a number of occasions by Rev.
William Frazer to be appointed as Protestant Chaplain, but as Margaret Price was
the only Protestant pauper, and as she was allowed to go to the Parish Church on
Sundays, it was decided not to engage Rev. Frazer; “There is little probability of
any other Protestant seeking admission.” In circumstances which were strange and
sad, Margaret Price was to be joined by another Protestant within a short time. On
Sunday, 1 June 1844, a baby boy “aged about twelve months was found inside the
walls of the grounds attached to the workhouse”. The following words on a piece
of paper were found with the baby, “Clogheen, Saturday night. Peter, a Roman
Catholic born and christened, a deserted child.” A letter was sent to the
Commissioners in Dublin to ascertain the Boards legal position as regards retaining
the child in the workhouse. Within a few days the reply was received that “the
child if retained in the workhouse should be brought up in the religion of the state.”
On the 17th June it was resolved on the motion of George Fennell, and seconded
by Edwin Taylor, that the child should be taken by the master to be baptised by the
Rev. William Frazer, and brought up in the Established Church; and so, Peter the
deserted child became a Protestant and joined Margaret Price in the workhouse.
The sadness in this story is obviously that a mother felt it necessary to abandon her
child, as did many mothers during those years, knowing that she would never see
him again, but it is also sad that intelligent educated men, the pillars of society,
should be so petty as to change a child’s religion having been informed that the
child was already baptised in a different denomination. Referring to similar cases
38
of double-baptisms in Thurles, Anne Lanigan suggests that the “confusion of
ceremonies and theologies...might have puzzled the almighty.”1044
Sometime earlier Fr. James Kelly, the Catholic Chaplain, was directed by the
Board to attend on Saturdays to hear confessions of such of the inmates as required
it. Fr. Kelly notified the Board that “ by the rules of the Church the paupers were
not required to attend confession every week”, and this “explanation was deemed
satisfactory.” Religion was again the subject of a meeting in December 1843.
George Fennell was on the visiting committee, and on the days of inspection by
this committee Mr. Fennell was in the habit of reading Scripture to the children in
the classroom. Rev. Fr. Kelly objected to this and the Board supported him,
ordering that the scripture reading should be discontinued. The clerk later recorded
that Mr.Fennell of the visiting committee continued to visit the house “ but he has
ceased to examine the children.”
Even though the workhouse was designed to accommodate 500 people, in those
early years the figure never seems to have exceeded 250. This was partly due to a
reluctance on the part of paupers to apply for relief, and partly an attempt by the
Guardians to keep costs down.
Each week, between 6 and 10 people applied to enter the house and over half of
these were refused.
In late 1844, the rate-collecting had not improved, and the collectors were
ordered to “ proceed against all defaulters owing over ten shillings poor-rates,
without respect to persons.” The problem of funding the house was compounded
by the inefficiency of some of the collectors, and the money having been collected
was no guarantee that it found its way into the Union account. Legal action was
occasionally threatened against the collectors themselves for not producing
statements of monies collected, and their sureties would be advised that they were
in danger of losing their bond-money. At one meeting the Guardians complained
about “the excessive County Cess” and they were obviously aware of the difficulty
the tenants were in. A letter from the Commissioners requested information as to
the amount of money collected with the Police in attendance.
Another cost-cutting measure adopted by the Board was to discharge ablebodied paupers at harvest time, with “employment now to be had throughout the
country.” It caused great consternation when some of the inmates refused to leave
Clogheen workhouse. Surprisingly they continued to get a food allowance, albeit
reduced. Permission to use force to discharge them was obtained from Dublin, and
it seems they were ejected, including one family who had used forged documents
to gain entry. The forged document was probably a forged letter supposedly from a
warden supporting a family’s application.
Many of the officers of the house also found themselves in trouble at this time.
The school mistress was warned that she would be discharged, if she did not
44
Ibid., p.74
39
control her “ ill-temper”, and Nurse Jane Brogan was questioned about
unnecessary force being used and an improper operation having been performed
on a female idiot. The Board held that she was “ perfectly correct with respect to
the operation, but that she did use light language which she should have avoided.”
The Matron was also brought before the Board and she was cautioned, “ not in
future to inflict anything in the way of corporal punishment upon the children in
the school.” The Master almost lost his job when it was discovered that he had sent
a bed, the property of the Union, to his son in Cahir, and that he kept his own fowl
in the Union grounds.
In November 1844, a letter was received from the East India Company in reply
to a letter from the Clerk of the Union, stating that “ John Troy who served in the
Bombay Artillery for five years and eleven months appears to have been
discharged in consequence of the loss of the left leg.” They went on to say that
John Troy was not entitled to a pension, but that they would forward a wooden leg
for his use!
By the end of 1844, families being abandoned was a serious problem and a
large proportion of the inmates were women and children who had become
destitute for that reason. January 1845 arrived, and for some it held promise of
better days ahead. Edmund Prendergast and his wife decided to leave with their
three children. They were allowed to keep their workhouse shoes. Annie Craddock
was refused permission to leave, possibly because of her health, as inmates were
usually allowed to leave on a few hours notice, so she absconded by scaling the
wall. Three young men were discharged for using bad language and ill conduct,
while two women were discharged with their children for improper and abusive
language towards the person in charge of the female Idiot Wards.
The Master applied to the Barrack-Master at Clonmel for soldiers cast coats,
presumably for male paupers doing outside work, and with the coming of spring he
ordered 6 barrels of seed potatoes and 1,000 cabbage plants so that the paupers
could grow food for the house. The benefits of growing the vegetables for the
house were twofold; it provided employment for the inmates, and helped in the
never ending economy drive of the Board. Nothing in the house was wasted. Old
clothes were sold for rags and the old school copies were sold to Ed. Hogan of
Main Street at 1½d. per lb.
A serious problem that arose in many of Ireland’s workhouses was an
inflammation of the eyes called Ophthalmia. Clogheen was no exception and this
highly infectious complaint was the subject of a meeting in March 1845. It was
decided to paint the inner walls of the buildings on the medical officers
recommendation as he felt this would alleviate the problem.
James Cleary, the porter, was in trouble for being on duty smelling of spirits,
and on a more serious note Dr. Bradshaw of Ballyporeen wrote to the
Commissioners in Dublin stating that smallpox was very prevalent in that part of
the Union. The Commissioners referred to their several letters to the Guardians
concerning the Union’s refusal to renew vaccination contracts. In their defence the
40
Guardians said that the Dispensaries of the districts were voluntarily vaccinating
people and hence there was no need for expensive contracts. It turned out that
Ballyporeen dispensary had not been vaccinating.
Around that time, the registrar of Clogheen recorded in the Minute Books that
a marriage was to take place between John Cloughton of Cahir, a cabinet maker,
and Lucy Fahey of Clonmel, a housekeeper; even though they do not appear to
have had any connection with the workhouse. John Dillon, a carpenter of
Clogheen, whose wife and family were in Clogheen workhouse, was reported to be
in Waterford. Mr. Langley, the Clerk of the Union, sent word that he was away
from home unexpectedly, and he later resigned. Richard Burke was now appointed
as Clerk of the Union, while Richard Maher took up the position of schoolmaster.
The following week another marriage was recorded in the Minute Books; Michael
Byrne of Shanbally Castle, to Jane Crotty of Cappagh, County Waterford.
By August 1845, the potatoes were growing well and the paupers were at work
weeding the crop. Catherine Kelly availed of this work away from the house to
steal a linen sheet, but she was caught. A short time later she absconded leaving
three children behind. A boy named John Talbot left without permission “ taking
with him clothes the property of the Union.” Many inmates now applied to leave as
it was harvest time again, and their names are recorded only because they applied
to keep their workhouse shoes and stockings. Such was their poverty that the shoes
they wore on admission were unfit to be worn again. Among those applying for
discharge that August were Bridget Henan, John Keating, Mary Keating, John
Riordan, Mary Casey, William Fennessy, James Lonergan, John Fleming, and
Catherine Kelly. These people, and thousands like them, were of the class that
were to suffer most, almost to the point of extinction, in the ‘Great Famine’ that
was almost upon them.
In those pre-famine years of the workhouse, despite the financial problems that
beset the Guardians, the Poor Law system of institutionalised relief appears to have
been coping with the number of destitute people in the Galty-Vee Valley. This is
borne out by the fact that the numbers in the house never reached anything near
capacity. Vagrants could now be removed to the poorhouse by the Parish-wardens,
and this must have provided satisfaction to the ‘better off’ of both the rural and
urban areas. Landlords wishing to consolidate the smallholdings were well served
by the system also, as those evicted would now be behind the high, cold grey walls
of the workhouse; ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The buildings themselves were cold
and smoky, probably not much more comfortable to the inmates than the cabins
that they had left behind, or been forced to leave behind, and so it was only the
truly destitute who entered there.
The whole Poor Law system could never have come into being had it not been
for the efforts of the unpaid Guardians. Even though they were, in some cases,
arrogant and superior, and possibly, to some extent, responsible for the gulf that
existed between them and the people they were elected to serve, they must have
been driven by feelings of benevolence towards their fellow man, as they often met
twice a week, and spent long hours hearing the applications for relief, and
41
dealing with the multitude of problems that were inevitable in the administration of
the workhouse.
When George Nicholls had drawn up the plans for the Irish Poor Law, he
recognised that in the event of a famine, the system that was being put in place
would be unable to cope with the vast numbers of paupers seeking refuge and
relief. His opinion was about to be put to the test.
42
Chapter 5 Famine Years
Weary men, what reap ye? “ Golden corn for the stranger.”
What sow ye? “ Human corpses that await for the Avenger.”
Fainting forms, all hunger-stricken, what see you in the offing?
“Stately ships to bear our food away, amid the stranger’s scoffing.”
There’s a proud array of soldiers, what do they round your door?
“They guard our master’s granaries from the thin hands of the poor.”
Pale mothers, wherefore weeping? “ Would to God that we were dead,
Our children swoon before us, and we cannot give them bread!”45
Speranza (Lady Wilde) 1820-1895
By mid-September 1845 it was obvious that something was seriously wrong
with the potato crops throughout Ireland. In 1844, blight had caused great damage
in America, and in August 1845 reports had come in that the disease was ravaging
the potatoes in Europe. By October the Irish newspapers were treating the matter
seriously, and not just as another annual scarcity. The Tipperary Free Press, the
Clonmel based newspaper, reported that they had “had opportunities of making
further inquiries into the actual state of the potato crop... and in South Tipperary
the injury is more serious than we apprehended, particularly as regards white
potatoes.”
The London Standard noted that “A scourge more terrible than rebellion, war
or pestilence, a scourge more terrible than any which has for a century afflicted
that unhappy country is impending.”
Week after week letters to the Tipperary Free Press carried suggestions and
advice as to how the potatoes could be saved, or, if already diseased, used.
“All sign of disease removed if potatoes are pitted and dry
slacked lime shaken over them”
and
“Rotten potatoes can be boiled and mixed with bran for
feeding cattle.”
There was even a letter to the effect that “The eminent chemist Dr. Cahill cured
diseased potatoes by washing them in soap-suds.” These letters were matched only
by the number of appeals for the grain that was being produced in Ireland to be
retained in Ireland, and The Tipperary Free Press itself said that “the call to keep
the grain at home will ere long become as general as the announcement of potato
45
Lady Wilde,(Speranza),’Famine Years’, 1,000 Years of Irish Poetry,
Kathleen Hoagland,(Editor)(New York, 1949, p.494)
43
rot” and it referred to the “listless moping over vain theories and plans to qualify
rotten potatoes for home use so that the grain as usual may be shipped out of the
country.”
It was becoming increasingly obvious that there would be mass starvation
unless something was done to alleviate the distress of the poor who were already
suffering from the terrible effects of losing their food crop, and there was no
shortage of advice to the London Government as to what course of action must be
adopted if the people were to be kept alive. The Nation newspaper carried a report
of a meeting of the citizens of Dublin at which Lord Cloncurry had said;
“If they were determined to do their duty, never was there
such a crop of oats as at the present time; and he would state
to the Lord Lieutenant, if he did his duty in shutting the ports
and stopping the distilleries if necessary, there would be
ample provision to which the people could have resource.
They should not suffer the corn to be sent to England.”46
That newspaper also stated
“Some continental states, especially Belgium, have prohibited
the carrying of grain, meal, or flour, out of the country, a
course which, however objectionable under ordinary
circumstances, yet may become sometimes absolutely
necessary, when a calamity like the present occurs. Of this
however we must not think. We have no domestic
Government or Legislature to provide such a remedy, and as
for the English Government, is not Ireland their store-farm.”47
In a speech in Dublin in December Daniel O’Connell said
“There never was a richer or more abundant harvest of oats in
Ireland than this year. The crops are decidedly more than
average in quantity and most excellent in quality. If our ports
were closed against the exportation of this abundant supply of
grain, see how advantageous and beneficial it would prove to
the great bulk of the population, and permit me to say... that if
we had a Parliament in College Green the grain would be
preserved in Ireland and the inhabitants would be saved from
hunger...Let it not be pretended that we seek alms from
England.”48
46
The Nation, ( Newspaper, November 1, 1845)
47
Ibid., ( October 25, 1845)
48
Ibid., (-December 6, 1845)
44
He went on to liken the Government to “a surgeon at a flogging”, feeling the
national pulse to see how much more starvation could be endured. On the 17
February 1846, O’Connell made an impassioned appeal in the House of Commons:
“I have shown you our distress. I have shown you that there
are no agricultural labourers, no peasantry in Europe, so badly
off. In no part of Europe, I repeat, is there such suffering as in
Ireland. There, there are five millions of people always on the
brink of starvation...they are in the utmost danger of a fearful
famine.”49
In November 1845, Prime Minister Peel had ordered that one hundred thousand
pounds worth of Indian Corn should be imported secretly into Ireland. At no stage
was it intended that this corn should be given to the starving masses who had lost
their potatoes. Instead it was planned to hold it in reserve, and release it onto the
market as a means of controlling prices whenever this was deemed necessary. It
could be purchased by relief committees and resold to the destitute poor, but it was
a strict rule that it could not be given freely. This was because the Government was
determined not to interfere in private enterprise. It was somehow believed that
traders would suddenly materialise and meet the demand for food created by the
famine. Even if these traders had materialised it would have made little difference
to those who were starving. They had no money.
There is no doubt that the corn imported by Peel greatly alleviated the distress
of the poor in those first months of the great Famine, but one hundred thousand
pounds worth of Indian Corn could in no way compensate for the loss of three and
a half million pounds worth of potatoes. It was estimated that the corn could have
fed 2,000,000 people for one week.50 What was needed was a ban on the export of
food from Ireland until its population was fed. Even while people starved, fifteen
million pounds worth of food was being exported annually, and economists called
this ‘Ireland’s surplus produce.’
It was Ireland’s misfortune that the famine came at the same time as the bitter
controversy over the Corn Laws in England, and attempts to repeal those laws. The
millions of factory workers and labourers in the huge industrial regions of England
were demanding cheaper food. Bread was at an artificially high price because of
the duties on imported flour and grain. Home grown corn was realising premium
prices, and the wealthy landowners were adamant that their prices should remain
protected. It was hypocritical of politicians and self-contradictory to insist that a
‘laissez faire’ policy should be applied in some cases and not in others. This was
the term used to describe the notion that free market forces should be allowed
prevail, and the Government was determined not to interfere with those market
forces. The whole issue was so contentious that the question of starvation in
49
Quoted in History of Ireland Under the Union, Op.Cit., p.296
50
Power, History of South Tipperary,
p.138
45
Ireland was secondary in the minds of those entrusted with its care. Opponents of
Corn Law Repeal even went so far as to deny that there was famine in Ireland.51
Mr. Peel recognised that it was almost political suicide to press for repeal but
he finally managed to push his proposals through the House of Commons. It had
taken many months of wrangling, and at one stage he had actually resigned, only to
be asked by Queen Victoria to take office again.
A Relief Commission was set up with its headquarters in Dublin, but
answerable to Charles Edward Trevelyan, the Head of Treasury in England. The
Commission was instructed to set up Relief Committees around the country that
would collect money to buy food, and organise local relief works. A letter titled
‘Efforts for the Poor’, and signed by ‘Benevolus’ appears in The Tipperary Free
Press of 11 April, 1846. It gives an account of the first attempts to form a Relief
Committee in the Clogheen area. A meeting was called, to be held in Clogheen
courthouse “for the purpose of devising the best means of immediate relief for the
destitute.” The letter further refers to “the distress, so deplorably extensive in our
neighbourhood”. The gentlemen who attended the meeting were reluctant to form a
committee until Lord Lismore could attend, and as he was unavoidably absent
from that meeting, another was called for the 11th April. At that, and subsequent
meetings, a committee was formed, comprising of, Lord Viscount Lismore; Alfred
Grubb, Esq. J.P.; Rev. James Curran, C.C.; Thomas Gallogly, Esq. M.D.; Michael
O’Brien,Esq.; Edwin Taylor, Esq. J.P.; Rev. James Kelly, P.P.; Rev Michael
Prendergast, ; Samuel Grubb, Esq.; Richard Walsh Esq. M.D.; and Messrs. Daniel
Ryan; John Murphy; James Atkins; James Mulcahy; Robert Steele; Henry Langley;
James Collins; James Fennell; Michael Mahony; Edward Rice (treasurer); Rev.
William Frazer (Secretary); David Hickey ( Assistant Secretary).52
The Committee met occasionally twice per day, and from the outset they were
kept busy in “dealing out provisions at a reduced rate, and endeavouring to procure
employment for such as are able to work”. The town and surrounding area were
divided up into ten ‘walks’ and these walks were visited by the Committee
members. They selected 387 families containing 2,017 persons “as fit objects for
relief”. By the 18th April, The Tipperary Free Press was able to report that
oatmeal and coarse flour had been distributed to over 1,000 people in Clogheen
during the week.
51
52
C.W.Smith, The Great Hunger, Op.Cit., p.50
The Tipperary Free Press,
46
( May 9, 1846. p.3)
Figure 4
Reproduced by permission of Tipperary County Library,
from the Minute Books of the Board of Guardians of Clogheen
47
The potatoes that had been so carefully tended by the inmates of the workhouse in
August 1845 had also succumbed to the blight. In the first week of January 1846, it
was resolved by the Guardians that:
“Each pauper in the workhouse excepting sick and infants be
allowed in lieu of skimmed milk, 3 ounces of meat made into
soup for dinner on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, and on the
other days oatmeal porridge given in the proportion of
1¼ ounces of oatmeal with vegetables and pepper to each
pauper.”
By the end of March the usual contractors for potatoes were unable to supply
the workhouse and the following was recorded in the Minute Book:
“In consequence of receiving no tenders for potatoes this day,
it was resolved, that household bread be substituted for
potatoes at dinner on 4 days of the week in the same
proportion as on the other three days,”
It was further resolved on a motion of Lord Lismore:
“That from the state of the potato crop in this neighbourhood,
we have no doubt that the supply of food will be found
deficient, and in as much as the people are now in very great
want of employment, we strongly recommend to her
Majesty’s Government that such sum of money may be
advanced for some public works in the Union as may give
employment to the people.”
It can be seen from the above resolution and from the reluctance of the people
at the meeting in Clogheen on 9 April to form a committee without Lord Lismore
in attendance, that he was a leading figure in the relief efforts undertaken in the
area. He was also actively involved in the public works that were undertaken in the
barony, and indeed was the chairman of an Extraordinary County Presentment
Session held in Clonmel on Thursday, 9 April, which explains his absence from the
Clogheen meeting of the same date.
At the Clonmel Presentment Session, Mr. Jones the County Surveyor was
called upon to explain the object of the meeting. Relief works had been approved
at the sessions held earlier in the various baronies of the County, and the gentlemen
now gathered in Clonmel Courthouse would consider those and sanction them as
they saw fit.53
The monies for these relief works had to be repaid by the cess payers in the
barony in which they were carried out. The initial cost was met by loan from public
funds. Road repairs, drainage and sewerage works were carried out under this
53
The Tipperary Free Press,
48
(11 April, 1846. p.3)
scheme. Of the £100,000 available to the country as a whole, £21,532 was
expected for works passed at the Clonmel meeting.
Lord Lismore was also the foreman of the Grand Jury of South Tipperary in
early 1846, and at one such meeting the County Surveyor in his report said that
“ The bridge, works etc. over the River Duag near
Ballyporeen have been finished, and the bridge and
embankment etc. at Gurtacullen, on the road from Clogheen
to Newcastle are also completed, and both of them have for
some time been open to the public.”
A Road Session was held at Clogheen Courthouse on the 19th June, at which
road works were contracted for. Under the heading “ Lease Contracts” the
following were listed:54
1. To repair 1,162 perches of the road from Cahir to Dungarvan between the
spittle land cross at Ardfinnan and the cross of Mullough for three years, not
to exceed 4d. per perch.
2. To repair 704 perches of the road from Ardfinnan to Fethard, between
Farrells cross near the Castle of Ballindowny and Coffeys forge, for three
years.
The following Special Repairs were listed:
3. To trunk and fill the roadway between the guard walls lately built and the
roadway between Patrick Dooling’s house and the bridge of Clareen, on the
road from Clogheen to Newcastle.
4. To build three flagged gullets on the road from Cahir to Dungarvan,
between the village of Newcastle and the bounds of the County Waterford.
5. To repair the abutments and parapets of the bridge of Shanrahan on the road
from Clogheen to Tallow, not to exceed £10.
6. To build 96 feet of a guard wall on the east side of the bridge in the town of
Cahir, opposite Dr. Talbot’s house and ending at Thomas Black’s house.
Not to exceed £10
7. To build a wing wall to the bridge from Glengarra on the mail-coach road
from Dublin (via Cashel) to Cork, between the town of Caher and
Brackbawn bridge on the county bounds. Not to exceed £50.
8. To open three windows in the Sessions Court house of Clogheen, and to put
sash frames etc. and to paint the work of same, and proper cut stone window
shoots to be set in regular beds of masonry.
54
The Tipperary Free Press, ( Notice of Road Session)( 10 June, 1846.p.1)
49
Meanwhile the Relief Committee in Clogheen had opened a subscription list.
Over 100 names appear on the list which was published in The Tipperary Free
Press on May 9th55. The following donations were included:
Lord Lismore
£100
Rev. James Kelly
£20
Samuel Grubb
£40
Edwin Taylor
£15
Earl of Glengall
£20
Richard and Alfred Grubb
£40
John Barry
£5
Hon. Mary O’Callaghan
£10
Many smaller amounts, some less than £1, brought the total to £436. The list
was then submitted to the Commissioners in Dublin and a grant of an equal amount
was requested.
The Relief fund in Ardfinnan amounted to £453 and included donations from
the following:56
“Earl of Donoughmore
40
Rev. J. O’Connor
20
John Bagwell
20
Earl of Glengall
15
Rev. J. Prendergast c.c.
10
Lord Lismore
10”
In Cahir the total collected was 654 and included:
“Earl of Glengall
50
Countess Glengall
25
R. Grubb and sons
30
R.H. and W. Sargint
30
William Going
20
Included in the Newcastle and Mullough Relief Fund were:
55
56
The Tipperary Free Press,
The Tipperary Free Press,
50
( May 9,1846. p.3)
( July 1846.)
“Earl of Clonmel
10
Rt. Hon. Edward Pennefeather
10
O’Kearney Family
10
Rev. Fr. Larkin P.P.
10
Earl Donoughmore
5
Mr. Perry
10
Many other subscriptions of smaller amounts down to 6d. brought the
Newcastle fund to £112
On the 6 June, 1846, the Relief Committee of Templetenny ( Ballyporeen)
wrote to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The letter stated that great distress existed
in consequence of the very great failure of the potato crop, and that 3,000 people
were in immediate need of relief and assistance. There was great poverty in the
neighbourhood, and the Committee had commenced the sale of Indian Meal at the
reduced price of one penny per pound. They were selling three tons per week and
had relieved 1,662 people. The number was increasing daily as was the poverty
and distress. Some of the people were obliged to pass entire days without food, and
were it not for the kind and charitable feelings of their more opulent neighbours;
they would be reduced to the grave. There was no resident gentry or landlord, and
consequently there was no permanent employment for the starving poor. The letter
went on to say that the spring work for the farmers had concluded, and there was
therefore no means of support for the labouring classes. It was signed by Rev.
Joseph Armstrong and Rev. Edward Walsh, R.C.C.57 The Templetenny Relief
Fund included £136 collected locally, and at a later stage a contribution of £150
from the Earl of Kingston.
For some of the paupers in the area the relief offered by the distribution of
Indian Meal, and the Public works, was not coming through quickly enough.
Others were told they did not qualify for relief. For these, patience began to run
out. In late March, Mr. Pennefeather at Dublin Castle had written to Major Shaw,
the Magistrate, telling him to communicate with the Earl of Glengall on the subject
of Military escorts for the supplies of flour going to Clonmel. There is further
reference to the military escorts in a letter from Charles Bianconi to Dublin Castle
on the 30 March. He begged to inform the Castle authorities that the extraordinary
display of military and police which accompanied the flour convoy into Clonmel
that day was an insult to the people. He said that he considered such an exhibition
“well calculated to do much mischief” by awakening the people to a sense of their
progressive misery. He went on:
“I am in possession of a list of tradesmen and labourers
mostly unemployed, whose families nearly 5,647 are nearly
57
Famine Relief Commission Papers, Tipperary, 1846, N.A., Dublin, D1938
51
destitute, and I consider the above exhibition an insult to the
patience and good conduct of these suffering people.”58
Bianconi also mentioned that a convoy of flour carts had arrived in Clonmel
from Clogheen as usual, with young boys guiding the horses, and the boys were
not in the least apprehensive. The convoy that had a military escort came from
Cahir. In early April, the mills and bakeries in Clonmel came under attack. The
Earl of Glengall, who was Vice-Lieutenant of the county, wrote that most alarming
accounts were reaching him every hour about the attacks. It was clear, he said, that
they would have to guard all the mills in towns and country in the baronies of Iffa
and Offa, and the sooner some sort of public works were started59 the better.
It is strange to record that the Earl of Glengall, in another letter said that there
was no excuse for these attacks as “potatoes were in the market aplenty”. It is
extraordinary that the Earl of Glengall could be so out of touch with what was
happening in the country. The workhouses of the country were unable to secure a
supply of potatoes. Relief Committees from all the towns and villages reported
destitution and crop failure, and yet the Vice-Lieutenant of the county thought that
potatoes were “in the market aplenty”. Here was the man to whom the people
looked for salvation, and he seemed unaware of their plight. Lord Donoughmore
was the Lieutenant of the county and the Tipperary Free Press had been critical of
him for being absent from the county and living in Dublin when he was sorely
needed. Admittedly both men contributed to the Relief Funds when they started,
but Lord Donoughmore had to answer accusations that he had said that the tenants
of landlords who did not subscribe to the relief funds should not get relief. He
refuted the charge.
Attacks on the flour carts were now a regular occurrence. The Earl of Glengall
reported that the populace throughout the whole of the district at Clonmel,
Clogheen, and Marlfield had attacked the flour carts. No flour could leave the mills
without escort, and even as he was writing, a convoy of eighty carts was preparing
to start for Clonmel. Each car carried about £20 worth of flour. He thought it was
lamentable that the carmen gave up the property and did not try to defend it when
attacked. A second letter written on the same day, April 13, 1846, shows the
urgency that was felt and the seriousness of the situation:
“ Since the enclosed letter was written, we have received
information that the Mills of Castlegrace are to be attacked.
We have ordered four police to guard them for the present.”60
He went on to say that there was great difficulty in providing escorts
58
Outrage Papers, 1846, Tipperary, 27/87-11415, N.A. Dublin.
59
Ibid.
Letter dated 14 April, 1846.
Ibid.
52
Letter dated 13 April, 1846.
60
“there being in this district more mills than in any other part
of Ireland.”
Mr.O’Brien, who seems to have been a police inspector, wrote at the time that the
train of cars that left Cahir and Clogheen for Clonmel each day was over a half
mile long.61 Several letters in the ‘Outrage Papers’ in the National Archives appeal
for extra military to be sent, and on April 15, Dublin Castle ordered the Third
Dragoons to go to Clogheen. That same day, Lord Lismore had written from his
home, Shanbally Castle, to say that Alfred Grubb “a great miller of this district”
had his carriages conveying flour from Clogheen to Lismore, “ plundered by a
tumultuous body of people”. He also stated that Mr. Grubb had reason to expect an
attack on his mill. Military escorts could only operate with a magistrate in
attendance, and Lord Lismore regretted that he was too old to attend such escorts.62
That same week the mills at Castlegrace and Clogheen did come under attack. At
Castlegrace the attack was repulsed by the policemen stationed there, and the
attack on Clogheen petered out when the rioters found that the townspeople would
not support them. The mob that came to Clogheen with the intention of plundering
the mills and town was described in the ‘ Outrage Papers’ as “ a tumultuous body
of people from the adjoining parish” and they “ advanced blowing horns “. The
Earl of Glengall wrote that they were more frightened than hurt at Clogheen, and
that mobs certainly went to the Castlegrace and Flemingstown Mills but they did
not get in as “ they were prepared.” Ardfinnan was also prepared, with police at the
mill, the Dragoons on the way, and the millworkers armed by the owner.63
Other areas also came under attack around the same time, The Tipperary Free
Press reported that Abbey flour mill in Clonmel was plundered, bakeries in the
town were looted, and a crowd of hungry people watched one hundred carts of
flour coming into that town from Cahir, but they were disappointed at the presence
of a military escort. In Kilsheelan the boats conveying goods between Clonmel and
Waterford were attacked and “ the goods taken off by men, women and children”
In the disturbances in Fethard which the paper described as “a rising”, both
Mrs. Harvey’s and Mrs. Wilson’s stores were attacked. Similarly in Carrick-onSuir numerous stores were broken into, and in Tipperary town a dray laden with
flour was “seized by starving people.” That week, 1,293 people left Waterford for
New Brunswick.
But it was not all doom and gloom in the Clonmel paper. Lord Waterford’s
horse ‘ The Robber’ won 100 sovereigns at the Curragh races, and on the 26th,
Cahir Cricket Club held a meeting at the Glengall Arms, presumably to plan their
upcoming match with “ the Garrison Team” at which Cahir were victorious. The
Tipperary Foxhounds held a meet at Kilcooley, and the Kilkenny Hunt advertised
61
Outrage Papers, Tipperary, 1846. N.A., Letter 31 March,1846, Brien.
62
Ibid.,
Lord Lismore to Dublin Castle, April 15, 1846.
63
Ibid.,
Earl of Glengall to Dublin, April 17, 1846.
53
five meets for April. Waterford and Limerick Railway Company sought tenders for
‘railway sleepers of Baltic Timber, carriages, wagons and trucks, and locomotive
engines. Unfortunately for the Galty-Vee-Valley, the proposed rail link between
Cahir and Mitchelstown via Clogheen and Ballyporeen never materialised.
In March, the Board of Guardians of Clogheen Union had appealed to His
Excellency William Baron Heytesbury, Lord Lieutenant and Governor of Ireland.
They began their appeal by saying that “in the said Poor Law Union the failure of
the potato crop has been very general and great, that there is now consequently a
great deal of distress therein.” They continued by asking that depots of Indian meal
should be established in Clogheen and Cahir, “both military stations”, and
suggesting that meal could be retailed out there at cost price, “no potatoes are now
coming into the markets, and persons who live generally upon them are
consequently at the mercy of a few persons who are retailing oatmeal
therein...oatmeal which is now charged at 2s.6d. per stone.” The appeal to His
Excellency went on to say that the Board of Guardians were very doubtful of the
relief that would be realised from the proposed Public Works, as the great majority
of contractors were invariably persons of very small means, who would have no
means of paying the men as the work proceeded, or farmers who employed their
own families and servants. In any case they pointed out, it would take six weeks to
get the works under way.64
Summer arrived, and with the fine weather came the start of the relief works.
The few pence earned per day was barely enough, and very often not enough, to
support the starving families employed on such schemes. One of the farms bisected
by the ‘New Line’ from Clogheen to Cahir, which was built around this time, was
owned by the Condon Family. This family has inherited the sad tale of the paupers
at work on the road coming to the Condon house in search of turnips or other food.
Once word got out that Condons would give food, they had to refuse it, as the
crowds seeking their charity would soon have consumed the family’s own meagre
supply of food. It is also said that many people died at work on this road and that
they are buried in ditches along the way
In June 1846, the number in the workhouse was 327, but as employment
became available on the relief works and on some of the farms, the numbers
dropped to 266 (by 5 September.) Rev. William Frazer was finally successful in
being appointed as Protestant Chaplain. He was appointed by the Commissioners
in Dublin despite opposition from the Guardians. The Guardians were also busy
investigating a row between the matron and the school mistress in which the
schoolmistress had accused the matron of being drunk “morning, noon, and night”,
but the Board held that the accusations were groundless. Julia Dwyer was given
assistance by the Board to take herself and her three children, aged 13, 11, and 4, to
join her husband in America, from where he had sent for her,while the papers
64
Minute Book of The Clogheen Board of Guardians, 1846, (28 March,1846)
County Library, Thurles.
54
advertised free passage to Australia for anyone with a trade. The Clerk and the
Master were ordered to go through the house and examine all beds and clothing for
vermin. They reported that all clothing in store, and bedding was free from vermin,
“with the exception of a few beds in the girls room.”
At the same time as the inmates of the house were leaving, with their
‘workhouse clothes’ all that they possessed, the reports that the 1846 potato crop
had been destroyed by blight started to come in. On August 19 the Tipperary Free
Press said:
“ Another blight has ruined the potato crop, there is no
gainsaying it- the potato crop is destroyed- before it is yet
matured...from the centre to the sea, in every direction, the
alarm has spread, and the ruined farmer and cottier look out
with fainting hearts on the prospects before them.”
A scourge equally as loathsome as starvation was fever, and during the ‘Great
Famine’ it was responsible for a great proportion of the deaths that occurred.
Fever, relapsing fever, typhus and cholera, and two different types of dysentery
ravaged Ireland and made no distinction between rich and poor. The great number
of beggars who wandered the countryside, and the traditional Irish hospitality
shown to them, were contributory factors in the spread of the diseases. Being bitten
by infected lice was all that was necessary to contact typhus and “ the poorer
classes were, very frequently, infested with lice”.65 The authorities issued advice to
the poor on how to prevent fever and infectious diseases, and this advice was
printed in the newspapers. They were advised to keep windows open during the
day, or to make windows if none existed; to remove the dung-heaps from near their
houses, as the vapour and smell had been found to generate infection and fever; to
scrape their floors with a spade, and to sweep every day; to keep themselves and
their furniture clean; to avoid intemperance, as this rendered them more susceptible
to contagion; to avoid eating bad potatoes; to avoid lying on beds on the floor; not
to visit houses that had fever; not to admit beggars; not to visit houses if they themselves had fever in the house; to burn the straw of the beds when the sufferers
recovered or died; and the gentry were advised only to employ people who obeyed
these rules.66
Cahir, Clogheen, Ardfinnan and Ballyporeen, all had fever hospitals at the time
of the famine. In Clogheen the hospital was at ‘Cockpit Hill’ while in Ardfinnan
the ruins of the hospital can still be seen at Lady’s Abbey. The workhouse also
built temporary fever wards on the workhouse property to house any inmates who
might contract fever. It is not clear if these wards included the ‘fever sheds’ that
once existed near the burial ground known as the ‘ Reigh ‘ ( probably from the
65
C.W.Smith, The Great Hunger, Op.Cit., (p.191.)
66
The Tipperary Free Press,(August 15, 1846.)
55
Gaelic ‘riasc’ meaning a ‘moor’) which is in Mount Anglesbey townland, near its
border with Kilballyboy townland.
The Repeal of the Union movement that had dominated the political scene
during the previous few years was to undergo change in 1847 with the death of
Daniel O’Connell, but in August of 1846, the movement was still very active.
During that month, the priests of the diocese of Cashel and Emly held a repeal
meeting at Ryall’s Hotel in Cashel: “The tables contained every delicacy of the
season, and the wines were excellent.” (T.F.P)
As September passed, the people began to realise that there was no food for the
coming winter. Panic began to take hold. In Dungarvan, County Waterford, rioters
who were demanding work, and attempting to prevent grain from being loaded
onto ships, were fired upon by the military. The Tipperary Free Press said
“this is a melancholy scene to lay before the world, that in the
middle of September, with the country teeming with food,
that poor labourers of this locality are wholly destitute of even
a morsel to support themselves and their families.”67
As the exceptionally severe winter of 1846-1847 approached, occasional
disturbances took place. John Prendergast of Bohernegore who was employed by
Mr. Grubb to take a load of flour to Clonmel, was attacked at the ‘Ballalley
townland of Park’ by about twenty people, both men and women. They forced his
cart into a boreen (little road) and there they opened some of the sacks of flour, and
shared it out.68 James Lonergan of Castlegrace corroborated Mr. Prendergast’s
evidence. The attack was reported in the T.F.P on October 21. The report stated
that the men, women and boys had lain in wait for the cart about a mile from the
police station at Knocklofty, “and were supplied with bags for the purpose of
helping themselves”. The paper warned the Government that on the same day as
the above attack took place, convicts from the same district had left Clonmel gaol,
on their way to their destination, having been sentenced to transportaion for a
similar offence “a fact very well known” said the writer, and added, “Verbum sat.”
(A word is enough)
In November 1846, and again in December, Lord Lismore received news of the
birth of his first two grandchildren. On both of these occasions, 200 of his tenants
and employees were entertained at Shanbally Castle to “sumptuous dinners of roast
beef and plum pudding” and the music for the after-dinner revelry was supplied by
the Clogheen Amateur Band. Bonfires illuminated the neighbourhood from the
Sugarloaf to the Galtys, and dancing was kept up to a late hour.In a letter to the
Press, Benevolus wrote that unlike some other landlords who revelled in foreign
countries “out of reach of interruuption from the wailing of their fellow
67
68
Ibid.,
( September 19, 1846.)
Outrage Papers, Tipperary,(1846, N.A.,Dublin.) Sworn Statement of John
Prendergast, 19 Oct.,1846
56
creatures...when an appaling famine and its awful consequences threaten the
land...Lord Lismore does not feast the people today and let them starve tomorrow.
No, his Lordship’s bounty flows as a constant stream...during this season of famine
over 50 people of the most destitute are daily fed at the castle and 48 families of
250 persons supplied with meal for their families at home”.69
69
The Tipperary Free Press, ( December 23, 1846., p.3)
57
Chapter 6 Black ’47
Little children, tears are strange upon your infant faces,
God meant you but to smile within your mother’s soft embraces.
Oh, we know not what is smiling, and we know not what is dying,
But we’re hungry, very hungry, and we cannot stop our crying.
Speranza (Lady Wilde).
It is generally accepted that in the Great Famine of 1845-1850, the areas that
suffered the greatest destitution were the west and southwest of Ireland. John
Mitchel visited Galway in Spring of 1847 and wrote:
“ There is a horrible silence, grass grows before the doors, we
fear to look into any door, though they are all open and off the
hinges, for we fear to see yellow chapless skeletons grinning
there; but our footfall rouses two lean dogs, that run from us
with doleful howling, and we know by the felon gleam in
their wolfish eyes how they have dined...(we) say with
shaking voice, “ God save all here!” No answer, ghostly
silence, and a mouldy stench as from the mouth of burial
vaults. Ah! they are all dead, they are all dead. The strong
man and the fair dark-eyed woman, and the little ones, with
their liquid Gaelic accents, that melted into music for us two
years ago.”70
He later wrote:
“ Sometimes I could see in front of the cottages, little children
leaning against a fence when the sun shone out, for they could
not stand, their limbs fleshless, their bodies half naked, their
faces bloated yet wrinkled, and of a pale greenish hue;
children who would never, it was too plain, grow up to be
men and women.”71
Nearer to the Galty-Vee-Valley, at Clashmore in Co.Waterford, the people
were living on blackberries during the Autumn of 1846, and in Rathcormack in Co.
Cork, they were living on cabbage leaves. 72 It will be shown in this chapter that the
conditions of the poor in the Galty-Vee-Valley were no better.
The concern shown by The Society of Friends (Quakers), their selfless
contributions, and the giving freely of their own labour to the poor of Ireland
70
The Nation, (June 19, 1847.)
71
Mitchel, John,
The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps),(1861, p.207
72
Smith, C.W.,
The Great Hunger, p.125
59
during the famine has not been sufficiently acknowledged. In 1846 Lord John
Russell had become England’s new Prime Minister, and while he and Charles
Edward Trevelyan of the British Treasury, were overly concerned with
‘Malthusian’ and ‘Ricardian’ theories and principles of economy and population,
the Society of Friends through their Central Relief Committee, undertook to do
what they could to alleviate the distress of the starving people of Ireland. Mr.
William Forster commenced an investigative tour of Ireland on behalf of the
Society, and his reports of the horrendous scenes that he witnessed convinced even
the most sceptical in England of the calamity facing Ireland. Funds began to come
in from the Society’s members, both at home and abroad, and the Auxiliary Relief
Committees commenced the setting up of Soup and Porridge Kitchens. From
Clashleigh House in Clogheen, Mrs. Grubb wrote to the under-secretary at Dublin
Castle:
Clashleigh,
Clogheen, Jan 8, 1847
T.N. Redington Esq.,
Dublin Castle,
Having observed a paragraph in a newspaper mentioning that
the Dean of Limerick had intimated that Government would
contribute an equal amount to any subscriptions in that city
for a soup depot; the Ladies who have instituted one in the
town of Clogheen, which has been in operation during one
month, and has in that time relieved 5,965 persons by
cheapening that number of quarts of soup and 1/2 lbs of bread
given in a ratio of 1 / 3, and 1,882 by giving them the same
gratuitously, supporting daily 260 persons, and that number
continually augmenting, are induced to make application for
assistance, in as much as that the district contiguous to the
town is a mountainous tract of country, with very few resident
gentry, and in consequence they cannot extend aid beyond its
precincts. Could they obtain aid from Government, they
might take in rather a wider district, where the people are
actually dying of famine. The Ladies raised £260 which they
distribute and attend to with the greatest economy, as they
trust inspection of their accounts will prove.
Signed on behalf of the Committee
Mrs. Grubb, Secretary.73
In reply, the Relief Commissioners told Mrs. Grubb that Government aid could
only be given to official Relief Committees and that the Clogheen Relief
73
Famine Relief Papers, (Tipperary), National Archives, Dublin.
60
Committee could avail themselves of the assistance of the Ladies Association. She
then wrote to Sir Randolph Routh, the Commissary General:
“... The Ladies conducting the Soup Depot here beg to say,
that as regards their establishment, it is giving great relief in
the town, as the improved looks and health of many of the
people evince, and that if only corresponding measures were
taken in the surrounding districts, which are at present totally
unprovided for, to prevent the population from pouring in on
them, they would endeavour to work on as they have already
done; but, if something be not done, they fear it will be
imperative on them to withdraw altogether, as no persons
with common feelings could withstand the solicitations of the
starving wretches imploring them for relief which they cannot
give. Disease in the rural districts is making rapid strides,
where grass, and bran, and donkeys, they are here resorted to
for food; the two former they know are not uncommon.
Can the rest of Ireland which has excited well-merited
sympathy exceed the misery we are fast approaching to?
For the Ladies
Mrs. Grubb74
Compounding the problems of starvation and fever, the Relief Committees and
the Guardians of the workhouse now had to contend with an ever increasing
number of evictions. Many estates were in serious financial trouble and sought to
clear the troublesome smallholders from their lands. This they felt would permit
them to consolidate the smallholdings into more profitable units, with the
opportunity to install a better ‘ class’ of tenant. Many of these evicting landlords
were totally devoid of compassion, and with the aid of the military in many cases,
families were driven from their cabins, which were then ‘tumbled’, often in the
depths of winter. Men, women and children were compelled to live in ditches and
makeshift huts, and there can be no doubt that this inhuman treatment caused many
deaths. Whole families wandered the countryside, now freezing, starving, and
dying from disease. The lucky ones swelled the already overcrowded workhouses.
A letter to the editor of The Tipperary Free Press in the first week of January
1847, and titled ‘ EXTERMINATION SYSTEM’ tells of sixty-two ejectments
granted at Clogheen court that week:
“... it is calculated to fill every thinking mind with melancholy forebodings, and
to create the horrifying suspicion that the present terrific scourge of famine may be
precursory to a still more appaling catastrophe, the extermination, by legal process,
of the smaller tenantry on the estate of this landlord.”75 Many of the ejectments
74
Ibid.
75
( 9 January, 1847, p.2)
61
granted at that court sitting were against tenants who were able to produce receipts
of the previous March’s rent, which effectively meant that they were up to date
with their rent payments. All were granted at the request of a single landlord who
was not named in the newspaper, but the writer was at pains to point out that it was
not Lord Lismore:
“...influenced by native benevolence, and guided by the
judicious counsels of his lordships humane agent, Edwin
Taylor, Esq., he has notified to his tenantry his intention to
reduce the rents due for the past year”.76
Mention is also made in this letter of the “ admirably managed estate,” and “ a
class of farmer remarkable for the improved cultivation of their lands”.
The workhouse which had been designed to hold 500 inmates now found itself
unable to accomodate the increasing numbers seeking refuge there, and plans were
underway to provide extra accomodation. The sheds that were being used to store
coal and straw were to be converted into dormitories for 80 paupers, and
permission was granted to the Guardians to rent the corn store from William and
James Fennell, as requested. The corn store in question is described as being “100
perches from the Union workhouse, and situated in a central part of Clogheen.”
Even though it is hardly accurate to describe it as being ‘100 perches’ from the
workhouse, the store was undoubtedly at Glenleigh where Fennells had the Manor
Mill. It was reckoned that this building would hold 100 paupers, and it was now
referred to as the ‘additional workhouse’ for which the rent would be £3 per
month.
From Rochestown, Ardfinnan, Mr. Barton wrote to the Commissioners to say
that the Ardfinnan Relief Committee were about to set up a soup kitchen and
needed assistance,
“...our district being very poor and extensive, comprising the
electoral divisions of Ardfinnan, Tullaghmelan, and
Ballybacon, the latter lying along the range of the
Knockmaeldown mountains, and containing by the last census
[ 1841] 3,109 of the poorer inhabitants,
not a single proprietor living in it and very few even comfortable farmers.”
Mr. Barton went on to ask for a 100 gallon boiler.
From the Clogheen Committee a sub-committee was formed to run the soup
depot with the ladies. Samuel Grubb, and William and James Fennell wrote
seeking extra assistance to match the extra monies which had been collected:
“...in consequence of the absolutely tremendous calls on us in
this place, where hundreds have no other dependence for their
76
Ibid.
62
daily support but the rations we give them. It is an
acknowledged fact that the exertions used by the conductors
of this depot have been a means of saving many lives. The
bulk of the population are paupers; this day, respectable
tradespeople, never having known want before, having kept
back from seeking alms until exhausted by suffering, have
applied for relief. One had 11 in family, another 8, and so on,
saying they could endure it no longer.”77
The Ballyporeen Relief Committee’s letter had the words “ workhouse full”
written on top of the first page. They again emphasised to the Commissioners the
fact that there were no resident gentry in the neighbourhood who could give
assistance,”and consequently our collection is very small.” Attention was drawn to
the fact that the distressed circumstances in which many of the farmers found
themselves prevented them from paying anything. Their letter went on:
“ There is a great deal of distress and sickness...many persons
have died from actual want and starvation, and in fact the
great mass of the people are reduced to a dreadful state of misery and
wretchedness. We have been doing all in our power to relieve the poor people by
selling provisions to them at first cost, and we are erecting two boilers and expect
to have them ready on Monday. I regret to state that very little is doing towards
tilling the land, nor have the people seed.”78
Unlike the June 1846 list from Ballyporeen which had over 130 names on it,
the list that accompanied the above letter had just six entries: Earl of Kingston,
£50; Alfred Grubb Esq., £l; A friend £l,; Earl of Kingston’s second
contribution,£100; John Massey Esq.,£7; A friend, £5,; A matching grant of £164
was approved by the Commissioners.
The Vicars Hill, Tubrid, was the residence of the Rev. Henry Palmer, and it
was from here that he wrote to the Commissioners to say that much of their funds
were being used in “ daily distributing 400 gallons of Indian meal porridge”.79 He
also said that if money was granted they intended to use some of it in encouraging
small farmers to till their land, and he asked for permission to store a few sacks of
Indian meal in the Police station at Tubrid. The committee were trying to provide
employment for some of the 4,000 needy persons identified in the area by
operating eleven quarries. In these quarries they employed, according to funds
available, from 250 to 375 people.
77
Famine Relief Papers,
78
Ibid.
79
Ibid.
op. cit.
63
Able-bodied men received between 8d. and 10d per day, while the infirm and
boys received between 4d. and 6d.80
Further letters to the Commissioners from Ardfinnan mention the “ great
destitution in Ballybacon and Neddins” and “ the greatest possible distress.” Mr.
Barton wrote to Lord Donoughmore to say that he was about to commence the sale
of porridge but “ we will certainly be obliged to refuse assistance to the tenants of
those who do not subscribe.81
In Cahir the Relief Committee had identified 500 families representing 2,500
people and they were giving them flour and Indian meal twice a week. Soup
kitchens were also established under Relief Committees at Newcastle and
Mullough.
It was no coincidence that all these soupkitchens were being established at the
same time. In most cases it was a direct result of “ The Soup Kitchen Act” of
January 1847, though in some instances, as can be seen from Mrs. Grubb’s letter,
they were in operation in December 1846. But the granting of outdoor relief to the
poor of Ireland through soup depots was not the only change of policy which the
Government introduced in the Act, more properly known as”The Temporary Relief
of destitute Persons Act.” It had also been decided that the relief works were a
failure, and therefore they were to be phased out.
The Tipperary Free Press carried reports from around the country, including a
story of a family from County Mayo eating their donkey and trying to salt some of
it in a barrel. From County Clare, news was received “... that a disease almost
amounting to a plague” had broken out in the workhouse in Scariff. The article
then described the funerals that regularly took place at Scariff:
“ It is horrifying to behold a cart laden with five or six bodies
piled over each other, going to be interred, and not a person
attending the wretched cortege, except the driver. The graves
are so dug that the coffins are barely covered with earth,
rendering the air infected.”
At a meeting of the Board of Guardians in Clogheen on 27 February, 1847, it
was recorded that the number of people in the workhouse was now 669. That week
5 inmates died, and 124 were refused admission. It was agreed that the cost of the
burial of a man who had died on the streets of Clogheen should be borne by the
Union. On the 13 March, the workhouse held 689, and that week 6 people died. It
was resolved that week to substitute the bread given to the paupers with Indian
meal. It was acknowledged that the Medical Officers duties were greatly increased
by the spread of disease in the workhouse. On March 20, 95 people were rejected
and 11 inmates died, including 5 children, one of whom was under 2. At a meeting
80
81
Power, P., History of South Tipperary
Famine Relief Papers, Tipperary, National Archives, Dublin
64
later in the month, it was decided to supplement the diet of the inmates with peasmeal and rice.
65
One of the great flaws in the system of allocating grants to the Relief
Committees was that the poorest areas which had the greatest need were unable to
collect subscriptions, and as grants were allocated on a ‘ grant equal to
subscription’ basis, these areas of greatest need received the smallest grants. In
order to assess the destitution of the various townlands, representatives of the
Society of Friends in their various areas undertook to visit and report back to their
Auxiliary Committees on the conditions prevailing in those townlands. The report
of Robert Davis, who visited part of the Galty-Vee-Valley, is documented in
Transactions of the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends. His report
states that he visited the districts of Burncourt and Tubrid on February 22, taking in
Ballyboy on his way. At Ballyboy he found:
66
“active measures in progress for the daily distribution of
prepared food to the distressed people around, and here I may
literally say that actual famine first met my view. There was
no mistaking the shrunken looks and sharpened features of
the poor creatures, who were slowly and with tottering steps
assembling to partake of the accustomed bounty. Sheer
destitution marked their attenuated countenances too legibly
to admit of a doubt that it was all a sad reality...From
Ballyboy I next went to Clogheen, and visited the soup,or
rather porridge, establishment there, it was at full work and
appears to be well attended to. From Clogheen we proceeded
to the village of Burncourt situated at the foot of the Galtee
mountains, a locality where destitution abounds to a fearful
degree...deaths from actual starvation were becoming of daily
occurence; whilst the corpses were buried in some instances
at night, and without coffins.” 82
Robert Davis said that it was gratifying to see “ a well regulated and well
supplied porridge shop “ now at work in the “ little village of Burncourt.” He then
noted that
“... From Burncourt we next passed along the base of the
Galtee range, through a desolate and wretched district, to
Tencurry, where another porridge kitchen is just set up and at
work.”
He also visited Tubrid, Castlegrace and Ardfinnan, where kitchens had recently
been set up. Mr. Davis finished his report by expressing alarm at the apparent
abandonment of the land in the areas through which he had passed, particularly in
the district from Burncourt to Tencurry, where the land was lying “ desolate and
uncultivated”
Of the people, he noted that there was a total absence of anything bordering on
pleasantry or cheerfulness...all seemed to be downstricken and dejected”
but”refrained from outrage in a remarkable manner”. This restraint however, had
not prevented the “ dreadful murder” of a money lender at Kilcoran on 5
January.On his way from the Sessions of Cashel “ where he had obtained several
decrees against parties indebted to him... he was waylaid and barbarously
murdered, his throat being cut, “ his head dreadfully fractured, and a large stone
pressed on his breast.83
The Tipperary Free Press also carried a report, which was similar in its content
to the report of Robert Davis, in its issue of February 20:
82
Transactions of the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends
83
T.F.P., 9 Jan., 1847
67
DISTRESS IN THE RURAL DISTRICTS.
“ We apprehend that many of our readers may not be aware of
the extreme distress which prevails in the district lying
betweenthe Galtee and Knockmaeldown mountains. We have
been shown a letter from a gentleman, who visited several
townlands in this district, in the present week,an extract of
which is as follows: ‘ I have just returned from having visited
ten townlands, and a more distressing duty I never I think
performed, although I knew great destitution prevailed, yet I
had no idea that the wretched people were at all so bad. In
many instances, I had to speak to them while they lay on a
little dirty straw, which they use for beds, they not being able
from exhaustion to get up to speak to me. People who were in
good health four or five months ago, I found were dead,and I
was assured by the Sergeant of Police, that their deaths were
caused by starvation. Fever in many of the houses I visited
and greatly increasing. In short, sore famine is in the country.’
84
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, March 5, there was great excitement
in Clogheen when it was discovered that Wade’s Mill at Mount Anglesbey was on
fire. Samuel Grubb’s fire-engine, and the engine from the Military Barracks were
quickly at the scene, and although the roof had fallen in, the fire was quickly
brought under control. It was thought that the cause of the fire was a workman
leaving a candle in the screening room.85 Earlier in the month the Manor Mill at
Glenleigh was in the news when it was advertised for sale by the Murray family.
There is no doubt that some of the outrages that were committed during those
famine years were committed by common criminals, of whom there were plenty. In
spite of the Coercion Laws, the following notice was posted up around Clonmel:
“ Whereas many evil disposed persons avail themselves of the
present scarcity of food as a pretext to commit acts of
violence against property...His excellency the Lord
Lieutenant is pleased to grant to Her Majesty’s peaceable and
loyal subjects without distinction, the power to have and to
keep any description of firearms, for the protection of the
public peace and likewise their own homes and property.” 86
However, it was not just ‘Her Majesty’s peaceable and loyal subjects’ who took
advantage of this unrestricted gun-owning law. Mr. Ryall of Clonmel wrote to the
84
T.F.P., 20 Feb., 1847
85
T.F.P., 24 March, 1847
86
Outrage Paper, Tipperary, National Archives, Dublin
68
Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle to inform him of the worrying trend of gun
auctions which were taking place in Clonmel. Notices of an auction for 25th of
February had been posted up around the town, advertising an important sale of
1,000 guns and pistols. This auction had been going on for three days said Mr.
Ryall, and the guns were being bought by the lower classes as well as the farmers.
One woman bought a gun for 22s.6d. and said it was for her son. A further auction
was held in March at the Albert Hotel, Bagwell street. Clonmel, which offered for
sale 500 double and single guns of various sizes; 1,000 pairs of pistols, and
500,000 best percussion caps. Similar correspondence arrived from Tipperary town
in the same month.
As 1847 progressed, the destitution worsened. Under the Outdoor Relief Act of
February of that year, the burden of the various relief measures was passed onto
the ratepayers. Also included in that Act was the infamous clause that required all
applicants for relief to give up all land over a quarter of an acre. John Mitchel in
his An Apology for the British Government in Ireland says the Quarter Acre clause
“ may be said to have completely finished the operation of thinning off the
Celts...”. Thousands of families who had always been self-sufficient in blight-free
years, now had to surrender the very land that had given them that self sufficiency
in order to get some Indian meal to keep their families alive. They were to be
officially classified as ‘Paupers’, and would never again have the independence
that owning a few acres had once given them. They now had recourse only to the
relieving officer, the workhouse, or, for those who could get the money together,
having surrendered their interest in the land, a ticket to America. For others the
desire to hold on to the land was too great and they held out, sometimes with
dreadful consequences. In the winter of 1847-1848, the Guardians questioned the
relieving officer for the Ballyporeen district about a report in the newspapers that a
family in that area were living on the flesh of their dead horse. The relieving
officer said that he had advised the head of that family to give up his 1½ acres so
as to qualify for relief, but he had refused.
For the small landholders who were not yet destitute, and who were still
managing to eke out a living from their farms, the imposition of the enormous rates
now necessary to fund the workhouses and other relief operations was just too
much, and they fled the land in ever increasing numbers. At various times in the
spring of 1847, The Tipperary Free Press reported that “ the small farmers of
Ireland will be almost entirely extinguished”, and on March 20: “...from the county
of Waterford, that upwards of two hundred tenants of the Duke of Devonshire in
that county have tendered their leases, being resolved to emigrate this spring to
America. They are solvent and substantial farmers, and therefore of the class which
Ireland can least afford to lose, and furnish we fear, an index to those from among
whose ranks emigration is likely to prevail.”87 From Clonmel, it was reported on
May 15 that “ The tide of emigration still flows with unabated vigour, and carts
laden with men, women and children, and furniture may be seen daily passing
87
T.F.P., 20 March, 1847
69
through our streets.”88 At the end of December, Thomas O’Brien, a Guardian of
Clogheen Union, representing Kilbehenny district, and a vociferous opponent of
the practice of “ keeping people in idleness and moral debasement”, suggested in a
letter that all the workhouses should be turned into factories,as the people wanted
employment and not alms. He also said that “ in the electoral district of
Mitchelstown and Marshalstown, the coffin contractors to the Relief Committee
supplied 2,400 coffins for five months...at least 500 people in the middle sphere
have been cut down by fever and dysentery...and upwards of 600 people have
emigrated out of a population of 14,000, taking with them the amount of their
effects in gold to the value of £6,000.”89
As early as the .end of February The Tipperary Free Press had published
extracts from a private letter from New York, warning people of the horrors that
awaited them if they were unprepared for their new lives in America:
“ There are hundreds of naked half famished creatures
arriving here every day from Liverpool...New York was never
so crammed with paupers... The English send their paupers
here; a great many of those after arriving enlist in the U.S.
army as22 there are six thousand men being raised to be sent
to Mexico.”
In May it reported that the New York almshouses and outbuildings
“ are crowded with unfortunate pauper emigrants, among
whom the ship fever is making sad ravages.”
In The Great Hunger, C.W. Smith notes that “ three-quarters of the emigration
across the Atlantic sailed from Liverpool, and 95% of that emigration was Irish.”
23 Hundreds of thousands of Irish paupers descended on that city on their way to
the ‘New World’; many had their fares prepaid to Canada or the United States, and
would spend only a few days in Liverpool, while others had no means of going any
further but were determined to get out of Ireland. This huge influx of destitute
people caused the most horrendous problems for the city authorities. Fever was
spreading; Liverpool was overrun by Irish beggars; they were crammed into slums
and cellars that had previously been cleared, and many who had escaped the fever
in Ireland were now exposed to it in the cramped confines of those slums and
cellars. On June 23 it was reported that 7 out of 22 Catholic priests in Liverpool
had died from fever. In the Galty-Vee-Valley too, the priests were exposed to the
fever as they ministered to the people, and in July came the report of the death of
Rev. Michael Prendergast, R.C.C., Clogheen:
88
89
T.F.P., 15 May, 1847
T.F.P., December, 1847
70
“ who after a struggle of eight days with the malignity of
typhus fever, caught in the discharge of his sacred duties,
resigned his pure spirit into the hands of his creator.”90
In March The Tipperary Free Press had announced the immense arrivals of
Indian corn in Cobh. Over 72 vessels had arrived in 4 days carrying 20,000 tons, an
amount equal to the previous week’s landings. In February it had carried a
summary of the exports from Waterford for the previous twelve months which
included hundreds of thousands of sides of bacon, tens of thousands of cwts of
butter and lard, thousands of barrels of wheat and barley, 13,000 tons of flour, and
over 50,000 live animals. Throughout all this trade in foodstuffs, people died of
starvation. The imported food for the poor was quite properly under the care of the
Relief Committees, but the Relief Committees were under the control of
Government, and the food was only available to those who met certain criteria,
such as presenting oneself to a workhouse, or surrendering one’s land. There are
two extremely divergent viewpoints on this trade in foodstuffs. The first is from
P.S.O’Hegarty’s A History of Ireland under the Union:
“ Let it be remembered, it cannot be too often repeated,that in
these years of starvation and fever, Ireland exported to
England more than enough grain, and cattle, and pigs, and
butter, and eggs, to feed the Irish people twice over, and that
the strong determination of the English about the principles of
political economy and the course of trade was simply their
determination that the English food supply must not be
interfered with, even though the Irish, who produced it,
should starve.”91
The otherviewpoint is epitomized by the assertion of Dr.R.F.Foster in his book
Modern Ireland:
“ The idea that food produced in the country should not be
exported was not adopted anywhere, and would have been
considered an economic irrelevance at the time.” 92
The Nation newspaper of October 25, 1845 would certainly seem to be at odds
with Dr. Foster’s view when it stated that Belgium had prohibited the export of
grain, meal or flour out of the country. It must at all times be acknowledged,
however, that the trade in food was legitimate from an economic point of view.
The farmers relied on the mills to purchase their wheat, and, to stay in operation
and remain viable, the mills had to keep their customers supplied. Without this
market for their wheat and other markets for their butter and pigs, the farmers
90
T.F.P., July 1847
91
O’Hegarty, Op.Cit., p.316
92
Foster, R.F., Modern Ireland 1600 –1972 (1988, p. 325)
71
would have been unable to pay their rents. Perhaps therein lies the crux of the
matter. A farmer grew crops which he sold for cash. The cash he received had to be
handed over to the landlord, the county cess collector, and the poor-law rate
collector. Rarely was there enough to satisfy all, so the food was exported and the
money was gone. Without their potato crop, the small farmers, as well as the
labourers and cottiers, were also visited by the ‘hunger’, and having given up their
land to qualify for relief, they would never again be productive members of society
in their own country.
Despite the fact that the relief works were scheduled to be closed down, an
Extraordinary Presentment Session was held in the Court house in Cahir at the end
of February. The Hon. Cornelius O’Callaghan, who was chairman, stated that he
expected that session would be the last under the present Act, and they needed a
further £9,000 to complete the works at present in hand in order to keep the people
employed for the next two months. He said he also understood that the railways
were to commence work in Cahir the following week. Lord Kingston was
aggrieved that he was not allowed apply for money for works in the Ballyporeen
area, and remarked that Cahir and Shanbally were well looked after. When he was
reminded that his area had received a fair amount, and that Doon had just received
£500, he retorted: “ Doon! That was as gross a job as ever was perpetrated in the
county. You lowered a hill going to the church that no Protestant entered, that was
built for ornament.”93 Rev. Fr. Kelly told Lord Kingston that that work was
necessary to keep the people from starving. They then agreed on the allocation of
money to finish the relief works, including £1,000 for the New Line from
Clogheen to Cahir, £1,450 for Newcastle, and smaller sums for most other areas in
the barony, mostly for ‘lowering hills’.
The potato crop of 1847 was to a large extent, blight free, but after two
devastating years, the people had lost faith in the potato, and the amount sown was
negligible. Seed was scarce, land had been given up, con-acre was not an option to
people with no money and no seed, and land that was available for potato growing
had not been tilled while the relief works were available in spring of that year. The
continuity necessary for millions of people to sustain themselves with a single crop
each year had been broken. The employment from the works was no longer an
option, as these had for the most part been closed down. The poor of Ireland were
ruined. They had no work, no money, and no food. The Government now decided
on a new strategy to deal with the crisis. The soup-kitchens were to be closed
down! The old, the infirm, and the widowed were to be cleared out of the
workhouses to make room for the able-bodied paupers who might apply for relief!
No outdoor relief was to be given to this category of applicant. The rules were
quite clear. The able-bodied paupers were to be incarcerated in the workhouse
before they could be given food. Relieving officers were appointed in each area at
a salary of £50 per year. The Relieving officers appointed in Clogheen Union were:
93
T.F.P., 27 Feb., 1847
72
Cahir, George Frederick Fennell; Ardfinnan/Newcastle, Charles P.Browne;
Clogheen, Spring Rice; Ballyporeen/Kilbehenny, John Gilliard. The Government
also decided that the entire cost of all relief should be the responsibility of the Irish
Poor-Law.
The rates to support the Poor Law had become a hugely contentious issue.
Guardians from the different areas argued bitterly at meetings against the
imposition of impossible rates on their districts. The more paupers an area had, the
higher the rates, and in some cases rates of 6d. in the pound now rose to 3s.6d . By
July 1848, even though it was never actually struck, a rate of 5s.10d. in the pound
was being put forward as necessary for Kilbehenny. The ratepayers became angry
and began to resist. In October 1847, and again in December, Richard Grubb had
written to Dublin seeking police protection for John George Fennell who was a rate
collector of ten electoral divisions in Clogheen Union. Mr. Fennell, he said, is of
the opinion that a conspiracy exists between farmers of the area not to pay rates,
and that police are necessary. Richard Grubb also mentioned in this letter that a
Mr.Hughes was making a distress for rent. This was a common method of
satisfying a landlords demand for rent, a ratecollector’s demand for rates, or a taxcollector’s demand for the county cess. ‘Distressing’ or ‘distraining’ was the
seizure of goods ( usually crops) in lieu of rent owed. Very often the crops were
still growing, and a watch would be kept on the fields to prevent the farmer from
harvesting and paying some other debt with the proceeds. These watchmen were
highly despised and were often attacked. In October 1848, for example, 3 men
were murdered in the Glen of Aherlow, on the north side of the Galty mountains,
while minding property that had been”legally seized”94 Lord Lismore again
appealed to the authorities in Dublin for extra dragoons to be sent to Clogheen, as
there were ten mills in the district and the corn buyers would cease to purchase if
extra cavalry were not sent.
James Flaherty, who was a county cess collector, said in a letter that he had
held that position for 26 years, and that he had never before met with such
opposition, particularly in the parish of Tubrid and Whitechurch. He needed
protection, he wrote, to collect £3,576 and he could not distrain unprotected. His
deputy collector had been robbed in Newcastle, in full view of some of the
landholders. “ In fact [ he said] I can see nothing among the lower classes but
schemes and tricks, and they are not disposed to pay the county cess.”
All over the country, as winter approached, and with no relief works, the people
flocked to the workhouses and clamoured to get in or be given food. In Dungarvan
over 1,000 people had laid siege to the workhouse, and fears were expressed that
through starvation and disease “ half the population would be swept away.” At a
meeting in Clogheen on October 11, which was reported in the Tipperary Free
Press, the chairman began by informing the board that the number of patients in
Ardfinnan Fever Hospital was now down to 53, ( from well over 100). During the
94
T.F.P., 11 Oct., 1848
73
course of a lengthy debate on the numbers in need of relief, Mr. Phelan, one of the
Guardians, said “ It is quite evident that it is very great hardship to these poor
people coming here day after day, and our not being able to do anything for them”,
95
and Mr. Griffith, referring to the question of Relieving Officers going on duty,
and where the funding would come from, said “ if you put those officers to their
duties, you will be in the same state as they are in Dungarvan, and have to get the
military and police to clear your way to this house.”
At the October 25 meeting the Guardians were informed that the manager of
the National Bank in Clonmel was refusing to honour their cheques, so no accounts
were paid that week, and no outdoor relief was distributed. Lord Suirdale said that
crowds of able-bodied people were coming to him saying they had no money for
food, and he asked what he could do for them. With the new instructions issued by
the Poor Law Commissioners now being in force, Lord Suirdale had no option but
to send those people to the workhouse, even though this cost much more than
outdoor relief. Mr. Griffith later estimated that it cost more than ten times as much
to feed people in the house, than it did to feed them outside of the house.
The master was now ordered to furnish the Board with the number of widows
and children in the house, and the number of these that would be prepared to leave
the house on outdoor relief of one pound of Indian meal per day. Children would
be given a half pound per day. The thousands of people who now had to live on
outdoor relief had to suffer the further indignity of having their names posted up in
a prominent place in the locality for inspection by the rate-payers, who were free to
give information about the paupers to the Relieving Officer. Very often this
prominent place was the local police station, and on May 27 1848, it was recorded
in the minutes of that week’s meeting that “ objections exist to lists of people on
outdoor relief being posted up on police barracks.”
As there were 404 children under the age of 15 in Clogheen
workhouse, and 180 adults, it was decided, as 1847 drew to a close, to find
alternative accommodation for the children, to which they could be transferred
with the schoolmaster and the schoolmistress, and so make way for the inevitable
influx of able-bodied paupers.
Before the meeting of the 25th was brought to a close, Mr. T. Fennell addressed
the board on behalf of the Clogheen Relieving Officer. He said he was authorised
by the R.O. to offer his resignation. “ He told me that he would not for his entire
salary, have to visit Araglin again, such were the scenes of heartrending misery he
witnessed there, as well as from the numerous attempts at imposition sought to be
practised on him, and the numbers applying for relief.”96 It was not until February
of 1848 that the Minute books began to record the numbers given outdoor relief
each week. The total relieved in the Union that week was 1,582 cases, representing
95
96
T.F.P.,23 Oct., 1847
T.F.P., 30 Oct., 1847
74
4,755 persons. This figure was to rise to 2,397, representing 7,622 persons by the
first week of June 1848.
On November 13, 1847, the Clerk of the Union, Richard Burke, was instructed
to inform Mr.Walpole that his offer of the disused factory and twelve acres of land
at Tincurry at a rent of £80 per year was acceptable to the Guardians, and the
premises would now be inspected by Samuel Barton, Lord Suirdale, and Joshua
Fennell. This examining committee reported later that the house and the adjoining
buildings could be made suitable for the 400 children and the officers of the house
at little cost, and would cost approximately £192 per year to run. Reference was
made to the temporary fever hospital at Tincurry, which seems to have been there
prior to the Auxiliary Workhouse. Preparations were immediately made to have the
house at Tincurry made ready for the children, and 100 paupers were sent over
from Clogheen to assist in scouring the floors. Thomas Dobbins and Jeremiah Daly
were hired to carry out the necessary repairs, and the following appointments were
made. Edmund O’Brien was to be the first master at Tincurry, and Mary
O’Donoghue was the Matron. The job of porter went to David Farrell. Rev. Henry
Palmer applied for the position of Protestant chaplain, but because there were no
Protestants. among the children, his request was turned down. Furniture was soon
put in place, including the beds from the now closed Ardfinnan Fever hospital,
which were to be used in the infirmary, and on January 23 1848, the schoolmaster
left Clogheen with the boys who were not at trades.
From the outset the master had trouble looking after “ the boys of Tincurry”.
They frequently went missing, most returning within a few days, others
disappearing. On one of his periodic visits to the house, Mr. Fennell, on calling the
roll, discovered that Thomas Doherty and John Lonergan of Tincurry, together
with James O’Brien, were missing. They returned shortly afterwards “ with turnips
in their possession.” Mr. Fennell was very critical of the master and the porter, and
it was reported that the practice of stealing turnips was very prevalent in the
neighbourhood. It was decided that the boys were to be punished, as corporal
punishment was permitted under restrictions laid down by the Commissioners.
Later in the year, John Murphy was caught stealing turnips, and it was directed that
he be “well whipped by the Schoolmaster.” In March, the police notified the
Guardians that paupers continued to stray about the country, and that they had met
with five of them on the previous night’s patrol at Scart.
In February, the Catholic chaplain of Clogheen workhouse complained that the
new schoolmaster was a Protestant, and it was resolved to replace him. The clergy
were constantly vigilant for fear of any attempts at conversion during those trying
years. The fact that there were attempts at conversion connected with the
distribution of food during the famine caused much bitterness in Ireland, and sadly
the efforts of these proselytisers have overshadowed the wonderful charitable
works of those whose only interest was the feeding of the starving poor. However,
one such case was highlighted in the Tipperary Free Press of 27 November, 1847.
Rev. Fr. Edmond Larkin, Parish Priest of Newcastle and Fourmilewater, wrote
from Pastorville, a letter of almost 2,000 words, criticising the actions of Dr. Daly,
75
the Protestant Bishop of Cashel, who had caused a church to be built in Newcastle
where there existed but three Protestant families. Fr. Larkin quoted Dr. Daly as
saying “build your hive and the bees will come to it.” He roundly condemned the
actions of Rev. Mr. Fry, who had been sent by Dr. Daly, and who had set up a
school under a Mr. Crowley, with a meal depot attached to it. Free meal was
available to anyone who attended Mr. Fry’s school and took instruction in the
Protestant faith:
“Many [of his poor people] come to me with tears in their
eyes,. representing their extreme distress, and begging my
permission to allow them to send their children to this meal
school, which is nothing else but a depot of proselytism and
hypocrisy, adding in homely but touching language, ‘ Ah Sir!
We are in great want, permit us to let the children desert the
National school, and go to this meal school, and when the
hard times are over, sure we can send them back again.’97
Fr. Larkin went on to lavish praise on the Protestant Rector of the Parish, Mr.
Mockler, who tended his own flock and lived in peace with his Catholic
neighbours. Some weeks later, Charles Fry from Kilronan, Clonmel, wrote to
Dublin Castle seeking police protection, as his life had been threatened in
consequence of his character being under attack by the priest from the pulpit.
By February 1848, the education of the boys on Tincurry was being looked
after. An agricultural instructor was employed to teach the boys, and to direct them
in the tilling of the twelve acres. Boys as young as eight, using spades and
mattocks with ‘ short handles’ cleared furze, dug drains, trenched, double trenched
and manured the land,and planted crops. The Tincurry report at the end of
February stated that they had begun to clear the land: “...many of the boys are
found to engage in it cheerfully, while others are lazy, idle and awkward. The men
with very little exception evince the greatest reluctance to work, always grumbling
about their food and feigning illness...children should be sent here and thus make
room for adults in Clogheen.”
Mr. O’Brien, the master,continued to have problems maintaining discipline at
Tincurry, and he complained to the Board that one of the paupers had refused to
work at removing timber and had said that “ he did not care a devil about the
master or the matron.” An inmate named Brien had stolen a new spade from the
workhouse and sold it for sixpence while on his way from Clogheen to Tincurry.
He also complained that some of the children that were being sent over from
Clogheen were dressed in rags and appeared unfit to have left the probationary
ward. The Commissioners in Dublin later held that an inspection of Tincurry
showed that Edmond O’Brien was not performing his duties to their satisfaction
and they issued an order that he should be dismissed.
97
T.F.P., 27 Nov., 1847
76
At a Board meeting on February 19, it was noted that the workhouse and
auxiliary workhouse now held over 1,000 inmates between them. Items for
discussion at that meeting included the fact that while the weather was fine the men
were to work as long as it was daylight, with a break for breakfast and dinner. A
letter from the Commissioners at a later date ordered that able-bodied male paupers
who applied for outdoor relief because of lack of accommodation in the
workhouse, were required to do eight hours work for their food. At the meeting of
the 19th, the Guardians discussed and agreed that the funeral expenses of a poor
woman who had died on her way to the workhouse, and also of a poor man who
died at Shanrahan, should be paid for by the Union.
An order was issued from Dublin in early 1848, to the effect that any orphan
paupers in the workhouses of Ireland would be given free passage to Australia, if
they so desired. The matter was discussed by the Clogheen Board of Guardians. An
orphan is obviously someone who has lost both parents, but Mr. G. Fennell
maintained that they could relieve the ratepayers by classifying as orphans those
whose fathers only had died, in which case greater numbers could be ‘transhipped’.
The other Guardians did not agree with Mr. Fennell’s definition of the word
‘orphan’ and at a later meeting it was reported that 26 orphans had agreed to go to
Australia.
Reference was made to conditions in the workhouses on many occasions and
the Guardians were divided in their opinions as to the acceptability of the
conditions that prevailed. Some felt that Clogheen was a model workhouse, while
others, including the inspector, felt that it left a lot to be desired. It is unusual to get
an inmates view of life in the workhouse during the famine years, apart from the
occasional complaint about bad stirabout being recorded. However, on the 22 April
1848, a pauper named Michael Doody was called before the Board to substantiate
charges that he had made against an assistant nurse ( a pauper) and others. The
Tipperary Free Press reporter vas present at that meeting, and he described what
took place.
“ Doody was called into the board room and told to state his complaints. His
ease of manner, self possession, and style of address told that he had seen better
days, and society different from workhouse associates.
Doody- My lord and gentlemen, although I am now in this
workhouse I have been well bred. I have received a fair
education, and studied something of the medical profession,
but adversity compelled me to seek a livelihood in a different
way, and I became a boot and shoe maker. I worked in a
respectable establishment, and I could support my family
decently until trade fell away, when I, with many others, was
discharged, and I was forced to seek this asylum. The
practices in this house were so revolting to my feelings that I
mentioned them to my confessor, and he advised me to state
them to the board. I am prepared to be sworn. I do not know
whether I can corroborate all I will say by other witnesses, but my
77
lord, if my word should be doubted, you can examine the
parties accused and see what they will admit.’ He took from a
pocket a paper and read as follows:
Clogheen, April 22, 1848.
‘ Sir, The workhouse of the Clogheen Union is intended by
the Legislature as an asylum for the destitute poor of the
neighbourhood; the exterior of it is grand and inviting, but the
interior is a scene of tyranny, cruelty, and inhumanity, which
is destructiv to human life. The portion of the food and drink
given to each person daily is not sufficient for one meal,
which I would swear on oath, and that small portion is
fraudulently distributed. Some are gluttonously fed, and many
are perished by lingering hunger. This practice is so managed
by the paupers themselves that the master cannot investigate
the conduct of a rude, stupid house of paupers, who are
terrified by hunger and death. The poor children commited to
your care are notoriously perished, for the pauper nurses sell
and eat the very small portion of nourishment which you offer
them, for whiskey and other purposes. From the 1st of March
until the 1st of April, I have seen from 6 to 12 children dead
daily. On the 23rd March or thereabouts, I have seen 16 dead
together, 14 of whom were helpless children. I have seen
fathers and mothers who could not find their children dead or
alive. I attempted twice to report this inhumanity to you, but
you refused to listen to me. Merciful God! Would you permit
so much human life to be destroyed through indolence or
wilful neglect?
An Inmate.’”98
The report in the Tipperary Free Press continued with Mr.Fennell crossexamining Mr. Doody on behalf of Dr.Gallogly:
“ ‘ What are your particular charges and against whom?’
Doody-’ My children were in hospital and I occasionally went
to see them; having observed the gross neglect of the nurses, I
sat up with them all night, and had an opportunity to see what
passed. I have seen the bread and milk allowed the patients,
sold by the nurses to other paupers. I have also seen whiskey
drank in this house by the nurses.’
A pauper nurse named Harrington was then interviewed. She maintained that
the money for her whiskey came from her daughter who worked for Parson
98
T.F.P., 3 May, 1848
78
Palmer. Other witnesses verified Mr. Doody’s account of events, but the board
decided that the food which was sold by the pauper Harrington was food that the
sick children could not eat, and that no injury was sustained by the children from
her doing so. Mr. Doody insisted that on a previous night he had heard a row in
which all concerned “ must have been drunk “.
This report from Michael Doody, taken with other occasional entries in the
minutes of meetings, about overflowing stinking cesspits and food being returned
to suppliers as unfit for use, paints a most horrifying picture of what life was like in
a ‘model workhouse’.
On March 4, 1848, there were 1,159 people living in the workhouse and
auxiliary workhouse. At Tincurry a serious outbreak of measles occurred, and Dr.
Stokes from Cahir was appointed as medical officer on a salary of 5s. per day. The
officers in Tincurry complained endlessly that the most basic supplies neccessary
for the house were not being supplied to them from Clogheen. Malcomson Bros.
supplied 1,100 yards of tarred canvas to Clogheen for the purpose of waterproofing
the sheds, in order that even more paupers could be taken in. The ‘old court house’
in Clogheen of the 1840’s was in its time, a court house, a school, a place of
worship while St. Paul’s Church was being built, and later in the century it was
Clogheen’s market house, but during the winter of 1848-1849, it was used as
accommodation for the ever growing number of paupers. This building was in the
Square, Clogheen, at the site of O’Donnell’s Garage.
At the end of 1848, the reports of the respective visiting committees said that
Clogheen had much improved, but in Tincurry it was observed that there was a
great falling off in cleanliness. The medical officer in Tincurry reported a very
malignant form of scarlatina, and requested that no more children should be sent
there for the time being. During all these outbreaks of measles and scarlatina,
numbers of children died, but in the measles outbreak of February 1849, in the last
week of that month, 13 boys, 13 girls, and 6 babies under two years had died.
Some of these children died in Tincurry, and some in Clogheen where they were
sent to hospital.
Early in March, the medical officer, Dr. Stokes stated that they had 66 under
nines who should be in Clogheen. On March 6, Clogheen workhouse, plus three
additional wards, was home to 981 people, while Tincurry was home to 529.
Clogheen fever hospital had 22 patients, and 219 of the workhouse inmates were in
the workhouse infirmary. A note in the minute book of that week noted that “ there
are 7 fever patients in Clogheen workhouse who cannot be moved in consequence
of the inadequacy of the accommodation in Clogheen fever hospital.” That week,
11 boys, 9 girls, and 6 babies under two years died from measles.
In October 1848, it had been resolved to rent 12 acres of land from Lord
Lismore, part to be cultivated, and part to be used as a burial ground. This is the
Paupers’ Cemetery known as the Reigh, outside Clogheen. Tradition has it that
before the Paupers’ Cemetery came into use, the victims of the famine were buried
in the north-east corner of Shanrahan cemetery in a plot referred to as the ‘ heap ‘,
79
a name which speaks for itself. It is assumed that other older cemeteries in the
Valley were also used at that time. In Tincurry, another cemetery was in use, a
short distance from the auxiliary workhouse.
1849 brought Asiatic cholera to Ireland, and in March a deputation from Cahir
Town Commissioners requested that a hospital be prepared to deal with any
outbreak of cholera in the area. They also requested an order that paupers on
outdoor relief should be obliged to “ clean and remove the nuisance of the town, so
necessary for the prevention of contagion.” In reply the Guardians stated that they
had no able-bodied male paupers on outdoor relief in the Clogheen Union.
It is not difficult to understand how a superstitious, uneducated population
could believe that their misfortunes were visited on them as punishment from God.
This belief was reinforced when “ in June 1849, the Quakers gave up relief work.”
The Government had abandoned Ireland to Irish funded Poor-Law, and charitable
organisations. The Society of Friends replied to an offer of £100 from Lord John
Russell, and “with their habitual courtesy and restraint administered a few home
truths.”99 The Society’s Central Relief Committee stated that conditions in the
country “ could not be improved until the land system of Ireland .was reformed.”100
Who can say that on such a date the Great Famine was over? It certainly was
not over on the night in 1849 when “ the Board sat till a late hour ( nearly 12 p.m.)
to hear applications for relief, in order to facilitate the poor, and to save them from
returning home 12 miles, and back again for relief the next day, which in most of
the cases referred to would be rendered impossible by the state of weakness caused
by utter destitution in which they appeared before the board.” Nor was it over in
1851 when the Census of Ireland found that 495 males, and 827 females were
living in Clogheen workhouse, and 239 males and 306 females were living in
Tincurry auxiliary workhouse. The famine went on and on.
In November 1852, Mary Keating wrote from Lisfuncheon, Clogheen, to her
son Michael in Boston:
“...Dear Michael I am going to tell you the state of poor
Ireland. The potatoes are as bad this year as when you left
home. Your brother William had bad health for some time,
but thanks be to God he is as well as ever. Father James will
send your mother to you, and something to William, coming
on spring, that would carry him out of poor Ireland. He is a
slave for one shilling per week in mud and cold. Breaking his
heart for one shilling, and nothing be it but poverty. Give my
best love to all my friends in America...” 101
99
Smith, C.W., The Great Hunger, P.383
100
Ibid.
101
Original Letter held by Mrs. S. Harper, Lisfuncheon, Clogheen
80
An early nineteenth century village street scene
81
An Irish Peasants Cabin as might have been seen on the lower slopes
of the Galtees or the Knockmealdowns. (London Illustrated News)
82
Chapter 7 Aftermath
“‘Pity! oh, Pity! A little while spare me,
My baby is sick, I am feeble and poor;
In the cold winter blast, from the hut if you tear me,
My lord, we must die on the desolate moor!’
Vainly she tries in her bosom to cherish
Her sick infant boy, ‘mid the horrors around,
Till, faint and despairing, she sees her babe perish,
Then lifeless she sinks on the snow covered ground.”102
( Richard D’Alton Williams, 1822-1862)
Because the registration of deaths did not become compulsory until some years
after the famine, it is not possible to ascertain how many people died in the
Clogheen Union during that period of our history. However it is worthwhile
looking at the figures supplied by the census commissioners for the years 1841 and
1851. Below is a table showing not only the population figures for the electoral
divisions in the Union, but also the number of houses at each census date.
Electoral
Division.
Population
1841.
Population
1851.
Houses
1841.
Houses
1851.
Ardfinnan
2,669
1,942
384
277
Ballybacon
1,602
1,118
247
177
Ballyporeen
4,362
2,944
720
555
Burncourt
1,929
1,280
322
214
Cahir
7,185
6,192
1,136
957
Clogheen
5,464
5,155
896
667
Coolagarranroe
2,545
1,723
442
330
Derrygrath
2,300
1,661
343
239
Kilcoran
3,393
1,472
570
253
Mortlestown
1,830
1,057
296
169
Newcastle
2,639
2,226
402
356
Tubrid
3,103
2,819
485
384
Tullaghmelan
3,028
2,059
487
341
102
Williams, R.D., from Extermination, in 1000 Years of Irish Poetry
83
Tullaghorton
1,883
1,255
304
214
Total
43,932
32,903
7,034
5,133
The figures for the various townlands are even more remarkable and perhaps
more telling than those for the electoral divisions. However, because of population
movements between the townlands, one needs to exercise caution when assessing
the impact of the famine on these smaller geographical units.
The figures given in the census are obviously no indication of how many died
or emigrated, but unscientifically applying a ratio of 1:1, it would appear that 6,000
people died in the valley, and a further 6,000 emigrated in the ten years between
the censuses. This represents a 25% decrease in the population. If the pattern of
annual increase in population prior to the famine is taken into account, and a
projected figure used for what the 1851 numbers should have been, then the
decrease will appear even greater.
The drop in the number of houses is also quite remarkable, from 7,034 in 1841
to 5,133 in 1851, a loss of 1,901. This reflected the national trend of landlords
tumbling the hovels and cabins of the poor when they died, emigrated, were
evicted, or went to the workhouse, even though this phenomenon of reduced house
and population numbers applied equally to areas in the control of benign landlords
and evicting landlords. Professor William Smyth has noted the following from an
early valuation map for the townland of Glengarra, which is on the Galtees, in the
parish of Clogheen and Burncourt:103
“The Earl of Glengall has received possession of the whole of
the present occupiers of this townland and their houses are to
be thrown down.”
There are similar entries for the townlands of Ballyhurrow and Boolakennedy.
The census figures for those townlands are as follows:
Townland
Population 1841
Population 1851
Houses 1841
Houses 1851
Ballyhurrow
227
83
44
13
Boolakennedy
128
34
27
7
Glengarra
214
82
40
16
On the Knockmealdowns too, many of the townlands showed a dramatic
reduction in the numbers of people and houses after the famine, though as already
stated, these figures should not always be taken in isolation
Flemingstown
368
182
57
37
Boolahallagh
266
114
39
17
103
Professor William Smyth, Unpublished PhD thesis.
104
Flemingstown, Clogheen Electoral District
84
104
Shanrahan
615
455
99
68
Gorteeshal
344
192
60
44
Other townlands also suffered dramatic losses, including those from the centre
of the valley; Overall however ,it was the areas near and on the mountains that
suffered greatest loss. The towns in the Union of Clogheen returned the following
figures:
Town
Population
1841
Population
1851
Houses 1841
Houses 1851
Ardfinnan
530
537
102
100
Ballyporeen
772
586
142
120
Burncourt
195
144
35
25
Cahir
3,668
3,694
588
556
Clogheen
2,049
1,562
348
284
Newcastle
253
250
49
49
The above figure for Clogheen town does not include the 1,322 inmates in the
workhouse in 1851.
The celebrated essayist and lecturer, Rev. Dr.Cahill, in his lecture on the
depopulation of Ireland, given in Roscommon in 1856, stated that “...seventy-two
cabins in every hundred hovels of the poor labouring classes, and of the struggling
cottiers, have been levelled by extermination and banishment; thereby reducing
(from all causes) the population by the incredible amount of nearly two millions
and a half.”105 Like John Mitchel, Dr. Cahill was single minded in his conviction
that the British Government had utilised the famine to exterminate the poor
Catholic population of Ireland. In a letter to Lord John Russell after the famine, Dr.
Cahill said:
“Alas! Alas! where shall I begin to tell your political career as
regards poor down-trodden Ireland? Nor is it with ink and
paper I would attempt the description of the woes of your
rule. No, no, my lord; the deserted village, the waste lands,
the unfrequented chapel, the silent glen, the pale faces and the
mournful national voice, stamp the history of Ireland with the
deep, deep impression of your administration...”106
The question of Britain’s culpability in the deaths of one million people during
the ‘Great Famine’ is a vexed question, and one that has caused and will continue
to cause great debate whenever and wherever the famine is discussed. John Mitchel
105
Cahill, Dr. D.W., D.D., ‘The Depopulation of Ireland’ in Life, Lectures and
Letters of Dr. Cahill ( Dublin, 1886)
106
Ibid.
85
insisted that “a million and a half men, women and children were carefully,
prudently, and peacefully slain by the English Government. They died of hunger in
the midst of abundance which their own hands had created.”107 While it is doubtful
if anyone would go so far as to level such an accusation nowadays, certain aspects
of England’s behaviour at that time are indeed questionable; for instance, the
insistence on ‘laissez faire’ policies, the closing down of the public works, just
when they were needed most, and had in many cases, taken the people away from
the land, leaving it untilled; the application of the ‘quarter acre clause’ which
caused people to become landless in order to qualify for relief; the withdrawal of
Government aid in 1847 and leaving Irish property to support Irish poverty, when
it was clear that the landlords, like their tenants were in serious financial difficulty.
In the Galty-Vee-Valley the Earl of Glengall and the Earl of Kingston both had
receivers appointed to their estates at the Court of Chancery, under the
Encumbered Estates Act of 1849. This occurred all over the country. The Poor
Law rates became too much for the tenants to bear and so they gave up the land.
The landlord now became responsible for the rates on that land, and the previous
tenant may well have been admitted to the workhouse, thereby causing the rates to
be increased, and so it went on in an ever increasing spiral, causing massive
emigration, overcrowded workhouses and many landlords being brought to their
knees. Again, a question that will continue to be asked is if England would have
abandoned any other part of the Union to its own resources in time of famine.
Would Wales for example, have been denied British funds if its people were
starving? Was The Times representative of the British Establishment of the time
when it referred to the Irish peasantry as ‘ weeds ‘ and ‘ vermin’.108
Great faith had been placed by the British Government in the theories of
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) who stated that increases in population
tended to exceed the increases in the means of subsistence. This was looked on as a
natural law. By allowing food grown in Ireland to be exported, and by standing
idly by as people starved, it was easy to say: ‘ Look! Malthus was right!’. Ireland’s
surplus food went east,while the surplus population went west.
The ‘surplus population’ who were compelled to emigrate, did so under the
most horrific circumstances, even allowing for the period of history in question.
Stories of the stinking, rotten, disease ridden coffin ships crammed full of Irish
people who had been torn from the land are legion. This phenomenon of disease
ridden ships continued even after the famine, and David Ryan wrote from St. Louis
to his cousin Fr. James Hickey at Lisfuncheon thanking him for his efforts on
behalf of his sister Johanna. Johanna was rescued from a life as an unpaid labourer
on the family farm owned by her brother Ned, and following the intervention of Fr.
107
108
Mitchel, John, The Last Conquest of Ireland (1861)
‘Extracts from the Times’ abridged from the Dublin Evening Post and
carried by the Tipp Free Press, 23, Jan., 1847
86
James, a sum of money was handed over to Johanna and her passage paid to
America,
“...but unfortunately the vessel she came out in, called the
England, became badly affected by the Cholera on her
passage, and several passengers died on board, and also great
numbers after her arrival in quarantine in the Harbour of
Halifax, and sad to relate, poor Johanna among the rest.”109
A letter to the same house in the early 1850s, from William Hickey, newly
landed in Boston, described his meeting with friends and family, both in Boston
and on board ship, among them Mickey Keating, Ally and Kitty Breedy, Tom
Russell, and William Starkey.
“ Not a single person died on board but one woman who was
wife to John Bourke from Tubrid who went to bed with her
husband the first night we went on board in Liverpool, and
was a corpse the next morning at four o’clock, and left two
young children to deplore her loss. He got only two hours to
get her away on his back and have her interred.”110
The miseries and exploitation of those who emigrated during the famine have
also been well recorded; exploitation that began even before they left Ireland. For
those who survived the journey, the disease, the swindlers and tricksters on both
sides of the Atlantic; for those who did not end up in the quarantine station and
graves in places like Grose Ile, or in the Atlantic itself, very often the ‘New World’
was a squalid slum in Boston or New York, where they had to cope with conditions
that they were ill prepared for. Most of those who emigrated would have been from
farm backgrounds who had surrendered their interest in the land for the price of a
ticket to America; a ticket to freedom, away from the rack rents, penal rates and
hunger.
It has been suggested that the dearth of ‘famine folklore’ is due to the shame of
having survived the years of hunger; the fact that surviving in those years might
have been seen as having been indifferent to the plight of ones neighbours, shutting
the once open welcoming door, or covetously hoarding the last few pounds of meal
while former friends starved. This is what starvation does. It is inherent in all of us
to do whatever is necessary in order to survive. Witness the once law abiding
labourers and peasants attacking the mills and flour carts to get food for themselves
and their children. Witness the once proud people standing in humiliating line to
collect the bowl of food from the ‘famine pot’; food that had been cooked so that it
could not be resold, by order of the Relief Commissioners in Dublin.
109
Private letter held by Mrs. Susan Harper, Lisfuncheon.
110
Ibid.
87
There are those who cry that the land that was abandoned by the famine
emigrants was taken by other Irishmen in order to increase their holdings. Would
they have it that the land should remain abandoned for all time? Land does not go
away, and it is the natural order of things that it is tilled and utilised by those who
are left behind. It is this natural order that has bestowed on us the Ireland of today.
We are all products of our history.
The exportation of millions of pounds worth of food from the country while
millions starved is also a subject that will be raised whenever the famine is being
debated. It has been defended by pointing to the fact that exports were necessary to
ensure the economic survival of the country. It is a defence that is used to this very
day to justify the exportation of food from third world countries. This is world
economics. According to this extraordinary theory of Economics ‘National debts
have to be serviced before people can be fed’. The people from the Galty-VeeValley who died during the ‘Great Famine’ knew nothing of economics. They
suffered and died because of a system of land ownership and landlordism that had
been inflicted on them in previous centuries. It would be naive however, to suggest
that there would have been no hunger, no death, no poverty, no famine, if there had
never been a British involvement in Ireland, but an Irish Government, even a
Protestant Ascendancy Irish Government, would not have turned its back on the
starving as happened in 1847. It would also be wrong not to acknowledge
organisations such as The British Relief Association who collected and distributed
many thousands of pounds in Ireland at the time. As wonderful as this charity was,
it was regarded as insulting by some Irish writers that the Irish should be reduced
to begging from England while Irish grown food was being eaten at British tables.
It is ironic that the ‘Repeal of the Corn Laws’ that some had hoped would
ensure enough food to feed the hungry, was a major contributory factor in the
demise of the milling industry in the Galty-Vee-Valley. Together with the opening
up of the vast cereal growing regions of the United States by the railroads, built to
a large extent by Irish labour, and the by-passing of the Galty-Vee-Valley by the
Irish rail network, it eventually caused the Clogheen mills to become so
uncompetitive that less than twenty years after the ‘Great Famine’, Slater’s
Directory noted that “ the trade of this town [Clogheen] like that of many other of
the towns in this and the neighbouring county has passed away, some of the largest
mills and stores standing idle.”111 By 1889, G.H. Bassett wrote that the butter and
egg market was small compared with what it had been some years earlier. He also
noted that the once first-rate cattle fairs and the weekly market had been adversely
affected by competition from Clonmel, Cahir and Mitchelstown.112 Here indeed
was proof of the isolation felt in Clogheen because of its exclusion from the rail
system.
111
Slater’s Directory, 1870
112
The Book of County Tipperary, (G.H. Bassett, 1889.)
88
Emigration continued on an enormous scale after the famine, as the people
continued to surrender their smallholdings for the price of a ticket to America.
Attitudes had changed dramatically towards subdivision of farms, and while eldest
sons could be fairly sure of inheriting the land, second and subsequent sons had to
look to America, Canada or Australia, if they yearned for independence. To remain
in Ireland would have meant a life of servitude on their brother’s farm. Like the
poorer landless families, they too now joined in the ritual of a family member
going to America, who would strive obsessively to earn enough dollars to send for
his, or her, younger brothers and sisters, eventually to leave old men and women to
mourn the loss of entire families to America.
Many thousands of those emigrants died. Many thousands never made it
beyond the slums and low paid jobs, and many thousands were to die in the
American civil war. Hundreds of thousands more did make it however, through
ambition, determination and good luck. The many millions of Americans who can
today trace their ancestry to the Irish emigrants of the famine years are testimony
to this fact. Whether in lowly positions or in positions of high office, those
emigrants have all contributed in their own way to making America the great
country that it is today. During the Great Famine, Michael Regan decided to leave
the Galty-Vee-Valley. Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined that
one day his great grandson would become the President of the United States of
America.
89
Bibliography
Burke, Canon W., : History of Clonmel.
Cahill, Dr.,
: Life, Letters and Lectures of Dr. Cahill.
( Dublin, 1886.)
Census of Ireland:
Clogheen.
: Minute Books of the Board of Guardians of Clogheen Poor
Law Union. (Local Studies dept. County Library, Thurles.)
Foster, R.F., : Modern Ireland 1600-1972, ( London, 1989.)
Griffith, R.,
: Griffiths Valuation of Ireland.
Hoagland, K., :
Lewis, S.,
1,000 Years of Irish Poetry, ( New York, 1949.)
: A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland.
Lonergan, E., : St.Patrick’s Hospital, A Workhouse Story. (Cashel,1992
Lanigan, A., :
‘The Workhouse Child in Thurles’, published in
Thurles: The Cathedral Town.
McGee, T. D’Arcy : History of Ireland from the earliest period to the
Emancipation of the Catholics. ( Glasgow, 1887 ?)
MacDermott,M.,
: Songs and Ballads of Young Ireland, ( London, 1896.)
Mitchel, John,: An Apology for the British Government in Ireland,
(Dublin, 1905.) Nation,
Library,
: The Nation newspaper, ( 1845-1846. National
Dublin.)
O’Hegarty,P.S.,
O.S. Map,
: A History of Ireland under the Union. (London,1952.)
: 1840 Ordnance Survey Map.
Outrage Papers,
Archives, Dublin.)
: Outrage Papers Tipperary 1846 etc.,(National
Power, P.,
:History of South Tipperary.
P.R.O.
: Public Record Office, Kew England. File no: WO 44/580 1
582. Relief,
: Relief Commission, Incoming Letters, Tipperary 1846-7,
( National Archives, Dublin.) Repeal,
: Reports of the Loyal National Repeal
Association of Ireland. ( Second Series, Dublin, 1840.)
Slater,
: Slater’s Directory, 1846.
91
Smith, C.W., : The Great Hunger, 1962.
Smyth, W.J., : Clogheen-Burncourt, A Social Geography of a Rural Parish in
South Tipperary. ( Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis U.C.D., 1969.) Tipperary, : Tipperary
Historical Journal,1993.
Tipperary,
Tipperary, History and Society. ( Dublin 1985.)
Tipperary Free Press. (1846-7-8, National Library,Dublin.)
Tipperary Vindicator. ( 1845, Local Studies, County Library, Thurles.)
Young, A.,
A Tour in Ireland etc.
(1780) Arthur Young.
Private documents held by Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, Cooleville, Clogheen; and
Mrs. S.Harper, Lisfuncheon, Clogheen.
Tipperary Historical Journal, 1993
Notes
1. Tom O’Brien of Castlegrace Cross (R.I.P.) was told by his father that the
soup-kitchen at Castlegrace was at Whites which is just beyond and opposite the
Castlegrace Cemetery.
2. Regarding the site of Fennell’s corn store which was used to house paupers
in 1847; it now seems that that family had a corn store in the centre of the village
of Clogheen at the time. It is more than likely that the store was the one at the
Square, Clogheen which was subsequently owned by Dan Brien.
I am grateful to Michael Lewis for the following information regarding the
Great Famine in Kilbehenny:
A Parish Relief Committee was set up in Kilbehenny to try and cope with this
problem of starvation. Re. Thomas Kearney, Rector and Rev. James Clancy P.P.
were the joint treasurers. They submitted a list of subscribers to the Relief
Commission in Dublin. They also sent a letter explaining their case:
“In a parish in which there is neither resident landlord,
Magistrate nor gentlemen, some exertion has been made to
alleviate the wants and privations of up to twelve hundred
people. These people have been left destitute of the ordinary
sources of food and subsistence by a visitation unprecedented
and to be accounted for alone in the wisdom and counsels of the
Almighty. Under these trying circumstances many of the poor
have parted with every article of domestic comfort and even
clothing that decency could properly spare, before a murmur was
heard from them.” And the local clergymen continued; “They are
now gladly receiving at our hands Indian Meal which we sell to
them at 1d pre 1lb, but to the more necessitous and aged, we give
92
it either gratuitously or at half price.” They concluded their
letter, “ We hope that the Relief Commissioners will consider
this district worthy of a similar proportion of public funds to
what has been so liberally granted to our adjoining and
neighbouring
parishes.”
Relief Works
Relief works were started in 1846. The idea was that people would be able to earn
money to buy food. A number of new roads were built. The New Line from
Carragane to Ballybiblin, The Bog Line from Annaslinga to Ballyfaskin, the Wood
Road and Bohereen Glas in Glencurrane and part of the Dublin road from
Brackbawn Bridge. The hills on the Gerah road at Baileys and Kellys were
lowered and the material removed was used to build up dips in the road at the
bottom of hills. With a view to discouraging crowds of starving people from
seeking employment on these schemes the workers were not permitted at their
nearest centre, e.g. people from around Brackbawn had to travel to the Wood road
and vice versa. Indeed, many people died on the works due to starvation, disease,
and exposure. The winter of 1846/47 was one on the most severe ever and people
didn’t have the clothing for outdoor work. There is an unmarked graveyard beside
the wood road in Glencurrane where people who died on the job were buried.
Population Decline in Kilbehenny an Anglesboro Parish.
1841
1851
Ballinatona
Behenagh
Boher
Brackbawn
Carrigeen Mt.
Carhue
Castlequarter
Churchquarter
Coolatin
Coonamahogue
Garryvourragha
Geerah
Glencurrange
Kilglass
Knockcommane
Knocknagalty
Knockrour
Loughananna
Shrove
TOTAL
94
263
118
108
135
156
74
109
165
136
113
146
271
477
122
57
289
182
148
4,597
114
190
72
95
92
104
25
70
117
50
84
117
106
371
70
43
127
83
94
3,118
93
94
95
>Back Cover<
FAMINE IN THE VALLEY
“This is a competently written and at times poignant account of the
Famine in a corner of the county which suffered more than many other
regions. Mr. O’Riordan covers pre- and post-Famine periods as well as
the actual Famine years.
1997 Tipperary Historical Journal
Extracts from ‘Famine in the Valley’ formed part of the Cork University
World Famine 150 exhibition in 1995, an exhibition which was subsequently
shown at Tufts University in Boston.
Edmund O’Riordan has also written ‘Historical Guide to Clogheen’ and has
previously edited START - the South Tipperary Arts and Cultural magazine.
The author can be contacted by email
ed@galteemore.com
www.galteemore.com/clogheen.html
96
97