This case study of a town and its rural hinterland during the Great Famine breaks new ground in the historiography of that cataclysm. The focus on a single community allows the author to highlight the cumulative and shattering impact of disastrous government relief policies on a population rendered prostrate by repeated failures of the potato harvest.
He outlines in turn the shambles of the public works, the loathed soup kitchens, and most horrifically the appalling disease and mortality that occurred both inside and outside the Ennis Union workhouse and its auxiliaries after 1847.
Among the topics which this book illuminates are a huge upsurge in violent and non-violent crime, desperate individual attempts to prevent the outward movement food supplies. The brutal outrages of secret societies, and harsh judicial reaction also feature, in addition to the unsympathetic and often indifferent attitude displayed by officialdom at all levels towards those whose misery they were appointed to relieve.
Important new insights are offered on a wide variety of other topics such as corruption on the boards of guardians, the bizarre election campaign of 1847, the Special Commission of 1848 and the hangings which followed it, and a merciless campaign of evictions carried out by landlords in the district. Exhaustively researched, and compellingly written, this book is sure to set the standard for future work of a similar kind.
Contents:
Acknowledgements
Illustrations
Foreword
Introduction
1. The Remote Little Town of Ennis
2. The Canker is not Partial but General
3. Legally and Morally Answerable: The Relief Committees in Action
4. The Patience of a Famishing People: Summer to Autumn 1846
5. Ploughing to the Roads Instead of the Fields: The Public Works
6. The People are Dying in Every Corner of the Land
7. 1847: The Elections of Summer and the New Poor Law
8. The Good Intentions of the Present Ministry
9. Pseudo-Patriotism and the Mendicancy: The 1848 Rebellion and the Workhouse Bureaucracy
10. A Blighting Desolation: 1849-1850
11. 1850-1851: The Eve of Better Times?
12. A Considerable Degree of Prosperity: The Community of Ennis After the Famine
Appendices
Bibliography
Index
