Local Relief during the Great Irish Famine, 1845–1850: The Case of Castlebar, County Mayo, 1846–1847

LOCAL RELIEF DURING THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE, 1845–1850: THE CASE OF CASTLEBAR, COUNTY MAYO, 1846–1847 MICHAEL O’MALLEY the objective of this paper is to contrast the relief efforts of the British government with those of locals leaders including Church of Ireland and Catholic clergymen in Castlebar, County Mayo, during the Great Irish Famine. Between 1845 and 1850, almost every harvest of potatoes, the subsistence food for most of Ireland’s inhabitants before the famine, failed partially or totally. The potato crops’ destruction resulted in starvation and death throughout Ireland. During the crisis, both the British government and local leaders in Ireland attempted to reduce the level of suffering by providing famine relief. Five factors determined the effectiveness of these relief efforts: the relief providers’ ideology; their preferred forms of relief; their initiative in establishing effective relief schemes before starvation took place; their attitude toward the poor; and their willingness to prioritize famine relief. The government and the clergy took different stands on these issues. The government adhered to a free-trade policy and argued that direct relief would stifle private enterprise. It favored indirect relief in the form of public works to direct relief in the form of free food. In addition, the government feared that direct relief would produce a dependent public. Finally , the government believed that its first priority was to protect the immediate interests of England. As a result, the government failed to provide adequate relief in famine-stricken Ireland. In contrast, Church of Ireland and Catholic clergy in Castlebar viewed the problem of famine relief from a local perspective. Their primary goal during the late 1840s was to prevent starvation among their neighbors. As a result, the clergy favored direct relief , in the form of inexpensive food, and established soup kitchens, which provided sustenance to the poor as soon as famine conditions appeared locally in late 1846. LOCAL RELIEF DURING THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 109 During the Great Famine, British government administrators—including Sir Charles Trevelyan, permanent secretary of the treasury, and Thomas Larcom, a poor law commissioner—criticized local relief efforts and praised those the government provided. Trevelyan argued that the government’s soup kitchens, which operated for a brief period in 1847, saved millions of lives during the famine.1 Larcom claimed that the middle classes within Irish society did not try to relieve starvation during the famine.2 These views were echoed in English newspapers such as The London Times, which reported that farmers were “capable of relief by the smallest exertion” and that this lack of generosity was “absolutely without parallel in the history of civilized nations. . . .”3 The newspaper also accused the Irish poor of being too indolent to give their dead a “decent Christian burial” and pointed out that “the brutality of piratical tribes sinks to nothing compared with the absolute inertia of the Irish in the midst of the most horrifying scenes.”4 Revisionist historians such as Roy Foster sympathize with Trevelyan’s interpretation of the British government’s role in the famine.5 According to Foster, the British did not cause mass starvation during the late 1840s. In addition, he believes that an evaluation of Britain’s famine policy must include a discussion of the ability of the state to relieve poverty as well as an analysis of the attitudes of mid-nineteenth-century English political leaders toward the poor.6 Foster asserts that the provision to the public of free food was beyond the abilities of any government at that time. He claims that political leaders rejected proposals to provide famine relief because they felt that this move would turn the Irish into paupers and make them permanently dependent on the state for sustenance. Consequently, the British adhered to the belief that private enterprise should provide most of the food required to feed famine-stricken Ireland.7 LOCAL RELIEF DURING THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 110 1 Charles Trevelyan, The Irish Crisis (London: Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1848), 64, 65. 2 Final Report of the Board of Public Works in Ireland, September 1847, British Parliamentary Papers—Famine (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1970), vol. 8, 379–85. Quoted in Christine Kinealy, This Great Calamity: The Irish...