COMMEMORATION

Cappamore
12 October 1997

Famine Scene by Michael Killeen – Sculptor

The winter of 1846-47, one hundred and fifty years ago, marked the peak of the Great Famine in Cappamore, as elsewhere.The blight of 1845 had destroyed 30% 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 80% 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 12,00 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.Intensity of the famine locally my 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:

          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 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, Druomsally 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, died 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 a family members with fever, often resulting in people being walled up in room or cabin with only a vent hole for food.Decision 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 horrow, 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.The worse the famine the intense the fever, 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