the Famine in Clare

[matthewmacnamara]

In April 1846 as the Famine sets in, a report sent to the Chief Secretary in Dublin Castle gave details of the situation in South East Clare.
[Cottiers were people renting micro holdings from two to ten acres, sublet to them by farmers]

One fourth, and in many cases upwards of one third, of the rural population have no land, or at least less than half an acre, which is usually held under a farmer, or middleman. These people live chiefly by barter. They rarely have any money transactions, except, perhaps from the sale of a pig. They are usually employed part of the year by the farmers or neighbouring gentlemen. They take from the farmer, on the conacre system, a sufficient quantity of land, on which they plant potatoes for their support. If the farmer manures it, the amount charged varies from 5 pounds to 8 pounds an acre; but if the cottier has manure of his own, derived from the pig, scraping the road etc. he is rarely charged any rent for the part so manured. When unemployed, he has his potatoes to live on, and with the small potatoes he rears and fattens a pig, from the produce of which the family are clothed. Such is the state of dependence of at least one fourth, or probably one third, of the Irish people.
In the present year, owing to the potato disease, this usual resource has partially failed, and at the present moment the cottier class of this county, and of Clare, are bordering on starvation, and in the villages are in many cases actually without food. [House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers, Famine, Ireland, 5, 129]

[Sduddy]

Hi Matthew

I’ve taken a couple of images from Ireland Illustrated, 1680-1860 (https://ttce.nuigalway.ie/irelandillustrated/) to accompany your post:

[A Simple Meal] – by S. Williams (created 1837): https://ttce.nuigalway.ie/irelandillust ... 1335300571

Interior of one of the better kind of Irish cottages – Daniel Maclise (created 1836) : https://ttce.nuigalway.ie/irelandillust ... 1347287624. You can see the pig in the doorway.

Plan d'une cabine. Cheminée d'une cabine en Connaught - Charles-Étienne Coquebert de Montbret (created 1791): https://ttce.nuigalway.ie/irelandillust ... 1522137982. This is many years too early to be suitable as an image to accompany your post, but I think you will find it interesting. Scroll down for English translation and see the method for boiling potatoes - still the very much the same today! Some things stay the same as they say in France - plus ça change ...

Sheila

[smcarberry]

Matthew, I am right there with Sheila in appreciating context for the era involved in your posting. She added links to imagery. I went back into my old e-files and found a Google Books snippet (screenshot) from an even earlier time preserved by William Shaw Mason in his series of publications 1814, 1816, and 1819. Those were compilations made from the writings of Protestant clergymen around Ireland produced expressly for Mason. Mason's volumes are not a comprehensive selection around the island but a fine window into each locality as those clergy knew it.

To do a posting here, I needed to go back and get a page number not preserved in my e-note, which led to the discovery that, in the interim since I viewed Mason on Google Books (with its not-too-handy search engine), the Clare County Library through its Local Studies Centre has put the entire 3-volume set online ! I easily found the section I wanted. The below quotations provide an illustration of how basic Clare diet was in the early to mid 1800s even for middle-class people (I guess only the wealthy who had gone off to Dublin enjoyed fancier cuisine).]

Here is the description provided by Kilrush's Rev. John Graham for William Shaw Mason's 1816 volume (no. 2), both paragraphs appearing on p. 452:

With all this profusion of food of the most exquisite kind, it may perhaps puzzle the Political Economist to hear, that the greater proportion of inhabitants of this rich and populous district live upon potatoes and milk. The inhabitants of the town of Kilrush may perhaps be excepted; but a great proportion of our landlords sell their oats, calves, lambs, poultry, pork, and butter; living and thriving on upon eggs, fish, potatoes, buttermilk, and salt.

and

Many of these people give their daughters marriage portions, amounting to an [sic] hundred guineas. They ride to mass on sundays [sic] with their wives behind them, on good horses and comfortable pillions, wear decent frize clothes, and have brick chimneys on their houses. The fact is, that the potatoe affords sufficient nourishment to them; and anything farther, in the way of food, whether it be turbot or mutton, smoaked dog fish or salt, is a luxury...At Christmas or Easter and on St. Martin’s Eve, a more expensive mode of living is adopted; for on these occasions, every man in the parish and union dines upon animal food [i.e. meat].

For those wanting more of Rev. Graham's observations, his article is 84 pages starting on p. 414, including a "List of Incumbents" which appear to be the top local men (i.e. landlords) appearing in the First Fruit records kept by the "established" church back then and on p. 488 an Appendix listing all the townlands in the civil-union jurisdiction comprising Kilrush and its environs.

As to another Clare locality, treated similarly by its local Protestant clergyman, but much more briefly, here are my notes:
A Statistical Account, or Parochial Survey of Ireland - compiler William Shaw Mason
1819 edition: chapter on the Union of Noughaval & Carrune -- east of Kilfenora, north of Corrofin village
by Rev. Robert Gabbett (deceased as pf 1819 publication) pp.281-288
168 inhabited houses, total between the 2 (civil) parishes
very little land suited for agriculture; mostly rocky pasture
not a single Protestant inhabitant
First Fruits records used for a List of Incumbents (landowners, named)
Appendix contains individual townlands with comments on meaning of the names

Here is the Library link to the entire series by Mason:
https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/cocla ... _index.htm

[matthewmacnamara]

A feature of class relationships in the early days of the Famine was tension between farmers, and men securing employment on relief schemes.
In August 1846, a road blocking incident in Coonagh, adjacent to the Clare Limerick border, bespeaks strong tension between landless men and cottiers looking to relief schemes for employment, and the local farmers who want to have first call on their services. The absence of an alternative to farm work would be a factor restraining the wages obtainable from the farmers. In the following newspaper report the term the Lady refers to Lady Clare – a traditional Rockite personification. One can note the involvement of a number of men and the use of firearms. We can only speculate as to the name that has been redacted into asterisks. It may have been that of Gloster, a local landlord holding land in Moylish who in the previous year had been shot at Toonagh, south of Corafin: A number of armed men, on Tuesday night, assembled at Coonagh, and set to work, cutting a trench across the public road; after which they set up a stile stone, and affixed thereto a Rock notice, of which the following is a copy: – ‘Take notice that the Lady of Corafin has giving a visit to the North Liberties to see how they are situated in labour and now She sees that there are no public works carrying on there, and if it don’t be carried on that She must rebel against them, and if they put her to trouble of coming again they may remark the consequences. Any man that lays a hand to this job that is done here by her Ladyship he may remark the consequences after – but if the farmers of this place interfere as they did before in this business Heavens and Mighty they will get the death of *** Let no person touch this job until the work is laid out’ After performing this lawless work, the whole party withdrew, firing shots, which were distinctly heard by farmers in the neighbourhood. [Limerick Chronicle, August 1, 1846]