The Hidden Famine Poverty, Hunger and Sectarianism in Belfast 1840–50 Christine Kinealy and Gerard Mac Atasney 2000 Pluto P Press LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA 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 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 10987654321 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 Disclaimer: Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. We would like to dedicate this book to Rita Pearson (d. 1999) and Philip Wilson (d. 1998) Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgements x Introduction 1 Part I The ‘Old’ Poor Law, c.1640–1845 1 An ‘Un-National Town’ 13 The Industrial Capital of Ireland 14 The Athens of the North? 15 Housing and Diet 18 Strategies for Survival 22 A Poor Law for Ireland 24 The Hungry Forties? 32 Part II A National Crisis, c.1845–47 2 A ‘Man-Made Famine’ 39 An Unusual Blight 40 Local Responses 43 ‘Absolute Danger of Starvation’ 46 ‘A District Distinct from Belfast’. Suffering in Ballymacarrett 49 A Divided Society53 3 ‘All the Horrors of Famine’ 57 Belfast in Crisis 57 Protest and Riot 62 ‘Gnawing and Deadly Hunger’ 65 Desolation and Distress Unparalleled 70 ‘The Glorious Principle of Self-Reliance’ 74 Poverty on the Streets 76 4 An Droch-Shaol. Disease and Death in Black ’47 81 Institutional Responses to Disease 82 Fever Follows Famine 86 Great and Peculiar Urgency89 viii THE HIDDEN FAMINE Rising Mortality and Multiple Burials 93 ‘Skibbereen Brought to our Doors’ 95 ‘An Increasing Scarcity of Money’ 97 The Amended Poor Law 99 Judgment upon Our Land 102 Part III A Divided Town 5 Public and Private Responses 109 Government Relief. The Amended Poor Law 110 Private Philanthropy113 Women and Philanthropy120 ‘Thorough Evangelization’ 124 Charity and Conversion 127 The Bible and Protestant Dominion 134 6 Conflict and Rebellion 139 Rising to the Challenge. The Role of the Belfast Workhouse 140 Emigration and Removal 142 ‘Orange and Green Will Carry the Day’ 147 The War of the Placards and the 1848 Uprising 152 The Rate-in-Aid Dispute 158 7 ‘The Crisis is Passed’ 163 The Path to Recovery163 The Cholera Epidemic 168 Orange against Green 171 A Royal Visit 176 8 Aftermath. ‘A Hell below a Hell’ 185 Appendices 193 Notes 210 Further Reading 233 Index 235 List of Illustrations Figures 1 Distress in Ireland. Belfast News-Letter, 8 January 1847 68 2 Fund for the Temporal Relief of the Suffering Poor. Belfast News-Letter, 8 January 1847 69 3 Amateur Performance for the Relief of the Poor in Belfast. Belfast News-Letter, 30 March 1847 74 4 Soup kitchen poster, 1846 76 5 The Ladies of the Industrial Relief Committee and Belfast Bazaar for the Relief of Irish Destitution. Belfast News-Letter, 19 March 1847 115 6 Bazaar for Connaught. Belfast News-Letter, 22 December 1846 116 7 Belfast Ladies’ Association for the Relief of Irish Destitution. Belfast News-Letter, 29 January 1847 121 8 Poster advertising meeting for Irish independence, 1848 155 Maps 1 Poor Law Unions in Ireland, 1842–49 xii 2 Belfast Union, showing location of soup kitchens and relief committees 77 ix Acknowledgements Many people have contributed directly and indirectly to the writing of this book. Friends and colleagues have provided on-going support, especiallyBernadette 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, BobbyLavery,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, Rayand 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. x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi 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, 1 2 THE HIDDEN FAMINE 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.