As in so many less developed countries even today, the spectre of famine[1] haunted Ireland many times in its history.
The Famine of 1740
Although it is less widely known than that of the 1840s, the famine of 1740-41 killed a higher proportion of the Irish population; estimates vary from a grim 13% to an horrific 20%. The winter of 1740-41, especially the seven-week period known as The Great Frost, was the coldest on record and destroyed potatoes which had been earthed up in clamps to overwinter. Poor weather in the following summers exacerbated the situation.
However, in the 1740s, potatoes were not yet so important to the Irish diet as they were to become; oats provided most of the calories, carbohydrates and nutrition required by people and horses alike. The Newry canal quickly proved its worth in an unexpected way just a few years after it opened; during the spring and summer months of 1745, McCutcheon (…..) states that grain worth over £150,000 (then a huge sum) was carried north along the canal for famine relief.
The Great Famine (1845-1852)
Famine returned almost exactly 100 years later. The Great Famine[2] (an Gorta Mór, the Great Hunger) is generally deemed to have lasted from 1845 to 1852. Every area of Ireland was affected when the potato crop, having by then supplanted oats as the main source of carbohydrates and calories for the Irish labouring classes, was infected by potato blight, Phytophthora infestans, and started to rot in the fields.
We saw earlier from William Greig’s report that many large estate tenants regarded farming as a secondary activity. Their farm cottage provided somewhere to carry out their main activity of linen weaving. The local effects of the famine were magnified as the linen industry was going through one of its periodic slumps, so the income of most working families dropped severely. At the same time, the price of food rose steeply due to shortages. Disaster.
On 7th November 1845, under the heading “The Potato Disease”, the Mansion House Committee in Dublin wrote to Sir Robert Peel, UK Prime Minister, imploring him to believe that a severe famine was about to happen in Ireland, and urging him to take measures to help avert it.
Poyntzpass – First Steps
The Newry Telegraph reported a meeting chaired by Col Close, held in Poyntzpass on the same day, to discuss:
“…what might appear best to be done under the present alarm as to the disease in the potatoes” and “…receiving and diffusing the best and latest information for economising food from the diseased potatoes and, if possible, preserving what of them at present seems sound from contagion or decay.”
One method recommended by William Blacker was to boil diseased potatoes to a pulp, with several changes of water, and then recover and dry the starch.
“It may be made into bread with the addition of meal of any kind, or with cabbage will make excellent colcannon”.
Desperate times!
On 21st March 1846 the Newry Telegraph reported on ‘Abstracts of the most serious representations made by several Medical Superintendents’ in a report which Queen Victoria had requested. It includes:
“Poyntzpass, Wm. Moorhead MD – Fever and influenza have increased in the proportion of 4 to 1 within the last two months; but not entirely attributable to insufficiency and unsoundness of food.”
The report for Armagh noted:
“Diarrhoea…produced from the constant use of diseased potatoes”.
Dr Wade of Belturbet reported:
“Dyspepsia, diseases of the alimentary canal, dysentery and diarrhoea are caused by unsound food. Cottiers[3] are without even tainted potatoes for food. Many unemployed poor of district are in a starving condition”.
Relief committees sprang up throughout Co Armagh in the autumn of 1846. Poyntzpass, Forkhill and Tandragee were the first three, based on their Petty Sessions Districts, and received official approval from the Central Relief Commissioners on 20th October.
1846 was not the worst year of the famine – that was still 12 months away.
In February 1847, William Fordyce, travelling through Ulster, wrote a letter to the Rev Thomas James at Moy, later published in The Patriot:
“In passing from Newry to Portadown, we had a considerable delay at Poyntz Pass, the horse that drew the car on which we were travelling, having broken down on the road. And here we could observe, that the horses in this country seem to suffer from the famine almost as much as the men. We have been obliged, on some occasions, to walk the greater part of the way, in mercy to the poor starved beast which was in the shafts. Looking for a horse here, we made our usual inquiries.
Poyntz Pass is on the estate of Col Close, who, with his lady, does much good among the poor. They are highly spoken of. They have established a soup-kitchen, and are about to turn a large yarn factory on their estate at Acton into a hospital, for patients in typhus fever, which prevails very much in the neighbourhood. We have been informed by various persons, that the worst feature of this disease is that it requires a great reduction of the system, and the people are already brought so low by insufficient and bad feeding, that it is impossible to reduce them further, without destroying life. The disease, therefore, burns slowly, till it consumes whatever strength remains, and death almost inevitably ensues.”
If things weren’t bad enough already, on 29th May 1847 a huge hour-long hail-storm occurred over Poyntzpass and caused massive crop damage at the height of the famine. The Northern Whig reported
“The hail is said to be 18 inches deep in most places, and up to 4ft deep in hollows!”
People were so dependent on potatoes for their most basic nutrition that despite the failures, it was an absolute necessity to plant again the following years. Not to replant guaranteed starvation and death. There was no alternative. In Co Armagh, from 1845 to 1847, the potato acreage dropped from 47,563 to 9,652[4] – a fall of almost 80% in two years! In Co Down, things were even worse; the acreage under potatoes dropped by over 84%!
During the famine, Richard Robinson of Lisburn widely advertised his “Improved Portable Steaming Apparatus” for use by Relief Committees and stated that (among others) one had been acquired by the Poyntzpass Famine Relief Committee.
The Newspapers Lose Interest In The famine!
While there was much in the newspapers about the potato blight and the emerging famine in late 1845, it is striking that coverage soon decreased instead of increasing, to the point where is was minimal! Reports of this national disaster almost fade from the newspapers. In his book on William Dargan, Fergus Mulligan scathingly observes:
“…the Irish railway Gazette, a useful recorder of railway developments, adopted an ostrich-like approach, saying in September 1845 that reports of the potato blight and famine warnings were magnified to a much greater extent than warranted. Indeed, the almost total absence of coverage of the Famine in newspapers like Saunders News-Letter during the years 1845-8 suggested it was unworthy of a news report. Such papers gave considerably more coverage to the trivial pursuits of the royal household than the mortality rate among the inmates of the…workhouse.”
Indeed, some newspapers even denounced the famine, and its attendant diseases, as ‘fake news’. On 20th March 1846, the Tyrone Constitution claimed that Sir Robert Peel was just ‘talking up’ both, to advance his own political career. It also accused the report to Queen Victoria of being one-sided, and of only including submissions from dispensary doctors in areas when the news of increased disease was particularly bad and claimed that fever was generally “the result of the filthy and improvident nature of the people.”!
About the same time, William Blacker, optimistic that the failure of the 1845 potato crop was a temporary blip, was busy ordering large quantities of seed potatoes from Inverness for his tenants. However, with the panic about both real and imagined shortages, the price of basic foodstuffs had risen, not least as many merchants were stockpiling grain in the hope of even higher prices later in the year. So Blacker had also purchased a large quantity of oats and was advocating setting up a stockpile of Indian corn meal (maize) at Dungannon, to force the price down.
By 12th July, seemingly optimistic, he advertised 40 tons of oatmeal for sale, only to withdraw it just 10 days later as the first signs of blight appeared on the 1846 potato crop, commenting that it would be better to sell it locally in Markethill.
Famine Relief Committees
Once the extent and potential impact of the failure of the potato crop became apparent, local Famine Relief Committees were quickly set up.
The Poyntzpass committee was convened at the end of the 7th November meeting. It included familiar figures such as Alexander Kinmonth, John Bennet, Peter Quinn and Crozier Christy as well as Dr Moorcroft, the Reverends Darby, Gamble, Elwood and Priestley, and Messrs Moody, Madden, Porter, Milne and Allen. Naturally, Col Close was chairman. The committee was to meet weekly.
Later in November 1846, Col Close wrote to the Earl of Gosford, County Lieutenant, advising him that famine relief committees had been formed for Poyntzpass and Tandragee. William Blacker of Gosford chaired the committee for Markethill, where he lived.
Blacker’s copy-out letter book shows that he was quick to use his contacts and buying power to secure and import potatoes and other foodstuffs, such as yellow meal (maize), from other parts of the British Isles, for the tenants of the multiple estates which he managed.
Many thousands of the near-starving flocked to William Dargan’s railway construction sites, but in vain. He was already employing tens of thousands of men, and, despite his undoubted sympathy for them, he often had to disperse these wretched people, so as not to hold up construction. He needed strong, fit men capable of hard physical labour. It was a brutal but necessary calculus.
Famine Relief Schemes
Many relief schemes were created across Ireland, to pay some of the impoverished population for work that created something of lasting value, instead of just giving handouts.
Drumbanagher Wall
By sometime in 1846, construction began for one of these schemes – building the boundary wall[5] around the Drumbanagher estate. It was 3.5 miles long and enclosed an area of about 2/3 sq. mile and one of countless ‘famine walls’ built throughout Ireland. About the same time, a similar but less extensive wall was constructed at Union Lodge, Loughadian. The scale of these wall-building efforts can be judged from an almost throw-away one-sentence news item in the Northern Whig of 12th December 1846 – “There are at present 900 men employed by Col Close in his demesne at Drumbanagher.”
However, a report in the Newry Telegraph in March 1834, a decade earlier, about a D&AFS meeting mentions “…the corner of Col Close’s demesne wall” so perhaps some part of it was already in place.
National Schemes
One of the most innovative schemes was for landowners to pay their tenants in cash for making improvements to their own holdings – repairing ditches, improving drainage, planting hedges etc. Government funds were made available, from which landowners could reclaim some of their outlay.
Impractical Bureaucrats
As a highly successful Land Agent, and agricultural reformer, William Blacker of Gosford expressed extreme exasperation about the bureaucracy and strict rules surrounding the scheme – the need to draw up and submit detailed plans, including survey drawings, for each individual proposed improvement, get approval in advance, and to have it inspected afterwards to ensure that the work done complied with plans as submitted and approved. Writing to the Castle Administration …..(date)……, about Gosford tenants, Blacker says:
“I am informed…that before any grant under the Land Improvement Act can be sanctioned by you everything must be complied with according to the letter of the Act, and that a report stating the present and improved value of the fields to be drained with a plan estimate and specification must accompany the application and further that the fields intended to be drained should be marked upon the ordnance survey. If such requirements are insisted on, I apprehend the present Act will be as great a failure as its predecessor the Million Act[6] as far as the North of Ireland is concerned…
”…the ordnance survey of the County Armagh has not been laid down in fields and the scale is so minute that it will be exceedingly difficult so accurately to specify each particular field…there is the further objection that if this even was accomplished the record so made would not be of any certain value as the proposed drainage there stated might never be carried into effect by the tenant.
“…the number of his Lordship’s tenants in the county of Armagh are somewhere about 1,100 each of whom would have the privilege of draining one or two fields, besides which in his estate in county of Cavan there are 400 to 500 more. You must therefore be aware gentlemen that to insist upon such a condition as this if the Bill is to be a practical measure and generally acted on, is at once to put a veto upon the whole operation of the Act, for the surveyors could not be found to comply with the demand in any reasonable time and the expense and delay in the first instance and again in the verification survey to be made by your officers will naturally deter most people from embarking in any improvement…
“…to make detailed plans estimates and specifications for 2,000 or 3,000 distinct fields would seem to be an unnecessary and unreasonable requirement inasmuch as the drains are universally made up and down the slope at different depths and distances apart, according to the nature of the soil when opened up, until which is done neither depth distance or expense of making the drains can be accurately ascertained…’
“All that government can claim interference in is to see that there is actual work done for the money and that it is laid out for the object stated in doing which there can be no difficulty as the drains will speak for themselves and any competent person can easily judge whether they should cost the sum charged for them.
“I believe I was the first person who ever proposed that government should advance money to individuals for the purpose of thorough drainage…I venture to propose that the Board of Works should…only require…the names of the townlands in which the proposed drainage was intended.”
In other words, it was a totally impractical scheme, dreamed up by isolated bureaucrats with no practical experience of what would be required to make it work – something we still see all too often today.
In another letter, to Lord Gosford, Blacker discusses the feasibility and cost of setting up a ‘tile works’; presumably this was to make clay drainage pipes or rough tiles to create covered drains in fields, not domestic tiles. Improving field drainage was one of Blacker’s obsessions.
Sycophancy
Many of the gentry took the lead in organising famine relief, and often donated generously, but some of the public reporting of their actions was fawning and sycophantic. In January 1847 the Newry Reporter asserted:
BENEVOLENT LANDLORDISM. __ In a year of such unparalleled distress as this, the example of the good and benevolent cannot be left in the shade, however congenial that may be to the taste of genuine and unaffected charity. For some years we have been observers of the kindness and munificence of one of our best resident landlords and his lady – we speak of Colonel and Mrs Close, of Drumbanagher Castle.
The comparative freedom from want which prevailed in former years afforded to these humane and estimable persons the sweet luxury of doing good, in silence, and without ostentation; and therefore it was not until now that the attention of the public has been attracted by the daily relief which is being supplied at Drumbanagher Castle, to all requiring food or raiment; Mrs Close, with an active and untiring energy, so characteristic of her, examining minutely into the several cases of destitution, and personally superintending the kind and measure of the relief afforded. Such sympathy … secures in return from the poor and humble a cheerful resignation to the will of Providence, and an uncompromising submission to His visitation.
“Cheerfully” resigned to poverty, starvation, their children dying, and to the will of Providence? Unlikely.
In September 1858, the Newry Journal, reporting on the state of the harvest on the Drumbanagher Estate, reported that, as well as heavy wheat, barley and flax crops “The potato crop is a fair one, with about one third diseased, but are still for use with pigs…”
The Commercial Crisis of 1847
This major financial and banking crisis that coincided with the worst year of the famine. It was triggered by a combination of economic shocks and agricultural failure:
There was a major harvest failure in England in 1846, as well as in Ireland, which led to soaring food prices and trade deficits. This caused a sharp depletion of the Bank of England’s gold reserves. To protect them, the Bank raised interest rates, which severely restricted commercial credit. This led to widespread business failures and a collapse in commerce during late 1847.
The British government under Lord John Russell was torn between strict monetary policies (such as requiring banknotes to be backed by gold) and the need to provide more financial relief and stimulus to the struggling economy and famine victims.
They ultimately limited relief spending, influenced by the prevailing laissez-faire economic ideology, and so worsened the suffering in Ireland by reducing government relief efforts when they were needed most.
As usual, William Blacker of Gosford had much to say on the subject but the committee investigating the crisis rebuffed him – so he published his observations in the snappily titled “Statement of Evidence which Would Have Been Given to the Committee of the House of Commons on Commercial Distress by William Blacker, Had Not a Majority of the Committee Refused to Admit of His Being Examined”
Phew!
[1] See “Loughbrickland Famine Correspondence”, John J Sands, BIF Vol 1, 1987
“Pre-Famine Poverty in Aghaderg”, by John J Sands, BIF Vol 3, 1989
“The Famine and The Whyte Estate, Loughbrickland“, David Griffin, BIF Vol 16, 2021
[2] McAtasney – there were also famines in 1799, 1800, 1817 and 1822
[3] Tenant farmers who lived in small cottages or huts on the land they rented from larger landowners. They typically worked very small plots, often less than five acres, and paid their rent in cash or kind to their landlords.
[4] “Black ’47 and Beyond”, Cormac O’Greada????
[5] It is possible that some parts of the wall were built earlier; the OSMI (1830s) says of Demoan townland “… a part of which is walled into Drumbanagher demesne.” The memoirs also say of Skigatallagh townland “There are several small quarries opened by Colonel Close to build walls around his demesne.”
[6] The Drainage Act of 1846, which allocated £1 million famine relief projects. The British government had determined that paying workers for improvement projects in cash was preferable to handouts, and that these projects should almost exclusively consist of surface drains. Sub-surface drains were not funded – possibly because of the difficulty in detecting fraudulent claims by inspecting them. Its provisions were extended by another Drainage Act in 1846.