The Great Irish Famine

by Canon John O'Rourke, 1874, Dublin

• Charles K. O'Hara was chairman of the Co.Sligo Board of guardians in 1846/47
• Mr. Crichton, Somerton, Ballymote noted the crop failure in 1846 was not bad.
• 8/3/1846...Mr. Cooper of Markree saw a cloud fall over the land which gave notice of the impending corp failure.
• Fall of 1846- One landlord evicted 30 families affecting some 150 indivuals.
• Feb. 8, 1847...100's and thousands die from starvation
• The Sligo workhouse had become a pesthouse, and was abandoned by the guardians, in terror.
• Disentery was the main killer of the young
• May 1847...Sligo is a plague spot; disease in every street; and the worst kind.

The Great Calamity, The Irish famine 1845-52,

Dr. Christine Kinealy, 1995, Colorado

• Sligo was one of the Indian corn out spots.It's port was used to receive the shipments of this grain directly from America
• By May 1846, Co. Sligo had joined 17 other counties in request for public woks projects.
• In 1845, Co. Sligo had only one fever hospital
• At one point in 1846, some 100 indivuals were reported to have marched through the streets of Sligo Town with loaves of bread fixed on poles. When the local guardians promised to give them both work and increased wages, the crowd dispersed.
• In April 1846, Sir Robert Palmer, an absentee landlord, from Co.Sligo was attacked for his luxurious living, while people died of starvation on the hovels of his estate.
• In 1847, Sligo was listed with many other Poor Law Unions of the West as being, distressed. This meant that the areas, so named, required external financial assistance to alleviate the suffering.
• The additional aid sems to have been insufficient as the Sligo Union, like many others in the West, was the scene of crowds gathering regularly at the meetings of the guardians and vice-guardians; and the troops had to regularly disperse these people.

Paddy's Lament Ireland 1846-1847

Thomas Gallagher, 1987 Orlando

• February 25, 1847-The Sligo Champion...The coroner is still busily engaged in this country; The people are still dying of hunger, while the stores of the Commissary General are full of corn, but political economy prohibits being touched. The following inquests were held during the week on the bodies of

• Francis Kelley
• Catherine Hoy
• Maurice Conroy
• John Caucurn
• James Kilmartin
• Michael Tighe
• patrick Conolan
• Michael Har

The Great Hunger Ireland 1845

Cecil Woodham-Smith, 1979, London

• October 30, 1846...Mr. Dobree a seasoned and unsentimental Commission officer, wrote that in spite of an order to stop giving out supplies; it was...quite out of his power...to shut his stores altogether against a little relief for the poor people, and he did not intend to do so, without a positive order to that effect. When told he must close, he retorted on November 3, that...in spite of the most harassing applications he had screwed them down to 23 tons for his enormous district last week. He had extracted a solemn pledge from relief committees to distribute only to those who had absolutely no food of any kind. Sligo was not a grain-growing country, and it was useless to tell the people to consume their own supplies.
• When a concoction called ,,,soup,,,was being used to feed the people. Mr. Dobree noted: it was ,,no working food for people accustomed to 14 lbs. of potatoes daily.
• December 1846- A Board of Works' Relief Inspector at Sligo pleaded ....Pray do something for them. Let me beg of you to attend to this, I cannot express their condition.
• By late January 1847, highly respected inhabitants, of Liverpool, England, were asking for relief from the influx of Irish paupers. Thousands had left Ireland with the intention of seeking help in that English City. On February 3rd, a member of the House of Lords was reporting of the arrival of over 3000 since the 1st of that month; 701 from Co. Sligo.
• While it was expected that the soup kitchen scheme would aliviate some of the problem, boilers for making soup had not arrived in Sligo even as late as April of 1847.
• On October 20, 1847, a Mr.T.N. Redington, a government official, notified his superior that the Poor Law rates would not, because they could not, be collected , in Co. Sligo. It was also noted by Lord Sligo , of Co. Mayo, ,,,Public funds must fed our poor or they must die, and how are these funds to beproduced? Not in Sligo, for a stone is not bread.
• August 1, 1847 found, outside of the fever hospital...three wretched creatures, who where groaning on mats on the other side of the road because they could not be taken in.
• As things worsened, the anger of the people turned to their landlords. Many of the gentry left the country in fear. By December 1847, a sub-inspector of police had a list of at least 10 landlords in Leitrim and Sligo, who were marked men. ..their lives are not worth a sheet of paper.
• Mid-summer 1848 found the disease on the potato crop was still present. Throughout the West, including Co. Sligo, the blight was the same,, as in 1846.
• In October, the British Chancellory stopped the issuace of relief supplies and the people who were still alive realized they had to emigrate to survive. These emigrants were farmers; of a good class; and the country needed them. In Sligo and Donegal, a Poor Law inspector reported that,,,the better, more energetic farmers are selling up and going.

Killoran and Coolaney A Local History

Michael Farry, 1985 Ireland

• As early as the autumn of 1845, blight was in Ireland. The Sligo Champion noted the existence of the problem elsewhere; and noted on October 25th,, it is with deepest regret we find ourselves compelled to confirm the rumor of the failure potato crop in this county...a decay in the chief, we may say the only article of food of the peasant.
• In November, chairman Major O'Hara of the Sligo workhouse Guardians, indicated that: ,,no one can say his crop is safe.
• In January 1846, O'Hara was planning public road projects and was to add many workers to his estate staff in the summer. An August issue of the Sligo Journal noted that O'Hara had employed over 300 men, daily, during the previous six months and had provided liberal amounts of oatmeal for them.
• Indian Meal arrived in Sligo in march 1846 but did not go on sale until may.
• While the 1845-46 famine was bad, some potatoes were saved for planting in the spring. By August 1st, the Champion was reporting blight and a week later O'Hara said, ,,,last year was a season of plenty compared to what the present is likely to turn out.
• In September, 20,000 pounds was granted for relief projects in the county. However, by november, the workhouse had 1227 inmates and was closed. Between October and December 1846, over 3000 had emigrated to America from Sligo.
• Throughout Black 47 things were horrible as noted in the previous extracts. This account deals mostly with local parish events for that period.
• The Champion also noted the emigration of another 3000 from Sligo Port between January and May of 1847.
• A letter to the Journal in December 1847 praised O'Hara for distributing clothes, coats, trousers, petticoats, and blankets to more than two hundred families on his estate and supplying them with bread, beef and mutton.
• In January 1848, the Champion noted,,,the condition of the poor in Sligo and neighborhood is truly frightful. The next month,,,,The misery which the people are now enduring beggers all description; and in March,,,,many deaths will take place from absolute want.
• The Sligo workhouse, like all such facilities, was designed to be unattractive and the poor only entered as a last resort. Sligo's building was suppose to hold 1200 so, in 1847, additional sheds were built to handle 70 more. By April 1848, the place had to be extended to house the over flow and reached a capacity of 1700.
• 1849 found the worst was over and only about a third of the potato crop was hit by the blight. In 1850, a new Union was created out of Sligo's Poor Law Union and set up in Tobercurry. In that area, the O'Hara family was still aiding the poor as late as 1871, even though major Charles had died and his widow, Lady Anne Charlotte was looking after the family estate.
  
  Dr. Christine Kinealy's book is by Roberts Rinehart, 5455 Spine Road, Boulder, Colorada 80301; Lib. of Con. # 95-067332

  Thomas Gallagher's book is from Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Orlando, FL 32887; ISBN 0-15-670700-4

  Canon John O'Rourke's book is from Veritas Publications 7/8 Lower Abbye Street, Dublin 1, Ireland; ISBN 1 85390 130 X Paperback

  The Great Hunger, by Cecil Woodham-Smith, is the definite description of the the Famine. It has been reprinted over and over again. One is from Love & Malcomson Ltd, Surrey, England dated May 1979.

  there are more recent copies available through almost every chain of book shops for all of these books.

  Contributor:
  JOHN
  jpgar@ptd.net