F: Famine - AtoZ Challenge

Earl Grey Orphan Scheme

The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge is an annual challenge put out to bloggers, to publish a post from A-Z, every day in April, except for Sundays. April 1 is A, April 2 is B……….and so on throughout the month. Participants can post on a chosen theme or publish random posts with no theme at all.

Theme

My theme for 2025 is The Earl Grey Orphan Scheme. I became interested in the scheme when I realised that my great great grandmother was an Earl Grey Girl. This scheme was a government sponsored program designed to give young, impoverished Irish girls a chance at a better life in Australia.

In 1840s Ireland, many impoverished families depended on potatoes as their primary food source. In 1845, however, disaster struck when a blight began to decimate the country’s potato crops. While the initial impact in 1845 led to only partial failure, the blight returned with a vengeance between 1846 and 1849, devastating the potato harvest year after year. Approximately one and a half million people died, and more than one million people fled the country in the hope of being able to survive and even live a better life in another country.

AI Generated image: Waiting for food during famine

from: The Citizen (Sydney, NSW: 1846-1847, Saturday 24 October 1846, Page 4¹

FAMINE IN IRELAND
It appears that the pressure of distress upon the poor in Ireland still continues with great severity. It is really provoking to perceive that while such is the unhappy condition of that long suffering and truly patient people, under such an accumulation of trials, attempts should be made by interested and heartless government officials and sundry other correspondents of a hireling London Press, to deny the existence of such a state of things, as would call for even ordinary exertion for the relief of the poor sufferers. We make a few important extracts:
CONNEMARA. - The correspondent of the Chronicle gives a list of thirty-four families of 203 souls, whose sole provision as a guard against famine was thirty three and three quarters bushels of potatoes, their seed plants having been consumed! In the market, potatoes were 5d. per stone! Forty thousand people are in the above condition in Connemara. It is not clear that anyone has actually been starved to death, not does it appear that fever extends largely, but the misery is extreme; and as the landlords will not, perhaps cannot, subscribe to the relief of the poor, Government will not help them, waiting the preliminary subscription. Now, a little Indian meal at Clifden would have the effect of lowering the markets; none has been sent; bye-and-bye it will be too late.
THURLES. - The district about this town, as regards the prevailing want and loss of the potato, is in a wretched state indeed; and although the market is considered a very plentiful one, potatoes are sold (good and bad) at 4d per stone, and oatmeal 20s. per cwt.

The Temperance Society of the town, with a spirit that cannot be too highly estimated, applied some funds which they had at their disposal, and purchased wheat, and having it ground into meal, sold it out to the people at 1s. 9d. per stone, the prime cost of the article. It will be at once observed what an improvement this was upon oatmeal as regards both price and quality.

The example of the Temperance Society was followed by Mr. Mulvany, a miller. Such expedients would do, provided the people had means or employment to enable them to purchase the food. The poor of the town and parish were driven by the cravings of nature into at least the appearance of an outbreak, and were collected in considerable force in the streets.

The Roman Catholic and Protestant clergymen of the town, with other influential persons, went about, and in a short time collected £300 from shopkeepers. This timely assistance saved the town, perhaps, although no overt act of violence was actually committed. Mr. John Maher sent £50, and Mr. O'Brien, who possesses scarcely any property in the place, gave £30; Dr. Slattery, Roman Catholic Bishop, £5; Archdeacon Cotton, £30; the Catholic and Protestant clergy £1 each; Count Chabote, the owner of the town, £50, with £10 for his son. - Freeman.

NENAGH. - I regret to say that the people here are the very worst off, of any that I have met with as yet. There was a local fund got up in the town, but there is not a penny of it remaining at present. I am bound to say that although all is at present quiet, the inhabitants about this neighbourhood are undoubtedly the most violent and wicked people in all Tipperary when they do break out. I do not say they are so at present, but goaded as they have been, and as they continue to be (see hereafter), no one can calculate on the result; and this added to the dreadful privations they are doomed to endure from the want of even ordinary food, is sufficient to produce almost any consequences.

The following observation is an index to the feeling of the people in this extensive district: "We have no work; we are willing and able to do it: we would be perfectly satisfied with even half wages to get a miserable bit for our families. We can't starve; and although we have got a bad name - very undeservedly - we won't murder, but I tell you what we'll do, sir, we'll go into the fields - not at night, or like thieves, but in the open day before the world, and knock the head off the first fat bullock or sheep we meet, and then let us be shot, which will be far better than dying of hunger, or than hearing our wives and children calling to us for food, and we not able to obtain it for them."

Leaving South Hills, I went through the country for some miles, and found the distress most alarming in every quarter; but in no place as intense as on Mr. Clark's property; nor are the habitations elsewhere so totally devoid of all comfort. There is no use in attempting details. I am at a loss - having already beheld such human destitution - to find language sufficient to characterise the increasing horrors as I proceed. There is one frightful theme on which the people speak openly through this part of the country - that they will not endure their present state much longer.

The complaints about the conduct of the landed gentry - the worse than frosty and flinty indifference shewn by so many of them to the wants of the people, is the only topic of conversation from the humblest peasant to the wealthiest farmer and most comfortable shopkeeper. Things cannot go on as they are; the people will "rise," as they call it, if they don't get work or something to eat. The fund collected in the town of Nenagh is gone; the shopkeepers have taxed themselves, but they are no longer able to sustain the load. Not a landlord contributed a penny. The people in town and country are in extremis for food. - Correspondent of the Freeman.

GALWAY. — Of the 45,000 persons in the town and suburbs, one fourth are in a state of absolute pauperism. The committee have collected £600. The opening of Lough Corrib to the sea, new railroads, a new college, new barracks, and other works are talked of, and in the meanwhile the people starve for want of employment.

Potatoes are 8d. the stone!! There are only 300 people in the workhouse, which contains 1200. Only one cargo of Indian meal² has arrived, and that is locked up. The people are emigrating in swarms. — Chron.

RESULTS OF EVICTION. — A family named Gallaher, one of the many lately evicted, reached Liverpool, and proceeded through Warrington to Manchester in search of work. They were walking, barefooted, ragged, without food or money; one night they slept in a work-house, the next in an asylum for the destitute, and a third in a damp ditch, where they were nearly killed by the cold of the night, the mother in vain attempting to keep the little children warm with her scanty raiment and her shivering hand. A charitable ropemaker near whose premises they slept found them, and had pity. Through his charity they existed for a fortnight, and now the Irish in Manchester are stirring in their behalf. There are, happily, no Irish landlords among them. Thus, from every province - from every county - almost from every district we receive perpetually recurring proofs that we have much more to do before the people shall be protected from famine.

Every successive day brings fresh evidence of the necessity for continued exertions and larger sacrifices for that noble and Christian end. Children poisoned to obtain Funeral Club-money. - An inquiry, which occupied the attention of Mr. H. Churchton (Coroner for Chester) nearly the whole of Saturday, owing to most horrible disclosures which have been made, has produced an intense degree of excitement all through the neighbourhood.

The inquest was held on the bodies of two children of Joseph and Mary Pimlett, who were then in custody, charged with the murder of two of their own offspring, and attempting the murder of a third. Pimlett, it appears, is a ship carpenter, and he with his family came to reside in Runcorn about three months before Christmas. Amongst all who knew him he was considered a respectable, industrious, sober and humane man.

The circumstances which led to the disclosure are as follow: - On the 6th of March James Pimlett, an infant ten months old, was reported to have been found dead in bed; an inquest was held on the body, and the principal witness examined was the mother, who gave such an account of the illness of the child as to induce the coroner's jury to believe that death was the result of some disease incident to children, and a verdict was returned of 'found dead: on the 16th of same month another child, Richard, was taken ill; it was taken to a medical gentleman, Mr. E. Pye, who administered remedies; a day or two afterwards the mother called on Mr. Pye, and in consequence of her representations two alterative powders were given her; these powders, however, were afterwards found in the house of the parents, having never been administered - the child died on the 21st.

On Monday, the 27th April, the mother took the third child, of the name of Thomas, to the surgery of Mr. Pye. This one was three years and two months old, and the symptoms which he manifested produced no suspicion in the mind of Mr. Pye; and thinking the child was labouring under indigestion, he administered a purgative draught. Subsequently Mr. Pye's suspicions were excited, and he gave information to the magistrates and to the coroner of the county, and in the meantime the child having become very ill, he desired the mother to preserve the ejecta, but she did not do so, and frustrated his purpose of obtaining any portion of it. However, being afraid of the life of the child, he was removed from his unnatural parent, and she and her husband taken into custody.

Subsequent inquiries prove that arsenic had been administered to the child. The coroner then issued his warrant for the disinterment of the bodies of James and Richard, and summoned Mr. Pye to make a post-mortem examination; and on the coffins being opened both bodies looked remarkably fresh, considering the time which had elapsed since death. This led to the supposition that arsenic might have been taken by them, as it has the effect of preserving dead bodies. The internal viscera was removed and analysed, the result being that arsenic in considerable quantities was detected in both bodies.

A great variety of circumstancial evidence was given affecting the charge as against the mother, but there being nothing more than suspicion against the father, he was discharged, and the jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against Mary Pimlett. The motive for the criminal act is supposed to have been the temptation of receiving money for the interment of the children from a burial club. - Liverpool Paper.

Famine Memorial

The Famine Memorial in Dublin, Ireland designed and crafted by Dublin sculptor Rowan Gillespie and presented to the city of Dublin in 1997 - irishcentral.com

General Reading

Kinealy, Christine. This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52. Gill & Macmillan, 1994.
Barefoot and Pregnant: Irish Famine Orphans in Australia by Trevor McClaughlin
Fair Game by Elizabeth Rushen and Perry McIntyre
The Great Irish Potato Famine by James Donnelly (Sutton Publishing, 2002)

1. 1846 'FAMINE IN IRELAND.', The Citizen (Sydney, NSW : 1846 - 1847), 24 October, p. 4. , viewed 26 Oct 2024, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article252637548

2. Indian Meal - The British government, which ruled Ireland at the time, imported a food known as Indian Meal, which was given out to many poorer people at a low price. This meal was hard to digest and very unpleasant to eat but did have some impact in preventing deaths.