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Date Posted: 07:15:52 09/02/02 Mon
Author: ANON.
Subject: What the papers said

An Ghorta Mhor The Great Hunger

WHAT THE PAPERS SAID


On August 20, 1845, the director of the National Botanic
Gardens in Dublin, David Moore, first identified the potato
blight associated with the Great Hunger, or Great Starvation, of 1845-52, which claimed over one million Irish lives and forced another million to flee the country. Moore identified the fungus, Phytopthora Infestans, as the cause of the blight and also correctly prescribed the use of copper sulphate, as a fungicide, to combat it.

Intensive potato cultivation had accommodated the 70%
population increase in 1791-1841; by the mid - 1840's it is
argued that the potato was the primary food for one third of the population and essentially to many more. These areas were mainly Gaelic-speaking regions, and the effects on our native language were also to prove disastrous.

Crop blight first occurred in the Autumn of 1845; the
1846 crops failed entirely. The 1847 crop was poor. The
population fell by 2 - 2.5 million in 1845-51, of whom around a million died through starvation or malnutrition - induced diseases; the remainder emigrated mostly, to the USA on what became known as coffin-ships. At just one landing point on an island, near Montgomery, Quebec, Canada, stands a Celtic Cross, erected by the Ancient Order of Hibernians (A.O.H.), which commemorates more than 20,000 Irish famine victims buried in mass graves there.


JOHN MITCHELL


One Irish patriot, John Mitchell (1815-75), born a
Presbyterian minister's son near Dungiven, in Co. Derry, took up his pen to record what he saw and felt. He had formerly studied at Trinity College, Dublin, practised as an attorney, and became assistant editor of 'The Nation'. Starting with the 'United Irishman (1848), he was tried for his articles on a charge of 'treason-felony' and sentenced to 14 years' transportation, but in 1853 he escaped from Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) to the USA, and published his ' Jail Journal' (1854).

Returning in 1874 to Ireland, he was next year elected to
the British parliament for Tipperary, declared ineligible by the British authorities, yet re-elected, but died the same month. He published a 'Life of Hugh O'Neill' (1845) and a 'History of Ireland from the Treaty of Limerick' (1868).

He is best remembered because he left us pen-pictures of the horror that encompassed Ireland, which, even after a lapse of one hundred and fifty years, make the heart burn with anger and tears of shame and pity fill the eyes. "A calm, still horror was over the land", he writes, and you know that the words fell from an aching heart.

"Go where you would, in the heart of the town or in the suburb, on the mountain side or on the level plain, there was a stillness and heavy pall-like feel of the chamber of death. You stood in the presence of a dread, silent vast dissolution. An unseen ruin was creeping round. You saw no war of classes, no open Janissary war of foreigners, no human agency of destruction. You could weep, but the rising curse died unspoken within your heart, like a profanity. Human passion there was none, but inhuman and unearthly quiet. Children met you, toiling heavily on stone-heaps, but their burning eyes were senseless and their faces cramped and weasened like stunted old men.
"Gangs worked but without a murmur or a whistle or a laugh, ghostly, like voiceless shadows to the eye. Even womanhood had ceased to be womanly. The birds of the air carolled no more, and the crow and the raven dropped dead upon the wing. The very dogs, hairless, with the head down and the vertebrae of the back protruding like a saw of bone, glared on you from the ditch-side with a wolfish avid eye, and then slunk away scowling and cowardly. Nay, the sky of heaven, the blue mountains and still lake, stretching far westward looking not at their wont. Between them and you rose a steaming agony, a film of suffering, impervious and dim. It seemed as if the anima mundi, the soul of the land was faint and dying and that the faintness and the death had crept into all things of earth and heaven. You stood there too, silenced in the presence of all the unseen and terrible".

Other educated men would take up their pens in both horror and defence of the starving Irish masses. Writing from Clifton, Co. Galway to the Freeman's Journal under the date February 11, 1848, Rev. Peter Fitzmaurice PP said, "I am sure my readers, though shocked, will not deem it exaggerated, when I certify to the fact of some persons in these parishes lived on horse flesh for days, nay on that of dogs, until death put an end to their sufferings".
In February, 1848, the Limerick Chronicle had this item of news: "At Tulla, Co. Clare, an inquest has been held on the bodies and one man and two women named Boland, who had died of starvation. Five or six weeks before their death everything they possessed had been seized for rates, since which time they had never lain on a bed. They held over twenty acres of ground from Col. Windham".

'DEATH FROM STARVATION'

In more recent years it has been a revisionist practice of some historians to dwell upon those who expressed their humanity in terms of practical aid, while ignoring those who did the exact opposite at a time of great national tragedy. In a bid to present a more balanced account the following researched extracts seem appropriate.

In February 1848 the Waterford Mail reported five inquests held on poor people who had fallen down suddenly and died. The verdict in each case was "Death from starvation".
The Galway Vindicator, February 12, 1848 had this paragraph:
"It is our painful duty to announce the murder of one hundred in our poorhouses, goals and hospitals. In Connemara, in the neighbourhood of Roundstone, six bodies have been for days above the ground, no persons being able to perform the sad rites of burial".

"We have today in out country prison", wrote the same paper a few weeks later, "997 prisoners, in a house originally built for the reception of only 110 inmates. The number of deaths in the gaol are 25 since Sunday last, and 116 since the first of the month. Our poorhouse, originally intended for 800, now contains 1,105 with 242 in hospital and 30 deaths during the week. The fever hospital is filled to overflowing and there were 73 deaths during the week or an average of 11 per day. Our town gaol contains 136 prisoners, although intended for 64."

Non-revisionist researchers recall the fact that the crime committed by most of the prisoners mentioned was the taking of turnips, mangolds and parsnips from farmers' fields, to relieve the pangs of hunger.


The Cork Examiner of February 25, 1848 carried a report from a correspondent in Donoughmore giving sickening details of how little children, distracted mothers and men worn to skin and bone by hunger were dying day by day. The correspondent added: " I am of opinion that I will have to report the death of twice as many before another week, and the principle cause is that the small pittance allowed by the law, of one pound of meal for each adult per day and half a pound for each under nine years of age, has been curtailed by the Boards of Guardians about one third. This is for economy I suppose. This, sir, is a melancholy state of things, when food is so very cheap; but we do not know where to apply for redress. If report be true, one of our Guardians has been heard to say that "Ireland will not prosper until another million of the wretched die."
The Tuam Herald told of a starving family who died after eating portions of the putrid flesh of a dead donkey they had found by the roadside.

A local paper reported:" Longford Gaol is filled to excess with famine victims who have been committed to take their trial for the stealing of cabbage and turnips. Fever and dysentery prevail in the gaol to an alarming extent. It at present contains more than three times the number of persons it was originally intended to accommodate".

INQUESTS DENIED

The Sligo Champion published a letter from Rev. Fr. Henry, Bunenaden, Ballymote, in March 1848, in which he gave a list of 24 deaths that had occurred in his parish within ten days. He wrote: "Every person living in the townlands where these deaths have occurred can testify that in every case starvation was the cause of death. In none of the cases was there any means of procuring a coffin. I reported the details to the police, in order that they would call for a coroner's inquest. They told me that they were not allowed to call on a coroner in cases where there was no doubt that starvation was the cause of death."

That order was probably given to the police after several juries had brought in a verdict of wilful murder against Lord Clarendon, the Lord Lieutenant, and Lord John Russell, Queen Victoria's Prime Minister - the Whigs were then in power.

Early in March, 1848, the Mayo Constitution said in its editorial columns: "We have learned, from various quarters, during the past week, the most shocking accounts of the misery and sufferings of hundreds of wretches who are sinking into untimely graves, the victims of disease and hunger. The streets of every town in the county are overrun by stalking skeletons. The several poorhouses are crammed to suffocation. Our county prison is thrice filled with perpetrators of petty thefts. While this state of things exists, thousands of pounds are being weekly expended in outdoor relief". The editor did not say that most of the money so expended went into the pockets of overbearing officials, on reports, in printing and on every possible form of red tape. When "economies" had to be effected, they were always made at the expense of the starving people.

A CRUCIFIED PEOPLE

In the weeks ending March 18, 1848, deaths from hunger were reported from Limerick, Westmeath, Galway, Tipperary, Cork, Kerry, Mayo and other counties. Some were buried in turf banks or the nearest convenient place, because there was no one strong enough to carry the coffinless bodies to a graveyard. One paper told of a poor woman who carried her dead boy on a rope to a place of burial, and the Mayo Telegraph had this news item: "Died at Kilmeena, of want, this week, Austin Heraghty. This poor man had been deprived of scanty allowance of meal during seven days, for having absented himself one day from the stone-breaking depot ! He was that day engaged in seeking out some asylum for the ensuing week; and when he found one, the poor, heart-broken man had to carry his sick children on his back to their new quarters. Needless to add, he had to assist in throwing down his own cabin before he would get a morsel of food."

From the various sources at hand one can claim, without contradiction, that though hunger stalked the land there was no 'famine' in the strictest sense of the word. John Mitchell, then a young man, who had his revolutionary network of contacts throughout Ireland, stated the following facts which have never been refuted:
"Drogheda, Waterford and Newry are but three of eleven seaports from each of which at least two large steamers ( from some of them five steamers) went twice in each week to England, laden with corn and cattle. And this without counting the minor ports, and the hundreds of sailing vessels all laden with corn and cattle. In short, during the four 'famine years' Ireland exported four quarters of grain for every quarter she imported, besides cattle; and of the grain imported, the greatest part had been exported before, and came back laden with two freights and speculators's profit to the helpless consumers".

Revisionist historians quite frequently endeavour to put a particular escapist gloss on events, in the hope that their supposedly empirical thesis will be accepted at face value. Many it seems have overlooked one simple factor. Facts are facts. They can be ignored or selected but they remain to the seeker after truth. While historians and academics may argue, it has long been a popular belief, among our poor and dispossessed, that while the potato blight was an act of nature, the English establishment created the famine.

Many other historians would agree with the latter contention. Christine Kinealy, in her book on this period, 'This Great Calamity, The Irish Famine 1845-52' (published by Gill and MacMillan 1994) concludes that:

"...the response of the British government to the Famine was inadequate in terms of humanitarian criteria and, increasing after 1847, systematically and deliberately so. The localised shortages that followed the blight of 1845 were adequately dealt with, but as the shortages became more widespread, the government retrenched. With the short-lived exception of the soup kitchens, access to relief - or even more importantly access to food - became more restricted. That the response illustrated a view of Ireland and its people as distant and marginal is hard to deny. What, perhaps, is more surprising is that a group of officials and their non-elected advisors were able to dominate government policy to such an extent. This relatively small group of people, taking advantage of a passive establishment, and public opinion which was opposed to further financial aid for Ireland , were able to manipulate a theory of free enterprise, thus allowing a massive social injustice to be perpetuated within a part of the United Kingdom. There was no shortage of resources to avoid the tragedy of a Famine. Within Ireland itself, there were substantial resources of food which, had the political will existed, could have been diverted, even as a short-term measure, to supply a starving people. Instead, the government pursued the objective of economic, social and agrarian reform as a long-term aim, although the price paid for this ultimately elusive goal was privation, disease, emigration, mortality and an enduring legacy of disenchantment."

Footnote:
This article appears within our archives. No name was attached to it, but the style of writing seems familiar.

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