Other Famine: The 1822 Crisis in County Leitrim

The Other

Famine

The Other

Famine

THE 1822 CRISIS

IN COUNTY LEITRIM

GERARD MAC ATASNEY

For the generations of Guckian families who have lived in

Annaghasna, Gowel and Mong.

First published in 2010

The History Press Ireland

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Dublin 2

Ireland

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This ebook edition first published in 2012

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© Gerard Mac Atasney, 2010

The right of Gerard Mac Atasney to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Tables

Introduction

Maps

1  Life in Post-Union Leitrim

2  Debating and Vacillating

3  ‘All the appearance of approaching famine’

4  The Central Committee

5  Recovery

6  ‘A merciless proprietorship’?

7  Recrimination and Explanation

Appendices

Endnotes

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to the following repositories for access to, and permission to quote from, the records in their possession: the Public Records Office, Belfast; the Church of Ireland College of Education, Rathfarnham; the National Archives and National Library, Dublin; the British Library, Guildhall Library and English National Archives, London; the Hampshire Records Office, England. To the staff of the Leitrim County Library in Ballinamore I offer my sincere thanks, especially to Mary Conefrey to whom nothing was too much trouble.

Many thanks to Sean Gill for his patience in drawing and re-drawing the maps in the text. I am indebted to Monsignor Raymond Murray and Prionnsíos Ó Duigneáin for reading drafts of the original text and their subsequent insightful comments, advice and encouragement.

Thanks are due to those friends and relatives who offered accommodation during various research trips, particularly my sister Mary Kellegher and her husband Eamonn Gowel and John McCormack of Chiswick, London.

As always, my gratitude for the understanding and patience shown by my parents, Maura and Peter, and my wife Daphne.

Of course, all efforts at research would be in vain without the support of a committed publisher. Thus, I am indebted to the staff of The History Press, especially Ronan Colgan and Maeve Convery for their faith in this project and their diligence in bringing it to fruition.

Finally, for the first time, I received financial support in the form of a grant to research the material in the book and I would like to thank the Leitrim Development Company Ltd and the Carrick-on-Shannon Heritage Group for their generosity. In particular I am indebted to the efforts of my great friend, John Bredin, a man with a passion for the understanding of the history of his native county.

TABLES

1. Goods distrained on the Bessborough estate, November 1805. (p.23)

2. Employment in Ballinamore, week beginning 13 July 1822. (p.91)

3. Distribution of food to labourers in Ballinamore, June 1822. (p.92)

4. Local public works in the parish of Fenagh. (p.94)

5. Distribution of grants by County Leitrim Central Committee, 15 July 1822. (p.111)

6. Number of distressed in County Leitrim, 22 July-5 August 1822. (p.121)

7. Relief expenditure in County Leitrim, July-August 1822. (p.122)

8. Number of distressed in County Leitrim, 12 August-2 September 1822. (p. 127)

9. Distribution of clothing in County Leitrim, 1823. (p. 153)

10. Rent payments for the townland of Gowel Beg, May 1823-May 1824. (p.178)

11. Sale of distrained goods in Drumsna, 25 May 1825. (p.179)

12. The number of distressed poor in County Leitrim who obtained relief weekly in each parish 23 May-12 September 1822. (p.187)

13. Committee members of Leitrim Bible Society, October 1823. (p.205)

INTRODUCTION

‘Leitrim is a county about which very little is to be found in the papers of the relief agencies’.¹

This comment appeared in Professor T.P. O’Neill’s ground-breaking study of the 1822 famine which was submitted as a Master’s Thesis to University College Dublin in 1965. The observation in relation to County Leitrim reveals the limited nature of that study and the fact that his work was largely based on a 346-page report published by the London Tavern Committee in 1823. As with similar reports, this contained much general information and the majority of references to local distress focussed on the large counties of Cork, Limerick, Clare, Galway and Mayo. O’Neill acknowledged the limits of his study when commenting:

The report of the London Tavern Committee contains correspondence from the distressed districts in all matters. These reports do not mention any disputes which arose among the committee members. The reports do not explain how the plans of relief were worked out, nor do they try to give a comprehensive picture of the situation in any place. Only specially selected letters are quoted and so as sources they are not as satisfactory as a collection of the complete correspondence.²

However, the papers from which this report was compiled constitute a huge correspondence and provide the potential for detailed studies of individual counties. Thus, while little mention is made of Leitrim in either the official reports of the London Tavern Committee or the Dublin Mansion House Committee, the hundreds of letters on which these reports are based offer a rich source for the historian.

The non-usage of such papers perhaps explains to a large degree why little has been written about this episode in Irish history. In the general study of the nineteenth century entitled A New History of Ireland volume V: Ireland under the union 1801-70, the 1822 famine warrants less than one page out of a total of 800. However, S.J. Connolly, writing in the same volume, acknowledges that the role of government in the crisis ‘awaits detailed evaluation’.³

The only monograph to focus on this period was Royle’s 1984 article on the 1822 famine on the Aran Islands. Nevertheless, at sixteen pages, it only offered a glimpse of the riches of this archive.⁴ In fact, when the London Tavern Committee papers have been used, it has been for articles or chapters in books examining Irish society in the years prior to the Great Famine of 1845-52. Thus, in O’Neill’s article in Galway History and Society entitled ‘Minor Famines and Relief in County Galway, 1819-1925’, the distress of 1822 contains fewer than four pages out of a total of twenty-five.⁵ The most recent usage of the London manuscript occurred in Patrick Hickey’s Famine in West Cork – The Mizen Peninsula Land and People, 1800-1852 Cork (2002). This represents the most detailed examination of the sources to date, but in a book totalling 342 pages, the section on the 1822 famine extends to sixteen pages and is firmly contextualised in the pre-Famine era.⁶

While this new book utilises a variety of standard sources such as newspapers, parliamentary reports, government outrage papers, etc., it also makes use of previously unused material such as unsorted estate papers in the National Library of Ireland. However, by far the most significant source, and the one on which the majority of the book is based, is the correspondence to the offices of the London Tavern Committee from various clergy and resident gentlemen in County Leitrim from May 1822 until the latter part of 1823. Unlike the general report quoted by O’Neill, analysis of these papers illustrates the detailed working of relief committees in the county, their relationship with the central committee based in Carrickon-Shannon and the tensions arising out of such. The sources also contain a lot of information on the reaction of local landlords to the crisis and the consequences of their response. Finally, correspondence to the London Tavern Committee reveals that religious conflict was never far away from any aspect of Irish society, even in the midst of one of the most severe crises of the early nineteenth century.

1

LIFE IN POST-UNION LEITRIM

On 7 September 1799, almost one year to the day after the Battle of Ballinamuck (8 September 1798), Myles Keon of Keonbrook, Carrick-on-Shannon, wrote to British Chief Secretary for Ireland Lord Castlereagh to inform him of the campaign in counties Leitrim and Roscommon in support of a legislative union between Ireland and Britain. Keon had successfully drawn up a declaration in favour of the move and had it rubberstamped by Dr John Cruise, the Catholic Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnois, together with his clergy. This had then been circulated by him to all parish priests in order that they, together with their principal parishioners, could sign it. Keon’s sense of achievement was evident:

The union, some time ago, had not a single advocate in this neighbourhood but myself and I have met with frequent and unpleasant opposition in arguing upon it, not from any Catholics; however, I hope soon to satisfy your Lordship that I have not been an unsuccessful Champion. Either in this County of Leitrim where I live or in the County of Roscommon I have acquired some little reputation and influence among my countrymen and both have been invariably and diligently employed through the whole of the late disorders and rebellion to recall my neighbours that were led astray to loyalty and to confirm those that did not offend in a peaceable and orderly demeanour.¹

In the 1770s, Keon had been at the forefront of the campaign to ease the Penal restrictions which had been imposed on Catholics since the late 1690s. As part of the first Relief Act in 1775, which restored some property rights to Catholics, Keon was the first Leitrim Catholic to take the Oath of Allegiance. In the 1790s he was a very active member of the Catholic Committee and fraternised with members of the United Irish Society before that organisation was forced underground and adopted a revolutionary outlook. He believed that Catholics in a union with Britain stood a far better chance of full emancipation than if they remained under a Protestant-only Dublin parliament.²

As well as informing Castlereagh of his efforts to gain support for the proposed measure, he revealed how he had lost a ‘loyal and valiant son’ in consequence of the fatigues he underwent as a volunteer in Captain Rowley’s Corps of Yeomanry before and after the Battle of Ballinamuck.³ By early January 1800, Keon was able to forward a petition with the names of a further 1,500 Catholics in Leitrim and Roscommon to Castlereagh. His total belief in the impending measure was again evident in his stated conviction that the union was ‘the most effectual remedy that can be applied to our national maladies’.⁴

Keon failed to identify these maladies but a contemporaneous survey of County Leitrim published in 1802, together with a general national survey by Edward Wakefield a few years later, certainly suggested that this area suffered from severe structural economic problems. Mc Parlan’s Statistical Survey of County Leitrim was one of a number of surveys which were produced in the early years of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately for the historians of Leitrim, this was not one of the best, and it contains many generalisations and some debateable conclusions. Indeed, Wakefield comments that, ‘Dr McParlan’s Surveys are found great fault with in Ireland; but he is the only author of a survey, Mr Tighe excepted, who has given a general result’.⁵ Despite its deficiencies, it offers us a glimpse of the condition of the county just as Keon was campaigning in support of the Act of Union.

McParlan established that the population of the county was 76,630. He achieved this figure by taking the returns of parochial lists and multiplying each by five (the average family unit).⁶ The largest landowners in the county were absentees and it was noted that only three or four substantial landlords lived within its boundaries.⁷ Without these natural leaders of society, crucial aspects which could have improved the status of many within the county were absent. For example, there were no farming or agricultural societies to encourage dissemination of new crop methods, breeds of animals, etc. According to Wakefield, this illustrated the extent to which Ireland lagged behind other nations:

The harness of the horses was very rude and bespoke the lowest degree of civilization; it was merely a hay or straw rope or band. The people were busily employed in the hay-harvest tossing hay about with their hands; and had no idea that this operation could be better performed with a fork.⁸

Similarly, McParlan commented how, ‘no encouragement, of a public or private nature, that I could learn, has been given to any manufacture of this county’. It was noted that the weaving trade was carried on to a considerable extent, while ‘coarse potteries’ were ‘very numerous’ around the villages of Leitrim and Dromahair. The roads system, apart from that in proximity to landlords’ residences, was primitive, and in the parishes of Cloone, Mohill, Inishmagrath and Killargue the roads were ‘shamefully broken and bad’.⁹

Major differences of opinion emerge between surveyors in matters of food and clothing. McParlan claimed that for a huge proportion of the population, food consisted of potatoes and oaten bread, with butter and eggs, adding that the people enjoyed ‘great feastings of pork, beef and mutton at Christmas and Easter’.¹⁰ It is highly unlikely that those enjoying such ‘feastings’ were the labouring population – the vast majority – as their daily wage was only from 4d to 6d per day, often paid by means of the rent of a small parcel of land (conacre). The latter point is given increased force by Wakefield, who commented that meat formed ‘no part of the food of these people’, with livestock being reared solely for sale ‘to the northerns’.¹¹ Indeed, in a general comment, Wakefield remarked that, ‘the poor throughout Connacht live in a state of great wretchedness; oatmeal is a luxury which they seldom taste’.¹² In a more specific reference to Leitrim he continued:

The country around the Arigna iron works is inhabited by a people who, according to every appearance, are in a most wretched condition. They are badly clothed and reside in dirty mud cabins, continually filled with smoke. They have as little morality as taste for personal neatness or domestic convenience.¹³

The question of morality seems to have arisen as a result of a conversation which Wakefield had with the resident agent of the iron works, a Mr Williams, who described the local people as ‘the greatest thieves in the world – quarrelsome and addicted to fighting at patterns or fairs by families or clans’.¹⁴ Williams asserted that Arigna was particularly susceptible to trouble, as it was here that the counties of Leitrim, Cavan and Sligo intersected, with crowds from each assembling to fight in the area.¹⁵

With respect to clothing, McParlan described this as ‘remarkably neat, clean and strong’, with a coat of frieze, breeches of corduroy and a ‘fancy waistcoat’ being the standard attire.¹⁶ However, Wakefield noted that clothing for men consisted of frieze while women wore linsey ‘both manufactured by themselves and a dyed dark snuff colour with oak sawdust, which has a most gloomy appearance’.¹⁷

While wages remained at a constant rate of 4d-6d per day, food prices tended to fluctuate wildly. Thus, while McParlan noted that a hundredweight of potatoes and a similar quantity of oaten meal usually sold for one to two shillings and eight shillings respectively, these prices had increased three and fourfold at the time of his survey.¹⁸

In addition, as McParlan pointed out, the lack of willingness by landlords to give tenants lengthy leases contributed to the impoverishment of the population:

Short and precarious leases are no doubt a material obstacle to improvement of land; but as to the idea of long leases, which might encourage the tenant to improve, it need not be entertained. Individual landlords will pursue their old habits and interests, so much so, that from that source I am certain nothing can be expected, unless the legislature graciously interfered and enacted leases either for ever, or very long terms, to be made to maintain tenants.¹⁹

McParlan’s view was reflected in the remarks of Thomas Bond, agent to the King estate at Fenagh. In total, John King owned ten townlands in the parish of Fenagh – Aughaboneil, Annaghaderg, Corrabarrack, Corragoly, Cornagun, Cornavad, Drumcollop, Garadice and Knockroosk – and Breandrum in the parish of Mohill. On 12 April 1808, Bond informed King:

The tenants at present think you will not dispossess them and have not done any good to the lands nor for themselves not having any certainty of a lease. In fact the estate is like a wilderness and you have now an opportunity of clearing it of them and setting the lands for their full value. You mentioned in your letter to me you would make leases for twenty-one years, if you sell only for that term your lands will not be better at the expiration of the leases that they were twenty years ago for the lands being of a bad quality no person will lay out any money or labour in improving