Liam's Irish Traditional Music - Irelands culture and tradition

The Poor Move to The Towns and Workhouses

Under the Irish Poor Law Act of 1838, Ireland had 130 Poor Law Unions, which were responsible for building local workhouses. They were to be run by collecting a rate for the poor, but few had been able to open, and when the famine struck, they were closed, often in disrepair and in debt. By 1847 the workhouse system was bankrupt. But thousands of people were arriving seeking relief.

As the people moved to the towns and workhouses, disease travelled with them: 1847 became known as the Plague Year. Cholera, smallpox, dysentery, typhus fever and relapsing fever attacked the migrant population, and the death rate soared. Tents were erected in towns to cater for those who had disease, and this eased the burden on the workhouses. By November 1847, the epidemics were beginning to slow down, but there were still outbreaks of fever throughout the following year. In December 1848, Asiatic Cholera entered Belfast and added to the death toll.

The Soup Kitchen Act

In 1847 the government passed a Soup Kitchen Act, which gave charities and local committees some small financial aid. Thereafter the government declared that it was up to the people of Ireland to provide help for them selves.

A fashionable London chef, Alexis Soyer, ‘created’ a soup for the poor of London. It cost three farthings a quart, and was thought to be very good and nourishing. He had no understanding of the full affects of famine. The government was warned that the soup was actually harmful for people suffering from starvation, as it passed straight through the body giving no nourishment. For people suffering from dysentery it could cause death.

The migration from the country begins. This picture shows the Irish poor crowding round the gates of a workhouse for food and shelter

Alexis Soyer was invited to Ireland, where he opened a Model Soup Kitchen in Dublin. The people flooded into Dublin when they heard of the distribution of food. The soup left them as hungry as before. The government turned Soyers’s kitchen over to the relief committee of the South Dublin Union. Other soup kitchens were opened across Ireland, and hungry, desperate people fought each other to receive a share. The relief committees and workhouses could not take care of the needy. Thousands more starved to death in the winter of 1847-48.

· Quarter lb of leg of beef – 1d

· 2 gallons of water

· 2 ounce of dripping - ½d

· 2 onions and other vegetables – 2d

· ½ lb flour – a farthing

· ½ lb pearl barley - 1½d

· 3 ounce salt and ½ ounce brown sugar

Source: quoted in Cecil Woodham Smith, The Great Hunger, Hamish Hamilton, 1962.