Workhouse death records online for 1850-51: names, ages, COD

[smcarberry]

Google Books (main Google page, click on "more" in upper lefthand screen, then click on "books") has, among the reams of
Parliamentary Papers issued by the British House of Commons, a report by the Poor Law Commission Office (Dublin) which
provides details of over 2900 workhouse residents from 25 Mar 1850 to 25 Mar 1851 in the Kilrush and Ennistimon workhouses, including a Sandfield location. That report starts on p. 71 and extends over 46 pages. Here is its link which popped up on a Google search on another topic (although I doubt that this link will actually work): http://books.google.com/books?id=vpMSAAAAYAAJ...

To reach this publication, I suggest you use input in the Google Book search engine a surname which is misspelled (use the exact misspelling):
Mulganeerry
Mexall
Costoleo
Reooan

Then you can either read down the list on each page or input a surname in the "search this book" search engine provided by
Google Books. You might have to be creative with spellings, since I saw the type of mistake made by people not familiar
with Clare surnames but trying to decipher handwriting, especially those tricky initial letters of a name. The residents are
listed by full name, age at time of death, date of entry into the workhouse, date of death, and cause of death, as well as
occasional additional comments. No place names are given, other than the location of the workhouse.

There is another report, earlier in this publication, which provides some letters dealing with a controversy on the Ennistymon's workhouse board being replaced in toto.

There is also a section of the Paper which provides verbatim comments by Clare dignitaries on how orderly and clean they found the workhouses after making a visit. This section has similar comments made by visitors to the workhouses of other counties in the West. Another section has the responses of a Galway workhouse official to refute allegations that children were not being kept clean or were forced to sleep in overcrowded conditions.

This publication is not to be read unless you are up to reading about how a three-year-old was a "mere skeleton" or how
a young man "came in to die." Many youngsters are called a "mere starveling."

I hope this can provides clues re: your missing family members. If I ever find similar lists for East Clare and Ennis workhouses I will post it here.

Sharon Carberry USA

[Paddy Casey]

Sharon,

Thanks very much for bringing it to our attention and for the useful search tips (Chinese proverb: "Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day. Give him a fishing rod and he can eat for the rest of his life").

This is, as you say, a very stark document. One may read of x deaths per month in some workhouse or other but this enormous list of names and ages and causes of death really brings it home. At least these unfortunate people, by being included in this list, had some kind of memorial to commemorate their existences and deaths.

The whole Ennistymon section of the document, with its countless memoranda and minutes of meetings and resolutions fleshes out the disaster in all its details.

Paddy

[Clare Admin]

Thank you very much for this link, Sharon. Clare County Library has already transcribed and published the bulk of the report on our site (click here), and we have now placed a link from that to the scanned document on Google Books. We have made it a little easier for people to find particular names by combining them all into one index (click here), and of course all names are searchable at any rate by using the Google Mini option on our 'Search This Website' page.
Thank you again for this invaluable link,
Clare Admin

[smcarberry]

I really appreciate the kind comments posted about this database, which appears in both Google Book and Clare Library versions. Mine was a quick posting, so that this material could receive some publicity, even if it did overlap with the Library's material (a possibility which occurred to me at the time). My perspective is that, with surnames being all that some descendants have in order to unravel the mystery of their Clare origin, the more ways to use a database, the better. Each detail that can be collected is another piece of the puzzle. The easier the collecting process is, the more surely enough clues will be gathered.

I felt that I could do no more than a quick posting, because my current project which is so close to being done. I am now
within a hundred names of being done with a new database of 700-plus names of defendants in Clare eviction cases heard in court from 1827-1833. It has been a year since my last donation to the Clare Library, and I want no further time to elapse before this one gets submitted. Although the Tithe Applotment records cover the mid-1820s, I am seeing names in the new database which are not in the TA. The new set of names will dovetail with other databases and articles already on the Library site, such as the Clare newspaper article entitled Land Agitation in 1792, donated by Declan Barron. That's such an early time, which some descendants may feel will never be relevant for their research. However, the names in that article also appear in the 1827-1833 evictions. Declan made the extra effort of searching for the 1792 article's people in the Tithes records but could not find, e.g., William Connell who had resisted official action taken by Giles Daxon. The new database of 1827-33 has three Daxons listed as plaintiffs in eviction cases. Richard and William Daxon in Clonderalaw Barony (no townland listed) tried ejecting Bryan and Peter Connell. Giles Daxon was the plaintiff in Islands Barony cases to eject Daniel Leadon and Andrew Joynt from their Dromcliffe/Drumcliff plots of land.

Historians and sociologists will have new material to analyze in 1827-33 results, because the new database reveals some
startling facts, such as the apparent repeated attempts to evict cottiers from their little plots of land, by both the
well-known "big" landlords and also by what appears to be their own family members (plaintiffs and defendants sharing the
same surname). What does it mean that hundreds of cases were brought with the huge majority involving only land, not
houses ? What does it mean that the landlords were so unsuccessful in this period of time and were not allowed to remove
the cottiers ? Surely renters in this period of time included a large number of widows - what does it mean that so few
appear in this database ?

Anyway, stay tuned and I will post when the new database has been processed by the Library and placed online. In the
meantime, researchers can benefit by regularly checking the "What's New" section of the Library's website where listings already are exist for valuable databases donated by Tom McDowell, Robert Craig Doherty, Paddy Casey, and Ernene
Smedley, among others. The latest major one was done by the Clare Roots Society, the home folks who are out in the cemeteries getting their feet wet in order to put material online for us descendants. These provides pieces for your puzzles and are not part of material appearing anywhere else in the world. The Clare Library has brought forth a new era by providing a means for descendants to add to online material and a place to discuss the questions it engenders. Our folks are not just gone and forgotten.

Back to typing,
Sharon Carberry USA