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Cummins
Families of County Carlow, Ireland|
The Cursed Famine By Michael Purcell
With the publication in 1956 of Prof. Edward's and William's academic
volume "The Great Famine" the silence was broken. Incidentally, two Carlow men T. P. O'Neill, MA, and Oliver MacDonagh, MA, Ph.D., were among the first to contribute to this scholarly volume. Their MA thesis became the celebrated chapters: T. P. O'Neill on
"The Organisation and Administration of Relief, 1845-'52" and Oliver MacDonagh on "Irish emigration to the USA and the British Colonies during the
Famine." T. P. O'Neill also wrote an article "The Famine in Carlow" which was published in the 1947 edition of Carloviana, the journal of the Old Carlow Society. The Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Francis Haly wrote in January 1847 "no imagination can conceive, no pen can describe it. To have anything approaching a correct idea of the suffering of the poor, you should be here on the spot and see them with your own eyes!" and he added "in one of the Dublin workhouses it appears the deaths were 50 a week so crowded were the unhappy inmates." Father Maher was another R.C. priest that expressed his anger at how little was being done to relieve distress and denounced the 16 ounces of food doled out to the poor in Carlow Workhouse. Many priests and religious orders played a part in relieving the conditions of the people, but the Hierarchy seem to have been as concerned with political events (the build up to the failed Rising of 1848 for instance) and other church matters such as the vexed question of the "soupers" and the role and motives of other churches including the Quakers which diminished the role of the Hierarchy in the memory of the succeeding generations of Irish people. But it is the Society of Friends (Quakers) who were remembered most fondly by the people for their practical sleeves-rolled-up, no-strings-attached assistance at this time. In November 1846, cooked food was distributed to the destitute by the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Carlow town and county. There were complaints that some people who were not destitute were receiving relief. Seven large boilers in which to cook stirabout soup were distributed in Carlow, one to Mangan's Mills of Coal Market in the town of Carlow (the boiler exists to this day.. see note at end of this article). In it was cooked yellow meal and rice and also turnip parings and dripping fat. In 1973 the late Miss Kathy Mangan, when she was in her 90th year, told me that her aunt Johanna Mangan had told her that people would stand in line in the Coal Market carrying a pot or a bowl to place food in. They had to eat the contents there and then so as to make sure it would not be swapped or traded for tobacco or alcohol by some of the more roguish element of the destitute. They also had a security man posted to make sure that none of the employed labourers would avail of the relief. Stirabout was also distributed from the Presentation school in Tullow Street. In Kildare during November, 1846, the threat of raids on provision boats along the Grand Canal led to a contingent of 23 constabulary being assembled to protect the fleet. On the night of January 19, 1847, a food boat was attacked by a large body of men in the Bog of Allen and robbed of "several packages of tobacco, eggs and
whiskey." Frank Taaffe in a paper presented to Kildare County Library, tells us that "Kildare, with 85 per cent of its area classified as arable land, had the smallest area given over to potato growing of all the Irish counties, also the building of the GSWR railway line gave much employment in the area during 1845 and up to August, 1846," so at least for this period there was no great distress recorded in Kildare. Nevertheless, the number of inmates in Athy Workhouse which was opened in 1844 to accommodate 360 adults and 240 children, reached 737 by December 1846. There were three workhouses in Co. Kildare - at Athy, Celbridge and Naas. In 1847, the Naas Workhouse admitted 1,381 people. The diet for Carlow Workhouse in 1847 consisted of eight ounces of oatmeal with a pint of mixed milk for breakfast and for dinner one pound of brown bread with a pint of buttermilk. In fact at this time the prisoners held in the jail in Carlow town were better fed than the workhouse inmates. In the jail prisoners received: one pound of brown bread and a pint of sweet milk for breakfast and for dinner eight ounces of oatmeal stirabout and a pint of buttermilk. (On Sundays two pounds of brown bread and two pints of milk were served for dinner!). Besides the mass emigration that was prevalent during the Famine there
were emigration schemes assisted by the landlords who had figured that it was much cheaper to be rid of the destitute than to maintain the unfortunates in workhouses.
Over the years many of the workhouse officers were dismissed for "irregularities" which did not make the enforcement of this detested system any easier for the administrators or the inmates but nevertheless their were many good officers and Masters and Matrons during this sad time.
An odd ray of sunshine was allowed into the workhouse to dispel the gloom, when the danger of cholera was present the inmates were encouraged to dance to keep up their spirits.
The workhouse also had an itch ward where those afflicted with "the itch" were kept and wherein they could scratch each other to shreds, not to mention the ward for the insane . To provide labourers with money and assistance the government set up relief committees throughout the country. They in turn were to organise relief works / schemes in various Grand Jury districts. Ten committees were established for Carlow but only five qualified for government aid; they were Tullow, Bagenalstown, Hacketstown, Kiltennel and Borris. Due to political and legal difficulties, the relief schemes could not be implemented immediately (sounds familiar!). The aid schemes plan had to be first submitted to the Lord Lieutenant who then sought the opinion of the Relief Commission and also sought advice from the Board of Works (themselves subject to advice from a supervisory system) on the advisability of proceeding with the aid. Reports from those bodies were then forwarded to the Treasury in London and the approval of the treasury agents were required before any aid could be released. On occasion a proposal might be returned for clarification on a point. Many complaints were lodged by the landowners and the clergy against this delay and many of the landlords made strong representations to the government to get things moving. In the meantime subscriptions were collected among the landlords and the clergy "to aid in every possible way those who needed assistance." In May a large crowd gathered at Alexander's Mills outside Carlow and refused to disperse until they were promised that the gentry of Carlow would come to their aid. Finally in June 1846 "public work schemes" got underway. Aid would be distributed to committees formed for each electoral division. These committees were to make estimates of their required budget for two weeks in advance and this budget had then to be sanctioned by the finance section of each poor law union. On obtaining this approval the budget was advanced to the treasurer who if he was satisfied would then approve payment of the budget. The schemes were building new roads, hill lowering, filling hollows, repair of roads, building walls, etc. but all was not well in some areas. In Leighlinbridge a mob of about 200 people tore up the newly laid road because they thought "the schemes inadequate to employ all the destitute labourers." The system was intent on making it difficult and undesirable to the destitute to apply for aid in order to encourage them to support themselves.
Believe it or not but this operation was successful in alleviating distress in many areas.
People who were deemed sick or unable to work could get support from the Committees. The committees also issued cooked food according to a plan devised by the Society of Friends (Quakers). Only those able to work could seek admission to the workhouse.
Otherwise imprisonment was a better option! T.P.O'Neill tells us that: "In practice, if not in theory, the Calvinst tenet that poverty was a sign of wickedness was accepted by the elite of the
times." This could explain why the inmates of the jail were better treated and fed. In 1846, Colonel Wandesforde sent out 3,000 people from the Castlecomer area at a cost of £5 each. Those of farming stock were directed to Canada, those with mining experience to Pennsylvania. It was also reported that Lord de Vesci was undertaking extensive removals from the Queen's County (Laois). Wandesforde and de Vesci were among others who were accused of "brutal extermination" at the time. Overall the death rate on the "coffin ships" was extremely high. In 1847 alone over 40,000 died at sea. Another emigration option was the assisted passage of workhouse orphans of which over 4,000 orphan girls were sent to Australia during 1847-'49. A large number came from the Carlow, Kildare and Laois workhouses. My own great grandfather, Sam Snoddy, a Presbyterian Ulsterman from Ballymena, County Antrim had come to Carlow working on the railway line and had settled in Pollerton Road, Carlow town in 1845. On the first day of September 1849, Sam went to work early in the morning when he returned that night his wife, Sera, and two children, John and Anne, were dead and their remains already buried in Knockaunnarelic graveyard on the edge of the town. In their last hours all three had been baptised and received into the Roman Catholic Church by Rev. G. Kearns. How much of a say they had in their sudden "conversion" I can't say, all I know is that when Sam went to work that morning he left behind a wife with two children all of the Presbyterian faith and when he returned they were dead and buried and Roman Catholic!....
Thirty days later Sam himself converted to the Roman Catholic religion, thereby going against the norm of the time when others were converting away from Catholicism to get the "free soup" and other benefits
- here he was becoming a Catholic. (At the time those families who took the "soup" became known for generations as
"soupers.") After the Famine many re-converted back to being Roman Catholics and in turn they became known as
"jumpers," so one could have the "souper Doyles" or "souper Murphys" and later, after the famine was over ,the "jumper Doyles or "jumper
Murphys." I think in the following generations the "jumpers" were more frowned upon than the
"soupers." I am sure there are many such stories with families throughout the counties. It is imperative that those accounts should be recorded in order to enable historians to form a complete picture of the events of this period. Often the best way to bring home the reality of a disaster is to hear the personal stories of the people who were affected. Very little is recorded in the folk memory records for the three counties but there are many sources as yet untapped such as the local landlord accounts, local newspapers for this period, estate papers, workhouse records, church registers, the Pat Purcell Papers and various other collections. The purpose of this article is to stimulate interest and, hopefully, to encourage others to research this neglected period of our history. Carlow County Heritage Society would like to learn of any such research project, perhaps with a view to publishing same. I wish to thank Cait Kavanagh of Laois County Library, Mary Coughlan of Kildare County Library, Carmel Flahavan of Carlow County Library and my late uncle Pat Purcell for preserving so many records of the period.
Photo: "The Cursed Famine" is based on extracts from a paper prepared by Michael Purcell for a series of talks due to be given in the USA in the near future. Michael will travel to California, Arizona and Arkansas as a guest of the Emerald Circle. The theme of the talks will be "The role of the ascendancy during the Great Famine" and "The Pat Purcell Papers Archive." In the year 2002 I presented the Famine Pot, referred to above, to Carlow County Heritage Society. They have placed it in the Workhouse Burial Plot on the Green Road, Carlow. It has a stone erected recording its history. The stone was presented by the members of Sister Cities Corp. of Tempe, Arizona and was unveiled by our good friend Tom Burns of Todd Drive, Tempe, Arizona.in 2002.
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