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Past & Present

Past & Present

PAST & PRESENT

NUMBER 179 MAY 2003

CONTENTS page

REVENGE, ASSYRIAN STYLE: by Marc Van De Mieroop ...... 3

WRITTEN ENGLISH: THE MAKING OF THE LANGUAGE 1370–1400: by Jeremy Catto ...... 24

ABSOLUTISM, FEUDALISM AND PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE OF LOUIS XIV: by David Parker ...... 60

GRAVESTONES, BELONGING AND LOCAL ATTACHMENT IN 1700–2000: by K. D. M. Snell ...... 97

THE RIOT OF 1887: NATIONALISM, CLASS AND THE : by Virginia Crossman ...... 135

BHAKTI AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE: by Vijay Pinch ...... 159

THE CAUSES OF UKRAINIAN–POLISH ETHNIC CLEANSING 1943: by Timothy Snyder ...... 197

NOTES ...... 235

Published by Oxford University Press for the Past and Present Society THE NEW ROSS WORKHOUSE RIOT OF 1887: NATIONALISM, CLASS AND THE IRISH POOR LAWS

On 17 February 1887 the inmates of the workhouse in New Ross, County , rioted, attacking the master and the paid (vice-)guardians who had been put in charge of the union following the dissolution of the the previous December. The disturbance apparently started with a chorus of female voices accompanied by the ringing of bells and banging of doors. Before long, ‘the whole house [was] on the loose’. The master, Timothy McAuliffe, and the vice-guardians, Walter Wall and Andrew Nolan, had been stock-taking in the work- shops. On seeing a largely female crowd coming across the yard shouting, they retreated towards the boardroom. The inmates followed in pursuit. Some threw stones, breaking windows and hitting both vice-guardians, and a male inmate attacked McAuliffe with a crowbar. Wall managed to escape into the town, pursued for a distance by a number of the women, who pelted him with stones and mud. Finally reaching the police barracks at around noon, he raised the alarm. His colleague barricaded himself into the boardroom with McAuliffe. The inmates were eventually persuaded by the matron to return to the main body of the house, where they proceeded to run riot until the police arrived. A local newspaper, the People, described the scenes in the workhouse as ‘most exciting’. There were ‘women rushing hither and thither, children roaring and shouting with unusual energy; young girls dancing on the tops of the tables in the dining hall; the steam-cocks roaring and gushing like thunder, form[ing] a scene which it is impossible to portray’.1 Contemporary interpretations of the riot focused on three key elements: the dissolution of the board of guardians; the

1 Wexford Independent, 19 Feb. 1887; People, 19 Feb. 1887. The People, published in Wexford Town and edited by Edmund Walsh, had one of the highest circulation Wgures for a local newspaper: nine thousand in 1892 according to the government. It was judged by the government to have a strong inXuence among nationalists. See Marie-Louise Legg, Newspapers and Nationalism: The Irish Provincial Press, 1850–1892 (Dublin, 1999), 127, 130.

© The Past and Present Society, Oxford, 2003 136 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 179 inXuence of the mass nationalist organization, the ; and the classiWcation of female inmates. The local police inspector, Henry Cary, attributed the riot to ‘the resigna- tion of the [workhouse] ofWcers by order of the National League and the attempt to classify women by separating bad characters from the rest which caused great discontent’. He categorized the whole event as ‘an attempt to carry out the orders of the Irish National League’.2 Most newspaper reports referred to these issues but with differing emphases. All accounts agreed that the riot was an expression of popular discontent with the vice-guardians’ administration. Where there was disagreement was over the origin and nature of this discontent, some seeing it primarily as a reaction to unpopular decisions made by the vice-guardians, others as the result of an orchestrated campaign by the deposed board. The London Times highlighted an order made by the vice-guardians ‘forbidding the inmates of the workhouse to speak or associate with the mothers of illegitimate children’, and noted that this order ‘annoyed the women who were the mothers of such children’. This explanation was dismissed in the Wexford Independent, which observed that the separation of ‘the women of bad character from the girls . . . was not the cause of the present mutiny — it was simply the result of the and the resignation of the matron and six or seven other ofWcers’.3 As these accounts indicate, there are a number of different contexts in which the riot can be explored and understood. The provided the political context. Originally a movement of agrarian protest regarding rent levels, the Land War had evolved into a campaign against both landlordism and British rule. Tenants sought to force landlords to accept rent abatements through collective action. The New Ross Board of Guardians had been dissolved in December 1886 for providing a special ward in the workhouse for the accommodation of tenants evicted for refusing to pay what they regarded as excessive rents. Following their dissolution the deposed guardians had instigated a campaign of resistance to the paid ofWcials appointed to replace them. The riot can, therefore, be considered as an

2 Report of District Inspector Cary, 19 Feb. 1887: National Archives of (hereafter NAI), Chief Secretary’s OfWce Registered Papers (hereafter CSORP), 1887/11223. 3 Times, 18 Feb. 1887; Wexford Independent, 19 Feb. 1887. THE NEW ROSS WORKHOUSE RIOT OF 1887 137 episode in the land agitation. But it can also be seen as high- lighting the oppressive character of the Irish Poor Law, and can be explored in the context of prevailing social attitudes towards poverty and pauperism. The categorization of the poor, and the classiWcation of workhouse inmates into groups such as ‘women of bad character’, were central to the administration of the Poor Law system, and are central to an understanding of the riot. Analysis of the events surrounding the riot thus pro- vides an insight into the interaction of social and political issues in the Irish Poor Law. Riots in Irish were not uncommon. In their annual report for 1862/3, the Irish Poor Law Commissioners referred to repeated attempts having been made to set Wre to the Union workhouse. The Commissioners noted that these attempts had sometimes been ‘attended by violent resistance to the ofWcers, and by riot and tumult’, and that a similar spirit had been evident in other large workhouses, such as those in , and .4 In one sense then, the New Ross riot can be seen as a part of a tradition of insub- ordination and resistance within workhouses. What gives it wider signiWcance is the politicization of the outbreak, in terms of both its causes and its representation. The Land War was a critical episode in the development of the nationalist move- ment. The agitation was executed by a broad alliance of social groups that included substantial tenant farmers, rural business- men, smallholders and labourers. The ability of the Land League, and its successor the National League, to build and maintain this alliance was one of its great strengths. Another was its use of tactics that combined traditional forms of social protest with modern methods of political campaigning. Com- munal activities such as boycotting operated alongside the machinery of a national political organization.5 The riot exem- pliWes this intersection between traditional and modern, but it also demonstrates the unstable nature of the cross-class alliance. As we shall see, the riot and the circumstances surrounding it highlighted class divisions rather than obscured them.

4 Annual Report of the Commissioners for Administering the Laws for Relief of the Poor in Ireland, Parliamentary Papers (hereafter P.P.), 1863 (3135), xxii, 12–13. 5 See Stephen Ball, ‘Crowd Activity during the Irish Land War, 1879–90’, in Peter Jupp and Eoin Magennis (eds.), Crowds in Ireland, c.1720–1920 (Basingstoke, 2000). 138 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 179 The Poor Law was introduced in Ireland in 1838 in an attempt to reduce poverty and disorder, and to promote economic and social development and political stability.6 As in England, the Poor Law was administered by boards of guardians composed partly of guardians elected by the ratepayers and partly of magistrates sitting ex-ofWcio. It was hoped that the experience of working together on Poor Law boards would bring the different classes in Ireland together, thus reducing sectarian and partisan feeling.7 This hope was never fully real- ized. Prior to 1898 Irish Poor Law boards were the only local bodies in rural areas to include a popularly elected element. Following the radicalization of rural politics that took place during the years of the Land League campaign (1879–82), Poor Law elections were increasingly contested as part of the national campaign for self-government. In 1881, called on tenant candidates to contest the Poor Law elections in order ‘to wrest the local government of the country from the landlord classes’. The following year, an editorial in the nationalist weekly, United Ireland, repeated the call: ‘Every seat of power is ours by right. Up and seize it . . . [The Poor Law is] the Wrst rung of the ladder of national self-government. Win at the Poor Law Boards and we will presently win at the Castle’.8 Elected guardians increasingly presented themselves not only as representatives of the ratepayers, but also as repre- sentatives of the Irish nation. In his study of the ‘nationalization’ of Irish Poor Law boards, William Feingold demonstrated that during the 1880s the dominance of Poor Law boards by landowners was eroded. Prior to this period, landlords (or their agents) acting as ex-ofWcio guardians occupied the positions of chairman, vice-chairman and deputy vice-chairman on the vast majority of boards. By 1886 elected, tenant guardians made up 50 per cent of ofWce holders, compared to just 12 per cent in

6 See Maria Luddy, ‘Religion, Philanthropy and the State in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Ireland’, in Hugh Cunningham and Joanna Innes (eds.), Charity, Philanthropy and Reform from the 1690s to 1850 (Basingstoke, 1998). See also Virginia Crossman, Local Government in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Belfast, 1994). 7 Sixth Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners for England and , P.P., 1840 (245), xvii, 24. 8 Freeman’s Journal, 1 Mar. 1881; United Ireland, 4 Feb. 1882. Dublin Castle was the seat of government in Ireland. THE NEW ROSS WORKHOUSE RIOT OF 1887 139 1877.9 The shift in power on many Poor Law boards was to produce a far more politicized and polarized system: elected guardians seeking to protect the interests of tenants and advance the cause of were ranged against ex- ofWcio guardians seeking to protect the interests of landlords and defend the Union. It was also to bring nationalist guard- ians into conXict with the . At the time of the introduction of the Poor Law system to Ireland, respon- sibility for its supervision and regulation was entrusted to the Poor Law Commissioners in London ‘with a view to insure regularity’.10 But a separate Irish Commission was established in 1847, and this was replaced in 1872 by the Irish Local Government Board. Central supervision of the Irish Poor Law boards, as of the English, had a tutelary function. The aim was to provide both guidance for, and a check on, local boards, thus ensuring their adherence to the principles of economy, efWciency and impartiality.11 There was, however, a crucial difference in relation to Ireland. The Irish Poor Law authorities were empowered to dissolve any board of guardians that was failing to discharge its duties, and place the management of the union in the hands of paid ofWcers.12 In the immediate post- Famine period the power of dissolution was rarely used. This was to change in the 1880s. Between 1880 and 1892, fourteen boards were dissolved by the Local Government Board, and a further ten were warned regarding irregular proceedings or violation of the general regulations.13 In this regard 1886, which Feingold took as marking the end of the process of board

9 William L. Feingold, The Revolt of the Tenantry: The Transformation of Local Government in Ireland, 1872–1886 (Boston, 1984), 173–80. 10 Hansard, 3rd ser., xl, col. 1021 (12 Feb. 1838). 11 For England, see Christine Bellamy, Administering Central–Local Relations, 1871–1919: The Local Government Board in its Fiscal and Cultural Context (Manchester, 1988). 12 Under the original legislation of 1838, the Poor Law commissioners were required to order fresh elections following a dissolution. Only if the new board also failed to act effectually could they appoint paid ofWcers. The Poor Law Amend- ment Act of 1847, passed at the height of the Famine, had speeded up this process by providing for the immediate replacement of a board. Forty-two boards were subsequently dissolved, most for failing to collect a sufWcient rate. 1 & 2 Vict., c. 56, §26; 10 & 11 Vict., c. 31, §18; Christine Kinealy, This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine, 1845–52 (Dublin, 1994), 211. 13 Return of the Boards of Poor Law Guardians in Ireland Dissolved or Warned by the Local Government Board for Ireland since and inclusive of the Year 1880, with a Statement of the Reason in Each Case, P.P., 1892 (298), lxviii. 140 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 179 nationalization, represents the opening of a new and more tur- bulent period in the relationship between the nationalized boards and government. Of the fourteen boards dissolved between 1880 and 1892, ten were dissolved in the years after 1886. The winter of 1886–7 saw the inauguration by nationalists of the Plan of Campaign. The combination of bad weather and economic recession left many tenants unable to meet rent demands and led to the re-emergence of agrarian agitation. Like the Land League campaign, the Plan of Campaign was intended to provide a structure and focus for agrarian discontent, whilst at the same time advancing a broader nationalist agenda.14 Under the Plan, tenants in dispute with their landlords over rent levels were to offer what they believed to be a fair rent. If this was refused, the money was to be paid into a fund that could then be used to support tenants evicted in the course of the dispute. One of the key Wgures behind the Plan was William O’Brien, a leading Parnellite and editor of United Ireland. O’Brien used the paper to initiate and then to advance the Plan, reporting on its progress in different parts of the country, and encouraging its prosecution by all possible means. O’Brien had been a keen advocate of the campaign to capture the Poor Law boards in 1881, and he was quick to appreciate the potential of the Poor Law system for advancing the land campaign. An editorial in United Ireland in 1882 had argued that ‘if it were only in the matter of for evicted families, the Poor-law Guardians about to be elected may be made to play a great and inXuential part in the death-grip with landlordism’.15 In the event, the part played by Poor Law guardians in the Land League campaign was not to be as great or inXuential as O’Brien had envisaged, mainly because a key element in the strategy adopted by the League in 1881–2 was for tenants to avoid actual eviction. The policy then in practice, known as ‘rent at the point of a bayonet’, involved withholding rent as long as possible, and paying up on the point of eviction. The Plan of Campaign, on the other hand, required tenants to refuse to pay ‘unreasonable’ rents, thereby courting eviction. Providing support for evicted tenants was thus a more pressing issue during the Plan of Campaign than it had been during the Land League campaign.

14 Philip Bull, Land, Politics and Nationalism: A Study of the Irish Land Question (Dublin, 1996), 101–6. 15 United Ireland, 4 Feb. 1882. THE NEW ROSS WORKHOUSE RIOT OF 1887 141 Boards of guardians sympathetic to the land agitation could assist evicted tenants either by granting them outdoor relief or by accommodating them within the workhouse.16 Outdoor relief could be lawfully provided for one calendar month only. Relief within the workhouse was subject to no Wxed time limit. But if evicted tenants were to utilize the workhouse they needed to be persuaded that their entry would not brand them as paupers or result in a loss of respectability. The workhouse regime was deeply unpopular in Ireland, and entry to the workhouse was associated with lack of independence and non-respectability. As in England, the operation and legitimacy of the Poor Law depended on a distinction being made between poverty and pauperism, and between the respectable and non-respectable classes. Elected Poor Law guardians were drawn predominantly from the strong-farmer class,17 and were deeply imbued with the ideology of respectabil- ity; they viewed pauperism in the same unsympathetic light as the respectable middle classes throughout the United Kingdom. Their approach to the administration of the Poor Law differed from that of ex-ofWcio guardians not in its terms of reference — both groups utilized categories such as the deserving and undeserving poor — but in their deWnition of these terms. The provision of relief to evicted tenants is a good example of this. Ex-ofWcio guardians and government ofWcials condemned the granting of relief to tenants evicted for non-payment of rent as contrary to both the spirit and, in many cases, the letter of the Poor Law. Recipients of relief were alleged to be ‘in good circumstances’, they were being supported even though they were ‘idle’, and as such their example was ‘demoralising’.18 It was ‘manifestly unjust’, an ex-ofWcio guardian complained to

16 Under the 1838 Act, all relief was to be provided in the workhouse. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1847 permitted guardians to grant outdoor relief under certain, very limited, circumstances. These circumstances were extended in 1848 to include people made destitute by eviction. See 10 & 11 Vict., c. 31; General Order of the Poor Law Commissioners for Regulating the Administration of Outdoor Relief (Dublin, 1847); 11 & 12 Vict., c. 47, §4. 17 ‘Strong farmers’ were tenant farmers holding Wfty or more acres of land. This group had substantially increased following the Famine, since land vacated by the many thousands of small tenant-farmers and labourers who had died or emigrated was consolidated into larger units. 18 W. Monsell to T. H. Burke, 18 July 1881: NAI, CSORP, 1881/26500; Monthly Report of County Inspector T. F. Singleton, 2 Oct. 1888: NAI, Crime Branch Special, DCCI, Carton 4; evidence of Col. G. C. Spaight (Local Government Inspector), Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Poor Law Guardians (Ireland) Bill, P.P., 1884–5 (297), x, 74. 142 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 179 the Local Government Board in 1886, that people who had voluntarily given up their livelihood ‘should become a burthen on the rates’.19 In nationalist eyes, however, evicted tenants were not responsible for their own misfortune. They were the victims of landlordism, and as martyrs to the cause they were more than deserving: they had a special entitlement to support. In January 1882 the chair of the Longford Board of Guardians had declared that he would be in favour of giving aid to the families of evicted tenants, even when they did not qualify for it under the Poor Law acts ‘more than those who had always had it, who were mendicants’.20 This approach was supported by nationalist newspapers such as the Nation, which declared in February 1888 that it was the duty of Poor Law guardians ‘to interpose the shield of charity between ravaging landlordism and its victims’.21 Both sides in this debate utilized concepts of morality and entitlement, though to very different ends. The board of guardians of the New Ross Union was one of those that had undergone the process that Feingold termed ‘nationalization’. In 1877 the board’s three ofWcers had consisted of two landlord representatives and one tenant. By 1882 only one landlord ofWcer remained, and by 1886 all three ofWces were in the hands of tenants. The board of the neighbouring Wexford Union had undergone a similar transformation.22 The tenants who Wlled these ofWces were drawn from the strong- farmer class and many were active members of the National League. Michael M‘Grath, for example, the deputy vice-chair of the New Ross Board, was treasurer of the Ramsgrange branch of the National League. As the power of the elected, tenant guardians grew, so the attendance of ex-ofWcio guard- ians at board meetings declined. An ofWcial return in 1888 revealed that, on average, just two of the thirty-two ex-ofWcio guardians of Wexford Union attended board meetings.23 Tenant

19 Lt. Gen. Lord Clarina to Secretary of the Local Government Board, 21 June 1886: NAI, CSORP, 1886/11762. 20 United Ireland, 28 Jan. 1882. A member of the Athy Board professed in 1887 that he believed evicted tenants to be ‘objects of compassion a great deal more than the ordinary recipients of relief’: Kildare Observer, 4 June 1887. 21 Nation, 11 Feb. 1888. 22 Feingold, Revolt of the Tenantry, 196–200. 23 Return Showing the Number of Meetings Held by the Board of Guardians of Each Union and the Average Attendance of Ex OfWcio Guardians during the Year Ended 30 September 1887: NAI, CSORP, 1889/3812. Comparable Wgures were not available for New Ross since the union was in the hands of vice-guardians. THE NEW ROSS WORKHOUSE RIOT OF 1887 143 guardians were thus free to run their unions as they saw Wt, without opposition or obstruction from the ex-ofWcios. In the summer of 1886 the elected guardians of New Ross embarked on a course of action that was to have potentially far-reaching consequences. They decided actively to support the prosecu- tion of the Plan of Campaign on a number of local estates. In March 1886 tenants on Lord Templemore’s property had announced their determination ‘to throw their farms upon the landlord’s hands’, if their demands for a substantial reduction in rent were not met. They would then ‘take up their quarters in the New Ross Union workhouse, and allow Lord Templemore the gratiWcation of paying the cost for their maintenance’. This plan appears to have been devised by Canon Thomas Doyle, parish priest of Ramsgrange and president of the Ramsgrange branch of the National League. Doyle was well known as a local leader of the Land League, and had remained active within nationalist politics. As chair of the meeting at which the tenants decided on their course of action, Doyle called on the guardians of the New Ross Union to prepare ample and comfortable, aye, and cheerful accommodation for those who are to go in [to the workhouse]. Let them Wt up the number of wards required in the best style, with the nicest beds they can procure for cash, and at once enter into a contract with the butchers, bakers, and wine-merchants for a plentiful supply of all creature comforts.24 Aware of the social stigma associated with entry to the work- house, Doyle went out his way to assure the tenants that their standing in the community would not suffer. It was, he reminded them, ‘considered an honour to go to Kilmainham [Gaol, where Parnell had been imprisoned in 1881]’, and ‘on this occasion it will be a still greater honour to go into the workhouse for the advancement of this great cause’.25 The tenants achieved their objective without leaving their properties when Lord Templemore agreed to a rent reduction of 25 per cent. A few months later Doyle encouraged tenants of the marquess of Ely to hold out for a similar reduction.26 They did so, and in August 1886 were evicted from their properties for non-payment of rent. The evictions were strongly condemned at a meeting of the Ramsgrange National League, and a resolution was passed calling

24 People, 10 Mar. 1886. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., 5 May 1886. 144 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 179 on the New Ross Board of Guardians to prepare a special ward for the tenants’ reception. As a mark of respect for their resistance to landlord tyranny, the people of southern Wexford were asked to accompany the tenants to the workhouse. On 23 August the eleven families (some Wfty people in total) left their homes at Fethard to travel the sixteen miles to New Ross. They made the journey seated in wagons, accompanied by a large crowd of supporters and a number of brass bands.27 Given the emphasis placed on the sacriWce being made by the tenants, the purpose of this procession may have been partly to stiffen their resolve. Special arrangements were made to accommodate the tenants in the workhouse. According to the master, William Harrington, this had initially been necessary to cope with the sudden inXux of people. Further relaxation of workhouse rules had then been introduced ‘by special directions of the Guardians who visited the house and made arrangements for [the tenants’] admission and treatment’.28 Unlike other inmates, the tenants were allowed to wear their own clothes, to stay together as families in separate apartments, and to cook food brought for them by supporters. They were also entertained on a number of occa- sions by brass bands, and were ‘visited frequently and condoled in their trouble by a committee of the Ladies of New Ross’.29 The action of the Ely tenants attracted much comment in the press. While the Conservative St James Gazette deplored the ‘decadence of that spirit which made entrance to the poorhouse to the more decent of the farmers and labourers a humiliation bitter as death’, the Nation welcomed an addition to the move- ment’s ‘stock of strategic information’, and commended this method of proceeding ‘to the consideration of all the National League ofWcials’.30 United Ireland saw ‘no reason why the New Ross idea should not be extensively imitated’. The Ely tenants had done as much to popularize the workhouse ward, an editorial

27 Ibid., 18 Aug. 1886; 25 Aug. 1886. 28 Admission Wgures show that in the week of the tenants’ admission there were 433 people in the workhouse compared to 338 the previous year: Wexford County Library (hereafter WCL), New Ross Union Minute Books (hereafter NRUMB), July–Dec. 1886, 141; William Harrington to Chairman of Board of Guardians, 13 Nov. 1886: ibid., 350. 29 The establishment of a Ladies Committee, drawn from the women of the town, had been suggested by Canon Doyle, with reference to the committees formed by the ‘patriotic women of Ireland’, in order to visit and sustain those imprisoned during the Land League years: People, 4 Sept. 1886. 30 St James Gazette, quoted in Nation, 11 Sept. 1886. THE NEW ROSS WORKHOUSE RIOT OF 1887 145 declared, as nationalist prisoners had done ‘to rob the prison cell of its lugubrious associations. It is disgraceful to enter the workhouse as a loafer; it is in the highest degree honourable to occupy it as an encampment against landlordism’.31 In their reporting of the tenants’ situation, nationalist papers were at pains to rebut allegations appearing in publications such as the Times that the tenants were reluctant martyrs to the cause. Inter- viewed in the People, one of the tenants, Thomas M‘Namara, rejected these allegations as ‘quite false’. All the tenants, he insisted, were determined to stay until they had taught the land- lord’s agent, Godfrey Taylor, to ‘act justly’.32 United Ireland printed a colour supplement that included a picture of the tenants at dinner in the ‘Ward of Honour’ being waited on by the nuns. The presence of the nuns, who worked in the inWrmary where the tenants were initially housed, provided a powerful endorse- ment of the righteousness of the tenants’ cause, and of their respectability. Writing to the People in February 1887, Doyle was to claim that ‘the holy sisters who have care for the poor only felt too happy in being afforded this opportunity of consoling these oppressed people’.33 The picture emphasized more plainly than any words both the extent to which the workhouse regime had been adapted to accommodate the tenants, and the fact that they were neither perceived nor treated as ordinary workhouse inmates. Despite the amount of space being devoted to the New Ross workhouse and its inmates in the press, the Local Government Board took no ofWcial notice of the situation. A local government inspector, Edmund Bourke, had visited the workhouse on 27 August, four days after the Ely tenants had been admitted. His report made no mention of them, remarking only on the satis- factory nature of the general management and condition of the workhouse. It was not until Bourke visited the workhouse again on 25 October and reported that he had found Wve able-bodied male inmates living in the inWrmary and being provided with foodstuffs which they cooked in their wards, that the Local Government Board sought an explanation from the guardians. Seeing a report of the Local Government Board’s action in the

31 United Ireland, 18 Sept. 1886. 32 Times, 28 Sept 1886; 30 Sept. 1886; People, 2 Oct. 1886. 33 United Ireland, 2 Oct. 1886; People, 5 Feb. 1887. 146 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 179 press, a Wexford landowner, Lieutenant Colonel Hewitson, notiWed the board that the enquiry should be a much more extended one. It is not Wve inmates of the New Ross Workhouse that are treated in an exceptional manner; but nearly Wfty men, women and children . . . None of them were destitute, very far from it, and I am informed that they have not to conform to the rules of the Workhouse; they wear their own clothes, get special food, can go in and out as they like . . . According to my idea the whole matter is a gross abuse of the Acts . . . and I protest against paying rates perfectly unnecessary and expenses incurred simply for political purposes.34 The guardians’ initial response to the Local Government Board’s enquiry was a conciliatory one. Whilst afWrming the tenants’ entitlement to ‘special treatment on account of [their] being so suddenly cast out of comfortable homes’, the guardians assured the board that they were now conforming to workhouse rules, ‘except in the matter of some triXing privileges known to and approved by the Guardians’. These privileges included the supply of ‘comforts’ from supporters outside the workhouse, a practice that the guardians defended as incurring ‘no expense to the ratepayers’, and as being ‘customary in all the Unions we know of’. The Local Government Board took a different view, observing that ‘distinguishing certain paupers by granting them privileges which are not enjoyed by others of the same class is entirely at variance with the proper administration of the Poor Laws and cannot be permitted to continue’. The Board ordered the guardians to instruct the master ‘to enforce the rules strictly’, threatening to remove him if he failed to do so.35 When the guardians met on 11 December they had before them the ultimatum from the Local Government Board, a letter of resignation from the master, and a report from the board of guardians’ visiting committee. The committee was made up of Wve of the elected guardians, and included the chair of the board (William Kelly) and the deputy vice-chair (Michael M‘Grath). In their report the committee noted that on their recent inspection of the workhouse they had found the wards to be ‘clean and in excellent order’, with the exception of those

34 Letter of Local Government Board, 29 Oct. 1886: WCL, NRUMB, July– Dec. 1886, 308; H. A. Hewitson to Secretary of the Local Government Board, 6 Nov. 1886: ibid., 349. 35 Resolution of the Board of Guardians, 13 Nov. 1886: ibid., 351; Resolution, 27 Nov. 1886: ibid., 390–1; W. D. Wodsworth (Secretary of Local Government Board) to Clerk of New Ross Union, 9 Dec. 1886: ibid., 429–30. THE NEW ROSS WORKHOUSE RIOT OF 1887 147 occupied by the evicted families, ‘which we consider quite inadequate for their health and comfort’. The committee recommended that two wards, one male and one female, be ‘exclusively set apart’ for the evicted families, which were ‘not to be locked during the day time’. They further recommended that the master should be ordered ‘to allow the evicted families to keep their clothes in the wards and if necessary to wear them if their health require it’.36 It is clear from the visiting commit- tee’s report that the elected guardians were still anxious to make conditions inside the workhouse as bearable as possible for the evicted tenants. This aim was directly contrary to that of the Local Government Board and indeed to the Poor Law itself. Poor Law regulations were framed so as to render life inside the workhouse less comfortable than that outside, the intention being to ensure that people would only enter the workhouse if they had no alternative and would leave again as soon as possible. The guardians were aiming to subvert the Poor Law in this respect by ensuring minimum standards of comfort, thus enabling the tenants to remain as long as they needed. They were not seeking to improve conditions in the workhouse generally. The state of the wards might be ‘inad- equate’ for the ‘health and comfort’ of the evicted families, but it was judged to be perfectly adequate for the ordinary inmates. As the People observed, the tenants had been ‘allowed privileges their respectability entitled them to’.37 It was not suggested that such privileges should be extended to the non-respectable. The conXict between the guardians and the Local Government Board had placed the master in a very difWcult position, as his resignation indicates. Like most workhouse masters, Harrington appears to have enforced some regulations more strictly than others. With the attention of the Local Government Board focused on the administration of the workhouse, such latitude was no longer possible. The ultimatum from the Local Government Board, in con- junction with the master’s resignation, left the guardians with few options. Aware that they would not be permitted to provide any special treatment for the evicted families, they abandoned all attempts at conciliation and adopted a policy of deWance. Challenging the board to send down vice-guardians, the guardians

36 Report of the Visiting Committee, read 11 Dec. 1886: ibid., 426–7. 37 People, 15 Dec. 1886. 148 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 179 declared their determination ‘to refuse to treat persons who have been rendered homeless and destitute by the tyranny of a brainless agent as ordinary paupers’. On receiving the guard- ians’ response, the Local Government Board dissolved the board and appointed vice-guardians to manage the union.38 The master declined a request from the vice-guardians to with- draw his resignation. Harrington was well aware that they would insist on the strict enforcement of Poor Law regulations, and, as he explained to the People, he was not prepared to enforce ‘minor rules which never interfered with good manage- ment but caused great hardship to the poor’.39 The guardians had already discussed tactics in the event of their dissolution, and now, with the support of the National League, embarked on a campaign of open deWance of the Local Government Board. Ratepayers were called on not to pay any poor rates ‘so long as the Union is managed by the representatives of Dublin Castle’.40 Resistance to the new regime was also encouraged within the workhouse. On 8 January, Harrington’s Wnal day as master, four of the elected guardians accompanied him in making a farewell tour of the workhouse, starting in the nursery. Harrington asked the women there to be kind to the wives of the Ely tenants, observ- ing that the elected guardians ‘would remember it to you when they come in again’. Michael M‘Grath then addressed the women on behalf of the elected guardians. He reminded them of the disturbances that had taken place when vice-guardians had last been in charge of the union during the Famine, and encouraged them, ‘if you are harshly treated’, to ‘do the same thing’. When the men Wnally departed it was reported to be to cries of, ‘Down with Landlordism’, ‘To h—l with the vice guardians’, and ‘we’ll give them what they got in ’47’.41 By appealing to the women in this way M‘Grath began to blur the distinction that the elected guardians and their supporters had previously established between the families of the evicted

38 Resolution of Board of Guardians, 11 Dec. 1886: WCL, NRUMB, July–Dec. 1886, 430; Sealed Order of Local Government Board, 14 Dec. 1886: ibid., 448–9. The resolution was adopted unanimously. 39 People, 15 Jan. 1887. 40 Ibid., 8 Jan. 1887. 41 Ibid., 15 Jan. 1887. In November 1847 a crowd of around three hundred people had threatened to attack the workhouse unless they were provided with either food or employment: see Kinealy, This Great Calamity, 202. THE NEW ROSS WORKHOUSE RIOT OF 1887 149 tenants and the ordinary inmates of the workhouse. The inmates had until now been presented as people with whom the tenants should not be expected to mix. They were, moreover, represented as being politically compromised by their pauper- ism which rendered them dependent on the state or on the charity of the landed class. The People, for example, had maintained that it was ‘the duty of the Guardians to decline to submit to an order compelling the children of respectable parents to sleep in wards with the illegitimate offspring of the most infamous class in the community — the land thieves’.42 By encouraging the pauper inmates to be disruptive, the elected guardians were now offering them an active role in the political struggle. Under the vice-guardians’ administration, Poor Law regu- lations were closely adhered to and expenditure, particularly on outdoor relief, was reduced. Steps were taken to intro- duce a stricter classiWcation of inmates and to separate women deemed to be of bad character from other female inmates in the workhouse. On 9 February the vice-guardians ordered that mothers of two or more illegitimate children were to be placed by themselves in the wing previously occupied by the women and girls generally. Married women and children were to have their own quarters, as were the girls.43 The action of the vice-guardians followed established practice and also addressed one of the main complaints made on behalf of the evicted tenants, that they were being forced to mix with the pauper inmates. The People had com- plained in early January that the vice-guardians were deliberately trying ‘to make the workhouse as uncomfortable as possible for the unfortunate evicted tenants, and to degrade those decent people to the lowest level’. They had ‘aimed their Wrst blow at the respectable wives of the tenants by making them mix with the very dregs of society — mothers of illegitimate children and prostitutes’. In the view of the Nation, compelling the wives and sisters of ‘sturdy farmers . . . to sleep in dormitories set apart for the most disreputable

42 People, 24 Nov. 1886. 43 Order of the Vice-Guardians, 24 Dec. 1886: WCL, NRUMB, July–Dec. 1886, 489; Order, 13 Apr. 1887: ibid., Jan.–June 1887, 287; Order, 9 Feb. 1887: ibid.,109. 150 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 179 female characters in the house’ constituted ‘a scandal that must not be tolerated’.44 The reference to ‘sturdy farmers’ is interesting here, since the tenants were not in fact ‘sturdy farmers’. They were not land- holders at all, but rather household tenants who worked as tradesmen and labourers. The tenants’ economic status had become a point of issue in public discussion of the case, dem- onstrating, according to Unionist writers, the ‘utter absurdity of the claim put forward by the “Nationalists” that their move- ment is a fair and just one, based upon agricultural grievance alone’. Supporters of the tenants dismissed this point, arguing that even if they were not landholders themselves, they were economically dependent on the agricultural population sur- rounding them.45 By promoting the tenants to the status of farmers, the Nation was effectively maximizing sympathy for their plight — the greater their social status, the greater their sacriWce — as well as glossing over the issue of their relation- ship to the land question. While its readers could be expected to identify with the wives and sisters of ‘sturdy farmers’, the thought of the wives and sisters of tradesmen and labourers being obliged to mix with disreputable characters was unlikely to provoke much outrage. The segregation of certain categories of paupers within the workhouse was intended to promote discipline and to prevent moral contagion. Since the 1850s particular emphasis had been placed on keeping women of ‘bad character’ away from women of good character and young girls. Local guardians were, however, allowed considerable discretion in this matter, for, as the Secretary of the Local Government Board had observed in 1880, while it is an object of great importance to prevent innocent persons from being corrupted by association with the incurably vicious, it is scarcely less desirable to avoid adoption of a system which might conWrm tendencies in those who would be led by the regularity and industry of a well-conducted workhouse establishment to amend their lives.46

44 People, 8 Jan. 1887; Nation, 15 Jan. 1887. United Ireland commented that this was ‘the British system all over — trying to degrade political offenders of stainless life by associating them with the foulest dregs of society’: 15 Jan. 1887. 45 Notes from Ireland, 9 Oct. 1886. 46 B. Banks (Secretary of Local Government Board), to Clerk of Wexford Union, 2 July 1880: NAI, CSORP, 1883/7984. THE NEW ROSS WORKHOUSE RIOT OF 1887 151 This approach was based on the assumption that the local knowledge of guardians and ofWcials would allow them to make informed decisions in individual cases. The difWculty facing the vice-guardians was that neither they nor the new master, McAuliffe, had any local knowledge. It was normal practice to appoint vice-guardians who had no connection with the union to which they were being sent, and McAuliffe came from Wexford Town some thirty miles from New Ross. Their approach to the classiWcation of inmates may, therefore, have been more rigid than that normally applied, exacerbating ill-feeling and unrest within the workhouse. Accounts of the February riot and its aftermath suggest that the rioters were principally drawn from the pauper and non- respectable inmates of the workhouse. Police reports, for example, refer to a male ‘pauper’ who had taken a prominent part in the riot, and to a female rioter who was subsequently arrested in the town for being drunk and disorderly.47 Moreover, the behaviour of the female rioters, as evidenced by their shouting, their exuberance and their removing their clothes in order to avoid arrest,48 was not the behaviour of ‘respectable’ women. It was the behaviour of women who were quite deliberately exploiting their exclusion from respectability. The successful administration of a workhouse required a level of consent on the part of inmates. In order to achieve this, workhouse ofWcers needed to adopt a Xexible approach to statutory regulations, such as that outlined by Harrington (above). The actions of the vice-guardians in imposing a stricter interpretation of rules and regulations, including classiWcation, combined with the resig- nation of most of the workhouse ofWcers,49 had the effect of causing some of the inmates to withdraw their consent. The riot can thus be seen as a protest against the modiWcation of agreed codes of discipline and behaviour that operated within

47 Report of DI Cary, 19 Feb. 1887: NAI, CSORP, 1887/11223. 48 The Freeman’s Journal reported that having shut themselves up in a ward in the male division of the workhouse, a number of the young girls had used hot water, ‘stirabout, and other means of defence . . . to resist arrest’, adding that it was said that the girls had ‘stripped naked’ so that if the police succeeded in entering the ward, ‘they could get into the beds’: 19 Feb. 1887. 49 Seven union ofWcials including the matron of the workhouse had resigned their posts the day before the riot took place, in accordance with a resolution passed at a National League convention held in New Ross the previous week: Report of DI Cary, 16 Feb. 1887: NAI, CSORP, 1887/11223; People, 12 Feb. 1887; Wexford Independent, 19 Feb. 1887. 152 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 179 the workhouse. In encouraging the pauper women to resist the vice-guardians, and to create a disturbance if they were harshly treated, the elected guardians were acknowledging their ability to be disruptive as well as recognizing the conditions that might lead to disorderly behaviour.50 The riot drew attention to the deWciencies of the vice-guardians’ administration, and thus provided good propaganda for the elected guardians. However, it also shifted the focus of atten- tion away from the evicted tenants and onto the pauper inmates, and revealed a contradiction at the heart of the elected guardians’ campaign. This was variously presented as being on behalf of the ratepayers of New Ross, the evicted tenants, the poor, and the nation, but the interests of these groups did not necessarily coincide. Not only was it unclear on whose behalf the campaign was being waged, the ultimate objective was also ambiguous. Some saw the campaign as undermining the Poor Law system. An editorial in United Ireland, for example, predicted that ‘the New Ross ratepayers, in avenging the outrage perpetrated on their representatives, will end by disen- cumbering the country of the whole hateful Poor Law system, with its wasteful expenditure and overfed Bumbledom’.51 National League activists, on the other hand, saw themselves as locked in battle not just with the Local Government Board and the landlords, but with the British government itself . . . If we are able to win in the struggle it will be a far greater victory than a victory over a landlord — it will be a victory over Dublin Castle . . . If we make any sort of a Wght now you may depend upon it that it will be many a long day before government will throw down the gauntlet to one Board of Guardians again for polit- ical reasons.52 In the months after the riot the elected guardians concen- trated their efforts on maintaining the rates strike and the boy- cott of the vice-guardians. Anticipating serious difWculties with the collection of rates, the Local Government Board applied in March 1887 for a substantial police presence to protect the rate collectors and bailiffs. The ensuing operation was regarded as a

50 Young women were regarded as particularly troublesome inmates of institu- tions. See Dympna McLoughlin, ‘SuperXuous and Unwanted Deadweight: The Emigration of Nineteenth-Century Irish Pauper Women’, in Patrick O’Sullivan (ed.), Irish Women and Irish Migration (Leicester, 1995). 51 United Ireland, 12 Feb. 1887. 52 John Cummins, Secretary of the Ramsgrange branch of the National League, speaking at a National League convention at New Ross: People, 30 Mar. 1887. THE NEW ROSS WORKHOUSE RIOT OF 1887 153 success, having passed off quietly and with payments being made in most cases, even though the cost to the authorities exceeded the amount obtained.53 By the summer it was clear that, although some ratepayers were refusing payment (around six hundred people were struck off the voters’ register for the New Ross Union for non-payment),54 many people had paid. The boycott appears to have been more widely enforced than the strike. The union bank account had to be transferred from the National Bank to the Bank of Ireland and union ofWcials were forced to travel out of the county to obtain supplies for the workhouse.55 Maintaining the rates strike became more difWcult following the departure of the evicted tenants from the workhouse in early June. The tenants’ situation had attracted little media attention in the months following the riot, and with communication between workhouse inmates and people outside being severely restricted, the tenants were effectively isolated. A decision by the vice-guardians on 1 June to discharge four of the evicted tenants as ‘being able-bodied men who should have no difWculty in obtaining employment’, prompted the entire party (with the exception of two people who were sick) to quit the workhouse and return to Fethard.56 Their departure was not reported in the nationalist press. Local nationalists were under- standably annoyed by the tenants’ action. Police reports noted that Canon Doyle had publicly denounced the tenants, claiming that they had left the workhouse against advice, and calling on people not to associate with them.57 Opposition to the vice- guardians continued, but public appetite for the Wght was waning. When the question of continuing support for the rates strike was discussed by the New Ross on

53 Henry Robinson to Balfour, 19 Mar. 1887: NAI, CSORP, 1887/11223; Report of County Inspector Jones, 20 Mar. 1887: ibid. According to government Wgures the operation cost around £127, and netted around £80: Hansard, 3rd ser., cccxiii, cols. 213–14 (1 Apr. 1887). 54 People, 3 Aug. 1887. 55 Resolution of Vice-Guardians, 2 Mar. 1887: WCL, NRUMB, Jan.–June 1887, 167; Notes in Minutes, 11 May, 28 May 1887: ibid., 382, 442; Report of DI Gam- ble, 5 May 1887: NAI, CSORP, 1887/11223. This situation inevitably impacted upon the poor. A reporter for the People described meeting a number of distressed people at the gate of the workhouse who had not received relief for some weeks because the relieving ofWcers were unable either to obtain food or to cash cheques: People, 19 Feb. 1887; see also 25 May 1887. 56 Order of Vice-Guardians, 1 June 1887: WCL, NRUMB, Jan.–June 1887, 470. 57 Report by DI Gamble, 11 June 1887: NAI, CSORP, 1887/11223. 154 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 179 28 July, one commissioner, Patrick Tierney, argued that there was now no reason to continue the strike. ‘Everyone in the Union’, he observed, ‘would be glad this thing was settled . . . the cause of the disturbance is removed, and the affair can be settled’.58 At the beginning of August, Doyle ofWcially called off both the rates strike and the boycott of the tenants, observing bitterly in a letter to the People that the only regrettable circumstance in this whole affair is that the miser- able creatures proved themselves utterly unworthy of an honour that O’Connell or Charles Stewart Parnell might be proud to receive — to be surrounded, cheered, and applauded by 70,000 Wexford, and men. Such a compliment should have made cowards brave.59 Far from stressing the respectability of the tenants, Doyle now drew attention to their lack of social status, pointing out that most of them ‘had better food and clothes in the workhouse than they had at home’. Even though victory had been ‘within their grasp . . . they preferred to skulk home, a sham and a disgrace to their native village’.60 By the beginning of the following year the Ely tenants had been readmitted to the nationalist community. Their rehabili- tation was made possible by the decision of Lord Ely to offer them a 50 per cent reduction on all rents due. This was consid- erably more than the 25 per cent originally requested, but as the tenants were no longer part of the Plan of Campaign, Ely was able to settle with them without appearing to be giving in to the Plan. Wexford nationalists claimed victory. At a meeting at on 1 January 1888, public congratulations were extended to the tenants upon ‘their splendid victory . . . over landlordism’. One speaker expressed the hope that none of the ‘brave Ely tenants should be at a loss for the sacriWces they have nobly made for the sake of principle and the cause of their fellow tenants’.61 The lifting of the rates strike allowed the government to return the administration of the Union to the board of guardians following the Poor Law elections in 1888. There was some concern amongst local nationalists about the elections, possibly fearing a backlash from ratepayers. In the event the ratepayers were not given the opportunity to express

58 People, 30 July 1887. 59 Ibid., 6 Aug. 1887. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 18 Jan. 1888. THE NEW ROSS WORKHOUSE RIOT OF 1887 155 an opinion since no opposition was offered to National League candidates, and all the old guardians for New Ross (with two exceptions) were elected unopposed.62 Despite the exhortations in the nationalist press, the strategy of encouraging evicted tenants to enter the workhouse was not widely imitated. Following the initial publicity surrounding the Ely tenants, boards of guardians in at least four other unions had arranged to set aside a special ward to accommodate evicted tenants and to provide a special diet, but these wards were never utilized. The Local Government Board attributed this to warnings that it had issued to the boards that workhouse rules could not be varied for political reasons.63 More to the point perhaps, tenants had shown little sign of wishing to take advantage of the arrangements made. Utilizing the workhouse as a refuge for evicted tenants proved ineffective as a policy for a number of reasons. It was dependent on the infringement of workhouse regulations, and the Local Government Board had the power to dissolve boards of guardians that acted in this way. Evicted tenants were reluctant to enter the workhouse due to its association with pauperism, and there was insufWcient public support for a campaign focused on the workhouse and workhouse inmates. Although nationalist activists attempted to play down the signiWcance of the social and economic status of the Ely tenants, it would appear that this was a crucial factor. The relative poverty of the tenants, and their relatively low social status, meant that they had less to lose from entering the workhouse. Despite the public references to the sacriWce being made by the tenants, nationalist activists such as Doyle clearly believed that the tenants were beneWting materially from being in the workhouse. This would not have been the case had they been landholders. There was, therefore, something disingenu- ous about the calls to adopt this policy more widely. It was a policy that was only suitable for a certain class of tenant.64

62 Ibid., 3 Mar. 1888; 7 Mar. 1888. 63 Memorandum as to the Administration of Local Governing Bodies in Ireland, 2 Apr. 1892: NAI, CSORP, 1892/4813; see also United Ireland, 16 Oct. 1886; 6 Nov. 1886. The four unions were Fermoy, Kanturk, Millstreet and Mallow. 64 An editorial in United Ireland on 27 November 1886 had implicitly acknow- ledged this, when it recommended granting evicted tenants outdoor rather than indoor relief unless there ‘should arise any special local pressure which would make it advisable to utilize the Wards of Honour’. 156 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 179 The national leadership of the Plan of Campaign remained noticeably silent about events in New Ross. The only MP publicly to support the rates strike appears to have been T. M. Healy.65 This reticence reXected the less than cordial relationship between the national leadership and local activists in Wexford. In March 1886 the national secretary of the League, , had been obliged temporarily to dissolve a number of local branches in for passing resolutions calling for the boycotting of ‘objectionable’ people. Examples of such resolutions, Harrington had warned, were being collected by the Loyal and Patriotic Union and ‘served up for the British public and the House of Commons where they have a most prejudicial effect upon the prospects of our cause’. If he could not suppress them, he had determined that he would ‘at least separate the general organization from them’.66 The campaign against the vice-guardians was and remained a local initiative. Despite being taken up by national- ist newspapers, the cause of the evicted tenants was not, as the editor of the People had originally hoped, ‘adopted and fought by the Central Committee of the National ’.67 Feingold maintained that the position of the nationalist guardians ‘on the Local Government Board was clear: as the representative of British rule, the board’s authority was to be opposed and obstructed whenever possible’.68 This article has presented a more complex picture. Nationalist guardians were aware that if they wished to retain the management of union affairs in their own hands, they should avoid open conXict with the board. The elected guardians of New Ross initially

65 Hansard, 3rd ser., cccxx, col. 698 (31 Aug. 1887). A number of MPs, includ- ing , who represented North Wexford, attended National League meetings and conventions at which the campaign against the vice-guardians was discussed. But they do not appear to have referred to the campaign in their own speeches. See, for example, the report of a meeting in on 16 January addressed by , John Redmond and William Redmond: People, 19 Jan. 1887. 66 Harrington to Wexford branches of the National League, 9 Mar. 1886: National Library of Ireland, ‘Proofs of Letters from Timothy Harrington as Secre- tary of the Irish National League, 1883–1888’, 42; Harrington to Rev. P. M. Furlong, 22 Mar. 1886: ibid., 53. Although the Ramsgrange branch of the League avoided censure, Harrington believed meetings held under Canon Doyle’s presi- dency to have been ‘just as bad’ as those that had prompted dissolution: ibid.; see also People, 20 Mar. 1886. 67 People, 10 Mar. 1886. 68 Feingold, Revolt of the Tenantry, 181. THE NEW ROSS WORKHOUSE RIOT OF 1887 157 attempted to meet the board’s objections to their treatment of the Ely tenants. It was only when it became clear that the board was not prepared to allow the guardians any latitude that they adopted a more militant stance. For their part, the ofWcials of the Local Government Board were reluctant to intervene in union affairs unless regulations were being openly and deliber- ately Xouted. The ultimate sanction of dissolution was resorted to only in extreme cases. To adopt an inXexible approach would have threatened the operation of the entire system. Having turned a blind eye to the arrangements made in New Ross workhouse, the board intervened only after the arrangements had remained in place for some months and the situation was ofWcially brought to their attention. National League activists in County Wexford made use both of the tenants and of the pauper inmates of the workhouse in their prosecution of the Plan of Campaign. The tenants were allowed to join the Campaign because of their willingness to resist payment of rent and to enter the workhouse. The pauper inmates, and pauper women in particular, were enlisted to sup- port the tenants and resist the vice-guardians, because of their willingness to cause disturbance in the workhouse. Unlike the tenants, however, the paupers were never seen or presented as members of the political community. As the coverage of the riot makes clear, they remained outsiders even whilst serving the community’s ends. The disruptive behaviour that signalled their resistance to the vice-guardians also conWrmed their lack of respectability and marginality. Class proved a crucial element in determining the nature and extent of social and political activism. In contemporary accounts, the signiWcance of the riot lay in its link to the political agitation. Nationalists presented it as demonstrating the strength of popular resistance to the vice- guardians. The authorities stressed the role of the elected guardians as instigators of the disturbances, and of the National League as the ultimate authority.69 The riot did provide evidence of communal solidarity, but it also highlighted the difWculty in forging a shared identity. For while the rioters were

69 See, for example, ‘Reports Made by Capt. Slacke in July 1887 Giving Reasons for Recommending the Proclamation of Counties in the South-East Division under the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act 1887’: Public Record OfWce, London, Cabinet Papers, CAB 37/18/41. 158 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 179 able to identify with the plight of the evicted tenants, the tenants were unwilling to identify themselves with their fellow inmates. In theory, membership of the nationalist community was open to all those who adopted its beliefs and tenets. In practice, however, there was a distinction between those such as strong farmers and Catholic priests who were assumed to possess an entitlement to inclusion by virtue of their social and economic status, and those who had to earn that entitlement. The latter group included the poor and Protestants. The Ely tenants were admitted to the nationalist community on suffer- ance, and when they failed to conform to its rules they were publicly excluded. They were only readmitted when they had negotiated a settlement with their landlord that could be repre- sented as a victory for the Plan of Campaign. The tenants had entered the workhouse with their status in terms of nationality and respectability enhanced by their participation in the Plan of Campaign. They were thus clearly distinguished from the pau- per inmates of the workhouse who possessed neither respect- ability nor nationality. When the vice-guardians took over and the elected guardians called on the paupers to support the evicted tenants, the distinction between the two groups became blurred. Ultimately the only way in which the tenants could again distinguish themselves from the pauper inmates was to leave the workhouse. In later years the Local Government Board was to claim credit for preventing boards of guardians from ‘using the workhouses for the purpose of assisting in the working of the Plan of Campaign’.70 In reality this strategy had been buried in the wreckage of the riot.

Staffordshire University Virginia Crossman

70 Memorandum as to Administration by Local Governing Bodies in Ireland, 2 Apr. 1892: NAI, CSORP, 1892/4813.

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