A Famine diet of turnip-tops and sand eels in Erris

PART ONE

By Tom Gillespie

ENGLISH philanthropist James Hack Tuke was for 18 years treasurer of the Friends Foreign Mission Association, and for eight years chairman of the Friends Central Education Board.

But he is mainly remembered for his philanthropic work in Ireland, after a visit to Connaught in 1847, and of the scenes of distress which he witnessed during the Famine. In addition to relief, his eye-witness testimony brought further relief to the west of Ireland.

In 1997, Castlebar born publisher Eamon Bourke from Mountgordon published ‘Transactions of the Society of Friends during the Famine in Ireland’, in which Tuke describes his visit to Connaught in the autumn of 1847.

The original book of 480 pages was published in 1852 and the present volume is a facsimile reproduction with an added index compiled by Rob Goodbody.

As probably the first major publication relating to relief work during the Famine, and as an original source, Transactions stands as a lasting testimony to Quaker relief work and a valuable reference for historians and students in research and development studies.

Tuke wrote: The union of Ballina, in the county of Mayo, is about 60 miles in width by 30 miles in breadth, or nearly three times the size of Middlesex, containing an area of 509,154 acres, with a population of 120,797 persons, and a net annual value of £95,774.

Let us suppose that the union stretches from London to Buckingham or Oxford in one direction, and from London to Basingstoke in another, with a poor-house at St. Albans, and we shall have a good idea of the extent of the Ballina Union.

A consideration of these facts, or a glance at the map, will convince anyone how impossible it is for the wretched paupers of the extreme or even central portions of this mammoth union to receive the relief which, by law, is designed for them.

Look to the parish of Belmullet, in the barony of Erris, itself as large as the county of Dublin, and conceive for a moment the hardships of those who travel 50 miles or more to the poor-house in Ballina.

The barony of Erris alone is clearly large enough for one union, and ought to have its poor-house at Belmullet.

I must be allowed to dwell at some length upon the peculiar misery of the barony of Erris, and the parish of Belmullet, which I spent some days in examining.

Afflicting as is the general condition of Mayo - fearful as are the prospects of the province in general, there is here yet a lower depth of misery, a district almost as distinct from Mayo, as Mayo is from the eastern parts of Ireland.

Human wretches seem concentrated in Erris; the culminating point of man’s physical degradation seems to have been reached in the Mullet.

It may seen needless to trouble you with particular descriptions of the distress I have witnessed; for these descriptions are but repetitions of the far too familiar scenes of the last winter and spring; although the present seems aggravated by an earlier commencement.

Nevertheless, such a condition as that of Erris, ought, however painful, to be forced on our attention until remedies are found and applied.

The barony is situated upon the extreme north-west coast of Mayo, bounded on two sides by the Atlantic Ocean. The population last year (1846) was computed at 28,000; of that number, it is said, at least 2,000 have emigrated, principally to England, being too poor to proceed to America; and that 6,000 have perished by starvation, dysentery, and fever.

There is left a miserable remnant of little more that 20,000, of whom 10,000 at least are, strictly speaking, on the very edge of starvation.

Ten thousand people within 48 hours journey of the metropolis of the world, living, or rather starving, upon turnip-tops, sand eels, a diet which no one in England would consider fit for the meanest animal which he keeps.

And let it not be supposed that of this Famine diet they have enough, or that each of those poor wretches has a little plot of turnips on which he may feed at his pleasure.

His scanty meal is, in many cases, taken from a neighbour hardly richer than himself; not indeed at night, but, with the daring of absolute necessity, at noon day.

On entering the houseless and uncultivated region of Erris, the traveller is reminded of the wilds of Canada: for some miles, hardly an acre of cultivated land or the appearance of human residence greets the eye. Yet this district is reported by the Waste Land Commission as peculiarly capable of improvement.

Advancing further into Erris, the desolation and wretchedness were still more striking. One may indeed at times imagine oneself in a wilderness, abandoned to perpetual barrenness and solitude.

But here and these scattered over this desolate landscape, little green patches appear unexpectedly where no other sign of man presents itself to you; as you walk over the bog, and approach nearer to the spot, a curl of smoke arises from what you suppose to be a slight rise in the surface.

To use the graphic language of the late continental visitor, “Let the traveller look where he is going, however, or he may make a false step, the earth may give way under his feet, and he may fall into what? into an abyss, a cavern, a bog?

“No, into a hut, a human dwelling-place, whose existence he has overlooked, because the roof on one side was level with the ground, and nearly at the same consistency.

“If he draws back his foot in time, and looks a round, he will find the place filled with a multitude of similar huts, all swarming with life.”

Of what is this human dwelling-place composed? The wall of the bog often forms two or three sides of it, while sods taken from the adjoining surface form the remainder.

Windows, there is none; chimneys are not known; an aperture in front, some three or four feet in height, serves the office of door, window, and chimney; ‘light, smoke, pigs, and children, all pass in and out by this aperture’.