“Giving a Helping Hand”: International Charity during the Forgotten Famine of 1879–81 Gerard Moran (bio) Throughout the nineteenth century Ireland endured a reported twenty-seven national, regional, and local famines, subsistence crises, and food shortages which have left a defining imprint on Irish society.1 While much has been written on the major crises of 1831–33, 1861–63, 1879–82, and in particular An Gorta Mór of 1845–52, our knowledge of the events of 1821–23, 1867, 1885–86, and others is largely superficial, and in some instances the crisis does not even merit a footnote in the historiography of the period. The role of private relief agencies has also been neglected, with the exception of the activities of the Society of Friends during the Great Famine and, as Christine Kinealy has highlighted, the role of individuals and the international community between 1845 and 1850.2 The international community’s contribution in subsequent crises was largely the result of the experiences from An Gorta Mór, and was often led by the Irish diaspora. This was nowhere more evident than during the Forgotten Famine, sometimes referred to as “An Gorta Beag,” of 1879–81. Without this international intervention the country faced a calamity as devastating as that of the late 1840s. A combination of factors led to the crisis of 1879–81 having its greatest impact on many areas along the western seaboard: the decline in the earnings seasonal migrant laborers brought back from Britain as a result of the increasing mechanization of British agriculture; pressure on the kelp industry, which sustained coastal communities, because of cheaper chemical fertilizer from Germany; and the withdrawal of credit in the aftermath of the financial crisis [End Page 132] of the mid-1870s.3 The major reason for the crisis was the failure of the potato crop as a result of continuous bad weather between 1877 and 1879: it rained for two out of every three days during the summer of 1879. While the average yield for the potato between 1870 and 1876 was 3.3 tons per acre, in 1879 it came to only 1.4 tons, the lowest since the dark days of 1847. The Registrar General recorded that the crop in 1879 was only half that of the previous year, which itself was poor. Nationally, reliance on the potato had declined since the 1840s, but dependency remained high along the western seaboard, where pre-Famine structures, such as the subdivision of holdings, an increasing population, early marriages, and archaic agricultural practices like rundale and conacre, still prevailed.4 In Clifden Poor Law Union, 22 percent of the farms were under five acres and on one estate twenty-five families survived on sixty-eight acres of tillage land (two and two-thirds acres for each family) devoted almost entirely to potatoes.5 In Belmullet Union, where two-thirds of the land was either bog or barren, 33 percent of the holdings were under five acres and the average holding had only three and one-fifth acres under tillage: more than half was devoted to potatoes, the remainder mainly to oats.6 On Achill Island 220 acres of arable land supported 250 people.7 Carna had 956 families and 879 acres of potatoes were grown, just over an acre for each family.8 From early 1879 the Catholic clergy were warning authorities of widespread distress, in particular in the west. By May, the Westport deanery priests were highlighting severe destitution among their parishioners, quickly followed by their counterparts in Galway, Cahirsiveen, Tuam, and Claremorris. Not only were these clergy writing directly to government officials in Dublin, but they also alerted local and national newspapers to the conditions in their areas. As the “Low Rent Movement,” the precursor to the Land League, held demonstrations in the west, the priests took the opportunity to address the audiences as to the deteriorating conditions in their parishes and warned that a famine situation [End Page 133] on the scale of the late 1840s was approaching.9 Father Patrick McManus, parish priest of Clifden, said that the people were doomed to the situation of 1847 and 1848 because there was no hope of...
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Aug 27, 2024
Melanie Lück-Vogel + 8
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