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After the potato crop failed for the third time, another wave of emigration and eviction began. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, FEBRUARY 9, 1850
Arise ye dead of Skibbereen
And come to Cork to see the Queen.
—DITTY SUNG IN THE STREETS, 1849
THE YEAR 1848 HAD a hopeful start, but it ended in double disaster. As police were combing the countryside for William Smith O’Brien and other leaders of the failed uprising, farmers and laborers were making a frightful discovery. The dreaded potato blight had returned, as virulent as 1846.
In August, heavy rain caused the blight to spread rapidly. Overnight, field after field of potato plants withered and blackened. Farmers dug the early potatoes and hurried them to market, but it was useless. Even potatoes that appeared healthy when dug soon melted into a stinking, rotten mass. By September, the potato crop was destroyed.
It rained still more throughout September, so heavily that farmers reported their cut hay was floating in the fields. Maggots and Hessian flies multiplied rapidly in the wet weather. The excessive rain caused wheat to sprout on the stalk and produced smut in the oats.
“The potatoes are gone as a crop,” wrote Elizabeth Smith in her diary. “The corn much of it mildewed, and the hay partly uncut and partly lying in swathe under all these heavy showers. The cattle are not thriving. . . . Prospects for the winter are gloomy.”
The winter forecast was worse than gloom. The potato crop failure was a crushing blow to the Irish, but British leaders felt little sympathy. They were furious at the ungrateful people who had dared to rise against them. “We have subscribed, worked, visited, clothed, for the Irish,” wrote Lord John Russell. “The only return is rebellion and calumny. Let us not grant, lend, clothe, any more and see what that will do.” The consensus was that the Irish must take the consequences for their actions.
British leaders halted all extraordinary government relief measures, except for those measures already provided under the Irish Poor Law. They ended loans to the Irish unions and stopped shipments of clothing to the workhouses. If the Irish laborers needed workhouses and public works, let the Irish ratepayers shoulder the costs. To make sure they did, Trevelyan raised the rates.
The increased rates struck fear in the hearts of the rate-paying farmers. If they didn’t pay, they knew that troops and police would seize their property, including whatever healthy grain was left. Without their grain crops, farmers couldn’t pay their rent and faced certain eviction. In fear, many gave up their holdings and fled Ireland while they still had the means to emigrate. “They simply closed the door after them,” explained William Blake. “They had little to bring and could not sell their farms.”
Landlords faced the same dire circumstances. Without rents, they couldn’t pay their rates, and they were in danger of losing their property. Some wished to sell their heavily encumbered estates, but the law required them to pay off all debts first. In despair, many abandoned their property and emigrated, leaving their lands to waste.
The new wave of emigration affected nearly every village and town, as large tracts of land were deserted. Without customers, shopkeepers and merchants closed their doors. City shops were shuttered up and broken windows stuffed with paper. Public houses closed. Notices and handbills were pasted over doors and walls. All over Ireland, the butter, bacon, and cattle trades foundered. Once-busy warehouses stood idle and empty on the quays.
The landlords and large farmers were negatively impacted, but small farmers and laborers suffered most of all. They couldn’t afford to emigrate, since new legislation had increased the cost of passage. They could only suffer as the Poor Laws were strictly enforced. On the public works, older boys and men had to break stones for eight hours each day before they earned one pound of cornmeal. A priest described the workers as “stooping, feeble, ghastly scarecrows.” The labor requirement was later raised to ten hours.
Masses of destitute people were turned away from the workhouses. For some people, jail became a place of refuge, where they were assured of one meal a day. To get arrested, they threw stones at street lamps or through shop windows in plain sight of policemen. Children and teenagers, desperate to leave Ireland, committed crimes and asked to be transported to penal colonies. One boy who got his request explained it this way: “Even if I had chains on my legs, I would have something to eat. Anything is better than starving and sleeping out at night.”
The growing number of young convicts embarrassed British authorities, especially when the governors of penal colonies complained that the children behaved too well to be prisoners. The governors also said it wasn’t fitting for children to mingle with older convicts and to be treated like common criminals. The British government realized that something had to be done.
LAND-GRABBERS
Just when it seemed as though life was hard enough for the farmers and landlords, it got harder. In an effort to even out Ireland’s resources, the government passed the Rate-in-Aid, an act that required the more prosperous Irish unions to contribute financially to the distressed and bankrupt unions.
Ratepayers protested angrily: the rates had already been raised once, and now they were expected to pay more. They argued that it wasn’t fair that Ireland was made to stand alone. They reminded the British government that the Act of Union had joined Britain, Scotland, and Ireland, and the three countries should contribute equally. But their protests fell on deaf ears. The Rate-in-Aid Act passed in May 1849, making Irish unions responsible for £322,000 in rates. It was the equivalent of about 1.5 million dollars.
The British government knew that increased rates weren’t enough to save Ireland. They understood that many landlords did not have the money and could not afford to invest in their property They also knew that many landlords wished to sell their estates.
The British government hoped to encourage wealthy British speculators to buy Irish land and invest money in improvements. They hoped that the new owners would improve the system of agriculture, so that crops other than potatoes would be planted.
To accomplish this, Parliament passed an amended Encumbered Estates Act in July 1849. (An earlier act had been passed in 1848.) Under this revised law, landlords were permitted to sell their estates without first paying off their debts. It also allowed the government to sell encumbered estates, even if landlords did not agree.
Because the value of Irish land had fallen drastically, people eagerly bought up land at bargain prices. To the government’s dismay, new owners were not British, since few British people wanted to invest in a country as ruined as Ireland. Most buyers were wealthy Irish landlords or businessmen.
Other buyers were large farmers, called “land-grabbers.” They bought their neighbor’s land cheap when the neighbor died, emigrated, or was forced to sell his holdings for cash. “‘Grabbing’ was quite common,” said Martin Breathnach, from County Kilkenny “Farmers who had any money to spare were only too ready to approach the landlord or his agent and offer to pay back the rent if they would be given possession.”
The new owners wanted empty land, so that they could expand their dairy and livestock businesses. Ruthlessly, the new owners cleared the tenants from the estates, creating another wave of evictions. “No invader could be more heartless than some of the peoples’ own neighbours,” said Ned Buckley.
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The British government had hoped that the Rate-in-Aid and the Encumbered Estates Acts would reform Ireland, but it didn’t happen. Ireland was too far gone: twenty-two unions were bankrupt. Forty to fifty more unions verged on ruin. Two hundred thousand inmates were crammed into workhouses intended for 114,000. Inmates were fed just enough to avoid death by starvation. Inside and outside the workhouses, people were dying from starvation and disease.
“People were worn out with untold hardship,” said Kathleen Hurley “My father said he saw people dead on the roadside, such sights, their bodies all skin and bones, with bunches of green grass in their mouths, the green juice of the grass tricking down their chins and necks.”
By 1849, Ireland proved too devastated for charities to continue relief operations. Since the blight first struck in 1845, private charities had donated more than one million pounds—nearly five million dollars—toward Irish relief, and now their funds and energy were gone. By June, the Society of Friends also withdrew their help from Ireland. Politely but firmly, they explained that the distress had grown beyond their ability to help. They also said that the British government was capable of raising the money and devising a plan to save Ireland. In all, the Quakers had spent over two hundred thousand pounds—about one million dollars—and countless hours over the Famine years.
CÉAD MÍLE FÁILTE
Lord Clarendon, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, offered an unusual remedy for the country. He suggested that a visit from Queen Victoria might serve as a tonic for the Irish people. He believed that a royal visit might boost Irish morale and stimulate Irish trade.
Clarendon’s idea was remarkable, considering the bitterness harbored by the Irish toward the English and the present state of Ireland. In Britain, Queen Victoria was popular and admired. She was young, now thirty years old, agreeable, and devoted to her husband, Prince Albert, and their six children. But how would the Irish people feel about the queen?
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Lord Clarendon was convinced that she would be popular with the Irish. He believed that they would welcome a royal visit, since it would show that Queen Victoria hadn’t forsaken them. He believed that the Irish would raise their hats to her and shout in Irish, “Céad Míle Fálte” (pronounced KAYD MEAL-uh FALL-chuh), which means “a hundred thousand welcomes.” Lord Clarendon began to make plans for a royal visit in August 1849.
Over the summer, Ireland prepared for the queen’s ten-day visit. Though Lord Clarendon wished to keep expenses down, other officials undertook extravagant preparations. In Dublin, an army of Irish carpenters transformed the old city. They built balconies and tiers of elevated seats so that people could view the royal procession. They constructed triumphal arches through which the royal cortege would pass.
The lord mayor of Dublin planned for the entire city—the windows and the streets—to be illuminated for the queen. Merchants and peddlers sold gas devices, candles, and bucket lamps to light up windows and streets. Homeowners painted and decorated their houses, and shopkeepers washed their windows and set out their richest display of goods. People scrubbed and swept the streets, alleys, and courtyards. “There was never such scrubbing and beautifying, such running to and fro of busy men,” said a reporter.
As the queen’s arrival date grew closer, newspapers published lists of noblemen who arrived daily in Dublin. The city’s milliners, tailors, and dressmakers were kept busy making hats, suits, and gowns for the ladies and gentlemen who hoped to be presented to the queen. Hotels and lodging houses filled up, and people rented out rooms and beds in their homes. They even sold window space to tourists who wanted to watch the royal procession. For security, extra troops were brought in and encamped in Phoenix Park, outside Dublin.
An Irish carriage-maker was commissioned to build an expensive, royal blue carriage to transport the royal family. He painted the royal arms on the panels and lined the interior with royal blue cloth. The royal blue wheels were intertwined with white. “It was an exquisite specimen of Irish manufacture,” declared one newspaper.
Some people criticized the queen’s pending visit. One newspaper editorial pointed out that Queen Victoria would not see the worst areas in Ireland. She would not witness the wretched, starving peasants, the roofless cabins, the evicted tenants, the workhouses crammed with inmates. Others also criticized the extravagant amount of money spent on the preparations, especially as thousands of destitute Irish people lay dying from starvation and disease.
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One man pointed out that nearly every poor family in Dublin had lost a parent or child to disease. “If we have funds to spare, let them be spent not on illuminations but on her Majesty’s starving subjects,” he declared.
Other people, remembering the hundreds of people who had perished in Skibbereen, sang: “Arise ye dead of Skibbereen/And come to Cork to see the Queen.” Some suggested that a funeral procession would offer the best greeting from a famine-striken land.
HER MAJESTY WAS VERY MUCH PLEASED
Excitement won out. On Thursday evening, August 2, crowds lined the Cork harbor. When the royal yacht appeared, warships and batteries shot off cannon in the queen’s honor. Bonfires burned on hilltops, rockets blazed in midair, and the whole town was lit up.
On one estate, overenthusiastic servants used too much tar and kindling wood for their bonfire and accidentally set fire to fourteen acres of fir trees. Unaware of the accident, the queen thought the huge fire burned in her honor. “Her Majesty was very much pleased with the effect,” said a newspaper reporter.
The next morning, the river was filled with steamers, brigs, sloops, and yachts, and thousands of people lined the harbor banks, eager to see the queen and the royal family. As the queen appeared on deck, a band struck the national anthem and everyone sang “God Save the Queen.”
The queen boarded a small tender and toured the Cork harbor, then landed in Cobh. Loud cheers and huzzahs resounded when she set foot on Irish soil. As she stood on a specially built pavilion, she was presented with a pocket handkerchief. It had been embroidered for her by students at the Cork Embroidery School, one of the many industrial schools established for starving children.
The children also made a beautifully worked shirtfront for Prince Albert and a frock for one of the princesses. “The frock was worked by a girl who could not hem when she entered the school two and one-half years ago,” noted a reporter. “It is hoped that the fashionable of Cork will not now be ashamed to wear or purchase articles similar to those admitted into the Royal wardrobe.” Before she departed from Cobh, the queen renamed the town “Queenstown.”
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The royal yacht arrived in Kingstown harbor on Sunday, August 5. The next morning, small boats circled the royal yacht, with passengers waving laurel branches. The queen appeared on deck briefly, wearing a large red plaid shawl and plain straw bonnet. As the crowds cheered, she bowed several times in acknowledgment.
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In Dublin, Queen Victoria attended a banquet at the Vice-Regal Lodge, which had been cleaned up for the occasion. She rode through the city streets in her carriage and passed under the triumphal arches. She watched a huge military exhibition in Phoenix Park and saw spinning and weaving displays at the Linen Hall in Belfast. Though she enjoyed the events, she was most amused when an Irish couple broke into a spontaneous jig, danced to the music of a piper.
It was just as Lord Clarendon had hoped: during the visit, Queen Victoria and the Irish people became enchanted with each other. She said she felt deeply for their suffering. In a letter to her uncle, she noted the thin and ragged people who cheered her each day. “You see more ragged and wretched people here than I ever saw anywhere else,” she wrote. “The women are really very handsome—quite in the lowest class—such beautiful black eyes and hair and such fine colours and teeth.”
The royal visit ended on August 12, when the royal family boarded thei yacht at Kingstown. The Irish people lined the harbor to wave goodbye, and the queen said that she left Ireland with “real regret.”
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For ten days, the royal visit brought pageantry and excitement to Ireland, but the visit had no long-term effects. As the 1849 harvest season approached, the famine was far from over. Victoria, queen of the mightiest empire in the world, could not provide a remedy for Ireland.
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