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191
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English
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2000
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Publié par
Date de parution
20 septembre 2000
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781783715855
Langue
English
Drawing on a wealth of original research, Kinealy and MacAtasney begin with an examination of society and social behaviour in Belfast prior to 1845. They then assess the official response to the crisis by the British government, the response by the Church in both England and Ireland, and the part played by the local administration in Ulster. The authors examine the impact of the cholera epidemic on Belfast in 1849-50, the city's recovery after the Famine, and the beginnings of open sectarianism among the business and landed classes of the province.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. The ‘Old’ Poor Law c. 1640-1845
1. Poverty before the Famine
Part II. A National Crisis. c.1845-47
2. A Man-Made Famine
3. All the Horrors of Famine
4. An Droch-Shaol . Disease and Death in Black ‘47
Part III. A Divided Town
5. Public and Private Responses
6. Conflict and Rebellion.
7. The Crisis is Passed
Aftermath
Appendices
Further Reading
Index
Publié par
Date de parution
20 septembre 2000
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781783715855
Langue
English
The Hidden Famine
The Hidden Famine
Poverty, Hunger and Sectarianism in Belfast 1840–50
Christine Kinealy and Gerard Mac Atasney
First published 2000 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Christine Kinealy and Gerard Mac Atasney 2000
The right of Christine Kinealy and Gerard Mac Atasney to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kinealy, Christine.
The hidden famine : poverty, hunger, and sectarianism in Belfast, 1840–50 / Christine Kinealy and Gerard Mac Atasney.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0–7453–1376–0
1. Belfast (Northern Ireland)—History. 2. Famines—Northern Ireland—Belfast—History—19th century. 3. Poverty—Northern Ireland—Belfast—History—19th century. 4. Poor—Northern Ireland—Belfast—History—19th century. 5. Belfast (Northern Ireland)—Social conditions. 6. Belfast (Northern Ireland)—Church history. 7. Ireland—History—Famine, 1845–1852. I. Mac Atasney, Gerard.
II. Title.
DA995.B5 K56 2000
941.6’7081—dc21
00–008778
ISBN 0 7453 1376 0 hbk
ISBN 0 7453 1371 X pbk
ISBN 978 1 7837 1585 5 ePub
ISBN 978 1 7837 1586 2 Mobi
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Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Production Services Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton Printed in the European Union by TJ International, Padstow
We would like to dedicate this book to Rita Pearson (d. 1999) and Philip Wilson (d. 1998)
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I The ‘Old’ Poor Law, c .1640–1845
1 An ‘Un-National Town’
The Industrial Capital of Ireland
The Athens of the North?
Housing and Diet
Strategies for Survival
A Poor Law for Ireland
The Hungry Forties?
Part II A National Crisis, c .1845–47
2 A ‘Man-Made Famine’
An Unusual Blight
Local Responses
‘Absolute Danger of Starvation’
‘A District Distinct from Belfast’. Suffering in Ballymacarrett
A Divided Society
3 ‘All the Horrors of Famine’
Belfast in Crisis
Protest and Riot
‘Gnawing and Deadly Hunger’
Desolation and Distress Unparalleled
‘The Glorious Principle of Self-Reliance’
Poverty on the Streets
4 An Droch-Shaol . Disease and Death in Black ’47
Institutional Responses to Disease
Fever Follows Famine
Great and Peculiar Urgency
Rising Mortality and Multiple Burials
‘Skibbereen Brought to our Doors’
‘An Increasing Scarcity of Money’
The Amended Poor Law
Judgment upon Our Land
Part III A Divided Town
5 Public and Private Responses
Government Relief. The Amended Poor Law
Private Philanthropy
Women and Philanthropy
‘Thorough Evangelization’
Charity and Conversion
The Bible and Protestant Dominion
6 Conflict and Rebellion
Rising to the Challenge. The Role of the Belfast Workhouse
Emigration and Removal
‘Orange and Green Will Carry the Day’
The War of the Placards and the 1848 Uprising
The Rate-in-Aid Dispute
7 ‘The Crisis is Passed’
The Path to Recovery
The Cholera Epidemic
Orange against Green
A Royal Visit
8 Aftermath. ‘A Hell below a Hell’
Appendices
Notes
Further Reading
Index
List of Illustrations
Figures
1
Distress in Ireland. Belfast News-Letter , 8 January 1847
2
Fund for the Temporal Relief of the Suffering Poor. Belfast News-Letter , 8 January 1847
3
Amateur Performance for the Relief of the Poor in Belfast. Belfast News-Letter , 30 March 1847
4
Soup kitchen poster, 1846
5
The Ladies of the Industrial Relief Committee and Belfast Bazaar for the Relief of Irish Destitution. Belfast News-Letter , 19 March 1847
6
Bazaar for Connaught. Belfast News-Letter , 22 December 1846
7
Belfast Ladies’ Association for the Relief of Irish Destitution. Belfast News-Letter , 29 January 1847
8
Poster advertising meeting for Irish independence, 1848
Maps
1
Poor Law Unions in Ireland, 1842–49
2
Belfast Union, showing location of soup kitchens and relief committees
Acknowledgements
Many people have contributed directly and indirectly to the writing of this book.
Friends and colleagues have provided on-going support, especially Bernadette Barrington, Eileen Black, Pat and John Brandwood, Deirdre and Lyndsey Briggs, Ann Brownlow, Susan Burnett, Arthur Chapman, Bill Crawford, John Dallat, Sandra Douglas, Angela Farrell, Ben and Nellie Fearon, Fionnula Flanagan, Brian Griffin, George Harrison, Roddie Hegarty, Bobby Lavery, Maura and Peter Mac Atasney, Pat McGregor, Fr Kevin McMullan, Kevin McNally, Ian Maxwell, Donal Moore, Don Mullan, Monsignor Raymond Murray, Cormac Ó Gráda, Fr George O’Hanlon, Ray and Honora Ormesher, Trevor Parkhill, the late Rita Pearson, John Richie, Owen Rodgers, Peter Roebuck, Louise Ryan, David Sexton, Sean Sexton, John Shaw, David Sheehy, Alison Skilling, Teresa Stein, Thompson Steele, John Trimble, Roger van Zwanenberg, Ian Vincent and the late Philip Wilson.
We would also like to acknowledge the assistance of the staff of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the British Library at Colindale, the City Hall in Belfast, the Craigavon Historical Society, Cumann Seanchas Ard Mhachan, Down and Connor Diocesan Archives, the History Department in the University of Central Lancashire, the Irish Linen Centre at Lisburn, the Linen Hall Library in Belfast, the National Archives in Dublin, the National Library in Dublin, the Public Record Office in London, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Queen’s University Medical Library and the Ulster Museum. We are particularly grateful to the Deputy Keeper of Records, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and to Dr David Craig, Deputy Keeper of the National Archives in Dublin. We also gratefully acknowledge financial assistance from the Belfast Society.
Special thanks are due to Arthur Luke who has provided many insights into Belfast past and present, and to Professor John Walton who read earlier drafts of the text. We should also like to express our gratitude to Sean Gill who drew the maps and Ian Briggs who scanned documents. Any mistakes and omissions are, however, the responsibility of the authors.
We are particularly grateful to those people who have lived through the writing of this publication at various stages of its existence. They are Daphne, Kieran, Siobhan and Robert.
Finally, inspiration and encouragement was also derived from a Conference on the Great Famine held in Hunter College, New York in October 1997, where the keynote speakers included Mary Nellis of Sinn Féin and Billy Hutchinson of the Progressive Unionist Party. Their ground-breaking contributions were a reminder of a shared past which also offered hopes of a collective future.
Christine Kinealy
Gerard Mac Atasney
Map 1 Poor Law Unions in Ireland, 1842–49
Introduction
Despite the outpouring of academic publications, which accompanied the sesquicentenary commemorations of the Great Famine in 1995, certain aspects of the crisis remained under-represented. One such omission was a scholarly reappraisal of the impact of the Famine in the province of Ulster. Many historical studies have tended to ignore the Ulster dimension or represent the northeastern counties as areas where the impact of the Famine was minimal. In their ground-breaking history of Guinness’s brewery, Patrick Lynch and John Vaisey wrote: ‘The areas unaffected directly by the Famine were the maritime economy centered on Cork, Dublin and Belfast.’ 1 More recently, Roy Foster stated: ‘Regions with varied local economies (notably the north and east coast) escaped lightly.’ 2 And Brian Walker, a historian from Ulster, in a publication about the role of myth in Irish history, claimed: ‘The Great Famine, with its enormous human toll, affected Ulster far less than elsewhere in Ireland, thanks to northern industrialization and the availability of crops other than the potato.’ 3 At the same time, a collective impression was created that the impact of the crisis was confined largely to Catholic communities. This viewpoint was articulated by the economic historian Liam Kennedy, who stated: ‘Ulster fared better than the average experience of the island … The Protestant people of that province suffered less severely from famine.’ 4
Overall, therefore, the traditional orthodoxy has been that the Famine had little impact on the northeastern corner of Ireland, especially on the Protestant population. Contemporary evidence suggests otherwise. In July 1847, the Belfast Orange Lodge lamented that the recent famine had ‘thinned out our local population and removed many of our Loyal brethren’. In recognition of the calamity, no music was played at the traditional Boyne commemoration. 5 The denial of the extent of the Famine in Protestant and Unionist historiography appears to owe more to political expediency than to historical reality. In 1937–38, the Unionist government of Northern Ireland refused to allow the Department of Education to participate in an all-Ireland study of famine folklore. The resultant survey, therefore, covered only the 26 counties of what was then the Irish Free State. 6 More recently, a number of Unionist politicians reacted angrily when the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, issued a statement that ‘Those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy.’ In the same year also, members of the Democratic Unionist Party opposed a motion by nationalist members of Belfast City Council to erect a stained glass window in the City Hall, as a commemoration to those who died in the town during the Famine. Sammy Wilson, a
