The Great Irish Famine page 2

Their "horrid deeds," says the Annual Register, "appeared to be instigated by a mere thirst for blood." It should be said in contrast that a painful and tender sympathy with the Irish sufferings pervaded every class of Society.

From the Queen on her throne to the convicts in the hulks, expenses were curtailed, and indeed privations endured, in order to swell the Irish subscriptions. The London season of 1846 was remarkable for the absence of gaiety and expensive entertainments. The vibration was felt through every nerve of the British Empire. But distant observers sometimes could not understand why the Irish did not keep quiet while they were starving.

There was a thirst among the Irish peasantry, though not necessarily a thirst for blood. It was a thirst for arms. In the midst of the most wretched want, disease and death, they could not and would not endure being shot down when making disturbances which to their thinking were rightful protests against injustice, or a seizure of food to which they believed they had as much right as the next man. Where the folk got the money to pay for arms is a mystery, for there were no stockings with savings. Perhaps by theft, or even by loan. But to such an extent did the barter for arms spring up that the gun trade at Birmingham experienced a great revival. Old store shops cleared out their entire stock. Auctioneers with carts laden with Birmingham arms attended the fairs and markets in Cavan and the adjoining counties. At Clonmell a huge stand of arms was disposed of in a few days. The peasants went about armed; took their pigs, when they had any, to market gun in hand; and the countryside echoed to volleys of musketry as they practised shooting. Government warnings were issued, and the reply was made that the people must protect their homes and property. It was sense in the mouths of storekeepers in the towns; but irony from the cadaverous, hunger-stricken waifs in the streets.

To bring home to the Government the urgency of relief a leading Cork merchant and magistrate, Mr. N. J. Cummins, addressed a letter to the Duke of Wellington which when published made a profound sensation, and helped to promote further efforts in aid. He described one townland which he visited, Skibbereen. Provided with as much bread as five men could carry, he found the wretched hamlet apparently deserted, and entered some of the hovels to discover the cause.

"In the first six," he wrote, "famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearance dead, were huddled in a corner on some filthy straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged horse-cloth, and their wretched legs hanging about, naked above the knees. I approached in horror, and found by a low moaning they were alive. They were in fever - four children, a woman, and what had once been a man. It is impossible to go through the details; suffice it to say that in a few minutes I was surrounded by at least two hundred of such phantoms, such frightful spectres as no words can describe. By far the greater number were delirious, either from famine or from fever. Their demoniac yells are still ringing In my ears, and their horrible images are fixed upon my brain.

"My heart sickens at the recital, but I must go on. In another case - decency would forbid what follows, but it must be told - my clothes were nearly torn off in my endeavours to escape from the throng of pestilence around, when my neck-cloth was seized from behind by a grip which compelled me to turn. I found myself grasped by a woman with an infant, just born, in her arms, and the remains of a filthy sack across her loins - the sole covering of herself and babe. The same morning the police opened a house on the adjoining lands which was observed shut for many days, and two frozen corpses were found lying upon the mud floor, half devoured by rats. A mother, herself in fever, was seen the same day to drag out the corpse of her child, a girl about twelve perfectly naked, and leave it half covered with stones. In another house, within five hundred yards of the cavalry station, the dispensary doctor found seven wretches lying, unable to move, under the same cloak. One had been dead many hours, but the others were unable to move either themselves or the corpse."

There were gloomy misgivings on all hands as to the winter of 1846-7. The ambitious attempts to give relief had not functioned very well. It was one thing to make alternative foods available at a reasonable price, the requisite funds being derived from private subscriptions plus Government donations. It was another to get the Irish poor to buy the food from Relief Committees and what not. Money wages were almost unknown, the labouring class having given their labour for rent, while living on their potatoes. It was early found necessary to provide the peasants with money with which to buy the new food. So a system of public works was instituted, the most obvious being roads. The expense of executing them was defrayed by advances of public money, half of which was a grant, and half a loan to be repaid by the barony. But the problem facing the authorities was much graver now. In the preceding eight months the failures of crops, though disastrous, had been partial. It was now realised that the failure of the autumn and winter crops would be complete. Three million people would have to be fed.

The relief works so far had not gone well. The terms offered being more advantageous than any which had been open to labourers for many years, a rush took place from all quarters. The wage was a shilling to eighteenpence a day, as against the ordinary rate at that time of eightpence or tenpence. There was a general fear that people would be deprived of what they called their share of the grant. So the relief works, instead of acting as a test of real distress, operated as a bounty, on applications for public works, to a class of persons who were at once charged with the administration of the relief, and were interested in the execution of the work. Consequently, though the applications up to August had amounted to £1,2 89,816, the sum actually expended was only £476,000. Other expenses were for loans, grants in aid, and extra staffs, but the actual relief by this time had only amounted in all to a little less than three-quarters of a million.

This was only to nibble at the problem. The relief was sadly inadequate. Else why the gibbering spectres in the townlands? Scarcity now extended over Western Europe, and famine threatened elsewhere. The entire stock of food for the United Kingdom was seen to be insufficient. An extraordinary advance in freights, which occurred simultaneously in the ports of America, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, increased the difficulty of obtaining sufficient foreign supplies. It was determined at the end of 1846 to stop the relief works, to stop the further sale of Indian corn, and to substitute for this machinery a system under which relief would be only administered in the shape of food by Committees, drawing funds from the Government, to be repaid by the localities afterwards. But unfortunately this measure could not be enacted at Westminster until February, 1847. It was a policy necessary for many reasons, one being that the extent to which the rural population were thrown for support on the Board of Works threatened a disastrous neglect of the ordinary tillage. In the meantime what was possible temporarily was done by the establishment of soup kitchens, and the distribution of rations of cooked food. This was the more urgent because private dealers in foodstuffs were paralysed by the Government throwing into the market food supplies of unknown extent. And in the emergency, during the last half of 1846, all the discontinued relief works were recommenced, and there was an orgy of spending, some of it reckless. The Government and its officers assumed an amazing set of duties, beyond human power, and were blamed for not carrying them out. The Board of Works ultimately became the centre of a colossal organisation, with 5,000 separate works to be reported on, and 12,000 subordinate officers to be superintended.

The strain on all classes from this awkward system of centralisation was fearful. Pressure had to be brought to bear on millions on such sensitive points as wages and food. The opposition to task work was general, and its enforcement became a trial of strength between the Government and the multitude. The officers of the Board were often subject to murderous attack, and sometimes the works had to be stopped when, cases of insubordination or outrage occurred. Meanwhile the number of persons employed on the works was rapidly on the increase. Yet owing to the pressure of events, the lack of good information, the popular clamour, and widespread jobbery, many of these works were of no practical use, while in the remote districts where the famine was at its worst, peasants were dying of hunger owing to faulty communication.

The mistakes were inevitable, writes Bryce, for the hand of every man was against the Government, into whose pocket all parties claimed an unlimited right of plunging. No attempt was made to carry out the construction of any large plan of permanent benefit to the country. The result was that while in some cases good results were obtained, in others enormous sums were wasted. "Roads were laid out that led from nowhere to nowhere; canals were dug into which no drop of water has ever flowed; piers were constructed which the Atlantic storms at once began to wash away. An enormous canal was, for instance, planned to connect Lough Mask and Lough Corrib, by piercing the narrow neck of land which divides those two great sheets of water. It was thereby intended to make a continuous waterway from the centre of Connaught to the sea at Galway - a splendid and useful scheme. But when the canal was completed, it was found to be utterly incapable of holding water, being made of porous limestone; and it remains a source of wonder and amusement to every traveller."

The men who carried out these fantastic schemes, as well as the more sensible work on drainage, roads and railway embankments, were ill fitted for such strenuous toil. An officer of the Board of Works observing their emaciated condition reported that, as an engineer, he was ashamed of allotting so little task work for a day's wage, while, as a man, he was ashamed of requiring so much. In some districts proof of attendance had to be considered sufficient to entitle the labourer to his wage. The exhausted state of the workmen was one main cause of the small quantity of work done compared with the money expended. The Irish peasant had been accustomed to remain at home, cowering over his turf fire, during the inclement season of the year; and exposure to the cold and rain on the roads without sufficient food or clothing greatly contributed to the prevailing sickness. In order to obviate this as far as possible a circular letter had to be sent out directing that, in case of snow or heavy rain, the labourers should merely attend roll call in the morning, and be entered on the pay list for half a day's pay. If afterwards it became fine, they were to come to work, which would entitle them to a further allowance.

During this winter the whole world was ransacked for supplies, and on the high seas many ships were speeding to Ireland. Cork harbour was established as the house of call for grain ships bound to Western Europe, and here corn was purchased to supply the Government depots established on the western coast of Ireland, and large stores of biscuit and salt meat. At Deptford, Portsmouth, Plymouth and Malta, powerful Admiralty mills were constantly grinding corn, thus leaving the mill power of Ireland to the private importers of grain there. Hand mills, on the principle of the old Irish quern, were made for distribution in the most distressed districts, while others constructed on an improved plan were got from France. Several ships of war were moored in convenient situations and used as store ships. The largest and most powerful steamers, reinforced when necessary by sailing vessels, were appropriated for conveying meal from the mills in England to the depots in Ireland. Every other available steamer, not excepting the Admiralty yacht, made the necessary transfers from one depot to another. Indian corn, the taste for which had now developed in Ireland, rose to a higher price than wheat, and the London and Liverpool markets were again and again swept by the enterprising operations of the Irish dealers.

In the third year, 1847, the potato disease appeared in different parts of the country, but the plants generally exerted fresh vigour and outgrew it. The blight was fading out, but not the conditions it had created. Normal return from the crops could not be got for some time, and years must pass before normal life could be resumed. In the spring the peasants were still suffering death, disease, and appalling hardship. The plunder of breadshops, shooting of horses, and breaking up of roads to prevent the removal of provisions, were frequent. At Limerick, Galway, and elsewhere, mobs interfered to prevent any foodstuffs leaving the towns, while the country folk sought to prevent them being carried in. The troops, as well as the constabulary, were much harassed by the escort duties incessantly devolving upon them. In the Great War, convoys of warships had to safeguard food vessels to the British Isles; in the Great Famine convoys of troops had to safeguard the food wagons proceeding from place to place. Without these, says Mr. W. P. O'Brien in his account, nothing in the shape of food could in fact have been sent anywhere. On the coast hungry peasants attacked the food ships. In the case of a vessel sailing from Liverpool to Westport with a cargo of Indian corn, three boats put out filled with armed labourers, successfully attacked her, and looted many bags of corn. So with other ships carrying bread or meal. In several cases ships with no food stores on board were attacked off the coasts, and when the peasants found no corn or meal they fell like famished wolves on the ship stores and biscuits and devoured them. So frequent were these incidents that the Government took to sending parties of soldiers on board food ships approaching the Irish coast, after which the starving men in boats who put off to them were shot down by marines.

While the relief works were continued, as an emergency measure, up to the spring of 1847, desperate efforts were made to revise the lists of the persons employed. But neither the Board of Works, nor Sir Randolph Routh, who was in charge of the Commisariat, could effectively test the accuracy of the urgent representations made to them. The attraction of money wages regularly paid from the public purse, called the "Queen's pay," led to a general abandonment of other industries, in order to participate in the scramble. Landlords competed with each other in getting the names of their tenants placed on the lists; farmers dismissed their labourers and sent them to the works; the clergy insisted on the claims of the respective members of their congregations; the fisheries were deserted. It was often difficult even to get a coat patched, or a pair of shoes mended. It was impossible to exact from such multitudes, mostly employed upon the roads, a degree of labour which would act as a test of destitution. Huddled together in masses, they contributed to each other's idleness, and there was habitual collusion between the labourers and the overseers. The prevailing disorder left many a loophole for criminal acts. Pay clerks were shot for the money they carried. Occasionally magistrates, bailiffs, or gangers were shot. Police protection was given wherever possible. Farmers, landlords, and moneylenders were shot if they distrained on food, or evicted tenants for not paying rent, and certainly they were asking for trouble in taking such action at so perilous a time. In Roscommon one owner thought to do well by chartering a vessel to take his tenants to America where they might have a better chance. But the news came back that many died of fever on the voyage, or on landing, and the would-be philanthropist was shot in revenge. At an inquest in Galway on a man who had died from want the jury returned a verdict of "wilful murder against Lord John Russell and Sir Randolph Routh."