The Hidden Famine: Hunger, Poverty and Sectarianism in Belfast 1840-50
256
The Hidden Famine: Hunger, Poverty and Sectarianism in Belfast 1840-50
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Overview
Drawing on a wealth of original research, Kinealy and MacAtasney begin with an examination of society and social behaviour in Belfast prior to 1845. They then assess the official response to the crisis by the British government, the response by the Church in both England and Ireland, and the part played by the local administration in Ulster. The authors examine the impact of the cholera epidemic on Belfast in 1849-50, the city's recovery after the Famine, and the beginnings of open sectarianism among the business and landed classes of the province.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783715855 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pluto Press |
| Publication date: | 09/20/2000 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Christine Kinealy is a lecturer in history at the University of Central Lancashire. She is the author of The Great Calamity: The Irish Famine, 1845-52 (Roberts Reinhart, 1994) and The Hidden Famine (Pluto Press, 2000). She has written for History Ireland and the New York-based Irish Echo.
Gerard Mac Atasney is an Irish historian based in Belfast who has written widely on the Great Famine in Ireland. He is the author of The Other Famine (The History Press, 2010) and The Hidden Famine (Pluto Press, 2000).
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
An 'Un-National Town'
The commercial and industrial success of Belfast in the late nineteenth century was both unique and extraordinary within the overall picture of Irish economic development. In the middle of the seventeenth century, Ulster had been the poorest province in Ireland. Although Belfast had been made a Corporate Borough in 1613, as a market town and port it was overshadowed by nearby Carrickfergus. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, Ulster was the most industrialized and prosperous region in the country and Belfast was its pre-eminent town. The economic transformation of the area was due largely to the growth of the domestic textile industry, especially in the east of the province. Apart from Belfast's success in textile production – initially cotton but increasingly linen – the town benefited from its activities as a major port, not only for the products of the town but also as a channel for agricultural exports from other counties within Ulster. Economic expansion was matched by rapid population growth. Much of this increase was as a result of migration to the town. In 1821, the population of Belfast was 37,000, in the 1860s it had risen to 120,000, and by the end of the century to 350,000, making it larger than that of Dublin. Again, such growth was extraordinary given the overall decline in Ireland's population after 1841.
Belfast was a predominantly Protestant town. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Catholics accounted for only 9 per cent of the town's population but within ten years, the percentage had doubled. By 1861, the proportion had risen to 34 per cent, partly due to Famine migration. However, by the end of the century, it had fallen to 24 per cent. As the percentage of Catholics in the town increased, antagonisms between the main religious communities became more deeply entrenched.
By the 1840s, Belfast was playing a pivotal role within the economy of the north of Ireland. Its economic status was mirrored in increased civic and political awareness, which resulted in the formation of a new Council in 1840 and the election of a Mayor in January 1842. Notwithstanding commercial success and rapid expansion, economic growth in Belfast was uneven and was accompanied by extensive social dislocation. Poverty and disease also remained endemic, amplified by the fact that housing and other amenities could not keep pace with the demands of a growing population. The Famine of the late 1840s, therefore, impacted on a community that was already divided, not only along religious lines, but also by sharp economic demarcations.
The Industrial Capital of Ireland
By the middle of the nineteenth century, Belfast had emerged as the industrial and commercial capital of Ireland. However, its dominant position owed much to the economic developments of the late eighteenth century, notably the introduction of cotton manufacture in 1777. The subsequent expansion of cotton production in Belfast outstripped that of other parts of the country and, in its wake, created the need for innovative textile machinery. Thus, in 1798, the Lagan Foundry was established, followed a few years later by the Belfast Foundry in Donegall Street. By 1811, 15 steam-powered, twelve water-powered and six horse- or hand-powered mills had been constructed. Moreover, 150,000 spindles were working in the town, employing 2,000 spinners and 11,000 weavers. The success of the cotton industry can be illustrated by the fact that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Belfast accounted for a quarter of total Irish imports of cotton wool and yarn; by 1820, that proportion had doubled.
However, by the late 1820s, the cotton industry had declined in relative importance in the town's economy as a technological revolution occurred in another area of textile production. In 1825, James Kay patented the wet-spinning process by which the finest yarns could be spun by machine. As a consequence, the production of yarn was transformed gradually from a domestic to a mechanized factory industry. Although cotton production continued to be significant, Belfast entrepreneurs recognized that future economic success lay in linen manufacture through mechanized flax spinning. The first steam-driven, wet flax spinning mill in Ireland was opened in 1829 by the Belfast brothers Thomas and Andrew Mulholland. By the mid-1830s, over 20 mills in the town had converted from cotton to flax, making flax manufacture the most significant employer of factory labour. By 1850, there were 29 linen mills but only two cotton mills. The flax mills were concentrated in the north and west of the town. As had been the case with cotton, the expansion of linen necessitated new equipment and three new foundries – Boyds (in 1834), Albert (in 1843) and Falls (in 1845) – were constructed.
Although textiles were the backbone of the Belfast economy, other industries also contributed to the commercial vibrancy of the area. By the 1820s, Belfast had become the single most important centre for shipbuilding in Ulster. Between 1824 and 1854, 50 vessels were constructed in the town's three shipyards. In 1838, the first Irish-built iron steamer was launched from Coates' Lagan Foundry. By 1841, the town provided employment for almost as many shipwrights as Cork and Dublin combined – 177 in Belfast compared with 91 in each of the other two centres. The first half of the century also witnessed significant growth in rope and glass manufacture, tobacco processing and whiskey distilling. Industrial growth was paralleled in commerce with the emergence of three Belfast-based banks; the Northern Bank in 1824, the Belfast Bank in 1826 and the Ulster Bank in 1836.
Belfast's growth was facilitated by improvements in transport networks which, in turn, allowed a greater expansion of economic activities. By the 1820s, a regular steamship service had been established, which strengthened existing trade links with the northwest of England, particularly Liverpool. Tonnage cleared from Belfast port increased from 91,000 in 1815 to 291,000 in 1835. To allow further expansion, in 1837 the town authorities agreed to straighten and dredge the shallow, winding channel which provided the main access to Belfast. The work was completed in 1849 and as a consequence Belfast was transformed into a major port within the British Empire. Communication links within Ulster were enhanced by the creation of a railway network in the 1840s which connected Belfast with Ballymena and with Lurgan, Portadown and Armagh, which were also major textile centres. The rail links with Armagh siphoned off to Belfast much of the business which would otherwise have gone to Newry.
The developments in transport enabled Belfast to benefit from its close proximity to the centre of Britain's industrial heartland, the north of England and central Scotland. The technological, commercial and communication improvements ensured that the town was able to take full advantage of its links with British markets and with trading centres throughout the Empire. On the eve of the Famine, therefore, Belfast had become the undisputed industrial and commercial capital of Ireland.
The Athens of the North?
Whilst the economic expansion of Belfast in the early nineteenth century was rapid and, compared with other Irish towns, impressive, the town's development was sporadic and uneven. During the Napoleonic War, Belfast's economy had prospered. Exports of cattle, corn and textiles from the port had all increased dramatically. The postwar slump throughout Ireland after 1815, combined with the collapse of the local cotton industry, damaged the economy of Belfast.
Recovery from the postwar depression proved to be slow. For those who remained in employment, conditions were harsh and hours were long. Cotton weavers were working seven days a week from 4 o'clock in the morning to midnight in order to earn 4s 6d a week. In May 1826, the Belfast News-Letter reported that a 'multitude of operatives' had been laid off and estimated the number to be no less than 10,000. During the trade slump of 1825–26, one-third of all cotton weavers in the Belfast region were unemployed. In Ballymacarrett, unemployment was particularly high. As a result an emigration society was formed, its aim being to procure funds and assist those weavers who wished to emigrate to British North America (Canada).
Following a meeting in the Town Hall in May 1826, a relief committee was established in Belfast. The remit of the committee was to solicit funds in aid of the distressed weavers' families and to apply to the government for loans to enable local employers to continue in business. The relief committee raised money through a series of charity events which included a ball, a play and a 'grand sparring match' in McAllister's Racket Court in Peter's Hill. In total, subscriptions reached £2,500. The demand for assistance was so great that the relief committee needed to meet daily in order to assess the 'numerous applications' for aid. To facilitate this process, they divided the town into relief districts so that the needs of each family could be evaluated. Each applicant who was deemed to be eligible received a weekly ration of 28 lb of potatoes, the same quantity of meal and a half bag of coal. Able-bodied men who received relief were required to break stones in return. By August 1826, the relief committee began to wind down its operations. In September, as trading conditions revived, many weavers were again able to find employment. Nevertheless, even after the slump was over, the situation of the cotton weavers did not recover. In 1830, the Belfast News Letter reported that cotton weavers in Ballymacarrett were 'forced to live on Indian meal unfit for cattle and ... were reduced to skeletons from overwork and lack of sleep'.
The revival of the town's fortunes in the late 1820s was due largely to a reorientation of the textile industry to linen production. This shift was made possible as a result of the initiative of a number of Belfast industrialists, such as the Mulholland Brothers, who embraced the new technologies associated with factory production. It was the linen rather than the cotton industry which gained from the modernization of production techniques. Initially, the domestic out-work system based in Belfast's rural hinterland benefited from the increased demand resulting from the move to factory spinning. After 1840, however, the wages of rural weavers declined rapidly due to an abundant supply of labour and competition from England and Scotland and the increasing move to mechanized production.
By the 1830s, Belfast was on its way to becoming the premier industrial location in Ireland. The pace of industrial development was helped by trade links with Britain. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, shipping routes between Belfast and Britain, and Belfast and the British colonies, were well established and were able to benefit from the expansion of steam shipping in the 1820s. The thriving port was surrounded by cotton and flax spinning mills, which employed thousands, both directly and in a variety of auxiliary trades. The local economy was also diverse. For example, Ballymacarrett, which was a major area of textile production, also contained two vitriol works, a foundry, a glass manufactory, public lime kilns, and two ropeworks.
In spite of the success of the linen industry, mill wages – the major source of earnings – were relatively low; a man in constant employment would earn 5 or 6 shillings a week which, for a typical household, ensured a total weekly income of 14 shillings. The exception was Ballymacarrett where, by the mid-1830s, two-thirds of the population were employed by Glasgow linen merchants. These 'fancy weavers', as they were termed, had a regular family wage of £1 2s 0d. None the less, this advantage over their fellow local weavers was compromised by their reliance on the economic fortune of their Scottish employers who, in times of economic crisis, did not hesitate to reduce their wages or to stop production altogether.
In the rural areas, employment had become unpredictable due to a gradual process of deindustrialization as textile production became more mechanized. The accompanying emergence of the factory system meant that production moved from the countryside to Belfast and to other urban centres. This process of reorganization meant that alternative sources of income had to be sought by workers previously involved in domestic industry. In Carnmoney, for example, the poor relied increasingly on employment in public works programmes such as existed in the quarries and on the local roads. In Holywood, the decline of the domestic linen industry forced some of the local population to depend on agricultural production, notably growing potatoes, supplemented by collecting mussels on the seashore.
Wages in the countryside were determined by demand for labour; thus at harvest time a man could earn 1 shilling a day without meals, or from 6d to 10d with meals. The rate varied widely. In Carnmoney wages were below average, ranging from 6d to 10d without meals, and 3d to 5d with meals. Wages generally dropped in winter when there was less demand for labour and so desperate were many for employment that they would accept a few pence a day for any job. Wages were generally paid in cash, but in Holywood and Knockbreda, a combination of cash and food was paid. A number of localities operated a system of duty labour where, in lieu of rent, a tenant worked a fixed term for his landlord – usually one day a week.
Changes in industrial and agricultural production in the various sectors of the textile industry also had a detrimental impact on the earning capacity of women. Until the emergence of factory spinning, women had been able to make a small but valuable contribution to the family income. The demise of the spinning wheel in linen production meant that they were now reduced to preparing and winding yarn for their husbands and sons. Like their male counterparts, country women earned most during harvest when they were employed in haymaking, reaping corn or digging, weeding and gathering potatoes. In this way, they could earn between 6d and 10d a day. Although children as young as nine were employed in the Belfast mills, they were seldom required in outlying areas. At harvest, they could make 4d–6d a day working alongside their mothers.
Overall, the changes taking place in the Belfast economy after the 1820s proved to be protracted and they altered working relationships, not only in Belfast, but throughout the surrounding countryside. Moreover, the transition to mechanization and the spread of factory production resulted in the emergence of a new source of poverty – unemployment or underemployment during the periodic trade depressions.
Housing and Diet
For much of the local population housing conditions were appalling. Belfast mill workers usually lived in courts, described by one observer as 'ill-ventilated hovels' with little or no sanitation. Kennedy's Entry warranted the description of being 'a nasty, dirty, unhealthy lane and entry containing a very poor, wretched set of tenants'. A common concern of charitable organizations was the massive overcrowding in such localities. Donaldson's Entry, for example, contained one yard measuring 32 feet by 26 feet, which was held in common by the tenants of nine houses. McCrea's Entry, which encompassed 14 houses, had neither a yard nor a rear entrance, access being gained solely by means of a narrow passage. In Ballymacarrett, many houses were inhabited by two families often of between six and ten members each.
Such conditions were regarded by one clergyman as being responsible for loose morals and a high level of illegitimacy. He warned that:
A very great number of the lower classes have never been married, except by what is termed a bucklebeggar. Many men and women live together just while it suits convenience. The man then decamps and leaves the woman and child a legacy to the community.
Speaking on the 'evils of over-crowding', Dr Andrew Malcolm, a respected Belfast doctor, stated:
The great majority of the poorer class of houses in this town consist of four rooms in two storeys. These are generally occupied by two families. Each room varies from seven to ten feet square, and from six to eight feet high in the lower storey – the same dimensions with a lower storey in the upper. Each room, although not always, contains one window, the upper sash of which is almost invariably, in the older houses, made immovable. Such a house is manifestly insufficient to be the domicile of ten individuals; but we have known, and not infrequently [sic], so many as eighteen or even twenty persons sleeping within such limited apartments.
(Continues…)
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Copyright © 2000 Christine Kinealy and Gerard Mac Atasney.
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Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction
Part I. The ‘Old’ Poor Law c. 1640-1845
1. Poverty before the Famine
Part II. A National Crisis. c.1845-47
2. A Man-Made Famine
3. All the Horrors of Famine
4. An Droch-Shaol . Disease and Death in Black ‘47
Part III. A Divided Town
5. Public and Private Responses
6. Conflict and Rebellion.
7. The Crisis is Passed
Aftermath
Appendices
Further Reading
Index