The Workhouses of County Mayo 1841–1851 were 'appalling places'

LOCAL HISTORY: by Dr. Michael M. O'Connor

How much do we know about the workhouses of County Mayo during the Great Famine of 1845 to 1851?

They were appalling places, of course, and, in many instances, they were governed (or misgoverned) by terrible people.

But again, how much do we know?

Most people will know where the principal union workhouses were located, and most assume that was it. But it was not.

The workhouses designed by George Wilkinson and built before the Famine did not contemplate the complete unravelling of the fabric of society, consequent upon the failure of the potato crop and the absence of a meaningful and effective response from the governments of the day.

The heinous acts perpetrated against the poorer classes in Mayo by men like George Charles Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan, are part of our collective memory.

Lucan herded people off the land in the direction of the workhouses. This was done with full knowledge of what awaited them there.

There was the intent, and the Famine facilitated the clearance of an unwanted social class of people off the land to make way for cattle for export and later pedigree racehorses and horse racing.

A multitude of other starving men, women and children joined them at the entrance to the workhouse. Many entered, and many died. Those denied access died on the streets, on the roadside and in their cabins.

The workhouses could not accommodate the numbers seeking refuge, so temporary or auxiliary workhouses sprang up in towns around Mayo.

These are the institutions that do not make it into the histories without a bit of digging around in the archives.

Thousands died in the workhouses, auxiliary offshoots and fever hospitals in Mayo. Over the past two years, I have been building a database of recorded deaths in Mayo during the Famine.

The sobering but unsurprising conclusion I am coming to is that, when I am done, I will have relatively few names – mass graves, mass burials, no inquests. But the task is still worthwhile.

Despite what some say, there are records with names of those who died in Mayo workhouses. Things were different outside the workhouses; the press had access, and newspapers like The Connaught Telegraph and Mayo Constitution recorded many individual deaths.

Here, I have details of many individual deaths, and I continue to find more – it is slow going but worthwhile. These people deserve to be remembered as individuals, not as a collective - the ‘Famine Dead.’

In 1856, the Houses of Parliament published a list of workhouses in Mayo in the period 1841-1851 (see table). How accurate is that list?

Not entirely is the answer.

The large auxiliary workhouse in Castlebar, which was located on the site of Castlebar Brewery behind Burleigh House on Ellison Street, is not on the list.

In December 1848, the brewery (then known as Walsh’s Brewery) was leased to the Castlebar Union Board of Guardians. Even after modifications to accommodate hundreds of people, the brewery was not suited for the new purpose.

Hundreds died of dysentery and other diseases at the brewery and the other makeshift workhouses in Castlebar. What were their names? Where were they buried? Were their remains among those exhumed and reinterred in a pit at Castlebar Cemetery to make way for the new Sacred Heart Hospital in the late 1960s?

This group of unwanted, nameless people did not find rest in the grounds of Castlebar Workhouse (then the County Home).

They were moved on as they had been by Lucan and his acolytes over a century earlier.

Of course, it was all lawful - Minister for Local Government Niall Blaney issued an Exhumation Order.

In 2013, a memorial plaque was unveiled at the Sacred Heart Hospital ‘in memory of those laid to rest on this site’, but they had been moved on long before that, so the standard and undoubtedly well-meaning epitaph ‘May They Rest in Peace’ rings somewhat hollow.

As I have said, I have been building a database of recorded deaths in Mayo during the Famine.

This work is taking me to places I did not know existed, places where now long-forgotten people died. In many instances, they were forgotten because they perished as family units, so no one was left to carry forward a memory of them.

In some cases, entire communities were cleared - communities like Aughadrina, where Lucan cleansed the land of 913 people and their collective memory.

Many died; many went to the workhouses and died there, and some huddled together below deck on unseaworthy vessels after buying passage from unscrupulous shipping agents.