Images of the Famine

[Fairlie]

Images of the Famine

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/sadli ... awings.htm

[Tricia]

Can you put images up on petition group ?

[Fairlie]

Bridget O'Donnell and her family,
from The Illustrated London News, 1849.

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"The Sketch of a Woman and Children" represents Bridget O'Donnell. Her story is briefly this: 'I lived,' she said, 'on thelands of Gurranenatuoha. My husband held four acres and a half of land, and three acres of bog land; our yearly rent was L7 4s; we were put out last November; he owed some rent. We got thirty stone of oats from Mr. Marcus Keane, for seed. My husband gave some writing for it; he was paid for it. He paid ten shillings for reaping the corn. As soon as it was stacked, one 'Blake' onthe farm, who was put to watch it, took it away in his own haggard and kept it there for a fortnight by Dan Sheedey's orders. The then thrashed it in Frank Leille's barn. I was at this time lying in fever. Dan Sheedey and five or six men cam to tumble my house; they wanted me to give possession. I said that I would not; I had fever, and was within two months of my down-lying (confinement); they commenced knocking down the house, and had half of it knocked down when two neighbors, women, Nell Spellesley and Kate How, carried me out. I had the priest and the doctor attend me shortly after. Father Meehan annointed me. I was carried into a cabin and lay there for eight days, when I had the creature (the child) born dead . I lay for three weeks after that. The whole of my family got the fever, and one boy thirteen years old died withwantsand with hunger while we were lying sick. Dan Sheedey and Blake took the corn into Kilrush and sold it. I don't know what they got for it. I had not a bit for my children to eat when they took it from me. . . . '

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"Digging for Potatoes"
from The Illustrated London News, 1849.

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"'Searching for Potatoes' is one of the those occupations of those who cannot obtain outdoor relief. It is gleaning in a potato field, and how few are left after the potatoes are dug, must be known to everyone whohas ever seen the field cleared. What the people were digging and hunting for, like dogs after truffles, I could not imagine, till I went into the field, and then I found them patiently turning over the whole ground, in the hopes of finding the few potatoes the owner might not have overlooked. Gleaning ina potato field seems something like shearing hogs, but it is theonly means by which the gleaners could hope to geta meal."

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"Sketch in the House at Fahey's Quay, Ennis -- The Widow Connor and Her Dyind Child,"
from The Illustrated London News, 1850.

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"Miss Kennedy distributing clothing at Kilrish,"
from The Illustrated London News, December 22,1849.

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Another Sketch follows (that of Miss Kennedy), which shows that, amidst this world of wretchedness, all is not misery and guilt. Indeed, it is a part of our nature that the sufferings of some should be the occasions for the exercise of virtue in others. Miss Kennedy (about seven years old) is the daughter of Captain Kennedy, the Poor-Law inspector of the Kilrush Union. She is represented as engaged in her daily occupation of distributing clothing to the wretched children brought around her by their more wretched parents. In the front of the group I noticed one woman crouching like a monkey, and drawing around her the only rag she had to conceal her nudity. A big tear was rolling downher cheek, with gratitude for the gifts the innocent child was distributing. The effect was heightened by the chilliness and dreariness of a November evening, and by the wet and mire in which the naked feet of the crowd were immersed. On Captain Kennedy being appointed to the Union, his daughter was much affected by the misery of the poor children she saw; and so completely did it occupy her thoughts, that, with the consent ofher parents, she gave up her time andher own little means to relieve them. She gave away her own clothes -- she was allowed to bestow part of her mother's -- and she the purchased coarse materials and made up clothing for children of her own age; and she was encouraged by her father and some philanthropic strangers, from whom she received sums of money, and whose example will no doubt be followed by those who possess property in the neighborhood; and she devoted herself with all the energy and perserverance of a mature and staid matron to the holy office she has undertaken. The Sketch will, I hope, immortalize the beneficent child, who is filling the place of a saint, and performing the duties of a patriot.

On all sides I hear praises of the amiable child and her excellent father, and this is not without a moral for the landlords. The public officers who are appointed to administer and control the relief of the poor, have it in their power to do much for the people. Mere kindness of manner, though they render no substantial assistance, endears them to the suffering crowd. Captain Kenned is at once kind, charitable and judicious. He is at the head of the Union. He fills for the people the most important office in the district. He is the great man of the place. It must be so in other districts. The funds are contributed by the landowners, but they are distributed by public officers. Thus the Poor Law, which disposes of the landowner's property, also deprives them of the pleasure and the burden of distributing it themselves. A public officer is made, in fact, to administer their estates, and he stands between them and their compulsory bounties, securing the respect and confidence which they might and ought to have. The more the subject is examined, the more I have no doubt, it will be found that the Poor Law is as injurious tothe landlords as it is to the people.

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An Irish family after eviction.
From the Illustrated London News, 1848.

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Eviction scene from the Illustrated London News of December 16, 1848. The famine-era scenes illustrates the plight of Irish families made homeless during the Famine, described by Bishop Thomas Nulty of County Meath, who calcuated that close to 30,000 homes were leveled in Meath between 1843-71. Nulty described evictions in his writing. "The speechless agony of men, the piteous wailings of women, the terror and consternation of children, as their houses are pulled down, their homes demolished, and themselves set adrift on the world -- all contribute to make up a horrible scene that . . . can never be forgotten throughout the length and breadth of the locality in which it occurred." (Alfred P. Smyth, Faith, Famine and Fatherland in the Irish Midlands: Perceptions of a Priest and Historian Anthony Cogan, 1826-1872. Dublin: Colour Books Ltd., 1992.)

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Kate Kearney's cottage, Gap of Dunloe,
from the Illustrated London News

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Scalp of Brian Conner, near Kilrush Union-House.

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Scalpeen of Tim Downs at Dunmore,
from the London Illustrated News, 1849.

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The last Sketch shows the Scalpeen of Tom Downs, at Dunmore, in the parish of Kellard, where himself and his ancestors resided on this spot for over a century, with renewal of their lease up to 1845. He neither owed rent arrears or taxes up to the present moment, and yet he was pitched out onto the roadside, and saw then other houses, with his own, levelled at one fell swoop on the spot, the ruins of some of which are seen in this Sketch. None of them were mud cabins, but all capital stone-built houses.

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Judy O'Donnel's Habitation Under the Bridge at Doonbeg. 1849.

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"Keillines, near General Thompson's Property,"
from the Illustrated London News, 1850.

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A homeless woman who has been evicted from her cottage.
Lawrence Collection, National Library of Ireland.

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The Village of Killard,"
from the Illustrated London News, 1850.

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The Embarkation, Waterloo Docks, Liverpool .
The Illustrated London News, July 6, 1850.

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Many Irish immigrants traveled to Liverpool first before emigrating to the United States and Australia.

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An Irish "coffin ship
as depicted in Harper's Weekly.

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The large number of fatalities aboard overcrowded vessels carrying immigrants away from famine-devastated Ireland led them to be labeled "coffin ships." This political cartoon from Harper's Weekly, by W. A. Rogers, ran with the caption, "The balance of trade with Great Britain seems to be still against us. 630 paupers arrived at Boston in the steamship Nestoria, April 15th, from Galway, Ireland shipped by the British Government." The Irish vessel is labeled "Poor House from Galway." The smaller vessel to the left is marked with the words, "From New York. The Dynamite." The small box on which the man in the plaid coat is seated also contains the words "the dynamite."

Harper's Weekly.

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Scenes between decks
from The Illustrated London News, July 6, 1850.

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The Times of London wrote a lead editorial about the plight of famine immigrants on Friday, September 17, 1847:

The great Irish famine and pestilence will have a place in that melancholy series of similar calamities to which historians and poets have contributed so many harrowing details and touching expressions. Did Ireland possess a writer endued withthe laborious truth of Thucydides, the graceful felicity of Virgil, or the happy invention of DeFoe, the events of this miserable year might be quoted by the scholars of the age to come together with the sufferings of the pent-up multitudes of Athens, the distempered plains of northern Italy, or the hideous ravages of our own great plague. But Time is ever improving on the past. There is one horrible feature of the recent, not to say the present, visitation which is entirely new. The fact of more than a hundred thousand souls flying from the the very midst of the calamity into insufficient vessels, scrambling for a footing on a deck and a berth in a hold, committing themselves to these worse than prisons, while their frames were wasted with ill-fare and their blood infected with disease, fighting for months of unutterable wretchedness against the elements without and pestilence within, giving almost hourly victims to the deep, landing at length onshores already terrified and diseased, consigned to encampments of the dying and of the dead, spreading death wherever they roam, and having no other prospect before them than a long continuance of these horrors in a still farther flight across forests and lakes under a Canadian sun and a Canadian frost -- all these are circumstances beyond the experience of the Greek historian or the Latin poet, and such as an Irish pestilence alone could produce.

By the end of the season there is little doubt that the immigration into Canada alone will have amounted to 100,000; nearly all from Ireland. We know the condition in which these poor creatures embarked on their perilous adventure. They were only flying from one form of death. On the authority of the Board of Health we are enabled to state that they were allowed to ship in numbers two or three times greater than the same vessels would have presumed to carry to a United States port. The worst horrors of the slave trade which it is the boast of the ambition of this empire to suppress at any cost have been reenacted inthe flight of British subjects from their native shores. In only ten of the vessels that arrived at Montreal in July, four from Cork and six from Liverpool, out of 4,427 passengers, 804 had died on the passage, and 847 were sick on their arrival; that is, 847 were visibly diseased, for the result proves that a far larger number had inthem the seeds of disease. "The Larch," says the Board of Health on August 12, "reported this morning from Sligo, sailed with 440 passengers, of whom 108 died on the passage, and 150 were sick. The Virginius sailed with 496 -- 158 died on the passage, 186 were sick, and the remainder landed feeble and tottering -- the captain, mates, and crew were all sick. The Black Hole of Calcutta was a mercy compared to the holds of these vessels. Yet simultaneously, as if in reproof of those on whom the blames of all this wretchedness must fall foreigners, Germans from Hamburgh and Bremen, are daily arriving, all health, robust and cheerful." This vast unmanageable tide of population thus thrown upon Montreal, like the fugitives from some bloody defeat, or devastated country, has been greatly augmented by the prudent, and, we must add, most necessary precautions adopted in time by the United States, where more stringest sanitary regulations, enforced by severer penalties, have been adopted to save the ports of the Union from those very horrors which a paternal Government has suffered to fall upon Montreal. Many of these ships have been obliged to alter their destination, even while at sea, for the St. Lawrence. At Montreal a large proportion of these outcasts have lingered from sheer inability to proceed. The inhabitants have of course been infected. From the offficial return of burials at Montreal, for the weeks ending August 7, it appears that in the city there died during that period 924 residents and 896 emigrants, making a totalof 1,730 deaths. Besides these, 1510 emigrants died there at the sheds, making a grand total of 3240 in the city of Montreal and its ex tempore Lazaretto; against only 488, including residents and emigrants, for the corresponding weeks last year. A still more horrible sequel is to come. The survivors have to wander forth and find homes. Who can say how many will perish on the way, or the masses of houseless, famished, and half-naked wretches that will be strewed on the unhospitable snow when a Canadian winter once sets in?

Of these awful occurences some account must be given. Historians and politicians will some day sift and weigh the conflicting narrations and documents of this lamentable year, and pronounce, with or without affectation, how much is due to the inclemency of heaven, and how much to the cruelty, heartlessness or improvidence of man. The boasted institutions and spirit of this empire are on trial. They are weighed inthe balance. Famine and pestilence are at the gates, and a conscience-stricken nation might almost fear to see the "writing on the wall." We are forced to confess that whether it be the fault of our own laws or our men, this new act in the terrible drama has not been met as humanity and common sense would enjoin. The result was quite within the scope of calculation and even of cure. For our own part, before one emigrant left our ports, and when thoughtless and selfish men were first beginning to talk of a great systematic plan of emigration, we called the attention of the Legislature to the dreadful scenes that would be witnessed on board the emigrant fleet, crowded with wretches already at death's door, predisposed to almost any malady, and certain victims to the first existing cause of disease. We subsequently exposed the wickedness of transporting our pauperism to shores where no provision was made for its reception, and to a climate where the necessities of life were at least as indispensable as our own.

The simple and infallible character of the precautions proper for the safe transport of such a multitude, will be seen from the letter written at our suggestion by the late lamented Dr. Combe, and unfortunately interrupted by his death. By the kindess of a friend our readers are permitted to hear "his voice from the grave," and it will, we trust, be heard where such warnings are certainly needed. But simple as precaution was, what has been done? In the first place, our usual regulations as to the proportions of passengers to tonnage are lax enough. Then, it appears that British vessels bound to Canada, owing to the recent repeal of a former enactment, need not, and do not, take out surgeons. Then, as a correspondent informs us, the inspectors appointed to see that emigrant ships chartered from British ports observed such regulations as there are, have generally failed in their duty. Into this part of the business we hope that Parliament will not omit to inquire. Further, notwithstanding the assurances given to the Legislature last session, it is quite clear that due preparation has not been made at the colony. As the Montreal Board of Health justly complains, there have been no adequate funds,or even competent authority, provided for the crisis; the estimate at Gross Isle has been ridiculously insufficient, nor have any measures whatever been adopted or though of for the transmission of the helpless and destitute crowd beyond Montreal, much less for their employment and settlement. Such neglect is an eternal scandal to the British name; nor do we see any way to escape the opprobrium of a national inhumanity, except by taking the earliest and most effectual means to rectify past errors, and prevent their recurrence.

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"The Affray at the Widow McCormack's House, on Boulagh Common,"
The Illustrated London News, 1849.

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Irish peasants staged several aborted uprisings in 1848, but famine and poverty had weakened the citizens too much for them to stand any chance of success. These uprisings were extensively covered in the London Illustrated News, however, as was the queen's visit to Ireland the following year.

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Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visit Ireland. 1849.

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"Dance of Peasantry on the Lawn at Carton" before Queen Victoria and Prince Albert during their visit to Ireland in 1849.
Illustrated London News.

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A young goatherd,
from The Illustrated London News, 1849

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"Herd Boy of the Purple Mountains" from the Illustrated London News, 1849.

[Fairlie]

Can you put images up on petition group ?

Lot of images already up on petition group

[Tricia]

Oh ok... Images are harrowing but hits home

[Fairlie]

Can you put images up on petition group ?

I have added all the one that are here