The Case of Dunlavin, County Wicklow 1600 -1910
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The establishment and evolution of an Irish village: the case of Dunlavin, county Wicklow 1600 -1910. Vol. 2 of 2 Chris Lawlor M.A., H.D.E. Thesis for the degree of PhD Department of History, St. Patrick’s College Drumcondra, A college of Dublin City University Head of department: Professor James Kelly Supervisor of research: Professor James Kelly May 2010 CHAPTER FIVE. DISASTER AND READJUSTMENT: DUNLAVIN, 1845-1901. Introduction. The Great Famine killed off all attempts to restore paternalistic landlordism, with its associated levels o f deference from the tenantry, which the Tynte family tried to restore in the early nineteenth century. There is a perception that county Wicklow was not badly affected by the Famine. 1 However, this chapter demonstrates that the Dunlavin region experienced acute levels of distress. Population losses in the area were significant, with a quarter of the village population, and a third o f the population o f the region no longer resident in the aftermath o f the disaster. Post-Famine Dunlavin emerged scarred and demographically frail. The lack o f employment opportunities and, the effects o f impartible inheritance o f land meant that emigration remained the only option for many young people in the Dunlavin region. Long-term demographic decline, attested to economic stagnation, but strong farming families consolidated their landholding position and provided the local economy with the means to stage a gradual recovery in the post-Famine era. Despite this, Dunlavin failed to grow in any respect during this time; no improvements were made to village furniture, and no new houses were erected. The Catholic middle class became dominant in local trade and agriculture. Improved levels of education and literacy among the Catholic middle class aided their rise to social prominence. A challenge to the power o f the elite, including the Tyntes o f Dunlavin, was underway, and by the beginning o f the twentieth century it was evident that it would succeed. 1 In 1847 Archbishop Daniel Murray of Dublin requested Thomas Synott to compile a list of nationwide Famine deaths. Synott’s reply, dated 21 Oct 1847, provided statistics for nineteen counties. Counties Wicklow and Kildare, both adjacent to Dublin, were not among their number. Thomas Synott to Archbishop Murray, 25 Sep 1847 (Dublin Diocesan Archive [D.D.A.], Murray Papers, 32/6/13). Synott’s total figures up to 25 Sep 1847 were deaths from starvation: 22,241; deaths from diseases consequent on starvation: 51,884. 294 This chapter contains four sections. Section one explores the Famine experience and contextualises events in Dunlavin by locating them within the wider Wicklow-Kildare region. Dunlavin data is examined wherever possible, in particular utilising Catholic parish registers to analyse changes in marriage rates and birth rates. The second section focuses on demographic change in the Dunlavin region between 1881 and 1901. The Catholic baptismal registers and the census reports are used to provide a diachronic analysis o f a shrinking population. Section three focuses on Dunlavin’s social and agricultural situation, using the agricultural statistics and Slater’s Directory in conjunction with census material to uncover social developments during these decades. The functions o f the village are placed in the context o f trends within its agricultural hinterland, which it continued to serve as a market town. The social strata within the village and their interaction with each other come in for scrutiny, and commerce and education in the village are also considered. The final section provides a synchronic snapshot o f the area in the early years of the twentieth century, using the detailed census returns o f 1901 and local newspaper reports to reveal the state o f the village and: its environs at the dawn of the twentieth century. Dunlavin entered that century in a much-altered state from the pre-Famine village o f 1845. By 1901 population had stabilised, though it was never again to reach pre-Famine levels. 1. Famine. The year 1845 ran its normal course in west Wicklow until October, when the first signs o f potato blight appeared in the region. On 20 October, Bartholomew Warburton, a Baltinglass R.M., reporting on the state of the potato crop in his area, observed that it was affected by disease. 2 This was followed by a further report on 25 October, in which Warburton described the worsening blight, and advised that more detailed information could be obtained through the poor law guardians. 3 The following day, Elizabeth Smith 4 of Baltiboys, near Blessington, recorded the presence of potato blight in the area. Smith wrote: Just in Baltiboys there seems as yet to be no damage done but very near at hand this widespread disease has already attacked some large con-acre fields where the poor man’s supply for the next nine months may, without active measures being speedily taken, fail him entirely. The potato once attacked is quite unfit for food, it rots away, infecting all its companions.5 These reports suggest that the blight struck in the Dunlavin region about the week o f 20-26 October 1845. A week later, on 4 November, the disease was reported on the Smith’s estate at Baltiboys, 6 suggesting that all of west Wicklow was blight-stricken by the first week o f November 1845. The potato blight was a fungus, phytophtera infestans, which spread in humid conditions, and was rapidly diffused through mist or wind. Whole fields could be destroyed in hours and, crucially for the longevity of the Great Famine, the disease could lie dormant through the winter and reappear during the following growing 2 Bartholomew Warburton to Chief Secretary, 20 Oct 1845 (N.A.I., Famine Relief Commission Papers, Distress Reports, CSORP, Z series, RLFC2/Z14016) 3 Warburton to Chief Secretary’s office, 25 Oct 1845 (N.A.I., Famine Relief Commission Papers, Distress Reports, CSORP, Z series, RLFC2/Z14442) 4 Formerly Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus in Scotland: Andrew Tod (ed), Memoirs o f a highland lady (Edinburgh, 3rd ed, 1993), p. vii. 5 Dermot James and Seamas O Maitiu (eds), The Wicklow world o f Elizabeth Smith (Dublin, 1996), pp 47-9. 6 Ibid, p. 49. 296 *7 season. It had disseminated from mainland Europe, through the Isle o f Wight into o mainland Britain. It was reported in England in August that: A fearful malady has broken out among the potato crop. On all sides we hear o f the destruction. In Belgium the fields are said to be completely desolated. There is hardly a sound sample in Covent Garden market... as for cure for this distemper, there is none. 9 However, the occurrence o f blight in countries such as Belgium or Britain was not as serious as its arrival in Ireland, where the potato was a staple food. In 1836 the rector of Dunlavin, Rev W. Moore Morgan, highlighted the importance o f the potato in the daily diet o f many in the region in his response to a query by the poor law inquiry commissioners regarding the food of the poor: ‘Potatoes! Potatoes! Potatoes! The ordinary diet, sometimes with stirabout and milk’. 10 This dependence on the potato crop made prevention o f the blight vital, but the best scientific brains in Europe were at a loss to know how to deal with the disease.11 From west Wicklow came a suggestion that the inclusion o f ventilating channels in potato pits might help as an aid to preservation, but this was not to be. 12 The disease continued to mystify both farmers and the elite in west Wicklow, who were powerless to prevent it, to treat it or to store 7 Mary E. Daly, The Famine in Ireland (Dundalk, 1986), p. 53. 8 Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger (New York, 1962), pp 38-40. 9 Gardeners' Chronicle, 23 Aug 1845. 10 Poor Inquiry, Appendix D and supplement, [37], H.C. 1836, xxxi, p. 153. Epitomising the over dependance on the potato crop among the poor, Moore Morgan’s reply is cited in Wicklow County Council, The Famine in County Wicklow (Wicklow, 1996), section 4, p. 3 and in Ken Hannigan, ‘Wicklow before and after the Famine’, Hannigan and Nolan (eds.), Wicklow: History and Society (Dublin, 1994), p. 819. 11 Kevin Whelan speaking on Famine, RTE video documentary (1996). 12 Warburton to Chief Secretaiy’s office, 29 Oct 1845 (N.A.I., Famine Relief Commission Papers, Distress Reports, CSORP, Z series, RLFC2/Z14572) 297 the potatoes.13 By late 1845, with no solution in sight, the blight affected ‘a large proportion’ of the crop.14 Since blight of 1845 did not affect the whole potato crop, it was generally expected that the crisis could be negotiated without serious hardship. In west Wicklow, Elizabeth Smith expected that ‘the partial failure [of the potato crop] will be the less felt, particularly as the com harvest was excellent’. 15 However, the situation was serious enough to prompt Archbishop Daniel Murray of Dublin to write to the priests in his diocese to gather information regarding the state o f the country. Replies from counties Wicklow and Kildare provide a revealing perspective on conditions in the wider region in late 1845. According to Fr. McKenna of Rathdrum, on 30 November 1845, the blight was widespread in the region, but much of it was ‘both light and partial’. He calculated that ‘about one eighth of the crop has been damaged, and one twentieth utterly destroyed’. McKenna was concerned that the people were unwilling to try new methods of storing the crop. He noted that the crop was ‘stored in old- fashioned pits’ and he feared that the potatoes would ‘heat up and be lost’.