Flynn, Joan
(1996)
The Famine Years in Queen's County 1845-1850.
Masters thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
This thesis is a. local study of the nationwide calamity of the
Irish famine 1845-1850 and how it effected the county of Queen's.
In general it attempts to assess the overall effect of the famine
on the population, who was effected and how they were effected.
It gives a more in depth analysis of the relief measures that
were carried out in the county and the government response to the
disaster.
The first chapter deals with the county as a whole and it's
situation prior to the famine. It looks at the people of the
county and the methods by which they supported themselves. They
are broadly divided into two groups those who were land owning
and those who rented land and worked it in small farm units. Of
the later group the labourers who had very little land and who
survived solely on the potato were the worst effected by the
famine. The consequences for them of the failure of the potato
crop were largely disease, death, or emigration.
In the second chapter the aim is to assess the measures of
relief that were provided by the government. The government
largely left the responsibility of relief to the land owners.
The kind of relief varied from public works, (roads,drainage and
fencing) soup kitchens and food depots. The land owners in the
county made great efforts to relieve distress but lack of
resources finally meant that the government had to change their
methods of relief.
The new approach was a reliance on the Poor Law Unions for the
relief of the destitute. In Queen's the records survive for the
Mountmellick Union so what follows in the third chapter, is a
case study of the union during the famine from the view of the
Guardians who ran the workhouse. The day to day running of the
house as well as the important issues which faced them as the
famine worsened are examined.
The conclusions reached include Queen's as being one of the
worst effected counties in the province of Leinster in terms of
population decline during the famine. Furthermore it seems that
in general the relief measures established by the government and
run by the land owners proved inadequate yet it must be said that
the local property owners in general did all that was possible
with the resources available to them.
| Item Type: |
Thesis
(Masters)
|
| Keywords: |
Famine Years; Queen's County; 1845-1850; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > History |
| Item ID: |
5165 |
| Depositing User: |
IR eTheses
|
| Date Deposited: |
11 Jul 2014 13:55 |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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