History In Focus – The Famine, Emigration, And Clare

0:00And at his time for Claire History in focus and joining us as ever is the local historian and author column, Liddy column. Good morning to you. Good morning, Alan. Thanks very much for coming in and we return to the famine. The so much in this obviously given along it went on for and the immense impact it had on on Ireland and our people this week. You're going to focus on the immigration aspect. That's right. So I mean the overall picture was that the entire Irish economy and lifestyle had now been found to be completely unsustainable. You could not, as it was then practiced feed eight, eight and a half million people. Not without the potato. I mean, we have this fanciful notion that we in fact had loads of food. We did not. We relied big time on this magic product that was coming out of the ground, producing trillions of calories, all in its own, you know, with, with to be honest, fairly little labor. Take that out of the equation and you simply cannot feed the Irish population. Now, as well as that, it had provided employment.

1:06So to solve the problem, you would have either needed an entirely new form of agriculture, which would take decades to develop or industrialization. I mean, in other countries, they had industrialized and that obviously led to the people having money to buy other kinds of food. But you can't just do that. I mean, even the British industrial revolution, tip quiet on us, happened by accident. I mean, if they knew what they were doing, they could have done it again. But they didn't. If it happened, I mean, to some extent, they were just incredibly lucky to be sitting on a vast amount of coal and iron under the ground, particularly in the North, England. But like it's not as if they could even make the industrial revolution happen in the South of England, for instance, it just happened up around Lancashire and all that particular place where the ingredients were there and kind of a cycle of invention took off and created the British industrial revolution. You just can't import something like that to Ireland and make it happen. And if they could, they would have. But so really all that being ruled out the only solution for the Irish population over population was immigration.

2:19And we're going to get into immigration during the famine. And we know millions left this country to escape the horrors of what was going on here. But and we know about immigration since then, and particularly during periods like, you know, recessionary periods like the 80s and then after the crash in the late Nazis. What was immigration from Ireland, like though, before the famine column? Well, I absolutely agree with you. We pink we know about immigration, but in all honesty, we just know about our uncles and grand uncles and, you know, and grandmothers. So really 20th century immigration, we know something about the further back you go, the less we know. Surprisingly, there had already been a fair bit of immigration just in the decades, the two decades before the famine, the pressure was building. And we find that, for instance, in England, just as the famine is about to begin, there's already 400,000 Irish people there. Now, as it happens, not too many of them were from Claire, we were probably one of the least likely counties to emigrate.

3:22We were afraid of us. We just were a very kind of homespawn people, still a huge amount of us speaking Irish. And also what had a huge effect was two ships in the early 1830s that left Limerick Port, sunk out of the outland to the Atlantic. So that kind of put people off the whole way. In terms of that, we get around and definitely make you think twice indeed. So it was only when the options were debt or the workhouse or immigration. That was when clear people finally started to immigrate. And of course, if they're thinking of emigrating, the first option has to be the place that is right on our doorstep. And that is Britain. That's right. Well, first of all, if you're absolutely destitute, it's cheap. As much as you would pay, would be 10 pence to cross the channel over. You could also probably get there for free if you hitched right on a cattle boat. But in any case, whether you paid the 10 pence or not, the conditions were appalling.

4:22Generally speaking, you were just on the deck. I mean, no cap, nothing like that. You for the full crossing, which would take maybe about 17 hours to get over to Liverpool. You could also go to Glasgow if you were more up around the north of Ireland. And you cross on the deck while feeling desperately seasick with the waves hitting you. And if it starts raining, there's no. I forgot during winter or something like that. It could be really cold, brutally, brutally. So so ultimately, though, it is cheap and you can probably bring your whole family of eight children and the wife, you know, for a month. Now you could say it was the easy option just to go to Liverpool. But easy to get there, but very difficult to thrive. Because I mean, a thing about her history is we tend to be very insular in looking at how miserable our conditions were. It wasn't particularly a great time to be a poor English person either. You might have heard of the guy Frederick Engels. He was a good pal of Karl Marx and they developed, you know, the concepts of communism together.

5:26He wrote a fantastic book where check and I was called the condition of the English working classes. And he tours around places like Manchester and Liverpool. Nobody finds our English working class people living in appalling conditions. And as bad as they are, he hose comes then to a soberb where the Irish live. And it's just that bit worse. I mean, they're living in absolute hovels, a damp cellar. There's three families living in a tiny space. There is no sanitation. There's a few filthy rivers that flow through Manchester. And then when you get to a little parent of town called Little Ireland, you find that they're far away from anything. Literally, I mean, we talk about Irish people living in poverty in Ireland. Well, in the countryside, you can dispose of your waste. I mean, it's just fields are on place. Try to imagine a scenario where quite literally as you walk down what passes for a street, it's covered in... ...p****** everywhere. There's also because Irish people, unfortunately,

6:28they're quite fond of having pigs. There's pigs running loose everywhere. The children, the filthy children are playing with pigs in these appalling conditions. Yeah. So that was where they moved to the poor Irish. God, it's not sure that's necessarily better. I suppose maybe it's better than death, but your description of how... Watch... British people, certainly lower class British people, go through... ...brings a question to mine column, which is, whilst the Irish over in being a Liverpool Manchester ever may have had it that bit worse, I'm sure that's not the differential in terms of how bad you have it. It is not in the minds of those who are struggling in Britain. And did that lead to resentment that here were more mouts to feed. Here were more people who were going to be looking for scraps from the tables, so to speak, and did that feed into a lot of, you know, anti-R sentiment? It did. It did. Because I mean, quite literally, we were appalling to their eyes,

7:28arriving often not able to speak English, and prepared to live, you know, as they would see it, like animals, you know, and with animals, in a way that even the lowest English class... And I do wonder, Columnif Word, about the extent of how bad the famine was, had really got back to people like that in Britain. They might not be aware of just how dire the circumstances were. I don't think there were any people who were supposed to be. Yeah, exactly. They were not. And then we'll see on top of that, of course, the Irish immediately have to sit to work, to survive. And they quickly become known for doing the jobs the Brits won't do. They buy and learn Irish people of that time, where actually taller and stronger than your classic English person. You know, that's the reality. And we were down on the docks immediately lifting massive bags and loads, because we would do that, you know, literally to a capacity that the classic English foreign class couldn't do. So we're doing that. We're hefting things left right in center. And our dream is to get a job in an English factory, which would be Cushure.

8:34But Cushure until you find out what it actually entails. I mean, at that time, the hours were insane. It was no big thing to work 16 hours a day, 16. I mean, it's kind of insane. They're working 16 hours a day inside in a factory, where the conditions are at those dusty, it's so harsh, there's noise, you know, that's clangering the whole time. I mean, there was a campaign at this point in history to bring the hours down to just a 10-hour day. People would have loved a 10-hour day. And one of the significant difference for the hours to arrive there was to find that the attitude to children, as bad as things were in Ireland, a child in the corner of the site never did more than tipped away at a few jobs, you know, around the house, of course, and around the little farm. But here, different attitude. Children as young as six were working in factories. By the age of nine, you're definitely working in the factory. There's no escape. From nine, you are a little man, a little woman, and you work in the factory.

9:38Those jobs for you, for your little hands, things that small people can do. But it's desperate conditions. And again, these children are working insane 12-hour days and longer. They're like, they're crying. They don't want to do this, and they are being, you know, badly, badly mistreated. And of course, as well, it's dangerous. One of the more famous Irish immigrants of that period is Michael Davitt. Who left from Mayo. It is arm-chopped off in one of these factories, you know, when one of the machines got a hold of him. So, yeah, things had been pretty bad in Ireland. And in England, they would feed you. But my god, it certainly wasn't easy. Okay, so Britain, the closest option, doesn't sound like a great option. Let's find out if the other options were any better. Well, certainly, travel to Britain more favorable down Australia and Canada will start with Australia. But climate is in Australia's favour. But I suppose if you're going that far, the likelihood of seeing any family again,

10:40if you left any behind in Ireland was, and that would survive the famine, was minimal. That was. So, what was that option like? Okay, so the first thing is it's daunting. I mean, it takes about three months to get there. And it's beyond the expense of it is beyond most people. And yet, quite a lot did. I mean, at least 10,000 clear people left around this time. We'll say partly that's because landlords made it happen. There was a landlord up in West Claire called George Windom. He financed a lot of people. He bought some ground in South Australia. A lot of people in North Claire also left because of their landlord. These included families such as the Daverns, Kerns, Canis, Lannans. They went to a place in South Australia which became so clear orientated that now to this day it's called the Claire Valley. And it's a winery area. And one of their most famous wines is called Inchi Quinn Wine.

11:42So yeah, clear people essentially were the founders of that area. The government also gave assisted passage to tens of thousands of Irish people. And if you actually go on the Claire Library's website, they have an amazing list of thousands of clear people who went to New South Wales. Now it doesn't cover the other provinces but it's quite a lot of people. It's remarkable to say how many clear people. Another option which was free was to get yourself transported for life by committing a crime. Something many people did. Obviously they stole sheep and cattle, out of starvation and as a 900% and then finally there was a bunch of teenage girls. What it was was that Australia was crying out for women. They had more than enough men who had already gone there and of course all these convicts from both England and Ireland. So what they needed was women. And the solution was to scour the workhouses of Ireland

12:42where there was quite a lot of orphan girls who in fairness their face in Ireland was not going to be too pretty. You know they didn't have anybody to look after them. So generally teenage girls aged say 15 to 18 were taken from all the Irish workhouses and about a hundred and something from the four clear workhouses were sent out there. I have some names of these girls. They were like Bridget Carmady, Nora Danahar, Mary Egan, Catherine Fitzpatrick, Marigosh Frawley, Alice Gavin, just ordinary Irish girls sent out there on a ship. And actually friend of yours interested, there's quite a bit online about their voyage because the ship's surgeon kept a diary. So you can read all about it. But one telling anecdote was that when the girls were going out there I guess in around 49 on Christmas Eve they all gathered on the deck and they began keening.

13:43And apparently it was an incredible sound and a polling sound basically you're talking about a few hundred girls crying for you know how lonely they were for everybody they had left behind that they would never see again. Nevertheless they eventually got to Australia and more quite a lot of the mage decent lives for themselves. They did it in time, get married and raise families. Yeah, no perfect situation because that's the that is the awful trade off a better life. But one without your your family back in Ireland. Option three Canada. Canada, yeah I mean we'll deal now in a further episode but up the obvious one, America. But Canada was actually initially the more popular option again because it was cheaper. It was cheaper to get to Canada. But about three hundred and thirty thousand Irish people went to Canada and quite a lot of them were for a clear. It took about seven weeks on a boat and to be honest these boats were the classic

14:44coffin ships. In particular going to Canada was worse than going to USA the death rate on quite a lot of them was just appalling. Ultimately when they would get to Canada they had the ships had to anchor at a place called Gross Point and from the ships that just parked there they pulled three thousand Irish people who were already dead on arrival in 1847. Then when they came in many of them were sick and huge quarantine station was built to kind of house them and they were just laid out and then eventually when the hospitalist sick or full the sick were just laid out on the ground all around this Gross Point just on the ground you know acres of sick Irish people. Ultimately another three and a half thousand died so at that place which is in Canada there is now what they regard as the largest Irish cemetery outside of Ireland in the world you know because there's at least seven thousand Irish people buried there effectively in a mass grave.

15:47So yeah then a few with them got a little bit further as far as Montreal and again five thousand Irish died there and again another mass grave in Montreal where there's five thousand buried there there's a black rock 30 tonne black rock which marks this part. I can't just try and think about what it was like to be on one of those ships and wouldn't wish it upon anybody as you say the states the big option and you will deal with that in a separate episode. You wanted to mention column one specific Claire family can you tell us why and who they were? Well as to say the problem is that the records really only get going properly with a lot of famine things when it's almost over you know it's kind of like from 1850 on that you get a lot better records but as regards a family that did go in black 47 one of them is the O'Shocknases who were from Cool Mean. Cool Mean you know it's a parish down there near La Bichida and they were John O'Shocknase and his wife Ellen Finuchan and we do know a fair bit about them. They were

16:48tailors they had five sons aged four to 14 and somehow they got through the whole Canada or deal fully intact they managed to get to Montreal and most because Taylor was an excellent thing to bring to bring a scale like that to America or Canada put you in pole position by comparison to the common farm laborer. So they thrived there and all of the boys eventually became tailors and some of them very successfully so you know to great effect in Montreal but the eldest son he didn't have time as it were to do the apprenticeship necessary so he was post laboring by his family at the age of 15 straight into it being a laborer that made him though involved in some amazing projects because America and Canada were building themselves that you know the railroads were being built he was involved in building puts known as the Grand Trunk Railroad a huge undertaking which crosses all of Canada from you know east to west he was involved in that and he

17:54was involved in building there is a huge railway bridge across the Lawrence River there which at the time was regarded as the eighth wonder of the world it's a two mile bridge across you know an expense of a river basin so or man John Ashoknesee did all that eventually like so many of that first generation he married an Irish girl practically every Irish immigrant they stayed within their group in the first generation and then maybe in a later generation they might chance marrying a fellow Catholic Italian maybe you're really branching out but they certainly in the first generation and so often it would be a girl from their own county as well it was incredible really so he married an Irish girl and his descendants are there in Canada to this day and as regards the original couple John and Ellen their youngest son wound up a few years later being involved in the fiendian conspiracy in Canada which meant he had to go on the run so he wound up in New York

18:58and he too founded a very prosperous and clothing industry in the government in Manhattan which am lest true to the end of that century so yeah that's the Ashoknesee's a family that did well ultimately and that just brings to mind can you imagine how many incredible stories there are families who are families who survived the travel over and kind of the life they led and the things they got up to and the things they saw for the moment column thank you very much is it the US is that our next episode yeah the US and a few more obscure ones where clear people went to Argentina as well there's a town called Murphy in Argentina and they have a bit big arch connection so looking forward to hearing more about that column thank you as ever for people who want to check out more about what you do where can they find out well the books are available in all good clear bookshops such as the ennest bookshop and the one-end-lay hinge and the one in kirosh and the banner in ennestiamen okay brilliant stuff the local historian author column

20:01ledie with us for another installment of clear history and focus and next time we'll look at our shem gration to the United States during the famine