Mayo history: Lord Lucan attended evictions in 1849

By Tom Gillespie

HARROWING accounts of Famine times in Mayo were recorded in The Connaught Telegraph, which was 19 years in circulation when the potato crop failed in 1847.

Local Castlebar historian Tom Higgins, in his history of Castlebar parish, ‘Through Fagan’s Gates’, recalled from the Connaught the results of the Famine in Castlebar.

He wrote: In 1835 the Catholic population of Castlebar parish was 17,915 and the number of Protestants was 1,303. In 1841 the population of the town, as distinct from the parish, was 5,137.

The population of the town fell from 5,137 in 1841 to 4,027 in 1851. In 1846 the number of children baptised in Castlebar parish was 552. By 1847 there were only 40 marriages. Business and trade in the town had collapsed.

Trade and commerce within the town was ruined by the depopulation of the countryside and by the lack of money. Castlebar was suffering from the effects of the Famine. All the old industries had disappeared. The linen industry, which had given a lot of employment in rural areas through the growing of flax, no longer existed. The brewery, distillery, brick works, tanneries and quarries had all closed down. Lord Lucan provided the only employment in the town.

In order to get some employment in the town, a scheme was started in 1850 to lower the bed of the river through the town, resulting in the canalised river we have today.

A group of people led by Fathers Peter Geraghty and Peter Curley bought a quantity of wool and employed about 100 people in weaving and dying and making suits which were sold for 10 shillings a suit. This committee also raised subscriptions from England to buy seed for the surrounding farmers so that they could sow crops again.

It was no surprise that most tenants were unable to pay their rents, and many of those were evicted by the landlords, both during and after the Famine.

Sir William Butler, an English member of parliament, described one such eviction:

The Sheriff, a strong force of police, and above all, the ‘crowbar brigade’, were present.

The miserable inmates of the cabins were dragged out upon the road, the thatched roofs were torn down and the earthen walls battered in by crowbars.

The screaming women, and half-naked children, the paralysed grandmother and tottering grandfather were hauled out and left to wander the roads, ending up in a makeshift shelter of wood and straw.

The following evictions were carried out in 1848 on the orders of the Third Earl of Lucan, the landlord who owned extensive tracts of land in the Castlebar area.

Aughadrina: The townland was cleared of 289 people, all houses levelled.

Balloor: 53 ejected, houses levelled (May 1, 1848).

Staball: 52 ejected, houses levelled (April 1848).

Knockthomas: 12 ejected (May 1848).

Gallows Hill: 39 ejected (May 1848).

No townland in the parish escaped the terror of Lucan’s ‘crowbar brigade’ in April and May in 1848.

Famine, death and evictions continued into 1849. The ‘crowbar brigade’ moved once again to Staball Hill, with Lord Lucan himself in attendance. Only the sooty gables were left standing.

In 1848 there were 400 prisoners in Castlebar Jail, imprisoned for such crimes as stealing a hen, stealing turnips, rooting potatoes, or running out of the workhouse.

The jail was filled to capacity with vagrants who deliberately smashed windows in the town in order that they might be imprisoned and fed. Vagrancy was a crime punishable with imprisonment.

In 1849 vagrants, both male and female, were stealing sheep and cattle, driving them in front of police, hoping to be caught and thrown into prison. Even stone-breaking and the treadmill in jail were preferable to starvation and death.

At the height of the Famine, when starvation or stealing food were the stark choices open to the poor, the response of the authorities was imprisonment with hard labour, or transportation to Botany Bay in Australia.

Voluntary Famine Relief Committees were set up in all the local towns to raise funds and provide free food for the starving masses.

A record of the proceedings of the Castlebar Poor Relief Committee from December 21, 1846, to January 16, 1847, stated that on December 21, 1846, the committee had set up boilers capable of making 100 gallons of soup. Later they acquired boilers of 140 gallons capacity and commenced the issue of ‘wholesome and nutritious soup made from beef of the best quality, thickened with oaten or other meal, and seasoned with pepper, onions and other vegetables’.

Every adult qualifying for relief was entitled to receive two pints of soup daily, one pint of each for the other members of his or her family, or the equivalent in meal, upon payment of one half-penny.

The committee was later presented with an additional 100 gallon boiler by the Society of Friends in Dublin.

The committee acknowledged the generous contributions it received from many sources. The members were now confident that the ‘disease had been checked’ and that the starving poor were being given some measure of relief.

The chairman of the Castlebar Relief Committee in 1846 was Rev. Richard Gibbons, parish priest of Castlebar, and he was assisted by clergy and lay people from across the religious divide.

However, the optimism of this committee was without foundation. The worst was yet to come.

Faced with a situation of disastrous proportions, what could the local clergy do, with starvation, disease and death the ever-present reality for their parishioners?

At that time there were four priests in Castlebar parish - Rev. Gibbons, Rev. James McManus, Rev. Geraghty and Rev. Curran, who launched an appeal for funds to help the victims of famine.