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AN IRISH EVICTION,

Grey River Argus, Volume IX, Issue 599,
18 November 1869, Page 4

A correspondent writes to the Daily News giving an account of the painful scenes witnessed at a recent eviction in Ireland; - "In the county of Carlow some fifty miles from Dublin, and not far distance from beautiful and enchanting scenery of Wexford, stands the hamlet of Nurney, in or near which is a district is called the lands of Cloneen. On these lands a number of poor cabins were built and occupied by 22 families, numbering upwards of 120 individuals.

Many of these families have been on the lands since 1821, and the majority of them held leases from a person who acted as middleman between them and the principal landlord. In these cabins, for which most of them paid a yearly or weekly rental, they appear to have lived industrious, peaceable, and virtuous lives, working on the neighboring farms, paying their rents punctually, owing no man anything, keeping clear of Fenianism, terrorism, the workhouse, and the jail, and bringing up children to follow in their footsteps, and emulate their loyal and praiseworthy example. But a few months since their leases lapsed on the death of the person on whose life they depended, and then the scene was suddenly changed.

The principal landlord had determined that not a soul should be allowed to dwell on the land. Two bailiffs, a sheriff, and eight police, armed with rifle, bayonet, and crowbar, made their appearance one morning about 11 a.m., tore off the roofs of the cabins, and forced out  the unresisting and defenseless in habitants, without giving them time or place to prepare or partake of dinner. Many poor creatures were compelled to locate themselves in ditches, sheds, or under covered planks. Several families found refuge in an old cowshed on and neighboring gentleman’s land, with a roof extemporised from the thatch of the levelled cabins. In this considerable period, Patrick Nolan, with wife and six children, of both sexes; Ellen Kinsella and son, 21 years old; Kate Tuite (born on the property) 55 years old, with two children, a boy and a girl, from 11 to 13 years old; and Kitty Cyrne, a young woman of marriageable ages.

There were only one room and one bed; all who could crowded there, the rest lay on doors and wood taken from the dismantled cabins, or on the damp and filthy floor. One poor old man in another wretched hole laid himself down night by night for many weeks in the centre of a miserable bed, with his grown-up son on one side of him, and his grown-up daughter on the other. I visited Cloneen on the 3^rd of last month, and spent some considerable time on the scene of destruction. The day was bright and clear, the country for miles round was in a fair state of cultivation, while the green fields glistened in the sunlight, and made the heart glad with promise of approaching harvest.

Scarcely a human habitation was visible; but here and there, at wide distances, two or three scattered homesteads revealed the presence of man, and appeared to protest against the plea of a surplus population.  But close at hand, on the roadside where I stood, were the dismal ruins, blackened walls, scattered stones, and broken timber, which once helped to make up the dwelling places of the evicted poor. It was a gloomy and painful sight, and the thought was even still more painful and gloomy that the owners of the land in this unfortunate country could find no better remedy for their real or fancied grievances than to outrage the common feelings of our nature by heartless crudity and grinding oppression, and that the peasantry have no higher resort than the dreary alternatives either to bid farewell to the land of their birth or to die in ditches unpitied and unknown.

But many Irish landlords have found a better remedy and why should not all! One excellent man pulled down the miserable mud cabins of his laborers, it is true, but only when he had built others larger, more airy, more lofty, more comfortable in every respect, and he now lets them to his own peasants at a rent of one shilling per week. I had the pleasure of talking with this gentleman within an hour after leaving the lands of Cloneen. He told me that the rent did not pay for the money expended, but that the men so housed were cleaner, more self-respecting, more moral, doing more and better work for him, and living far more like the beings God made them for, than when they inhabited hovels, scarcely fit for the beasts of the field.

Another Irish landowner (and the names of both these gentlemen are ready if necessary)., coming into some new property, found a number of dirty cabins near the lodge gates, and made no secret of his wish to get rid of them. He went quietly amongst their inhabitants, showed that he was ready to help them settle comfortably where they were wanted, instead of being where they were miserable themselves and a burden to others; and in a short time, with the cheap expenditure of a little money, and a little pains, they were all gone of their own free will, without a shot, or a murmur, or a curse”.

Source: http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=GRA18691118.2.21

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Irish Independent 1923

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