Connaught Telegraph highlighted the plight of the Famine starving
By Tom Gillespie
THE Great Famine of 1846 to 1850 occurred at a time when Ireland formed part of the richest, most industrialist nation in the world, the United Kingdom.
The Famine was a product of many factors, including four years of blighted potato harvests, the people’s inability to acquire alternative food sources, the continued export of grain and the inadequacy of the government’s response to the growing crisis.
During the Famine, according to ‘The Story of Mayo’, by Rosa Meehan and published by Mayo County Council in 2003, Mayo lost 30 per cent of its population either through death or emigration.
The blight affecting the potatoes was first noticed in September 1845, the second year of the potato crop failure.
At the time, no cure was known. Fifteen years after the Famine, it was discovered that the fungus Phytophthora infestans caused the blight; it could reproduce itself rapidly, infecting entire fields within hours.
It was to take another 25 years before an effective cure was found, by the French scientist Professor M. Millardet who devised a mixture of copper sulphate (bluestone) and hydrated lime to be sprayed on the growing shoots of the plants.
The only hope for the vast body of the starving Irish was to turn to the workhouses which had been established under the Poor Law (Ireland) Act of 1838 to alleviate the distress of the ‘deserving poor’.
In Mayo, the Poor Law Unions comprised of extensive areas overwhelmingly populated by semi-destitute peasantry.
The various Boards of Guardians went into arrears due to the non-payment of Poor Law Rates and looked to central government for assistance during the Famine years.
Some of Mayo’s Poor Law Unions were declared ‘distressed’ and financial assistance was given to Ballina, Ballinrobe, Swinford and Westport. But the response did not need the scale of need.
Workhouses were designed in pre-Famine times to house 1.5 per cent of the Poor Law Unions’ population.
During the Famine, they were unable to cope with the demands of the thousands of people who often walked miles to seek relief and who were frequently refused.
The workhouse system was rigid: inmates were separated according to age and sex, and had to follow a severe disciplinary regimen governing their diet and daily schedule.
In the spring of 1846, Indian corn was imported into Ireland to help ease the crisis.
It was known as ‘Peel’s Brimstone’, after Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel and the burning pain it left in the stomachs of the hungry.
Public works schemes were introduced in 1846 to give employment so that the destitute could earn money to buy food.
The works consisted of activities such as making roads, breaking stones, drainage works, pier and bridge building.
The building of a canal connecting Mayo’s Lough Mask to Galway’s Lough Corrib was one of the many schemes undertaken.
The purpose was to provide a navigation channel between the two lakes, but the canal was never used since the bedrock was limestone and it proved too porous.
In June 1846 The Connaught Telegraph reported: 'Numerous, we regret to state, well-founded complaints have been made to us from Turlough, Islandeady, Castlebar, Ballinrobe, Newport, Westport, Aughagower and Ballyheane, as to the manner in which Public Works are being carried out - but particularly the way in which the poor wretches employed on them are paid their wages.
'Most of these creatures, pale, haggard, have declared to us that for two, three, four and five weeks they have not been paid their wages.'
In August 1846 The Connaught Telegraph published a petition sent to the Right Hon. Lord John Russell, First Lord of the Treasury, following a public meeting ‘of at least 20,000 persons’.
The petition was from inhabitants of the parishes of Aglish, Ballyheane, Breaffy, Turlough, Islandeady, Touaghty, Drum, Rosslee, Ballintubber, Burriscarra, Kilmeena and Kilmaclasser.
The newspaper reported: The meeting assembled in the open air, on the Green of Castlebar, beg leave to respectively submit to you that in consequence of the total failure of the potato crop of the present season, the great bulk of the people of these parishes, and of the county generally, are reduced to a state of utmost destitution, and that starvation with all its horrors must immediately ensue, and the people will, unless relieved, inevitably perish by thousands and thousands.
William Bennett, a member of the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers), wrote an account of his visit to Mayo during the Famine.
He entered a cabin in Belmullet and saw:
Stretched in one corner, scarcely visible, from the smoke and rags that covered them, were three children huddled together, lying there because they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly, their little limbs - on removing a portion of the filthy covering - perfectly emaciated, eyes sunk, voice gone, and evidently in the last stage of actual starvation.
Crouched over the turf embers was another form, wild and all but naked, scarcely human in appearance. It stirred not, nor noticed us.
On the same straw, sodden upon the ground, moaning piteously, was a shrivelled old woman imploring us to give her something - baring her limbs partly, to show how the skin hung loose from the bones, as soon as she attracted our attention.
Above her, on something like a ledge, was a young woman, with sunken cheeks - a mother, I have no doubt - who scarcely raised her eyes to answer our enquires, but pressed her hand upon her forehead, with a look of unutterable anguish and despair.
During 1846/’47 the Quakers, together with others charitable relief organisations and local relief committees, organised soup kitchens for the needy.
The Tyrawly Herald reported in January 1847 that Ballina and Ardnaree Relief Committee had distributed 1,387 quarts of soup each day to 563 families at the expense of £23.