Droch Shaol - The Irish Holocaust
Evicted and dispossessed
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There were days in that western county when I came back from
some scene of eviction so maddened by the sights of hunger and
misery I had seen in the day's work that I felt disposed to take
the gun from behind my door and shoot the first landlord I met.
Captain Arthur Kennedy, a Poor Law inspector in Kilrush, County
Clare
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The widespread policy of forceful, or even subdued, evictions
carried out by the landlords of Ireland completed the destruction
of the potato economies in the south and west of Ireland and
precipitated the social and agricultural upheaval brought on by
the Irish Holocaust.
In pre-Famine Ireland the spectre of eviction was always on the
horizon for smallholders, cottiers and landless labourers. The
majority of these were tenants-at-will or rented their property
on a year-to-year basis. Most landlords were happy enough with
this situation, and allowed sub-letting and sub-division once it
enhanced their income.
When the Famine struck, rents went unpaid and landlords faced
extra costs due to the Poor Law rates system and so widescale
evictions began.
As each landlord was responsible for paying the rates of every
tenant who paid less than £4 in yearly rent, those whose land was
crowded with poor tenants were faced with huge bills. They
couldn't collect rent, let alone rates, from the wretches on
their estates. The only way they saw to collect enough money was
to clear the poor from their small plots, and to relet the land
in bigger lots, to people with more money.
In doing so the landlords were acting in accordance with the
advice tendered by the British government and economists in the
decades before the Famine. But while reform was necessary in the
long term, a process of mass eviction in a period of famine and
widespread destitution was, by any standards, inhumane.
It nevertheless had the full support of the law and, by default,
of the Liberal government and, indeed, the parliament of the day.
The government took no action to stop, or regulate evictions, nor
to care for the dispossessed, other than to direct them to the
workhouses, which in many cases were already dangerously
overcrowded.
They, in fact, supported the likes of the Earl of Lucan who
`owned' over 60,000 acres and once said that ``he would not breed
paupers to pay priests''. He removed over 2,000 tenants in the
parish of Ballinrobe alone. In County Mayo over ten per cent of
all evictions in Ireland took place, whereas in County Clare over
1,000 evictions were carried out in a five month period in
1847-'48. The Marquis of Sligo claimed he was selective, only
getting rid of the idle and dishonest - over a quarter of his
tenants.
The only intervention from the government was to lend military
and police support for evictions or to enact legislation which
would make it easier for landlords to sell `their' estates onto
new landlords. The new owners, hellbent on getting a return on
their investments, continued and accelerated the policy of
evictions/clearances.
The excuses for such an oppressive move against an already
downtrodden people was non-payment of rents, expired leases
and/or non-renewal of leases. `Unofficial' evictions also
occurred where the landlords induced tenants to vacate their
holdings and even got them to pull down their houses. Bribes of
money, assisted passage to the US and promises of entry to the
workhouse accompanied such evictions.
It is unknown how many were evicted before records began to be
kept in 1848, but the next five years saw 49,000 official
evictions. Evictions continued well after the Famine was over as
estate clearances continued.
The attitude of individual landlords to eviction varied. A number
believed that the new system of taxation combined with the large
rent arrears had given them little choice but to clear their
estates. A small number of landlords, including the Edgeworths in
County Longford and Henry Moore in Galway, refused to evict, even
though their own incomes were much diminished.
A minority combined a policy of eviction with emigration,
although the conditions of the latter varied considerably. Lord
Lansdowne in County Kerry financed a programme of emigration
which his agent calculated was a cheaper alternative to tenants
becoming a burden on the local poor rates.
A large number of the landed elite and their agents viewed the
Famine as an opportunity to clear their estates without fear of
resistance. They saw it as an opportunity to impose order and
discipline on their estate management. Major Mahon of Strokestown
in County Roscommon, cleared his estates with the intention of
replacing his Catholic tenants with Protestants, preferably from
Scotland.
The way in which evictions were carried out was often ruthless
and added to the pain of displacement and homelessness. James
Hack Tuke, an English Quaker, who observed a number of official
evictions, was shocked by what he saw and described the process
in detail in a series of letters. In Erris, in a remote part of
Connaught, for example, 140 families were evicted. They were,
Tuke said, 50 miles from the nearest workhouse. A high military
presence of 50 armed troops and 40 policemen was on hand. After
the notice to quit was read, Tuke described what occurred:
``The policemen are commanded to do their duty. Reluctantly they
proceed, armed with bayonet and muskets, to throw out the
miserable furniture... But the tenants make some show of
resistance - for these hovels have been built by themselves or
their forefathers who have resided in them for generations past -
seem inclined to dispute with the bayonets of the police, for
they know truly that, when their hovels are demolished, the
nearest ditch must be their dwelling, and that thus exposed,
death could not fail to be the lot of their wives and little
ones.''
Tuke also recorded how, at a dinner party that night, the
landlord ``boasted that it was the first time that he had seen his
estate or visited his tenants''.
A number of those evicted attempted to create shelter in dug-out
holes or build refuges from the remains of their destroyed
cabins. These temporary dwellings, known as `scalps' or
`scalpeens', were often destroyed. Many families were reported to
have died by the roadside.
In Birr, County Offaly, a man called Denis Duffy was evicted,
although he was ill.
``Duffy was brought out and laid under a shed, covered with turf,
which was once used as a pig cabin, and his house thrown down.
The landlord, not deeming the possession to be complete while the
pig cabin remained entire, ordered the roof to be removed, and
poor Duffy, having no friend to shelter him, remained under the
open air for two days and two nights, until death put an end to
his sufferings.''
The manner in which evictions were carried out caused an outcry,
even in the English parliament, yet nothing was done but to rush
through a Crime and Outrage Bill in 1847. The concern here was
not the welfare of the dispossessed but their tormentors. With an
increase in attacks on landlords and a fear of a popular uprising
the bill and the additional 15,000 troops sent to Ireland was to
quell the situation. The prime minister though was not altogether
sympathetic to the `plight' of the landlords, saying: ``It is
quite true that landlords in England would not like to be shot
like hares and partridges... but neither does any landlord in
England turn out 50 persons at one go and burn their houses over
their heads, giving them no provision for the future.''
The Young Ireland leader John Mitchel put it more forcefully in
The Last Conquest of Ireland:
``Sometimes an ejecting landlord or agent was shot by desperate
houseless men. What wonder? There were not half enough of them
shot.''
By Aengus O Snodaigh