Evicted and dispossessed

     
  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

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