The History of the Irish Famine

Irish Famine Migration Narratives: Eyewitness Testimonies

Jason King, Jason King

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315513676
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

The Great Irish Famine remains one of the most lethal famines in modern world history and a watershed moment in the development of modern Ireland – socially, politically, demographically and culturally. In the space of only four years, Ireland lost twenty-five per cent of its population as a consequence of starvation, disease and large-scale emigration. Certain aspects of the Famine remain contested and controversial, for example the issue of the British government's culpability, proselytism, and the reception of emigrants. However, recent historiographical focus on this famine has overshadowed the impact of other periods of subsistence crisis, both before 1845 and after 1852.

This volume breaks new ground in bringing together foundational narratives of one of Europe and North America's first refugee crises — making visible their impact in shaping perceptions, public opinion, and patterns of memorialization of Irish forced migration. It documents eyewitness impressions of suffering Irish emigrants, and raises questions about what literary conventions, mnemonic motifs, and popular images can be found in eyewitness accounts, press coverage, and foundational narratives of Famine Irish forced migration. These primary sources provide a model for understanding how representations of forced migration shape public opinion and policy.

Part I

Irish Famine Migration Narratives

1
Stephen De Vere to T. F. Elliot, 30 November, 1847, Minutes of evidence before Select Committee on Colonisation from Ireland, British Parliamentary Papers, Emigration, v 5, pp. 45–48

In April 1847, Stephen De Vere (1812–1904) risked his life travelling steerage and accompanying former tenants from his estate Curragh Chase, County Limerick, to provide an eyewitness account of the hardships of the trans-Atlantic voyage. ‘Prior to his departure he told an audience in Pallaskenry, Co. Limerick, that his aim was to see a movement on an extensive scale that would benefit both countries.’¹ Unlike other proponents of assisted emigration, De Vere personally escorted former tenants to British North America in order to put his ideas into practice.

Stephen De Vere was the second son of Sir Aubrey De Vere and Mary Spring Rice, and older brother of the Victorian poet Aubrey De Vere. His other siblings were Elinor, Horatio, William, and Vere Edmond De Vere, whom Stephen succeeded to become 4th Baronet of Curragh in 1880 after his older brother died without an heir. After he returned to Ireland from Canada in 1848, he was elected Liberal Party MP for Limerick County from 1854 to 1859, and was appointed High Sheriff of County Limerick in 1870; he also suffered from terrible nightmares which led him to ‘lamentable howls’ on a nightly basis.² He relocated from Curragh Chase to the island of Monare, Foynes, Co. Limerick where he spent his later years living as a notable eccentric in a laborer’s cottage. De Vere had converted to Catholicism while in Canada in 1847, defended Irish Catholic institutions upon his return, and built a Gothic church in Foynes, County Limerick, where he is buried. Like his brother Aubrey, De Vere never married and died childless in 1904, when the baronetcy became extinct. The Hunt/De Vere family estate is now publicly owned, the Curragh Chase National Forest Park, though the estate house was accidentally destroyed by fire in 1941.

Ultimately, Stephen De Vere’s legacy was to help safeguard Irish emigrants at sea and to inadvertently stymie the passenger trade he had sought to promote. He is at once the most influential and least understood eyewitness of the Irish Famine migration of 1847. After accompanying former tenants from his estate at Curragh Chase to British North America in April 1847 to bear witness to the hardships of the transatlantic crossing, De Vere wrote a letter in Toronto to Thomas Frederick Elliot that is reproduced below. His account provides the most widely cited description of the Famine voyage. He also wrote extensively in his ‘America journals’ and letters that remain unpublished and almost completely unknown, yet represent some of the most compelling and vivid Canadian travel narratives in the mid-Victorian period. They are partly reproduced here for the first time in print. The journal is comprised of two volumes, from April 29 – December 1, 1847 (MS. 5061, 67 pages), and Dec 1. 1847 – June 23 1848 (MS 5062, 57 pages). Irish Famine Migration Narratives publishes De Vere’s first journal and beginning of his second one to the date of 9 January, 1848, covering the period until he dispatched his influential letter to T. F. Elliot.

These documents reveal that De Vere’s attempt to establish a model colonial settlement failed because he sought to recreate Ireland’s hierarchical, semi-feudal class relations on Canadian soil, whereas his former tenants often preferred waged labour, moved to the United States, or were emboldened by the Young Ireland uprising.³ More broadly, De Vere’s personal failure to resettle Famine emigrants had policy implications in compounding the lack of political will to fund colonization schemes, even when it seemed a distinct possibility⁴ and his recommendations for Passenger Act reform were accepted in 1848. Ultimately, De Vere was dismayed that the very legislation he inspired to safeguard emigrants at sea increased Canadian immigration levies and thereby stymied the passenger trade he had sought to promote. Nevertheless, his letter to T. F. Elliot and unpublished ‘America Journals’ remain the most important eyewitness accounts of the Irish Famine migration.

London, Canada, West.

November 30, 1847.

My dear sir,

I HAVE to thank you for sending me the Report of the Colonisation Committee of last year, the evidence contained in which (though I have not yet had time fully to go through it) proves to one the value of emigration at home, and confirms the opinions I had already formed of the benefit likely to result to the colonies from it.

The emigration of the past year was enormous, though deriving no assistance from Government until its arrival here. The mortality also was very great. During the next year, the number of emigrants will probably be still larger; and I fear we shall have a repetition of the mortality if the errors which experience has detected be not promptly and liberally corrected.

I shall not regret the disasters of the last two years if their warning voice shall have stimulated and enabled us to effect a system of emigration leading to future colonisation, which shall gradually heal the diseased and otherwise incurable state of society at home, and, at the same time, infuse a spirit into the colonies, which shall render them the ornament, the wealth, and the bulwark of the parent country.

We have no right to cure the evil of over-population by a process of decimation, nor can emigration be serviceable in Canada unless the emigrants arrive in a sound state, both of body and mind. I say ‘both of body and mind,’ because clamour in Canada has been equally directed against the diseased condition and the listless indolence of this year’s emigrants; but, while I admit the Justice of that clamour to a certain extent, I must protest against the injustice of those here who complain that the young and vigorous should be accompanied by the more helpless members of their families whom they are bound to protect; and I cannot but remember that famine and fever were a divine dispensation inflicted last year upon nearly the whole world, and that the colony could not reasonably expect to be wholly exempt from the misfortunes of the parent state.

The fearful state of disease and debility in which the Irish emigrants have reached Canada must undoubtedly be attributed in a great degree to the destitution and consequent sickness prevailing in Ireland; but has been much aggravated by the neglect of cleanliness, ventilation and a generally good state of social economy during the passage, and has been afterwards increased, and disseminated throughout the whole country by the mal-arrangements of the Government system of emigrant relief. Having myself submitted to the privations of a steerage passage in an emigrant ship for nearly two months, in order to make myself acquainted with the condition of the emigrant from the beginning, I can state from experience that the present regulations for ensuring health and comparative comfort to passengers are wholly insufficient, and that they are not, and cannot be enforced, notwithstanding the great zeal and high abilities of the Government agents.

Before the emigrant has been a week at sea he is an altered man. How can it be otherwise? Hundreds of poor people, men, women, and children of all ages, from the drivelling idiot of ninety to the babe just born, huddled together without light, without air, wallowing in filth, and breathing a fetid atmosphere, sick in body and despair at heart, the fevered patients lying between the sound in sleeping places so narrow as almost to deny them the power of indulging, by a change of position, the natural restlessness of the disease, by their agonized ravings disturbing those around them and predisposing them, through the effects of the imagination, to imbibe the contagion; living without food or medicine except as administered by the hand of casual charity, dying without the voice of spiritual consolation and buried in the deep without the rites of the Church.

The food is generally unselected and seldom sufficiently cooked. The supply of water, hardly enough for cooking and drinking, does not allow washing. In many ships the filthy beds, teeming with all abominations, are never required to be brought on deck and aired. The narrow space between the sleeping berths and the piles of boxes is never washed or scraped, but breathes up a damp fetid stench, until the day before arrival at quarantine, when all hands are required to ‘scrub up’ and put on a fair face for the doctor and government inspector. No moral restraint is attempted. The voice of prayer is never heard. Drunkenness, with its consequent train of ruffianly debasement, is not discouraged, because it is profitable to the captain who traffics in the grog.

In the ship which brought me out from London last April, the passengers were found in provisions by the owners, according to a contract, and furnished scale of dietary. The meat was of the worst quality. The supply of water shipped on board was abundant, but the quantity served out to the passengers was so scanty that they were frequently obliged to throw overboard their salt provisions and rice (a most important article of their food), because they had not water enough both for the necessary cooking, and the satisfying of their raging thirst afterwards.

They could only afford water for washing by withdrawing it from the cooking of their food. I have known persons to remain for days together in their dark close berths, because they thus suffered less from hunger, though compelled, at the same time, by want of water to heave overboard their salt provisions and rice. No cleanliness was enforced; the beds never aired; the master during the whole voyage never entered the steerage, and would listen to no complaints; the dietary contracted for was, with some exceptions, nominally supplied, though at irregular periods; but false measures were used (in which the water and several articles of dry food were served), the gallon measure containing but three quarts, which fact I proved in Quebec, and had the captain fined for; once or twice a week ardent spirits were sold indiscriminately to the passengers, producing scenes of unchecked blackguardism beyond description; and lights were prohibited, because the ship, with her open fire-grates upon deck, with lucifer matches and lighted pipes used secretly in the sleeping berths, was freighted with Government powder for the garrison of Quebec.

The case of this ship was not one of peculiar misconduct, on the contrary, I have the strongest reason to know from information which I have received from very many emigrants well-known to me who came over this year in different vessels, that this ship was better regulated and more comfortable than many that reached Canada.

Some of these evils might be prevented by a more careful inspection of the ship and her stores, before leaving port; but the provisions of the Passenger Act are insufficient to procure cleanliness and ventilation, and the machinery of the emigration agencies at the landing ports is insufficient to enforce those provisions, and to detect frauds. It is true that a clerk sometimes comes on board at the ship’s arrival in port; questions the captain or mate, and ends by asking whether any passenger means to make a complaint; but this is a mere farce, for the captain takes care to ‘keep away the crowd from the gentleman.’ Even were all to hear the question, few would venture to commence a prosecution; ignorant, friendless, penny less, disheartened, and anxious to proceed to the place of their ultimate destination.

Disease and death among the emigrants; nay, the propagation of infection throughout Canada, are not the worst consequences of this atrocious system of neglect and ill-usage. A result far worse is to be found in the utter demoralization of the passengers, both male and female, by the filth, debasement, and disease of two or three months so passed. The emigrant, enfeebled in body, and degraded in mind, even though he should have the physical power, has not the heart, has not the will to exert himself. He has lost his self-respect, his elasticity of spirit – he no longer stands erect – he throws himself listlessly upon the daily dole of Government, and, in order to earn it, carelessly lies for weeks upon the contaminated straw of a fever lazaretto.

I am aware that the Passengers’ Act has been amended during the last Session, but I have not been yet able to see the amendments. They are probably of a nature calculated to meet the cases I have detailed; but I would earnestly suggest the arrangement of every passenger ship into separate dimensions for the married, for single men, and for single women; and the appointment, from amongst themselves, of ‘monitors’ for each ward; the appropriation of an hospital ward for the sick; the providing of commodious cooking stoves and utensils, and the erection of decent privies; and the appointment, to each ship carrying more than 50 passengers, of a surgeon paid by the Government, who should be invested during the voyage with the authority of a Government emigration agent, with power to investigate all complaints at sea on the spot, and at the time of their occurrence to direct and enforce temporary redress, and to institute proceedings on arrival in port in concert with the resident emigration agent. He ought, for this purpose, to have authority to detain witnesses, and to support them during the prosecution at Government expense. I would also suggest the payment of a chaplain of the religion professed by the majority of the passengers.

The sale of spirituous liquors should be prohibited except for medicinal purposes, &c., the minimum supply of water enlarged from three to four quarts.

I believe that if these precautions were adopted, the human cargoes would be landed in a moral and physical condition far superior to what they now exhibit, and that the additional expense incurred would be more than compensated by the saving effected in hospital expenses and emigrant relief.

The arrangements adopted by the Government during the past season, for the assistance of pauper emigrants after their arrival in Canada, were of three sorts, hospitals, temporary sheds, and transmission. These measures were undertaken in a spirit of liberality deserving our best gratitude; and much allowance ought to be made for imperfections of detail, which it was not easy to avoid under the peculiar and unexpected exigencies of the case; but I think I can demonstrate that much of the mortality which has desolated as well the old residents as the emigrants, may be attributed to the errors of those arrangements.

In the quarantine establishment at Grosse Isle, when I was there in June, the medical attendance and hospital accommodations were quite inadequate. The medical inspections on board were slight and hasty – hardly any questions were asked – but as the doctor walked down the file on deck, he selected those for hospital who did not look well, and, after a very slight examination, ordered them ashore. The ill-effect of this haste was two-fold: some were detained in danger who were not ill, and many were allowed to proceed who were actually in fever.

The sheds were very miserable, so slightly built as to exclude neither the heat nor the cold. No sufficient care was taken to remove the sick from the sound, or to disinfect and clean the bedding after the removal of the sick to hospitals. The very straw upon which they had lain was often allowed to become a bed for their successor; and I have known many poor families prefer to burrow under heaps of loose stones which happened to pile up near the shore rather than accept the shelter of the infected sheds.

It would, I am aware, have been difficult to have provided a more substantial shelter for the amount of destitution produced by the peculiar circumstances of the past year; but I hope that, in future, even though the number of emigrants should greatly exceed that of last year, so large an extent of pauper temporary accommodation may not be necessary, and that a better built, and better regulated house of refuge, may be provided.

Of the administration of temporary relief by food to the inmates of the sheds, I must speak in terms of the highest praise. It was a harassing and dangerous duty, and one requiring much judgment on the part of the agent, and it was performed with zeal, humanity, and good sense.

I must now advert to what has been the great blot upon the Government arrangements – the steam transmission up the country. The great principle, that the due regulation of passenger ships is a duty of the State, is admitted by the Passengers’ Act. The Government itself enforces the heaviest penalties for the infringement of its provisions; but yet, when the Government itself undertakes to transmit emigrants from Quebec to Montreal, Kingston, and Toronto, how has it acted? I state, upon the authority of Mr. McElderry, the able and indefatigable emigrant agent at Toronto, who has fallen a victim to his zeal and humanity, that the Government made an exclusive contract with one individual for the steam transmission of all emigrants forwarded by the State, at a certain price per head, without any restrictive regulations. The consequences were frightful...