The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by Kelly John

Author:Kelly, John [Kelly, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2012-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

A deserted famine village

In Irish port towns, long lines of scantily dressed men and women—their worldly possessions compressed between two pieces of cardboard—gathered on wharves in the cold and snow to wait for a British packet to rescue them. “Even in the depth of a winter of unusual severity … vast numbers are emigrating,” the Dublin Evening Post reported on February 16. “[In] Limerick some hundreds of small farmers … and mechanics are to embark for the United States this week.” Even the peasantry, which had no tradition of emigration, was leaving. Anyone able to “beg or borrow a few shillings [was taking] deck passage on the steamers or sailing vessels to Liverpool, Bristol, Newport, Glasgow, or some other seaport in England or Scotland.” The swelling emigrant tide alarmed Lord Brougham, a former lord chancellor of England. On February 4, in an impassioned speech, Brougham accused the Irish poor of defying the will of God. “Providence, who sent the potato disease, meant that many should die,” he declared—not that they should emigrate to Brixton, Buxton, Vauxhall, or Merseyside. In one recent forty-eight-hour period, Brougham noted, three thousand Irish paupers had arrived in Liverpool: 240 from Cork, 701 from Sligo, 692 from Drogheda, 272 from Newry, and 911 from Dublin.

Lord John was also alarmed by the swelling emigrant stream. What was the “use in sending men from starving in Skibbereen to starve in Montreal?” Besides, the Irish would turn Canada into a Catholic country, and set a bad example for the impressionable Canadians. “Before we fill our colonies with them,” the prime minister told a colleague, better to improve the Irish first.

Lord John was also concerned about the public works program. In January, when he announced that the program would be closed, there were 570,000 laborers on the rolls, and the monthly cost of operations was £736,125. In February, employment rose to 708,000 and monthly operating costs to £944,144. (That works out to almost $500 million a month in modern money.) On February 22, the Board of Works ordered its inspecting officers to begin reducing the workforce. That was easier said than done. Despite the new corps of Inspecting Officers, the local relief committees still retained a great deal of control over hiring, and for reasons ranging from humanity to fear, the committees were reluctant to cut the work rolls. From Clare, Colonel Douglas, the army officer on temporary relief duty, reported that the committees in his districts not only refused to honor the reduction order but were even adding laborers in “packs [of] fifties.” In County Leitrim, a relief committee told a board officer named Bull that if he dared to pare its rolls, the committee would send “the starving and dead bodies” of the dismissed men to his home “in carts.”

By March 7, the public works labor force stood at 734,000, and the daily cost of operations at £40,000 (almost $20 million). Treasury blamed the numbers on the culture of dependency in Ireland; the real reason was more elementary.

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