From early times the land in the west of Ireland was under the control of landlords while tenant farmers maintained small holdings at little or no profit. Although they had to pay rent to the landlord the Irish peasantry were very attached to the land on which their forbearers had lived and would do almost anything to remain in the place of their ancestry. Many landlords, who actually lived on their estates, had a paternalistic relationship with their tenants. However, since the landlord had total economic control over his tenants, he also had control on the political and social relationships that existed under his domain.

Many tenants were "tenant at will" meaning they held no lease on the land, could be evicted at any time, and had no recourse in disagreements with the landlord. Tenant eviction and land agitation were issues in Ireland from at least the early 1700s when landlords determined that they could make more money from grazing than from the rents of their tenant framers.

Some land issues agitations were covered by the English press.

Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna (nee Browne) (1790-1846) was and English evangelist and writer who lived in Ireland from 1818 to 1824. Irish Recollection was first published in 1841. Much of the book is an anti Catholic diatribe. She makes this comment on eviction.

" On these occasions, a keeper was set over the property; some legal papers were served, and all the household goods, consisting of iron kettles, wooden stools, broken tables, a ragged blanket or two, and the little stores of potatoes, the sole support of the wretched inhabitants, were brought out, piled in a long row down the street, and "canted", that is, put up for sale, for the payment of perhaps, on or two pre cent, of the arrears."

The Ejectment of Irish Tenantry

Two images and text.

A vast social change is gradually taking place in Ireland. The increase of emigration on the part of the bulk of the small capitalists, and the ejectment, by wholesale, of the wretched cottiers, will, in the course of a short time, render quite inappropriate for ists new condidtion the old cry of a redundant population. But this social revolution, however necessary it may be, is accompanied by an amout of human misery that is absolutely appalling. The Tipperary Vindicator thus portrays the state of the country:_

"The work of undermining the population is going on stealthily, but steadily. Each succeeding day witnesses its devastation - more terrible than the simoon and more deadly than the plague. We do not say that there exists a conspiracy to uproot the 'mere Irish'; but we do aver, that the fearful system of wholesale ejectment, of which we daily hear, and which we daily behold, is a mockery of the eternal laws of God - a flagrant outrage of the principles of nature. Whole districts are cleared. Not a roof-tree is to be seen where the happy cottage of the labourer or the snug homestead of the farmer at no distant day cheered the landscape. The ditch side, the dripping rain, the cold sleet are the covering of the wretched outcast the moment the cabin is tumbled over him; for who dare give shelter of protection from 'the pelting or the pitiless storm?' Who has the temerity to afford him the ordinary rites of hospitality, when the warrant has been signed for his extinction? There are vast tracts of the most fertile land in the world in this noble country now thrown out of tillage. No spade, no plough goes near them. There are no symptoms of life within their borders, no more than if they were situated in the midst of the Great Desert- no more than if they were cursed by the Creator with the blight of barrenness. Those who laboured to bring these tracts to the condition in which they are capable of raising produce of any description- are hunted like wolves, or they perish without a murmur. The tongue refuses to utter their most deplorable - their unheard- of suffering. The agonies endured by the 'mere Irish' in this day of their unparalleled affliction are far more poignant than the imagination could conceive, or the pencil of a Rembrandt picture. We do not exaggerate; the state of things is absolutely fearful; a demon, with all the vindictive passion by which alone a demon could be influenced, is let loose and menaces destruction. Additional sharpness, too, is imparted to his appetite. Christmas was accustomed to come with many healing balsam, sufficient to remove irritation if not to stanch wounds; but its place is usurped by other and far different qualifications. The howl of misery had succeeded the merry carol which used to usher in the season; no hope is felt that an end will soon be put to this state of wretchedness. The torpor and apathy which have seized on the masses are only surpassed by the atrocities perpetrated by those who set the dictates of humanity and the decrees of the Almighty at equal defiance."

Image and text

'In sooth," Cowper says, "the sorrow of such days is not to be expressed, when he that takes and he that pays are both alike distressed." That he who pays should be distressed is not to be wondered at, but that the receiver should be in like evil case would certainly be surprising if the poet had not given an all-sufficient reason in the fact that "well he knows each bumpkin of the clan, instead of paying what he owes, will cheat him if he can." This was written concerning tithes, but will apply equally well to the subject of our illustration, that bugbear of Irish politics, the rent, a matter in which it is held by some perfectly legitimate, we will not say to cheat, as that is rather a strong word, but to circumvent the landlords, who on the other hand, on the principle of diamond cut diamond, keep a sharper count of their tenants' earnings than is quite consonant with that personal freedom which we all like to enjoy. The season may have been a prolific one in the matter of potatoes, the pigs may have thriven, the cattle been free from disease, the harvest a fat one, but all this instead of being an unmixed cause of congratulation to the lucky tenant, raises, should he be only a tenant at will, a horrid spectre of increased rental, for well he knows that "a chiel," the land bailiff to wit, has been "takin' notes" that he has the whole docketted, and can tell within a reasonable margin what the yield of the farm, or it may be only a farmlet, has been, and will be ready, when rent-day comes round to report his worldly prosperity, and give the agent an excuse for adding another pound or so to the rent.

There is a practice much in favour with defendants to breach of promise cases, who, with a fine knowledge of the weakness of human nature, have observed that the ear is not the only organ to be assailed with appeals for merciful consideration, but that a beggar who in a decent cast might starve very comfortably, has only to tear his garment into shreads and refrain from washing to make a good livelihood. Putting these maxims in practice, with a view to the reduction of damages, they will select their worst clothes in which to appear before a jury of their countrymen, as though their tailors refused them credit, and ready money was a blessing for which they sighed in vain. The case is much the same with the tenants our artist has drawn; their wardrobes have been made to yield their refuse, perhaps a scarecrow had been robbed for the occasion, and their tongues are ready with a lamentable list of misfortunes as a vivid imagination can invent. Frost and blight have withered the crops, the murrain has fallen on their cattle, the rot has seized their sheep, the measles have destroyed their pigs, and in fine, there is no rent "sorra ha'porth". But there beside the agent is their natural enemy the bailiff, and it is to be a contest of wits between their protestations and shabby wardrobes and his figures; blarney sometimes getting the better of facts, sometimes being lamentably routed. An Irishman has a persuasive tongue, a quick invention, a ready wit, and driven from one post will retire skirmishing to another; but on the other hand, some Irish landlords have a genius for extracting rack rents from their land, and with such, "no rent", what ever plea may be brought forward in its palliation, has but one remedy-"Eviction." It is difficult to say from the illustration who will be victor in the present case, for while the tenants look plausible enough to soften the heart of the sheriff's officer, as their countryman Sheridan is once said to have done, the land agent has a countenance resembling in its expression the portrait of Sheridan's creation, Uncle Oliver.

Notes:

• Murrain literally means disease. A highly contagious disease in cattle and sheep, it is mentioned in the Bible relating to the fifth plague of Egypt.

  Exodus 9:3 "Behold, the hand of the LORD is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep: there shall be a very grievous murrain."

• Look at the images of the evictions and see what the people were wearing. Did they also dress down for the evictions?

• Anyone know what the reference to Uncle Oliver and Sheridan means?

The next week, on June 11, 1870, the Graphic ran the above image in contrast to the June 4th image. The same couple is now presented in their best clothes and with a completely different demeanor as the greet the parish priest outside of mass.

" The question of rent, on the present occassion, we may presume, has been settled; the bailiff has carried his point and the money has been produced, or the tenant has cajoled the steward into an abatement, or postponement, or what not; at any rate the evil day is past, and the tenant can appear without danger in his decent habit, which, by the time rent-day comes round once more, with its sorrows and anxieties, will be a s pitifully ragged as ever."

The area of Mayo that included Claremorris, Hollymount, Ballinrobe, The Neale and Clonbur was hot bed of militant Land League activities during the Land Wars.

Mayo landlord Lord Mountmorris was murdered in September 1880.

Lord Mountmorriss was murdered at about 8:00 on Saturday evening September 25, 1880 on the road between Clonbur and Ebor Hall (his home) as he was driving himself from a magistrates meeting in Clunbar. He was shot six times, several times at very close range, and from the nature of the wounds must have died instantly. The perpetrators presumably escaped over the hills and across Lough Carrib. When the horse and empty carriage arrived at Ebor hall the servants went searching for Mountmorres.

Clunbur is in the middle of a strip of land between Lough Corrib and Lough Mask on the border between Galway and Mayo.

While Mountmorris was portrayed in the newspaper article as kindly landlord, he had apparently recently refused a reduction in rents to some of his tenants. The motive for the murder was never clarified and no one was ever convicted.

1. Ebor Hall, the house of Lord Mountmorres. 2. The spot where he was murdered, and 3. Flanagan's cottage.

Notes:

• I never know if images like these are meant to be ironic. Juxtaposing the house of the lord with the cottage of the peasant and the gentleman in his carriage with the poverty stricken woman and child on the side of the road seems quite ironic to me.

• The stone walls which are all over the west of ireland.

Most of article missing.

The writer calls Mountmorris:

"the poor half-ruined, well intentioned nobleman, endeavouring to do his duty as a county magistrate, and to keep up friendly relations with all classes of the people about him."

Lord Mountmorris, we are told, never evicted any of his tenants for nonpayment of rent, though he must have wanted the rents badly to support his moderate household expenses."

He lately had some fault to find with a herdsman in his employment, and dismissed the man from service, requiring him, at the same time, to quit the cottage allotted for the herdsman's dwelling. This man, however, claimed to be an agricultural tenant, and to have a right to hold the cottage and bit of ground. In order therefore to settle the question regarding the legal character of a piece of property, Lord Mountmorris sued for a formal degree of evection, which was granted upon sufficient evidence."

While the rest of the above quoted article is missing there is some indication that the Flanagan family who lived in a cottage not far from the site of the murder refused to allow the body to be brought into their cabin. Flanagan and his wife were later suspected of being connected with the murder and were arrrested. At the an inquest into the death of Lord Viscount Mountmorris, Patrick Sweeney, an Irish speaker and the disgrunteled former herd for Lord Mountmorris needed a translator in the court.

In October 1880 all of the suspects in the Mountmorris case were dismissed.

The Illustrated London News December 4, 1880:

"A band of fifty volunteers from the counties of Cavan, Fermanagh, and Monaghan, came to Lough Mask , as we have related to perform this work gratuitously for Captain Boycott. The government send a large military force to protect them, as well as to protect the gentleman and his family, and a regular encampment was formed in his grounds. The party of Ulstermen, mostly sons of farmers, under the leadership of Captain Somerset Maxwell, and the soldiers, hassars, infantry, and sappers, commanded by Lieutenant-colonel W. L. Twentymen, 19th Hassars, have borne many days of fatique, worry, and exposure to bitter wintery weather, in an exemplary spirit. No attempt has been made to molest them; and the work of reaping and digging the various crops, and of threshing the corn has duly finished. On Saturday last, at two in the afternoon, the camp was broken up; and the Ulster party, taking leave of by Captain and Mrs. Boycott , marched to Ballinrobe. Our Special Artist furnishes two or three Sketches of the scenes of their departure, and of the subsequent journey of Capain Boycott and his family, with the military escort, who started early on Saturday morning for Claremorris. They were in a covered ambulance cart, and Captain Boycott carried a favorite parrot in a cage. Captain Boycott and his family proceeded to Dublin by railway, the infantry of the escort going on the Curragh Camp."

A kind of rural Irish loan shark, the Gombeen man was a moneylender who charged exorbitant interest. The word comes from the Irish gaimbin=usury

"Farewell to Lough Mask".

Pictures from the Illustrated London News from January 1, 1881 indicate that boycotting continued after Captain Boycott returned to England.

Clearly boycotting in this instance meant more than not shopping in the store of this tradesman. The townsmen have come out to "groan" and make unpleasant noises and comments.

Unfortunately the the article that accompanied this picture and the one following was not available.

There was a lot of Land League activity in Ireland at the time put I have not been able to determine what precisely required the Scots Guard in Ireland in January 1881.

ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS MARCH 26, 1881

On March 5, 1881 there was an "attempt by shooting" on the life of John Hearne of Killoshine cottage. Hearne was a Land Agent for the Mountmorrency Estate in Cloongowla. He was hit several times but walked home and survived the attack. Three men, Patrick Hession of Cloongowla and two of his nephews, Richard and John Nally of Ballykinave, Claremorris were charged with the attack but for some reason were not sent to trial.

The Irish Land League

One images and text.

....." most of the prisoners are rather obscure persons, and there are a few of the peasant or small farmer class. In the case of some of these, who have left their farms in Mayo or Connemara, a demonstration of sympathy has been got up by assembling numbers of people, men and women, as shown in our Artist's Sketch, to dig and plant in their fields."

"The renewed prevalence of fierce outrages in Connemara has excited serious apprehensions. The murder of John Lyden, a caretaker in the service of Mr. Francis J. Graham, at Letterfrack, was a most shocking crime. On the night of Sunday, the 24th, nine armed men broke open the door of Lyden's house, dragged him and his son, Martin Lyden, out of bed, in the presence of his wife and young children, took them outside the house, and then fired a volley of bullets into the unfortunate old man, and finished by battering him with heavy stones; they then fired at his son, who fell, they thought, dead with four bullets in his body; but he is still live. The surgeons have no hope of his recovery. Two men, named Joyce and Walsh, have been arrested on the charge of taking part in this murder. At another place a bailiff, named King, was seized by a gang of these villains, and was roasted over a fire till his whole body was covered with blisters and the hair burnt off his head. At Deergrove, near Castlebar, and at Ballyhean, houses were attacked last week, in the night, and shots were fired in at the windows. In several instances bailiffs or hinds of the landlords have been savagely beaten and stoned, and cattle and horses have been cruelly mutilated."

The tenant frequently built his cottage himself from local materials. However his rent and taxes were higher if he had windows, if his door was over a certain height and if he made any type of improvements or enlargements to the dwelling.

The landlords practiced "Rack Renting" in order to get rid of unwanted tenants. Rents were raised to the point that the tenant could not afford to pay them. The landlord then had the tenant evicted for non payment of rent. There were no appeals and no mercy shown.

Photographer Robert French for the Eblana/Lawrence Collection per Ciaran Walsh, April 2006

Compare the difference between the Irish Catholic's cottage and the surroundings of the landlord.

" "Agrarian outrages, murders, and other crimes of violence and cruelty, not including the practice of "boycotting," are pretty well confined to certain notorious districts [of the west]......The peasantry, in general, can barely keep themselves alive...... Their greatest hardships are those which Nature has inflicted upon them by the niggardliness of the soil, a large proportion of the country being moorland or mountain, rock and bog, and by the unfavorable climate, stormy, wet, and cloudy, from the neibourhood of the Atlantic Ocean. In the judgment of scientific agricultural economists, a considerable part of the land in those western counties is so poor that it cannot afford to pay any rent whatever; its quality, with the effect of the weather that ordinarily prevails, is such that it only just enables the cultivators to earn mere subsistence for themselves and their families. Rent has usually been paid from money earned by one or two men of each family going yearly to England or Scotland for harvest work, and in some cases also by women or young persons going to work for the farmers of Ulster; when this expedition has failed the peasant has sold his last cow, heifer, or pig, or the horse needed for the plough, to pay the rent; but it is seldom paid for the produce of the soil. This is the position, generally of the poor Connaught tenantry, of whom, in that province, there are seventy thousand having less than five acres each, many with land that yields no crops but potatoes and oats and rye; and in some districts, last season, these crops were an utter failure. Our readers will therefore consider what is the meaning of an "eviction" for non-payment of rent, in such a district of Mayo as that where our Artist, Mr. Claude Byrne, the other day made his sketch of the girl, shut out with her father, mother, and the children from the cottage built by their own hands‹waiting in charge of their few household goods while they go to find shelter for the ejected family; but it happens too often that they have no roof to cover them at nightfall, and , with little food and scanty clothing, it is likely that the weaker may perish."

THE DISTRESS IN THE WEST OF IRELAND

From a Sketch by Mr Claude Byrne

The Illustrated London News, April 10, 1886

A Touch of Nature: Scene at an eviction on Clare Island

An eviction of one of Lord Clanricarde's tenants, Wooford, County Galway, Ireland

The accompanying article was not available with the print so the circumstances of this eviction are not known. However, while the acreage is unknown the buildings give the look of a fairly substantial property by west of Ireland standards for the time.

The Illustrated London News carried an article and pictures on May 1 1886 concerning evictions for non payment of rent in the west. This particular article focused on evictions in Galway.

"On one estate we found that the rents, which previously seemed high, had been raised 4s. in the pound about two years ago. Thus holdings which gave 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 acres of oats and about as much of potato, with a wild mountain run for a cow, calf, or pony, had been raised from 5 (pounds) 5 s to 6 (pounds) 6 s......some paid more rent, other less. These little mountain farmers usually had four or five cows or young beasts and twenty or thirty sheep each."

"It as like a military invasion of the country; they were prepared for fighting; there was an army surgeon with them, and a box, with a red cross on it, containing bandages and medicine for the wounded.

No resistance was offered; scarcely anywhere did people enough gather to be called a crowd."

Driving on cars to the estate where tenants are to be evicted.

The constantabulary rode in the cars, the soldiers marched.

Lest you get the wrong impression, this was to make sure she was not malingering.

"At most of the cottages or hovels only the members of the squalid family to be driven out were found; if any were ill, or feigned illness, the army surgeon, examined the state of the patient."

Clearing out a tenant's furniture

Marching to another eviction

"Their few poor articles were carried out of doors; and the Sheriff, according to custom, plucked some straw from the thatched roof and handed it to he landlord's bailiff in token of possession."

An evicted peasant family and Straw hut on the mountain side, the only shelter after eviction

Harper's Weekly, March 17, 1888

From a book, title unknown. Written in pencil on margin, "1890"

An article in the The illustrated London News of March 13, 1886 shows how the idea of boycotting took hold all over Ireland and was used as a method to push at the English dominance in society.

"The social condition of Ireland has in all ages been deplorable; from one case to another, that country has never been at peace for seven years in the course of seven centuries. The peculiar symptom exhibited at this moment of its chronic malady is the organized system of interference with private dealings and personal affairs by the arbitrary decrees of the local branches of the National League, formerly known as the Land League. These decrees are enforced by putting every man or woman who disobeys them under a species of interdict or excommunication, forbidding all members of the League, who are the majority of the neighbors, to render the commonest services of life to the obnoxious person."

""Here is and "emergency man," one specially employed by the Defense Association to take charge of the house from which a tenant has been evicted; the neighbouring baker and butcher have been prohibited from selling him food, so he is obliged to order it from a distant town, and the package, sent by the parcel post is handed to him though a window."

"A cartload of boycotted turf is stopped on the road, upset, and scattered, by a mischievous assembly of peasants; while the deputy of the National League, turning his back on this petty outrage, pretends not to be aware of it, and reads, United Ireland as if all were quite and serene.

"In another scene, the cart bringing provisions for a party of "caretaker" on a boycotted estate is waylaid by a family, man, wife, and boys who have been recently ejected from one of the farms, and whose insults might proceed to acts of violence but for the presence of armed police."

"The Kilkenny Hunt, being a pastime for the landed gentry, was severely boycotted, and here we see the farmers, on the bank of a stream, treating a gallant horseman as a trespasser, and driving him off when he attempts to land in their fields. What would the hard-riding, free-living, cross-county gallopers of Charles' Lever's entertaining tales have said to such an interruption of their sport?"

"These minor annoyances keep up a bad feeling between different classes, interfere with trade and industry, deprive home life of its comfort, and spoil the naturally pleasant temper of the Irish people. The continual reports of their occurrence have greatly prejudiced English minds against consideration of those plans for the benefit of Ireland which statesmen are disposed to entertain. It is extremely impolitic, on the part of leaders of the Irish political movement, to permit within reach of their influence, such unjustifiable exhibitions of spite and malice, which are likely to create a false idea of the national character, and to impede salutary legislation."

No date. Publication unknown.

Notice the difference in dress between these "ladies of the manor" and the peasant ladies on their estates.

The guards were provided by the government. It would be interesting to know how much the government spent on soldiers to escort "ladies of the manor" on visits during the "troubles" in the 1880s.

An article in the Graphic of May 19, 1888 illustrates a bocott issue but unfortunately does not really explain the reason for the boycotting.

The Boycotting of Norah Fitzmaurice

"On January 31st, an agrarian murder of a remarkable cold-blooded and deliberate kind was committed near the village of Lixnaw, Kerry, an old man named James Fitzmaurice being assassinated in the presence of his daughter, Norah. Two men, who have since been executed, were afterwards charged with the crime, and Norah gave evidence on the part of the Crown against them. From that time onwards she was rigorously and vindictively boycotted. On Sunday, April 15th, she attended service at the Lixnaw Roman Catholic Chapel for the first time since the conviction of her father's murderers at the Wicklow Assizes in March. She was protected by twenty armed policemen, some of whom entered the chapel, while other remained outside. Just before the part of the service called "The Gospel" was reached, two men, named Thomas Dowling and Mortimer Galvin, got up off their knees and walked down the aisles; and, in consequence of signals given by them, the majority of the congregation, numbering about fifty persons, left the chapel and refused to return. No word was spoken to Norah Fitzmaurice herself. The result of these proceedings was that on April 21st, at a special Court held by Captain Massey and Mr. Cecil Roche, at Listowel, Dowling and Alvin were charged with intimidating Norah Fitzmaurice, and were each sentenced to imprisonment with hard labor for six months. The defendants appealed, and were admitted bail. We may add that an urgent appeal is being made to the loyalist of Great Britain and Ireland on behalf of Norah Fitzmaurice, her sister, and their widowed mother. Their lives are in such danger that they are continually guarded by police. They find it impossible to a labourer to work for them, and have no funds to employ men from a distance. Several influential gentlemen have undertaken to collect subscription; among them are the Ven. Archdeacon Orpen, the Rectory Tralee; S M Hussey, Esq., Tralee; and J A Frounde, Esq., 5 Onslow Gardens, London. S. W.

On delivering judgment Captain Massey said: "The case is a peculiar one, but is part and parcel of the dread system of boycotting which is carried on in this county. This instance of sympathy with murders surpassed all that has gone before, for it had led to the desecration by the people of their own house of worship". And Mr. Roche added: "The girl Norah Fitzmaurice had committed no offence against the laws of God or man; she simply told the truth, and brought to justice the ruffians who so cruelty and foully murdered her father. In any civilized country the poor girl would be an object of pity and compassion. Whereas she had been subjected to the most cruel persecution; her enemies had even t racked her into the house of God, and there exposed her to what was the greatest possible form of intimidation by forbidding others to worship in her presence."

See Religion for the accompaning picture.

The above two images are from one postcard that shows a before and after picture of the same area in Castlebar.

After centuries of oppression by English landlords the Irish peasant began to gain control of the land through a series of Acts that allowed them to purchase the land they had been living on:

• In 1885 the Ashbourne Land Purchase Act provided for a system of government-assisted land purchase, which enabled many tenants to buy out their landlords.
• The 1887 Land Act was an extension of the Ashbourne Land Act. It allowed excluded leaseholders into the system set up two years previous.
• The Land Act of 1891 created a board to purchase land and create holdings in the poorest areas in the western counties and a loan fund for tenants who wished to purchase their lands.
• The Wyndlam Act of 1903 provided loans to tenants at reduced interest for the purchase of land and gave bonuses to landlords who sold.
• The 1907 Evicted Tenants Act provided for compulsory sale of land needed for evicted tenants.

By 1921 two-thirds of land was in the hands of Irish tenants.