The winter of 1846-47 marked the peak of the Great Famine in
Cappamore, as elsewhere. The blight of 1845 had destroyed about
thirty percent of the potato crop but Robert Peel’s relief measures
of imported Indian Corn and public works prevented a disaster. It is
said that no one died of hunger during Peel’s administration.
However, when he was replaced as Prime Minister by Lord John Russell
in June 1846, all relief measures were ended, mainly in the belief
that the new crop of potatoes would see an end to the famine.
The winter of 1845-46 was very mild and very
wet, as indeed was much of the summer of 1846. As a consequence, the
blight fungus stayed in the ground and spread rapidly, leading to an
eighty percent crop failure in the autumn of 1846. By August, Fr.
John Ryan, P.P. was describing Cappamore as “one of the most
distressed districts in Ireland” with“three quarters of the
crop lost and half the labourers idle”. Fr. Thomas Meagher was
also writing to the Relief Commissioners suggesting land reclamation
projects for the vast unemployed in Cappamore. An expenditure of
1200 pounds, he wrote would establish 500 or 600 families in the
neighbourhood of the Slieve Phelim mountains.“If the government
showed a little determination towards the landlords”, he said “4000
acres could be brought into cultivation which is now only a
receptacle for wild fowl”.
Despite an active local
relief committee headed by Fr. Ryan and the Rev. Mr. Atkinson, and
despite government soup kitchens which at peak were feeding 2,781
people in Cappamore daily, the winter of 1846-47 brought famine,
fever and death to large numbers in Cappamore. The intensity of the
famine locally may be measured by the decline in population of 47%
in the rural areas of Cappamore between 1841 and 1851. In the same
period, in the Skibbereen Union, acknowledged to have been one of
the severely hit regions in Ireland, the population decline was only
36%.
Population Statistics |
|
1841 |
1851 |
Portnard |
611 |
196 |
Dromsally |
637 |
393 |
Dromalty |
384 |
168 |
In 1841, on the eve of the
famine, there were 496 houses in the Cappamore Parish, of which 382
were one-roomed mud cabins. This was exceptionally high by East
Limerick standards. Many of these dwellings contained more than one
family. Twenty years later, in 1861, there were only 40 mud cabins
left in Cappamore. Most of the mud cabins had been built in cut-away
bogs.
Baptisms:
In 1846 there were 237 baptisms in
the parish – five years later, in 1851, there were only 64 baptisms.
In all, 250 families or
1,500 individuals disappeared off the Cappamore map during the
famine years. Worst hit was Portnard with a loss of 64 families,
Dromsally with 63, Dromalta with 33, Pallasbeg with 27, Killuragh
with 16 and Drumclogher, Tineteriffe and Bilboa with 12 each.
Those who suffered most
were those who depended on the potato for their existence; occupiers
of cabins and small holdings of one to five acres; labourers living
on the land of farmers for whom they worked occupying a cabin with a
small plot of potatoes; labourers who had no fixed employment and no
land, living in hovels and hiring yearly a scrap of land from some
farmer. Out of a total of 647 families in the parish of Cappamore on
the eve of the famine, some 496 (77 %) belonged to one or other of
these three categories. And that is why the famine was so severe in
Cappamore. The parish had an unusually high percentage of labourers.
Generally, the families of agricultural labourers were those who
died; the families of small farmers were those who emigrated.
The majority of those who
died did not die in the workhouse, although many did. They did not
die on the side of the road, though some did. They did not die in
the fields or ditches, though some did. The vast majority of those
who died, succumbed in their own homes, often in the most appalling
of conditions. Decisions had to be made about how to share whatever
scraps of food they had. Decisions, more harrowing about family
members with fever, often resulted in people being walled up in room
or cabin with only a vent hole for food. The decision was sometimes
made to ignore the plight of friends or neighbours in the struggle
to survive.
Some indication of the
horror of it all may be gleaned from a Skibbereen account of
December 1846, addressed to the Duke of Wellington by a Mr. Cummins,
a justice of the peace:“I entered some of the hovels, and the
scenes that presented themselves were such as no tongue o pen can
convey the slightest idea of. In the first, six famished and ghastly
skeletons, to all appearances dead, were huddled in a corner on some
filthy straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged horse-cloth.
I approached in horror, and found by a low moaning that they were
alive; they were in fever, four children, a woman and what had once
been a man. In a few minutes, I was surrounded by at least 200 of
such phantoms, such frightful specters as no words can describe. By
far the greater number were delirious from famine or fever. Their
demonic yells are still ringing in my ears, and their horrible
images are fixed on my brain. In another house, the dispensary
doctor found seven wretches lying, unable to move, under the same
cloak. One had been dead for many house but the others were unable
to move either themselves or the corpse”. The famine fever was
made up of two distinct species of disease, typhus and relapsing
fever. Both were spread by lice, although this was not known until
40 years later. People exhausted by hunger, with rags worn night and
day, huddling together for warmth, crowded into filthy conditions,
provided conditions ideal for lice to multiply and spread rapidly.
As the famine became more severe, the intensity of the fever grew,
and crowds of screaming people often took to the roads and carried
the disease with them.
A Temporary Fever Act,
designed to separate the ill from the healthy, provided for local
fever hospitals in 1847.One such, the Cappamore Fever Hospital was
set up in Dromsally. In the two years of its’ existence up to 1849,
it catered for 556 patients, of whom only 84 died. The deaths,
according to Dr. Arthur the medical officer were “attributed
to many very aged persons being seized with fever, and to the great
debility of their conditions from previous want”.
Of the 473 medical officers
appointed by the Board of Health to special fever duty, one in every
13 died at his post. The clergy too were also at risk from fever, if
only because of their duty to attend to the sick and dying. The
Curate in Newport died from fever in 1848.The winter of 1846-47 was
one of the worst, with severe frost and snow for prolonged periods.
It added to the misery and the deaths, but had one good effect in
killing the blight fungus. The crop of 1847 was not affected but
only a third had been sown. However, the Blight returned again in
1848 and 1849, prolonging the famine for three more years.
By: Dr. Liam Ryan, Professor of Sociology,
Maynooth College;
FAMINE COMMEMORATION; Cappamore , County Limerick (12 October 1997) |