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 FRANCE OF LOUIS XIV: by David Parker .................................... 60 GRAVESTONES, BELONGING AND LOCAL ATTACHMENT IN ENGLAND 1700–2000: by K. D. M. Snell ...................................... 97 THE NEW ROSS WORKHOUSE RIOT OF 1887: NATIONALISM, CLASS AND THE IRISH POOR LAWS: 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 Wexford, rioted, attacking the master and the paid (vice-)guardians who had been put in charge of the union following the dissolution of the board of guardians 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 Dublin 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 Irish National League; 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 Plan of Campaign 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 Land War 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 Ireland (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 workhouses 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 South Dublin 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 Cork, Waterford and Clonmel.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, Charles Stewart Parnell 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.