The Great Irish Famine page 3

Famine now, in 1847, had its dread camp follower, fever. The land was devastated with disease, and this aftermath was to haunt Ireland in the succeeding years. An Act was passed empowering the Relief Committees to attend to the proper burial of the dead, to provide temporary hospitals, to clear away nuisances, and to ventilate and cleanse cabins. The necessary funds were advanced by the Government in the same manner as the advances for providing food. These sanitary arrangements were extensively acted upon. By the middle of August, 326 hospitals and dispensaries had been authorised, with accommodation for over 23,000 patients, with medical officers, nurses, and ward-maids. The additional expense incurred under this Act was made a free grant to the unions, for the state of their finances was now a source of deep anxiety. Rates were not collected sufficient to defray the current expenses of workhouses, and some of the Guardians threatened to turn the inmates into the streets if assistance was not given from the public purse. Consequently some loans were made for medical inspection and superintendence in localities where much sickness prevailed, and for the erection of fever wards. The popular feeling was shown at Rathkeale, where in October a mob of three thousand attacked the workhouse, and the Guardians only escaped with difficulty when military and police arrived. Damage was done to the building; the dragoons were stoned; and the people dispersed with bayonets. Another attack, on the workhouse at Tipperary, had also to be repulsed.

Early in 1847 it was plain that the Relief Works system had broken down, and that the supply of rations to the people was succeeding, even though partially applied. The time was ripe for a change over to the new policy. By January the average number employed on works was 570,000; in March it was swollen to the enormous number of 734,000, representing with the families of the men approximately three million souls. To reverse this process, on March 20, twenty per cent, of the labourers were struck off the lists, and successive reductions effected thereafter proportioned to the progress made with the direct supply of meals. By the first week in June the labourers on the works were reduced to 101,000, and by the last week to 28,000. Great efforts were made to leave roads and other vital works in a safe and passable state as far as they had gone, their future being left to the localities. The Relief Works Act lapsed in the middle of August.

To complete the new system of distributing food, an Act was passed placing it more decisively on the Poor Law. In each electoral division a Committee was set up of the magistrates, one clergyman of each persuasion, the Poor Law Guardian, and the three highest ratepayers. This was supplemented by a Finance committee, and Inspecting Officers. The expense was defrayed by payments out of the rates, reinforced by loans, and free grants were also made to those unions with the largest number of destitute. Where private subscriptions were given, donations were made to an equal amount. The personal attendance of all parties requiring food relief was insisted on, with the exception of the sick, impotent, and children under nine; and this relief was directed to be given only in the shape of cooked food declared by the medical authorities to be sufficient to maintain health and strength. The cooked food test was found efficacious in preventing abuse, though its enforcement in some parts cost a severe struggle. Undressed meal might be converted into cash by those who did not require it as food; and even the very poor often disposed of it for tea, tobacco or spirits. The "stirabout," which becomes sour by keeping, had no value in the market, so persons did not apply for it who did not want to eat it. This stirabout was made of Indian meal and rice steamed, and was sufficiently solid to be carried away. The pound ration thus prepared swelled by the absorption of water to three or four pounds. An official ration consisted of one pound of biscuit, meal, or flour; or one quart of soup thickened with meal, with a quarter ration of bread, biscuit, or meal.

By July, 1847, under this system over three million persons received separate rations, of whom 2,265,534 were adults, and 755,178 were children. This multitude was gradually and peaceably thrown on its own resources at the season of harvest, when new supplies of food became available, and the demand for labour was higher. The necessary labour was returned to agriculture, the downward progress of the country was arrested, and new strength and spirit revived for her regeneration. A ration of cooked food proved less attractive than full money wages for labour, and so the more helpless portion of the community was not crowded out. The famine was stayed. The enterprise was the most significant attempt ever made to grapple with famine over a whole country. And up to that time it certainly was without a parallel to feed over three million persons every day in the neighbourhood of their own homes by special administrative methods.

But though this beneficent work was a source of deep satisfaction, and the committees and officers concerned with it passed hundreds of resolutions congratulating the Government, Ireland inevitably remained for years a land stricken with sorrow and disease. Dark revolt against fate was in the heart of the people, and throughout 1847 the roads to the seaports were thronged with families hastening to escape their peril, thus beginning that stream of emigration which was destined permanently to reduce the Irish population by several millions. Even in this flight their luck was dead out. Pestilence broke out with virulence on board the emigrant ships, which were shockingly ill suited to their task. There was a frightful mortality on board, and also on landing, necessitating almost as many remedial measures as the famine itself.

A Mr. de Vere took his passage in the steerage of an emigrant ship, and his description of the conditions was adopted as a public document by the Colonial Office. Hundreds of poor people - men, women and children of all ages, from the drivelling idiot of ninety to the babe just born - were huddled together in a ship without light, without air, wallowing in filth, breathing a fetid atmosphere, sick in body, dispirited in heart. The fevered patients lay between the sound, in sleeping places so narrow as almost to deny them the power of indulging by a change of position the natural restlessness of the disease; by their agonised ravings disturbing those around, and predisposing them to imbibe the contagion. The emigrants lived without medicine, and almost without food, except as administered by the hand of casual charity. They died without the voice of spiritual consolation, and were buried in the deep without the rites of the Church. "The food," this traveller stated, "is generally ill-selected, and seldom sufficiently cooked.... The supply of water, hardly enough for cooking and drinking, does not allow washing. In many ships, the filthy beds, teeming with all abominations, are never required to be brought on deck and aired. The narrow space between the sleeping berths and the piles of boxes is never washed or scraped, but breathes up a damp and foetid stench, until the day before arrival at quarantine, when all hands are required to scrub up and put on a fair face for the Government Inspector and the Doctor. No moral restraint is attempted; the voice of prayer is never heard; and drunkenness, with its consequent train of ruffianly debasement, is not discouraged, because it is profitable to the captain, who traffics in the grog." Such were the horrors of escape, recalling those of the middle passage.

And such is the history of "the black forty-seven."