On Mother's Day, I wish to thank my Great, Great Grandmother, Mary Givens, who left Glenties, Donegal, Ireland in 1852. The following is a contemporary news article of the conditions she left at the age of 11, bringing with, her little brother, John, 7 years of age.
In 1845, when the great Famine of that and following years was about to break upon Ireland, "The Times" newspaper appointed Thomas Campbell Foster as its "Commissioner to report on the condition of the people of Ireland". In this article, there appear extracts from his letter written at Gweedore on September 3, 1845, in which he described the towns he passed through, namely, Donegal, Glenties, Dungloe, and the island of Arranmore.
From Donegal town, he "proceeded to Glenties, a village which is the property of the Marquis of Conyngham, whose chief managing agent is Mr. Benbow, M.P. for Dudley. The whole of the country for many miles in the direction of Dungloe, and beyond that town--in fact, almost the whole barony of Boylagh--belongs to this nobleman, together with the island of Arran, or Arranmore, on the west coast. Once in the course of his lifetime--two years ago--the Marquis of Conyngham visited this estate for a few days. His chief agent, Mr. Benbow, usually comes once a year, and the sub-agents visit the tenants every half year to collect the rents. At short periods of a few years the farms are visited to see what increased rent they will bear, and this is the extent of the acquaintance of the Marquis of Conyngham with his tenants.
This nobleman, himself, bears the character of a kind-hearted, generous man--fond of yachting and amusement, and having an excessive distaste for every kind of business or trouble. From one end of his large estate here to the other, nothing is to be found but poverty, misery, wretched cultivation, and infinite subdivision of land. There are no gentry, no middle-class,-- all are poor--wretchedly poor."
"Every shilling the tenants can raise from their half-cultivated land is paid in rent, whilst the people subsist for the most part on potatoes and water....Every rude effort that they make to increase the amount of the[ir] produce is followed immediately by raising their rents in proportion--as it were, to punish them for improving; they are, naturally enough, as discontented and full of complaints as they are wretched in their condition."
Foster reported in minute detail what he found when he visited some of the homes, if such they could be called, of the noble marquis's tenants.
"Into these cottages I entered. They were stone-built and well-roofed, but the mud-floor was uneven, damp, and filthy. In one corner was a place for the pig, with a drain from it through the wall to carry off the liquid manure, like a stable. Two chairs, a bedstead of the rudest description, a cradle, a spinning-wheel, and an iron-pot constituted the whole furniture. An inner room contained another rude bedstead; the mud-floor was quite damp. In this room six children slept on loose hay, with one dirty blanket to cover them...The father, mother, and an infant slept in the first room, also on loose hay, and with but one blanket on the bed. The children were running about as nearly naked as possible, dressed in the cast-off rags of the father and mother; the father could not buy them clothes. They had not been to mass for a twelvemonth for want of decent clothes to go in.
"These men assured me that their whole food was potatoes, and if they had a penny to spare they bought salt or a few sprats, but very seldom these. Instead of buying salt they sometimes bought pepper and mixed it with the water they drank. This they called 'kitchin'--it gave a flavour to their food."
