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Extract 'To the British government, the Famine was a threat to public order'

Author Gillian O’Brien looks at the workhouse and prisons and what they tells us about the Famine.

Gillian O’Brien is a Reader in Modern History at Liverpool John Moores University. For her first book, The Darkness Echoing, she travelled around Ireland to discover the stories behind our most haunted and fascinating historical sites, and what they say about Ireland as a nation. From war to revolution, famine to emigration, and finally, to death and ghosts, The Darkness Echoing examines the old, accepted narratives and brings newly unearthed stories from our past to life. In this extract, O’Brien visits workhouses and looks at what they tell us about Irish Famine history. 

WHEN THE FAMINE becomes ‘visible’, it tends to be in places where it intersects with the institutions that did so little to relieve it: prisons and workhouses.

To the British government (and many landlords), the Famine was a threat to public order and they were determined to quash any prospect of revolt.

Unsurprisingly, this resulted in a surge in the prison population in the late 1840s, in part because of crimes of desperation which saw adults and children imprisoned for very minor offences, including stealing a ‘copper coal scuttle’, ‘one pear from a garden’ and, in one instance, ‘handfuls of grass’.

Some of the first convicts sent to the prison on Spike Island near Cobh to await transportation were those who in desperation broke the law. Edward Walsh, a teacher in the prison, wrote to his wife in 1847 that ‘most of the convicts are persons . . . who were driven by hunger to acts of plunder and violence . . . I wept today in one of the wards when some of the people of Schull and Skibbereen told me the harrowing tales of their sufferings from famine, and the deaths – the fearful deaths – of their wives and little ones.’

The prison population was further swelled by the Vagrancy Act of 1847, which made begging and homelessness punishable by a month of hard labour in prison. Kilmainham Gaol had just over a hundred cells, most intended to house one prisoner, but in 1850 over nine thousand committals were recorded (the average number of daily inmates was 259).

The prison inspector’s report noted that ‘numbers of these wretched creatures are obliged to lie on straw in the passages and dayrooms of the prison without a possibility of washing or exchanging their own filthy rags for proper apparel’.

Kilmainham was far from the only prison that was overcrowded during the Famine: in jails such as Wicklow and Nenagh it was common for cells designed for one prisoner to house at least five. Some people were so desperate they actively solicited arrest in the hope of a meal and a place to stay. The quality of prison food did decline during the Famine, but all prisoners were fed.

And it wasn’t just adults: hundreds of children were also held in these jails. In 1847, ten-year-old James McCormack was sentenced to forty days’ hard labour for stealing parsnips.

Those who weren’t arrested often threw themselves on the mercy of the state and found themselves at the door of the local workhouse. Workhouses were a response to the growing poverty evident in Ireland a decade before the Famine. The 1836 Poor Inquiry Commission reported that almost two and a half million people were in such a state of poverty in Ireland as to require organised welfare schemes.

Two years later, the Poor Law was passed, and by the early 1850s there were 163 workhouses spread throughout the country, usually close to market towns. In 1847, there were about 417,000 inmates; by the end of 1849, there were over 932,000. Though most of the workhouses continued to operate until the early 1920s, in popular memory they are closely associated with the Famine. 

Workhouses were forbidding, gloomy places deliberately designed to act as a deterrent rather than a refuge, for the government believed that people would become idle on welfare. They were all designed by George Wilkinson and were very similar – two-and three-storey limestone buildings built along a horizontal H-plan. Segregation of inmates was the primary concern. 

There were separate dormitories, yards and workspaces. At the back of the complex there was an infirmary for the ill and a ‘dead house’ for the deceased. ‘Wee Hannah’ Herrity, who was an inmate in Dunfanaghy Workhouse in north Donegal, recalled the cruelty of the matron, who, when inmates died, would have their bodies dragged from the dormitory and ‘you’d hear the head of the corpse cracking down the steps till it was put in the dead house below’.

The regime inside the workhouse was prisonlike.

Residents were referred to as ‘inmates’ and obliged to wear uniforms. Every day was strictly regimented and inmates were obliged to work to pay for their keep. Since workhouse employment was not allowed to compete with businesses outside the walls, the work was designed to be ‘of such a nature as to be found irksome’. This meant that, alongside cultivating the food eaten in the workhouse, many inmates picked oakum and broke stones – jobs more usually associated with prison.

More than half of the former workhouses in Ireland have been demolished and, of those that remain, about forty operate as medical facilities – St James’s Hospital in Dublin, Naas General Hospital and St Finbarr’s Hospital in Cork are just three of those that have incorporated former workhouses into their modern facilities.

Extracted from The Darkness Echoing by Gillian O’Brien, published by Sandycove, which is out now.

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    Mute David Stapleton
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    Feb 17th 2022, 3:00 PM

    Is there any way to find out if I was not baptised correctly and so am not a member of an organisation that I cannot voluntarily leave?

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    Mute Charlie
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    Feb 17th 2022, 3:04 PM

    @David Stapleton: You can certainly leave but they will still consider you a catholic.
    Even if you choose to be another religion, or you can try and get excommunicated. If you succeed will you spread the “word”?

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    Mute Irish Antichrist
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    Feb 17th 2022, 7:14 PM

    @Charlie: You need permission to get excommunicated and no you cannot voluntarily leave they made it illegal 15 years or so ago.

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    Mute Miriam Kelliher
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    Feb 17th 2022, 8:17 PM

    @Irish Antichrist: illegal? Seriously

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    Mute Teresa O'Halloran
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    Feb 18th 2022, 12:28 AM

    @David Stapleton: If you don’t want to belong – leave. No need to make a drama out of it.

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    Mute Marie Gunbay
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    Feb 18th 2022, 1:10 AM

    @David Stapleton: love your humour ha ha hope you are not stressing out about this.

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    Mute Stephen Mogerley
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    Feb 17th 2022, 3:03 PM

    This is like an Onion article.

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    Mute David F. Dwyer
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    Feb 17th 2022, 3:11 PM

    Is there anything to be said for another mass?

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    Mute Dave Harris
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    Feb 17th 2022, 5:08 PM

    @David F. Dwyer: that would be an ecumenical matter

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    Mute Brendan Harlowe
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    Feb 17th 2022, 6:00 PM

    @David F. Dwyer: it would depend on the wording used if it would be beneficial

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    Mute Larry Whack
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    Feb 17th 2022, 3:02 PM

    Remember, these people are supposedly educated adults.

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    Mute Maximus_Demonus
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    Feb 17th 2022, 4:33 PM

    Ah no, if you’re going to do magic spells get the wording correct, otherwise anything can happen.

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    Mute Tony Durran
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    Feb 17th 2022, 6:25 PM

    @Maximus_Demonus: Mickey mouse showed us the horrors that can unfold.

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    Mute Séamus White
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    Feb 17th 2022, 3:05 PM

    Lucky them

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    Mute John Mulligan
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    Feb 17th 2022, 3:09 PM

    But I thought their god was three people?

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    Mute Watchful Axe
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    Feb 17th 2022, 6:59 PM

    @John Mulligan: When you look at a shamrock, is that one leaf or three leaves in your opinion. Jazus.

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    Mute John Mulligan
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    Feb 17th 2022, 9:03 PM

    @Watchful Axe: we have no idea of the relevance of your question.
    And my name’s not Jazus.

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    Mute Larry O Reilly
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    Feb 17th 2022, 3:09 PM

    What the big deal, it down to interpretation we v I, who cares they lucky anyone want to be associated with this corporate sinful organisation

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    Mute Ann Harman
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    Feb 17th 2022, 3:56 PM

    We=God and I.No problem

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    Mute Mike Ryan
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    Feb 17th 2022, 3:13 PM

    Who knew identity politics would be such a pervasive issue in the catholic church

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    Mute Tony Durran
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    Feb 17th 2022, 6:24 PM

    They’ve got a point. What if the spell doesn’t work without the correct invocation?!

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    Mute Padraic McDonagh
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    Feb 17th 2022, 3:50 PM
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    Mute Mary Nugent
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    Feb 17th 2022, 6:15 PM

    @Padraic McDonagh: Boris at it back then, my God.

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    Mute Irish Antichrist
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    Feb 17th 2022, 7:13 PM

    Why would a universe creator give a toss??

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    Mute Colm de Cleir
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    Feb 17th 2022, 9:36 PM

    Hilarious! So what does the all-powerful, all-loving God look down on the baptism and snark… “Hmmm… no, he didn’t quite say that right, so that baby can’t come in I’m afraid”? – It’s hard to believe that a church who continuously preaches about how God and The Holy Spirit and Jesus love us all so much and is super-powerful and super-intelligent, and how we should rejoice that He even exists… would also consider Him that incredibly petty…

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    Mute Pete Brady
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    Feb 17th 2022, 7:25 PM

    They need to train priests better so that this doesnt happen again and set up a freephone helpline for concerned Catholics who may be affected by this error. I mightn’t sleep tonight unless I can pull out my documents on the off chance my parents christened me in Brazil.

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    Mute Christopher Mc Camley
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    Feb 17th 2022, 6:27 PM

    Usual anti Catholics that the Journal attracts out with their comments. This Cork priest hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about. He merely confirms that the Association of Catholic Priests isn’t representing the views of majority of priests.

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    Mute Pat Conway
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    Feb 17th 2022, 8:02 PM

    @Christopher Mc Camley: What difference does it make anyway whether it’s a ‘correct’ baptism or not. What benefit does it bring to the child? None whatsoever.

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    Mute katholic
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    Feb 17th 2022, 7:24 PM

    Asking the Association of “Catholic” Priests to comment on something like this is pretty pointless. They’re nothing but the media’s “go-to” Fr. Trendys. They can always be relied upon to misunderstand and fudge the details of any issue relating to the Church.

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    Mute Piggy
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    Feb 17th 2022, 4:42 PM

    No, he was on trial in Liverpool

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    Mute Ken Miles
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    Feb 17th 2022, 6:56 PM

    Should have stuck with the proper version, no mistake then

    ego te baptizo in nomine + Patris, et Filii, +, et Spiritus + Sancti.

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    Mute Irish Antichrist
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    Feb 17th 2022, 7:16 PM

    @Ken Miles: + Et Nonsense

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    Mute Colm de Cleir
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    Feb 18th 2022, 12:32 AM

    Maybe it’s a computer running it all up there and they forgot an important rule of UI: Never allow free text on data you’re going to validate. They need to spell it out for them and the priest just ticks a box or something.

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    Mute Sean
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    Feb 18th 2022, 7:59 AM

    Why would milk not work for consecration? After all it isn’t actually the blood of Jesus that is used. It is just red wine with a drop of water.

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