Famine fears and outright denial
In his latest Times Past column, Jonathan Smyth looks at the 1924 and 1925 famine scare around Bawnboy and Blacklion...
In 1924, The Anglo-Celt warned that a famine was about to strike! The news hit like a bolt out of the blue. But was there any truth to it? Or was this just some politically motivated scare tactic? Globally, famine is still with us in the 21st century. Human nature, greed and envy still dictate and in many places those with the most want even more, whether it is a country’s minerals, or its land. Over the centuries and into our present age, the machinations of war have caused human destruction and sometimes food shortages that lead to starvation and famine. Famine conditions caused by natural disasters like drought are dreadful, but if hunger is deliberately, systematically, and sadistically encouraged to hurt a people, then that is unacceptable, and it must be called into check. One person’s death is a death too many. There is a stark difference between doing what is right and doing what is wrong.
Famine is interpreted as a failure of crops and lacking in enough food to feed a nation. Ireland has had its share of famines. A few years ago, for Times Past, I featured an account of the famine conditions felt in the 1620s based on information from Dr Brendan Scott’s research paper in the Irish Historical Studies series. The kindly Bishop William Bedell of Kilmore communicated his concerns to Samuel Ward in May 1629, informing him that ‘many are dead, the residue have no bread; horse and dog flesh is eaten’ and added that ‘1,000 people had already left the famine-inflicted diocese and moved to England’.
The journalist spoke about the hunger experienced in jails and mentioned that extra courts were held to prevent the ‘starvation of prisoners in custody’.
In Ireland of the 1840s, the poorest farmers experienced a failure of the staple diet of potatoes. It was the ordinary person’s main food source and the lack of it therefore induced starvation. But what about actual food shortages? Were there no other forms of food? Of course there were. Corn was grown and supplied in abundance to Britain to feed the factory workers who manufactured the goods of the Industrial Revolution. Alternative food sources to the potato were too expensive for the poor to buy. I have heard a family tradition about farming people who held back sacks of corn, which they hid under the floorboards of their home.
1925 food shortages
In 1925, massive food shortages caused concern especially in the West of Ireland, and on top of that there were 100, 000 people who were out of work. At first, the Executive Council of the Free State blatantly denied the situation. The Minister for Lands and Agriculture, Patrick Hogan, dismissed the shortages in the Dáil when he said that there was no such ‘abnormal distress’ facing the poor. He explained how the West of Ireland was always seemed to be in distress, but that things were fine and for a famine to occur, there must be a ‘failure of the potato’ and sure there was ‘no failure of the potato crop’. However, difficulties began the year before when echoes of the Great Hunger chimed strong when the summer crops failed disastrously in Ireland’s recently established Free State.
Bawnboy and Blacklion
In September 1924, The Anglo-Celt warned of prevailing conditions around the country that were affecting farmers as a result of the wet summer and concluded that a ‘most disastrous famine’ could only come of the present circumstances. The correspondent’s knowledge of the district around Bawnboy, Curlough and on to Blacklion, said that the majority of landholders there were living in a ‘mountainous and congested area’ and they had no further interest in the weather, since all the crops were destroyed. Locals found themselves resigned to ‘famine conditions’ during that winter. The turf was a failure too and the reporter only witnessed smoke emanating from two houses along the 17-mile road that lay between Bawnboy and Blacklion. A nearby clergyman declared that ‘famine was absolutely certain there this year’ and ‘the people not having a dry sod of turf’ faced the ‘most serious circumstances’.
At Ballybay, Co Monaghan, the County Board of Health met under the chairmanship of Senator O’Rourke. One of the speakers was Mr Loughhead, who announced that ratepayers now faced into bad times, if not famine because ‘half the country people were starving’ and some of the poor now ate food ‘not fit for pigs’. He commented that it was a poor thing that in 1924 they were once again relying on the Indian meal so indelibly ‘associated with Black ’47’ and ‘being relied on again in order that a section of society may keep body and soul together’. To make matters worse, the cost of importing food had risen and during the week of the meeting in Ballybay, Indian meal had gone up by 15 shillings per tonne.
The crop situation affected livestock who had poor quality hay to eat which left them in poorer condition and more likely to receive lower prices when sold at market. Farmlands that lay from Rockcorry to Newbliss and at Drum were severely flooded and Deputy Duffy pointed out how flooding from the Cortubber River had affected up to a mile of land on either side of the river, forming artificial lakes and flooding ‘over 300 yards of the public road to a depth of 4 feet for 9 months of the year’.
The report concluded: ‘To cope with the threatened famine in Bawnboy to Blacklion, portions of County Cavan and in other places… the Government should at once cause an investigation to be made’. In 1880, similar crop failures occurred and at that time government intervention staved off the worst effects. It was hoped that the Free State government might provide help in the present predicament.
However, by the winter of 1924 at least three quarters of the population did not have potatoes. Deaths caused by hunger were reported in Galway and Clare. The food crisis was attracting worldwide attention by January 1925, and the government were compelled to provide better assistance. That month, the government provided £500,000 in aid money to alleviate starvation. The initial denial of the severity of the food crisis was put down to saving face, since such reports would damage the newly established Free State’s credibility overseas. Thankfully, harvests improved during the summer of 1925 and in the years to follow, which pulled the country back from the brink of disaster.
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