Feast and Famine: A History of Food in Ireland 1500-1920 0198227515, 9780198227519

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Feast and Famine

Feast and Famine Food and Nutrition in Ireland 1500–1920

L. A. CLARKSON  E. MARGARET CRAWFORD

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, 2 6 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © L. A. Clarkson and E. Margaret Crawford 2001 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clarkson, Leslie A. Feast and famine : a history of food in Ireland, 1500–1920 / L.A. Clarkson and E. Margaret Crawford p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Food habits–Ireland–History. 2. Potatoes–Social aspects–Ireland–History. 3. Food supply– Ireland–History. 4. Ireland–History–Famine, 1845–1852. 5. Ireland–Social life and customs. I. Crawford, E. Margaret. II. Title. GT2853.I73 C53 2001 363.8'09415–dc21 2001045166 ISBN 0-19-822751-5 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset in Baskerville by Regent Typesetting, London Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by T. J. International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

Preface W   nearly two decades writing this book. This pace is not in step with the emphasis on speed that is currently the research culture in universities in the United Kingdom. Our leisurely progress is partly explained by one of the authors becoming caught up in the oxymoronic world of university management. There is something quaintly quixotic in urging one’s colleagues to make haste, whilst at the same time proceeding on a time scale that is scarcely less than geological. A second reason is that both authors have had other teaching and research commitments. There has been one great benefit from our slow progression. The last three decades have been most fruitful ones in Irish historical studies. Professional historians in the universities and other institutions of higher learning, and dedicated local and amateur historians, have greatly enlarged our understanding of Ireland’s past. The ‘Troubles’ have been a powerful stimulus to research, as was the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Great Famine. Most of all, though, the burgeoning has being owing to the industry of the scholars of Ireland. We have drawn freely and profitably on their work. It would fill too much space to acknowledge them all by name and invidious to identify only some. We hope the bibliography will reveal the extent of our debts. We apologize to any who recognize their arguments whom we have failed to acknowledge. There is one scholar whom we must identify. The late K. H. Connell, professor and first head of the Department of Economic and Social History in the Queen’s University of Belfast, was one of the few truly seminal historians of Ireland in the second half of the twentieth century. He reconfigured population history, in Britain as well as in Ireland. And he pioneered the study of dietary history on this island. We have not always agreed with him, but we have continually been stimulated by him. We are indebted to our University. Queen’s has paid our salaries and has given us several research and travel grants to support our work. Some of this money enabled us to employ Dr Myrtle Hill and Mrs Marianne Litvack as research assistants at various times. Just as important, the University has remained faithful to its true principles as a place of learning, embracing the humanities as well as the sciences, liberal studies as well as the vocational. At a departmental level, successive heads of department—Cyril Ehrlich, Kenneth Brown, Alun Davies, and the late David Johnson—have been patient about a book that they must have thought at times existed only in our imaginations. We are grateful to Professor Brown for finding the time to comment on the manuscript.

vi  We have received generous grants from the ESRC and the Wellcome Trust for the History of Medicine, for which we are extremely grateful. At an early stage the Department of Education for Northern Ireland awarded Dr Crawford a postgraduate scholarship to pursue studies in London, where she benefited from the interests of Professor T. C. Barker and Professor D. J. Oddy in dietary history. Oxford University Press has been remarkably patient, and over the past few months Ms Ruth Parr and Ms Kay Rogers have been most encouraging. We have benefited from the criticisms of two anonymous readers and have responded to most of their points. Dr Anne McVeigh of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and Ms Bernie Cunningham, Deputy Librarian of the Royal Irish Academy checked some references for us. To be related to a historian, but not to be a historian, must be a slightly disconcerting experience. We are grateful to Rosalind Clarkson and to the late Ernest and Eleanor Crawford for their tolerance. In 1903 P. W. Joyce explained that he had written his A Social History of Ancient Ireland, ‘to give glory to God, honour to Ireland, and knowledge to those who desire to learn all about the Old Irish people’. A century later, historians lack the confidence to make such claims for their craft. We have written our book because we wanted to. But no historian working in Northern Ireland can be insensitive to the uses to which history is sometimes put. We hope this book will contribute to the understanding of Ireland’s past and that that understanding will lead to reconciliation and not to division.

Contents List of Graphs

viii

List of Tables

ix

Abbreviations

x

1. F, E,  S

1

2. T S  S C: A P E

9

3. F  R   G F: T F   M  U C

29

4. P, P  D, CIRCA   CIRCA 

59

5. D C, ‒

88

6. F, F,  I

111

7. T A  F

134

8. F  N

164

9. N, H,  D

222

10. F, M,   S

249

11. C

279

Appendix: Account Books

282

Bibliography

287

Index

320

List of Graphs 8.1. 8.2. 8.3. 8.4. 8.5. 8.6. 8.7a. 8.7b. 8.7c. 8.7d. 8.7e. 8.7f. 8.8a. 8.8b. 8.8c. 8.8d. 8.8e. 8.8f. 8.9a. 8.9b. 8.9c. 8.9d. 8.9e. 8.9f. 9.1. 9.2. 10.1. 10.2.

Daily protein content of labourers’ diets, 1839–1903/4 Daily fat content of labourers’ diets, 1839–1903/4 Daily carbohydrate content of labourers’ diets, 1839–1903/4 Daily energy values of labourers’ diet, 1839–1903/4 Daily calcium content of labourers’ diets, 1839–1903/4 Daily iron content of labourers’ diets, 1839–1903/4 Daily protein content of gaol diets, 1824–1868 Daily fat content of gaol diets, 1824–1868 Daily carbohydrate content of gaol diets, 1824–1868 Daily energy values of gaol diets, 1824–1868 Daily calcium content of gaol diets, 1824–1868 Daily iron content of gaol diets, 1824–1868 Daily protein content of workhouse diets, 1841–1887 Daily fat content of workhouse diets, 1841–1887 Daily carbohydrate content of workhouse diets, 1841–1887 Daily energy values of workhouse diets, 1841–1887 Daily calcium content of workhouse diets, 1841–1887 Daily iron content of workhouse diets, 1841–1887 Daily protein content of school diets, early 18th century–1869 Daily fat content of school diets, early 18th century–1869 Daily carbohydrate content of school diets, early 18th century–1869 Daily energy values of school diets, early 18th century–1869 Daily calcium content of school diets, early 18th century–1869 Daily iron content of school diets, early 18th century–1869 Deaths per 100,000 of the population from tuberculosis, 1864–1904 Deaths per 100,000 of the population from diabetes mellitus, 1864–1920 Offences against food and weights and measure acts, 1863–1912 Total net government income (£000s), 1700–1800

198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 242 247 267 273

List of Tables 2.1. 2.2. 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5. 3.6. 4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4. 4.5. 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 7.1. 7.2. 7.3. 8.1. 8:2. 8.3. 8.4. 8.5. 8.6. 8.7. 8.8. 8.9. 9.1. 10.1.

Provisions purchased for the lord deputy’s household, 1576–1577 Household expenditure of the earl of Sussex, Kilmainham, 24 July 1562 to 6 September 1562 Percentage of food and drink expenditure by category in thirteen households, 1674–1828 Percentage expenditure on food and drink, England and Ireland Estimated numbers of animals consumed in Ireland, 1700–1841 Seeds bought from Daniel Bullen, Dublin by William Balfour, Townley Hall, Drogheda, February 1755 Retained imports into Ireland of coffee, currants and raisins, tea and sugar, 1698–1817 (five yearly averages) Retained imports into Ireland of wines and spirits, 1698–1817 (five yearly averages) Philip Skelton’s diet for a farming family of six, 1741 Arthur Young’s observations of potato consumption, 1776–1778 Potato consumption according to the Statistical surveys W. H. T. Hawley’s survey of labourers’ diets, 1839 National food consumption patterns 1836 as revealed by the Poor Law Inquiry Average daily consumption of food (in ounces) by male adult labourers, 1839–1904 Food consumed by labourers, small farmers, and artisans according to respondents to an investigation of prison diets in 1867–1868 Indian corn and meal imports to Ireland, 1840–1899 (cwt) Deaths from marasmus, dropsy, and starvation, 1844–1850 Number of so-called ‘ophthalmia’ cases in Irish workhouses Mortality from various infectious diseases in Ireland, 1844–1851 The Atwater scale Examples of energy values (in kilocalories), per capita, per man, and per LAM Nutritional analysis of a farming family diet, 1741 Nutritional analysis of a labouring man’s diet, 1839–1904 Nutritional composition of gaol diets, 1824–1868 Dietary scale for use in workhouses, 1842 Mean daily nutrient values of workhouse diets for able-bodied males, 1841/4–1887 Mean daily nutrient values of school diets, early eighteenth century to 1869 Hospital diets, 1829–1830 Mean decennial mortality from selected infections per 100,000 of the population Assize of Bread, Ireland

21 22 34 35 40 49 51 54 63 65 66 71 76 91 94 95 145 150 161 173 174 182 185 187 188 189 191 196 245 259

Abbreviations ADD MS BG Cal SPDI HMC HMSO IMC MS MSS NLI n.p. OSM PP PROI PROL PRONI SP TCD

Additional Manuscripts Board of Guardians Calendar of State Papers relating to Ireland Historical Manuscripts Commission Her Majesty’s Stationery Office Irish Manuscripts Commission Manuscript Manuscripts National Library of Ireland No place of publication stated Ordnance Survey Memoirs Parliamentary Papers Public Records Office, Ireland (now National Archives of Ireland) Public Records Office, London Public Records Office, Northern Ireland State Papers Trinity College Dublin

CHAPTER ONE

Food, Economy, and Society Introduction Food and drink touch society in every conceivable way. We need nourishment in order to survive and to reproduce. The quantity and quality of the food we consume affects our health and well-being. The production and distribution of food and drink are the basis of economic activity. The well-known definition of economics—the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends—is almost a definition of food markets. Wars have been fought over the control of food supplies, and political and legal structures designed to regulate its production and distribution. The preparation and consumption of food and drink are the bases of social activity, from the simple family meal to great occasions of celebration and commemoration. Hospitality is a bond that cements communities together and, in the past, has established ties of obligation and obedience. Food and drink have taken on mystical and symbolic qualities in religious services, such as in the Christian mass. Fear of hunger underlies many European folk tales and shortages of food have heightened a belief in magic. Increases in the production of food in England during the eighteenth century contributed to the decline in magic.1 Nevertheless, historians have had surprisingly little to say about food—as distinct from food production (i.e. agriculture)—and even less about the physiology and psychology of eating and drinking. This is an odd oversight given the fundamental importance of food. Part of the explanation lies in Sir John Clapham’s comments, made more than half a century ago, about the place of economic and social history in historical studies: ‘of all varieties of history the economic is the most fundamental. Not the most important: foundations exist to carry better things.’ Food and drink are part of the foundations. But, he continued: Most sports of leisured people are variants of old economic activities—or warlike ones. Men first hunted the deer to get his flesh to eat or his leather skin to wear; they first climbed mountains to save the sheep or kill chamois. As most men in most ages have had little leisure, it is a comfort for the economic historian to remember that the sun has seldom completely failed to get into this basement of his.2 1 Robert Darnton, ‘Peasants tell tales: the meaning of Mother Goose’, in Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and other episodes in French cultural history (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985), 17–78; Keith Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic: studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth century England (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), 650. 2 Sir John Clapham, A concise economic history of Britain from the earliest times to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1949), xvii.

2 , ,   Until very recent times the history of food, diet, nutrition, and cooking has dwelt in the darkness of the basement, or at best below stairs in the kitchen, alongside the plough and the anvil, of greater interest to the cultural anthropologist than to the historian. Things are changing. Wealthy people in rich countries today worry about their health and diets. We have become food faddists in a fashion that our ancestors could never afford to be. Television has brought the horrors of famines to our comfortable firesides. History reflects the concerns of the present and so nutritional history is moving out of the cellar. We are trying to integrate food, diet, nutrition, and health into the wider fabric of Irish economic and social history, and to add a dimension that has been largely absent from the general story unless there has been a famine to brood over. Almost all the food eaten throughout the world derives from settled agriculture. Some fruits, fish, and fowl are the products of hunter-gathering, but even in the lightly populated Ireland of the sixteenth century farming was required to feed the bulk of the population. As settlement spread the social framework of landlords, farmers, and cultivators evolved; crops were planted and animals reared in response to demand. Legal structures were devised to protect landed property and the incomes earned from land. Until the end of the nineteenth century agriculture was the main source of livelihood in Ireland, employing almost two-thirds of the working population and contributing roughly one-third of the national income. In the economically more developed island on the other side of the Irish Sea, the proportions were much lower. Livings were extracted from the soil in the form of rents, profits, and wages (sometimes paid in kind). Many of the secondary industries that existed were those that turned the raw materials for food into products that could be consumed: milling, baking, brewing, distilling, and dairying. Much of the service sector was busy in the distribution of food within the country, the export of food or its raw materials out of the country, and the importation of commodities, such as wine, that Ireland did not produce for itself. Poor people spend more of their time and income on feeding themselves and their families than do rich people. A sample of budgets gathered by the Poor Inquiry in Ireland in 1835–6 indicates that 71 per cent of labourers’ income went on food, including the rent of potato land.3 On the eve of the Great Famine virtually all the effort of poor cottiers was put into growing potatoes and cultivating their landlords’ corn. But as long as potato harvests were good there was time to spare for drinking and dancing. Prosperous farmers, merchants, and landlords had time to enjoy more leisured lives and the income to spend on sugar, wine, tea, and coffee. Their wives explored the pleasures of 3 Mary Cullen, ‘Breadwinners and providers: women in the household economy of labouring families 1835–6’, in Maria Luddy and Cliona Murphy (eds.), Women surviving (Swords, Co. Dublin: Poolbeg Press, 1990), 92–8.

, ,  

3

cultivating fruits in kitchen gardens, orchards, and hot houses. Gentlemen fed the local poor, entertained their neighbours—and were entertained in return—and enhanced their social standing by lavish displays of hospitality. Such behaviour required more than a modicum of wealth, usually coming from rents, and in return generated a demand for grain, flour and bread, meat, fish, milk, cream, and cheese, as well as for farmworkers, cooks, and household servants. The economics of eating and drinking dominated lives at all levels of society.4 And not merely of society at large, but of the individual household also. The majority of the population of Ireland were cultivators: farmers holding land on some sort of lease; or penny-pinched cottiers clinging onto their potato patches rented by the year. Farming tasks of ploughing, sowing, and harvesting were regulated by the seasons. Similarly, the rearing of animals for meat or milk followed an annual rhythm, and non-agricultural activities—flax spinning for instance—had to be slotted into the seasonal round of food production. The nature of the work in Ireland, as in many other societies, conventionally determined who did what. At the end of the nineteenth century ‘women laid potatoes, spread manure, collected stones for drains, fed the cows in busy times, hand-raked the meadows, prepared turf, and bound corn. They rarely herded or sold cattle. Women occasionally ploughed, although they more commonly performed spadework.’ Women looked after the poultry.5 A major task in all households was cooking. In the substantial establishments of the middling and upper classes there was a hierarchy of domestics from butlers and housekeepers down to the humblest scullery maid to attend the hearth and the associated tasks, but lower down the social order these duties were left to wives and daughters. They were not paid and the economic importance of their work has thus been frequently overlooked.6 Cooks had little equipment to assist them—an open fire, pots and pans, griddles, trivets, and oat cake toasters if they were lucky—and the very poorest households possessed nothing except a pot and a hook to hang it on. Until the 1920s the majority of housewives in rural cottages cooked over open fires. There were cookery books on the market but cost, illiteracy, and the restricted option of the boiling pot, limited their usefulness.7 During the second half of the nineteenth century, shopping became another unpaid task that increasingly occupied the time of housewives. There had always been a retail trade in food in Ireland and housekeepers in the big house4 L. A. Clarkson, ‘Hospitality, housekeeping and high living in eighteenth-century Ireland’, in Jacqueline Hill and Colm Lennon (eds.), Luxury and austerity (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 1999), 84–105. 5 Joanna Bourke, Husbandry to housewifery: women, economic change, and housework in Ireland 1890–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 149–51, 168–98. 6 For a perceptive analysis of the economic value of housework see ibid. 1–22. 7 E. Estyn Evans, Irish folk ways (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957), 72–84; Bourke, Husbandry to housewifery, 218–19; Reay Tannahill, Food in history (London: Penguin Group, 1988), 322–6.

4 , ,   holds nurtured links with their favourite suppliers. The rich depended on merchants and shopkeepers to keep them in beer, wine, tea, sugar, and other groceries. In towns, the poor from earliest times were always more likely to buy bread than to bake it themselves. In the later nineteenth century, rising family incomes permitted a greater consumption of foods grown beyond the back yard, and often from lands far distant from Ireland. The numbers of retail food outlets more than doubled between 1861 and 1911 and their numbers were supplemented by the many thousands of casual hawkers, peddlers, and petty traders. Shopping enhanced the economic importance of housekeeping. Food has significance far beyond the economic. Eating and drinking are conditioned by taste, by cultural values, and by likes and dislikes. But tastes change as new foods become available or as fashions and attitudes alter. Few Europeans before the nineteenth century—certainly not in Ireland outside the richest classes—tasted sugar or tea, but after 1800 these luxuries became necessities. Today an individual in the West consumes, on average, twenty-five times as much sugar as did a person in the mid-eighteenth century.8 During the second half of the nineteenth century, sugar consumption in Ireland increased tenfold. This was not a healthy development. But it was a desired one. People eat for pleasure as well as to stop themselves feeling hungry. In early times most Europeans possessed a lusty appetite for meat. Today vegetarianism has become elevated almost to a religion in some sections of society, especially among the young.9 Horse meat is anathema in most English-speaking countries, but not so in continental Europe. Veal is offensive to many English palates because of the way that calves are reared.10 Because of the remarkable ability of the human body to cope with the food and drink that is put into it, what we eat has over time been less important for maintaining health than whether we get enough to eat. As long as the nutritional balance is satisfactory, human beings are likely to stay fit, or at least be in a condition to confront infections. Nutrition is the link between food and health. The story of food in Ireland between 1500 and 1920, we argue, demonstrates that what the country could grow and what it could obtain by way of trade was normally enough to keep the population alive, well, and working. True, lifespans before the twentieth century were shorter than lifespans in the late nineteenth century, but so they were throughout western Europe. And more men, women, and children everywhere died of infections than of hunger. In the past, people have preferred to eat in social groups rather than in 8 Stephen Mennell, All manners of food: eating and taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the present (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 5. This book contains a good survey of the anthropological discussions of eating and drinking. 9 There was a vegetarian restaurant in Belfast in the 1880s. The menu is ‘as scientifically designed as it is toothsome, nutritious, and healthy’. The bases of the menus were beans, peas, lentils, and brown bread. W. H. Crawford (ed.), Industries of the north one hundred years ago: industrial and commercial life in the north of Ireland, 1888–91 (Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1986), 135. 10 Alan Davidson, The Oxford companion to food (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 386, 822.

, ,  

5

solitary state. Microwave meals for one are the product of modern lifestyles and technology. Traditionally, human beings have gathered together in humble cottages, great houses, monasteries, hospitals, schools, army camps, prisons, or workhouses. Social status conditions the setting. In Ireland at the beginning of the seventeenth century the Englishman, Fynes Moryson, contrasted the eating habits of ‘gentlemen of the English-Irish, and all the English there abiding’, who ‘use the English diet’, with the habits of those who have, ‘little by little been affected with the Irish filthiness’. Yet the components of the meals of these two groups differed little. Styles of eating have changed much over time. When the Great O’Neill and Sir Henry Sidney, the noblest in Ireland, dined together in the 1570s, it was at a rough-hewn table enjoying an unimpeded view of the butchering and cooking. This was a world away from the polite gentility by which food was delivered discreetly from the kitchen onto the dining table and sideboards of modest Irish gentlemen two centuries later. An Italian historian has written: Vanished now were those patriarchal courses that had seen large game and the meat of heavy and solid quadrupeds led past in oily procession only to slither from their enormous trays onto the broad chopping-boards and thence into the capacious plates of the dinner guests. In their place, modern culinary art now struggled to produce a fashion show of minute, winnowy and fragile crockery on which was presented ‘precious sauces’, ‘extracts and thick gravies’, consommés and thick broths, purés and gelatines, the cooks’ alchemical skills being employed to extract the spirit of the flesh from the vulgar ruddy hunks of dead meat in which it dwelt. The resulting fare discharged the fine mangeurs from the trivial need to bite, to tear and to munch, thereby freeing them to engage in elegant discussions and lively conversations.11

The dining table became artfully arranged with ‘a geometrical order and a mathematical reason’. Eating and drinking were directed to satisfying more senses than hunger. The poor could not afford to be so fastidious. Nevertheless, there was a pattern to their meals, which were taken two or three times a day, depending on the season. There were good physiological reasons for this. Not even the most prodigious potato eater in pre-Famine Ireland could down 10 to 14 pounds of potatoes at a sitting and the demands of physical labour required refuelling more than once a day. Food was divided into two or three meals and the quantities, if not the items, altered between breakfast, dinner, and supper. Men and women labouring in the fields needed more calories in the summer than in the winter. If there was meat, it was usually on Sundays. Fish, for religious reasons, was a Friday dish. These hourly and daily rhythms became a ritual, almost a devotional order of service, and they are with us still.12 Religious systems have developed elaborate dietary rules. In Hindu society 11 Piero Camporesi, Exotic brew: the art of living in the Age of the Enlightenment, trans. Christopher Woodall (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 6. 12 For a discussion of the daily and seasonal patterns of eating see Piero Camporesi, The magic harvest: food, folklore and society, trans. J. K. Hall (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 81–3.

6 , ,   vegetarian foods are central to diets; the cow and the bull are sacred and not to be eaten. Buddhism goes even further, at least in extreme forms, and diets exclude all things that have been deliberately killed. Orthodox Judaism has a strict dietary code based on a mixture of religious and nutritional beliefs. Muslims avoid blood; hence animals killed for human consumption must be slaughtered in a particular fashion.13 Christianity is less elaborate, but the symbolism of oil, bread, and wine in the sacraments needs no stressing.14 Piero Camporesi’s imagination has stretched beyond oil, bread, and the wine, suggesting that in pre-industrial Europe broth also had a deeply mystical significance: This is a food which, in both the literal and the symbolic sense, harks back to remote dietary archetypes such as milk—to the earliest origins of life, and hence to the restoration and prolongation of existence. Broth, in its alchemical marriage of water with the spirit or soul of the flesh . . . had the status of an irreplaceable quintessence in the hierarchy of nutritive property of foods.15

If this sounds fanciful, we should remember that broth is still commonly regarded as a good diet for invalids. As for milk, popular Irish beliefs about milk give some substance to Camporesi’s musings. Milk was important throughout the centuries and many customs grew up associated with Lá Bealtaine (May Day), the beginning of the milking season. This was the time when the ‘milk profit’ might be assured or lost. Without appropriate action, some evil woman or the milking hare would steal the profit. So, masses had to be said, the dairy and the milk cans sprinkled with holy water, rowan twigs placed at the boundaries of fields to keep out intruders, cows driven through small fires, may-boughs hung in conspicuous places, and strangers prevented from walking across the meadow and disturbing the morning dew.16 As Professor Estyn Evans has written: The May Festival, the Gaelic Beltane, remained almost untouched by Christianity, and an astonishingly rich growth of magic beliefs and superstitious customs accumulated around it. They were concerned with the safety of familiar things which supported life, and especially milk cows whose ‘whitemeats’ were to provide the main food-supply until the harvest came round once more. It was a matter of pride to have a last formal dish of stirabout on May Day, ‘for if they hold out so well with bread they can do well enough . . . for then milk becomes plenty, and butter, and curds and shamrocks are the food of the meaner sort all this season’. It was considered most unlucky and unwise to give away salt, water or fire on May Day lest the luck and ‘profit’ of the farm went with the gifts. Witches and fairies were unusually active at this time, and many tales are told 13

Davidson, The Oxford companion to food, 111, 382–3, 419–20, 523. For a discussion see Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, A history of food, trans. from the French by Anthea Bell (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 201–90. 15 Piero Camporesi, ‘Concentrated broth’, in Camporesi, The magic harvest, 157. 16 Patricia Lysaght, ‘Women, milk and magic at the boundary festival of May’, in Patricia Lysaght (ed.), Milk and milk products from medieval to modern times (Edinburgh: Canongate Academic Press, 1994), 212–22. 14

, ,  

7

of the wiles they adopted to outwit the unwary and gain admission to house or byre to do their mischief. It was a wise precaution to pour milk on the threshold, or at the roots of the fairy thorn, and the many protective charms against the stealing of cattle and milk were augmented by others special to the occasion.17

Food and drink are at the centre of celebration and commemoration. In Ireland, christenings, weddings, and wakes were—and are—occasions of much eating and drinking, and hang the cost. The rituals attending eating extended beyond these rites of passage. In late nineteenth-century Ireland, Sunday among the poor was when the midday meal was constructed around ‘kitchen’, an omnibus term that embraced beef, bacon, a cow’s head or calf’s head and pluck, cow’s feet, sheep’s trotters, pig’s entrails, or—if times were really hard—sheep’s blood. Whatever it was, was boiled with barley, peas, beans, or nettles to make a broth and shared with neighbours and friends. The custom remains in more prosperous times. Go into any country-town hotel in Ireland on a Sunday lunchtime and the dining room will be packed with extended groups of families and friends gathered around tables groaning with food served in gargantuan quantities.

Themes This book explores five broad themes relating to food in Ireland between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries. Scarcity of evidence precludes an earlier start, although a medievalist could probably conjure something up.18 The eve of Partition seems a good place to stop. Not only did it cause a break in some of the sources of evidence, but it also stands at the threshold of new economic and social patterns that had profound effects on patterns of food consumption. The first theme is the changes in patterns of eating and drinking over time and among social classes. It is explored principally in Chapters 2–5. We are concerned with the components of diet, including the rise of and eventual decline in potato consumption. We consider the reasons for the changes, including the growth of population and the alteration in labour–land ratios. New settlers from England and Scotland brought with them their own techniques of farming. They also brought their own cultural values that squeezed from middle-class diets the offal and blood puddings that had once been important. The second, related, theme running throughout Chapters 2–5 is the widen17 Evans, Irish folk ways, 272. The quotation is from Sir H. Piers, West-Meath: a chorographical description of the county of West-Meath (1682), in C. Vallancey, Collectanea de rebus hibernicis, i (1770). 18 For an example of the possible, see Regina Sexton, ‘Porridges, gruels and breads: the cereal foodstuffs of early medieval Ireland’, in Michael Monk and John Sheehan (eds.), Early medieval Munster: archaeology, history and society (Cork: Cork University Press, 1998), 76–86.

8 , ,   ing and then the narrowing chasm between the diets of the top two-thirds of the population and the bottom one-third during the decades before the Great Famine. Much of the explanation for this lies in the crucial role played by potatoes in the economic circumstances of the poor. The third theme is encapsulated in the question, ‘was famine Ireland’s destiny?’ Our answer, reduced to its simplest, is ‘no’. The frequency of famine in Ireland was, we suggest, little different from that of other European societies, although famine, when it came, could be more devastating. The thesis is developed mainly in Chapters 6 and 7. The first is concerned with frequency, the second with severity of famines. Chapters 8 and 9 explore at some length the relationship between food, diet, nutrition, health, and demography. We revisit some of the material discussed in earlier chapters, but we look at it from a different perspective. Chapter 8 is technical, but is designed to be the bridge between the science of nutrition and the historical study of food and diets in their social setting. Chapter 10 reverts to a conventional chronological mode and deals with our final theme. This is the relationship between the state and food. In the Irish context, the subject has been dominated by discussions of famine relief, such has been the hold of the Great Famine on historiography. This is an important issue because of the economic, political, and ethical questions that the policy of famine relief raises. But there are other concerns. Why, for example, did the assize of bread survive so long? What was its purpose and why was it eventually abandoned? Did successive governments treat food and drink as commodities ripe for taxation or were they items, the production of which should be nurtured for the benefit of producers and consumers? Perhaps, most intriguingly, why was there so little legislation touching food and drink throughout the centuries, compared to the welter of concern about politics, religion, and land? This question brings us back to the beginning: the paradox of food as the fundamental prop of society languishing for so long in the basement of historical studies. It is important to stress what this book is not about. It is not a history of cooking in Ireland, although it touches on the subject from time to time.19 It is not a history of agriculture or of food technology although, again, we cannot ignore these subjects. We consider the cultural history of food, although not in a systematic fashion. And this is not another history of the Great Famine, although no serious history of food in Ireland can ignore that climacteric event. 19 There are plenty of books on this subject, some more folksy than others and many aimed at the tourist market. A useful brief introduction is Regina Sexton, A little history of Irish food (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1998).

CHAPTER TWO

The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A Pattern Established Introduction Population is central to a history of food. Without people there is no demand for food; and without food there can be no people. In 1600 there were perhaps a million men, women, and children in Ireland, although estimates as low as half a million and as high as 1.4 million have been offered. The size of the population in 1500 is even more uncertain, although it was probably well below one million. During the seventeenth century there was substantial growth— although with a sharp decline in mid-century—to around 2 million by 1700 and 2.2 million by 1725. In the second half of the eighteenth century population doubled to about 5 million in 1800; and by 1845 had reached 8.5 million. Over the next five years famine and famine-related diseases killed at least a million people and emigration removed over a million more. For a century thereafter the numbers of people in Ireland declined and its demographic history passed into the mournful mausoleum of apparent Malthusian disasters.1 The Great Famine, with its implications of country overstocked with people, has dominated Irish historiography. Yet, before 1800 Ireland was a thinly populated and lightly urbanized country. Ireland was a land of woods, bogs, and mountains and even in the most Anglicized regions settlement was sparse. In 1672 Sir William Petty pointed out the benefits to agricultural production that would flow from a more densely populated country.2 Only Dublin with a population of no more than 8,000 in 1550 and fewer still in 1600, but with as many as 50,000 or 60,000 people in 1700, depended on a sophisticated market system for its food supplies.3 1 L. M. Cullen, ‘Economic trends, 1660–91’, in T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin, and F. J. Byrne (eds.), A new history of Ireland, iii: Early-modern Ireland 1534–1691 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 388–9; Nicholas Canny, ‘Early modern Ireland: an appraisal appraised’, Irish Economic and Social History, 4 (1977), 64; S. G. Ellis, Tudor Ireland: crown, community and the conflict of cultures 1470–1603 (London: Longmans, 1985), 40; L. A. Clarkson, ‘Irish population revisited, 1687–1821’, in J. M. Goldstrom and L. A. Clarkson (eds.), Irish population economy and society: essays in honour of the late K. H. Connell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 26–7; Pádraig Lenihan, ‘War and population, 1649–52’, Irish Economic and Social History, 24 (1997), 1–21; Cormac Ó Gráda, Ireland: a new economic history 1780–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 5, 69, 213–14. 2 Sir William Petty, The political anatomy of Ireland [1672], in C. H. Hull (ed.), The economic writings of Sir William Petty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899), i. 144–5. 3 The figure of 8,000 is suggested by MacNiocaill but it is disputed by Canny. Gearóid MacNiocaill, ‘Socio-economic problems of the late medieval Irish town’, in David Harkness and Mary O’Dowd

10      Despite—perhaps because of—the influence of the Great Famine, few modern historians of Ireland have given much attention to the study of food, as opposed to famine. Early writers, such as Patrick W. Joyce, discussed food and drink in early Ireland but not in an analytical fashion.4 In 1960 A. T. Lucas surveyed Irish diets in the centuries before the potato became important. His method was to review the consumption of foods, item by item, drawing on a wide range of literary sources, but with little regard to chronology and even less for the social or economic context.5 In this context Professor Connell’s book on pre-famine population published in 1950 was seminal. It devoted a chapter to the influence of the potato on social and demographic trends. His work was unique for its time in attempting a nutritional analysis of diet. Since then dietary history has attracted the attention of several continental and American scholars and similar studies have made a few inroads into Ireland.6 Professor L. M. Cullen has considered dietary changes as part of a wider process of social evolution wrought by commerce and colonization.7 Our purpose here is to explore this process during the two long centuries of settlement.

Contemporary perspectives From the late sixteenth century the social and economic characteristics of Ireland became widely known from accounts of visitors and settlers. Descriptions of the food and eating habits were generally Anglocentric and frequently highly critical. In the opinion of the Irish scholar Geoffrey Keating in 1634, they were calculated to cast contempt on Irish manners and customs.8 An early example was John Derricke’s The image of Ireland . . . published in 1581, a blatant piece of wartime propaganda, consisting of a series of woodcuts accompanied by a text written in doggerel verse. Derricke’s work has often been used to depict life in Gaelic Ireland, even though his knowledge was limited and probably second hand. The best-known illustration is that of the Irish chieftain’s feast in which the assembled company squat around a table devouring newly slaughtered meat and offal which is being cooked over open fires nearby. The guests, including a discomforted Sir Henry Sidney, are (eds.), The town in Ireland, Historical Studies, 13 (Belfast: Appletree Press, 1981), 19; Nicholas Canny, From Reformation to Restoration: Ireland 1534–1660 (Dublin: Helicon, 1987), 7. 4 P. W. Joyce, A social history of ancient Ireland . . . (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1903), ii. 114–58. 5 K. H. Connell, The population of Ireland 1750–1845 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), 121–62; A. T. Lucas, ‘Irish food before the potato’, Gwerin, 3 (1960), 8–43. 6 E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Subsistence crises and famines in Ireland: a nutritionist’s view’, in E. Margaret Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience 900–1900 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1989), 198– 219. 7 L. M. Cullen, The emergence of modern Ireland 1600–1900 (London: Batsford, 1981), chs. 7, 8, passim. 8 Geoffrey Keating, The history of Ireland, ed. and trans. David Comyn (London: Irish Text Society, IV, 1902), i. 4–5.

    

11

entertained by a poet and a harper, whilst members of the chieftain’s court warm bare bottoms by the fire and dogs gnaw at bones discarded by the cooks. The accompanying verse leaves no doubt about Derricke’s distaste:9 But tagge and ragge will equal be when cheifest Rebell feede. Well, Beeues are knocked downe, the butchers plaie their parte, Thei take eche one the intrails forthe, the Liver with the Harte. And beying breathyng newe, th’ unwashen puddynges thei: Upon the coales or embers hotte, for want of Gredyron laie. And scarce not halfe enough (drasse serueth well for hoggs:) Thei take them up and fall thereto, like rau’nyng hongrie Doggs. Devouryng gutte and limme, no parte doth come amisse: Whose lippes & choppes wth blood do swim most true reporte is this. As for the greatest Karne, thei have the cheefest stuffe: Though dirtie tripes and offals like please under knaues enough.

Derricke succinctly summed up his loathing of the Irish: ‘my soul doth detest their wild shamrock manners’.10 His exact contemporary, Andrew Trollope, shared his disgust when writing from Dublin to Secretary Walsingham in London: And their fede is fleshe if they can stele any . . . and if they can gett no stolen fleshe, they eate if they can gett them, like [leek?] blades and a three-leved grasse, which they call shamrocks and for want thereof caryon, and grasse in the felds, with such butter as is to loughsome to discrybe; the best of them have syldom breade, and in the coomon sorte never loke after eny.11

Trollope’s reference to shamrock echoed an observation of Edmund Campion’s three years earlier. Campion also described the consumption of ‘whey milke, and Beefe broth’, blood puddings spread with butter, and ‘Aquavitae, which they swill in after such a surfeite, by quarts & pottles’.12 Similar descriptions abound. Writing at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Sir James Perrot, son of one lord deputy and brother-in-law of another, commented that the Irish ‘diet was but mean, feading more on milke scarce strayned, and therefore usually stuffed with that which is not fitte to be named’, than on ‘well dressed’ meat.13 The most splenetic description was penned by Fynes Moryson, Cambridge fellow, European traveller, and 9 John Derricke, The image of Ireland with a discoverie of the wood kerne (London, 1581: new edn., John Small, Edinburgh, 1883). For a discussion of Derricke as a source see Mary O’Dowd, ‘Gaelic economy and society’, in Ciaran Brady and Raymond Gillespie (eds.), Natives and newcomers: the makings of Irish colonial society 1534–1641 (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1986), 121. 10 Quoted in D. B. Quinn, The Elizabethans and the Irish (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966), 62. 11 Calendar of the State Papers relating to Ireland, 1574–85 (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, & Dyer, 1867), 318. 12 James Ware (ed.), Campion’s historie of Ireland (1571). In The historie of Ireland collected by three learned authors, viz Meredith Hammer . . ., Edmund Campion, and Edmund Spenser . . . (Dublin, 1633; repr. Amsterdam: De Capo Press, 1971), 18. 13 Sir John Perrot, The chronicle of Ireland 1584–1608, ed. Herbert Wood (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1933, IMC), 15.

12      secretary to Lord Deputy Mountjoy between 1600 and 1604. It is worth quoting at length: Touching the Irish diet, some lords and knights, and gentlemen of the English-Irish, and all the English there abiding . . . use the English diet, but some more, some less cleanly, . . . and no doubt they have as great, and for their part greater, plenty than the English, of flesh, fowl, fish, and all things for food, if they will use like art for cookery. Always I except the fruits, venison, and some dainties proper to England, and rare in Ireland. And we must conceive that venison and fowl seem to be more plentiful in Ireland, because they neither so generally affect dainty food, nor so diligently search it as the English do. Many of the English-Irish have little by little been affected with the Irish filthiness . . . The English-Irish after our manner serve to the table joints of flesh cut after our fashion, with geese, pullets, pigs, and like roasted meats, but their ordinary food for the common sort is of white meats, and they eat cakes of oats for bread, and drink not English beer made of malt and hops, but ale. At Cork I have seen with these eyes young maides, stark naked, grinding of corn with certain stones to make cakes thereof, and striking off into the tub of meal such reliques therof as stuck on their belly, thighs, and more unseemly parts. And as for the cheese or butter commonly made by the English-Irish an Englishman would not touch it with his lips, though he were halfstarved; . . . in cities they have bread such as ours, but of a sharp savour, and some mingled with anice-seeds and baked like cakes . . . The wild (as I may say) mere Irish . . . are barbarous and most filthy in their diet. They scum the seething pot with a handful of straw, and strain thir milk taken from the cow through a like handful of straw, none of the cleanest, and so to cleanse, or rather more defile, the pot and milk. They devour great morsels of beef unsalted, and they eat commonly swine’s flesh, seldom mutton; and all these pieces of flesh, as also the entrails of beasts unwashed, they seethe in a hollow tree lapped in a raw cow’s hide and so set over the fire, and therewith swallow whole lumps of filthy butter. Yea (which is more contrary to nature), they will feed on horses dying of themselves, not only upon small want of flesh, but even for pleasure . . . Many of these wild Irish eat no flesh, but that which dies of disease or otherwise of itself, neither can it scape them for stinking. They desire no broth, nor have any use of a spoon . . . They feed most on white meats, and esteem for a great dainty sour curds, vulgarly called by them Bonaclabbe. And for this cause they watchfully keep their cows, and fight for them as for their religion and life; and when they are almost starved, yet they will not kill a cow, except it be old and yield no milk. Yet will they upon hunger in time of war open a vein of a cow and drink the blood, but in no case kill or much weaken it . . . The wild Irish (as I said) seldom kill a cow to eat, and if perhaps they kill one for that purpose, they distribute it all to be devoured at one time; for they approve not the orderly eating at meals, but so they may eat enough when they are hungry they care not to fast long . . .14

Almost a century later, in 1698, another Englishman, John Dunton, offered a disgusting description of food served to him in a Galway cabin:15 he asked for a drink of water, but his host’s wife filled a wooden bowl with sour milk, ‘into 14 Fynes Moryson, ‘The itinerary of Fynes Moryson’, in C. L Falkiner (ed.), Illustrations of Irish history and topography, mainly of the seventeenth century (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1904), 225–30. 15 John Dunton, Teague land, or a merry ramble to the wild Irish: letters from Ireland, 1698, ed. Edward MacLysaght (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1982), 18–22.

    

13

which she dipt her nasty fingers twice or thrice to pick out some dirt, she carryed it to the cow . . . and with the milk she made me a syllibub’. She started to cook a hare for Dunton’s supper but, ‘I soe much doubted their cookerie that I prayed them to spare them selves the trouble of roasting it; and to let me have it boyld . . .’ She then ground ‘three pecks of dried oats . . . verie lustily’, mixed them with water and ‘made a triangular cake which she reard up before the fire against a little stool made like a tripod, the bakeing of which was committed to the care of her mother, an old woman who was all the while either cramming, sneezeing into her nose or wipeing away the snivell with the same hands that she turn’d my oaten cake, which made my gutts wamble’. Meanwhile, ‘my landlady . . . fell to washing her hands and arms, and immediately brings to the hearth a small wodden churn, narrow at the mouth and bottle-bellied’. She gripped the churn between her legs and with her bare arms stirred the milk until it made butter. ‘Nor do I wonder that Irish butter should smel rank and strong if it all be made after this manner, for surely the heate which this labour put the good wife in must unavoidabley have made some of the essence of arms pitts tricle down her arm into the churn . . .’ At supper, ‘then enters the landlady’s daughter . . . In her hand she brought the hare swimming in a wodden boul full of oyl of butter. I told my guide they were verie generous in affording so much sauce to the drye meate, but he answer’d me that was but the broath for they had boyld it in butter . . .’ Dunton felt obliged to eat before retiring to bed. Breakfast was even worse and he could not face it. Such accounts illustrate how perceptions of eating habits were refracted through the cultural values of the observer, in this case through English eyes. We should not dismiss them for all that. Gaelic sources tell a similar story, in one or two cases in terms hardly less jaundiced than those of transient visitors. The anonymous satire of the lower orders, Pairlement Chloinne Tomais, written about 1610, described how St Patrick condemned the members of Clan Thomas, descended from demons and incapable of becoming Christians, to an existence of ‘indolence, slobbering, abject cowardice and utter ineptitude’. This wretched condition extended to their food: ‘the head-gristle and trotters of cattle, and the blood, gore and entrails of dumb animals; and furthermore these were to be their bread and condiment: coarse half-baked barley-bread, messy mish-mashes of gruel, skimmed milk, and the butter of goats and sheep, rancid, full of hairs and blue pock-marks.’16 Yet the author distinguished between the behaviour of the common people and, ‘the nobles and aristocracy of the Christian peoples’ who eat ‘delicate, palatable foods’ and ‘drink sweet, intoxicating liquor’. Furthermore, he believed the lower orders to be capable of salvation and exhorted them to cultivate grain and eat bread, believing these to be signs of civilized living, concluding with the exhortation, ‘plough Ireland, or rather, plough the soil’.17 16 17

N. J. A. Williams (ed.), Pairlement Chloinne Tomais (Dublin: Institute for Advanced Studies, 1981), 66. Ibid. 74.

14      Gaelic sources show cereals to be a useful component of diets. The Annals, amidst their preoccupation with genealogies, recorded failures of the grain harvests and episodes of hunger. The Annals of Connacht described a great frost that gripped the country from November 1434 to February 1435 that prevented the ground from being ploughed for winter corn. In 1466 they referred to the burning of corn during military campaigns, a theme that recurs many times in subsequent decades. Two years later, ‘the crops of Tirerril, Cairbre and Luigne [all in County Sligo], were poor and thankless’. In 1476 corn in Moybrawne was destroyed by armies. In 1497 the ‘Great famine throughout Ireland this year’ was probably the result of crop failure caused by bad weather. ‘A stormy, very wet summer and autumn’ in 1518 resulted in ‘a hard niggardly year’ in 1519. In 1536 and 1537 invading armies ruined the corn crops in Connacht, while in 1541 because of a hard frost and heavy snow at the beginning of the year, ‘no plowing or husbandry could be done in Ireland’.18 The role of tillage crops in Gaelic Ireland was to supplement meat and dairy produce. Sir George Carew explained to the Privy Council during the military campaigns of 1600, how the ‘rebels’ in County Kerry ‘in the summer season . . . [live] on the milk and butter of their kine grazing on the mountains and in fastness, which holds this rebellion on foot longer than otherwise it would. But of their harvest, wherein their chief hope remaineth to live in winter, I propose, God willing, to frustrate their expectations in burning and consuming the same.’19 Richard Stanihurst, a member of an Old English family resident in Dublin, described conditions in County Meath in 1584. ‘This part of the colony is justly called the barn of Ireland. Their work of cultivation and sowing the fields produces spectacular crop yields. Now land in parts of Munster and the other provinces produces annual corn crops wherever the farmers merely fertilise and sow, but the yields are moderate. So while the soil of Ireland is naturally fertile, industry and good husbandry render it more fruitful.’ In Ulster, on the other hand, ‘it is unusual to find cultivators who break the naturally fertile soil with a plough share’.20 During the sixteenth century, cereals assumed a more central place in diets. Settlement generated careful evaluations of the economic potential of the land. Ireland was still predominantly pastoral, but there were sizeable pockets of arable farming that were continually expanding. English colonial theory required that land be put under the plough, yet economic success was more likely to go to those who disregarded theory and concentrated on cattle and 18 A. Martin Freeman (ed.), The Annals of Connacht, 1224–1544 (Dublin: Institute of Advanced Studies, 1944), 475, 512–13, 537, 543, 581, 603, 637, 695, 705, 719. This source deals with Connacht during the thirteenth century, but thereafter ranges over the whole of Ireland. Both the Annals of Connacht and the Annals of LochCé were compiled from the same materials. 19 Calendar of the State Papers relating to Ireland, 1600 (London: HMSO, 1903), 244. 20 Colm Lennon, Richard Stanihurst the Dubliner 1547–1618 (Blackrock: Irish Academic Press, 1985), 142–3.

    

15

sheep.21 In Ulster, according to Pynnar in 1619, ‘many English do not yet plough nor use husbandry, being fearful to stock themselves with cattle or servants for those labours. Neither do the Irish use tillage, for they are also uncertain of their stay’, but Scottish settlers were ploughing the soil.22 Arable husbandry gained a footing throughout east Ulster and the commercial production of oats and other grains grew in importance.23 The spread of tillage was gradual. In 1652 the Dutch physician, Gerard Boate, published a natural history of Ireland ‘for the benefit of the Adventurers and Planters therein’. He remarked on ‘the abundance and greatnes of pastures in Ireland [that] doth appear by the numberless number of all sorts of cattell, especially of Kine and Sheep, wherewith this country in time of peace doth swarm on all sides’. But with hard work, progress in tillage was possible. ‘Although Ireland almost in every part, where the industry of the Husbandman applieth it self thereto, bringeth good corn plentifully’, the ground ‘will hardly bear any thing else but oats, or rye and that none of the best’ because of the damp climate and cold soil.24 The best-known seventeenth-century account of Irish diets was written by Sir William Petty in 1672. According to him ‘6 of 8 of all the Irish live in a brutish nasty Condition . . .; feed chiefly upon Milk and Potatoes . . .’ He continued: The Diet of these people is Milk, sweet and sower, thick and thin, which also is their Drink in Summer-time, in Winter Small-Beer or Water. But Tobacco taken in short Pipes seldom burnt, seems the pleasure of their Lives, together with Sneezing: Insomuch, the 2/7 of their Expence in Food, is Tobacco. Their Food is Bread in Cakes, whereof a Penny serves a Week for each; Potatoes from August till May, Muscles, Cockles and Oysters, near the Sea; Eggs and Butter made very rancid by keeping in Bogs. As for Flesh, they seldom eat it, notwithstanding the great plenty thereof, unless it be one of the smaller Animals, because it is inconvenient . . . to kill a Beef, which they have no convenience to save. So, as ’tis easier for them to have a Hen or Rabbet, than a piece of Beef of equal substance.25

In the early 1680s the Dublin scholar, William Molyneux, surveyed wide tracts of the countryside, drawing his information from the Gaelic and Old English gentry, as well as New English settlers. The result was a detailed account of farming practices, indicating the extent to which agricultural production of all kinds had developed. Thousands of acres in counties Donegal and Londonderry had been improved by manuring and liming for the cultivation of barley, oats, and rye. In County Wexford land, ‘not naturally fertile’, 21 Michael MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster plantation: English migration to southern Ireland 1583–1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 225–8. 22 Quoted in Philip Robinson, The Plantation of Ulster: British settlement in an Irish landscape, 1600–1670 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1984), 178. 23 Raymond Gillespie, Colonial Ulster: the settlement of east Ulster 1600–1641 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1985), 67–9. 24 Gerard Boate, Ireland’s naturall history (London, 1652). In A collection of tracts and treatises illustrative of the natural history, antiquities and the political state of Ireland (Dublin: Alex. Thom & Sons, 1860), 75–8. 25 Petty, The political anatomy of Ireland, i. 191.

16      had been made to yield ‘all sorts of excellent bread, corn, grain, orchards, fruits, sweet herbs, meadows, pastures, for all sorts of cattle’. Fisheries had been developed along the coasts ‘with variety of base mullet, flocks, eels, hakes, herrings, oysters, cockles, [and] muskles’. In west Connacht an Irish gentlemen, Roderick O’Flaherty, told of the abundance of fresh and sea water fish and the great number of cattle. ‘The soil for the most part good only for Pasture . . . the chiefest product therefore and greatest commodity is beefe, butter, tallow, hides, and of late cheese, but on the Isles of Aran yet it yields as much corn of wheat, barley, oats and rye, as is enough to sustain the inhabitants and furnish the market besides.’ On the eastern side of the country, arable farming had become extremely important on the Ards Peninsula in County Down, and ‘every winter great store of good wheat, bear, oats and barley [were sent] to Dublin and elsewhere’. The cultivation of oats was widespread in County Antrim. Between Belfast and Lambeg, the road ‘is all along for the most part furnished with houses, little orchards and gardens’. Around Portadown in County Armagh large quantities of wheat, rye, oats, and barley were grown. The region was ‘the granary of Ulster and one of Ceres chiefest barns for corn and as it excells all ye rest for corn so it challenges the preference for fruit trees good cider being sold here for 30s the hogshead’. In the west, County Limerick was the ‘garden of the kingdom’ producing ‘great crops of all kinds of grain for 20 years together without manure’.26 Molyneux gazed at Ireland with the eye of an improver. Nevertheless, change was slow. John Stevens, an English Catholic serving in the Jacobite army in Ireland at the end of the 1680s, observed a population relying heavily on pastoral products. His journal entries for 1689, from Bantry in the south to Drogheda in the north, tell of a people living on beef, mutton, and milk. His description of conditions near Limerick in 1690 has a familiar ring. The food was meat and barley baked in cakes, milk, and butter. ‘Yet there this is counted the best of quarters, the people generally being the greatest lovers of milk I ever saw, which they eat and drink about twenty several sorts of ways, and what is the strangest for the most part love it best when sourest.’ Townspeople ate wheaten bread, but ‘the meaner people content themselves with little bread but instead thereof eat potatoes, which with sour milk is the chief part of their diet, their drink for the most part water, sometimes coloured with milk; beer or ale they seldom taste unless they sell something considerable in a market town.’27 26 Trinity College, Dublin, MSS 883/1, Molyneux MSS (1680s), 2–5, 40–2, 100–20, 150, 181–2, 201, 223, 244. For a discussion of William Molyneux and his survey see the chapters by J. G. Simms and K. H. Andrews in T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin, and F. J. Byrne (eds.), A new history of Ireland, iii. Earlymodern Ireland 1534–1691 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 447–8, 456, 477. See also J. G. Simms, William Molyneux of Dublin: a life of the seventeenth-century political writer and scientist, ed. P. H. Kelly (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1982). 27 R. H. Murray (ed.), The journal of John Stevens 1689–91 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), 45, 83, 84, 87, 138–9.

    

17

The components of diets None of the contemporary accounts enable us to judge the relative importance of the various components of diet except in a very general way. Almost the only quantitative evidence available for the purpose in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is rations prescribed for soldiers serving in Ireland. Most were for Englishmen and not for consumption by the Irish population. Nevertheless, the rations are not without interest. They show that English soldiers serving in Ireland lived principally on bread, biscuit, beer, and beef. They also indicate what foods were and what were not readily available locally. Given the restricted development of tillage, it is not surprising to find wheat meal, malt, beans, peas, and hops imported into Derry and Carrickfergus in 1566 and 1567 for the English garrisons. Nor is it a surprise to see shipments of honey, raisins, prunes, and rice since these items, apart from honey, were not produced in Ireland. Such delicacies, though, were probably not destined for common soldiers. More puzzling are imports of butter, cheese, and bacon.28 A possible reason may be that, despite being commonplace in Gaelic diets, such things were mainly subsistence foods and did not enter the market in quantities sufficient for the army. From time to time the Dublin administration discussed whether it could depend on local sources. As early as 1570, the London authorities were advised that Ireland was able to supply the army with ‘corne, beefe, fishe, etc. as good, cheape, and better then the victualer dothe or shall do’.29 Caution, nevertheless, was in order. A comment attached to a victualling contract for wheat in 1580 remarked that by provisioning the troops from England ‘the soldiers may have victuells wth them whereso ever they do lande’. But a further note added, ‘here is no beeffe nor fyshe, in this estimiat but let the soldiars shifte for the same, at thare being in Irelande’.30 At the end of the century the authorities were confident that the army could live off the land. ‘The corn and other victual in this realm being now so cheap’, reported George Beverley, an army victualler in September 1599, that, ‘there is a general disposition in the soldiers to desire money; every man to provide his own victuals, rather than receive any victuals out of the magazines.’31 A review of army provisioning in 1642 recalled how, during the Nine Years War, victuallers were able to buy beef and biscuit in Ireland but were compelled to import butter, cheese, meal, and rice.32 28

PROL, E351/148, Victualling accounts, 1560s & 1590s. De L’Isle and Dudley, Report on the manuscripts of Lord de l’Isle & Dudley (London: HMSO, HMC, 1925), ii. 15. 30 British Library, Add. MSS 5754, fo. 176, victualling accounts, c.1580–1600. 31 Salisbury, Calendar of the manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury (London: HMSO, HMC, 1888), ix. 351. 32 Egmont (earls of ), Report on the manuscripts of the earl of Egmont, vol. i, part 1 (London: HMSO, HMC, 1905), 169. 29

18      The import of cheese into a pastoral economy highlights a recurring feature. Notwithstanding Ireland being a land flowing with milk, the production and consumption of cheese never became important, perhaps because of a shortage of equipment to make hard cheese. When cheese was included in army diets it was usually as an alternative to other foods. Thus, in 1577 military commanders in Ireland asked London that soldiers be provided daily with 1 pound of biscuit, 2 pounds of salt beef and a pottle of beer, except on two ‘fish’ days a week when they should have half a pound of butter on one day and a pound of cheese on the other.33 Nearly a century later, in 1669 when Ireland had a regular army raised locally, 14,000 pounds of cheese were imported to feed 1,000 men for one month, that is approximately 7 ounces per man per day. It was a substitute for oatmeal: ‘there may be given One pound of Oatmeale . . . and there butter doubled [from 3 ounces to 6 ounces] and there cheese taken away soe they will have a little variety and the charge not encreased’.34 Throughout the century victuallers regularly bought cheese from Cheshire or Suffolk, two notable dairying districts in England.35 Army victuallers found it difficult to buy acceptable beer in Ireland. Hopped beer was difficult to obtain and English soldiers disliked the local unhopped ale. In 1580 Lord Burghley instructed a Bristol merchant, John Bland, to ship 2,000 lbs of hops to Ireland, telling him that there was the ‘gravest want of hoppes in that country’.36 Bland was also instructed to send brewing equipment with a capacity of six tuns to Limerick and two tuns to Cork, together with four coopers for a month; the whole enterprise cost the government over £106.37 Such costly efforts to keep the army lubricated does not mean that brewing was unknown in Ireland. Barley had been grown for malting and unhopped ale brewed for generations. There were even professional brewers attached to great households.38 In the Pale the army could probably buy more or less as much ale as it required. But elsewhere there was little commercial production. The taste for English beer spread. Local ale was not appreciated by the servants of the countess of Antrim in Ballycastle. During the rebellion of 1641 they were alleged to have said ‘they would no longer be her servants’ because of her weak beer. It was claimed, improbably, that the servants killed 900 ‘enemies . . . desiring her to make her liquor a little stronger’.39 Brewing was important to the smooth running of large households. John Watkinson, the rector of Castlecomber, County Kilkenny, reported that household goods, 33

De L’Isle and Dudley, Report on the manuscripts of Lord de l’Isle & Dudley, ii. 64. PRONI, Annesley Papers, D1854/3/4. Victualling accounts, 1641–69, 46, 49. 35 Joan Thirsk (ed.), The agrarian history of England and Wales, iv: 1500–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 46–9, 83–4. 36 British Library, Add MSS. 5754, fo. 180. Victualling accounts, c.1580–1600 37 Ibid. fo. 187. 38 Eugene O’Curry, Manners and customs of the ancient Irish, i (Dublin: Williams & Norgate, 1873), ccclxiv; Joyce, Social history, ii. 116–19. 39 Trinity College Dublin, MSS F2/5, Depositions, 1641–52. Typescript summaries, Antrim-Kerry, p. 39. 34

    

19

including brewing vessels, to the value of £20 had been destroyed in the castle of Castlecomber during the rebellion.40 If brewing were an activity principally to supply great households, we may have an explanation for the comments of Petty and Stevens that the native Irish drank beer only in winter or when they went to market. A Danish soldier serving in Ireland in 1691 similiarly noted that among the abundance of bread, peas, beans, and potatoes ‘beer is sometimes short [although] the water is good everywhere, especially with brandy’.41 Wheaten bread, biscuit, oatmeal, beef, and beer, supplemented by butter and cheese were the staples of army food. Diets of civilians in Dublin were not so very different. Masons working on Christ Church were fed on bread, fresh and salt beef, cows’ feet, fish—herrings, cod, and thorn backs—ale, milk, cheese, butter, eggs, and vegetables. Masons and carters received three meals a day. On at least one occasion Peter Lewys, the cathedral proctor, brewed beer for his carters and masons, paying 16 (old) pence for 4 pounds of hops. The cathedral also baked bread for the workmen.42 Among the indigenous population, dairy foods remained dominant. In 1597, an army captain told the government in London how Irish soldiers were fed: ‘to euery souldier [the rebel leaders] giue a gallon of Butter, and two gallons of meale for 5 dayes victuall, and milke or ale to drinke, or 5 white groates in lew of ther drink, which is VId ob. sterling of our coyne’. He went on to explain that ‘in Ulster and Connaught, the tranquilitie & peace of those two provinces hath bene so longe and so good, that they were growne very rich, in Cattaill & especially in kine, which brings a most wonderfull mass of Butter’. They wrapt the butter in tree bark, ‘which butter they hide in bogs, or Riuers, or in fresh water pooles’. They stored oatmeal in calf skins hidden in dry places. ‘Thus are the rebells of Connaught and Ulster paid, maintayned, and victualled; But in Leinster they being in a manner outlawes and theues, they liue by feeding upon the Inhabitants next adioyning unto them, and other spoiles. . .’43 He went on to describe the role of grain in Irish diets and the means of preparing it: they cut yt before it be full ripe that it will take no fire in the field as it standeth. And when they have cut it ther manner is to cary it presently into the next woodes, and there they will wyther it in green pleckes, untill it be so dry as it will take fire; then they burne 40

Ibid., Depositions, 1641–52, fo. 193. Kevin Danaher and J. G. Simms (eds.), The Danish forces in Ireland 1690–91 (Dublin: Stationery Office, IMC, 1961), 107. 42 Raymond Gillespie (ed.), The proctor’s accounts of Peter Lewis 1564–1565 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996), 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 41, 42, 43, 46, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 69, 70, 77, 78, 79, 80–1, 82, 83, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117. 43 Petworth House Archives, HMC, 90. Nicholas Dawtrey, ‘A book of questions and answers concerning the warrs or rebellions of the Kingdome of Ireland’, 1597. We are grateful to Dr Hiram Morgan for this reference. 41

20      it themselues out of the stawe, and put yt onto Cleaues, which they bury in the grounde; and this kinde of burnt Corne will make a kinde of breade called Chroanes, which bread is a strong and harty kinde of bread with Butter . . . For the grinding of ther Corne they haue great store of hand milles, which ly hidden as other things in all partes of the Country, and wheresoeuer ther Grueghes [i.e. herds] be their the people will haue hidden Corne milles to make meale for come they neuer so late to sitt downe in any place, within two howres after, they will not onely haue corne ground but made into bread and baked also . . .44

Away from the countryside market mechanisms were required. In Dublin the household of the lord deputy and the English administration were supplied by farmers and merchants in the Pale at prices fixed by the government, an arrangement that provoked loud complaints from producers. In 1577 a detailed account of food purchased for the lord deputy in the previous year was drawn up, noting the quantities purchased and the prices paid by the administration—the ‘Queen’s price’—compared with normal market prices.45 Table 2.1 sets out the main details. Clearly, farmers in the Pale were capable of supplying a large range of cereals and livestock products. Grain was a major item of consumption, accounting for just under one-quarter of total expenditure, but even in this most English of households beef, mutton, pork, butter, and ‘acates’ were consumed in large quantities.46 The Dublin food market was responsive to changes in supply conditions. In February 1603, when food was scarce, the mayor collected the ‘prices of corn and other accates’ and found that they had risen, on average, fivefold in the previous weeks. There were sharp increases in the prices of wheat, oats, and peas and also of beef, mutton, and lamb. Veal and pork prices went up less.47 The mayor did not record prices of cheese, butter, milk, fruit, and vegetables, possibly because these commodities still did not enter the market regularly. By the mid-seventeenth century, though, the trade in dairy produce was well organized. A farmer at Hacketstown, County Carlow, claimed in 1641 that he lost a herd of dairy cows and ‘ye milk yearly of twenty English Cowes kept at the Depondents charge payable to Phillip Watson of Dublin, Alderman’. Watson seems to have been pasturing dairy cattle for the Dublin market 35 miles away.48 A substantial export trade in butter was also developing and by the end of the century, exceeded 100,000 hundredweight annually.49 Butter 44

Dawtrey, ‘A book of questions’, 11. PROL, SP 63/57, no. 20. ‘A table of claimed loss by cess in Ireland, 1577’. 46 ‘Acates’ was a generic term used for small animals such as veals, lambs, and poultry, and sometimes eggs. 47 Bodleian Library, Laudian MSS, Misc. 612, fo. 147. ‘The Prices of Corne & other accates as thei are sould in the markett of Dublin this xxvith of ffebruary 1602 [1602/3].’ For an account of the harvest difficulties in 1602–3 see Raymond Gillespie, ‘Harvest crises in early seventeenth-century Ireland’, Irish Economic and Social History, 11 (1984), 8. 48 Trinity College Dublin, MSS F2/5, Depositions, 1641–52, fo. 42. 49 R. Dunlop, ‘A note on the export trade of Ireland in 1641, 1665, and 1669’, English Historical Review, 22 (1907), 754–5; Raymond D. Crotty, Irish agricultural production: its volume and structure (Cork: Cork University Press, 1966), 277. 45

    

21

T 2.1. Provisions purchased for the lord deputy’s household, 1576–1577 Commodity

Quantity

Market price (£)

Queen’s price (£)

Wheat Beer malt Oat malt Beeves Muttons Porks Butter Fresh acates Veals Bacons Lambs Pigs Geese Capons Hens Chickens 

910 pecks 630 pecks 1,071 pecks 1,000 number 3,920 number 245 number 2,590 gallons

227.50 157.50 214.20 1,000.00 490.00 108.00 323.75

113.75 78.75 67.90 450.00 196.00 36.75 102.18

73 number 2 number 297 number 25 number 415 number 16 number 3,142 number 1,654 number

18.25 1.33 14.85 1.25 10.38 0.40 39.27 10.34 2,617.02

3.65 0.50 3.70 0.30 5.40 0.20 19.64 5.17 1,083.89

Source: PROL, SP 63/57, no. 20.

exports eventually had the effect of depressing per capita butter consumption in Gaelic households and increasing the dependence on oatmeal and potatoes. Details of the food consumed in individual households in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ireland are scarce. A rare, but untypical, example was the household of the earl of Sussex, the lord lieutenant, at Kilmainham in the late summer of 1562 (see Table 2.2).50 There were large outlays on wheat and malt (including bere and oat malt), beef, mutton, and acates (‘both flesh and fysh’) and also on candles and wood. Hops were included with the malt. The wine was principally white and claret, together with some sack and Rhenish. A few years later Sir Henry Sidney, vice-treasurer to Sussex, bought wines from Gascony, Anjou, and sack and malmsey from the Iberian peninsula.51 Sussex’s spicery contained unspecified ‘spices of all sorts’. Sir Henry’s purchases included ginger, cloves, almonds, prunes, ‘marmylades’, succades (candied fruit), and ‘sugar of divers and sundry kinds and sorts’.52 Groceries were expensive and they were carefully stored in 50 PROL SP 63/7, no. 23(i). ‘A note of the six weeks expenses of the lord lieutenant’s household at Kilmainham 24 July 1562 to 6 September 1562’. 51 De L’Isle and Dudley, Report on the manuscripts of Lord de l’Isle & Dudley, i. 379–80. 52 Ibid. i. 380; ii. 17.

22      T 2.2. Household expenditure of the earl of Sussex, Kilmainham, 24 July 1562 to 6 September 1562 Commodity

Cost (£)

%

Wheat Malt Wines Light Beef Mutton Butter Acates Scullery Spicery Fuel 

96.78 55.63 26.49 14.93 52.60 22.70 4.89 55.39 7.00 21.99 60.00 418.40

23.1 13.3 6.3 3.6 12.6 5.4 1.2 13.2 1.7 5.3 14.3 100.0

Source: PROL, SP 63/7, no. 23(i).

secure places. When the rebellion broke out in 1641 a Hacketstown merchant, William Bailie, sent his stocks of cinnamon, cloves, mace, and nutmegs to Castle Dermott for safe keeping; he lost them, nevertheless.53 The earl of Sussex’s accounts may be compared with those of a much more modest establishment a century later, kept by Edward Pierce, steward of the bishop of Down and Connor. Over a period of seventy-three days between early July and mid-September 1674 Pierce spent £35 on food, about 52 per cent of all his housekeeping expenses. The bishop was rarely in residence and the purchases were mainly for the domestic staff and local poor. Three-quarters of the money went on grain and meat. The largest purchases of grain were of malt intended for brewing. The meat was beef, mutton, some veal, lamb, tongues, and venison, occasionally bacon, but no pork. Butter was bought in large consignments of several pounds at a time, and cheese (always described as ‘new’), milk, and cream in small quantities. The most important of the remaining items were dairy produce and groceries. Wine was represented by a single consignment of twenty-seven bottles and an occasional bottle of brandy. There were small outlays on eggs, fish, fruit, and vegetables and a single purchase of potatoes. Most fruit and vegetables came from the bishop’s garden and Pierce used much of the account book to write down gardening hints.54 Both account books introduce us to commodities, such as wine and brandy, that were not produced in Ireland. Wine had been imported for the Old 53

Trinity College Dublin, MSS F2/5, Depositions 1641–51, fos. 45a–b. PRONI, D2056/1. Household account book kept by Edward Pierce as steward in Lisburn to Thomas Hackett, bishop of Down and Connor, 1674/7. 54

    

23

English and Gaelic gentry for generations.55 It was also occasionally supplied to English soldiers in place of beer.56 By the beginning of the seventeenth century wine was the most important dietary item imported from the Continent and, tunnage—a duty on imported wine—was an important source of government revenue for much of the century. In 1614–15 recorded imports of wine into Ireland totalled 380,000 gallons, only one-twelfth of imports into London alone, and the equivalent of little more than 2 pints per head of population per year. The principal ports shipping wine in that year were, in order, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Dublin, and Waterford, although later in the century Dublin became the main focus of the trade.57 For centuries diets had been supplemented by herbs, wild fruits, and vegetables. Cabbages, leek, onions, wild garlic, watercress, were used as flavourings. When times were hard the poor ate nettles and shamrock. Seaweed— dulse—and laver was eaten in coastal areas. Hazelnuts and wild fruit were widely eaten; the only cultivated fruits of note were apples.58 Wild fruit and vegetables were used by settlers when times were hard. During the rebellion of 1641 English settlers in County Armagh ‘were almost pyned to death having food so little & poor that they thought themselves very happy when they could get a few nettles & coarse weeds to eat’.59 However, the new colonists set themselves to plant orchards and gardens. They cultivated apples, pears, and strawberries.60 In December 1653 John Percival, who had an estate at Burton, County Cork, imported 78 fruit trees from England at a cost of £5 8s: apricots, cherries, peaches, pears, and plums. Percival took his gardening seriously. Some years later he imported 36 peach and nectarine trees, 18 fig trees, 30 apricot trees, 15 pear trees, 37 plum trees, and 40 cherry trees.61 By now vegetable gardens were common throughout areas of English settlement and their destruction by the rebels was loudly lamented. John Davies, a County Carlow farmer, claimed he had lost household goods and ‘garden fruits’ worth £10, whereas all his livestock was worth only £11. Richard Woodward, another Carlow farmer, alleged the destruction ‘of [the] roots and the p’sent benefitt of a garden for this winter’ valued at £8, compared with 55

Lucas, ‘Irish food before the potato’, 40; Joyce, Social history, ii. 115–16. British Library, Lansdowne MS 40, fo. 209. Victualling accounts 1581–5. H. F. Kearney, ‘The Irish wine trade, 1614–15’, Irish Historical Studies, 9/36 (1955), 400–42. Further reference to the Irish wine trade may be found in National Library of Ireland, Syon House MS, Mic p. 3682; Kent Record Office, U269/O284, ON8729; Sheffield City Library, Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, 24–5 (198) (we owe these references to Dr Raymond Gillespie). See also George O’Brien, The economic history of Ireland in the seventeenth Century (Dublin: Maunsel & Co., 1919), 65, 87, 198. 58 Lucas, ‘Irish food before the potato’, 31–40; O’Curry, Manners and customs of the ancient Irish, i. ccclxiv; Joyce, A social history of ancient Ireland, ii. 148–58. 59 Trinity College Dublin MSS F2/5 Depositions, 1641. Typescript summaries, Antrim-Kerry, 89–90. 60 Lucas, ‘Irish food before the potato’, 37–40; Trinity College Dublin, Molyneux MSS 883/1, 182; Edward MacLysaght, Irish life in the seventeenth century (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1979), 109. 61 Egmont, Report on the manuscripts of the earl of Egmont, vol. i, part II, 531; vol. ii, 107, 122, 137. 56 57

24      only £6 for the losses of his household goods.62 The ‘roots’ were probably potatoes. In September 1643 three settlers living at Liscarrol in north County Cork went to harvest potatoes in the townland of Ballylyne ‘as was their custom’ but ‘found a poor stranger digging potatoes which they took from him, with his spade, and digged some themselves’.63 The importance of potatoes in settler diets was stressed during the rebellion by an English correspondent reporting to London: ‘the condition of Ireland being to live much upon their potatoe gardens which now they cannot; but now they come into places where they have nothing to live upon’.64 Fish had long been a useful adjunct to diets, although according to O’Curry, ‘whatever use the Irish may have made of game fish etc., the chief part of their animal food was obtained from their cattle’.65 During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were vigorous attempts to organize the fish trade. As early as 1533, according to an English priest, the population of Dublin had five meatless days a week, which he attributed to a scarcity of meat and not to an excess of piety or a fondness for fish.66 Thirty years later Friday had become a regular fish day for Dublin workmen.67 Fish days were introduced into army rations in the late sixteenth century to eke out supplies of beef. Fish was imported from Newfoundland for army use and herrings were purchased locally.68 By the early seventeenth century English fishermen were exploiting the pilchard shoals around the coasts of west Cork and Kerry.69 Although much of this activity was for export, presumably some of these catches entered the Irish food market. Herring fisheries were established at Galway town and in 1674 another was set up in Cashla Bay, about 20 miles west of Galway. The herrings ‘were larger and sooner come than Galway fish’. The enterprise continued for about five years until the fish failed. Fisheries were also well developed off the Dublin coast. In 1643 John Bartlett was robbed at sea ‘of so many barrells of herringes as were worth CCCli by some men of warr . . .’, and he also lost the use of ‘howses growndes mills fishyards gardens and other things’.70 The rivers and seas everywhere abounded with fish. ‘The water streams besides lamphreys, roches and the like of no value breeds salmons . . . eels & divers sorts of trouts, there was never a pike or bream as yet engendered in all this country, nor in the adjacent parts of Mayo or Galway countreys.’ The 62

Trinity College Dublin, MSS F2/5. Depositions, 1641, fos. 8, 44; Boate, Ireland’s naturall history, 77. Egmont, Report on the manuscripts of the earl of Egmont, i, part I, 207. British Library, Thurlo MSS 2, 602–3. A note relating to famine, 1654. 65 O’Curry, Manners and customs of the ancient Irish, i. ccclxx. 66 British Library, MSS Cotton Titus B. XI, fo. 346. 67 Gillespie (ed.), The proctor’s accounts of Peter Lewis, passim. 68 De L’Isle and Dudley, Report on the manuscripts of Lord de l’Isle & Dudley, 64; Salisbury, Calendar of the manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury, ix. 222; Calendar of the State Papers relating to Ireland, 1592–6 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1890), 435. 69 MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation, 223–4. 70 Trinity College Dublin, MSS F2/5. Depositions, 1641, fo. 49. 63 64

    

25

seas were ‘plentifully stored with fish as cods, lings, haukfish, coal fish, turbets, plaises, hadoys, whiting, gurnards, mackrells, herrings, pilchards, etc and no less liberal of shell fish as oysters, scallops, cokles, musceles, razures, together with lobsters, crabs, shrimps, etc’.71 As long as the native population had the means of catching fish they needed never to go hungry. Conclusion: the forces of change As Lucas, Cullen, and others have pointed out, Gaelic and Old English diets were strongly shaped by the pastoral nature of the Irish economy.72 So dominant were meat, offal, and milk products at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and so widespread the existence of customs that reflected a pastoral and semi-nomadic society—common possession of land, joint tenures, the high prestige attached to the ownership of livestock—that one or two historians have suggested that late medieval Ireland had more in common with Abyssinia than with western Europe.73 Ireland is naturally suited to the rearing of livestock. In modern Ireland permanent pasture accounts for 70 per cent of farm land and tillage only 15 per cent.74 In such conditions the population is likely to eat large amounts of meat and dairy produce. Before 1600, beef and mutton were eaten by the wealthy. But, as observers from Derricke to Petty noted, poor people could rarely afford to slaughter large beasts and made do with small animals—pigs, rabbits, game—scraps from the rich man’s table, and offal. All contemporary commentators were struck by the quantity of milk consumed in Ireland. Gallons were drunk, but gallons more were used in broths, eaten as curds commonly known as bonnyclabber (bainne clabair), or made into butter. Milk was also made into cheese. This was more likely to be soft cheeses rather than the hard cheeses characteristic of England. From earliest times Irishmen had cultivated and consumed cereals and legumes. But it was the new wave of colonists from the late sixteenth century that wrought fundamental changes in dietary patterns. The growth of population affected the diet in several ways. Most obviously, it increased the demand for food. Secondly, population growth changed the balance between land and labour so leading to labour-intensive tillage systems of cultivation. There were of course climatic and topographical limits to such developments but, as the history of Irish agriculture in the century after 1750 was to demonstrate, these limits were very elastic. 71

Trinity College Dublin, Molyneux MSS 883/1, 100, 119. Cullen, The emergence of modern Ireland, 141. 73 Kenneth Nicholls, Gaelic and gaelicised Ireland in the middle ages (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1972), 3; Crotty, Irish agricultural production, 1–8. 74 Crotty, Irish agricultural production, 4. 72

26      Two mechanisms worked to bring about a shift from pasture to tillage as population increased. First, assuming a given area of land, increasing labour inputs to pasture were accompanied by declining marginal output. There came a point beyond which further increasing the supply of labour resulted in no further increase in output at the margin; it then became economic for additional labour to be used for tillage.75 Secondly the growth of population extended the boundaries of settlement. The process was a complex one. In Ulster following the Plantation, English and Scottish colonists gravitated to the most accessible and most fertile soils—not always those that had been allocated by the initial grants—which they cultivated with the help of Irish tenants. Many Irish farmers shifted to the less fertile regions that English and Scottish settlers avoided if they could.76 New land was brought into cultivation for the first time. Wood was cut down for timber, fuel, iron smelting, or to make pipe staves for export, leaving scrub land suitable only for rough grazing. In the more favoured areas settlers ploughed the soil to produce grain to satisfy demand in Ireland and markets in England or Scotland.77 Alternative forms of land use were rarely possible without new methods, and settlers brought improved techniques. Money and effort were invested in hedging and fencing, in mills, and the infrastructure necessary for tillage. Dairy cows were imported from England, orchards planted, and investments undertaken in fisheries. None of this activity—with two exceptions—fundamentally widened the range of food grown in Ireland, but it increased the quantity and may have improved the quality. The exceptions were hops and—of great significance for the future—potatoes.78 Newcomers also brought their prejudices and their tastes. The cutting of cattle for blood to be eaten in jellified form or mixed with butter and salt and made into puddings, were aspects of Gaelic cuisine that particularly repelled English observers. They were appalled by the willingness of the indigenous population to devour the entrails of animals and to eat carrion and horse meat, by their partiality for warm milk straight from the cow, by their habit of eating fistfuls of rancid butter, by their unhopped ale, and their preference for oatcakes and gruels rather than good wheaten bread. Such reactions encapsulated a host of deep-seated attitudes associated with eating. ‘Although our species eats just about everything edible somewhere in the world, any particular group uses only a small percentage of the possible available nutrient sources.’79 The filtering process is determined by biology, 75 The analysis here follows Raymond Crotty, Cattle, economics and development (Slough: Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, 1980), 9–10. 76 Robinson, The Plantation of Ulster, 97–101. 77 Gillespie, Colonial Ulster, 11–14. 78 Ibid. 64–5, 71–7, 126–7; E. Estyn Evans, Irish folk ways (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957), 29–32; MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation, 228–30; Boate, Ireland’s naturall history, 77. 79 Paul Rozen, ‘Human food selection: the interaction of biology, culture and individual experience’, in L. M. Barker (ed.), The psychobiology of human food selection (Westport, Conn.: Avi Publishing Company, Inc., 1982), 226.

    

27

cultural conditioning, and taste. The biological make-ups of native and newcomer populations in sixteenth-century Ireland were hardly likely to have differed significantly, although there are cases of human populations adapting to specific foods that prove injurious to other populations.80 The Irish liking for whiskey may have been conditioned by the damp climate and settlers took to it for the same reason. But the aversion to horse meat and carrion was a cultural reaction, as was the abhorrence of the Irish way of eating butter. The English preference for hopped beer is best understood as a cultural feature affecting society as a whole; consumers developed a liking for hops remarkably quickly from the 1540s following centuries of drinking unhopped ale. That the consumption of grain in the form of bread was a manifestation of social values in Ireland is clearly indicated by the injunction of the author of Pairlement Chloinne Tomais to his countryman to plough the country and so provide their families with ‘regular food’. According to several social commentators, Englishmen who had been long settled in Ireland adopted Irish manners. The extent of English and Scottish colonization from the late sixteenth century reversed the process of acculturation and imposed the dietary values of the settlers on the native population. These values spread from the towns and the planted regions. Even so dietary adaptation took a long time. Changes in taste were powerfully accelerated by the commercial and political developments of which colonization was a part. In Gaelic society food had been distributed as tributes given to overlords or made over to them as rent payments. The lordship system dissolved slowly, but it was still partly in place on the eve of the uprising in 1641.81 Remorselessly, though, market mechanisms took over and food became a tradeable commodity, its consumption governed by the incomes and preferences of buyers. Commercial links also increased the range and volume of food and drink flowing into Ireland. Wine and grocery imports increased greatly to satisfy the wants of settlers and the Anglicized palates of the Gaelic population. Finally colonization brought with it economic development. We must not exaggerate the extent of change. As MacCarthy-Morrogh has stressed in assessing the economic impact of the Munster Plantation, continuity was a more obvious feature than rapid change. Gaelic Ireland had not been innocent of the benefits of commerce; neither did the newcomers suddenly displace traditional attitudes and customs.82 Nevertheless, colonization accelerated the pace of development and generated higher incomes. The evidence is tantalizingly poor, but in Dublin both wages and purchasing power seem to have 80 S. H. Katz, ‘Food, behaviour and biocultural evolution’, in Barker (ed.), The psychobiology of human food selection, 171–88. 81 Mary O’Dowd, ‘Land and lordship in sixteenth and early-seventeenth century Ireland’, in Rosalind Mitchison and Peter Roebuck (eds.), Economy and society in Scotland and Ireland, 1500–1939 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1988), 17–26. 82 MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation, 225–30.

28      increased between the 1560s and the 1680s, with a temporary check in the second quarter of the seventeenth century.83 Dublin wage-earners were not representative of all classes of society and their rising wealth may have reflected the localized demand for skilled labour in an economy where skills were generally scarce. Still, if the lower strata of Dublin society were becoming wealthier in the long run, it seems reasonable to assume that the middling and upper orders were also prospering. It is possible that the incomes of what Professor Cullen calls ‘the ordinary people’ reached a peak in the 1650s and thereafter deteriorated.84 During the seventeenth century there may already have been a significant gap opening up between the incomes of skilled wage-earners (as well as merchants and landlords) on the one hand and unskilled cultivators on the other.85 There were still many places in Ireland at the end of the seventeenth century where people continued to live on traditional milk-based diets alongside their neighbours who enjoyed the richer fare generated by colonization and commerce. During the next century diets of different social groups clearly proceeded along divergent paths. 83 L. M. Cullen, T. C. Smout, and Alex Gibson, ‘Wages and comparative development in Ireland and Scotland, 1565–1780’, in Mitchison and Roebuck (eds.), Economy and society in Scotland and Ireland, 106–10. 84 Cullen, ‘Economic trends, 1660–91’, in Moody et al. (eds.), A new history of Ireland, ii. 401–2. 85 Cullen, Smout, and Gibson, ‘Wages and comparative development’, 112–14.

CHAPTER THREE

From the Restoration to the Great Famine: The Food of the Middling and Upper Classes Introduction During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the dietary patterns of the Old English, the Gaelic Irish, and the new settlers merged and the eating habits of the middling and upper levels of society in Ireland came to resemble those in England. This convergence continued during the eighteenth century. Among the lower stratum of society, on the other hand, dietary patterns amongst the Irish poor became simpler and different from those of the more prosperous members of society. By 1800 the population of Ireland divided, gastronomically, almost into two distinct groups. There were those whose varied diets included meat and grain-based foods, as well as dairy produce, fish, fruit, vegetables, groceries, wines, and spirits. And there were those who were consumers chiefly of potatoes. This chapter is concerned with the eating and drinking habits of the former, broadly the middling and upper classes.

General influences on patterns of food consumption The population of Ireland rose from about 2 million people in 1700 to about 5 million in 1800, and to 8.5 million on the eve of the Great Famine. There were more stomachs to fill, but the translation of need into effective demand requires income. National income possibly increased fivefold between the 1730s and 1815, from £15 million to £75 million, and income per capita almost threefold, from £4 to £11.1 The frailty of the evidence does not detract from the reality of a substantial increase in wealth, an increase that had begun in the post-Restoration period. As per capita incomes rose, the gulf between rich and poor widened. According to one historian, relying on the estimates of Sir William Petty, the richest 14 per cent of the population in Ireland in the 1670s enjoyed incomes of £10 per annum, almost four times greater than those of the remaining 86 per 1 L. M. Cullen, ‘Economic development, 1750–1800’, in T. W. Moody and W. E. Vaughan (eds.), A new history of Ireland, iv. Eighteenth-century Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 185–6.

30        cent who survived on £2.60. In 1791–2 the richest 10 per cent had annual incomes of £20, more than four times greater than the bottom 60 per cent where families struggled to live on no more than £5 a year. Between the extremes there was ‘a significant new element’ comprising 30 per cent of the population who were neither ostentatiously wealthy nor desperately poor.2 By 1800 there was a large cottier class whose principal income was derived, not from cash in hand but access to small plots of land on which they grew potatoes. On the eve of the Famine there were 3 million ‘potato people’. This bottom layer of society was becoming poorer both relatively and absolutely.3 According to economists as people become richer they spend a diminishing proportion of their incomes on food, although they extend the range of foods they buy. There is little reliable historical evidence about such matters in Ireland. In England before 1800, the proportion of income spent on food by the labouring classes was between 50 per cent and 80 per cent, with a figure towards the lower end of the range being the more plausible.4 In Gregory King’s England the poorest 40 per cent of society devoted 69 per cent of their income to food and drink, whereas the richest 5 per cent spent less than onethird. Richer people spent proportionately less on grain-based foods but more on meat, groceries, and wines.5 At the higher levels of society, food consumption became more varied. Throughout late medieval and early modern Europe diets differed more sharply between rich and poor than they did across geographical regions.6 Economists are, nevertheless, too prone to explain dietary changes exclusively in terms of income, overlooking biological, psychological, and social influences. Consequently, important changes in dietary patterns may go unnoticed. One of the manifestations of rising wealth today is that people eat more processed foods, more imported foods, and more products that are expensive although not necessarily nutritious. At the same time they turn their backs on what is immediately available from the land. Something similar was happening in earlier periods. The native Irish had consumed offal, blood 2

David Dickson, New foundations: Ireland 1660–1800 (Dublin: Helicon, 1987), 97–8. Joel Mokyr and Cormac Ó Gráda, ‘Poor and getting poorer? Living standards in Ireland before the Famine’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 41 (1988), 209–35; Cormac Ó Gráda, Ireland before and after the Famine: explorations in economic history, 1800–1925 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 13. 4 Carole Shammas, ‘Food expenditures and economic well-being in early modern England’, Journal of Economic History, 43 (Mar. 1983), 89–100; John Komlos, ‘The food budgets of English workers: a comment on Shammas’, Journal of Economic History, 48 (Mar. 1988), 149; Carole Shammas,‘The food budgets of English workers: a reply to Komlos’, Journal of Economic History, 48 (Sept. 1988), 673–6; Carole Shammas, The pre-industrial consumer in England and America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 123–31. 5 Richard Stone, ‘Some seventeenth century econometrics: consumers’ behaviour’, Revue européenne des sciences sociales, 81 (1988), 40–1. 6 Richard Roehl, ‘Patterns and structures of demand, 1000–1500’, in C. M. Cipolla (ed.), The Fontana economic history of Europe: the Middle Ages (London: Collins/Fontana, 1972), 111–17, 120–2; Walter Minchinton, ‘Patterns and structures of demand, 1500–1750’, in C. M. Cipolla (ed.), The Fontana economic history of Europe: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (London: Collins/Fontana, 1974), 89–100, 115–30; Stephen Mennell, All manners of food: eating and taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the present (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 41–7, 62–4, 317. 3

      

31

puddings, syllabubs, bonnyclabber, shamrocks, leeks, shell and freshwater fish. Gradually these unseemly items disappeared from respectable tables. Culture and taste operate also to encourage the consumption of foods possessing little nutritional value. The most obvious case, historically, is that of sugar, which displaced other sweeteners and conquered the world.7 In Ireland, sugar, with tea, were established in the diets of the upper classes after 1750 as incomes rose and prices fell. But this is not the whole story. In England tea and sugar became desirable consumption goods even among the labouring classes, notwithstanding that there were cheaper alternatives.8 Among the Irish labouring classes tea and sugar made little headway before the nineteenth century, but the English experience should alert us to the possibility that influences other than income affected dietary changes at all levels of society.

The upper and middling classes It is not easy to pin down the normal eating habits of comfortably-off people, neither so miserably poor as to attract the attention of social reformers, nor so extravagantly rich as to invoke the envy of others. A revealing source is household account books although complete books do not survive in abundance. A further problem is that large establishments obtained much of their food from their own estates, orchards, and gardens. The bigger the estate the more likely it was to be self-sufficient, but even modest households were partially insulated from the market. When the Revd Nicholas Herbert, rector of Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, and his family moved into their new glebe house in the parish of Knockgrafton (a living also held by Herbert) in 1789, they threw a house-warming party. One guest was astonished: to see us sit down Morning, Noon, and Night, to the finest Beef in Christendom (for we always bought a Quarter whenever Mr Roe killed one of his remarkable Cows)—We had besides every kind of Fruit and Vegetable from Rockwell—The finest young sucking Pigs from Mrs Dexter—The finest fat Geese from Mrs Dogherty, with quantities of Eggs, butter, Cream Cheeses, and Oaten cakes—all Gratis, except the 200 pound weight of Beef which we paid for . . .9

For all their shortcomings, account books provide a starting point and are a useful antidote to contemporary descriptions coloured by the spectacular rather than the representative. The discussion here relies heavily on thirteen household books extending in date between 1674 and 1828. They vary in quality but, notwithstanding some identifiable gaps, they are reasonably 7 Paul Rozen, ‘Human food selection’, in L. M. Barker (ed.), The psychobiology of human food selection (Westport, Conn.: Avi Publishing Company, 1982), 228–9. 8 Carole Shammas, ‘Eighteenth-century English diet and economic change’, Explorations in Economic History, 21 (1984), 255–9. 9 Dorothea Herbert, Retrospections of Dorothea Herbert, 1770–1806 (Dublin: Town House, 1988), 197.

32        comprehensive. They are not a random sample in a statistical sense, but they are supported by evidence taken from incomplete accounts and other sources such as advertisements and import data. The provenance of the individual books is discussed in the Appendix, but some general features should be noticed at this stage. The first is that they differ in scale. The smallest recorded how a member of the Balfour family of Townley Hall near Drogheda spent £4 on food during five days in 1782. The longestrunning set of accounts belongs to the Plunkett family, earls of Fingall, stretching over the 1780s and 1790s. Total expenditure exceeded £1,000, but the purchase of groceries was probably understated. The largest expenditure was over £7,000 in the household of Thomas Conolly, of Castletown, County Kildare, between 1783 and 1787. The Conolly and Fingall accounts illustrate several problems with such sources. The Conolly books recorded quantities of meat consumed which came from animals slaughtered on the estate, but rarely the cost. In the accompanying tables the meat expenditure has been calculated using surrogate prices taken from other account books—including the Fingalls—dating from the same period. Similarly, expenditure on beer, milk, cream, butter, and wheaten flour, all produced on the Conolly estate, has been calculated using proxy prices. The only reference to fruit and vegetables in the accounts, apart from oranges and lemons, was to apples. Fruit and vegetables were grown in orchards and kitchen gardens. The absence of any spending on bread in the Conolly books is explained by the large purchases of grain meal and flour used for home-baking. A further feature of the Conolly accounts concerns the treatment of groceries, wines, and brandy. Consumption of tea, sugar, and coffee were itemized in the 1780s, but not their cost, although there are price lists for later years. There was no recorded expenditure on wines and spirits; this was kept in separate books that survive for the 1790s but not for earlier periods. Outlays on groceries or wines are missing or incomplete from five of the thirteen accounts included in Table 3.1 Many households kept separate grocery and wine books that have not survived. Conversely, there are extant grocery and wine books surviving from households where general books have been lost. It is often impossible to know how many people were fed within the households. Even the Balfour account, recording a mere five days’ expenditure in 1782, covered more than one person. The Conolly establishment contained over 100 servants in the 1760s. In the 1780s the maids, as well as receiving money wages (£8 a year), were allowed 2 pounds of sugar a month although they had to buy their own tea.10 The gentry fed people who were not members of the family. The Conollys purchased oatmeal to give to the poor. More than 10 Christopher Moore, ‘Lady Louisa Conolly: mistress of Castletown 1759–1821’, in Jane Fenlon et al., New perspectives: studies in art history in honour of Anne O. Crookshank (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1987), 134–5.

      

33

a century earlier the steward of the absentee bishop of Down and Connor regularly bought bread ‘for the poor’. The son of Dudley Cosby of Stradbally, County Laois, remembered how From the time my Father came [back] from England [in 1716] he lived very handsomely, more so than anyone in this county except my Uncle Pole, he kept a very plentiful house and table, his allowance was twelve beefs a year, 40 mutton, 26 barrels of wheat for bread, 60 barrels of Mault, 2 hogsheads of Wine, Pork, Veal, lambs, Wilde and tame fouls, and all other things in proportion. He continued in this method and never encreased or decreased, when there was the least company, his table was never covered with less than 5 or 6 and very often with more. He used to have variety of wines. The Poor never went away empty from his door . . .11

Expenditure on the major components of food and drink, averaged over the thirteen accounts, is set out in Table 3.1. Both the weighted and unweighted averages are given. The latter is a better indicator since the big spenders dominated the weighted averages. Meat, poultry, and rabbits formed the biggest category, however calculated, amounting to over one-third of all expenditure. Similarly, the proportions of income devoted to bread, cakes, and grain were similar. The table obscures changes taking place over time and differences between smaller and larger households. In England small establishments bought more processed and semi-processed foods, whereas large households enjoyed the economies of scale derived from bulk purchases and home butchering, baking, and brewing.12 It is instructive to compare the Irish evidence with English consumers’ behaviour (Table 3.2). Gregory King arranged society in late seventeenthcentury England into a hierarchy of ‘ranks, degrees, titles and qualifications’ and gathered information about their consumption habits. These ranks have been combined by later scholars into twelve expenditure groups. The nine wealthiest groups contained 37 per cent of the English population, roughly corresponding to the middling and upper classes in Ireland. Table 3.2 shows the average expenditure on food and drink of these nine English groups and rearranges the Irish accounts to ease comparison with King.13 The most striking features of Table 3.2 are that the expenditure on meat in eighteenth-century Ireland was double that in late seventeenth-century England and that spending on grain-based foods (excluding beer) was about the same. The contrast in the proportion of income spent on meat is in the expected direction. However, King’s estimate of English spending on meat looks too low. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries upper-class Englishmen spent between a quarter and a half of their food budgets on meat. So voracious 11 Pole Cosby, ‘Autobiography of Pole Cosby, of Stradbally, Queen’s County, 1703–1737’, Journal of the County Kilkenny Archaeological Society, 5 (1906–8), 90–1. 12 John Walter and Roger Schofield (eds.), Famine, disease and the social order in early modern society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 10–11. 13 Stone, ‘Some seventeenth century econometrics: consumers’ behaviour’, 38.

1674 1729–34 1738–82 1746 1763 1774–7 1782 1785–6 1781–99 1783–7 1812–6 1821–4 1828

Hackett Hutchinson Carew Inchiquin King Townley Balfour Aldercron Fingall Conolly Drogheda Grattan Castletown Unweighted average Weighted average

Sources: See Appendix.

Date

Account

35.4 992.7 397.1 6.2 32.8 194.0 4.0 6.4 1,028.0 7,130.9 228.7 37.7 78.3 51.2 36.7 18.9 6.1 54.0 19.3 26.7 5.7 26.9 17.6 9.5 37.9 12.4 24.8 20.6

36.3

Bread, cakes, grain (%)

23.1 29.8 5.2 17.4 26.9 47.3 51.2 11.3 15.6 40.8 48.6 54.4 79.3 34.7

Total Meat, expenditure poultry, rabbits (£) (%)

10.4

3.9

2.0 5.1 15.3 45.3 13.2 4.9 6.3 0.8 2.8 3.1 4.2 0.9 1.7 8.1

(%)

(%) 6.5 10.7 8.9 17.3 2.3 5.5 7.8 10.0 2.9 11.2 26.6 1.4 3.4 8.8

Fish

Dairy, eggs

1.2

1.6 3.4 3.3 1.3 0.0 2.3 5.5 28.1 0.8 0.5 9.0 0.3 0.1 4.3

(%)

10.1

5.7 4.3 16.0 2.8 0.5 13.2 0.6 40.7 2.3 12.2 0.7 0.6 1.2 7.8

(%)

11.1

2.9 3.3 3.3 6.0 0.0 5.9 0.0 2.4 4.6 14.3 0.8 2.9 0.0 3.6

(%)

5.9

3.9 5.3 27.9 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.6 42.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.3 6.2

(%)

Fruit, Groceries Beer, Wines, vegetables whiskey spirits

T 3.1 Percentage of food and drink expenditure by category in thirteen households, 1674–1828

0.7

3.0 1.5 1.3 3.8 3.1 1.4 1.9 0.5 1.7 0.4 0.7 1.6 1.6 1.7

(%)

Miscellaneous

      

35

were English aristocratic appetites in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that one contemporary commented caustically that ‘I think we have stowed more sorts of flesh in our bellies than ever Noah’s ark received’.14 Impressionistic evidence from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries indicates that wealthy Englishmen could match the Irish in meat consumption.15 T 3.2. Percentage expenditure on food and drink, England and Ireland Category Meat Fish, poultry, eggs Milk, butter, cheese Fruit, vegetables Salt, oil, spices Beer, ale Wines, spirits Bread, cakes

England 1688

Ireland 1674–1828

15.0 10.0 13.0 9.0 6.0 16.0 9.0 23.0

31.0 14.0a 7.0 4.0 10.0b 3.0c 6.0 25.0d

a b c d

Includes rabbits. Groceries and miscellaneous. Includes whiskey. Includes grain. Sources: See text.

The almost identical proportions of incomes spent on cereal foods in England and Ireland are a coincidence, but they underline the fact that the eating patterns among the higher social groups in the two kingdoms had much in common. Since meat and cereals together accounted for almost 60 per cent of expenditure in Ireland, as compared with 38 per cent in Gregory King’s England, spending on other items in Ireland is inevitably squeezed. It is puzzling, therefore, to find the proportion of Irish incomes devoted to groceries was apparently higher than that indicated by King. But King’s estimates were made before tea, sugar, coffee, and rice became prominent items of consumption in England. Import data demonstrate that per capita consumption of groceries, wines, and imported spirits in Ireland during the eighteenth century was substantially lower than in England.

14 Christopher Dyer, Standards of living in the later middle ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 56; Lawrence Stone, The crisis of the aristocracy, 1558–1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 557–9, appendix XXIV. 15 J. C. Drummond and Anne Wilbraham, The Englishman’s food: a history of five centuries of English diet (London: Jonathan Cape, 1959), 210–18; John Burnett, Plenty and want: a social history of diet in England from 1815 to the present day (London: Scolar Press, 1979), 80–98.

36        Meat, poultry, rabbits Meat, poultry, and rabbits accounted for more than one-third of all food expenditure of the better-off. The most common varieties of meat eaten were beef and mutton, followed a long way behind by veal, lamb, pork, poultry, and offal. The pattern was generally consistent across all the accounts. Contrary to the claim of Crotty, more beef than mutton was eaten, more beef than veal, and more mutton than lamb.16 The explanation is partly a matter of definition: at what age did veal become beef, and lamb turn into mutton? But, more importantly, it was the result of the economics of animal husbandry. A mature animal yielded producers an income from hides, wool, hair, and tallow, as well as meat. Although there were additional costs involved in rearing animals into maturity, they were not high in Ireland where animals were grazed all the year round on natural grass. Before the Famine, few calves were killed for veal, but were sold as stores to grazers who fattened them for beef.17 Neither did relative prices offer incentives to farmers to slaughter young animals. Veal, on balance, appears to have been only a little more expensive than beef; in England, indeed, veal was cheaper than beef in the 1770s.18 Only a small proportion of incomes was spent on pork and bacon. Apart from the Adlercron household in the 1780s, no household used more than 10 per cent of its meat budgets for pork or bacon. Pig meat appears to have been dearer than other meats, a finding that is supported by evidence from elsewhere.19 Much pork and bacon did not enter the Irish market, but was exported. Shipments of pork and bacon soared after 1760, probably at the expense of domestic consumption.20 Bacon prices also included the costs of processing. Spending on poultry and rabbits often exceeded that on lamb or pork. The King household spent most of its meat budget on poultry—principally ducks and chickens, but also a considerable numbers of turkeys—as well as on rabbits. Bishop Hutchinson and the Conollys spend large sums on poultry and rabbits. In the early 1730s they cost the bishop almost £51 over five years. Just over half went on chickens, pullets, and cockerels, a quarter on wild birds— principally rooks and pigeons—almost 10 per cent on ducks and geese, the same on turkeys, and the remainder on rabbits and hares. The Conollys spent almost £200 on poultry in the 1780s. Few chickens in County Kildare were safe from their carnivorous appetites. In four years 4,560 perished on the Conolly 16

R. D. Crotty, Irish agricultural production: its volume and structure (Cork: Cork University Press, 1966), 17. John O’Donovan, The economic history of livestock in Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 1940), 164–5. Richard Perren, ‘Markets and marketing’, in G. E. Mingay (ed.), The agrarian history of England and Wales, vi: 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 228. 19 Crotty, Irish agricultural production, 21; Perren, ‘Markets and marketing’, 228. 20 Crotty, Irish agricultural production, 28, 277; O’Donovan, The economic history of livestock in Ireland, 116–17, 190–4. 17 18

      

37

dinner table, in the company of 726 geese and ducks and 444 turkeys. Compared with beef and mutton, poultry were not cheap. Turkeys, ducks, and geese cost around 12 old pence apiece and chickens about sixpence. Rabbits appear in many account books. Warrening was an established activity on poor soils. In Magilligan in north-west Ulster, pelts and meat were produced for the market. The sandy soils between Newcastle, County Down, and the sea ‘abound[ed] with Rabbits’; and in the 1770s there were profitable rabbit warrens in Killala, County Mayo. Elsewhere the gentry maintained burrows, even though ‘the stock [of rabbits] soon become numerous and mischievous to an extreme’. Gamekeepers, poachers, and hawkers supplied households with wild rabbits and account books probably understate the true levels of consumption.21 Purchases of offal tell us something about tastes and attitudes. Vestiges of high levels of offal consumption survive in the housekeeping book of Edward Pierce, steward of Bishop Hackett, in 1674. Almost 16 shillings went on offal, especially tongues. Tongues remained an episcopal favourite, presumably for gastronomic rather than evangelical reasons. One of Hackett’s successors, Bishop Hutchinson, bought a tongue on average once a fortnight. Tongues provided a lot of meat and could be preserved with salt or spices. Hutchinson also spent sizeable amounts on calves’ and sheep’s heads, calves’ feet, and tripe. These, together with hearts, liver, lights, kidneys, and griskins (loin of pig), appeared occasionally in other accounts. However, offal was generally disdained by polite society and, when bought, was often given to servants or dogs and, in the case of lard, had non-culinary uses.22 Offal was expensive. Bishop Hutchinson’s housekeeper paid anything from a penny to sixpence for a tongue. They cost 7d. at Townley Hall in the 1770s and up to 16d. (together with veal) on the Conolly estate in the 1780s. Suet and lard were also expensive; the price of these items relative to carcass meat was the reverse of what we expect today. Suet did not come attached to the carcass meat. Bishop Hackett’s steward paid separately for suet. At the end of December 1760, Elizabeth Lowden, housekeeper at Townley Hall sent a note to a local shopkeeper: ‘Sr my Lady Begs you’l send a leg of veal 2 stone of good flowr 2 loves of white Bread a hatchet for cutting Beef. I did not get any suet your humbel serven’, Elizabeth Lowden.’23 21 Graeme Kirkham, ‘Economic diversification in a marginal economy: a case study’, in Peter Roebuck (ed.), Plantation to partition: essays in Ulster history in honour of J. L. McCracken (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1981), 72–5; National Library of Ireland, Townley Hall Papers, MS 10276 (3) doc. no. 6. Personal account book, five days, 1782; Walter Harris, The ancient and present state of the County of Down (Dublin, 1744), 81; Arthur Young, A tour in Ireland . . . made in the years 1776, 1777, and 1778 (London, 1780), i., 299; Sir Charles Coote, Statistical survey of the county of Armagh (Dublin: Graisberry & Campbell, 1804), 295; B. A. Holderness, ‘Prices, productivity and output’, in Mingay (ed.), The agrarian history of England and Wales, vi. 147–9. 22 Mennell, All manners of food, 310–16. 23 National Library of Ireland, Townley Hall Papers MSS 10276 (3), doc. no. 5. Note from Elizabeth Lowden.

38        Per capita meat consumption The gentry ate prodigious quantities of meat. Mr Balfour of Drogheda bought, on average, 84 pounds a week between November 1765 and March 1766.24 Twelve years later a member of the same family in five days purchased— although did not necessarily consume—90 pounds of beef and mutton as well as a tongue, two turkeys, a neck of veal, two and a half pounds of bacon, a ‘creamed fowl’, and a pair of rabbits.25 In 1747 Dr Delany, dean of Down, and Mrs Delany entertained a distinguished ecclesiastical party including Archbishop Stone of Armagh and his sister, and the bishop of Derry and his wife. They dined on ‘fish—beefstakes—soup—rabbit and onions—Fillet Veal’, followed by ‘Turkey Pout—salmon grilde—pickled salmon—quails— little Terrene Peas—Cream—Mushrooms—Apple Pye—Crab—Leveret— Cheese-cakes’. Mrs Delany thought she was being economical: ‘I give as little hot meat as possible, but I think there could not be less, considering the grandees that are to be here: the invitation was to “beef stakes” which we are famous for.’26 Another cleric, the Revd John Nixon of Killesher, County Fermanagh, held a dinner party for sixteen people in April 1769. There was brisket of beef, a roast leg of mutton, cow heels, and mutton broth (as well as vegetables and fish). Enough remained to provide cold beef, with cheese and butter, for supper. A month later Nixon greeted his guests with a shoulder of mutton, beef steaks and broth, cods’ heads, pickled oysters, and cheese. In September he had a dinner party for six who were fed on fowl with celery sauce, a sirloin of beef, two roast ducks, and ham, as well as vegetables and fruit.27 Everyday fare may have been more frugal. Not so, though, in the Annesley household at Castlewellan, near Newcastle, County Down. The larder books for the autumn of 1813 recorded weekly stocks of beef in excess of 200 pounds as well as smaller quantities of mutton. Stocks occasionally went much higher; on 7 April 1814 the larder contained 646 pounds of beef. The ebbing and flowing of the joints were carefully measured, as were their journeys into the dining room. Dinner on Sunday 26 September 1813, for example, included hare soup, sheep’s head mince, and roast loin of beef; there was a rump of cold beef on the side table. On Monday there were bacon and beans, boiled and roast chicken, roast mutton, roast rabbit and teal, with cold roast beef on the 24 National Library of Ireland, Townley Hall Papers MSS 10276 (3), doc. no. 7. Butcher’s account B. Balfour to Thomas Andrews. 25 National Library of Ireland, Townley Hall Papers MSS 10276 (3). Personal account book, five days, 1782. 26 Lady Llanover (ed.), The autobiography and correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs Delany (First series, London: R. Bentley, 1862), ii. 468; Angelique Day (ed.), Letters from Georgian Ireland: the correspondence of Mary Delany, 1731–68 (Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1991), 174–6. 27 George Mott, ‘Eating and drinking habits in Ireland two hundred years ago’, Irish Ancestor, 5/1 (1973), 8. For further details of Nixon’s hospitality see earl of Belmore, History of the Corry family at Castle Coole (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1891), 281–93.

      

39

side table. Tuesday was a modest day with a boiled leg of mutton, ‘colcannon’, roast goose, roast rabbit, and cold beef. Wednesday, likewise, passed relatively abstemiously with two boiled chickens, a neat’s tongue, roast saddle of mutton, roast duck, and cold rib of beef. Thursday was greeted carnivorously with bacon and eggs, fricassee of chicken, roast chump of beef, roast chicken, and cold chicken. If Friday was a day of abstinence, it was not apparent from the menu, which included soup, stewed giblets, and roast shoulder of mutton, roast chicken, cold roast beef, and cold chicken. And so the daily round was passed by the consuming of all God’s creatures.28 The sheep’s head, giblets, and colcannon were probably intended for the servants and the local poor.29 Such examples can be multiplied. In April 1812 nine members of the Balfour family from Townley Hall, Drogheda, but then staying in Merrion St. Dublin, dined on soup, chickens, stewed beef, veal cutlets, ham in crumbs, a ten-pound turkey, rissoles, salmon, plum pudding, and flummery.30 A multitude of meat was common in inns. John Gamble stopped at an inn in Dungiven in 1812 and was fed on ‘veal chops, roast mutton, and boiled beef. I had only ordered the first.’31 In November 1828 Humphrey O’Sullivan, a schoolmaster at Callan, County Kilkenny, joined the parish priest and two other guests for dinner: We had a boiled leg of mutton with carrots and turnips; we had a roast goose with green peas and pudding; we had a dish of tripe swimming in new milk; we had tea and sweet Irish songs, and spent the night till eleven o’clock merry, happy, lightedhearted, joyous, pleasant, gay.32

According to contemporaries in the 1830s and 1840s, Irish per capita consumption of meat was 56 pounds a year compared with a UK per capita consumption of 86.8 pounds.33 Assuming that per capita meat consumption among the middle and upper classes in Ireland in the eighteenth century was close to the British average of the 1830s and 1840s (i.e. 87 pounds) and did not change over time; assuming, further, that the meat-eating population of Ireland constituted 40 per cent of the total throughout the eighteenth century; and assuming, finally, that the weight of meat consumed was directly proportional to expenditure,34 we can make some guesses of how many animals were slaughtered annually for meat. We also need information about carcass 28

PRONI, Annesley Papers, D1854/7/1. Bill of fare book 1813. Colcannon was boiled potatoes and cabbage fried in bacon fat and provided a cheap and sustaining filler for the poor. An English equivalent is bubble-and-squeak. 30 National Library of Ireland, Townley Hall MSS 10247. Menu books of the Balfours of Townley Hall, Drogheda, 1811–17. 31 John Gamble, Views of society and manners in the north of Ireland: in a series of letters written in the year 1818 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1819), 261. 32 Revd Michael McGrath, SJ (ed. and trans.), The diary of Humphrey O’Sullivan, part II (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Ltd., for the Irish Texts Society (1929), 1936), 32. 33 Richard Perren, The meat trade in Britain 1840–1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 1–3; Holderness, ‘Prices, productivity and output’, 156. 34 The latter assumption will exaggerate the amount of pork and poultry consumed since they tended to be, pound for pound, more expensive than beef or mutton. 29

40        weights. On the Conolly estate in the 1780s carcasses of oxen averaged 684 pounds, sheep 69 pounds, and pigs 156 pounds. These weights were similar to those of animals killed on the same estate in the 1820s, and they are within the range of weights found in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.35 Putting these assumptions together produces the figures set out in Table 3.3. They show that considerably more cattle were eaten in Ireland during the eighteenth century than were exported, although the reverse was true for pig meat. Many more cattle were slaughtered annually than suggested by Crotty.36 T 3.3. Estimated numbers of animals consumed in Ireland, 1700–1841 Date

Total population (000)

Meat-eating population (000)

Cattle numbersa (000)

Sheep numbersb (000)

Pig numbersc (000)

1700 1753 1800 1841

2,000 2,300 5,000 8,200

800 920 2,000 3,280

57 65 141 232

376 432 940 1,542

30 34 74 122

a Assuming beef and veal accounted for 50 per cent of meat consumption. b Assuming sheep and mutton accounted for 33.5 per cent of meat consumption—the mean of the

weighted and unweighted averages. c Assuming pork and bacon accounted for 6 per cent of meat consumption.

Sources: See text.

How do the combined estimates of meat exports and domestic consumption correspond with the livestock population? Petty reckoned there were 600,000 cows in Ireland in 1672; in 1760 there were perhaps one million. In 1841 the cattle population was 1.8 million.37 The estimated number of cattle consumed at home, plus beef exports in 1841 implies a slaughter rate of 16 per cent, a figure comfortably below normally assumed rates of 18 to 25 per cent.38 Domestic and overseas beef consumption thus could easily be accommodated within the total cattle population. The only estimate of pig numbers dates from 1841 when the figure was 1.4 million. Since much of the stock was probably slaughtered every year, the total consumption of pig meat indicated in Table 3.3 looks suspiciously low.39 35 PRONI, Conolly estate papers, Castletown, County Kildare, Mic. 435, reel 3. Estate and household accounts; National Library of Ireland, Conolly estate papers MS 14342. Account Book of the Conolly family, Castletown, County Kildare, January–September 1828; Holderness, ‘Prices, pro36 ductivity and output’, 152–5. Crotty, Irish agricultural production, 17, 277. 37 Ibid. 17, 354. 38 For slaughter rates see Holderness, ‘Prices, productivity and output’, 147; L. A. Clarkson, ‘The manufacture of leather’, in Mingay (ed.), The agrarian history of England and Wales, vi. 471–2. 39 Holderness, ‘Prices, productivity and output’, 147. The estimates of consumption ignore pig meat eaten by the peasant population.

      

41

The estimates of the number of sheep consumed as mutton or lamb are more difficult to reconcile with recorded sheep numbers. In 1785 a contemporary reckoned that there were 5 million sheep in Ireland.40 In 1841 the sheep population was 2 million according to the census, whereas home consumption alone implies a sheep population of 4.5 million. Either the consumption estimate for 1841 is too high or the population estimate too low. The prime purpose of Table 3.3, however, is not to count the numbers of livestock in Ireland, but to test whether our consumption estimates are plausible. With the possible exception of mutton and lamb, the message of Table 3.3 is that the Irish gentry could gaze over their rolling pastures, content in the knowledge that their dinners were safely grazing.

Bread, cakes, and grains The middling and upper classes spent sizeable proportions of their incomes on cereals in various forms, including malt for brewing. This category includes flour, meal, bran, and malt, as well as unmilled corn. Meal was purchased for animal as well as for human consumption. The Conollys bought oats and bran as animal feed and oatmeal for ‘poultry, dogs [and the] poor’; in the mid-1780s up to 65 pounds of grain a day were used for these purposes.41 There were large variations in expenditure patterns. Some households concentrated their spending on grain and bought little flour or bread. The Conollys appear not to have purchased bread at all. The bulk of Bishop Hackett’s expenditure in 1674 was on barrels of wheat and rye and bowls of malt. His housekeeper bought bread (and also meal and gravy beef ) for the poor and ‘bread against your Lordship’s coming’. Little money was spent on flour until improved milling techniques were introduced into Ireland after 1750. Until the mid-century household demand for flour, as opposed to meal, was largely confined to Dublin.42 The Balfour family purchased flour in the 1770s, possibly from the nearby bolting mill at Slane, built in 1768. The Conollys, at Celbridge, County Kildare, bought fine flour from Dublin and second-rate flour from nearby Naas, which had been one of the early centres of English milling techniques.43 During the 1780s and 1790s the earls of Fingall purchased a total of only 36 stones of flour at an average price of 28 old pence a stone. It came in two qualities—first and second—from several suppliers, who also supplied bread and cakes to the 40

O’Donovan, Economic history of livestock, 101. PRONI, Conolly household accounts, Mic. 435, reel 3. L. M. Cullen, ‘Eighteenth-century flour milling in Ireland’, Irish Economic and Social History, IV (1977), 9–10. 43 National Library of Ireland, Townley Hall MS 11909. Account of domestic expenses 1774–7 and 1812–16; PRONI, Conolly household accounts, Mic. 435, reel 3; Cullen, ‘Eighteenth-century flour milling’, 10–13. 41 42

42        household.44 The Fingalls, unusually for a large establishment, were large purchasers of bread. During more than two decades they spent almost £250 on 10,000 loaves. Even so, this averaged only about 500 loaves a year—say ten a week. Contemporaries occasionally commented on the small amount of bread eaten in Ireland. ‘Would not a Frenchman give a shrug’, asked a traveller about 1750, ‘at finding in every little inn Bordeaux claret and Nantz brandy though in all likelihood not a morsel of Irish bread!’45 Nevertheless, there was sufficient demand from small households for ready-baked bread to support retail bakeries in practically every town. In a small provincial town, such as Coleraine, there might be a single bakery at work. Armagh, with a population of about 2,000 in 1770, including a fair sprinkling of clergy and minor gentry with incomes to spare and a taste for the luxuries of life, had six bakers, bread men, and gingerbread makers, as well as two meal men, and a flour and bread dealer to satisfy demand.46 In the towns and cities the bread trade was regulated by local authorities.47 Keeping a household in wholesome bread was hard work. The bishop of Elphin was obsessed by the quality of his bread at his summer residence at Elphin, County Roscommon, and at his house in Dublin. Some was made with flour milled from wheat grown on his own farm. His steward in Dublin was instructed to get ‘a Bagg of right good Flower’. The bishop believed it was necessary to use the purest barm, the preparation of which required the skills of an analytical chemist. In July 1751 Synge sent two pages of detailed advice to his daughter on the subject. The bread at Elphin, he told her, was superior to the bread in Dublin and he looked forward to his return every autumn without enthusiasm. ‘It will mortify me much, to have as indifferent bread this Winter coming, as We had the last. Pray Has your house-keeper no skill of this kind?’ The problem with the Dublin bread, he decided, was that the dough was made too wet.48 Bread existed in many varieties and qualities.49 Bishop Hackett’s housekeeper purchased ‘housel’ (household) bread, that is the lowest-quality wheaten bread.50 Housel bread featured among the accounts of the Balfours of Townley Hall in the early nineteenth century, along with brown and white bread. In the countryside there were many kinds of local bread. In 1732 the 44 National Library of Ireland, Fingall MSS 8036 (8, 9, 16). Food and wine accounts of the earl of Fingall, County Meath, 1785–98. 45 Mott, ‘Eating and drinking habits in Ireland’, 8. 46 T. H. Mullin, Coleraine in Georgian times (Belfast: Century Services, 1977), 87; L. A. Clarkson, ‘An anatomy of an Irish town: the economy of Armagh, 1770’, Irish Economic and Social History, 5 (1978), 36, 45. 47 See Chapter 10, below. 48 Marie-Louise Legg (ed.), The Synge letters: Bishop Edward Synge to his daughter Alicia, Roscommon to Dublin 1746–1752 (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1996), 71, 90, 171–2, 309, 320, 325–7, 331, 338, 350, 382, 489. 49 Anne C. Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), 207–46. 50 Christian Petersen, Bread and the British economy, c1770–1870, ed. Andrew Jenkins (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995), 243.

      

43

Revd William Henry, in the wilderness of County Fermanagh, lunched on ‘some lustran bread, which the Hottentot which was my guide gave me’.51 This was probably a flat oatcake baked on a griddle.52 In the 1730s, Bishop Francis Hutchinson bought ‘fresh rolls’ made of wheaten flour and enriched with milk, butter, or eggs after the French fashion.53 Among the Fingall’s purchases were barmbracks. These were loaves made with barm (i.e. liquid yeast taken from fermenting malt) and flavoured with currants.54 In 1789 friends gave the Herbert family of Carrick-on-Suir, ‘a huge Barm Brack, thinking it [reported Dorothea Herbert ironically] a wonderful fine thing . . . to a set of half famished wretches as they supposed us to be—How they were ashamed of their clumsy Present in the Land of Elegance and Plenty!’55 Barmbracks were much enjoyed by the comfortably off in the early nineteenth century and, indeed, long after.56 Biscuit appears in several accounts. In its original form it was twice-baked bread, rather like a rusk, and was a common item in military diets in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the eighteenth century biscuit had evolved into the plural, had become sweet, and verged into the category of cakes.57 Gingerbread was another bridge across the gap between bread and cakes. Originally it was made from breadcrumbs and flavoured with ginger and other spices. By the beginning of the eighteenth century it was composed of flour, butter, eggs, treacle, ginger, and fruit and baked like a cake.58 The presence of gingerbread makers in Armagh in the late eighteenth century is testimony to its popularity. When the feast day of St James (24 September) was celebrated at St James Well near Callan in 1829 there was ‘ginger bread for grown girls’, as well as gooseberries, currants, and cherries for children and ‘strong beer, and maddening whiskey for wranglers and busybodies’.59 Gingerbread did not feature among the cakes bought by the Fingalls, although they consumed almost every other kind. They kept a regular cake account with a local baker who supplied them with large cakes, small cakes, plum cakes, mixed cakes, cheesecakes, seed cakes, and cakes unspecified. They bought rusks, hard biscuits, naples, and seringo biscuits. Fasting cake was purchased during Lent, but for less austere occasions there were lemon sponges, raspberry tarts, apple pies and apple puffs, macaroons, and caramel 51 Armagh Public Library, MS G.I.14, fo. 9. ‘The topographical descriptions of the Rev. William Henry, 1732–39’. 52 P. W. Joyce, A social history of ancient Ireland (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1903), ii. 142–4. 53 Wilson, Food and drink in Britain, 230, 337–8. 54 Joyce gives a different derivation of the term. It was a corruption of the Irish bairgen-brack or borreenbrack. Bairgen was a cake and bairgen-brack or borreen-brack was a speckled cake, that is speckled with currants. Joyce, A social history of ancient Ireland, ii. 142. 55 Herbert, Restropections, 198. 56 L. M. Cullen, The emergence of modern Ireland, 1600–1900 (London: Batsford, 1981), 184. 57 For a description of biscuit see Wilson, Food and drink in Britain, 226, 240. 58 Ibid. 223, 237. 59 McGrath (ed.), Diary of Humphrey O’Sullivan, ii. 183.

44        baskets. Such luxuries were also conjured from the kitchens of the lesser gentry. In the summer of 1793, the Revd Nicholas Herbert took his family to their seaside cottage at Bonmahon; his daughter, Dorothea, and her friends celebrated: we set all Hands to work, got our Pastry and Music from Carrick with every Rarity the Season afforded in Meats Fruits or Vegetables—The two Blundons got us all manner of fish and wildfowl—Miss Butlar, Miss Blunden and Fanny manufactord the Whipps Jellies and Creams and I made a Central Arch of Pasteboard and Wild Heath with various other Ornaments and Devices . . .

Dorothea had served her pastry apprenticeship as a child with her siblings and cousins, raiding the kitchen on Sunday mornings when they were supposed to be in church, ‘making hot Mutton Pies and so forth with all the Varieties of Creams and Candies that the Dairy and Garden could allow’.60 The discussion has taken us beyond the boundaries of cakes, narrowly defined, into the territory of pies, pasties, and patties with their fillings of meat, fruit, or cream. Sweet and savoury pastries graced the lunch and dinner tables of every gentry family, blurring the distinctions between categories of food.61 Although the proportions of incomes devoted to such delicacies were small, the absolute amounts could be large. The entire ‘bread, grain, and cakes’ expenditure of the Inchiquin account in 1746 (admittedly a very small account), was taken up with apple tarts (16d.), a saffron cake (13d.), and jelly and cakes (62d.). A single apple pie purchased by the Balfours in 1782 cost 5 shillings—they could have bought 15 to 20 pounds of beef for the same money—and a more modest pie 3 shillings. Three or five shillings would have fed a labourer’s family for a week or longer. Dairy and eggs A long way behind bread, grain, and cakes were dairy produce and eggs, although they were probably more important than the account books indicate since they were the ingredients of cakes, pastries, and some kinds of bread. They were also often obtained from home farms and dairies. Butter was the most important of the dairy products. It was usually delivered in crocks containing 30 to 60 pounds weight. The receptacles were reusable and their cost included in the delivery price of the butter. Empty crocks littered the kitchens and pantries, although when butter reached the dining room it was likely to sit on silver butter dishes.62 Purchases of small weekly amounts of 60

Herbert, Restropections, 38, 311. See, for example, the menu books of the Balfours of Townley Hall, Drogheda, 1811–17; the Annesley of Castlewellan, 1813–14, MSS D1854/7/1; Townley Hall MSS, 10247. 62 L. A. Clarkson and E. M. Crawford, Ways to wealth: the Cust family of eighteenth-century Armagh (Belfast: Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies, 1985), 67, 77, 80; Mina Lenox-Conyngham, An old Ulster house and the people who lived in it (Dundalk: W. Tempest, 1946), 103, 104. 61

      

45

butter were interspersed among the big orders. Whatever the quantity, it was usually described simply as ‘butter’, although sometimes as ‘fresh butter’, and occasionally as ‘salted’. A good deal of butter was made in domestic dairies. The condition of his dairies did not please Bishop Synge: ‘the whole affair of the Dairy, and poultry was left to Jennet [the maid]. She order’d Milk, and butter and bought in Meal and dispens’d it as she pleas’d.’ The bishop, though, did sometimes buy butter. In June 1750 he instructed his daughter to ‘make such good Terms [with the Butter-Woman] as you could’.63 Close to the towns the trade in dairy products was well organized. In the mid-eighteenth century: ‘the near neighbourhood of the metropolis [Dublin], gives the Countryman an easie opportunity to convey thither the products of his Farm, Wicklow veil, Bacon, and ale, are noted for their goodness, so is their Butter & Cheese, the Effect of their Cleanliness . . .’64 The frequency with which fresh milk was purchased is remarkable. Bishops Hackett and Hutchinson both had regular deliveries, as did the Balfours of Townley Hall near Drogheda. There is no way of knowing whether these supplemented supplies coming from their own dairies, but it seems likely. Even town dwellers kept a cow or two. Miss Annaritta Cust had ‘at the house in Armagh two milch cows’ when she died in 1797. There was a haystack in the yard to provide them with winter feed and milk pans in the pantry.65 Outlays on cream were usually very small, although Bishop Hutchinson had a well-developed liking for it. A feature of the Fingall’s account was the purchase of ‘iced cream’. It was not cheap at 6s. 6d. a quarter, but it was expensive to make. This was done by placing cream, which might be sweetened or flavoured with fruit, in metal pots and burying them in pails of ice. It required an ice house, both to supply the ice and to provide a place to store the cream. Iced cream, consequently, was a luxury of the rich.66 Cheese was an unimportant item, except in the Conolly household, which bought local cheese for the estate workers. The best cheese was imported from England; Mrs Delany obtained fine ‘Berkeley’ and ‘Frogmill’ cheeses from friends and relations in Gloucester.67

Fish Spending on fish was small compared to that on meat and cereals. The average outlay varied greatly from household to household. Large estate owners had 63

Legg (ed.), The Synge letters, 69, 186. Armagh Public Library. Lodge MS 35. Papers of the Physico-Historical Society of Ireland (Dublin). Report on County Wicklow, fos. 11–12. Undated, but c.1740. 65 Clarkson and Crawford, Ways to wealth, 67, 82. 66 Wilson, Food and drink in Britain, 154. 67 Day (ed.), Letters from Georgian Ireland, 176. 64

46        their own fish ponds and rivers; and consumers of all kinds were supplied in very informal ways. In County Fermanagh in the 1730s ‘it is usual for the Innkeeper to ask his Guests how many Trouts he will have for Supper and throwing in his line [into the river] he brings up the defined number in a minute or two.’68 Account books, therefore, give an incomplete picture of fish consumption. Nearly one-third of recorded purchases was on fish of unspecified kinds. A further 16 per cent went on cod, ling, hake, whiting, turbot, trout, and—occasionally—freshwater fish such as salmon and eels. Pike were first mentioned in Irish records of the late sixteenth century. Carp and tench were introduced in the early seventeenth century and perch, bream, gudgeon, and others later. Trout were plentiful in lakes feeding into the sea, but not in isolated lakes unless deliberately introduced.69 Eels, trout, and salmon often made the journey from sea, to river, to table without going near the market.70 Oysters and shellfish generally accounted for nearly one-fifth of total spending on fish. One or two households had a special liking for oysters. Bishop Hutchinson’s household consumed around 40,000 oysters in five years, usually purchased in multiples of a hundred, but occasionally in pints. Except for one or two references to pickled oysters, they appear to have arrived fresh. The price varied between 3d. and 5d. a hundred. Other shellfish included crabs, lobsters, scallops, and shrimps. Hutchinson’s account book reveals a wellorganized trade in fish. Just over half the spending went on unspecified species and on sole, plaice, haddock, cod, whiting, and trout. He bought roughly 500 pounds of salmon over the five-year period, usually as whole fish, at 1½ or 2 old pence per pound. Eels were eaten in large numbers, more than 2,000 of them in all. They usually cost a farthing or a halfpenny each, although ‘big eyls’ could cost 5 old pence. They may have come from Lough Neagh, or from Lough Erne which ‘abounds in Pyke, Eels, Lampreys, Bream, Shads, Roaches, Trout, Salmon & Dace or fresh water herrings’.71 Herrings were delivered apparently fresh, apart from an occasional consignment of pickled and red herrings. ‘Good Scotch herrings’ were imported into Belfast in the mideighteenth century.72 Fish was usually a supplement to meat. In October 1749 Edward Synge was planning his return to Dublin and warned his daughter, ‘My scheme is to dine with you about four—some Sole, Whiting, or other good Sea Fish will be a treat. But you must have roasted mutton for Lawson [his housekeeper], and a couple of roasted Fowl, not rank.’73 At a dinner party given by Mrs Delany two 68 Armagh Public Library, MS G.I.14. Revd William Henry, Topographical Description [of County Fermanagh], 1732, fo. 96. 69 Christopher Moriarty, ‘Fish and fisheries’, in J. W. Foster, Nature in Ireland: a scientific and cultural 70 history (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1997), 284–5. Herbert, Retrospections, 197. 71 Armagh Public Library, Lodge MSS 35. ‘Topographical and statistical returns from various correspondents sent to Walter Harris and the Physico-Historical Society of Ireland’ (Dublin) c.1745. 72 e.g. Belfast News Letter (Tuesday 3 Apr. 1750). 73 Legg (ed.), The Synge letters, 173.

      

47

years earlier, fish formed three out of fifteen dishes served during the first and second courses. When, in 1757, she was a guest at a Dublin dinner party she was faced by the largest turbot she had ever seen. The creature was nevertheless dwarfed by a huge pig, roast veal, and a shoulder of mutton.74 Fish featured regularly on the daily menus at Townley Hall, Drogheda, and the Annesley household at Castlewellan in the early nineteenth century, but was always greatly outnumbered by the profusion of meat, poultry, dairy produce, pies, and patties.75

Potatoes, vegetables, and fruit The population of Ireland, Old English and Gaelic alike, had for centuries garnered the fruits of the forests and fields, but with the systematic development of horticulture, orchards, and gardening by the New English settlers, fruit and vegetables assumed a regular position in diets.76 Account books give a limited idea of the amount and variety of fruit and vegetables consumed by the gentry. Only small fractions of total food spending went on fruit and vegetables and the money outlays were not large. They exceeded £30 in the household of Bishop Hutchinson over a thirty-year period in the early eighteenth century. This account offers an unusually detailed picture of a household that relied heavily on the market for vegetables and fruit. Potatoes, beans, and peas were bought by the bushel. Cabbages, cauliflowers, and ‘greens’ were purchased almost every week; among the salad vegetables were watercress, celery, asparagus, mint, beetroot, and radishes. Apples, pears, plums, strawberries, and cherries came and went according to the season. The Conollys spent a good deal on fruit and vegetables in the 1780s. Nearly a third of the money went on potatoes, an indication both of the extent to which potatoes were a marketed crop, and of their popularity among the gentry. Hely Dutton remarked in 1824 that a ‘partiality [for potatoes] is entertained by every intermediate rank to the palace, no table being without them’.77 Bishop Synge was very proud of his potatoes. He boasted to his daughter in August 1751, ‘I never saw so good [potatoes], as I have had this Season, in my life.’ His neighbours at Elphin, Mr and Mrs Wills, supped ‘on [potatoes] every night; except when Oysters seduce Mrs Wills . . .’78 74

Day (ed.), Letters from Georgian Ireland, 174–7. National Library of Ireland, Townley Hall MS 10247. Menu books of the Balfours of Townley Hall, Drogheda, 1811–17; PRONI, D1854/7/1. Annesley estate papers, menu books of the Annesleys of Castlewellen, 1813–14. 76 T. C. Barnard, ‘Gardening, diet and “improvement” in later seventeenth-century Ireland’, Journal of Garden History, 10/1 (1990), 71–85. 77 Horatio Townsend, , Statistical survey of the county of Cork with observations on the means of improvement etc. (Dublin, 1810), 415; Hely Dutton, Statistical survey of County Galway, with observations on the means of improvement, etc. (Dublin, 1824), 350. 78 Legg (ed.), The Synge letters, 344. 75

48        In 1775 Richard Twiss remarked that potatoes, ‘form a standing dish at every meal; these are eaten by way of bread, even by the ladies indelicately placing them on the table-cloth, on the side of the plate, after peeling them’.79 The young Dorothea Herbert, and her friends, fed ‘on Potatoes and Milk at home, and [enjoyed] all the calm delights of a Young Summer in our Natural soil’.80 In August 1802 Lady Mount Cashell was in Paris with her husband where she was visited by a Polish countess who found her ‘eating plain boil’d Potatoes for her luncheon in the middle of the day. She then heard for the first time that that was the principle [sic] Food of the Irish . . .’ The countess returned the compliment by inviting Lady Mount Cashell to breakfast, and in her honour—and to her horror—served potatoes ‘dress’d in fifty different fashions’.81 In the early nineteenth century the earl of Limerick and a guest, Lord Sydney, dined with the earl’s four daughters. Before each of the daughters was a covered dish: ‘What have you got there, my dear?’ said Lord Limerick, addressing his eldest daughter, ‘lift the cover and see’. The young lady dutifully lifted the cover, replied ‘potatoes papa’. ‘Humph’ said the noble lord, ‘what have you got there?’ The second daughter, lifted the next cover, replied ‘potatoes papa’. ‘And what (to the fourth) have you got?’ ‘Potatoes papa’.82

The better-off also ate turnips, carrots, and onions, but they spent more on salads and herbs. Among fruit grown in Ireland, apples, pears, and soft fruits in season dominated purchases. There was also a considerable consumption of oranges and lemons, either imported in a preserved form or grown in hothouses. Every estate of even modest substance cultivated gardens for pleasure and profit.83 Bishop Synge took a keen interest in his gardens and hothouse, pestering his daughter for news of apricots, grapes, melons, nectarines, pears, and strawberries.84 The Delanys had 11 acres at Delville, which was their joy. In September 1750 Mrs Delany spent a day ‘gleaning my autumn fruits—melon, figs, beury pears, grapes, filberts, and walnuts’. She whiled away the dark hours of winter planning a greenhouse for her orange trees.85 The Herberts of Carrick-on-Suir were given ‘every kind of Fruit and Vegetable’ by their friends, the Roes, who had extensive gardens attached to their house at Rockwell.86 79

[Richard Twiss], A Tour in Ireland in 1775 (London, 1776), 37. Herbert, Retrospections, 131. T. U. Sadleir (ed.), An Irish peer on the Continent (1801–1803): Being a narrative of the tour of Stephen, 2nd Earl Mount Cashell, through France, Italy, etc., as related by Catherine Wilmot (London: Williams & Norgate, 1920), 80–1. 82 Limerick Chronicle (20 Jan. 1846). 83 T. C. Barnard, ‘Gardening, diet and “improvement” ’ in E. C. Nelson and A. Brady (eds.), Irish Gardening and Horticulture (Dublin: Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland, 1979). 84 Legg (ed.), The Synge letters, 34, 41, 46, 73, 121, 144, 206, 230, 246, 294, 327, 367, 489. 85 Day (ed.), Letters from Georgian Ireland, 187. 86 Herbert, Retrospections, 97. In 1850 the demesne was 400 acres (p. 449). 80 81

      

49

Gardening generated a demand for seeds, plants, and trees that was met by specialist seedsmen. Prominent among these in the mid-eighteenth century was Daniel Bullen of Dublin. He was the descendant of one, Bullen, who came from Westmorland to Ireland during the reign of Queen Anne and established a nursery of 4 acres in New Street where he grew the first pineapples in Ireland. He was widely employed by the nobility and gentry in laying out their gardens.87 Table 3.4 lists purchases of seeds from Bullen by the Townley Hall T 3.4. Seeds bought from Daniel Bullen, Dublin, by William Balfour, Townley Hall, Drogheda, February 1755 8 oz Spanish onions 4 oz Strasburg onion 2 oz Lon. leeks 8 oz orange carrott 5 oz Dutch parsnip 4 oz green turnep 2 oz red turnep 2 oz early Dutch turnep 1 oz yello turnep half oz scorzoncra half oz sassafie 4 pints shallots 1 lb garlic half oz black Span raddish half oz white Span raddish 5 oz Lon. raddish quarter oz cos lettuce half oz Dutch Bro lettuce quarter oz cabbage lettuce 4 oz Capucheen lettuce 2 lbs prickly spinnage 1 oz red beet 1 oz sorrell 1 oz cardoon 3 oz cresses 3 oz parsley 4 pts white Rouncivd peas half oz curld endive 1 oz carduss

6s. 8d. 3s. 4d. 1s. 8d. 2s. 8d. 10d. 1s. 4d. 6d. 4d. 1s. 1s. 4s. 1s. 6d. 6d. 1s. 1s. 1s. 3d. 1s. 4s. 6d. 1s. 1s. 6d. 6d. 4s. 6d. 6d.

half oz purslain 4d. 4 oz aspargass 2s. 1 oz udea cauliflower 5s. 2 oz early Yorks. cabbage 4s. 2 oz early Dutch cabbage 2s. 2 oz common cabbage 1s. 1 oz Dutch savoy 8d. half oz early cucumber 6d. half oz thyme – quarter oz hysop 2d. quarter oz white cucumber 3d. quarter oz sweet marjorom 4d. half oz winter savoy 4d. 1 oz pott marjorom 1s. 4d. 1 oz marigold 4d. 4 pints Windsor beans 2s. 4 pints Norf beans 2s. 8d. 4 pints Sandwich beans 2s. 4 pints white blossom beans 4s. 2 pints egg peas 2s. 1 pint dwarf kidney peas 1s. 6d. 1 pint Batts kidney peas 1s. 6d. 1 pint Dutch kidney peas 9d. 1 pint red kidney peas 9d. 4 pints Flander Hott peas 9d. 4 pints Charlton peas 6s. 2 pts dwarf sugar peas 2s. 2d. 1 oz celery 8d. 2 pints Orm Hott peas 2s. Box and cord 2s. 2d. Total cost £4 14s. 8d.

Source: National Library of Ireland, Townley Hall MSS 10276 (3), doc. no.1. 87 Essay on the rise and progress of gardening in Ireland, in Joseph C. Walker, Historical memoirs of the Irish bards; an historical essay on the dress of the ancient and modern Irish; and a memoir of the armour and weapons of the Irish, ii. (Dublin, 1818), 17–18. We are grateful to Mr Malcolm Thick of Oxford for this reference.

50        estate in February 1755, and gives some idea of the extent of his business. In the following month Powerscourt House, Dublin, paid Bullen 30 shillings for twelve different kinds of seeds, including onions, carrots, two varieties of broccoli, cauliflower, three types of lettuce, leeks, radishes, peas, endives, and kidney beans.88 Horticulturists advertised in provincial newspapers during the late winter and early spring. For example the Belfast News Letter carried hundreds of advertisements from seedsmen all over Ulster and sometimes from further afield, including Dublin. Many of them advertised year after year for two and even three decades.89 The sheer scale and variety of their stock indicates that the craze for gardening and growing fruit and vegetables extended well beyond the boundaries of the upper classes. Groceries 90 Unlike the items discussed so far, groceries were imported and bought from shops or directly from wholesalers. The grocery business was well organized. Within a year of its first publication in 1737 the Belfast News Letter carried an advertisement from Henry Agnew, ‘having just opened shop at the four sugar loaves in Belfast, lately possessed by James Young, Jr, sells several sorts of Grocery Goods, either by wholesale or retail as cheap as any in the Place’. In November 1757, James Dobbin of Lisburn offered a ‘great quantity of choise fine groceries, that he will sell at the most reasonable rates, by wholesale or in Parcels’. Among his delicacies were figs, nuts, sweet almonds, rice, as well as spices, sugar, tea, currants, and raisins. The tea trade was particularly well developed and offered an impressive range of varieties. In the summer of 1800 the Belfast firm of Martins and Parks received ‘direct from London’ 211 chests containing Sanchong, fine and common Congou, Twankay, Hyson, and Bohea teas.91 Tea and sugar dominated groceries, but currants and raisins were also significant, together with coffee at the end of the eighteenth century. Retained imports of coffee, tea, sugar, and currants and raisins are shown in Table 3.5. 88

National Library of Ireland, Powerscourt MSS 8367, folder 1. Horticultural account, 15 Mar. 1755. From information supplied by Dr John Greene, Belfast News Letter, computer indexing project based at the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast. 90 Much of the discussion in this section, and that on alcohol below, is based on legal imports as recorded in the customs books. The figures therefore understate true levels of consumption because they do not include smuggled goods. Smuggling was extensive between the 1730s and the 1770s. The only foods significantly affected were tea and spirits. Illegal imports were partly offset by illegal reexports to England and Scotland. See F. G. James, ‘Irish smuggling in the eighteenth century’, Irish Historical Studies, 12 (1960–1), 299–317; L. M. Cullen, ‘The smuggling trade in Ireland during the eighteenth century’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 67, section C (1968–9), 149–75; Cullen, in A new history of Ireland, iv. 187–95. 91 Belfast News Letter (30 Mar. 1738; 24 Nov. 1755; 12 Aug. 1800). 89

      

51

T 3.5. Retained imports into Ireland of coffee, currants and raisins, tea, and sugar, 1698–1817 (five yearly averages) Date

1698–1702 1703–1707 1708–1712 1713–1717 1718–1722 1723–1727 1728–1732 1733–1737 1738–1742 1743–1747 1748–1752 1753–1757 1758–1762 1763–1767 1768–1772 1773–1777 1778–1782 1783–1787 1788–1792 1793–1797 1798–1802 1803–1807 1808–1812 1813–1817

Coffee

Tea

Sugar

(cwt)

Currants and raisins (cwt)

(cwt)

(cwt)

112 104 115 278 322 377 435 401 346 372 348 297 569 277 634 462 169 351 525 1,073 824 1,726 7,136 9,258

2,841 1,985 2,101 3,521 2,949 3,323 3,317 3,753 2,490 1,166 2,956 3,347 3,744 4,407 5,780 5,653 4,459 4,089 6,113 5,504 4,202 3,973 6,364 6,186

5 18 25 91 205 392 639 764 1,339 1,684 1,534 1,385 1,269 2,054 7,761 6,782 9,900 15,702 15,943 18,674 25,013 26,806 31,959 29,472

8,522 8,121 12,844 13,697 20,685 29,590 39,990 46,083 51,891 50,782 79,885 96,819 101,505 139,392 189,732 212,663 155,001 189,073 208,405 193,884 275,006 294,643 403,554 309,879

Source: PROL, Customs 15.

Tea imports rose sharply from the 1760s and sugar imports more slowly throughout the eighteenth century, although with a check in the late 1770s. Imports of currants and raisins increased in an irregular fashion throughout the century. Coffee imports rose at the end of the century. These patterns reflected changes in supply conditions and the burden of tariffs (duties on tea fell sharply from the end of the 1760), but they also testify to the growing wealth of the Irish gentry as the century progressed. Per capita consumption of groceries in Ireland was low. Coffee consumption in the 1780s, at 0.01 pounds, was only one-tenth of the British figure. Tea consumption (0.4 pounds) and sugar consumption (5.3 pounds) were both about

52        one-third of British levels.92 In Ireland consumption was highly concentrated within a narrow social group. During the 1740s the household of Viscount Gormanston in Dublin bought roughly 14 pounds of sugar a month (168 pounds a year) when average household consumption could scarcely have exceeded 20 pounds a year. In the early 1780s the Conolly household ate its way through nearly 1,900 pounds of sugar a year and drank 50 pounds of tea, when average household consumption was 25–30 pounds and 2–3 pounds respectively.93 There was some tea drinking in humbler households. Mrs Lionel Dogherty, a neighbour of the Herberts in Carrick-on-Suir, was the wife of a ‘gentleman farmer’ in the 1780s. Her husband ‘broke her heart between the turf and the bottle—[but] she was a good woman, gave us a hot cake party, drank tea with us once’. In the 1790s the three elderly Miss Custs of Armagh City, sisters of a former revenue collector and local landowner, kept a house littered with the paraphernalia of tea drinking.94 By the 1830s tea was beginning to percolate even into the ranks of labourers.95 Groceries were sufficiently expensive to warrant separate account books. Among the most comprehensive were those of the Conollys of Castletown. During the five-year period 1783–7 purchases of tea, sugar, candy, and coffee cost close to £1,200, and there were in addition miscellaneous items such as raisins, currants, rice, spices, pepper, ginger, capers, anchovies, macaroni, and salad oil.96 During the 1740s, Viscount Gormanston of Dublin spent, on average, £15 a year on groceries. The week beginning 3 January is reasonably representative. Purchases included 2 pounds of bohea tea, 14 pounds of lump sugar, and the same amount of powdered sugar, 2 pounds of the best Turkish coffee, 2 ounces of nutmeg, 1 ounce each of mace, cloves, and cinnamon, 2 pounds each of currants and raisins, 1 pound of pepper, and half an ounce of allspice. The following weeks saw the purchase of Florentine oil, olives, almonds, chocolate, and anchovies.97

Alcohol Using household accounts to assess the consumption of alcohol is a risky business. Beer was home-brewed in the bigger establishments, and whiskey could emanate from a variety of legal and illicit sources. The national consumption 92 B. R. Mitchell and W. A. Cole, Abstract of British historical statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 355. 93 National Library of Ireland, Gormanston MS 14233. Grocery account book, 1741–52; PRONI, Conolly household accounts, Mic. 435, reel 3. Grocery account. 94 Herbert, Retrospections, 181; Clarkson and Crawford, Ways to wealth, 68, 69, 70, 81, 82. 95 L. A. Clarkson and E. M. Crawford, ‘Dietary directions: a topographical survey of Irish diet, 1836’, in Rosalind Mitchison and Peter Roebuck (eds.), Economy and society in Scotland and Ireland 1500–1939 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1988), 174–8. 96 PRONI, Conolly household accounts, Mic. 435, reel 3. 97 National Library of Ireland, Gormanston MS 14233. Grocery account book, 1741–52.

      

53

of wines, rum, brandy, and gin can be traced through the port books, although they leave unresolved the quantities consumed by individuals. The Irish gentry in the eighteenth century enjoyed a drunken reputation, which they did not always deserve. There is a much cited comment by Lord Chesterfield, the lord lieutenant in 1745–6: Drinking is a most beastly vice in every country, but it is really a ruinous one in Ireland; nine gentlemen out of every ten are impoverished by the great quantity of claret which, from the mistaken notions of hospitality and dignity, they think it necessary should be drunk in their houses; this expense leaves them no room to improve their estates by proper indulgence upon proper conditions to their tenants, who pay them to the full, and upon the very day, that they may pay their wine-merchants.98

Chesterfield had recently quit office and left Ireland and was writing with a jaundiced pen. A more temperate assessment made by Arthur Young thirty years later is sometimes forgotten: Drunkenness ought no longer to be a reproach; for at every table I was at in Ireland I saw a perfect freedom reign; every person drank just as little as they pleased, nor have I ever been asked to drink a single glass more than I had an inclination for; I may go further and assert that hard drinking is very rare among people of fortune . . .99

Table 3.6 tells a sober story. Legal wine imports approximately doubled in the first half of the eighteenth century from under 3,000 to under 6,000 tuns and there was little increase in the second half of the century. These figures represent just 3 pints per person per year in 1700, 5 pints in mid-century, and 2½ pints in 1800. Comparable per capita figures for Britain were 8 pints in 1700, 5 pints in 1750, and 6 pints at the end of the century.100 Even assuming that wine consumption was confined to the top third of Irish society, consumption per head was only 9, 15, and 8 pints respectively. By further excluding the underage drinkers (i.e. 40 per cent of the population aged 15 or less), consumption increases only to 14, 24, and 13 pints annually. Wine smuggling was insignificant. To wine consumption, we should add spirits. Imports of rum, brandy, whiskey, and gin were even more erratic than those of wines, rising from around 200,000 gallons at the beginning of the century to 1 million gallons in mid-century. In the 1760s and 1770s they touched 2.5 million gallons but fell back dramatically in the late 1770s and slumped even further, to around half a million gallons in the 1790s. Per capita consumption was less than one pint in the early 1700s, 3½ pints at mid-century, close to 5 pints a year around 1770, and less than a pint at the end of the century. 98 Bonamy Dobrée (ed.) The letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of Chesterfield, 6 vols. (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1932), iii. 945. 99 Young, A Tour in Ireland, ii. 238. 100 Calculated from E. B. Schumpeter, English overseas trade statistics 1697–1808 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), tables XVI, XVII.

54        T 3.6. Retained imports into Ireland of wines and spirits, 1698–1817 (five yearly averages) Date

Wine (tuns)

Spirits (gallons)

1698–1702 1703–1707 1708–1712 1713–1717 1718–1722 1723–1727 1728–1732 1733–1737 1738–1742 1743–1747 1748–1752 1753–1757 1758–1762 1763–1767 1768–1772 1773–1777 1778–1782 1783–1787 1788–1792 1793–1797 1798–1802 1803–1807 1808–1812 1813–1817

2,765 1,489 2,488 2,967 3,622 4,469 4,878 3,758 4,387 3,228 5,515 5,359 4,867 5,410 5,990 5,537 4,027 3,991 5,901 5,358 6,502 7,177 5,470 3,347

217,618 124,485 179,147 203,222 323,142 375,980 382,138 477,703 490,862 428,544 615,571 1,108,823 1,043,508 2,572,298 2,614,403 2,133,548 1,099,624 1,395,130 1,272,805 478,205 560,668 359,516 981,421 318,245

Source: PROL, Customs 15.

Legal imports are a poor measure of consumption since smuggling, particularly of brandy, was important at certain periods. Between the 1730s and 1770s smuggled brandy may have accounted for one-third of spirit consumption.101 Nevertheless, two conclusions can reasonably be drawn from Table 3.6. The first is that from the mid-eighteenth century the per capita consumption of imported wines and spirits was declining rather than increasing in Ireland, just as it was in Britain.102 The decline was noticed by contemporaries whose comments on Irish drinking habits at the end of the eighteenth century stand in contrast to those of Chesterfield in the 1740s.103 Secondly, the Irish gentry, as a 101

Cullen, ‘The smuggling trade in Ireland during the eighteenth century’, 169. For Britain, see Ralph Davies, The industrial revolution and British overseas trade (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979), 49–50. 103 See George O’Brien, The economic history of Ireland in the eighteenth century (Dublin: Maunsel & Co., 102

      

55

class, did not live in a perpetual state of alcoholic stupor: no more so than their English counterparts, unless they vastly outstripped their English cousins in their drinking of domestically produced beer and whiskey. This is not to deny that some individuals possessed a well-developed taste for alcohol. An apparent decline in the volume of imported wines drunk was not necessarily matched by a fall in the amount of alcohol consumed. If the gentlemen of Ireland were following the habits of their English peers, they were moving towards more intoxicating wines in the late eighteenth century.104 More importantly, the space left by the decline in the consumption of imported wines and spirits was partly filled by an increased consumption of English and Irish beer and by whiskey. Trends in beer drinking are difficult to chart. We do not know what was happening to home brewing, although it was probably declining outside the bigger households because of the capital costs involved. Within such households, however, the scale of production could be large. In June 1793 the marquis of Abercorn, then in London, was informed of the outcome of the year’s brewing activities at Baronscourt, Strabane: ‘The brewing is finished at B. Court. Mr Jamison has computed that there is 6,000 gallons which he reckoned every expense, fine excepted, included, to cost your Lordship about 7½d a gallon. The beer is allowed to be very good.’105 There was a marked decline in the number of small retail brewers in the second half of the century, as the large-scale porter breweries in Dublin and Cork—such as Guinness’s—captured a bigger share of the market. Between the 1750s and the 1790s imports of beer from England also increased substantially.106 The net effect of these developments may have been some reduction in per capita consumption; but any slack was taken up by whiskey. In the seventeenth century whiskey was one of the few local products to appeal to strangers’ palates. By 1661 it had caught the attention of the Restoration government anxious to find new sources of revenue. Consequently, there are plentiful statistics of the quantity of spirits paying duty. Unfortunately they are poor guides to total consumption because of weaknesses in the system of collection and the widespread existence of illicit distillation. The legal figures suggest a doubling of yearly per capita consumption from half a pint to one pint between the 1720s and 1760s, which hardly represents an alcoholic binge. Thereafter, though, there was a great surge in production, both legal and illicit. The latter rose dramatically after 1785 when import duties were increased and the revenue authorities attempted to impose a minimum size on 1918), 38; Elizabeth Malcolm, ‘Ireland sober and Ireland free’: drink and temperance in nineteenth-century Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1986), 45–6. 104 Davies, Overseas trade, 50. 105 John Gebbie (ed.), An introduction to the Abercorn letters (Omagh: Strule Press, 1972), 53. 106 Cullen, ‘Economic development, 1750–1800’, in New history, iv. 183; O’Brien, Eighteenth century, 210–12, 279–82; Malcolm, Drink and temperance, 22; Patrick Lynch and John Vaizey, Guinness’s brewery in the Irish economy 1759–1876 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 37–84.

56        distilleries. Even confining ourselves to legally produced whiskey implies an annual per capita consumption in excess of 6 pints at the end of the eighteenth century.107 One way and another at the end of the eighteenth century Irish consumers of alcohol were actively indulging in import substitution. Among the prosperous the drinking of beer, wines, and spirits was general and, by modern standards could be considerable. Sir Edward O’Brien was once counselled by a friend to confine himself to 3 pints of wine instead of ‘bumping away all night’ with a gallon.108 The Revd John Nixon of Killesher, County Fermanagh, had taken the advice of Timothy to his heart as well as to his liver when it came to claret drinking. In April 1769 he entertained sixteen people to lunch accompanied by fourteen bottles of claret and four bottles of port. At supper the same party, now reduced to thirteen, consumed four more bottles of claret, two more of port, and a bottle of whiskey. One Sunday afternoon in May of the same year the Revd Nixon and two friends drank nine bottles of claret and two of port over dinner. It is not surprising that from time to time Nixon retired to bed with a hangover.109 On Sunday 5 November 1828 Humphrey O’Sullivan joined the parish priest for dinner in the company of ‘seven jolly males . . . and one young lady. We had a leg of mutton, bacon, chickens and white cabbage; two roast duck and green peas. We had sherry [white wine] and port wine, and lots of punch till eleven o’clock.’110 The lack of palatable alternatives such as drinkable piped water, mineral water and soft drinks, and cheap and conveniently available tea and coffee, all contributed to high levels of social drinking. And what today might be regarded as excessive consumption was thought of at the time as a guarantee of good health. In December 1783 William Conyngham received a letter from a friend in Forkhill, County Armagh, sympathizing with his recent illness occasioned by your being a Disciple of that foolish Dr. Cadogan. It is not fit for you and me at our Time of Life to drink Water etc. He was a drunkard. We never were. Sometimes we have exceeded, as who of a good-natured Temper have not often. I beseech you not to drink less than a Bottle of good claret in condition after your Dinner and a Pint of old Port after your Supper.111

It was in the same spirit that Miss Annaritta Cust of Armagh City had among her possessions when she died in 1797 wine glasses and empty bottles in abundance, and ‘an old chest and therein 14 bottles of (I suppose) claret wine’. Elderly, lonely ladies needed their comforts.112 107 O’Brien, Eighteenth century, 212–15, 283–4; E. B. McGuire, Irish whiskey: a history of distilling, the spirit trade and excise controls in Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1973), 102–42; K. H. Connell, ‘Illicit distillation’, in K. H. Connell, Irish peasant society: four historical essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 26–46. 108 Quoted in Malcolm, Drink and temperance, 31. 109 Mott, ‘Eating and drinking habits in Ireland’, 8–9. 110 McGrath (ed.), Diary of Humphrey O’Sullivan, ii. 33. 111 Lenox-Conyngham, An old Ulster house, 9. 112 Clarkson and Crawford, Ways to wealth, 71.

      

57

Miscellaneous There were many items of food that do not fall into any of the obvious categories. These were things like salt, vinegar, and ice used for preserving or flavouring other foods. All households bought salt, usually in small quantities costing a penny or two; although the Conollys purchased salt in hundredweights and even tons to preserve the cattle killed on the estate for future eating. The Conolly dairies also made considerable quantities of salted butter. Many households bought vinegar that had several culinary and preservative uses. The account books also noted occasional purchases of isinglass, a form of gelatine used for preserving eggs and making jellies. The Fingalls bought ice from time to time. Edward Pierce, steward of Bishop Hackett, bought water in 1674; there were two deliveries between July and September, one costing 16 old pence and the other 15 old pence.

Conclusion The categories in Table 3.1 are not self-contained. Items such as pickles, mustard, and herbs grouped among groceries or vegetables should perhaps be more properly included among the preservatives. Many accounts included the costs of packaging, particularly butter crocks. The uncertainties, though, do not alter the general picture of the consumption patterns of the upper and middling classes. During the long eighteenth century the gentry of Ireland ate and drank in ways that were not greatly different from those of the gentry in England. There were differences in detail. Arthur Young thought the quality of venison, vegetables, and claret was poor in Ireland, although the port was better than in England. In general, though, ‘the tables of people of fortune are very plentifully spread; many elegantly; differing in nothing from those of England’.113 The evidence does not permit many firm judgements about trends over time. There was a sharp rise in the consumption of sugar, tea, and coffee. Imports of raisins and currants rose and this may reflect growing taste for cakes and pastries, and sweet confections generally. Wine and brandy consumption declined but that of whiskey and beer increased. The consumption of meat and bread was important throughout the century. Meat is usually regarded as a food that becomes more prominent in budgets as incomes rise, but rising incomes permitted greater diversity in expenditure; and as the century progressed meat had to compete with tea, sugar, coffee, and non-food luxuries such as tobacco. 113

Young, A Tour in Ireland, ii. 237.

58        One feature, though, is apparent. Towards the end of the eighteenth century a clear contrast was emerging between the diets of the top 40 per cent of the population and the bottom third. There was also an intermediate group who ate, not lavishly, but well. In all European societies there were substantial differences between the consumption patterns of the rich and the poor. But in Ireland, the dichotomy became great as the latter came to depend for their nutritional needs almost entirely on a single food, the potato.

CHAPTER FOUR

Potatoes, Population, and Diet, circa 1650 to circa 1845 Introduction In 1845 close to 40 per cent of the population of Ireland lived chiefly on potatoes. The emergence of the ‘potato people’ occurred against the background of a quadrupling of population after 1700 and a rise in exports of meat, butter, and grain. The increase in demand for food at home and abroad could not have been accommodated simultaneously without an expansion in agricultural output unless per capita consumption within Ireland declined substantially. The middling and upper classes did not reduce their eating or drinking. Any contraction, therefore, was borne by the poorer ranks of society but there is scant evidence that the quantity of what they ate declined. There was, however, a narrowing in the range of foods eaten by the poor. Increases in agricultural output cannot be measured directly, but they are indicated by the growth of agricultural exports, which imply both a rise in total production and a change in the composition of output. There had long been a buoyant export demand for meat and butter. The requirements of the British market for grain after 1750, as well as the increase in population within Ireland, stimulated the cultivation of oats, barley, and wheat. Output was raised by extending the area of land under cultivation and by technical innovations that pushed up yields per acre. An alternative path to greater output—a rise in labour productivity—was followed only to a limited extent. The spread of cultivation was the consequence of the inflow of New English and Scottish settlers after the Cromwellian reconquest of Ireland. Settlement patterns were shaped by climate, terrain, the quality of the soil, and market opportunities. Technology was determined by the type of farming undertaken—stock rearing, fattening, dairy, grain growing—but tillage farming was labour intensive. Cultivators collected lime, seaweed, and farmyard manure and spread it on the arable land. They dug out lazy beds with spades and planted potatoes which helped to clear the soil of weeds. Potatoes were the prelude to the cultivation of barley, wheat, oats, or flax. By such methods grain yields in Ireland were pushed close to levels found in England.1 Productivity has to be inferred indirectly. In the 1770s Arthur Young compared agricultural practices in Ireland with those in England and found 1

Cormac Ó Gráda, Ireland: a new economic history, 1780–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 27–8.

60 , ,   them wanting. But the problem with the comparison is that it took the standards of the most advanced agricultural country of the age as its yardstick and ignored features of Ireland that often made English methods inappropriate. Precisely because Ireland abounded with labour in the late eighteenth century, the labour-saving methods practised in England were unnecessary. Another way of judging productivity is to note that in 1841 the proportion of the workforce employed in agriculture in Ireland was double the proportion in England.2 The comparison implies that Irish labour productivity in agriculture was low. However, England was the world’s most developed industrial country and the share of the workforce in agriculture among the lowest; a continental comparison might put Ireland in a more favourable light. Furthermore, over a million people left Ireland between 1815 and 1841 to work in England and Scotland and large numbers of these, together with their English and Scottish companions, were fed by the produce of Irish farms. Irish agriculture was releasing labour to work in the industrializing parts of the British Isles outside Ireland.3 The labour that remained in agriculture was also producing turf for fuel and was involved in building and other non-farming activities.4 Nevertheless, it is safe to conclude that labour productivity in the cultivation of cereals was low. An important reason was the part played by potatoes in agricultural regimes. Potatoes cropped heavily in normal years and they provided a nutritious food for people and pigs. Potatoes held workers on the land and it was these labourers who tended the cattle, tilled the soil, and harvested the grain that fed the better-off in Ireland, and supplied the markets overseas. Potatoes conquered the diets of poor cultivators for roughly a century. Arthur Young was one of many eighteenth-century travellers to comment on the benefits of potatoes as a poor man’s food and to marvel at the robust health of the people who lived on them.5 Adam Smith made some much quoted comments on the virtues of potatoes as a food for Irish men and women. Less commonly remembered was his judgement about the chances of potatoes dominating the diet: It is difficult to preserve potatoes through the year, and impossible to store them like corn, for two or three years together. The fear of not being able to sell them before they rot discourages their cultivation, and is, perhaps, the chief obstacle to their ever 2 L. A. Clarkson, ‘Ireland 1841: pre-industrial or proto-industrial; industrializing or deindustrializing?’, in Sheilagh C. Ogilvie and Markus Cerman (eds.), European proto-industrialisation: an introductory handbook (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 67. 3 R. C. Allen and Cormac Ó Gráda, ‘On the road again with Arthur Young: English, Irish, and French agriculture during the industrial revolution’, Journal of Economic History, 48/1 (1988), 104. 4 Peter Solar, ‘Agricultural productivity and economic performance in Ireland and Scotland in the early nineteenth century’, in T. M. Devine and David Dickson (eds.), Ireland and Scotland 1600–1850 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1983), 75. 5 Arthur Young, A tour in Ireland . . . made in the years 1776, 1777, and 1778 (London, 1780), ii. 116.

, ,  

61

becoming in any great country, like bread, the principal vegetable food of all the different ranks of the people.6

The dietary history of Ireland over the ensuing decades demonstrated that Smith could be wrong. Potatoes indeed became the ‘principal vegetable food’ for 3 million or more people. The key questions are why potatoes were integrated into systems of cultivation, the date by which potatoes became the staple diet of the poor, the quantity of potatoes eaten by the labouring classes, and the nutritional adequacy of a potato diet. The spread of potato cultivation Potatoes arrived in Europe from South America in the later sixteenth century and were cultivated in English gardens a few years later.7 Sir Walter Raleigh has been credited with bringing them to Ireland, although the evidence is not overwhelming. R. N. Salaman liked the Raleigh legend, arguing that ‘to dismiss it summarily, as has been done by recent writers, is to abjure tradition’.8 Salaman speculated that the Armada included potatoes among the cooks’ stores and that these were plundered when the ships were wrecked on the Irish shores.9 Unhappily for the speculation—and the plunderers—there were no potatoes on the Armada ships.10 A Spanish origin, nevertheless, is hinted at by the early Irish name for the potato: an spáinneach.11 The earliest documentary reference to potato cultivation is a lease dated 1606 granting to Scottish immigrants in County Down, ‘land for flax and potatoes’.12 By the 1640s and 1650s potatoes were grown in gardens by settlers in Munster and Leinster and were a useful supplement to diet. During the 1660s potatoes were sufficiently well known among the peasantry to be a topic of bar-room banter when ‘we talk of how good the parsnips, potatoes or beetroots are, that our wives have got at home’.13 At the end of the seventeenth century John Dunton commented on cabins in the west of Ireland with their ‘turf stacks, their corn, perhaps two or three hundred sheaves of oats, and as much pease: the rest of the garden is full of their dearly beloved potatoes’.14 6 Adam Smith, An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations (London, 1776; Everyman edition, London: J. M. Dent, 1910), i. 147. 7 W. D. Davidson, ‘The history of the potato and its progress in Ireland’, Journal of the Department of Agriculture, 34 (1937), 286. 8 R. N. Salaman, The history and social influence of the potato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 9 1949), 157. Salaman, The potato, 157. 10 Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker, The Spanish armada (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988), 56–7. 11 Cormac Ó Gráda, Ireland before and after the famine: explorations in economic history, 1800–1925 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 8. 12 George Hill (ed.), The Montgomery Manuscripts (Belfast: J. Cleeland, 1869), 64. 13 N. J. A. Williams (ed.), Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis (Dublin: Institute for Advanced Studies, 1981), 47, 103. See also Cormac Ó Gráda, Black ’47 and beyond: the great Irish famine in history, economy, and memory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 14. 14 John Dunton, The life and errors of John Dunton by the late citizen of London written in solitude (1705; repr. in

62 , ,   Two points are important in these accounts. Potatoes were just one of a number of vegetables and grain-based foods eaten by natives and newcomers alike. Secondly, potatoes were garden crops. Until they were cultivated as field crops on a large scale they were never likely to be more than supplements to other foods. Potatoes made the transition from gardens to fields because they were an excellent clearing crop for newly tilled soil and valuable as a rotational crop to restore the fertility of land used for cereals. As the demands for cereals increased, potatoes entered cultivation regimes. The process was gradual, but accelerated from the middle of the eighteenth century under the stimulus of more or less continuously rising prices for grain.15

Potatoes: quantities, preference, and pleasure The chronology of the spread of potato cultivation has an obvious bearing on their consumption. Salaman concluded ‘that the potato was already the basic food of the Irish people . . . not later than 1630’.16 He cited the anonymous author of Advertisements for Ireland published in 1623 who wrote that the common Irish, ‘do feed altogether on moist meats’.17 But Salaman misinterpreted ‘meats’ as ‘meals’ and assumed that ‘moist meals must mean potatoes’. It is clear from the context, though, that the writer was discussing milk products. Professor Connell once suggested that it was only, ‘by the last quarter of the eighteenth century [that potatoes] had become the main food of the mass of the Irish’.18 Later, though, he shifted the date back to the 1730s.19 However, the 1730s seem too early a date. A dietary prescribed in the workhouse in the parish of St Giles in the Field, Dublin (a voluntary organization) in July 1726 illustrated the fare of a particularly empoverished section of the urban population.20 Weekly diets included meat on five days, bread, milk, beer, cheese, and pease porridge, but no potatoes. Perhaps this was because the workhouse catered for paupers in a large city where potatoes were not to be had in July. In 1727 the poor in the countryside were described by a contemporary as, ‘living in filth and nastiness upon Buttermilk and Potatoes’.21 The late 1720s were years of hardship as harvest failures pushed up grain prices; and ‘as the Constantia Elizabeth Maxwell, The stranger in Ireland: from the reign of Elizabeth to the Great Famine (London: Cape, 1954), 122. 15 Raymond Crotty, Irish agricultural production: its volume and structure (Cork: Cork University Press, 16 1966), 28. Salaman, The potato, 4. 17 George O’Brien (ed.), Advertisements for Ireland (Dublin: Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1923), 44. 18 K. H. Connell, The population of Ireland 1750–1845 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), 125–8, 133–4. 19 K. H. Connell, ‘The potato in Ireland’, Past and Present, 23 (1962), 60. 20 A. B., ‘A short view of the state of Ireland’, Royal Irish Academy, Haliday pamphlet collection, vol. 73, no. 16 (Dublin, 1727), 11. 21 A. B., ‘A short view of the state of Ireland’, Royal Irish Academy, Haliday pamphlet collection, vol. 73, no. 10 (Dublin, 1727), 213.

, ,  

63

winter subsistence of the poor is chiefly potatoes, this scarcity drove the poor to begin with their potatoes before they were full grown, so that they have lost half the benefit of them, and half spent their stocks about two months sooner than usual’.22 The severe famine of 1740–1 was caused by a failure of the grain harvest and a shortage of milk, combined with frost damage to potato crops.23 At its height Philip Skelton published what he perceived to be a suitable diet for a farmer and his family comprising six people, four of whom were working.24 T 4.1. Philip Skelton’s diet for a farming family of six, 1741 % 40 bushels grain making 60 lb. bread per bushel 52 bushels of potatoes 6 quarts of buttermilk or skim milk a day 1 hundred of skim milk cheese 1 hundred of butter & do of salt An ordinary carcass of beef

£6 0s. 0d. £2 12s. 0d. £1 10s. 5d. 8s. 4d. £1 4s. 8d. £1 0s. 0d.

51.0 13.6 12.9 3.5 10.4 8.5

Source: Philip Skelton (pseud. ‘Triptolemus’), The necessity of tillage and graneries in a letter to a member of parliament (Dublin, 1741).

Skelton remarked that ‘people in high life may think [it] too poor or scanty’. Its cost could be reduced by eating, ‘pottage made of whey, by leven pottage, by slink, or unthrown [i.e. aborted] calves, by sheep likely to rot, by fowl and pigs fed with whey and scattered corn’. Half the expense of the diet went on grain, 35 per cent on animal products, and the rest on potatoes. In terms of weight, though, potatoes predominated. A bushel of potatoes weighed anything between 50 and 90 pounds. Arthur Young thought that a bushel in Ireland contained 70 pounds.25 Using Young’s figure, and assuming that potatoes were eaten for nine months in the year (270 days), per capita consumption, based on the Skelton diet, was 2.25 pounds. a day, well below the quantities that became common in later decades. It is worth examining Arthur Young’s evidence in some detail. At Slane, County Meath, cottagers ate bacon, bread, potatoes, new milk, and ducks. In County Wexford the ‘common people used oatmeal for much of the year as 22 Hugh Boulter, archbishop of Armagh, 1672–1742, Letters written by His Excellency Hugh Boulter: to several ministers of state (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1769), 222. 23 Michael Drake, ‘The Irish demographic crisis of 1740–41’, in T. W. Moody (ed.), Historical Studies, VI (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), 101–24; David Dickson, Arctic Ireland: The extraordinary story of the Great Frost and Forgotten Famine of 1740–41 (Dundonald: White Row Press, 1998), 19–26. 24 Philip Skelton (pseud. ‘Triptolemus’), The necessity of tillage and granaries in a letter to a member of parliament (Dublin, 1741), 11. 25 G. E. Mingay (ed.), The agrarian history of England and Wales, vi. 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 125–6; Young, Tours, ii. 46.

64 , ,   well as barley bread, pork and herrings’. In County Armagh diets consisted of potatoes and oatmeal, but very little meat; for three months in the year the poor lived only on potatoes, salt, and water. The town of Lurgan, by contrast, was ‘very well off as to living’, with the people eating stirabout, potatoes, maslin bread, meat once a fortnight, and all washed down with whiskey. Food was varied on the Ards Peninsula and potatoes shared the table with oaten bread, milk, herrings, fresh meat once a week, salt meat, poultry, fish, and fruit. Near Clonleigh, County Donegal, the ‘poor people live[d] upon oatmeal, milk, potatoes and herrings; but the poorest eat very little meat’. At the other end of the country, in Gorey, County Wicklow, ‘the poor have all barley bread and pork, herrings, etc. and potatoes’. Near Florence Court, County Fermanagh, Young found people well fed on potatoes, oaten bread, beef or bacon in winter, but ‘no tea’. He was particularly struck by the plenty among the Palatinate community at Adair, County Limerick, who lived on potatoes, butter, milk, a ‘great deal of oat bread’, wheaten bread, some meat and fowls.26 In general, Young’s picture was one of considerable variety, with eating patterns varying according to income, region, and closeness to towns, lakes and rivers, and the coast. Young sometimes noted the quantities of potatoes eaten by families and he summarized his findings in tabular form (see Table 4.2). Over a year, daily consumption averaged between 6 and 7 pounds per person. The high figures for Derry and Cullen probably included potatoes fed to animals as well as to humans. Young concluded: When, however I speak of potatoes and buttermilk being the food of the poor, the tables already inserted shew, that in some parts of the north that root forms their diet but for a part of the year, much oatmeal and some meat being consumed. I need not dwell on this, as there is nothing particular to attend to in it, whereas potatoes, as the staple dependence, is a peculiarity met with in no country but the other parts of Ireland.27

The comment is important in explaining why Young did not stress the variety in diets he had noted as he journeyed from place to place. It was the heavy dependence on potatoes that caught his eye. Professor Cullen once argued that ‘the potato diet was by no means complete at the end of the eighteenth century’. He used the growth in pork exports as an index of the spread of potato cultivation, on the assumption that pigs and cottiers shared both food and habitations. Exports were small up to the 1730s, but more than doubled between the early 1750s and the early 1770s, and doubled yet again between the early 1770s and the 1780s.28

26 27 28

Young, A Tour in Ireland, i. 91, 204, 241, 481. Ibid. i. 120 (italics added). L. M. Cullen, ‘Irish history without the potato’, Past and Present, 40 (1968), 72–83.

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T 4.2. Arthur Young’s observations of potato consumption, 1776–1778 Place

Observation

Shaen Castle, Queen’s County (Laois) Shaen Castle, County Antrim Leslie Hill, County Antrim

A barrel of potatoes lasts a family of six persons for a week Six people eat a barrel of potatoes a week A barrel of four bushels for six persons A barrel for six persons for eight days A barrel of 18 stone feeds six people for a week A barrel for five persons for a week Five persons eat and waste two barrels a week Two barrels feeds six persons for a week. Man, wife and four children will eat a bushel weighing three cwt a week for nine months A barrel a week for a man, wife and four children

Near the Giant’s Causeway Castle Caulfield, County Fermanagh Gloster, King’s County (Offaly) Derry Cullen, County Tipperary Westport, County Mayo

Athy, County Kildare

Amount per person per daya 6.66 lbs. 6.66 lbs. 6.66 lbs. 5.83 lbs. 6.0 lbs. 8.00 lbs. 16.00 lbs. 13.33 lbs. 6.00 lbs. per day per year 6.66 lbs.

a Assuming a barrel contains 20 stones or 280 lb. Source: Young, Arthur, A tour in Ireland . . . made in the years 1776, 1777, and 1778, 2 vols. (London, 1780), ii. 119.

The Statistical surveys conducted by the Dublin Society give some support to Cullen’s views, although they do more to confirm the picture drawn by Young. The surveys were carried out between 1801 and 1832, but most were completed and published before 1810. The majority, therefore, were undertaken at the beginning of the nineteenth century when potatoes were scarce and the poor were compelled to eat other things or starve. Eight counties—Carlow, Fermanagh, Kerry, Limerick, Longford, Louth, Waterford, and Westmeath— seem never to have been completed and the survey for Tipperary was not published.29 Although following a standard format, some investigators were more assiduous than others in noting eating habits. Table 4.3 summarizes the comments of the surveyors relating to potatoes. The Surveys made many references to other foods, but these were subsidiary to potatoes. 29 National Library of Ireland, MSS 8146–7. ‘A complete survey of the County Tipperary, made in 1832 on the scheme laid down by the Royal Dublin Society, by J. Lalor Cooke.’ For full references to the printed Surveys see the bibliography.

66 , ,   T 4.3. Potato consumption according to the Statistical surveys Antrim, 1812

Armagh, 1804 Cavan, 1802 Clare, 1808 Cork, 1810

Donegal, 1802

Down, 1802

Dublin, 1801 Galway, 1824

Kildare, 1807 Kilkenny, 1802

‘Potatoes form the great basis of food . . . and in the county of Antrim they are as much esteemed as in any other part of it’ (353). ‘In late summer and autumn when oats are scarce a family of six will consume 4 bushels of potatoes in 8 days. At other times eaten for dinner and supper’ (354). ‘The food of the lower ranks are potatoes, stirabout, oaten bread, green vegetables, bacon in summer and beef in winter . . .’ (251). ‘The principal support being potatoes and oatmeal, of course these articles are cheap . . .’ (272). A family of six will consume an average of 22 stone of potatoes per week. Can be grown on less than one acre (178–9). Potatoes are the principal food for the whole year; formerly seasonal. ‘This excellent root is daily getting into greater esteem in all parts of the Empire’, but English potatoes are watery, whereas Irish potatoes are ‘pleasant, mealy and nourishing’ (88). Boiled and eaten hot and occasionally with a little flesh, fish, or milk (89). ‘Almost the whole subsistence of man, and no inconsiderable part of that of other animals . . .’ (229). A household will consume about 8 tons a year, rich farmers rather more, the poor rather less (229). ‘Common farmers’ prefer to cultivate cup potatoes to apple potatoes, which are more productive although of inferior quality. Apple potatoes do not do well on cold, moory soils of the west (407). Potatoes principal food, ‘not those of the lowest order alone, but even farmers worth from fifty to one hundred pounds per annum’ (415). ‘The great staff of life is the potatoe’ (469). ‘The common food is potatoes, oaten bread, and the benefits of the sea shore, with some milk and butter.’ For a family of 6 potatoes would cost £15–£16, ‘if sent to market’ (66). Provisions: potatoes, boiled and baked oatmeal, milk in summer. Some bacon and hung beef in winter. Latter scarce among farmers in past two years (216). ‘The food of the cottiers is potatoes and milk; the former article having been lately so dear they substituted bread’ (111). Family of 6 will commonly consume 22 stones a week. Can be produced on an acre of land, including a surplus for beggars, pigs, and fowls (352). ‘. . . the almost constant food of the Irish peasant, induce both sexes early to become the heads of families . . .’ (23). Daily consumption for family of five—3 stones at 2½d. = 7½d. a day = £11 13s. 2½d. year. 6 qts of sour milk at 1d. each = £9 2s. 6d. year (474). Potatoes with milk—when available – almost the whole food of the parish of Fiddown (479).

, ,   King’s County (Offaly), 1801

67

Potatoes are main food of the poor (56). Potatoes, oats, wheatmeal the food of the peasantry (77). Food mainly potatoes and oatmeal. Occasionally bacon (151). Leitrim, 1802 ‘The general food is potatoes and oaten bread, with butter and eggs . . .’ (63). Mayo, 1802 ‘Potatoes, a little oaten bread, milk, butter, herrings, and on two or three grand festival days in the year, some bits of flesh meat’ (86). Baronies of Burnskool, Murrisk, Gallen: ‘potatoes, oaten bread, milk, flummery, and on the sea coast fish’ (88). Carra and Clanmorris, ‘potatoes, oaten bread, milk, butter, herrings; in festival times a piece of pork, or bad beef or mutton’ (88). Meath, 1802 Blacks grow almost anywhere. ‘. . . the best poor man’s potato, as they are least apt to fail, and come in tolerably early’ (181). 80 sacks containing 22 stone per acre are a ‘good produce’ (182). Monaghan, 1801 Average yield per acre—7 tons a year (69). Potatoes and oatmeal the food of all the peasantry (75). Barony of Monaghan: potatoes are the principal food for the winter half of the year (175). Queen’s County Potatoes and oatmeal the only food of the peasant in the barony of (Laois), 1801 Cullinagh (83). Cottiers in East Maryborough well paid and have fertile gardens. Grow grain, potatoes, keep cows, and have income to spare (104). Roscommon, Potatoes and oats cultivated for home consumption (274). 1832 Dyspepsia is induced by excessive potato consumption. ‘I was assured that it is by no means uncommon, in times of plenty, for a labourer to eat fourteen pounds of potatoes at a meal’ (429). Killmore: potatoes are the general food of the peasantry (490). Sligo, 1802 Food mostly potatoes with some oaten bread, flummery, milk, egg, butter, fresh or dried herrings (71). Tipperary, 1832 Food merely potatoes of inferior quality. Everything exported except potatoes (fo. 16). ‘Dry potatoes are very commonly the food of the poor, and the kind of potatoe now in use, is very inferior to what it used to be . . .’ Bad for health (fo. 20). Tyrone, 1802 Potatoes plentiful (33). Potatoes and oatmeal the chief items of food; sold at public markets: Dungannon, Stewartstown, Cookstown Aughnacloy, Augher, Fintona, Omagh, Newtownstewart, Strabane (53). Wexford, 1807 Potatoes are the chief food of the inhabitants. Also eat oatmeal stirabout for breakfast and often barley bread with milk (96). Apple potatoes much used; keep well. White eyes are planted for early cropping (98). Wicklow, 1801 Potatoes eaten during eight or nine months of the year. Oatmeal and occasionally household wheaten bread at other times (55). Parish of Castle McAdam: potatoes and oatmeal for much of year (102). Sources: see bibliography.

68 , ,   Further evidence is provided by the Memoirs of the military officers who conducted the Ordnance Surveys in the 1820s and 1830s. The project collapsed in 1839 and only the counties of the north-east were surveyed. These were, on the whole, areas where rural diets remained relatively diversified and so there is an impression of variety largely lacking in the Statistical surveys. Even so, from parish after parish potatoes emerge as the common article of diet for farmers, labourers, and factory workers alike. Diets in County Antrim were better than many. In Ballymartin for example, the food of farmers was ‘plain, wholesome and substantial’. Among the ‘lower classes’, though, ‘potatoes and oatmeal, but particularly the former, constitute the basis of the food . . . Except while fed by the farmer they consume very little animal food.’ They drank tea very occasionally, but could never afford bakers’ bread.30 In Carnmoney where many people worked in Grimshaw’s cotton factory, potatoes were ‘their principal articles of food . . . They are primarily supplied with [them] by Mr Grimshaw.’31 In the coastal parish of Island Magee: The farmers . . . live rather frugally, though at the same time consume much animal food. They have very little idea of comfort, economy or neatness in the preparation of their food or the enjoyment of their meals, and but a very few of them eat apart from their servants. Fresh fish, being caught in abundance off the eastern coast of the parish, are hawked through it and much used during the summer. Immense quantities of them, particularly of herrings, are salted for winter use, and with salt pork, bacon, eggs and potatoes constitute their dinners, at which also oaten bread is used.32

Labourers’ food was similar although with less meat. Further north, near Cushendall, the poor lived mostly on potatoes and milk.33 When the area around Randalstown was surveyed in 1830 the linen trade was depressed and weavers were reduced to living off potatoes and salt herrings, a diet little different from that of agricultural labourers in the parish. Farmers fared better, although they too relied heavily on potatoes.34 In County Down diets were quite varied, although based on potatoes. In Rathfriland, ‘their food is as usual potatoes, milk, stirabout, bacon; their strong drink whiskey’.35 In Loughbrickland, ‘the food of the poorer class consists of potatoes, stirabout, oaten bread, flummery, also called “sowins”, made from the husky part of the oat, sifted from the meal called seeds, steeped until soured and then boiled’. Small farmers sometimes added bacon and poultry.36 In the 30 Angélique Day and Patrick McWilliams (eds.), Ordnance survey memoirs of Ireland, parishes of County Antrim, ii (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, 1990), 9. 31 Ibid. i. 42. 32 Ibid. iii. 38–9. 33 Ibid. iv. 50. 34 Ibid. iv. 59–60. 35 OSM, County Down, i. 17. 36 Ibid. iii. 5.

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coastal parish of Ardglass, the common diet was mostly of potatoes, oatmeal, butter, and fish, and occasionally meat on Sundays and holidays.37 Elsewhere in Ulster the food was very dreary. In Tartaraghan in north County Armagh, ‘potatoes form nearly the only article of food amongst the lower order of people. Those of the better class use oatmeal or milk and butter and occasionally milk.’38 Things were no better in Aghavea where the food ‘was universally potatoes with occasionally salt fish; meat is seldom or ever indulged in’.39 Life was more spartan still in the extreme south-western parishes of Kinawley and Tomregan although potatoes were occasionally supplemented by meal, milk, fish, and bacon.40 Even worse were conditons in Derryvullan in the north-east where the food was potatoes and meal with salt. ‘Only those who are able to keep cows use milk.’41 The surveyor of Inishmacsaint, County Fermanagh, was horrified by conditions, exclaiming: Would that it were possible, in sincerity and truth, to characterise the community as a people of sober, cleanly, frugal and industrious habits. An apathy and indifference to the accumulation of wealth seems to pervade almost the whole population, apparently happy and contented in their condition and nearly upon equality with each other. They evince no ambition or desire of independence . . . Potatoes and milk constitute the diet of the peasantry. Several years ago oatmeal and animal food formed no small portion of their daily meals, but both have long since, and still continue, luxuries very far beyond their present humble resources.42

Things were much the same in County Tyrone. In Donahedy the poor lived on potatoes, buttermilk, and salt, and farmers ate little better. In Dromore, ‘many of the labouring class have no better than potatoes and milk’. As for farmers, their ‘general food . . . is indeed not of costly materials, as they cannot afford it’.43 The surveyor of the parish of Longfield (West) was a little more impressed. There the population lived on potatoes and oatmeal porridge, ‘and sometimes their dinner is varied by the addition of a little bacon and greens, or oatmeal cake’. The inhabitants of the parish of Skirts of Urnay and Ardstraw lived on ‘potatoes, stirabout, flummery, oatenbread and sometimes a little fresh meat and broth’.44 In Desertcreat hired labourers and weavers lived ‘almost entirely’ on potatoes and salt, sometimes with milk in the summer. Better-off farmers also had stirabout and oaten bread.45 In County Londonderry, James Boyle was struck by conditions around Bellaghy in 1836 where ‘the lower class throughout the parish live badly. Salt and fresh eels and the fish caught in the lake furnish them with a principal support in their seasons. Unless at festivals, animal food is rarely used, and potatoes, salt herrings and milk are their other articles of food.’ Linen workers 37 40 43

OSM, County Down, iv. 5. Ibid. i. 109, 130. OSM, County Tyrone, i. 90, 96.

38 41 44

OSM, County Armagh, i. 122. Ibid. ii. 43. Ibid. i. 128, 141.

39 42 45

OSM, County Fermanagh, i. 22. Ibid. ii. 77–8. Ibid. i. 35.

70 , ,   could run to ‘some baker’s bread, a little bacon, tea, [and] oatmeal’.46 Elsewhere in the county ‘the food of both farmers and labourers may be said to consist principally of potatoes . . . The labourer’s family never tastes bacon, beef or mutton; he may himself occasionally do so, when working where he is dieted.’47 The surveyor of Kildollagh in the north-east of the county, though, was surprised by the good quality of local diets. ‘They live plainly and substantially on potatoes, stirabout and flesh meat, the last of which they use once a day with tea, oatbread and, on gala days, baker’s bread.’48 There was perhaps a touch of complacency from the surveyor of Tamlaght Finlagan when he reported in 1835 that, ‘however [the cottagers] may seem to fare indifferently, they are as contented with their potatoes as if they had a more exquisite dish’.49 At the same time as the ordnance surveyors were busy, the commissioners appointed to establish a poor law in Ireland were carrying out their own investigations. The Poor Inquiry of 1835–6 gathered information about diets from about two-thirds of the 2,500 parishes in Ireland and demonstrated that dependence on the potato by the poor was virtually complete.50 Once the Poor Law was in place the assistant commissioners conducted investigations of diets in their districts in an attempt to establish a dietary for workhouses that would be worse than anything that could be found outside.51 One of these was particularly detailed. W. H. T. Hawley surveyed a wide swathe in the southeast, containing about 14 per cent of the rural population. He found that men ate 4 or 5 pounds of potatoes at breakfast, dinner, and supper, although the latter meal was sometimes not eaten during the winter. The usual drink was milk or buttermilk. There was the occasional herring at dinner time to enliven the monotony. Hawley’s findings are set out in Table 4.4. Another assistant commissioner, Joseph Burke, submitted a less detailed study of diets in the west.52 Hawley and his colleagues confirmed the position that had been emerging over many years. Potatoes had taken over the diets of the labouring poor and had made substantial advances into the eating patterns of better-off farmers as well. They had not entirely obliterated oatmeal, milk, cabbage, herrings, bacon, and even beef, but they had squeezed such items into crevices of the year and converted them into luxuries. Estimates of the quantities of potatoes eaten by individuals become frequent 46

OSM, County Londonderry, i. 55. Ibid. i. 125 48 Ibid. vi. 71. 49 Ibid. vii. 92. 50 L. A. Clarkson and E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Dietary directions: a topographical survey of Irish diet, 1836’, in Rosalind Mitchison and Peter Roebuck (eds.), Economy and society in Scotland and Ireland 1500–1939 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1988), 171–92. 51 Sixth annual report of the Poor Law Commissioners for England and Wales, Appendix (D), Reports to board—Ireland, Nos. 21 & 22, ‘Report on workhouse dietaries’, PP 1840 [245], XVII, 238–48. 52 PROI, Poor Law Commission Papers, 1A/50/27. 47

, ,  

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T 4.4. W. H. T. Hawley’s survey of labourers’ diets, 1839 Breakfast

Dinner

Supper

LIMERICK UNION Men 4½ lbs. potatoes, 1 pint The same, and in This meal is pint skimmed milk. winter herrings and occasionally omitted water instead of milk. in the city of Limerick, particularly during the short days, and chiefly by labourers employed in stores, etc. Women The same. The same. RATHKEALE UNION Men 5 lbs. potatoes, The same. When This meal is not taken 1½ pints milk milk is scarce at periods of the year in summer, 1 pint herrings are used. when potatoes get milk winter. scarce, and work is not to be obtained. Women 4 lbs. potatoes, The same. 1¼ pint milk in summer, 1 pint milk in winter. NEWCASTLE UNION Men 5½ lbs. potatoes, The same; herrings, This meal is not always 1 quart skimmed milk. lard, and oatmeal taken. porridge are used when milk is scarce. Women 4 lbs. potatoes and The same. nearly the same quantity of milk. KILMALLOCK UNION Men 4½ lbs. potatoes, The same, with The same, but supper 1 quart skimmed milk. herrings and dripping is not always eaten. when milk is scarce. Women 3½ lbs. potatoes, from The same. The same. 2½ pints to a quart of milk. TIPPERARY UNION Men 4½ lbs. potatoes, The same. Supper is not always 2 pints of milk. taken. Women 3½ lbs. potatoes, The same. Ditto. 1½ pints of milk.

72 , ,   Table 4.4 (cont.): Breakfast CASHELL UNION Men 4½ lbs. potatoes, milk only used in harvest time.

Women Nearly the same. THURLES UNION Men 3 to 5 lbs. potatoes, from 1 to 2 pints skimmed milk.

Dinner

Supper

The same, and herrings occasionally.

Supper is not always eaten; when it is, the same quantity and quality of food is used as at other meals.

The same.

Women

The same; but a Supper is only eaten herring, weighing at plentiful seasons of 4 oz., is sometimes the year. used instead, and occasionally eggs and butter. The same.

Women

The same, and herrings when milk cannot be obtained. The same.

The same; but three meals are not always taken.

Women

The same. Herrings are used when potatoes become scarce. The same.

The same, and herrings are occasionally used when milk is scarce in the winter time.

The same. Supper is seldom eaten in the months of November, December, and January.

3 to 3½ lbs. potatoes, 1 pint skimmed milk. NENAGH UNION Men 4½ lbs. potatoes, 1 pint milk. 3 lbs. potatoes, ¾ pint milk. ROSCREA UNION Men 4½ lbs. potatoes, 1½ pint of buttermilk.

4 lbs. potatoes, 1 pint buttermilk. ENNIS UNION Men From 4 to 5 lbs. of potatoes, 1 pint skimmed milk.

Women

3 to 3½ lbs. potatoes, 1 pint skimmed milk, sometimes even less.

The same.

The same.

, ,  

Breakfast

Dinner

Supper

The same; but herrings are used in winter instead of milk, etc.; a sauce composed of water, meal, and onions. The same.

This meal is not taken at all times of the year.

ENNISTYMON UNION Men 5 lbs. potatoes, ‘cups’, 1 pint of milk.

The same.

Women

The same.

The same, but supper is not always eaten. The same.

Women

The same. Herrings when milk cannot be had. The same.

KILRUSH UNION Men 4 lbs. potatoes, 1 pint skimmed milk.

Women

From 2¾ to 3 lbs. potatoes, 1 to ½ pint skimmed milk.

The same when at work. SCARRIFF UNION Men 5 lbs. potatoes, 1 pint sour milk. 3 lbs. potatoes, 1 pint milk.

73

The same.

The same.

Source: Sixth annual report of the poor law commissioners for England and Wales, PP 1840 [245], XVII, appendix (D), no. 22.

from the mid-eighteenth century. Skelton’s 1741 diet implies a daily consumption of over 2 pounds. Arthur Young’s observation suggests a per capita daily consumption of 6 to 8 pounds in the 1770s, and as the decades passed so this figure crept up and up. Evidence drawn from the next sixty to seventy years was reviewed by Connell. He concluded that, ‘if we take 10 pounds a day as the average potato consumption for the adult man from the 1780s to the Famine we shall approach the real position as closely as our information permits’.53 He made no use of the evidence collected by Hawley and Burke in 1839. Their work suggests an average quantity of 12½ pounds a day for a man and almost 10 pounds for a woman. During the winter when supper was not eaten men ate 9 pounds. During the three-meal period, the quantity consumed by men was almost 14 pounds. On the eve of the Famine, Thomas Campbell Foster, The Times correspondent, visited Ballyshannon in County Donegal. He calculated that ‘on his rood 53

Connell, The population of Ireland, 146–50.

74 , ,   of land [an Irish labourer] will grow with a fair crop ten barrels of potatoes at eighty stones or 5 tons. This gives him thirty-two pound of potatoes per day for a year.’ Foster had in mind a family made up of a husband, wife, four children, and a pig. His observations imply a per capita consumption of  pounds a day, or double that figure for an adult male.54 The estimates of Hawley, Burke, and Foster were all close to the Edinburgh Review’s figure in 1848 of at least 14 pounds and to Wilde’s estimate, in 1854, of ‘nearly a stone’.55 Potatoes eaten in these quantities, supplemented by milk, provided a nutritious diet. Nevertheless, people at the time did not eat potatoes because they were aware of their nutritional excellence, except intuitively. They ate them because they were cheap, plentiful, and tasty. One of the attractions of potatoes was their convenience. Their preparation required merely a turf fire and a cooking pot, and their consumption no utensils apart from fingers. The ever observant Arthur Young noted: mark the Irishman’s potatoe bowl placed on the floor, the whole family upon their hams around it, devouring a quantity almost incredible, the beggar seating himself to it with a hearty welcome, the pig taking his share as readily as the wife, the cocks, hens, turkies, geese, the cur, the cat, and perhaps the cow—and all partaking out of the same dish. No man can often have been a witness of it without being convinced of the plenty, and I will add the cheerfulness that attends it.56

The pleasures of the potato were not lost on the higher ranks of society. In 1775 Richard Twiss observed two customs peculiar to Ireland. One was ‘that of having constantly boiled eggs for breakfast with their tea . . .’ The ‘second is the universal use of potatoes, which form a standing dish at every meal; these are eaten by way of bread, even by the ladies indelicately placing them on the table-cloth, on the side of the plate, after peeling them’.57 It is too strong to argue that, given a choice, the Irish poor would have eaten potatoes to the exclusion of all else. Nevertheless, there were many testimonies to the pleasure of potatoes in the first half of the nineteenth century.58 They came, admittedly, from people who were not themselves obliged to eat potatoes with thrice-daily monotony. According to Horatio Townsend writing in 1810, potatoes were the principal food, not of ‘those of the lowest order alone, but even farmers worth from fifty to one hundred pounds per annum’. Similarly, Hely Dutton, in 1824, observed that in County Galway a ‘partiality [for potatoes] is entertained by every intermediate rank to the palace, no table being without them’.59 In the words of Townsend, ‘this excellent root is daily 54

T. C. Foster, Letters on the condition of the people of Ireland (London: Chapman & Hall, 1846), 74. ‘The Irish crisis’, Edinburgh Review, 87 (1848), 234; W. R. W. Wilde, ‘The food of the Irish’, Dublin 56 University Magazine, 42/254 (1854), 131. Young, A Tour in Ireland, ii. 118–19. 57 [Richard Twiss], A tour in Ireland in 1775 . . . (London, 1776), 37. 58 A. Bourke, ‘The visitation of God’? The potato and the great Irish famine, ed. Jacqueline Hill and Cormac Ó Gráda (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1993), 16–20. 59 H. Townsend, Statistical survey of the county of Cork (Dublin, 1810), 415; H. Dutton, Statistical survey of County Galway (Dublin, 1824), 350. 55

, ,  

75

getting into greater esteem in all parts of the Empire’, but especially in Ireland where potatoes were ‘pleasant, mealy, and nourishing’.60

Other foods and drink Even the extremely poor could not live on potatoes alone. At the very least, they needed water in order to stay alive. In pre-Famine Ireland potatoes were as likely to be washed down with buttermilk or whiskey as with water. And there were other supplements. These fell into five groups. The first included the more or less regular summer additions to diets such as milk, buttermilk, and fresh herrings. Secondly, there were seasonal substitutes, such as oatmeal, eaten in the gap between the potato harvests. Thirdly, there were the fruits of the countryside—flesh, fish, and fowl—available locally and in season. Fourthly, in times of famine, all sorts of things—nettles, shellfish—were eaten in attempts to keep starvation at bay. Finally, there were occasional luxuries consumed at festivals, weddings, and wakes. These categories overlapped and before the Famine they contrived to relieve the tedium of potatoes, and potatoes, and potatoes, and provided those few requirements to good health that were absent from the staple food. As with so many matters, a good starting point is Arthur Young. His account of conditions around Castle Caldwell, County Fermanagh, sets the scene: The people in all the neighbourhood increase very fast. They are all in general much more industrious, and in better circumstances than they were some years ago. Their food, for three-quarters of the year, potatoes and milk, and other quarter oatmeal; in the winter they have herrings. They have all a bellyful of food whatever it is, as they told me themselves; and all their children eat potatoes all day long, even those of a year old will be roasting them.61

This pattern was general during the pre-Famine decades, although not always in the abundance described by Young. The position revealed by the Poor Inquiry in 1836 is summarized in Table 4.5. The table shows the percentage of parishes in the thirty-two counties that reported the consumption of potatoes and the principal supplements. Every county reported the consumption of potatoes, milk, and herrings to the Poor Inquiry, and every parish that answered the questions about food consumption confirmed the use of potatoes. But in the case of milk the proportion of parishes responding was only three-quarters, and for herrings only onequarter. And so on down the table. The individual foods have been ranked in the table according to the coefficient of variation of the individual county percentages from the national figure. This is a convenient way of measuring whether consumption was widespread or whether it was regionally restricted: a 60

Townsend, Statistical survey of County Cork, 88.

61

Young, A Tour in Ireland, i. 224.

76 , ,   low coefficient indicates widespread consumption. In simple terms, potatoes were eaten everywhere, milk was drunk in three-quarters of the parishes, and herrings in a quarter. The use of beef and oatmeal was observed in 31 of the 32 counties, but in a small number of parishes only. Other foods were eaten very occasionally. T 4.5. National food consumption patterns 1836 as revealed by the Poor Law Inquiry Food

Potatoes Milk Herrings Beef Oatmeal Butter Eggs Fish Bread Tea Bacon

Number of counties Percentage of reporting parishes consumption throughout Ireland reporting consumption 32 32 32 31 31 30 23 21 25 14 23

100 74.4 25.8 14.0 28.4 10.1 6.0 6.9 7.6 2.3 4.0

Standard deviation of county percentages

– 13.6 12.1 7.9 21.2 7.8 6.5 7.9 9.3 3.1 5.7

Coefficient of variation

– 0.18 0.47 0.56 0.75 0.77 1.08 1.14 1.22 1.35 1.43

Source: L. A. Clarkson and E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Dietary directions: a topographical survey of Irish diet, 1836’, in Rosalind Mitchison and Peter Roebuck (eds.), Economy and society in Scotland and Ireland 1500–1939 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1988), 174.

Milk and herrings were necessary supplements to potatoes since they were sources of vitamins A and D that were lacking in potatoes. Both were plentiful in spring and summer and dried herrings could be had in winter as well. Milk was produced almost everywhere and by the early nineteenth century it was the only item that was consumed by the poor with anything like the regularity of potatoes.62 In 1780 Arthur Young noted that, ‘the children of the Irish cabbin are nourished with milk, which, small as the quantity may be, is far preferable to the beer or vile tea which is the beverage of the English infant’.63 As long as cottiers had a cow or two, they had little difficulty in getting milk or buttermilk. Labourers in County Kildare lived on potatoes and milk for nine months and made do on wheaten bread and butter for the remaining three months. Farmworkers in Westport, County Mayo, commonly received a quart of milk a day from their employers, together with 6 quarts of buttermilk or bonny62 63

Clarkson and Crawford, ‘Dietary directions’, 176–8. Young, A Tour in Ireland, ii. 114.

, ,  

77

clabber. In the dairying districts of County Meath farmers let out their cows to ‘dairy-men, who are common labourers’. As a result ‘buttermilk is the food of all the people’. Similarly at Summerhill, County Kildare, ‘there are few cottars without a cow and some of them two’. In Killarney farmers rented cows to dairymen. Milk production was ‘in the bonny clobber method, that is letting the milk stand several days, till the cream comes off, by taking hold of it between the fingers, like a skin of leather, and some till it is moldy, the remainder is bonny clobber’. Consequently most of the poor drank sour milk, except the very poorest, who had ‘only salt and water . . . and occasionally a herring’ to go with potatoes.64 Although the general picture of potatoes and milk remained unchanged, milk was becoming more difficult to obtain because it was being sent to markets in the form of butter, or used to feed animals being fattened for sale. In County Cavan, ‘the butter and the hog are now sent to market, which before the [Napoleonic] war, were consumed at home, but all are now luxuries’. In Leitrim there were a ‘few little milk shops in Carrick-on-Shannon’; otherwise dairies were ‘unnoticeable’. In Tipperary, buttermilk was to be had only near the towns and was rarely drunk by labourers. Wicklow butter was sold as far away as County Meath and milk was fed to lambs in preference to children; the poor depended on buttermilk given to them by farmers. In Galway in the 1820s there was very little milk for the children of the poor since most of it was exported in the form of butter.65 A witness in County Limerick told the Poor Inquiry that ‘the farmers prefer sending their milk to the next market town, though a distance of five miles Irish, to selling it to the labourer, who cannot be a constant ready-money customer’. The best hope labourers had of drinking milk was ‘when they receive it from the generosity of the considerate farmer’.66 In the union of Cashel in 1839, milk was used only at harvest time. It was sometimes replaced by herrings in winter. Similarly, in Kilmallock, herrings and dripping were used in place of milk. In Limerick milk gave way to herrings and water in winter; in Scarriff, herrings were used ‘when milk cannot be had’.67 64

Young, A Tour in Ireland, i. 23, 28, 315, 469; ii. 6. Statistical surveys: Sir Charles Coote, Statistical survey of the county of Cavan with observations on the means of improvement drawn up in the year 1801 for consideration and under the direction of the Dublin Society (Dublin: Graisberry & Campbell, 1802), 240; Dutton, Galway, 9, 142; J. McParlan, Statistical survey of the county of Leitrim with observations on the means of improvement etc. (Dublin: Graisberry & Campbell, 1802), 42; R. Thompson, Statistical survey of the County Meath with observations on the means of improvement. Drawn up for the consideration, and under the direction of the Dublin Society (Dublin, 1802), 228, 233; Robert Fraser, General view of the agriculture and mineralogy, present state and circumstances of the county Wicklow; with observations on the means of their improvement, drawn up for the consideration of the Dublin Society (Dublin, 1801), 56, 209; National Library of Ireland, MSS 8146, 8147. A complete survey of the County Tipperary, made in 1832 on the scheme laid down by the Royal Dublin Society, by J. Lalor Cooke, fos. 16, 21. 66 First report of commissioners for inquiring into the condition of the poorer classes in Ireland, PP 1836 (36), XXXI, Appendix (D), 223. 67 Sixth annual report of the poor law commissioners for England and Wales, Appendix (D), Reports to board— Ireland, No. 22, ‘Report on Workhouse Dietaries—by W. H. T. Hawley, Esq.’, PP 1840[245], XVII, 244. 65

78 , ,   Supplies of herring fluctuated according to the seasons and the behaviour of the shoals. In summer fresh herrings could be had close to the shore. Around Gorey in County Wexford, ‘fish is a great article with the poor, particularly herrings and cod’.68 At Portaferry, County Down, Arthur Young observed the ‘summer herring-fishery for the home consumption of the country’. They are now taken chiefly off the peninsula of the Ards. Formerly the great take was in the loch, till within these four years. To the whole coast they reckon that there are 400 boats . . . A boat will catch six maze of herrings in night, each 500; and they sell at 8s. 8d. a maze on an average: it is, however, a precarious fishery. In 1774 it was very good: in 1775 very bad; this year it has begun finely. It begins on the 12 of July, and finishes the end of September.69

Thirty years later, Hely Dutton commented on the unreliable nature of the herring stocks around the coast of County Clare. ‘In the herring season upward of 200 hundred boats, sometimes not more than half that number, are fitted out at Kilrush, Carrigaholt, Querin, and other creeks; as the fishery is uncertain, a bad season completely ruins the poor men, who have expended their all upon the boats and fishing apparatus.’70 Organized herring fishing required boats and nets because, ‘as only the weak and small fish keep near the shore, it must be mere peddling, until companies are formed, that will be able to fit out vessels larger enough to navigate the sea . . .’71 In Counties Donegal and Londonderry, with good access to the sea, there was commercial fishing and fresh herrings were common in diets. Elsewhere consumption was irregular. In County Kerry, for example, herrings and sprats were eaten, ‘sometimes’. Even in Cork City the population relied on herrings—presumably dried—imported from Scotland and not on local catches.72 Oatmeal had been the poor man’s food in the seventeenth century. William Petty listed oatmeal, together with dairy produce, rabbits, poultry, meat from ‘one of the smaller animals’, as the staples of diet in 1672. In 1744 and 1745 when harvests were bad in Ulster, oatmeal was scarce and expensive and the poor relied on the charity of the gentry. In April 1745, the agent of the earl of Abercorn, wrote to his master: ‘their stock chiefly were cattle; they [the poor], have given their corn to preserve them and now they are dying every day’. Three years later, however, ‘oats are like to be very cheap: its a very great doubt with some people whether plenty be so great a blessing as scarcity obliged us to think it, as the labouring kind of people will not work and servants are become a very heavy tax to the farmers.’73 68

Young, A Tour in Ireland, i. 95. Ibid. i. 153–4. H. Dutton, Statistical survey of the county of Clare . . . (Dublin, 1808), 227. 71 Ibid. 229. 72 Young, A Tour in Ireland, i. 420, 429, 437. 73 J. H. Gebbie (ed.), An introduction to the Abercorn letters as relating to Ireland 1736–1816 (Omagh: Strule Press, 1972), 8, 9, 10, 24. Quotations at 9, 24. 69 70

, ,  

79

In 1752 Bishop Pocock identified the food of the poor as ‘chiefly oat cakes baked on the griddle’.74 By the 1770s, though, oatmeal was becoming confined to the ‘meal months’, the gap between the exhaustion of the previous year’s crop and the first of the new potatoes. Even that period was contracting. At Johnstown, County Tipperary, the potato crop was stretched out for eleven months. In a particularly desolate region of County Cavan, where the poor ‘make a dreadful ragged figure . . . very little oat bread [is] used . . . Their potatoes last them through the year; all winter long only potatoes and salt . . .’ On the other hand, the poor of Sortland, County Sligo, still lived on oatmeal for three months. A family of six in County Antrim might consume 40 pounds of oatmeal a week, although demand varied according to price; when the price of oatmeal rose above 1¼d. a pound the poor in Belfast switched to potatoes and milk.75 Contemporary opinions about the balance between potatoes and oatmeal were ambiguous. In 1830, Dr James Doyle, bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, told the select committee on conditions among the poor, ‘that before the French wars [the potato] was not in general use, except from the beginning of September until Christmas’.76 But the bishop was looking back forty years and his memory might have led him astray. Hawley, the assistant poor law commissioner, remarked in 1839 that ‘the potato is eaten at every meal and throughout all seasons of the year’. The prolific lumpers had almost eliminated the meal months, particularly in the west.77 There remained just a short summer spell when ‘oatmeal, eggs, butter, lard, dripping, and herrings [were] . . . partially, though sparingly, substituted for [the potato]’.78 Oatmeal shared some of the qualities of potatoes. Oats were extensively cultivated, especially in the north-east where consumption was most common.79 Oatmeal was versatile. It may have been ‘not so good, without a change, as potatoes are, those who live entirely on it being sooner cloyed than with the latter’, but it could be cooked in several ways. It was usually made into stirabout, a form of thin gruel or porridge, with water or milk. Or it could be kneaded into dough and baked into thin bread or cakes. In County Down oatcakes were occasionally flavoured with caraway or butter.80 They were cooked slowly on three-legged breadsticks or bread-irons propped in front of the fire. A quicker version, known as scowdher, was made by laying an oatmeal mixture on a pair of tongs and placing it directly on the embers, toasting first one side and 74

G. T. Stokes (ed.), Pococke’s tour in Ireland in 1752 (Dublin, 1890), 87. Young, A Tour in Ireland, i. 164, 183–4, 253, 295; ii. 23–4. 76 Quoted in Connell, Population of Ireland, 133–4. 77 Ó Gráda, A new economic history, 90. 78 Quoted in Clarkson and Crawford, ‘Dietary directions’, 181. 79 Clarkson and Crawford, ‘Dietary directions’, 181; Bourke, ‘The visitation of God’?, 42–3. 80 George Mott, ‘Eating and drinking habits in Ireland two hundred years ago’, Irish Ancestor, 5/1 (1973), 9; John Dubourdieu, Statistical survey of the county of Antrim: with observations on the means of improvement (Dublin: Graisberry & Campbell, 1812), 354; John Dubourdieu, Statistical survey of the county of Down: with observations on the means of improvement (Dublin: Graisberry & Campbell, 1802), 87. 75

80 , ,   then the other, leaving the middle quite raw.81 According to McEvoy, writing from County Tyrone in 1802, oatmeal should not be used for bread since, ‘a pound of it will go farther in a family made into hasty pudding, or stirabout . . . than a pound and a half made into bread’.82 Food prepared from grains other than oatmeal was uncommon among the very poor. Wheaten bread was sometimes eaten in the countryside and more often in towns. ‘When I was at Cashel,’ wrote Henry Inglis in 1834, ‘potatoes had become so dear, that bread was partly substituted for them by the poor. A baker’s shop chanced to be situated precisely opposite to the inn; and I saw very many children buy a halfpenny worth of bread, and divide it into two or three pieces for supper of as many.’83 Thirty years earlier barley and wheaten bread had been eaten when potatoes were in short supply. More often, though, only town dwellers and the better-off could afford to eat wheaten bread, such as the colliers in County Kilkenny who took it down the pits: ‘a twopenny loaf serves for a meal’.84 At the beginning of the nineteenth century Indian meal made an appearance into diets. Indian meal is made from maize which was imported into Ireland between 1800 and 1802, following a serious food shortage. Imports were renewed in the 1820s and in 1827 local gentry in County Kilkenny distributed Indian meal to the poor to ‘keep down the cost of living’. During the 1830s and early 1840s maize was imported intermittently. It was a difficult grain to store, mill, and cook, and it was not something that the poor adopted readily. Only during the Great Famine, when the government imported and distributed large quantities in an attempt to alleviate distress, did Indian meal become important in diets. It continued to be eaten fairly regularly after the Famine, although it was falling out of fashion by the end of the century.85 Indian meal is the best known of the famine relief foods, but the poor had long been resourceful at finding alternatives to eke out existence. A traveller in Fermanagh in 1739 noted, that although ‘potatoes were the main support of the common people’, the ‘hottentots’ also ate ‘lustran bread’ and drank whiskey ‘which is of an hot and drying nature and reckoned a sovereign antidote against the dampness of the air’. Rivers and lakes abounded in trout, pike, bream, eels, and other fish: ‘all these afford a very plentiful subsistence to the 81 E. Estyn Evans, Irish folk ways, 79–80; William Carleton, Traits & stories of the Irish peasantry (originally published Dublin, 1843–4; repr. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, Ltd., 1990), 2, 113. 82 John McEvoy, Statistical survey of the county of Tyrone: with observations on the means of improvement etc. (Dublin: Graisberry & Campbell, 1802), 42. 83 Henry D. Inglis, Ireland in 1834: a journey throughout Ireland during the spring, summer, and autumn of 1834, i. (London, 1835), 115. 84 Dubourdieu, Statistical survey of the county of Down, 80; Joseph Archer, Statistical survey of the County Dublin with observations on the means of improvement etc. (Dublin: Graisberry & Campbell, 1801), 111; McEvoy, Statistical survey, Tyrone, 39, 152; William Tighe, Statistical observations relative to the county of Kilkenny, made in the years 1800 and 1801 (Dublin, 1802), 71. 85 E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Indian meal and pellagra in nineteenth-century Ireland’, in J. M. Goldstrom and L. A. Clarkson (eds.), Irish population, economy, and society: essays in honour of the late K. H. Connell (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 113–17.

, ,  

81

inhabitants.’ People netted salmon, notwithstanding that the fishing rights belonged to a local landowner. In neighbouring County Sligo the strands, ‘abound with shell fish, such as muscles, cockles, shrimps, prawns, and raser fish which afford a very plentiful provision to the poor and regales the rich’. All round the north and north-east coast, herrings, mussels, cockles, and oysters were valuable supplementary sources of food and in scarce years in spring they have afforded great relief to ye inhabitants, [of the Copeland Isles] & many have come 20 miles with bestes to gather ym. One year they were taken in such numbers that ye common people thought it miracolus. They gathered them by millions, the whole strand was peopled wth ye gatherers & though they thought they had gleaned away all, yet in 2 or 3 tides a new and plentiful supply appeared . . . wch answered all the wants of ye common people until relief came from their dairys and gardens.86

‘Gleaned’ is the critical word. Marine fish required boats and nets, but shellfish living at the shore line or swept up with the tides, and freshwater fish that could be gathered with minimum effort, were gifts of God to be garnered with scant concern for property rights. In July 1776, Arthur Young visited Packenham Hall in Westmeath, the seat of Lord Longford. He found the ‘lower classes’ living well on potatoes. But Great numbers of families are also supported by the neighbouring lakes, which abound prodigiously with fish; a child with a packthread and a crooked pin, will catch perch enough in an hour for the family to live on for the whole day, and his Lordship has seen 500 children fishing at the same time, there being no tenaciousness in the proprietors of the lands about a right to the fish; besides perch, there is pike upward of five feet long, bream, tench, trout of 10 lbs, and as red as a salmon, and fine eels; all these are fine circumstances, and are very conspicuous in the numerous and healthy families among them.87

‘In respect of fish, no country can be better situated than Ireland’, wrote Dubourdieu more than thirty years later. Such bounty, he believed, could ‘administer to the wants or luxuries of mankind; but certainly these natural and obvious benefits never have been turned to the best advantage’. Sometimes this was because of shortage of capital, at other times from lack of skills.88 McParlan observed in 1802, ‘if the children were instructed in fishing with fine hooks, lines and proper baits, they could positively in summer time have abundance in fish alone, without meal or potatoes’.89 Yet fewer than 7 per cent of parishes in Ireland recorded the consumption of fish, other than herrings, during the Poor Inquiry.90 86 Armagh Public Library, G.I.14. ‘The topographical descriptions of the Rev. William Henry, 87 1732–39’. Young, A Tour in Ireland, i. 54. 88 Dubourdieu, Statistical survey, Antrim, 569. 89 J. McParlan, Statistical survey of the county of Mayo with observations on the means of improvement etc. (Dublin: Graisberry & Campbell, 1802), 97. 90 Clarkson and Crawford, ‘Dietary directions’, 174, 184.

82 , ,   The Statistical surveys occasionally noted the use of vegetables such as beans and cabbage. In Tyrone, ‘few in the county know what is meant by green food, much less have they any knowledge of it’. In County Armagh, small patches of beans were grown, ‘all for the food of man, and are generally boiled, and mushed with oatmeal, milk, butter, and pepper’; they were ‘wholesome and very palatable’. In County Sligo in the 1730s, women harvested ‘Dulesk & flukawn, which latter is a kind of seaweed, resembling Dulesk, but of a softer consistence & a much higher relish’. They also gathered ‘bringo roots’ from the sandhills, ‘the most nourishing & wholesome of all vegetables’.91 Such things were probably eaten more frequently than casual visitors realized. Ó Gráda has hazarded that on the eve of the Famine, average cabbage consumption per adult male could have been almost one and a half pounds a week.92 Turnips were grown in Ireland for animals, not people, but during the Great Famine they were sometimes eaten in the place of potatoes. Starving people gnawed them raw or, if they had any turf, boiled them. But, bulk for bulk, turnips were much less nutritious than potatoes and they left starving people still craving for food unless they consumed so many that their stomachs became so swollen, ‘especially children’s, that it was a pitiable sight to see’.93 Reviewing the procession of potatoes and potatoes, followed by potatoes, enlivened by the occasional herring and gulps of milk, a German traveller in 1844 remarked gloomily, ‘Christmas-day is the Irishman’s only Festival throughout the whole year, for on every other day he eats nothing but potatoes. This is not living like a human being, to whom nature has given an appetite and a stomach for various kinds of foods.’94 The poor usually found the means to get a little pork, bacon, or even mutton or beef at holiday time. At Stradbally, County Laois, in 1802, for example, ‘they can scrape together the price of a piece of meat for Easter or Christmas fare’.95 Wakes and weddings offered other opportunities. Anthony Trollope described a wedding feast at Mohill, County Leitrim, in the 1830s, attended by Thady McDermot, an impoverished petty landowner, his even more impoverished tenants, and the parish priest: 91 Dubourdieu, Statistical survey, Antrim, 353; Dubourdieu, Statistical survey, Down, 108; Coote, Statistical survey, Armagh, 215; Coote, Statistical survey, King’s County, 87–8; Dutton, Statistical survey, Clare, 177; Dutton, Statistical survey, Galway, 353; McParlan, Statistical survey, Donegal, 36; McParlan, Statistical survey, Mayo, 90; T. J. Rawson, Statistical survey of the County of Kildare, with observations on the means of improvement etc. (Dublin, 1807), 81; McEvoy, Statistical survey, Tyrone, 54; First report of commissioners for inquiring into the condition of the poorer classes in Ireland, PP 1836 (37), XXXII, Appendix E, 16, 25; J. S. Donnelly, Jr, The land and people of nineteenth-century Cork (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 26; Armagh Public Library, G.1.14, ‘The topographical descriptions of the Rev. William Henry’, fo. 103. 92 Ó Gráda, Ireland: A new economic history, 91. 93 Maureen Murphy (ed.), Annals of the famine in Ireland by Asenath Nicholson (first published New York, 1851; Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1998), 111–12. 94 J. D. Kohl, Travels in Ireland (London, 1844), 88. 95 Charles Coote, General view of the agriculture and manufactures of the Queen’s County, with observations on the mean of their improvement, drawn up in the year 1801. For the consideration of, and under the direction of the Dublin Society (Dublin: Graisberry & Campbell, 1801), 170.

, ,  

83

the bride, with such assistance as she could get, had succeeded in putting the supper on the table: a leg of mutton at the top, reclining on a vast bed of cabbage; a similar dish at the bottom; and a ham, with the same garniture, in the middle. The rest of the table was elegantly sprinkled with plates of smoking potatoes . . .96

The guests went about the serious business of eating using knives, forks, spoons, or fingers, according to their social status. When the eating was over they turned to copious draughts of whiskey punch which set them up for a night of dancing and talking. Among the better-off, bacon and meat figured more regularly and there were even luxuries such as tea and sugar. When Thady McDermot, Trollope’s tragic hero, sought refuge from the police in a wretched mountain cabin, his protectors, in recognition of his rank, brought him a loaf of bread and a piece of bacon to augment the lumpers and whiskey that was all that the cabin could offer. One of his hosts even suggested that McDermot send home for ‘a lump of mate or bacon, or a pound or two of sugar to swaiten the punch’.97 Arthur Young had occasionally commented disapprovingly on tea drinking by small farmers, but the habit rarely caught the eye of the authors of the Statistical surveys. The ‘working class’ of Magherafelt ate a little meat and bacon, while the ‘manufacturing classes’ enjoyed bakers’ bread and tea. At Bealteagh, County Londonderry, ‘some of the respectable farmers take tea’. At Drumachose, tea, eggs, meat, bacon, wheaten bread, and butter had ceased to be luxuries; and even ‘the labourer in general struggles to obtain for breakfast coarse tea and oaten cake (even without milk) in preference to wholesome porridge and potatoes with it’. At Dunboe, ‘the luxury of tea is creeping in’ among farmers and in Ballyrashane ‘tea is becoming, particularly amongst the females, an indispensable article’. Coleraine bakers sold wheaten bread in the surrounding countryside. The poor at Banagher occasionally used eggs; and ‘at Christmas, Easter and other festivals they add a piece of meat or their favourite butter, never forgetting the whiskey’. At Desertmartin, ‘tea is more in use, as is also bread, than formerly’.98 Farm servants in Magilligan had aspired to such standards of eating by the 1830s that they complained that rabbit meat was so common and asked their employer not to feed them ‘exclusively’ with it.99 A constant refrain among accounts of consumption was a fondness for whiskey. Close to Dublin in 1779, the greater part of the inhabitants of Ireland linger out a wretched existence. A small piece of ground is generally annexed to each, whose chief produce is potatoes; and on these roots and milk the common Irish subsist all the year round, without tasting either bread or meat except perhaps at Christmas once or twice. What little the men can earn 96 97 98 99

Anthony Trollope, The McDermots of Ballycloran (first published 1847), ch. 12. Ibid., ch. 23. OMS, Londonderry, i. 87; ii. 15, 102; iii. 53–4, 108; vi. 52, 71; x. 8–9; xi. 59. Clarkson and Crawford, ‘Dietary directions’, 174, 185, 186.

84 , ,   by their labour, or the women by their spinning, is generally consumed in whisky, a spirituous liquor resembling geneva.100

‘An Irishman loves whisky as well as an Englishman does strong beer’; remarked Arthur Young, ‘but he cannot go on saturday night to the whisky house, and drink out the week’s support of himself, his wife and his children . . .’101 Young reached this conclusion because of his belief that the poor did not have money to spend. Others thought differently and lamented that income that might have been better used went on whiskey. In the early nineteenth century the drinking of legally distilled spirits was falling because of high prices, and was replaced by beer and poteen. In County Clare, illicit ‘stills abound in every part of the country, even under the very nose of the magistrates . . . the quarter part of the barley is consumed in the private stills, that abound in every part of the county’. In Donegal, spirits were drunk ‘in great excess’ to banish the cold. In Kildare, ‘the quantity of whiskey made by stealth keeps it at a low price in the dram shops’. It was occasionally enlivened with vitriol. Whiskey drinking was said to be declining in Leitrim in 1802; nevertheless, thirty years later illicit stills kept Thady McDermot’s poor tenants busy and whiskey provided them with warmth and money. The price of illicit whiskey fell from the end of the French wars until well into the 1830s. It could be bought from both licensed and unlicensed drinking houses as well as directly from the manufacturers.102 Illicit distillation was concentrated in the northern and western half of the country, in mountainous districts remote from the prying eyes of excise officers.103 Witnesses to the Poor Inquiry in 1836 were sometimes reluctant to admit that breaches of the law were commonplace for such an admission might imply a neglect of duty. Thus, the Revd William Hickey from Donaghmore in County Donegal, prevaricated: I cannot exactly state the number of public houses in this parish. The delicate state of my health at present, and the severity of the weather, prevent my using efforts that would satisfy myself in giving a definitive answer to some of the queries. Illicit distillation and the immoderate use of ardent spirits I consider as one of the great sources of national calamity.

Others, though, were more forthcoming. The magistrate at Raphoe stated that illicit distilling and the selling of spirits without a licence was regarded by the populace as ‘an honest and fair means of living’. The presbyterian minister at Maguire’s Bridge, County Fermanagh, lamented: 100 Philip Luckombe, Tour through Ireland: wherein the present state of that kingdom is considered . . . (Dublin: 101 Printed by J. and R. Byrn for Whitestone, 1780), 41. Young, Tours, ii. 113. 102 Dutton, Statistical survey, Clare, 35, 68; McParlan, Statistical survey, Donegal, 67; McParlan, Statistical survey, Leitrim, 64; Rawson, Statistical survey, Kildare, 38; K. H. Connell, ‘Illicit distillation’, in K. H. Connell, Irish peasant society (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 1–50. 103 Connell, ‘Illicit distillation’, 30–1; Elizabeth Malcolm, ‘Ireland sober, Ireland free’: drink and temperance in nineteenth-century Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1986), 33.

, ,  

85

in country places shebeen houses are very numerous and to the number of places for selling spirits I confidently trace the great cause of the prevalence of idleness, poverty, and every species of demoralization. The great cheapness of a licence is an inducement to many to enter into that very injurious trade of whiskey-selling. Illicit distillation does prevail very considerably.104

Alcohol contributes little of nutritional value, although it kept the damp at bay. Since much whiskey drunk by the poor was not bought through legal channels, consumption levels can be judged only from contemporary comment and the statistics of seizures of illicit stills, which were particularly high in the 1830s. Thomas Davis, writing in the Nation, in January 1843, stated that ‘[the Irishman] drank nothing for some 350 days in the year; but once, maybe oftener in the month, he got roaring drunk’.105 But in the remote west the whiskey jug under the bed—hidden from the eyes of officialdom to be pulled out for visitors—was as common as the potato pot on the hearth.

Conclusion The story of the diets of the poor between the late seventeenth century and the Great Famine is, in essence, a simple one: the poor came to depend to an ever increasing extent on potatoes, and other foods became occasional, peripheral, and luxurious. The storyline becomes embellished as we consider social gradations, economic conditions, and regional variations. There was no great chasm between the extremely poor, the less poor, and the more prosperous, rather a blurred boundary between small farmers and better-off labourers, better-off labourers and impoverished cottiers. Living-in domestics and farm servants could even be fussy, as Elizabeth Smith, wife of a landowner on the borders of counties Kildare and Wicklow discovered in August 1841 when she tried to find a kitchen maid for a neighbour: . . . fancy I shall fail, the progress of civilisation indisposing any girl who has a hope of doing better to take a situation where the women servants sleep on a shakedown in the kitchen, three together . . . have low wages, meat but twice a week cut into rations in the parlour and sent out in portions, they would bear this well in a farmer’s house and be glad to get the place but when with this low degree in kitchen there is the utmost profusion in hall . . ., always they who practise such contradictions must be content with the refuse of the serving class . . .106

Town labourers enjoyed more varied diets than cottiers in the countryside because of the opportunities to get a little paid work; the linen counties of Ulster generally offered a high level of comfort. Eating patterns were affected 104

Report . . . into the condition of the poorer classes in Ireland, 314, 315, 355 Thomas Davis, The Nation (28 Jan. 1843). 106 David Thompson, with Moyra McGusty (eds.), The Irish journals of Elizabeth Smith 1840–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 37. 105

86 , ,   by the seasons: bad harvests, of grain as well as potatoes, tilted eating habits first one way and then another. Even whether the herring shoals chose to come inshore or to stay away had an effect on how well or badly people ate. The proximate reasons for the triumph of the potato were set out with startling clarity by Robert Bell in 1804: Bread made of flour of wheat was a luxury; but whenever, by any uncommon effort [the labourer] was able to cultivate that species of grain, it bore a price at market so comparatively high, that ruin would to him be the consequence of not selling the whole of it. Hardly ever in the possession of any sort of flesh meat, but pork or bacon, he always considered this as an article of too much value to be converted to the use of himself or his family. The butter, the poultry, and the eggs, were equally his property, and the miserable family by whose care they were produced, were equally prohibited to use them. What did these people live on? They lived on those things for which little or no money could be procured at market: potatoes constituted their chief food. The next article which he retained for his own use was one of still less value, it was that part of the milk which remained behind after butter had been extracted from it.107

The market swallowed up everything that was saleable. The slippery slope towards the potato was not swift. The desperate years of 1740–1 occurred because the corn failed to ripen and the grass to grow, as well as because potatoes had been ruined by frost. By the time Arthur Young travelled through the land in 1776–9 potatoes had become the staple. Per capita consumption was lower than in the 1830s, but had Phytophthora infestans visited the country in the 1770s and not in the 1840s, the consequences would have been devastating; just how serious is a matter for speculation. Between 1846 and 1851 famine deaths totalled at least a million, the equivalent of 12 per cent of the immediate preFamine population. The population in Young’s time was around 3 million. Had Ireland then suffered the same proportionate level of excess mortality as during the Great Famine, she would have lost 360,000 of her people from starvation and disease and possibly the same number again by emigration. Perhaps we should not be so cataclysmic. Per capita consumption of potatoes in the 1770s was only about 70 per cent of what was to come in the 1830s. Even so, there would have been a substantial check to the population that had begun to grow rapidly following the setbacks of 1740–1. But there was no fungus in 1776–9 and neither did the potato crop fail catastrophically before 1845. From the perspective of the individual, the move to a diet dominated by potatoes made economic and nutritional sense. Potatoes were cheap, convenient, and nourishing; they did not require the cottier to rely on the market, nor on the charity of an employer or landowner. From the point of view of society at large, however, the picture is less attractive. Because potatoes were so cheap, agricultural labour was cheap; because 107 Robert Bell, A description of the conditions and manners as well as the moral and political character, education etc. of the peasantry of Ireland such as they were between the years 1780 and 1790 (London: Charles Barber, 1804), 2–3.

, ,  

87

agricultural labour was cheap, agricultural output could be raised by employing more labour. Cheap food also kept down the cost of labour in, for example, the woollen and linen industries. Thus, neither agriculture nor industry was subject to the spur of rising labour costs that might have compelled them to innovate. And because the labour market was choked with cheap workers, there was insufficient depth of demand in the home market to stimulate sustained economic change. As long as agricultural prices were rising in response to a demand from Britain and elsewhere, farmers, middlemen, and landlords were prosperous; and as long as potatoes flourished, their labourers were healthy and hard-working. But the fall in agricultural prices after 1815 punctured the veneer of wealth and exposed the frailties beneath. More than one-third of Ireland’s population were potato people, competing for scarce plots on marginal soils, and hard pressed for rent by farmers who were themselves under pressure from falling grain prices and impoverished landlords. Phytophthora infestans chose an inauspicious moment to enter the scene.

CHAPTER FIVE

Dietary Changes, 1845–1920 The determinants of change The Great Famine, 1845–9, shattered the dietary regime on which the poor had depended and turned the demographic history of Ireland upside down. The outcome in the second half of the nineteenth century was to bring the diets of the lower orders in Ireland closer to those of their counterparts in other parts of the United Kingdom. These developments were determined not only by the Great Famine, but also by the interaction of demographic, economic, and social changes during the second half of the nineteenth century. Successive failures of the potato harvest during the dreadful years between 1845 and 1849 had an immediate impact on diets. In 1845, potato yields were down by 33 per cent on earlier years, in 1846 by 75 per cent, and 1848 by 37 per cent. Yields held up well in 1847 but few acres had been sown and so the total crop was small. A simple way of illustrating the scale of the losses is to translate them into calories. The calories provided by potatoes during the Famine years were only 23 per cent of the level in the period, 1840–5.1 A third or more of the population was faced with stark choices: to starve, to emigrate, or to switch to other foods. The third option was not a realistic one in the short run, except for those receiving relief rations. Death or emigration was the fate of 2 million people between 1845 and 1851. Neither potato yields nor acreage fully recovered after the Famine. In the early 1840s, more than 2 million acres had been sown annually with potatoes. This figure fell as low as 284,000 acres in 1847 and although the area increased subsequently, it never rose much above a million acres during the 1850s and 1860s. After 1871, there was a more or less chronic decline to less than 600,000 acres by the First World War. Yields, meanwhile, settled at about 70 or 80 per cent of the pre-Famine levels until improved strains and the conquest of Phytophthora infestans in the 1880s eventually pushed them higher.2 The combined effect of low acreage and depressed yields was that by the mid-1850s potato production was only about half of its immediate pre-Famine levels. Thereafter it declined erratically until the early 1880s. Output then fluctuated between 2 and 3 million tons until the end of the century. Before the 1 Peter Solar, ‘The great famine was no ordinary subsistence crisis’, in E. Margaret Crawford (ed.), Famines: the Irish experience 900–1900 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1989), 114, 123. 2 Michael Turner, After the Famine: Irish agriculture 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 228–30, 245–7.

 , ‒

89

Famine, there were almost two tons of potatoes a year per person. After the Famine, the available per capita supply ranged between a half and threequarters of a ton.3 On the eve of the First World War, the quantities of potatoes grown for home consumption averaged 0.27 tons per person.4 The decline in potato cultivation was part of a more general contraction of arable farming. The total area under crop increased immediately after the Famine but halved between the early 1860s and 1911. On the other hand, the numbers of cattle and sheep rose as agriculture tilted towards livestock and dairy farming.5 These shifts in the composition of output were shaped by factor endowments and were responses to movements in relative prices. They were also part of a continuing process of the integration of Irish agriculture into an international market. During the Famine Ireland ceased to be a net exporter of grain—a position it had occupied from the mid-eighteenth century—and became a net importer. Exports of agricultural products subsequently came to be dominated by meat, butter, bacon, hams, and eggs. The import picture was more varied; as well as cereals and groceries, food imports included substantial quantities of butter, cheese, and bacon.6 Once the ravages of famine had abated, consumers were faced with a greater choice of foods to eat. Accompanying the fall in population was a rise in the proportion living in towns bigger than 10,000, from 8 per cent to 23 per cent. The numbers of males employed in farming declined by a quarter and the ratio of farmworkers to farmers more than halved.7 Of particular importance for patterns of consumption, incomes rose sharply in post-Famine Ireland. The money wages of labourers more than doubled in the second half of the century. Food prices increased until about 1870 but fell thereafter, and rents absorbed a greater proportion of incomes than they had done before the Famine. Even so, the poor were left with more disposable income to spend on eating and drinking than their fathers and grandfathers as their real incomes increased.8 3 The pre-famine figure is based on Austin Bourke, ‘The visitation of God’? The potato and the great Irish famine, ed. Jacqueline Hill and Cormac Ó Gráda (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1993), 55. 4 Calculated from Agricultural statistics for Saorstat Éireann 1927–1933, 130, by R. O’Connor, and E. W. Henry, ‘Estimates of gross and net output and income arising in agriculture in all Ireland and in the Free State area in selected years between 1900/01 and 1926/27’, Irish Economic and Social History, 23 (1996), 45–72. 5 Turner, After the Famine, 16–22, 47–54; Cormac Ó Gráda, Ireland: a new economic history 1780–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 257–9. 6 Turner, After the Famine, 59; Ó Gráda, New economic history, 260; E. J. Riordan, Modern Irish trade and industry (London: Methuen, 1920), 81, 85–7. 7 Líam Kennedy and L. A. Clarkson, ‘Birth, death and exile: Irish population history, 1700–1921’, in B. J. Graham and L. J. Proudfoot (eds.), An historical geography of Ireland (London: Academic Press, 1993), 160–1; David Fitzpatrick, ‘The disappearance of the Irish agricultural labourer, 1841–1912’, Irish Economic and Social History, 7 (1980), 87–8. 8 A. L. Bowley, ‘The statistics of wages in the United Kingdom during the last hundred years’, Part III, Journal of Royal Statistical Society, 62 (1899), 400–1; Ó Gráda, New economic history, 236–9.

90  , ‒ The survivors of the Great Famine and their successors found themselves in a changing world. Less of their food was grown on the farms and in the gardens of Ireland; more came from abroad and was purchased from shopkeepers and dealers. The numbers of persons engaged in food retailing grew from fewer than 24,000 in 1861 to almost 69,000 by the end of the century. The number of grocers per head of population increased from 40 to 115. Beneath the network of retailers was a raggle-taggle army of petty dealers and traders spread throughout the countryside.9 Shopkeepers and dealers in their turn relied on the transport links provided by steam trains, steam ships, better roads, and, eventually, bicycles, motor trucks, and motor cars. Food consumption among the poorer people of Ireland became more diversified. In 1868–9 the government appointed a committee to inquire into conditions in gaols. To aid its deliberations it reviewed the diets of agricultural labourers, small farmers, and artisans. It concluded cheerfully: Since the failure of the potato crop in 1846 a remarkable change has taken place in the dietary of the agricultural labourer and small farmer, consisting in the substitution to a considerable extent of wheaten bread, of oaten and of Indian meal, for the potato. The potato is not now so exclusive an article of diet as it was in former years, and its lessened consumption seems to indicate that . . . a better proportion has been struck as to the relative amount of a potato and a cereal diet. The use of butcher’s meat, even in small quantity, seems to be, to a certain extent, limited to districts in the immediate vicinity of towns and villages; the coarser parts of the meat being principally employed. Bacon is much more frequently used, and the Sunday dinner often consists of it with cabbage or potatoes. Of fowl, the only kind in use is goose, and that on festive occasions. Other forms of animal food, such as butter, eggs, milk, dripping, are probably more extensively used than appears . . . Salt and dried fish are in common use, while fresh fish is rarely obtainable, except by the inhabitants of the coast districts, and by them frequently. In districts in the North-west of Ireland, especially in summer, when potatoes are not to be had, there is a large consumption of mussels, while on the western coast limits, cockles, razor fish, and whelks, etc., are in common use.10

The committee observed what a series of dietary surveys of the poor between 1839 and 1904 confirmed. Other evidence, including the Base-Line reports of the Congested Districts Board and the work of Sir Charles Cameron, the long-serving medical officer of health for Dublin, all pointed in the same direction. Table 5.1 summarizes the findings of several surveys conducted between 1839 and 1904. The surveys themselves are discussed in detail in Chapter 8. The simple picture presented in Table 5.1 is fleshed out in the sections that follow. 9 E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Food retailing, nutrition and health in Ireland, 1839–1989: one hundred and fifty years of eating’, in Adel P. den Hartog (ed.), Food technology, science and marketing: European diet in the twentieth century (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1995), 222; Ó Gráda, New economic history, 264–70. 10 Report of a committee appointed by the lord lieutenant to inquire into the dietaries of county and borough gaols in Ireland, PP 1867–8 [3981], XXXV, 661–2.

 , ‒

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T 5.1. Average daily consumption of food (in ounces) by male adult labourers, 1839–1904

Potatoes Buttermilk Skimmed milk Milk Indian meal Oatmeal Flour Bread Meat Bacon Fish Eggs Butter Tea Sugar

1839

1859

1904 rural

1904 urban

184 58 66 58 0 Not known 0 0 0 0 Not known 0 0 0 0

61 38 30 17 18 11 12 11 0.05 0.04 0.30 0.02 0.50 0.03 0.30

28

17 2 – 10 – 1.5

} }

14

15 5 0.3 1.7 Not known 0.6 0.7 0.3 3.0

} 23 1.12 1.16 Not known 0.6 2.0 0.4 3.0

Source: E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Aspects of Irish Diet 1839–1904’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1985).

Potato consumption after the Famine According to Professor Connell, faith in the potato was shattered earliest ‘in north-eastern Ulster . . . because, no doubt, it was never so firmly established. But elsewhere, its real relegation began, not in the 1840s, but in the 1870s and 1880s.’11 Diets in the north-east were generally better than elsewhere before the Famine; and excess death rates in Ulster between 1845 and 1849 were lower than in the other three provinces.12 In several parts of Ulster, nevertheless, especially in the western counties, the potato hung on tenaciously. Eighty-eight of the 102 dietary histories gathered throughout the province in 1859 showed that potatoes remained the major component of menus. This figure surpassed the proportion of potato-eating families in Munster and Leinster, though it was lower than in Connacht. Potato-based diets remained common throughout Ireland although the quantities eaten by individuals fell. E. D. Mapother, a Dublin surgeon, 11

K. H. Connell, ‘The Potato in Ireland’, Past and Present, 23 (1962), 66. Líam Kennedy, Paul S. Ell, E. M. Crawford, and L. A. Clarkson, Mapping the Great Irish Famine: a survey of the famine decades (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999), 68–75; Cormac Ó Gráda, Ireland before and after the Famine: explorations in economic history, 1800–1925 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 87. 12

92  , ‒ remarked in 1863, that in the countryside, ‘the potato, as long as it lasts is still the staple food’.13 Edward Smith observed in the same year, that ‘there can be no doubt, from the universal testimony of all classes, that potatoes are a most highly prized food amongst the labouring population of Ireland, and one in which they indulge as largely as the supply and the enlarged capacity of their stomachs will admit’.14 Three-quarters of families in Ireland still relied heavily on potatoes. Country people grew their own potatoes. In the west and north-west, ‘almost all labourers rent land for a potato crop’. In the south-west labourers ‘have from a quarter to half an acre of potato garden, . . . [and] are thus enabled to live on potatoes without stint, for three, four, or five months of the year’. They also bought potatoes. In counties Kildare, Dublin, Kilkenny, Laois, Wexford, and Waterford, ‘potatoes are frequently used when the price of this commodity is below 4d per stone; but when the price rises above this amount the lowest class of labourer earning 1s a day wages cannot afford to use them’.15 Potatoes were no longer quite the cheap food they once were. A stark demonstration of the continued reliance on potatoes in the west of Ireland was the reappearance of near famine at the end of the 1870s. Potato harvests were poor in three successive years, 1877, 1878, and 1879 and relief committees were set up to stave off starvation by giving out Indian meal. In counties Galway, Mayo, and Leitrim, more than 50 per cent of the population received relief rations, and in Sligo, Donegal, Clare, and Kerry between 35 and 50 per cent.16 As late as the 1880s in the Kerry mountains conditions were reminiscent of pre-Famine times. ‘They live on potatoes and porridge; seldom eat bread, meat never; wine, beer, tea, coffee are to them unknown luxuries.’ In the best seasons, ‘supposing the year to have been an exceptionally good one, the potato crop to have been plentiful, the cow to have been out in the hillside, the necessary grass for the making of a little butter, all that will be sufficient perhaps to prevent starvation’.17 Distress remained a recurrent threat in the west throughout the 1880s and 1890s. However, with rising incomes, the reliance on potatoes was gradually undermined, even in the remote parts. Lord Zetland and a Mr Balfour wrote to the Irish Distress Fund in 1891 that, ‘people sometimes talk as if the statement that the inhabitants of the congested districts were “dependent upon the 13 E. D. Mapother, ‘Suggestions for improving the diet of the Irish labourer’, Journal of the Royal Dublin Society, 4 (1863), 206. 14 Sixth report of the medical officer of the Privy Council, PP 1864 [3416], XXVIII, 286. 15 Thirteenth annual report of the commissioners for administering the laws for the relief of the poor in Ireland, PP 1860 [2654], XXXVII, appendix A, no. 2, ‘Report on labouring poor in Ireland’, 31–81. 16 The Irish crisis (Dublin: Proceedings of the Dublin Mansion House Relief Committee, 1881), Appendix IX. 17 Philippe Daryl (also known as Paschal Grousset), Ireland’s disease: notes and impressions (London: George Routledge Sons, 1888), 147, 149.

 , ‒

93

potato” meant that their whole subsistence was derived from such potatoes, as they are able to raise . . . Nothing could be more inaccurate. In no district does the bulk of the community live wholly on the potato.’18 The reports of the Congested Districts Board reflected the drift away from potatoes. Potatoes certainly remained important. In Clonmany, County Donegal, ‘potatoes [were] boiled twice and sometimes thrice a day’. In Grange, County Sligo, ‘potatoes generally last from August until April, and between these dates form the staple food of the people’. But other things were being eaten. Bread was consumed in most districts; tea was drunk in many places, as was milk. Indian meal and fish added to the variety.19 By the early twentieth century, everywhere throughout Ireland potatoes were eaten at fewer meals and in smaller quantities than previously. Whereas adult males in rural Ireland before the Famine had eaten 11 or 12 pounds of potatoes a day, their descendants at the beginning of the twentieth century managed on less than 2 pounds. There was also a gap opening up between town and rural labourers. In 1859, rural labourers ate about a quarter more potatoes than their urban counterparts; by 1904 this difference had widened to about 80 per cent.

Variety and diversity In 1859, a poor law inspector in counties Cork and Limerick became almost lyrical about the culinary riches he thought he had uncovered: Indian meal enters largely into the present dietary of the working class . . . [and] is made use of both in the shape of stirabout and griddle-cakes. The milk used is chiefly either skimmed or sour milk; the latter being at particular seasons very abundant and cheap, is largely drawn upon. Bakers’, or bought bread, when used, is usually fair, but not the best quality. Fish appears to be very considerably made use of at the dinner meal— fresh fish when it is to be had (as near the coast), but when this is impracticable, sprats, herrings, ling, etc. are much used. Milk, fish, and potatoes, when abundant and cheap, are also a good deal used.20

Ten years later the committee setting gaol diets published a table summarizing responses to its inquiries into the food eaten in the community at large. They came from 153 correspondents: 33 clerks of poor law unions; 39 Roman Catholic clergymen, all in the archdiocese of Cashel, and 81 other individuals. Such a host of worthies convinced the committee that its findings were ‘completely reliable’. Table 5.2 is an abridged version. 18

Report on the administration of the Irish distress fund, 1891 (Dublin: A. Thom & Co. Ltd., 1892), 5. Base-Line reports of the Inspectors of the Congested Districts Board, 1892–8 (Dublin 1898 lodged in Manuscript Room, Trinity College, Dublin, Press A.7.11), 27, 289. 20 Thirteenth annual report, 80 19

94  , ‒ T 5.2. Food consumed by labourers, small farmers, and artisans according to respondents to an investigation of prison diets in 1867–1868

Number of respondents Butchers’ meat Bacon Butter Eggs Milk Dripping Fish Bread Stirabout or porridge Potatoes Turnips Cabbage Tea Coffee Cocoa

Leinster

Munster

Ulster

Connacht

Ireland

45 1 4 9 6 38 3 23 32 36 44 7 13 42 3 4

66 4 – 4 5 46 – 12 18 41 52 14 19 43 7 –

25 6 2 – – 20 – 16 16 22 25 – 3 23 – –

17 1 1 4 6 16 2 15 8 15 17 2 2 14 2 2

153 12 7 17 17 120 5 66 74 114 138 23 37 122 12 6

Source: Report of a committee appointed by the lord lieutenant to inquire into the dietaries of county and borough gaols in Ireland, PP 1867–8 [3981], XXXV.

The committee’s confidence in its evidence was not wholly justified since Ulster and Connacht were underrepresented and Munster overrepresented by the Cashel priests. The gaps in the Ulster columns have more to do with the small number of informants than the likelihood that Ulster people did not eat butter, eggs, dripping, and turnips. Nevertheless, the table tells a story. The old refrain of milk, porridge, and potatoes is evident; but so too is an emerging pattern, notably of tea drinking. Ulster scored well on meat, bacon, bread, and tea. A feature not obvious from the table was that poor law officials had a rosier view of the ‘ordinary diet’, than did the clergy and private individuals. All ‘private correspondents’ reported that meat and bacon were ‘seldom used’, although they were effusive about turnips and cabbages. But the nineteen poor law clerks spotted distinct carnivorous tastes developing amongst labourers and farmers. A growing consumption of bakers’ bread, turnips, and cabbages, even when washed down by gallons of tea, was, nevertheless, hardly a shift to gourmet living, but judged against the monotony of pre-Famine fare it was almost a riotous abundance. Viewed from a pre-Famine perspective, things were getting better. Writing in 1859, of the peasantry in counties Louth, Meath, King’s, Westmeath, and parts of Tipperary and County Dublin, C. G. Otway,

 , ‒

95

a poor law inspector, commented, that ‘the diet of the labouring classes . . . has, within the last seven or eight years been much improved . . . Before the Famine potatoes with occasional milk was almost the sole diet . . .; now, wholemeal wheaten bread, Indian and oatmeal stirabout, and even tea and sugar, as well as milk is used not merely occasionally and as a great luxury, but almost generally.’21 Among the newcomers was Indian meal.

Indian meal and oatmeal The increasing consumption of grain-based foods after 1850 attracted a good deal of comment. The most novel cereal was Indian meal, once something to be eaten only in dire circumstances, but now established as a regular item of diet. Table 5.3 shows the course of imports between the Famine and the end of the nineteenth century. T 5.3. Indian corn and meal imports to Ireland, 1840–1899 (cwt) Quinquennium

Annual average

1840–44 1845–49 1850–54 1855–59 1860–64 1865–69 1870–74 1875–79 1880–84 1885–89 1890–94 1895–99

29,432 5,833,014 4,490,183 2,754,022 5,019,497 4,001,033 5,118,860 8,199,613 6,003,693 6,367,079 7,938,721 9,477,956

Source: E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Indian meal and pellagra in nineteenth-century Ireland’, in J. M. Goldstrom and L. A. Clarkson, Irish population, economy and society: essays in honour of the late K. H. Connell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 115.

Following the surge during the Famine years, imports fluctuated sharply around a rising trend. In the 1850s they were the equivalent to roughly threequarters of a hundredweight per person per year: at the end of the century to more than 2 hundredweight. Small quantities of meal were also imported from British ports.22 Indian meal was fed to pigs and poultry as well as to people, and much of the upward trend in imports from the 1870s was associated with the 21

Thirteenth annual report, 52. Report on the trade in imports and exports at Irish ports during the year 1904, PP 1906 [Cd 3237], CXIV, 655; and in PP annually thereafter. 22

96  , ‒ increase in livestock and poultry numbers.23 But Indian meal was also used in stirabout, bread, and cakes. Imports of Indian meal peaked during subsistence crises, mostly obviously during the Great Famine, but also in 1859–64, 1872, 1879–80, and 1890. It was cheaper than the alternatives. In 1850 Indian meal cost £7 10s. per ton and oatmeal, £10. In 1863 Indian meal was about half the price of oatmeal. The relationship remained unchanged into the twentieth century.24 At first people disliked Indian meal because it damaged the intestines and caused excruciating pain if it was improperly ground and cooked.25 Once they had learned how to use it properly, from published recipes and painful experience, Indian meal established a secure place in diets for several decades. The majority of families in all provinces ate Indian meal in quantities ranging from 12 to 27 ounces a day in the early 1860s. In counties Cork, Limerick, and Waterford, ‘Indian meal enters largely into the present dietary of the working classes. This is usually of good quality, and is made use of both in the shape of stirabout and griddle-cakes.’26 Dr Edward Smith described the use of Indian meal in 1863. ‘Maize or Indian corn meal is used exclusively in this division of the [United] Kingdom.’ Its popularity was ‘not due to any preference for its flavour, nor altogether to a belief in its nutritional qualities, but because of its furnishing in the absence of potatoes, the largest amount of nourishment at the smallest cost’.27 A year earlier when potatoes were scarce, Henry Coulter, a correspondent for the Saunders News-letter, had reported from Ballina, County Mayo, that ‘many of the small farmers and their families are at present subsisting exclusively on Indian meal or oatmeal. Some are getting their own oats ground, but the majority are selling them and applying the proceeds to the purchase of Indian meal, which is becoming a common article of diet.’28 The committee reviewing gaol diets in 1868–9 noted the considerable consumption of Indian meal. A County Galway doctor told the committee that a ‘given weight of Indian meal makes a larger bulk of stirabout than oatmeal, and they like it well; but it is commonly observed by labourers, who use it, that the sense of hunger quickly returns when depending on it for food, so that one23 Lynn Doyle (pseud., Leslie A. Montgomery), Ballygullion (first published, 1908; repr. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, no date), 51; James. H. Tuke, The condition of Donegal: letters with further suggestions for the improvement reprinted from The Times (London: W. Ridgway, 1889), 17; Second report by Mr Wilson Fox on the wages, earnings and conditions of employment of agricultural labourers in the United Kingdom, PP 1905 [Cd. 2376], XCVII, Appendix X, 608. 24 W. N. Hancock, Report on the supposed progressive decline of Irish prosperity (Dublin: Thom, 1863), 79. 25 E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Indian meal and pellagra in nineteenth-century Ireland’, in J. M. Goldstrom and L. A. Clarkson (eds.), Irish population, economy and society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 119–20. 26 Thirteenth annual report, 80. 27 Sixth report, 285, 289. 28 Henry Coulter, The West of Ireland: its existing condition and prospects (Dublin: Hodges & Smith, 1862), 246.

 , ‒

97

third of oatmeal is commonly added.’29 The committee published a recipe for polenta made from maize flour boiled in water until it formed a semi-solid mass. It could be eaten with milk, butter, or vegetables, or fried in dripping, ‘when it is a very palatable dish’. It could also be blended with parsnips and water to form ‘a favourite and nutritious food’. Indian meal was used extensively as a relief food in 1879–80.30 In the 1890s it was distributed throughout in the Congested Districts when the potato harvest failed. In Desertegney, County Donegal, ‘Indian meal stirabout is in many families the substitute for potatoes’.31 In Letterkenny, ‘for the poorest, after the potatoes are exhausted, Indian meal stirabout forms the principal article of food . . . Potatoes while they last forming the staple food, and when they are exhausted Indian meal.’32 By the end of the century, oatmeal was making a comeback. At Islandeady, County Mayo, ‘Indian meal is not much favoured except by the very poor people, and oaten meal, the use of which at one time had almost died out, is now again much used’. In County Galway, ‘the people are gradually ceasing to take Indian meal’.33 Oatmeal had returned even earlier elsewhere. In 1882 the earl of Shannon’s agent, William B. Leslie, had urged small tenant farmers to imitate the Scottish custom of making oatmeal their principal food.34 Maize was no longer served in Dublin hospitals in the 1880s; and none of the dietary investigators in 1903–4 discovered Indian meal being used in towns, with the exception of a single family in Dublin that was eating polenta. Sir Charles Cameron commented that, ‘Indian meal formerly much employed in the dietary of the poor, now rarely enters into their cuisine’.35 Indian meal had once saved thousands from starvation; now it was becoming relegated to the back of the store cupboard. Oatmeal had been the traditional food grain before the Famine, sharing with potatoes the role of feeding the peasantry. From 1852 to 1872 there was a steep fall in the production of oats.36 Thereafter output remained fairly steady, with minor upward swings in the mid-1870s, 1880–1, and 1893–4. Output per head held up fairly well, averaging 5–6 hundredweight in the 1850s and just under 4 hundredweight by the end of the century. There was also a small export and import trade in oats with Britain and America. Fragmentary data from the 1860s suggest that the combined annual export of oats and oatmeal 29 Report of the committee appointed to inquire into the dietaries of county and borough gaols in Ireland, PP 1867–8 (3981), XXXV, 738. 30 George Sigerson, ‘Final report on destitution diseases in the west’, in The Irish crisis of 1879–80, Proceedings of the Dublin Mansion House Relief Committee, 1880 (Dublin: Browne & Nolan, 1881). 31 Base-Line reports, 33. 32 Ibid. 87. 33 Ibid. 364, 442. 34 Cork Constitution, 4 Dec. 1882 35 Sir Charles Cameron, Reminiscences of Sir Charles Cameron (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co. Ltd., 1913), 169. 36 Turner, After the famine, 27.

98  , ‒ did not exceed 1 million hundredweight.37 Between 1904, when Irish trade figures are distinguished from those of the rest of the United Kingdom, and 1918, annual imports of oatmeal into Ireland regularly exceeded exports.38 Attempts to estimate human oatmeal consumption in Ireland are complicated because oats were fed to animals as well as eaten by people; up to 60 per cent of output may have gone into animal feed in the early twentieth century.39 The dietary surveys give some indication of human consumption. In 1859 the use of oatmeal was still low compared with pre-Famine levels, but there were marked regional differences. Labourers in Ulster enjoyed the highest consumption, just as they had before the Famine. In Leinster and Connacht oatmeal was eaten less than in Ulster, and in Munster scarcely at all. So marked was the regional pattern that Edward Smith commented that ‘oatmeal was not usually eaten by the [families] in Tipperary, Kerry, Limerick, and Clare, but was generally purchased in Galway, at Tuam, in Westmeath, Cavan, Monaghan and Armagh.’ Low levels of consumption were noted by the Commission on Agriculture (1880–1) and by Professor Baldwin, Inspector of the agricultural schools in Ireland in his evidence to the Select Committee on Industries in 1884–5.40 A landowner from County Londonderry, was sure that the ‘consumption of oatmeal is decidedly dying out . . .; I should say it is not one-fourth of what it was 25 years ago.’41 The reduced use of oatmeal was particularly marked in towns. In the 1850s and 1860s consumption by adult males averaged between 4 and 5 pounds a week in both town and country. In 1904 urban labourers ate only 60 per cent of the quantities consumed by country workers. Of seventeen Dublin families studied by Dr Lumsden for Guinness’s Brewery at the beginning of the twentieth century, adults ate only 11 ounces a week. He concluded that oatmeal now found only ‘an occasional place in the menu’, adding, ‘it is a great pity that this excellent food is not consumed more largely’.42 Stafford and La Touche discovered that 15 out of 21 Dublin families used oatmeal, but in very small quantities. 37 Return of the quantities of corn and meal imported into Ireland from Great Britain in each of the last five years, . . . and, similar return of corn and meal exported from Ireland to Great Britain . . ., PP 1864 (217), LVIII; Return of the quantities of corn and meal imported into Ireland from Great Britain, in the year ending 31 December 1864 . . . and, similar return of corn and meal exported from Ireland to Great Britain, PP 1865 (257), XXXI; Return of corn and meal exports from Ireland to Great Britain, PP 1866 (365), XXXIX; Return of quantities of corn and meal imported into Ireland from Great Britain in 1866, . . ., and, similar return of corn and meal exported from Ireland to Great Britain, PP 1867 (373), LXIV; Return of quantities of corn and meal imported into Ireland from Great Britain, . . . and similar return of corn and meal exported from Ireland to Great Britain, PP 1867–8 (378), LXIV. 38 Riordan, Irish trade and industry, 95. 39 Turner, After the famine, 99. 40 Sixth report of medical officer ..., 285; Commission on agriculture, PP 1881 [C 2778–I], XV, Q.3145–8; Report from the Select Committee on industries (Ireland), PP 1884–5 (288), IX, Q.7379–82, 7387. 41 Report . . . on industries, Qs. 7379 & 7382. 42 John Lumsden, An investigation into the income and expenditure of seventeen brewery families and a study of their diets (Edinburgh: Morrison & Gibb, 1905), 129.

 , ‒

99

Wheat, wheat flour, and bread Oatmeal failed to recapture its pre-Famine prominence because wheaten flour made inroads into labourers’ diets from the 1860s. Before the Famine, wheat had been a cash crop, rarely affordable by labourers. Output of wheat was maintained fairly well in the 1850s, but fell sharply from 1860 to insignificant levels by the end of the century. Several reasons explain the decline. The fall in population reduced the number of consumers. The strain of wheat grown in Ireland, a soft variety that required kiln drying prior to milling, was inconvenient and costly. The major reason, however, was foreign competition. From the early 1860s large quantities of cheap, good quality wheat entered Ireland from America and the Balkans. A grain once beyond the purchasing power of labourers now became a common component of diet. In addition, ‘the rise in wages, without any rise in [the price of ] wheat, has brought household bread within the reach of a much larger number of the labouring classes’.43 The introduction of roller milling in the 1870s further assisted in bringing flour within the means of the poor.44 Some millers were hesitant to adopt the new methods, but their more enterprising rivals undercut those who stuck to traditional ways. Many traditional millers ‘found their trade going down so badly lately that they have been unwilling, and in some cases unable, to adopt the modern system of rolling’.45 As early as 1859 poor law inspectors observed that ‘in and about towns and villages [in the west] there [was] generally an effort to procure some flour or baker’s bread . . . for breakfast on Sunday morning’. In Leinster bread was now in regular use.46 Urban bakeries multiplied from the mid-century and ‘the decade of the eighties saw the coming of the modern bakery industry’.47 In Belfast in 1891, ‘no manufacture [has] shown such extraordinary advancement during recent years as that connected with the baking trade’.48 Town bakers had a rural as well as an urban clientele. The Belfast bakery of Barney Hughes conducted an extensive business throughout the surrounding countryside from the 1850s. He boasted that he could supply ‘the inhabitants of Belfast and vicinity’ with bread, ‘manufactured, pure and unadulterated as cheap or cheaper, than any part of the United Kingdom, or even the world’.49 43

Hancock, Report . . ., 78. E. R. R. Green, ‘History of the Belfast grain trade’, Proceedings of the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society, 2nd ser. 8 (1971), 42. 45 Report . . . on Industries, Q.7383. 46 Thirteenth Annual report . . ., 50, 52, 139. 47 Green, ‘Grain trade’, 43. 48 W. H. Crawford (ed.), Industries of the north one hundred years ago, Part 1 (First published London, 1891; republished Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1986), 89. 49 L. A. Clarkson, ‘The city and the country’, in J. C. Beckett, et al., Belfast: the making of the city (Belfast: Appletree Press, 1983), 157. 44

100  , ‒ Another Belfast bakery, the OPB [Old Public Bakery] sent its vans deep into County Antrim. Florence Mary McDowell in the 1890s recalled how during her childhood in Doagh, the family bought its bread from their carts.50 The OPB had been established in 1800 as the Belfast Flour and Bread Company and changed its name in 1889, possibly to create the—erroneous—impression that it was a municipal enterprise. Its proclaimed objectives were ‘to prevent unfair monopoly, and to secure to all classes of inhabitants a supply of pure and wholesome bread and flour at equitable prices’.51 By the 1870s, ‘the practice of using . . . dry bread once or twice a day [was] becoming more general among the peasantry’ in County Carlow.52 When bread was home-baked, the poor bought low-grade flour and mixed it with Indian meal. But as real incomes rose, the labouring classes became less satisfied with second, third, or fourth quality flours. William Keating, a woollen merchant from Galway, told the Industries Committee that ‘the poorest of the population of Ireland now use the very finest flour to a considerable extent; they will not use even seconds; they buy the finest flour’.53 By 1900 more bakers’ bread than ever was eaten in town and countryside alike, even in the impoverished Congested Districts.54 At Grange, County Sligo, ‘the most marked difference in the diet of the people in this district [from earlier years] is the large amount of bakers’ bread consumed, [the] amount made at home being very small in comparison’. The inspector for Dunfanaghy, County Donegal reported that, ‘great numbers of [people] buy bakers’ bread’. But, he added, ‘in this way [the district] differs from most of the other congested districts where they mainly eat flour bread made at home’.55 In Dublin, ‘most of the families buy [bread] from the baker, and the 2 pound white loaf is the one invariably chosen’. ‘The baker’s bread is of good quality, . . . even the very poor [would] not purchase inferior bread.’56 Mass production methods established wheaten bread as a commonplace in town tenements and slums that did not possess the means of baking. Bakers’ bread had become the bread of the poor. Alexander Irvine, in a highly sentimental account of his childhood in Antrim Town in the 1880s, recalled that ‘when hunger got ahead of wages the family bread was bought at Sam Johnston’s bakery’. ‘When work and wages got ahead of hunger, which was seldom, Anna [his Mother] baked her own bread.’57 A feature of Irish bread in the late nineteenth century was its variety. Besides 50

F. M. McDowell, Other days around me (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1972), 27. PRONI, D1809/275. ‘The Belfast Flour & Bread Company Ltd and General Rules’. 52 Report . . . on dietaries of . . . gaols, 78. 53 Report . . . on industries, 362, Q. 6612. 54 Base-Line reports, 99, 289, 680, 289. 55 Ibid. 99, 289. 56 Lumsden, An investigation, 128; Sir Charles Cameron, ‘Earnings of the poor’, in Reminiscences, 169. 57 Alexander Irvine, My lady of the chimney corner (first published 1913; repr. Belfast: Appletree Press, 1980), 43–5. 51

 , ‒

101

bread made from Indian meal, oatmeal, or wheaten flour, blends of meals were popular. Indian meal was mixed with oatmeal or wheaten meal. The Irish love of potatoes extended into bread making. ‘Fadge’, ‘boxty’, and potato-apple bread used cooked mashed potato as a major ingredient.58 Yeast was used by bakers, but in cottages the usual raising agent was sodium bicarbonate: hence the names ‘soda bread’ and ‘soda farls’. Homemade breads were baked on a griddle or in a pot oven hung over the fire. Many of the flat griddle-baked breads were unleavened.59

Dairy produce Butter and milk were the most important of the dairy foods. In seventeenthcentury Ireland butter had been devoured in lumps like cheese. Its consumption among the poor declined during the eighteenth century because the export trade absorbed much of the output. As bread consumption increased after the Famine, there was no matching rise in butter consumption, which suggests that bread was generally eaten dry. Few poor households ate butter in quantity in 1859. As late as the 1880s, butter was provided only as an ‘extra’ for patients at the Meath hospital in Dublin, although nursing and domestic staff at the nearby Rotunda were allowed 12 ounces a week.60 Butter was rarely eaten in the Congested Districts and its occasional use provoked comment. In Glencolumbkille, County Donegal, breakfast consisted of ‘home-made bread of flour and Indian meal, tea and if they have it butter’. In Glenties, ‘butter is taken on the bread when they can have it’; at Inver, only ‘if it is plentiful’.61 By 1900, a sharp contrast in butter consumption existed between the extremely poor and the better-off. Unskilled workers and rural labourers used butter very sparingly. Many very poor Dublin families never tasted it. Consumption was also low among agricultural labourers living on family incomes of around £1 per week. Butter consumption was restricted to labourers who owned a cow or were given butter by their employers.62 Among skilled artisans, on the other hand, butter was an established part of diet. Consumption doubled in towns between 1859 and 1904. Families living on less than 25 shillings a week in 1904 ate under one pound of butter a week, but those 58 Fadge bread is made of cooked mashed potato, flour, salt, and fat kneaded together into a dough, rolled, and cut into farls. Boxty bread is prepared with peeled, grated raw potato to which is added flour, baking powder, salt, and milk to make a soft batter. Potato apple bread is a variation of fadge bread, chopped apple with a little sugar being added to the basic recipe. 59 Kevin Danaher, ‘Bread in Ireland’, in Alexander Fenton and Trefor M. Owen (eds.), Food in perspective (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1981), 63. 60 Twenty-fifth report of the Board of Superintendence of Dublin hospitals, with appendices, PP 1883 [c.3739], XXVII, appendix no. 5, 43 61 Base-Line reports, 176, 209, 220. Emphasis added. 62 D. A. Chart, ‘Unskilled labour in Dublin: its housing and living conditions’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Part 94 (1914), 169; Second report of Mr Wilson Fox . . ., 249.

102  , ‒ earning more than 40 shillings consumed more than 4 pounds. Prosperous town labourers in Ireland ate twice as much butter as English and Scottish artisans. A substitute for butter in Britain was margarine. In Ireland it was hardly eaten at all. The Board of Trade urban investigation in 1904 was the only one to discover any use of margarine. Neither did the poor eat cheese to any extent. It did not appear in the dietary surveys in 1859 and 1863 or among the reports of the Congested Districts Board. Turning to liquid milk, consumption rose during the second half of the nineteenth century. In County Cork in 1886: for the labouring classes, with higher wages and steadier employment, milk was no longer the luxury that it had been before the famine. When dieted by a farmer, bound labourers invariably received two pints of buttermilk along with each meal of potatoes. Unbound labourers purchased their own milk, usually boiled skim or ‘skyblue’, but sometimes more expensive, fresh whole milk.63

Buttermilk and skimmed milk continued to be the usual dairy drink of the poor. ‘The continuous high price of new milk has placed that article without the reach of the labouring poor. The article used, although described as “skimmilk” is sour and thick on delivery, and from which every particle of cream has been extracted and removed’, reported the poor law inspector for Clare, Tipperary, and Limerick in 1859.64 Things were changing, however. In 1904 in Dublin whole milk, purchased from urban dairies, greatly exceeded the consumption of butter- and skimmed milk. In rural districts, fresh milk ‘was rarely purchased, and the sources of supply [were] allowances from the farmers (often skimmed or buttermilk), the produce of their own goats, and particularly in the case of herds, of their own cows’.65 Tinned, sweetened, condensed milk was much used in Britain in the late nineteenth century because it kept well and was tasty, but there was little demand in rural Ireland. A doctor with extensive experience among the rural population told the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration at the beginning of the twentieth century that the poor could not afford condensed milk. In Dublin, where it could be bought for two or three pennies a tin, it was occasionally used in tea.66 Two general points about milk emerge from the dietary surveys. First, the old pattern in which buttermilk consumption was greater than that of whole milk was reversed by the early twentieth century. Secondly, the combined consumption of buttermilk and fresh milk declined. Between Edward Smith’s 1863 63 J. S. Donnelly, Jr, The land and people of nineteenth-century Cork (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 246. 64 Thirteenth annual report, 62. 65 Second report by Wilson Fox, 249. 66 Inter-departmental committee on physical deterioration, PP 1904 [Cd. 2210], XXXII, 361, Q.9869; Cameron, ‘Earnings of the poor’, in Reminiscences, 170.

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investigation and the Board of Trade’s rural survey in 1904, the average weekly consumption of milk of all kinds fell from 31 pints to 19 pints per family. The most important cause of both changes was the increase in tea drinking.

Tea and other groceries The tea-drinking propensities of Irish men and women during the later nineteenth century attracted considerable comment. Per capita consumption rose from 0.5 pound to 2.2 pounds between the late 1830s and the early 1860s.67 In Ireland as a whole, during the late 1850s more than one-third of families were tea drinkers, but the proportions ranged from 66 per cent in Leinster to 12 per cent in Munster. A poor law investigator in Ulster suspected that more tea was being drunk than his informants let on. ‘Although it is not stated in the returns I have received, still I am well satisfied that more or less tea is used in almost all the families in the country.’68 Dr Edward Smith noticed widespread tea drinking in the west of Ireland. Consumption, though, was uneven. ‘Tea is used very generally in towns, and sometimes to a large amount, whilst in some of the country places its use is almost unknown.’69 The tea habit spread rapidly during the 1870s and 1880s. In Galway, even the poorest families would purchase nothing but the finest quality tea: ‘the best teas that are sold anywhere in the United Kingdom are sold in the west of Ireland’. J. H. Tuke, returning to County Donegal in 1889 after forty years, noticed a great change in consumption habits since his previous visit, in particular the great quantities of tea consumed.70 Tea drinking in Dublin reached prodigious levels by the 1880s. Nurses, female pupils, and ward maids at the Rotunda hospital were allowed 4 ounces of tea a week in 1883.71 Such a ration would provide perhaps 2 gallons of tea; say more than seventy cups a week, or ten cups a day. The Base-Line reports were full of references to tea. In Dunfanaghy, County Donegal, ‘at every meal they have tea’. At Genties poor families drank tea four times a day, though their food generally was described as monotonous. In Glencolumbkille, ‘tea is drunk in excess three times a day by most, and by all once or twice’. In Westport, County Mayo, ‘all the families use tea at least once daily’. In Joyce County, County Galway, tea was ‘always’ used at least once a day and often two or three times. In Kenmare, County Kerry, ‘tea is much used of late’.72 In 1903–4, family tea consumption in rural districts averaged 9 ounces a week, and in towns nearly 12 ounces. These were higher levels than those found in England, Scotland, and Wales. Tea was drunk strong, often black, and thickly sweetened with sugar. ‘When 67 69 71

Thom’s official directory, 1868, 770. Sixth report, 293. Twenty-fifth report, 43.

68 70 72

Thirteenth annual report, 41. Tuke, Condition of Donegal, 12. Base-Line reports, 99, 133, 177, 382, 442, 684.

104  , ‒ milk is scarce’, wrote the Base-Line reporter from Newport, County Mayo, ‘tea is taken without it, and a greater quantity of sugar is then also consumed’.73 Tea was boiled practically to extinction, a practice that explains the insistence of consumers on a high-quality tea. The medical profession attributed many gastric ailments to ‘stewed’ tea: the pot [was] allowed to remain on the range or near the fire for hours on end, and replenished with water as long as any colouring matter [could] be produced. Thus all its tannin is extracted, and no doubt a very injurious effect upon the alimentary canal . . . is brought about. Much of the anaemia, dyspepsia and gastric derangement a doctor sees in hospital and dispensary practice chiefly amongst young women and very often children is the result of this pernicious tea drinking habit.74

Between 1896 and 1898 Dr Charles Browne conducted a series of ‘ethnographic’ studies among the islands and peninsulas of the west coast of Ireland. He was much struck by the levels of tea consumption even in these remote parts. At one point he was provoked into condemning ‘the abuse of tea’. In Connemara ‘tea is taken at every meal, and is drunk very strong; as it is usually “stewed” or overdrawn it is not by any means wholesome’.75 Poor families spent large sums of money on tea. ‘In nearly every instance’, wrote an observer from Donegal, ‘three shillings [15 new pence] a pound is paid for tea.’ If they bought it in 2-ounce quantities it cost the equivalent of 3s. 8d. (18.3 new pence) a pound. ‘The people’, he continued, ‘are quite at the mercy of the dealers as regards their tea, paying three or four times its value.’76 In rural Ireland tea and sugar accounted for almost 20 per cent of food expenditure in 1904. Ten years later, 14 per cent of food spending in Dublin was on tea and sugar. Almost as much was spent on tea as on potatoes.77 Tea and sugar were virtually in joint demand. The dietary surveys of 1859, 1863, and 1903–4 indicate a tenfold rise in per capita consumption of sugar, admittedly from very low levels, to over one and a quarter pounds per week by 1904. Much of the sugar was used in tea. The Richmond, Whitworth, and Hardwick hospitals in Dublin prescribed recipes for tea for patients in the 1880s. For 6 pints of tea they allowed 1.5 ounces of tea, 3 ounces of sugar, and 0.5 pints of new milk. Nurses at the Rotunda liked their tea even sweeter. To add to their weekly ration of 4 ounces of tea, they were allowed a pound of sugar.78 What sugar was not used in tea was sprinkled on porridge and stirabout. Coffee and cocoa were mentioned in a few of the dietary surveys. The 73

Base-Line reports, 346. Lumsden, An investigation, 129. 75 Charles R. Browne, ‘The Ethnography of Ballycrory, County Mayo’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 4 (1896–8). Quotations at pp. 243, 553. 76 Base-Line reports, 177. 77 Lumsden, An investigation, 247; W. H. Thompson, War and the food of the Dublin labourer (Dublin: Women’s National Health Association of Ireland, 1916). 78 Twenty-fifth report, 42, 43. 74

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commission setting prison diets in 1868 noted their occasional use. Five of the seventeen families of Guinness employees in 1903 sometimes purchased cocoa.79 In 1904, a Dublin tobacco spinner in ‘irregular’ employment occasionally had cocoa with his breakfast.80 In the same year, cocoa was used by eight of the twenty-one Dublin families studied by Stafford and La Touche. Stafford remarked, ‘the quantity of protein might be considerably increased if cocoa were used in place of tea’.81 An investigator for the Congested District Board in County Kerry commented, surprisingly, that ‘the poorer classes take coffee’.82 In England ‘coffee . . . [was] primarily a middle class drink, and rarely found a place in the wage earner’s budget’.83 The same was true in Ireland. Similarly with other groceries. There were four references to rice in dietary surveys of 1859 and 1863 and occasional references to rice and tapioca in 1904. The better-off Guinness families sometimes bought a pot of jam. Meat, fish, and eggs Before the Famine beef, pork, bacon, and fish eaten in tiny quantities and commonly referred to as ‘kitchen’ or ‘relish’ were luxuries to be enjoyed at Christmas and Easter. They were delicacies still in the later nineteenth century, although consumption was growing. Edward Smith found a County Kerry family where a labourer earning 6 shillings, and other members of the family 9 shillings, had meat regularly for Sunday lunch. Poorer families tasted meat perhaps once a month, or possibly only at Easter and Christmas. The Rotunda allowed nurses and domestics a generous ration of three-quarters of a pound of beef or mutton on five days a week in 1883; on the sixth day (Thursday) the ration was 4 ounces of meat and 6 of bacon. Friday was a fish day. In the Congested Districts fresh meat was eaten on special occasions.84 Bacon, though, was used regularly. The poor, both in town and country, ate fatty American bacon that was cheaper than Irish bacon, much of which was exported. Bacon fat was rendered down and poured over potatoes and cabbage. Other popular dishes were pigs’ cheek and crubeens (trotters).85 By the twentieth century meat consumption had increased both among rural labourers and urban artisans. Bacon remained a favourite, but coarse cuts of beef and mutton were popular, together with offal: ‘liver and heart and pigs’ feet are all amongst the dainties which the poor purchase, especially for 79

Lumsden, An investigation, 37, 70, 78, 92, 99. Sir Charles Cameron, How the poor live (Dublin: John Falconer, 1904), dietary history no. 6. 81 Royal Commission on the Poor Law and relief of distress, PP 1910 [Cd. 5070], L, Appendix X, Appendix No. II (D), Stafford and La Touche, ‘A note on the social condition’, 25, 27, 28, 31, 35, 37, 38, 40, 156. 82 Base-Line reports, 684. 83 John Burnett, Plenty and want: a social history of diet in England from 1815 to the present day (London: Scolar Press, 1979), 6. 84 Base-Line reports, 86, 99, 210, 232, 536, 581, 643. 85 Ibid. 259, 277, 394, 412, 418, 574, 608; Cameron, ‘Earnings of the poor’, in Reminiscences, 169. 80

106  , ‒ Sunday dinner’. In Dublin butchers in fashionable districts offloaded inferior meat to butchers in the poorer districts and in return took their expensive cuts.86 Nevertheless, ‘beef and mutton are not often found on the tables of the poor. When they are it is generally for the bread winner of the family.’87 Town labourers occasionally ate corned beef. The consumption of fish has never been high in Ireland. Nevertheless, in the nineteenth century fish was eaten more often than either meat or bacon, especially along the western seaboard. Because of the haphazard way by which many people got their supplies, it was likely that its use was greater than dietary surveys reveal. Herrings were the most commonly eaten fish, but hake and conger eels were cheap and plentiful in Dublin.88 Most Guinness workers ate fish regularly, but only one-third of Dublin’s casual labourers did so. As for eggs, the numbers of poultry increased very greatly during the second half of the nineteenth century.89 Nevertheless, eggs were rarely referred to in the dietary surveys. The cross-channel trade removed large quantities from Ireland. A poor law official in 1859 described entering ‘a small shop in a remote village of the County Donegal, [where] the man of the house . . . purchased 30,000 eggs from the peasantry about him every week during the summer’.90 In 1889, Tuke told how: the quantity of eggs exported from these districts [North Donegal] is a very important item . . . At the above price [6d. per dozen] the value of the eggs sold in the Dunfanaghy union and carted at a cost of 30s per ton, to Letterkenny en route to Londonderry and England, is estimated at over £10,000 annually.91

The importance of the egg trade to the inhabitants of the west was emphasized in the Base-Line reports. One described how ‘eggs were exchanged by the people at the shops for groceries over the counter’. In County Galway the egg marketing network was highly organized. Galway provisions’ dealers collected eggs from shopkeepers who issued receipts to their suppliers and credited the value of their accounts.92 In County Roscommon in 1904: each labourer’s wife, even those who have only a small garden, keeps a good many poultry . . . These they feed very well in winter, and they add greatly to their income by the sale of eggs. The egg industry in this and all the western towns is a great source of capital, and thousands of pounds are paid annually. Each market day in the western towns you meet droves of women and girls with baskets of eggs, bringing them to street corners, where they dispose of them to the men who buy, and send them to the English and Scotch markets.93 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

Sir Charles Cameron, ‘How the Dublin poor live’, Eastward Ho, 3 (1885), 431–2. Cameron, ‘Earnings of the poor’, in Reminiscences, 169. Cameron, ‘How the Dublin poor live’, 432–3. T. W. Grimshaw, Facts and figures about Ireland (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1893), 31. Thirteenth annual report, 41. Tuke, Condition of Donegal, 17. Base-Line reports, 51. Second report by Wilson Fox, 256.

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Because of their commercial value, eggs were eaten sparingly at home. In County Leitrim, ‘in spring time the men usually have a couple of boiled eggs at their dinner’. In County Sligo they were ‘more eaten . . . than in Donegal—not so much in the winter as in the summer months, as in winter they are a more marketable commodity than in summer’. In counties Mayo, Galway, and Roscommon men ate eggs ‘sometimes’.94 It is possible that more eggs were kept back from dealers than women were prepared to admit since their husbands preferred to exchange eggs for tea, sugar, and tobacco.

Fruit and vegetables Fruit and vegetables, apart from potatoes, made very little impact on labouring diets. Vegetables were rarely referred to in the 1859 and 1863 dietary surveys. Most country cabins had a cabbage patch and cabbage was a common accompaniment to bacon in the Congested Districts. Sir Charles Cameron remarked that ‘the esculents which enter into dietaries of artizan and labourers are few— cabbage preponderates enormously over all other vegetables combined, if we except the potato. Swedish turnips are occasionally used; peas and beans are rarely consumed.’95 But all twenty-one families in Dublin surveyed in the summer by Stafford and La Touche bought small quantities of vegetables other than potatoes, most commonly cabbage and onions. A few also bought apples and occasionally rhubarb or gooseberries.96

Alcohol We look almost in vain among the dietary surveys for evidence of beer and spirit drinking. Official and quasi-official inquirers paid little attention to alcohol; either that, or the poor were too canny to admit that they spent part of their hard-earned incomes on drink. According to Edward Smith ‘beer and cider were not drunk at all by the farm labourers’. If we are to believe the Board of Trade in 1904, ‘farm labourers generally [drank] very little’, although there was more drinking in towns; some Dublin food budgets showed expenditures of 2 old pence a day on stout.97 That shrewd observer, Sir Charles Cameron, wrote in 1885 that a large proportion of the wages of the working classes is spent in the purchase of alcoholic drinks: the artizan appears to me to be more intemperate than the labourer 94

Base-Line reports, 277, 289, 412, 565. Cameron, ‘How Dublin the poor live’, 432. 96 Royal Commission on the Poor Law and relief of distress, Stafford and La Touche, ‘A note on the social condition’, 25–45. 97 Sixth report, 289; Second report by Wilson Fox, 250. 95

108  , ‒ . . . This no doubt arises from the circumstance that the labourer would lose his employment if he failed to attend regularly to it, which is not so much the case with the tradesman.98

When the working classes turned to alcohol it was to whiskey and beer. The per capita consumption of legally distilled whiskey declined by at least a half between 1857 and 1910 and that of poteen by an even great amount.99 The temperance movement had some impact, but much more influential was the decay of what Professor Connell once described as ‘the malignant economy’ that made whiskey production and consumption such a feature of pre-Famine Ireland. By the end of the century illicit distillation had all but died out in the west of Ireland.100 Poverty also played its part in keeping levels of alcohol consumption low. ‘The labourer spends nothing in whiskey,’ wrote the Freeman’s Journal in September 1861, though a few pence a week goes for tobacco. He cannot afford “a half pint or noggin” . . . Perhaps the most abstemious race in the world is the labouring class of Irishmen. They do not all care for whiskey, and appear to have lost the taste for it. Farmers and their sons are the principal consumers.’101 Tea and beer also made inroads into spirit drinking. Again, according to the Freeman’s Journal in 1863, ‘other substitutes . . . operated to the decline of spirit consumption—beer considerably and tea most of all . . . The taxation of a pint [of beer] is a farthing, on a pint of tea the taxation is somewhat less, assuming a quarter of an ounze (sic) to make a pint. Now the glass of gin is burdened with a duty of five farthings.’102 The duty on whiskey at that time was about 60 farthings per pint.103 There was a fivefold increase in beer production between 1850 and 1900 at a time when the population halved. Per capita consumption increased from 3.5 gallons a year in 1850, to 10.8 gallons in 1871 and 26 gallons in 1901. Even at 26 gallons Irish consumption was smaller than in England and Scotland.104 How, then do we balance the decline in spirit drinking against the rise in beer? The net volume of fluid consumed undoubtedly increased, but it is not clear that the alcoholic intake rose. The safest conclusion to draw is that during the second half of the nineteenth century the consumption of drink of all kinds—alcoholic and non-alcoholic—became more varied, just as was the case with food. Skimmed milk, buttermilk, and whiskey fell out of favour, and fresh milk, beer, and tea became more popular. 98

Cameron, ‘How the Dublin poor live’, 433. K. H. Connell, ‘Illicit distillation’, in K. H. Connell, Irish peasant society: four historical essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 46. 100 Browne, ‘The Ethnography of Ballycrory, County Mayo’, 354. 101 Freeman’s Journal, 19 Sept. 1861. 102 Ibid. 24 Aug. 1863. 103 Connell, ‘Illicit distillation’, 44. 104 Elizabeth Malcolm, ‘Ireland sober, Ireland free’: drink and temperance in nineteenth-century Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1986), 323–5. 99

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Conclusion Post-Great Famine Ireland was a more prosperous country than the Ireland of the first half of the nineteenth century. Labour was less abundant and could command a higher price in the labour markets. After the Famine, the poor in Ireland lived better and ate better than their forefathers. It was not all gain, not at least in the eyes of conservative social commentators. In 1861 a Judge Longfield, using ‘a variety of statistical facts’, questioned whether the quality of life really had ‘greatly improved’. Similarly, the Freeman’s Journal was not impressed: You can, it is said, do anything with statistics—bring out any conclusion or confirm any assertion from official tables. We admit the labourer is not so wretchedly off as he once had been. His wages have increased and his diet and clothing improved; but, with all his economy, he is scarcely able to make the two ends meet. . . . If we assume steady employment throughout the year at an average of five shillings a week, his earnings will bring in thirteen pounds, out of which he has to feed and clothe himself, and his family, and pay the rent. If he lives in a town he pays a shilling a week—if he is attached to a farm he pays in labour for his wigwam and rood of potato ground. We need scarcely say how inadequate are his wages to meet his demands, even if he is fully employed throughout the year and no rains or frost to interrupt the continuity of employment. We should say the average yearly income of the labouring man does not exceed ten pounds a year! At one time it was little more than half that amount, but then potatoes were cheap and abundant, and the science of political economy was so imperfectly understood as to leave the mass of labourers attached to the farmers. Many little perquisites flowed to the labourer from this primitive condition . . . We can only state facts to show that if the labourer’s condition has improved in some respects, it has deteriorated in others. If he has higher wages he has heavier demands—if he is more independent of the farmers he is more dependent on the market . . .105

Neither judges nor journalists knew at first hand what it was like to be a farm labourer. Both might have been even more sceptical had they realized that the greater variety evident in diets did not necessarily equate with better nutrition. In the second half of the nineteenth century labouring diets became, in economic terms, superior to pre-Famine diets because they reflected greater choice. But nutritionally they were inferior. They were inferior, too, to those found elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Dr W. H. Thompson, writing in the winter of 1913–14 about the Dublin labouring classes, observed: No greater mistake could be made than to underfeed or improperly feed a working man—he cannot in the long run turn out more work than is supplied to it in the potential form of food. A good deal of the tendency ‘to take things easy’ which is said with some truth to be characteristic of the Irish workman at home, is unquestionably due to an inadequate supply of food. When he goes abroad, earns more money, and adopts 105

Freeman’s Journal, 19 Sept. 1861.

110  , ‒ the dietary habits of better fed peoples, no more efficient workman could be found. When he returns home again and resumes his old mode of living, the easy-going ways reappear. Wages must be increased to a level that will enable the working classes to procure enough food to live decently and give them power to do their days work.106

The Great Famine was a heavy price to pay for the rising living standards enjoyed by the poorer sections of society after 1850. Living standards are the sum of more things than food, and Professor Ó Gráda has written that a ‘whole series of proxies for living standards—wages, consumption, literacy, life-span, height, birth weight—argue for betterment between the Famine and the First World War’.107 Dietary changes were just one of these proxies. 106 W. H. Thompson, War and the food of the Dublin labourer (Dublin: Women’s National Health Association of Ireland, 1916), no pagination. 107 Ó Gráda, New economic history, 250.

CHAPTER SIX

Food, Famine, and Ireland Introduction Was the Great Famine ‘Ireland’s destiny’?1 Some readings of Ireland’s history interpret the events of 1845–9 as the culmination of an ineluctable progression towards disaster. ‘To give particular dates as the occasions of famine years’, George O’Brien wrote in 1918, ‘is, to some extent, to create a wrong impression of the Irish situation, the truth being that the country lived in a chronic state approaching famine, and that the particular years which are mentioned by historians as famine years are simply the years in which the chronic symptoms became acute.’2 For O’Brien the eighteenth century was a century of increasing hardship created by English economic and social policy. It is clear from his earlier volume on the seventeenth century that, in his mind, the roots of misery stretched back at least to 1600. The seventeenth century had been ‘characterized by periods of economic progress nullified by political cataclysms’. Recovery from the Nine Years War had been shattered by ‘the ravages of the Rebellion years’, during which ‘those who escaped death from war, famine, and disease, succeeded in sustaining life at the bare margin of subsistence by the fitful and often interrupted cultivation of the soil’. Post-Restoration prosperity was disrupted by ‘political upheaval’, thus preparing the ground for the disasters of the eighteenth century.3 As if to emphasize the point, in his third study—of the years between the Union and the Famine—O’Brien stated that the Great Famine, ‘though unprecedented in extent, was not unique in kind. The truth is that, throughout the whole of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries, Ireland had been living on the very border of famine, and the border was not unfrequently crossed.’4 O’Brien was following an interpretation established by William Wilde in 1851. Wilde had prefaced the census volume containing statistics of deaths with a table running to 194 closely printed foolscap pages, chronicling famines and related disasters throughout Ireland’s history. At its conclusion, under the 1 The phrase, although not the interpretation implied, is that of Cormac Ó Gráda, The Great Irish Famine (London: Macmillan, 1989), 76. 2 George O’Brien, The economic history of Ireland in the eighteenth century (Dublin: Maunsel & Co., 1918), 102. 3 George O’Brien, The economic history of Ireland in the seventeenth century (Dublin: Maunsel & Co., 1919), 236. 4 George O’Brien, The economic history of Ireland from the Union to the Famine (London: Maunsel & Co., 1921), 223.

112 , ,   heading ‘The Last General Potato Failure and the Great Famine and Pestilence of 1845–50’, he wrote, ‘we now approach the eventful epoch, towards the consideration of which all the foregoing extracts form but the introduction.’ 5 Yet, there is an alternative view. It is one that is argued in this and subsequent chapters: that Ireland was not chronically a famine-stricken society and that in normal years it was well stocked with nutritious food. ‘Normal’ is a concept that needs further examination and we return to it below. In 1950 Professor Connell observed, somewhat hesitantly, ‘it is remarkable, but apparently true, that during eighty years of increasing dependence on the potato, even the rumblings of disaster were seldom heard’.6 More recently, Ó Gráda has suggested that Ireland was ‘desperately unlucky’ with the Great Famine in the mid-nineteenth century. The potato fungus arrived at the wrong time. Too many of Ireland’s population depended too heavily on a single source of food, the science of plant pathology was too little understood; and the ideological principles of laissez-faire were too deeply ingrained in government thinking for the country’s good. The Great Famine was different in kind as well as in scale from anything that had occurred before. But its dreadful reality has coloured Irish historiography ever since. Questions of inevitability force us to consider whether the probability of famines were embedded in the structure of Irish society or whether they were random events caused by bad weather, bad luck, an ‘act of God’ or, as with Phytophthora infestans, a ‘tragic ecological accident’.7 In order to do this we need to assess the capacity of Ireland to produce enough food over the centuries to feed its people. We then go on to place Irish famine history within a wider geographical perspective. Famine: event or structure? 8 Famines have been an accompaniment of the human condition since the beginning of history. They are part of biblical imagery and were an intermittent feature of Europe until the end of the eighteenth century. By 1800, famines had largely retreated from western Europe, although they recurred until the twentieth century in the east. Mass hunger still stalks much of Asia and Africa today. The most obvious causes of famines are climatic crises such as prolonged 5 [William R. W. Wilde], ‘Table of cosmical phenomena, epizootics, epiphitics famines, and pestilences, in Ireland’, in Census of Ireland for the year 1851, part v. Tables of deaths vol. i, PP 1856 [2087–I], XXIX, 1, 41–235. See also E. Margaret Crawford, ‘William Wilde’s table of Irish famines 1900–1850’, in E. Margaret Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience 900–1900 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1989), 1–30. 6 K. H. Connell, The population of Ireland 1750–1845 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), 146. 7 Ó Gráda, The Great Irish Famine, 76. 8 The analysis here draws on David Arnold, Famine: social crisis and historical change (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988).

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droughts, intense cold and frost at sowing time, incessant rains at harvest time, unseasonable weather during growing periods. Related to climatic variability are other natural disasters. Cattle might be decimated by disease, and crops destroyed by insects, plant disease, or fungus. And then there are the manmade ravages of war and wanton destruction. However, weather, war, pests, and fungus are unlikely of themselves to create prolonged famine unless they find structural fissures in society in which to lodge. Phytophthora infestans would have been less deadly in the 1840s had fewer people in Ireland relied on potatoes for their sustenance. The blight did not leave Scotland and England unscathed, but it did less harm in those countries because a smaller proportion of their populations depended on potatoes. Economists sometimes describe peasants as ‘target workers’ who exert themselves just enough to satisfy immediate consumption needs, but not sufficiently to store up a reserve of food against a rainy day (or a rainless year). Target workers never learn; crises come upon them, but once the suffering passes they lapse into indolence and fatalistically await the next disaster. Consequently, on this line of argument, famines are endemic in peasant societies. An extreme exponent is the American scholar, R. E. Seavoy who wrote that, ‘all peasant societies, past and present, are governed by similar social values and institutions that control food production and fertility behavior. This claim is made on the basis of the high fertility behavior and low per capita food production in all known peasant societies.’9 He supported his argument with a substantial essay on Ireland, in which he identified two ‘most cherished’ social values of the peasantry: ‘the equalization of subsistence opportunities within each household’; and ‘the minimum expenditure of labor’. According to Seavoy, during the seventeenth century, ‘the peasantry changed the base of its subsistence from oats to potatoes because potatoes produce the maximum amount of food with the least expenditure of labor’.10 Seavoy recruited Arthur Young and Horatio Townsend to his cause, together with an ‘enormous number’ of unnamed authorities. It is not difficult to find descriptions of Irish peasants as target workers. In 1672 Sir William Petty asked, ‘what need they to Work, who can content themselves with Potatoes, whereof the Labour of one Man can feed forty . . .?’ But he added immediately, ‘Their Lazing seems to me to proceed rather from want of Imployment and Encouragement to Work, than from the natural abundance of Flegm in their Bowels and Blood . . .’ Why, he continued, ‘should they raise more Commodities since there are not Merchants sufficiently Stock’d to take of them, nor provided with other more pleasing foreign Commodities, to give in Exchange for them?’11 The problem was not indolence but lack of incentive. 9

R. E. Seavoy, Famine in peasant societies (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 1. Ibid. 300, 302, 302–3. 11 Sir William Petty, The political anatomy of Ireland [1672], in C. H. Hull (ed.), The economic writings of Sir William Petty, i (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899), 201, 202. 10

114 , ,   A century later Arthur Young complained, ‘that I have seen in excess the laziness of great numbers’ of workers in Ireland. They were lazy because potatoes and milk were so cheap that they did not have to work hard. But he qualified his argument by pointing out that labourers were capable of working energetically when they wanted to buy something, such as whiskey.12 Alcohol ranks ‘among the most important incentive goods’ in underdeveloped countries and so-called target workers willingly trade indolence for industry in order to buy it.13 Seavoy’s assertion is a crude version of the Malthusian argument that populations have an inevitable tendency to grow faster than food supplies. As well as third-world famines today, the Malthusian model has been used to explain the Great European famine of 1315–18, famines in medieval Ireland,14 and the English crisis of the late 1590s as well. The Malthusian thesis has proved a powerful analytical weapon in Ireland. It was accepted by Connell, not always consistently.15 Yet not all historians of Ireland have followed Malthus when considering the Great Famine, not even O’Brien who ‘combated the suggestion that Ireland was overpopulated [in the early nineteenth century] by the single argument that the productive resources of the country were capable of a large increase’.16 The most forceful rejection of Malthus in Ireland has been by Professor Mokyr. He compared the density of population in nineteenth-century Ireland with that found in Europe, and concluded, ‘by no definition can Ireland be said to have been a densely populated country’. A series of regression equations intended to test the link between the size of landholdings and incomes, failed to demonstrate that population pressure resulted in falling marginal incomes. And even if it could be shown that population pressure lowered per capita earnings, it is difficult to see how poverty, of itself, could have brought about the potato blight.17 Malthus himself did not predict a cataclysmic future for Ireland. Writing in 1808, he observed: Although it is quite certain that the population of Ireland cannot continue permanently to increase at its present rate, yet it is as certain that it will not suddenly come to a stop . . . Both theory and experience uniformly instruct us, that a less abundant supply of food operates with a gradually increasing pressure for a long time before its process is stopt.18 12

Arthur Young, A tour in Ireland . . . made in the years 1776, 1777, and 1778 . . ., ii (London, 1780), 116–17. P. T. Bauer and B. S. Yamey,The economics of under-developed countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 86–7. 14 Mary C. Lyons, ‘Weather, famine, pestilence and plague in Ireland, 900–1500’, in Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience, 47–8. 15 Connell, The population of Ireland, 242–3. 16 O’Brien, From the Union to the Famine, 84. 17 Joel Mokyr, Why Ireland starved: a quantitative and analytical history of the Irish economy, 1800–1850 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983), 30–80. 18 Quoted in Ó Gráda, The Great Irish Famine, 34. 13

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A more recent powerful analytical tool of famine is Amartya Sen’s entitlements thesis. ‘The entitlement approach to starvation and famines concentrates on the ability of people to acquire food through legal means available in the society, including the use of production possibilities, trade opportunities, entitlements vis-à-vis the state, and other methods of acquiring food.’19 Sen drew the important distinction between ‘some people not having enough food to eat’, and ‘of there being not enough food to eat’.20 The entitlements analysis consists of two parts. The first concentrates on ‘endowments’: that is, the legal ownership of the means of producing food. The second considers ‘exchange entitlements’: that is, the legal ability to trade for food. A person is entitled to food if he or she legally grows it, is legally entitled to receive it by way of gift, pension, or other transfer payments, or has the means of purchasing it. Famines may occur when substantial sections of the population lack entitlements, ‘either through a fall in the endowments bundle, or through an unfavourable shift in exchange entitlement mapping’.21 This can happen if people lose their jobs or their land or their farms yield less food than they once did. Alternatively, people may lose entitlements if the price of food they buy rises relative to their incomes. It remains a widespread belief that during the Great Irish Famine there was enough food to feed everybody but it was badly distributed. The evidence most commonly cited is that of corn leaving the ports while the peasants starved at home.22 But were the starving people of Ireland entitled to the grain that was leaving the ports? The grain belonged to farmers and merchants, not to the wretched cottiers who had toiled to produce it. The latter were not ‘entitled’ to it. Peter Solar has questioned the relevance of the entitlements thesis in explaining the Great Famine, stressing instead the absolute shortages of food. ‘While changes in the entitlements to food may well have contributed to the severity of the Irish famine, the fundamental problem was that there were significantly fewer calories being produced than had previously been used for domestic consumption, let alone for other uses.’23 When discussing entitlements, much depends on the meaning attached to the adjective ‘legal’. Incomes earned as wages established entitlements for they are legal payments. Occupancy of land on conditions set out in leases similarly created entitlements. But, although leases defined relationships between landlords and the head tenants in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland, contracts between farmers and the cottiers to whom farmers sublet their farms, were often obscure to the point of obfuscation. 19 Amartya Sen, Poverty and famines: an essay on entitlement and deprivation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 20 1981), 45. Ibid. 1. 21 Ibid. 47. 22 Mary Daly, ‘Revisionism and Irish history; the Great Famine’, in D. G. Boyce and Alan O’Day (eds.), Modern Irish history and the revisionist controversy (London: Routledge, 1996), 72–3. 23 Peter Solar, ‘The Great Famine was no ordinary subsistence crisis’, in Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience, 125, 127–8. Quotation at p. 125.

116 , ,   There existed also a shadowy area of custom and practice. In Gaelic society gifts of food between lords and followers were commonplace and were sanctioned by custom. The warmth of hospitality, even in the humblest cottages, was an aspect of society observed long into the nineteenth century. Custom assured cottiers of a supply of buttermilk and perhaps an occasional scrap of bacon. Arthur Young was worried in the 1770s by the decay of traditional responsibilities towards the poor on the part of the minor gentry, although his strictures did not extend to farmers or to great landlords.24 Twenty years after the Great Famine, a writer in the Freeman’s Journal looked back to an golden age when ‘potatoes were cheap and abundant, and the science of political economy was so imperfectly understood as to leave the mass of labourers attached to the farmers. Many little perquisites flowed to the labourer from this primitive condition . . .’25 Entitlements also include transfer payments such as famine relief rations. Voluntary systems to relieve the poor evolved during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and in 1838 the state established a national scheme for the relief of the poor. At the height of the Great Famine the poor law became overwhelmed and the responsibility to alleviate distress fell on landlords, clergy, and other individuals. Even when entitlements are clearly defined, some people will be more at risk than others. These include the poor who have the fewest legal claims to resources. Joel Mokyr has defined poverty ‘as the probability of a random individual at a random point in time dropping beneath subsistence’.26 However poverty can be defined in other ways and there is much to be said for a biological definition by which individuals are in ‘primary poverty’ if their ‘total earnings are insufficient to obtain the minimum necessities for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency’.27 The requirements for physical efficiency vary according to age, gender, and occupation. The most vulnerable people are generally the very old and the very young. Women usually survive famine better than do men, although pregnant and nursing mothers bear a heavy burden. Adolescents do better than most, although they are susceptible to tuberculosis.28 Many societies have regarded famines as events sent by God to punish the wicked. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the church in western Europe used prayer and penance as ways of staving off famine. Famine as an act of God was a commonly held view in nineteenth-century Ireland, and not merely by government officials. In January 1846 a Presbyterian minister from 24

Young, Tours, ii. 126–9. Freeman’s Journal (19 Sept. 1861). Mokyr, Why Ireland starved, 15. 27 The definition is Seebohm Rowntree’s and is quoted in Sen, Poverty and famines, 11. 28 Jean Mayer, ‘Famine’, in Jean Mayer (ed.), World nutrition: a U.S. view (Washington, DC: Voice of America International Communication Agency, 1973), 25; R. Dirks, ‘Social responses during severe food shortages and famines’, Current Anthropology, 21 (1980), 22, 25. 25 26

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Boveedy, County Londonderry, observed sadly that, ‘a dereliction from duty is often followed even here with visitations of Judgement. The Canker or Palmer worm God sometimes sends to chastise mankind.’29 The providential argument was strong among ‘ultra-Protestants [who] predictably saw the blight as divine vengeance against Irish Catholicism’30. Yet, it was not held universally. In 1860 the novelist and one-time postal official in Ireland, Anthony Trollope, reflected ironically on the tragedy of the 1840s when, ‘the greater part of eight million human beings were left without food. The destruction of the potato was the work of God; and it was natural to attribute the sufferings which at once overwhelmed the unfortunate country to God’s anger.’ But, he added: For myself I do not believe in such exhibitions of God’s anger. When wars come, and pestilence, and famine; when people of a land are worse than decimated, and the living hardly able to bury the dead, I cannot coincide with those who would deprecate God’s wrath by prayers. I do not believe that our God stalks darkly along the clouds, laying thousands low with the arrows of death, and those thousands of the most ignorant, because men who are most ignorant have displeased Him.31

Father Mullins of County Galway made the same point more succinctly in 1846. ‘How is all this desolation to be accounted for? Surely it was not caused by the visitation of an angry providence, but by the crying injustice of our earthly rulers!’32 Peasant attitudes, lack of entitlements, and ideological attitudes, even uncaring social policies: all were possible structural weaknesses in Irish society. But was there a more fundamental problem? Was the country simply unable to increase food production as the population multiplied? If that were the case, then George O’Brien’s doom-laden interpretation of Irish history has substance.

Ireland and food production Between 1600 and 1845 the population of Ireland increased eightfold. The law of diminishing returns predicts that the food supply will not rise in proportion if a growing quantity of one factor of production (labour) is added to a fixed supply of another factor (land). The reality in Ireland was more complex. In 1600 Ireland was underpopulated and for many decades a growing population increased the labour force and so permitted the bringing of more land into cultivation. In 1672, Sir William Petty argued that, ‘by comparing the Extent of the Territory with the number of people it appears that Ireland is much 29

National Archives, Dublin, RLFC II/442/2. Relief Commission papers. Peter Gray, ‘Ideology and the Famine’, in Cathal Póirtéir (ed.), The Great Irish Famine (Cork: Mercier Press, 1995), 91. 31 Anthony Trollope, Castle Richmond (first published 1860), ch. 7. 32 Quoted in Donal Kerr, The Catholic Church and the Famine (Dublin: Columbia Press, 1996), 82. 30

118 , ,   underpeopled; for as much as there are above 10 Acres of good Land to every Head in Ireland; whereas in England and France there are but four, and in Holland scarce one.’33 The arithmetic was approximate, but it was not fanciful. Nearly two centuries later, in 1841, there were 1.65 ‘cultivated acres’ per person in Ireland, compared to 1.5 acres in England, 1.94 acres in France, and 1.63 in Holland.34 If we assume that the ‘good land’ in 1672 was the equivalent of the ‘cultivated acres’ identified in 1841, mid-nineteenth-century Ireland was at least six times more densely populated than it had been in Petty’s day. But both in the later seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries Ireland was not overpopulated compared with her neighbours. Comparisons between Ireland and other countries in the nineteenth century need to be qualified by remembering that labour productivity in Ireland was relatively low. Nevertheless, such comparisons provide no strong support for believing that Ireland was incapable of feeding itself on the eve of the Great Famine. Nassau Senior had noted in 1829 that Ireland, ‘poor and populous as she is, suffers less from want with her eight millions of people, than when her only inhabitants were a few septs of hunters and fishers’.35 As the population increased rapidly from the mid-eighteenth century, the composition of agricultural output tilted more towards arable production. Within the tillage sector, there was a shift towards the production of highyielding crops, of which potatoes were the obvious example. There was an accumulation of agricultural capital, a developing regional specialization, and a growth of interregional trade in agricultural products. These advances were not spectacular, but rather a slow accretion of humdrum and small-scale improvements. Investment in fixed capital included houses, byres, barns and stables, carts, saddles and harnesses, ploughs, spades, forks, scythes and sickles, and other tools. Hedges, fences, ditches and drains, tracks and paths that led from field to field were also fixed capital. More visible forms of capital were mills powered by animals, water, or wind, although they were less common than their humble relatives of mortar, pestle, and quern. Less obvious forms of fixed capital included animals. Horses and oxen were used for haulage. Cattle and sheep were machines for producing manure as well as equipment that converted grass into wool and milk. At the end of their working lives they provided meat, tallow, hides and skins, at which stage they became consumption goods. Calves being fattened for meat, hens kept for the table, and pigs destined to become bacon were circulating capital, although the more familiar forms of this type of capital were seed corn and fertilizers.36 33

Petty, Political anatomy, i. 217. Mokyr, Why Ireland starved, 42. 35 Quoted in Guy Routh, The origin of economic ideas (London: Macmillan, 1975), 149–50. 36 For a general discussion see C. M. Cipolla, Before the industrial revolution: European economy and society, 1000–1700 (London: Methuen, 1976), 95–100. The technical history of Irish agriculture remains to be written, but see: Kenneth Nicholls, Gaelic and gaelicised Ireland in the middle ages (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 34

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Agricultural investments were made easier by the development of commonlaw property rights that smoothed the operation of a land market.37 Land could be mortgaged to raise money for the finance of investments. Perhaps more importantly, clearly defined property rights assured landlords and farmers that they would reap the benefits of improvements that they made. There were also investments in social overhead capital that benefited more than just agriculture. Bridges built across streams and rivers, and market hall and market places were obvious examples. Landlords undertook some of these initiatives, but others were the work of grand juries and municipal authorities. Increasing supplies of labour and capital, as well as a growing supply of land, therefore, generated a growth in agricultural output. Not until the late eighteenth century were the margins of cultivable lands being approached and even then technical innovation in the form of potatoes and lazy beds made it possible for grain yields to be maintained and for land productivity to be raised. ‘In . . . the half-century before the Famine’, Ó Gráda has calculated, ‘capital accumulation and technical change were adding 0.5 to 1.0 per cent annually to productivity.’38 Irish farming has suffered from a dismal image. Arthur Young must bear some of the blame. He focused his English-conditioned eye and enthusiasms for improvement on to Ireland and found much to condemn. He was especially scathing about the failure of landlords to invest in their estates and was highly critical of the sloth of cottier-labourers. He denounced the backwardness of farming methods and deplored the concentration of resources on pasture. But, as Ó Gráda and Allen have pointed out, Young’s familiarity with Irish conditions was more superficial than he pretended; and his general conclusions were sometimes at variance with his detailed local observations.39 Even on Young’s own evidence grain yields per acre matched those in England. On a broader view of land productivity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Irish record was respectable. ‘Only if Ireland is gauged by the 1972), 114–19; Aidan Clarke, ‘The Irish economy, 1600–1660’, in T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin, and F. J. Byrne (eds.), A new history of Ireland, iii: Early-modern Ireland 1534–1691 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 172–8; Michael MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation: English migration to southern Ireland 1583–1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 226–30; Raymond Gillespie, Colonial Ulster: the settlement of east Ulster 1600–1641 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1985), 71–4; Philip Robinson, The Plantation of Ulster: British settlement in an Irish landscape, 1600–1670 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1984), 144–7, 172–4, 178–80; E. Estyn Evans, Irish folk ways (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957), 100–13, 114–23, 127–39, 140– 50, 164, 165–80; Jonathan Bell and Mervyn Watson, Irish farming 1750–1900 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1986). 37 Raymond Gillespie, The transformation of the Irish economy 1550–1700 (Dundalgan: The Economic and Social History Society of Ireland, 1991). 38 R. C. Allen and Cormac Ó Gráda, ‘On the road again with Arthur Young: English, Irish, and French agriculture during the industrial revolution’, Journal of Economic History, 48 (1988), 105. 39 Young, Tours, ii. 91–108; O’Brien, Eighteenth century, 125–35; Kevin Whelan, ‘Pre and post-Famine landscape change’, in Póirtéir (ed.), The Great Irish Famine, 20–2; Allen and Ó Gráda, ‘On the road again with Arthur Young’, 104–8.

120 , ,   demanding standard of English “high farming” ’ can its agricultural sector be regarded as backward.40 Extensive pastoral farming had been a distinctive feature of Irish agriculture in the sixteenth century. Notwithstanding substantial pockets of grain cultivation, the keeping of cattle for their meat, milk, blood, hides, and tallow—and as symbols of wealth and status—predominated. In the following centuries stock rearing remained important, but fattening for beef, dairying, sheep rearing for mutton and wool all assumed a greater relative importance, as indeed did the growing of oats, barley, wheat, flax, and—especially—potatoes. In the 1660s cattle and cattle products accounted for two-thirds of the value of Irish exports; sheep, wool, and wool products for about a quarter; hemp, flax, and linen for less than 5 per cent; and grain and grain products for the rest. By the 1770s the share of cattle and cattle products had declined to one-third of total value and the share of grain and grain products had tripled. During the same period hemp, flax, and linen had grown to account for more than half export values, although sheep, wool, and woollen products had fallen substantially. The total value of exports had increased more than tenfold.41 Some of the most remarkable changes occurred from the 1770s when Ireland became a large net exporter of cereals, a position it retained up to the Great Famine. At the same time, exports of animals and animal products remained at high levels.42 Judged purely by export performance, agricultural production increased dramatically between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. We do not know how output for the domestic market performed, but we can hazard some guesses. In the eighteenth century agriculture was producing, very broadly, commodities for two purposes. There were commercial crops such as animals and animal products, wheat and barley, and raw materials (hides, skins, wool, flax) destined for sale at home and abroad. There were also the subsistence products—potatoes, oats, pigs, and poultry—consumed on the farms. The categories overlapped. Oats were extensively traded as well as eaten by farmers, cottiers, and livestock. Many pigs finished up in the export trade in the form of bacon; and there was a considerable export trade in eggs. Even a proportion of the potato crop went to the markets. Potatoes were the key to increasing output in both the commercial and the subsistence sectors. They were a technical innovation that aided the spread of grain cultivation into new territory; they were fed to animals and so were inputs into the production of meat and dairy produce. And they provided abundant quantities of palatable and nutritious food from a small area of land. A simple 40 Cormac Ó Gráda, Ireland: a new economic history 1780–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 26, 118–21. Quotation at p. 120. 41 David Dickson, New foundations: Ireland 1660–1800 (Dublin: Helicon, 1987), 101. 42 Raymond D. Crotty, Irish agricultural production: its volume and structure (Cork: Cork University Press, 1966), 277.

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way of judging their importance is to remember that on the eve of the Great Famine, a third or more of the population fed unstintingly on potatoes, in round numbers, say, 3 million people. One hundred and fifty years earlier, when grown as a garden crop, potatoes had been just one food among many. It follows that, if in 1845 close to 3 million people relied on potatoes, then there were 5.5 million people who did not depend on potatoes but enjoyed diets that were varied and adequate. These 5.5 million people formed a large domestic market for agricultural produce and their consumption standards were not falling. To these we should add the 10 per cent or so of England’s population (say 1.5 million) who were fed on Irish exports. In the two and a half centuries before the Great Famine, therefore, agriculture had been able to cope comfortably with the increased demand generated by consumers at home and abroad. This is not to say that short-term and seasonal difficulties never occurred. Potatoes were always scarce in the summer and there were individual seasons of hardship. Still, year in and year out, the calorific intake of the poorest sections of the population was maintained and probably increased. Modest amounts of investment, technical innovations—particularly the spread of potato culture—and the pushing out of the boundaries of land under cultivation, had all enabled Irish agricultural production to be raised. There was a price to these developments and the price was paid during the Great Famine. The potato, according to Professor Whelan, was an ‘ecological interloper’ that permitted the spread of tillage onto the wet, poor soils and up the mountains and high bogs of the west of Ireland. Ultimately it ‘destroyed the pre seventeenth-century balance between tillage and pasture in these environmentally frail areas. . . . The experience of land use prior to the potato emphasised pastoralism at the expense of tillage. In the west of Ireland, the spread of the potato deranged the traditional balance between tillage and pasture.’43 Whelan overstated the case by suggesting that potato cultivation destroyed the native plant species, so damaging the ecology of the wet uplands. In fact, native plants quickly recovered once the potato beds were abandoned. More generally, palynological evidence suggests that, with the exception of the immediate post-Black Death years, there have been no dramatic arable collapses in Ireland.44 Grain harvests in the cool, damp west were nevertheless sensitive to the weather and the cultivators became precariously dependent on a single food. As long as the seasons were not too frosty, potatoes could survive the vagaries of climate. But they succumbed to the damp-loving Phytophthora infestans in 1845 43

Whelan, ‘Pre and post-Famine landscape change’, 24–5. We owe these points to Dr Valerie Hall of the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast. See Valerie A. Hall, ‘Ancient agricultural activity at Slieve Gullion, Co. Armagh: a review of the palynological evidence’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 90, C (1990), 123–34; Valerie A. Hall, ‘Recent landscape change and landscape restoration in Northern Ireland: a tephra-dated pollen study’, Review of palaeobotony and palynology, 103 (1998), 65–7. 44

122 , ,   and so created the image of a famine-blighted country. We cannot, however, conclude from the Great Famine that Ireland had been chronically unable to feed itself.

Famine and Ireland in perspective Even if Ireland was not perpetually on the brink of famine, it is still possible that Ireland was more vulnerable than other countries in Europe. Alternatively, is it likely that potatoes increased the chances of famine by the mid-nineteenth century because they had become the dominant food crop and had pushed the margin of cereal farming into unsuitable regions? Any long-term or broad geographical surveys of the incidence of famine are bedevilled by problems of definition. The distinction between starvation (an individual event) and famine (a social event) is important, but how severe does the latter have to be before it can truly be called a famine as distinct from, say, an ‘acute food shortage’ lasting for a short period and affecting a limited region? As Arnold has written: Famine signifies an exceptional (if periodically recurring) event, a collective catastrophe of such magnitude as to cause social and economic dislocation. It generally results in abnormal levels of destitution, hunger and death. It can lead to the complete disintegration of customary patterns of work and subsistence and can greatly disrupt customary norms of morality and social behaviour.45

This definition is useful, but it leaves plenty of scope for subjective judgements. What is normal and what abnormal? Our ancestors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries could look forward, at birth, to lifespans of around thirty-five to forty years. That to them was normal, largely because the hazards of infancy and childhood carried so many to their deaths. However, they rarely died of dietary deprivation as a result of a shortage of food, but from infections. The problem of identifying famine is further compounded in Ireland because the historical record frequently fails to distinguish among plague, pestilence, and famine, thus exaggerating the frequency of periods of severe food shortages. The confusion is understandable since famine was invariably accompanied by disease, although many diseases were not induced by hunger. Wilde was aware of the difficulty and tried to overcome it by dividing his Table into two parts: ‘peculiar natural phenomena’, including ‘epizootics’, and ‘invasions of insects and noxious animals’; and ‘years of plenty and good harvests’, and ‘failures of crops, years of scarcity, famines, etc.’46 Wilde’s Table is the most important source for the study of the early history of famines in Ireland. Its purpose was to put the ‘Potato Rot’ into perspective 45 46

Arnold, Famine: social crisis and historical change, 6–7. Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 355–64.

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by ‘recording the fact, as well as analysing, the extent, causes, and concomitants of the recent “plague, pestilence, and famine”, with which it has pleased Providence to afflict this country’. He found that ‘from the earliest period . . . down to the present time Ireland has suffered sometimes alone, and sometimes in common with Great Britain and the rest of Europe, from various epidemic pestilences’.47 Wilde’s recognition that Ireland had suffered ‘sometimes in common’ with Britain is important. Ireland did not have a monopoly of suffering. Wilde divided his table into three eras: the Pagan or pre-Christian period before the coming of St Patrick; the ‘Historic Period’; and the ‘Scientific Period’, running from the 1640s to 1851.48 The earlier sections mixed accounts of bad or unusual weather, singular events (earthquakes, thunderstorms, lightning strikes), mortal sicknesses, wars, dearth, and starvation. As the centuries passed, Wilde was able to identify episodes of genuine famine with more confidence. The fifteenth century had ended in a bad-tempered fashion. In 1497 there had been ‘a great intolerable famine throughout all Ireland’, forcing people to eat ‘food unbecoming to mention, and never before heard of as having been introduced on human dishes’. Three years later cattle disease created a shortage of meat and pastoral products. In 1505, ‘continual rains that fell in summer and harvest ruined the corn crops’.49 Perhaps these events truly were famines as defined above; we cannot be sure. Although Wilde chronicled intermittent difficulties thereafter, really serious shortages seem to have been averted until 1523–4 when heavy summer and autumn rains destroyed the grain harvests.50 It is striking how often these early references were to corn, reflecting the vulnerability of grain to the wet Irish climate. From the 1520s Ireland seems to have escaped food shortages of such severity as to impress themselves indelibly in the minds of contemporaries, although Wilde’s sources probably fail to mention minor or localized scarcities. Conditions, though, were harsh in Munster, verging on famine, following the Desmond wars of the 1580s when a combination of bad weather and wartime destruction caused severe hardship. ‘Such as whom the sword did not destroie, the [famine] did consume and eat out; verie few or none remaining alive, saving such as dwelled in cities and townes.’51 The seventeenth century was ushered in by widespread famine that was the result of bad weather, exacerbated by military campaigns during the Nine Years War. The English commanders pursued a deliberate policy of destroying the grain crops belonging to the native population that caused the most 47 Quoted by Crawford, ‘William Wilde’s table of Irish famines, 900–1850’, in Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience, 2. 48 The census of Ireland for the year 1851, part v, Tables of deaths, i. 3. 49 Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 97–9. 50 Ibid. 100; L. A. Clarkson, ‘Conclusion: famine and Irish history’, in Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish 51 experience, 222. Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 104.

124 , ,   appalling suffering. After the war there followed several years of plenty, broken in 1621–4 by a sequence of poor harvests. Ireland experienced considerable economic dislocation, although there is little evidence of famine.52 The end of the 1620s was marked by two years of great distress. In July 1629 the bishop of Waterford, Patrick Comerford, reported to Father Luke Wadding in Antwerp that ‘in our countrie there was some dert of corne and mortalitie of cattle, wherefor our countriemen . . . rushed into England to begg, and being thrust out of England they flocked over to France . . .; the base rogues could very well stay at home and feed upon fish and herbs and some butter and milk, which was not altogether so scarce.’53 He wrote again in November: The deart of the two last years, the universal sickness, the oppression of souldiers, besides other incumbrances have made Ireland to be in verie deed the land of ire. . . . The weather is so rainie, and drousie continualy, that it doth imprint, and indent in a mans heart a certaine saturn qualitie of heavinesse, sloughishnes, lasines, and perpetuall sloute.54

The hardships continued into the following year. In January 1630 the bishop of Ferns reported that ‘in this country ye poverty is extraordinary great for ye scarsity of corne, and for other oppressions under which they lay this long while’.55 As late as August, when the new harvest was expected, Comerford told Wadding that ‘the countrie is very poor, and distressed, so much that well halfe the inhabitants seem more slaves then free men’. Plague haunted the country, but that only compounded the hunger. The shortages threatened church incomes: ‘our tounsmen onelie doe eate the church livings of most partes of this countie, and other counties to, without leve of them that be interested in them . . .’56 The difficulties of these years pale into insignificance when set besides the sufferings of the 1640s and early 1650s. The winter of 1641 was bitterly cold and frosty. The summer of 1643 was excessively wet. Unusually bad weather dogged the Cromwellian army wherever it went, and campaigning soldiers spread desolation wherever they went. The fighting destroyed crops and cattle, disrupted trade and spread disease. According to Petty, ‘167,000 of Irish and English in Ireland, died by the sword and famine and other hardships’ between 1641 and 1652. Most of the losses were probably the result of disease that accompanied the acute shortages of food in 1642–3, 1648, and the outright famine in 1652–3. Conditions were so bad in 1652 and 1653 ‘that a man might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living creature’. Between 1649 and 1652 the population possibly declined by 15–20 per cent because of war, 52 Raymond Gillespie, ‘Meal and money: the harvest crisis of 1621–4 and the Irish economy’, in Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience, 75–95. 53 Brendan Jennings (ed.), Wadding Papers 1614–38 (Dublin: Stationery Office 1953), 298. 54 Ibid. 321. 55 Ibid. 333. 56 Ibid. 404–5.

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disease, and famine.57 If so, it was indeed a famine and one of the worst demographic setbacks Ireland had suffered since the Black Death. The second half of the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth were free of famine. The Williamite wars caused some increase in mortality, but more by spreading infections than by creating scarcities. Ireland was spared the crises that afflicted south-west Scotland and the north-west of England in the late 1690s. She also escaped the worst of the severe winter of 1708–9 experienced in England and western Europe, although there was ‘an unusual mortality, first among tender infants, decrepit old men and valetudinarians’, which suggests that food was scarce.58 The generally good years were brought to an abrupt end in 1727–8. During the previous three-quarters of a century the population had increased by roughly 700,000; but the problem facing Ireland was not population pressure but wet weather that ruined the corn harvests. Writing in 1728, Archbishop Boulter recalled ‘the dearness of corn [which] was such that thousands of families quitted their habitations to seek bread elsewhere, and many hundreds perished’.59 Some years later an anonymous correspondent recalled the ‘miserable state to which the inhabitants of the north and indeed of all the kingdom, were reduced to in the latter end of 1728 and till the harvest of 1729’.60 The bad weather brought into the open a problem that had been threatening since the Restoration. Tillage farming (corn and potatoes) had spread over considerable parts of Ireland as the demand for cereals increased. Marginal farmers who moved into grain became susceptible to the uncertain climate, but for several years in the early eighteenth century a run of mild winters and good summers protected them from major disasters. By the early 1720s, indeed, the growing supply of corn and low prices had persuaded some farmers to forsake tillage for fat stock and dairying. By this time, though, grain in its various forms had assumed an important role in the diets of many people. Thus, when the weather turned sour in 1727–8 the poor were exposed to rising grain prices. In the countryside the peasantry ate potatoes as well as oats and so potatoes softened the blow. Town dwellers were most at risk because they did not have good supplies of potatoes.61 The late 1720s were a hint of what was to come, but the first really over57 Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 109–10; Clarkson, ‘Famine and Irish history’, in Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience, 223; Pádraig Lenihan, ‘War and population, 1649–52’, Irish Economic and Social History, 24 (1997), 8, 21. 58 J. D. Post, Food shortage, climatic variability, and epidemic disease in preindustrial Europe: the mortality peak in the early 1740s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 52; Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 118. 59 Hugh Boulter, archbishop of Armagh, 1672–1742, Letters written by His Excellency Hugh Boulter: to several ministers of state (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1769), 222. See also David Dickson, ‘The other great Irish famine’, in Póirtéir (ed.), The Great Irish Famine, 53. 60 Anon., A proposal for lessening the excessive price of bread corn in Ireland (Dublin, 1741), 4. 61 Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 120; David Dickson, ‘The gap in famines: a useful myth?’, in Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience, 98–9.

126 , ,   whelming portent of ecological frailty was in 1739–40, later described by Wilde as the time of ‘the first great potato-rot’.62 The freezing weather of 1739–40 left an abiding memory.63 ‘During the winter of 1739–40’, wrote Wilde, a ‘dreadful and indescribable hard frost . . . [caused] not only a great destruction of all sorts of cattle, but a lamentable blight and calamitous rot of plants and vegetables of all kinds. For the very birds of the air and other animals used for human sustenance perished in very great numbers from the excessive harshness of the cold season.’64 At the end of the century, Dorothea Herbert recalled ‘the Year 1739, famous for being the year of the great Frost when Brandy froze before the fire, and a fair was held on the Ice of the Thames’. Dorothea’s grandmother lived at Muckross, County Kerry. She ‘was the Lady Bountiful of the Neighbourhood, especially in the Year of the great frost, when she saved numberless poor wretches who were perishing in the Wilds of Muckrus, half famished and frozen to death—The frost was so intense that the Woodcocks and other Wild Birds flew into the House for Shelter.’65 The great frost was the prelude to the famine of 1740–1 when the corn and potato harvests both failed. The summer and autumn of 1739 had been wet and the harvest had been poor. The frost set in at Christmas and persisted almost without interruption until late February. The spring and summer of 1740 were cold and dry. The later part of the year was wet. Because of the poor harvest in 1739, corn was already scarce and the shortage was compounded by the harsh conditions at ploughing and sowing times in 1740. To make matters worse, the prolonged frost had destroyed much of the potato crop. The 1740 harvest was poor since seed potatoes had been scarce; and the potatoes that were gathered were soon eaten because of the scarcity of oats and oatmeal. Milling had been disrupted by the winter frosts and the low levels of the rivers during the spring and summer. Animal products were also scarce because the weather had restricted the growth of grass. There was little relief to be had by importing large quantities of grain from Europe where the weather was as bad or worse. The Irish experience was little different from that of other countries, with the important exception that Ireland suffered from a shortfall both of potatoes and of corn. This double blow may explain why mortality in Ireland was higher than in Britain and on the Continent.66 We can only guess at how many died, but on the basis of contemporary accounts and burials recorded in parish registers, there may have been between 300,000 and 480,000 famine-related fatalities in the two years 1740–1, the majority of them in the south and east of the country. If so, mortality was proportionately greater than during the Great Famine of 1845–9.67 62 63 64 65 66 67

Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 124. See David Dickson, Arctic Ireland (Dundonald: White Row Press, 1998), 11–16. Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 125. Dorothea Herbert, Retrospections of Dorothea Herbert 1770–1806 (Dublin: Town House, 1988), 1, 3. Post, Food shortage, 32. Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 124–32; Dickson, ‘The other great Irish famine’, in

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The crisis persisted into 1742, but as conditions eased the population entered into a period of unprecedented growth. The subsequent decades were not free of alarms, some of which were serious. There were regional shortages of corn in 1755–6, 1766, and 1782–4, although nothing on the scale of the early 1740s. The year 1784 was especially bad when a severe frost gripped the country in December 1783 and persisted to the end of the following February, when it was followed by very wet weather. The potatoes were damaged by frost and the grain ruined by rain. Exports of grain to England were suspended. Thousands of people in Dublin needed relief and 11,000 people were said to have left for America. Food prices rose, and burials in North Leinster were 15–20 per cent above normal. Yet, a major crisis was averted, perhaps, because of the efficiency of local authorities in dealing with distress.68 Hardship returned at the end of the century. In November 1799, ‘the most melancholy accounts of the harvest arrive from all parts of the country; in many places the oats and other late corn remain on the ground not worth the reaping.’ The winter of 1798–9 had been long and cold, the following spring cold, the early summer dry and hot, although the harvest months were wet and cool. The pattern was repeated in 1799–1800. Oats, barley, and wheat were all expensive and potatoes so scarce that the poor resorted to grain—if they could afford it. Mortality locally was very high—the crude death rate in Carrick-onSuir in 1799 exceeded 40 per 1,000—but widespread mortality was avoided because of the relief measures introduced by the Dublin administration and municipal authorities. These included importing Indian meal and rye flour, ‘which served much to allay this famine’.69 There were localized food shortages in 1800–1, 1816–17, 1822, and 1831. The second of these, in 1816–17, was sharp but short-lived. Estimates of the annual number of excess deaths in 1816 and 1817 range from 40,000 to 80,000. The higher figure implies an excess death rate of around 12 per 1,000. Mortality was severe enough to check, but not to reverse the growth of population. However, without the benefit of hindsight, the difficulties of the early nineteenth century could not be interpreted as portents of the disaster that was to come.70 They were acute crises rather than wholesale famine. Póirtéir (ed.), The Great Irish Famine, 53–5; Dickson, ‘The gap in famines: a useful myth?’, in Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience, 97–8; Michael Drake, ‘The Irish demographic crisis of 1740–41’, in T. W. Moody (ed.), Historical Studies, VI (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), 101–24; Post, Food shortage, 32–3; 51–76. 68 Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 151; Dickson, ‘The gap in famines’, 99–106. 69 Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 151, 157–61 (quotation at p. 159); E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Indian meal and pellagra in nineteenth-century Ireland’, in J. M. Goldstrom and L. A. Clarkson (eds.), Irish population, economy and society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 113–14; L. A. Clarkson, ‘The demography of Carrick-on-Suir, 1799’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 87, C, no. 2 (1987), 31; S. A. Royle, ‘Famine relief in the early nineteenth century: the 1822 famine on the Aran Islands’, Irish Economic and Social History, 11 (1984), 44–5. 70 Clarkson, ‘Famine and Irish history’, in Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience, 224; Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 159.

128 , ,   The Great Famine was unmatched in severity by anything experienced for a hundred years. It was ‘no ordinary subsistence crisis’ and did not fit into a previous pattern of disasters. It was different because the mortality it inflicted was high by nineteenth-century European standards, and indeed by the standards of the past, and because its impact on society persisted for many decades. It was different, also, in that the repeated crop losses between 1846 and 1849 were beyond the limits predictable on the basis of earlier experience.71 And they were caused by a fungal infection and not by the more familiar conjunction of frost and rain. The Great Famine is deservedly remembered as a terrible event, but it was unique in cause, scale, and timing. After the Great Famine crop failures continued to raise the spectre of famine in the west, but there was nothing that can be construed as a full-blown social disaster. In 1858 alarm bells rang in County Mayo when storms destroyed the potato harvest and there followed a succession of bad years between 1859 and 1862. More serious shortages occurred in 1879 and 1880, raising fears that the horrors of the 1840s might be returning. Finally, three short-lived and localized scarcities in 1890–1, 1894–5, and 1897–8 brought distress to the west. By this time, though, better marketing and transport systems, more efficient mechanisms for relieving shortages, and a greater variety of food available even to the very poor reduced the likelihood that the difficulties would lead to anything greater than acute anxiety.72 T. P. O’Neill has written of 1925 as marking the end of ‘the era of famine’. That was when the new Irish government felt confident enough to abandon the rhetoric of famine suffering that had proved such a useful political weapon. Could a better terminus, though, be the day in November 1897 when one Mrs Flaherty was discovered starved to death on Garomna Island in Connemara? The potatoes had failed. The family had been given emergency rations of Indian meal, but poor Mrs Flaherty had received nothing. The remaining members of the household and the Indian meal were nowhere to be found.73 But one starvation death does not a famine make. This historical panorama does not of itself banish the image of Ireland as a famine-prone land. It is instructive to compare the Irish experience with those of other European countries. To do this we need to retrace our steps and set Ireland’s famines and shortages in a wider geographical context. Ireland had more than its share of suffering during the great European famine of 1315–18.74 For the post-Black Death period there is insufficient 71

Solar, ‘The Great Famine’, in Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience, 127. T. P. O’Neill, ‘The persistence of famine in Ireland’, in Póirtéir (ed.), The Great Irish Famine, 206, 217–18; T. P. O’Neill, ‘The food crisis of the 1890s’, in Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience, 176–97; J. S. Donnelly, Jr, ‘The Irish agricultural depression of 1859–64’, Irish Economic and Social History, 3 (1976), 33–54. 73 O’Neill, ‘The persistence of famine’, in Póirtéir (ed.), The Great Irish Famine, 206. 74 William C. Jordan, The great famine: northern Europe in the early fourteenth century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 97. 72

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evidence on which to base any certain generalization. A recent consideration of European vulnerability to famine during the fifteenth century has concluded that ‘the local ecologies of corn-poor and remote pastoral-highland communities may have exposed some communities to the threat of famine’.75 Ireland fits this description, along with the north-west of England and the Scottish Highlands. The sporadically difficult years of the sixteenth century in Ireland seem to have been no worse than in England and Scotland. In some years, indeed, Ireland fared comparatively well. Cumberland and Westmorland endured a devastating famine during the winter of 1587–8, whereas 1588 in Ireland was celebrated in the Annals of Kilronan as ‘so good a year . . ., for its abundance of food and produce’.76 Ireland avoided the worst of the hardships that ravaged England a decade later. There was high mortality in upland parishes in northwest England in 1597–8 caused by plague and hunger. The crisis extended to other parts of England. Towns as far apart as Worcester, Salisbury, Bristol, and Newcastle were all short of corn because of unseasonable frosts and rain. Shakespeare memorably relived the time in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when The ox hath therefore stetch’d his yoke in vain, The ploughman lost his sweat; and the green corn Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard: The fold stands empty in the drowned field, And crows are fatted with the murrion flock . . .77

Scotland, France, and Sweden and other parts of north-west Europe all experienced terrible famines between 1595 and 1597.78 In Ireland though, the only event of note recorded by Wilde was a gunpowder explosion in 1597 that killed 200 people in Dublin.79 On the other hand, Ireland endured the ravages of war and the destruction of crops at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The food crisis of the early 1620s was worse in England than in Ireland. Mortality in Cumberland and Westmorland parishes began to rise in the winter and early spring of 1623 and reached a peak in about October or November. Accompanying the rise in deaths was a fall in marriages and conceptions—common features of famines. Parish registers in several communities contained explicit references to starvation.80 Mortality also rose in lowland 75 John Walter and Roger Schofield, ‘Famine, disease and crisis mortality in early modern societies’, in John Walter and Roger Schofield (eds.), Famine, disease and the social order in early modern society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 30. 76 A. B. Appleby, Famine in Tudor and Stuart England (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1978), 95–108; Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 104. 77 Act 2, scene 1. 78 Michael Flinn et al., Scottish population history from the 17th century to the 1930s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 117; A. J. S. Gibson and T. C. Smout, Prices, food and wages in Scotland 1550–1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 167; Appleby, Famine in Tudor and Stuart England, 133. 79 Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 104. 80 Appleby, Famine in Tudor and Stuart England, 121–32.

130 , ,   Scotland. The population of Dumfries fell by between 10 and 15 per cent and that of Dunfermline by between 20 and 25 per cent. In Kelso total deaths, including those of ‘strangers’ in the town seeking food, were equivalent to between a third and a half of the pre-crisis population.81 Although Ireland escaped the extreme hardships of her neighbours in the early 1620s, it was otherwise in 1629–30 and even more so thirty years later. True, there was a ‘crisis of crops 1647–52’ in Scotland brought about by poor weather and wartime dislocation. Grain prices rose to peaks not exceeded until the late 1690s. In England harvests were bad in the late 1640s and early 1650s. Nothing, though, matched the horrors of Ireland. In France, one historian, relying on variations in national burials, described 1657–8 as a year of ‘major crisis’.82 According to one authority, ‘by the mid seventeenth century . . . England had slipped the shadow of famines, in sharp contrast to the continuing vulnerability of most other west European countries’.83 Ireland, too, managed to step out of the shade for much of the time. She seems not to have endured the ‘ill years of the 1690s’ that blighted much of Scotland between 1695 and 1700 when bad weather ruined the oats; hunger was widespread and death rates soared throughout the lowlands.84 Thousands of people—perhaps as many as 50,000—flooded into Ireland from Scotland in search of food. In total, Scotland’s population may have fallen by about 13 per cent during the 1690s.85 Conditions were wretched also throughout much of France in these years. Demographic crises between 1691 and 1695 have been likened to a ‘drop of oil’ diffusing from the east and south-east in 1691, to the south-west in 1693, to the south, the centre, the Paris region and the north in 1694, and to the west in 1694–5. The early 1700s were also marked by several hungry years and the memory of famine in 1709–10 has ‘never been erased’.86 In 1740–1 heavy mortality gripped the whole of western Europe as blocking anticyclones brought continental patterns of cold winters and dry springs and summers that persisted until 1742 or 1743. The winter of 1739–40 in Europe was one of the coldest on record and presaged the start of the so-called ‘little ice age’. The effects in Ireland may have been ameliorated by the country’s maritime location, although the winter frosts in 1739–40 and 1740–1 damaged potatoes, thus aggravating the shortfall of the grain harvests.87 81

Appleby, Famine in Tudor and Stuart England, 151–2; Flinn, Scottish population history, 117–26. Gibson and Smout, Prices, food and wages, 168; Jacques Dupâquier, ‘Demographic crises and subsistence crises in France, 1650–1725’, in Walter and Schofield (eds.), Famine, disease and the social order, 192. 83 Walter and Schofield, ‘Famine, disease and crisis mortality’, 36; Flinn, Scottish population history, 150–1; Gibson and Smout, Prices, food and wages in Scotland, 168–9. 84 Flinn, Scottish population history, 164–85. 85 Ibid. 180; Gibson and Smout, Prices, food and wages, 166; Cullen, New history of Ireland, iv. 133–4. 86 Dupâquier, ‘Demographic crises’, 196–7; J. Meuvret, ‘Demographic crisis in France from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century’, in D. V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley (eds.), Population in history: essays in historical demography (London: Edward Arnold, 1965), 515. 87 Post, Food shortage, 52–63. 82

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But had England really entirely slipped the shadow of famine in the midseventeenth century? English men and women who lived through hungry years of 1782–3 and the more difficult 1790s might have found such a judgement puzzling. The final decade of the eighteenth century was one of rising food prices triggered by wartime inflation, bad weather, and the disruption of the European grain trade. Food prices were so high in 1799 and 1800 that the president of the Board of Trade warned the government of rioting in the streets. There had been widespread food riots in 1784 and more serious outbreaks in 1795–6. In 1799 and 1800 there were at least 200 riots in various parts of England. Wheat, oats, and potatoes were all scarce. In 1795 wheat prices had been 20 per cent higher than the long-term average, but in 1800 they were 35 per cent higher. In Lancashire potatoes more than tripled in price between January 1799 and January 1801. The national death rate increased only a little, but there were regional pockets of severe mortality both in 1795–6 and 1799–1800; in the latter years there were people who starved to death.88 From this survey it appears that from the mid-seventeenth century until the early nineteenth century, the frequency of famine was remarkably similar to that of England’s, perhaps better than Scotland’s and no worse than that of continental Europe. Severity, though, was another matter. Ireland in the 1740s and in the 1840s was in a league of its own. Was the nineteenth century any different? The periodic failures of the potato crops after 1815 led William Wilde to refer to the ‘state of chronic famine [that] had existed in many districts on the west coast of Ireland for several years antecedent to the last great potato failure [i.e. 1845–9]’.89 Yet a wider perspective raises doubts about the peculiarity of Ireland before the Great Famine. For example, the Scottish Highlands experienced severe shortages in 1806–7, 1816–17, and 1836–7. Starvation on a large scale was avoided only by imports of emergency supplies of meal.90 The undoubted hardships in Ireland in 1816–17 were matched in Scotland and England and were part of a worldwide problem that extended . . . over extensive regions of the Western world, not just parts of Europe. . . . Genuine famine conditions also prevailed in large areas of Switzerland, Italy, the Hapsburg Monarchy, and the Ottoman empire, as was likewise true in smaller regions of eastern France and southwestern Germany. Dearth, moreover, was common throughout Europe west of the Russian empire, and food shortages occurred in North Africa and also in some districts of North America.91 88 Roger Wells, Wretched faces: famine in wartime England 1793–1803 (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1988), 1–2, 35–52, 59–60, 69–71; Alan Booth, ‘Food riots in the north-west of England, 1790–1801’, Past & Present, 77 (1977), 84–107; R. B. Outhwaite, Dearth, public policy and social disturbance in England, 1550–1800 (London: Macmillan, 1991), 20; T. S. Ashton, Economic fluctuations in England 1700–1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 24–6. 89 Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 242; O’Brien, From the Union to the Famine, 226–32. 90 T. M. Devine, Clanship to crofters’ war: the social transformation of the Scottish Highlands (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 147. 91 J. D. Post, The last great subsistence crisis in the western world (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1977), xiii.

132 , ,   As with the crisis of 1740–1, the underlying reason was climatic disturbance. On this occasion the cause was a volcanic eruption in the East Indies that blocked out the sunlight. ‘During two successive years, 1816 and 1817, the season of harvest was too cold and moist to bring the fruits of the earth to maturity.’92 In Ireland the weather, nevertheless, was less harsh than on the Continent and mortality less severe. The reason why Ireland was different in the nineteenth century was the potato famine of the 1840s. The closest comparison with Ireland in the United Kingdom was the Scottish Highlands where some of the western parishes and the islands lost between a quarter and a half of their populations. But hunger and starvation were much less widespread than in Ireland. One hundred and fifty thousand people were at risk compared with 3 million on the other side of the Irish Sea. Hence the relief efforts in Scotland were more manageable and ‘the Highlands were saved in large part by the overall strength of the Scottish economy and the effective mobilisation of relief ’.93 It is true, also, that the political will on the part of the United Kingdom government to relieve famine distress in Ireland was not strong. The difficulties in Ireland in the late nineteenth century were the final throes of a potato-dependent society that lingered in the west but which was fast disappearing in the east. They could not compare with the horrors of the Great Famine. Meanwhile there were far worse famines in Finland in 1867–8 and in Russia in 1891–2 that affected 11 million people out of 36 million and left 400,000 people dead.94 Conclusion Many years ago Professor Connell argued that there was a ‘gap in famines’ in Ireland between the early 1740s and the 1820s. Dr Dickson has suggested that it is not a helpful hypothesis since it glosses over the seriousness of some years of scarcity after 1741.95 But the most cogent reason for rejecting it is that it implies that famine had been a normal condition of Ireland before 1740 and was to become so again after 1820. The long perspective adopted here 92 Post, The last great subsistence crisis in the western world, 1–26, 115–16, 122–40; Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 175–7; Dickson, ‘The gap in famines’, in Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience, 107; Ó Gráda, Ireland before and after the Famine, 87. 93 Devine, Clanship to crofters’ war, 146–7, 150. 94 For Finland see Cormac Ó Gráda ‘ “For Irishmen to forget?”: recent research on the Great Irish Famine’; and Pitkänen, Kari J., ‘The road to survival or death? Temporary migration during the great Finnish famine’, both in Antti Häkkinen (ed.), Just a sack of potatoes? Crisis experiences in European societies past and present (Helsinki: Societas Historica Finlandiae, 1992), 17–18, 50, 87–118. For Russia see R. E. F. Smith and David Christian, Bread and salt: a social and economic history of food and drink in Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 350; R. G. Robbins, Famine in Russia, 1891–2: the imperial government responds to a crisis (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1975), 170–1. 95 Connell, The population of Ireland, 144; Dickson, ‘The gap in famines’, 96–111.

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reveals that the striking feature is not how frequently famine occurred, but how infrequently. There were certainly periods of acute distress, most of which fell short of outright famine. A cluster of difficult years occurred in the early 1500s and the early 1520s; during the first of these Ireland may have suffered famine, but not so in the second. There was famine at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and in the 1640s and early 1650s. The earlier shortages of the early and late 1620s were short-lived and localized scarcities. From the 1650s there was an almost complete absence of bad years until the crises of 1727–9 and 1740–1. And notwithstanding occasional years of hardship, Ireland did not plunge into wholesale famine again until 1845–9.96 This chapter started with the question: was famine Ireland’s destiny? If by posing the question we are implying that Ireland has a famine-prone history distinct from that of other regions of Europe, then the answer is no. If, alternatively, the question suggests that the Great Famine was the inevitable outcome of inexorable forces—a growing imbalance between the population and the ability of the land to support the population—working over centuries towards a tragic climax, the answer is the same. Any simple Malthusian argument does not bear close scrutiny. An alternative argument could be made out for believing that it was the potato that kept the Malthusian spectre at bay by extending the boundaries of cultivation and providing a nutritious food fit for people and pigs. In the process a precarious ecological edifice was constructed. When that structure collapsed, Ireland plunged into the enormity of the Great Famine. Thus was created the image of famine as Ireland’s destiny. 96

Clarkson, ‘Famine and Irish history’, in Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience, 225–6.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Anatomy of Famine Introduction Although famine was not the chronic condition of Ireland, the country has suffered its burden of hunger. The first recorded famine in Ireland was in A[nno] M[undi] 4019 when ‘Bearngall Mac-Geyd . . . was king twelve years. In his time there were continual wars, which brought great scarcity of victuals throughout the whole kingdom.’1 Sir William Wilde, to whom we owe this information, tells us nothing more. At the other end of the time span, the horrors of the Great Famine have been garnered by historians, politicians, and myth makers and brewed into an intoxicating mixture that has fed into Irish historiography ever since. The human manifestations of famine are depressingly familiar. Men, women, and children starve to death and are scourged by fever, dysentery, and diarrhoea. Family life is turned on its head as mothers, fathers, and children die or leave home in search of food. The need to find something to eat destroys affective bonds between husbands and wives, parents, and children as they compete for such scraps as come to hand. Competition is intense at the community level as neighbour vies with neighbour. Tensions arise between the haves and the have-nots: between those in need of help and those in a position to give it. The survivors carry psychological scars and their physical and intellectual developments are stunted. At a broader level still, a famine may affect the trends of future population growth for generations to come. There may be political legacies if government policies are implicated in causing famine or blamed for failing to provide relief to the victims. This chapter explores these issues. We start with the visual and written descriptions of the famines that occurred in Ireland from the sixteenth century. We then move on to discuss the physical sufferings that afflicted starving men, women, and children. Inevitably, much of the evidence is drawn from the Great Famine, but that dreadful experience should not blind us to the sufferings of earlier times. Nutritional and medical understanding helps us to decode earlier accounts and thus put the events of the 1840s into perspective.

1 [William Wilde], ‘Table of cosmical phenomena, epizootics, epiphitics, famines, and pestilences in Ireland’, The census of Ireland for the year 1851, part v. Tables of deaths, vol. i, PP 1856 [2087–I], XXIX, 42–3.

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Images and descriptions of famine The Great Famine occurred a decade too early for the photographers’ art. But engravers did their best, especially those employed by the Illustrated London News, the world’s first illustrated newspaper. Between 1846 and 1850 it published more than forty illustrations of the Great Famine engraved from sketches, some drawn by resident Irish artists. The engravings are well known, but most failed to capture the agonies as vividly as the accompanying text. Either the sufferings were beyond the skills available to engravers or were too terrible for the subscribers to the Illustrated London News to contemplate.2 Words were more powerful than the engravers’ tools. Alexander Somerville, writing for the Manchester Examiner wondered whether even words were not too much. He was in Limerick in February 1847: The difficulty with me is to select the topics of most pressing interest, and postpone or leave untold what cannot now be published. To begin and continue to tell of all the ghastly faces, hollow and shrunken, which I have seen, with death looking out of their eyes, might horrify and appal the reader, but would not, I fear, instruct him; the masses of the population amongst whom I have travelled through Tipperary and part of this county, sinking from health to sickness, from life to death—not yet dead, but more terrible to look upon and think upon than if they were dead; living but with death and his attendants in possession of the human tenement, and keeping possession until the indwelling spirit of the clay is ejected, thrown out, out at the windows where it is already seen struggling to stay within, and glaring horribly at the passer by; those masses of the population would afford, in description, scope enough to fill all this paper, from title to printer’s ink. But the means of relieving them from present suffering and impending death are the topics which I shall rather choose.3

For almost all of Ireland’s famine history, we depend on the written testimony of men and women who witnessed terrible sights. The earliest accounts reported by Sir William Wilde concentrated on causes of famine, but from the later sixteenth century descriptions of the sufferings caused by famine began to be written. The Desmond wars in the 1580s were the occasion of ‘extreme famine; and such as the sword did not destroie, the same did consume and eat out’. Town dwellers survived better than people in the countryside, perhaps because towns were better provisioned. People living close to the coast were reduced to ‘eating the bodies of drowned sailors’. Travellers throughout Munster did ‘not meet anie man, woman, or child, saving in townes and cities, nor yet see anie beast, but the verie wolves, foxes, and other ravening beasts; manie of them laie dead, being famished, and the residue gone elsewhere’.4 2 Margaret Crawford, ‘The Great Irish Famine 1845–9: image versus reality’, in Raymond Gillespie and Brian P. Kennedy (eds.), Ireland: art into history (Dublin: Town House, 1994), 75–90. 3 Alexander Somerville, Letters from Ireland during the Famine of 1847, ed. K. D. M. Snell (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1994), 56. 4 Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 104.

136     Edmund Spenser recalled the events of that time. The English soldiers had burnt the native crops with terrible human consequences: Out of everie Corner of the woodes & glennes they came crepinge forth vpon theire handes, for theire legges could not beare them, they looked like Anatomies of death, they spake like ghostes crying out of their graues; they did eate of the dead Carrions, happye were they could fynde them, yea and one another soone after, in so much as the verie Carcases they spared not to scrape out of theire graues, and if they found a plott of water-cresses or shamrockes, there they flocked as to a feast for the tyme, yet not able longe to contynewe therewithall, that in shorte space there were none almost left and a most populous and plentyfull Countrye suddenlie lefte voyde of man or beast, yet sure in all that warr there perished not manye by the sworde, but all by the extremitye of famyne, which they themselues had wrought.5

Bad as the 1580s were, they were surpassed by the sufferings of 1600–1. Severe frost and ‘tempestuous weather’ in the winter brought with it a ‘very great dearth’. The following year havoc wreaked by the weather was compounded by ‘the continuall spoile of the Countrie, and the Armies cutting down the Rebels Corne for these last two yeeres’. Fynes Moryson saw terrible sights in counties Antrim and Down. There is perhaps an element of propaganda in his account, for truth itself is a victim of the atrocities of war. But the suffering rings true through the archaic language. Moryson told of a most horrible spectacle of three children (whereof the eldest was not above ten yeeres old), all eating and knawing with their teeth the entrals of their dead mother, upon whose flesh they had fed twenty dayes past, and having eaten all from the feete upward to the bare bones, rosting it continually by a slow fire, were now come to the eating of her said entralls in like sort rosted, yet not divided from the body, being yet raw. Former mention hath been made in the Lord Deputies letters, of carcases scattered in many places, all dead of famine. And no doubt the famine was so great, as the rebell souldiers taking all the common people had to feede upon, and hardly living thereupon, (so as they besides fed not onely on Hawkes, Kytes, and unsavourie birds of prey, but on Horseflesh, and other things unfit for mans feeding), the common sort of Rebels were driven to unspeakeable extremities (beyond the record of most Histories that ever I did read in that kind) the ample relating whereof were an infinite taske, yet wil I not passe it over without adding some fewe instances. Captain Trevor & many honest Gentlemen lying in the Newry can witnes, that some old women of those parts, used to make a fier in the fields, & divers little children driving out the cattel in the cold mornings, and comming thither to warme them, were by them surprised, killed and eaten, which at last was discovered by a great girle breaking from them by the strength of her body, and Captaine Trevor sending out souldiers to know the truth, they found the childrens skulles and bones, and apprehended the old women, who were executed for the fact. The Captaines of Carick-fergus and the adjacent Garrisons of the Northerne parts can witnesse, that upon the making of peace, and receiving the rebels to mercy, it was a common practise among sort of them . . ., to thrust long needles into the horses of our 5 Edmund Spenser, A view of the present state of Ireland [1596], ed. W. L. Renwick (London: Scholartis Press, 1934), 135. See also p. 244.

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English troopes, and they dying thereupon, to be readie to teare out one anothers throate for a share of them. And no spectacle was more frequent in the Ditches of Townes, and especiallie in wasted Countries, then to see multitudes of these poor people dead with their mouths all coloured greene by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend up above ground. These and very many like lamentable effects followed their rebellion and no doubt the Rebels had been utterly destroyed by famine, had not a general peace shortly followed Tyrones submission . . .6

Such scenes were not witnessed again for forty years, until the wars of the 1640s and early 1650s. An Irish poet lamented, ‘this was the war which finished Ireland and beggared thousands. Plague and famine ran together when the saintly Nuncio was exiled [in 1649].’7 Military campaigning continued to 1654, destroying crops and spawning armies of refugees. ‘About the year 1652 and 1653’, wrote Richard Lawrence, a colonel in Cromwell’s army, ‘the plague and famine had so swept away whole countries that a man might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living creature . . . [except] very aged men with women and children . . . [whose] skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.’8 With the coming of better times, such misery faded almost into the mists of memory, only to return in the 1720s. In 1727–8 there were several months of ‘Wants and Famines . . . attended with the most dismal Consequences’. A writer in 1741 recalled 1727–8 as ‘very near as bad’ as the later famine of 1740–1.9 Dean Swift described Dublin streets, ‘crowded with beggars of the female sex followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for alms’. Even worse, people were ‘every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected’.10 Widespread starvation in 1740–1 accompanied the worst famine before the Great Famine. In counties Galway and Clare in March 1741, many were ‘obliged by the extreme scarcity of provisions . . . to eat horses and dogs and to steal and kill ewes that are ready to yearn, that so their foul feeding has already thrown numbers of them into fluxes etc. and will in time . . . occasion more dangerous disorders’.11 The anonymous author of The Groans of Ireland told of: 6 Fynes Moryson, An itinerary containing his ten yeers travell through the twelve dominions of Germany, Bohmerland, Sweitzerland, Netherland, Denmarke, Poland, Italy, Turky, France, England, Scotland & Ireland (Glasgow: James MacLehose & Sons, 1908), iii. 282–3. 7 Seán Ó Conaill, ‘Tuireamh na hÉireann’, lines 353–6, in Cecil O’Rahilly (ed.), Five seventeenthcentury political poems (Dublin: Institute for Advanced Studies, 1952). Quoted in and translated by Pádraig Lenihan, ‘War and population 1649–52’, Irish Economic and Social History, 24 (1997), 1. 8 Quoted in Lenihan, ‘War and population’, 8. 9 The groans of Ireland in a letter to a member of parliament (Dublin: printed by and for George Faulker, 1741), 4. 10 Quoted in Charles Creighton, A history of epidemics in Britain (2nd edn., London: Frank Cass, 1965 [1894]), ii. 238. 11 Quoted in Michael Drake, ‘The Irish demographic crisis of 1740–41’, in T. W. Moody (ed.), Historical Studies, VI (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 104.

138     The most miserable Scene of universal Distress, that I have ever read of in History: Want and Misery in every Face; the Rich unable almost, as they were willing, to relieve the Poor; the Roads spread with dead and dying Bodies; Mankind the Colour of the Docks and Nettles which they fed on; two or three, sometimes more, on a Car going to the Grave for want of Bearers to carry them, and many buried only in the Fields and Ditches where they perished.12

Distressing reports came from all over the country: from Munster to Monaghan, from Cashel to Galway, of ‘many, [who] through want perish daily in the roads and ditches, where they are buried’.13 Sir Richard Cox wrote from west Cork: Mortality is now no longer heeded; the instances are so frequent. And burying the dead, which used to be one of the most religious acts amongst the Irish, is now become a burthen: so I am daily forced to make those who remain carry dead bodies to the churchyards, which would otherwise rot in the open air; otherwise I assure you the common practice is to let the tree lie where it falls, and if some good natured body covers it with the next ditch, it is the most to be expected. In short, by all I can learn, the dreadfullest civil war, or most raging plague never destroyed so many as this season. The distempers and famine increase so that it is no vain fear that there will not be hands to save the harvest . . .14

Although miseries like these were not repeated with such intensity for a hundred years, they were glimpsed again in 1756–7 when poor harvests pushed grain prices to high levels. This time the reaction was violence rather than starvation, an indication, perhaps, that the crisis was less severe. Mobs ransacked warehouses and stopped carts carrying oats and other grain. In the spring a Waterford merchant reported: Our Mobb took about 40 Tunns [of oatmeal] that was at miles near this Citty and reladed it out in our market ½d per pottile wch will make to the propritor 7s per [blank] they vow vingence against any man that would attempt shipping corn or meal from this, and realy I don’t find any quantity in this Neighbourhood so that we dreadd much a scarce summer. The Merchants of this Citty made a subscription of £1500 wch we intended to lay up in meal & sell to the Poor dwelers of Town at prime cost & we cannot get any to buy, although we have sent to distant quarters of this countrey, accept some that’s in the County of Tipperary & the Mobb at Carrick and Clonmell will not suffer any to come from hence . . .15

During ‘Ireland’s forgotten famine’ at the end of the eighteenth century, starvation stalked the countryside. In October 1799 James Hamilton, agent for the earl of Abercorn, wrote that it ‘was a most disastrous harvest year’. In the following May ‘the high prices are quite intolerable for the poor . . . meal is 3s 4d a peck: potatoes 1s a stone: butcher’s meat is 3d a pound and badly 12 13 14 15

The groans of Ireland, 3. David Dickson, Arctic Ireland (Dundonald: White Row Press, 1997), 50–2. Quoted in ibid. 50. PRONI, D354/851. Mussenden Papers. See also D354/842, 848, 850, 871, 925, 935.

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supplied. I do actually think before the middle of August people will be known to have died of want.’ There was a ‘great scarcity of food and money . . . Above two thirds of all the cotter houses in the country are deserted and their families in crowds begging through the country.’ In Strabane, ‘where beggars are not permitted I know that there are above 250 starving families kept from famishing’ by soup kitchens. In April he feared that ‘some of the very poor will die of hunger’.16 ‘The year 1800’, another observer remarked, ‘was nearly as unfavourable to the fruits of the earth as 1799.’ In Dublin and elsewhere local authorities organized soup kitchens and ‘it seems probable, that had not the poor been assisted in this manner many of them would have perished . . .’17 A decade and a half later, in 1816–18, famine once again brought the threat of starvation. In some places [wrote a contemporary] the poorer classes were compelled to the sad necessity of collecting various esculent wild vegetables, nettles, wild mustard, navew [rape or coleseed], and others of the same kind to support life: and in places distant from Dublin, wretched beings were often seen exploring the fields in the hope of obtaining a supply of this miserable food. In districts contiguous to the sea, various marine plants were had recourse to for the purpose of allaying the cravings of hunger; and we have been informed, that on the sea coast near to Ballyshannon, many of the poor, during several months of this period, subsisted, either chiefly or altogether, on cockles, muscles, limpets, or even the putrefying fish they could procure on the shore. In some districts seed potatoes were taken up from the ground, and the hopes of the future year thus destroyed, for the relief of the present necessity; and the blood drawn from the cattle on the fields, and mixed with oatmeal, when this could be produced, has not unfrequently supplied a meal to a starving family. So general was the distress, and insufficient the supply in the distant parts of the country, that a few unhappy sufferers are said to have died of absolute want of food, and many must have sunk under the combined impressions of hunger, damp, cold, and the anguish of mind necessarily attendant on sad anticipation of the future.18

And so to the Great Famine that displayed the agonies of hunger in all their terrible manifestations. In 1848 Dr Daniel Donovan wrote a chilling clinical description of starvation that he saw with his own eyes: I have made particular inquiry from those who have suffered from starvation relative to the sensations experienced from long fasting; they described the pain of hunger as at first very acute, . . . [which] subsided, and was succeeded by a feeling of weakness and sinking . . . with insatiable thirst, for cold water particularly, and a distressing feeling of coldness . . . In a short time the face and limbs become frightfully emaciated; [and] the eyes acquire a most peculiar stare.19 16 John H. Gebbie (ed.), An introduction to the Abercorn letters as relating to Ireland 1746–1816 (Omagh: Strule Press, 1972), 209, 210, 211, 212. 17 Francis Barker and John Cheyne, An account of the rise, progress, and decline of the fever lately epidemical in Ireland together with communications from physicians in the provinces (Dublin: Hodges & M‘Arthur, 1821), 16–17. 18 Ibid. 34–5. 19 Daniel Donovan, ‘Observations on the peculiar diseases to which the famine of the last year gave origin, and on the morbid effects of insufficient nourishment’, Dublin Medical Press, 19 (1848), 67.

140     A clergyman from Ballina, County Mayo told of ‘a vast number of impotent folk, whose gaunt and wasted frames and ghastly, emaciated faces were too obvious signs of the suffering they had endured. The little boys and girls presented a hideous sight. In many instances, their heads had become bald and their faces wrinkled like old men and women of seventy or eighty years of age.’20 The Illustrated London News accompanied its illustrations with written accounts. ‘The distress, both in Youghal and Dungarvan’, wrote one reporter, ‘is truly appalling in the streets; for without entering the houses, the miserable spectacle of haggard looks, crouching attitudes, sunken eyes, and colourless lips and cheeks, unmistakably bespeaks the suffering of the people.’21 William Bennett of the Society of Friends could scarcely control his emotions: My hand trembles while I write. The scenes of human misery and degradation we witnessed still haunt my imagination, with the vividness and power of some horrid and tyrannous delusion . . . We entered a cabin. Stretched out in one dark corner . . . were three children huddled together, lying there because they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly, their little limbs . . . perfectly emaciated, eyes sunk, voices gone, and evidently in the last stages of actual starvation. On some straw, . . . was a shrivelled old woman, imploring us to give her something,—baring her limbs partly, to show how the skin hung loose from the bones.22

Similar language was used by a correspondent of Sir Charles Trevelyan in the spring of 1847. From Donegal to West Cork, the writer witnessed starving children looking like living skeletons. ‘No words can describe the appearance of the arms, from below the elbow the two bones seem to be stripped of every atom of flesh. If you take hold of the loose skin within the elbow joint, and lift the arm by it, it comes away in a long, thin fold as if you had lifted one side of a long narrow bag in which some bones had been placed.’ J. H. Tuke saw children with ‘unmeaning vacant stare’ with all the appearance of men and women of 80 years of age.23 West Cork was particularly badly afflicted. In December 1846 newspapers carried harrowing accounts: Disease and death in every quarter—the once hardy population worn away to emaciated skeletons—fever, dropsy, diarrhoea, and famine rioting in every filthy hovel, and sweeping away whole families—the population perceptibly lessened—death diminishing the destitution—hundreds frantically from their home and country, not with the idea of making fortunes in other lands, but to fly from a scene of suffering and death—400 men starving in one district, having no employment, and 300 more turned off public works in another district, on a day’s notice—seventy-five tenants ejected here, and a whole village in the last stage of destitution there—relief committees 20

Revd Thomas Armstrong, My life in Connaught (London: Elliot Stock, 1906), 13. Illustrated London News, 9 (1846), 293. William Bennett, ‘Extracts from account of his journey in Ireland’, in Transactions of the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends during the famine in Ireland 1846 and 1847 (Dublin: Hodges & Smith, 1852), 163. 23 Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845–1849 (New York: Old Town Books, 1989 [1962]), 195. 21 22

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threatening to throw up their mockery of an office, in utter despair—dead bodies of children flung into holes hastily scratched in the earth without shroud or coffin—wives travelling ten miles to beg the charity of a coffin for a dead husband, and bearing it back that weary distance—a government official offering the one-tenth of a sufficient supply of food, at famine prices—neither mill nor corn store within twenty miles—every field becoming a grave, and the land a wilderness.24

West Cork, and Skibbereen in particular, were bywords for starvation. But a correspondent for the Cork Examiner found scenes as harrowing in Tallow, County Waterford: While I am writing these few lines in a miserable cabin there lie the gaunt and ghastly bodies of a mother and her son, found dead in each other’s arms by the remaining little boy, who had gone out a day or two before to beg something for their relief. And this morning, before men had left their beds, the same sad postulant was at doors, begging therewith to purchase coffins to consign them to their mother earth. In fact, . . . it is impossible to walk in that part of the country without being frightened by the rabid, hunger-stricken faces which meet you on your way—faces you can no longer recognise, so altered were they from what they were. Nor is the forgoing the only—no, not the tenth—instance of death from starvation which has occurred in this locality.25

Newspapers were full of accounts of starvation.26 The collapse of social conventions observed during earlier famines was seen again. As the Illustrated London News put it, ‘all sympathy between the living and the dead seems completely out of the question’. Its reporter ‘saw from 150 to 180 funerals of victims to the want of food, the whole number attended by not more than 50 persons; and so hardened are the men regularly employed in the removal of the dead from the workhouse, that I saw one of them with four coffins in a car, driving to the churchyard, sitting upon one of the said coffins, and smoking with much apparent enjoyment.’27 A survivor in County Donegal remembered that: There were houses in this district in which all died of fever and none were buried. Things were so bad at that time that no one cared how the other was. Every household was left to itself and no one would come in or out to it. Families began to die and the rest were so weak and far spent that they could do nothing for them but leave them until the last one in the house died. All in the house died and the bodies lay here and there through it. They were never moved from it. There were many hungry dogs going about; and they say, God save us, that they were going into these houses and eating the bodies. When the fever went by and those who were left after it came to themselves little by little, they went to those houses. The door-leaves had dropped from the doors; when they went in there was nothing to be seen but people’s bones lying about the 24 The Vindicator, Belfast (23 Dec. 1846), quoting from the Cork Examiner. Cited in John Killen, The Famine decade; contemporary accounts 1814–1851 (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1995), 83. 25 Quoted in Des Cowman and Donald Brady (eds.), The Famine in Waterford 1845–1850 (Dublin: Geography Publications and Waterford County Council, 1995), 163. 26 See, for example, Killen, The Famine decade, 75, 98–9, 101–2. 27 Illustrated London News, 10 (1847), 16–17.

142     house. They gathered the bones and buried them together in one grave. Then they burned the house to the ground.28

The members of the Belfast Ladies’ Association, set up to alleviate distress in the countryside, shook their heads sadly over accounts of starvation, mainly from County Donegal. The plight of Widow Mooney on the island of Arranmore, and her five children, reported by a local clergyman and gentleman in the winter of 1847, was typical. ‘Her husband and one child had been buried the day before our visit. That they died of starvation may be readily believed, as the widow asserted, there had been no food whatever in the house for several days. The children, even under their fresh affliction, presented a gaunt, unmeaning vacant stare, characteristic of inanition; their very lips having become blanched and shrivelled by prolonged destitution.’29 One of the few women who described the famine directly was Mrs Asenath Nicholson, an American protestant missionary, who travelled Ireland between 1844 and 1848.30 At the end of 1846 she heard from a policeman of a widow found stewing a dog she had killed, together with a few potatoes she had gleaned after the harvest, to feed her three children.31 Shortly afterwards she saw her first starving man: In my childhood I had been frightened with the stories of ghosts, and had seen actual skeletons, but imagination had come short of the sight of this man. And here, to those who have never watched the progress of protracted hunger, it might be proper to say that persons will live for months, and pass through different stages, and life will struggle to maintain the lawful hold, if occasional scanty supplies are given, till the walking skeleton is reduced to a state of inanity—he sees you not, he heeds you not, neither does he beg. The fist stage is somewhat clamorous—will not easily be put off; the next is patient, passive stupidity; and the last is idiocy.32

No journalist more graphically captured the sufferings than Alexander Somerville. In March 1847, he watched seven men wearily sowing a field of oats. He followed one of them home, supposing him to be a ‘feeble old man’. But, ‘he was not an old man. He was under forty years of age; was tall and sinewy, and had all the appearances of what would have been a strong man if there had been flesh on his body. But he bowed down, his cheeks were sunken, and his skin sallow-coloured, as if death were already upon him.’ The man had eaten only once in two days and then only a little stirabout. Somerville met his family: 28 Roger J. McHugh, ‘The famine in Irish oral tradition’, in R. Dudley Edwards and T. Desmond Williams (eds.), The Great Famine: studies in Irish history 1845–52 (Dublin: Browne & Nowlan, 1956), 417–18. 29 First report of the committee of the Belfast Ladies’ Association for the relief of Irish destitution, March 1847 (Belfast, 1847), 23. 30 Maureen Murphy (ed.), Annals of the Famine in Ireland by Asenath Nicholson ([1850] Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1998). For a consideration of Nicholson as an observer see, Margaret Kelleher, ‘The female gaze: Asenath Nicholson’s famine narrative’, in Chris Morash and Richard Hayes (eds.), ‘Fearful realities’: new perspectives on the Famine (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1996), 119–30. 31 Murphy (ed.), Annals of the Famine, 36–7. 32 Ibid. 38–9.

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They were skeletons all of them, with skin on the bones and life within the skin. A mother skeleton and baby skeleton; a tall boy skeleton, who had no work to do; who could now do nothing but eat, and had nothing to eat. Four female children skeletons, and the tall father skeleton, not able to work to get food for them, and not able to get enough of food when he did work.33

Here was a man, Somerville pointed out, one of the best paid on the estate earning 10 old pence a day, but earning barely enough to eat, not enough to sustain his family, and nothing over to buy fuel. The tide of distress flowed into the cities as starving people arrived seeking food and shelter. In the spring of 1850 the Liberties of Dublin were crowded with ‘strangers from different parts of the country, especially Mayo, Galway, and other western counties . . . [and] all presented the same listless, stupid, careworn aspect, and the same miserable squalid appearance’. Living skeletons were seen on the public highways, but most bags of bones died out of sight in the foetid tenements and yards of the back streets.34 Mrs Nicholson was outraged that ‘in the wealthy, beautiful city of Dublin, which can boast some of the finest architecture on earth, there are in retired streets and dark alleys some of the most forbidding bogs of that wretched country’. There were to be found families ‘having neither food, fuel or covering, nothing but death stared them in the face. . .’35 The Great Famine eventually retreated and with it the haggard faces and the skeletons, living and dead. They re-emerged in some numbers in the west of Ireland at the end of the 1870s, raising fears of a new disaster, and occasionally in the Congested Districts in the 1890s. They loom large still in the collective memory of myth, legend, and history.

Starvation, kwashiorkor, and marasmus Throughout the accounts of famines in Ireland, the images of the dead, the skeletal barely living, the children wizened in their youth, raging fevers, the breakdown of society, appear again and again. Behind the gaunt masks were the physiological conditions that had brought people to this pass. Unless food is restored to hungry people, some will starve to death, but many more will perish from infections along the way. We consider, first, those deaths caused most directly by a lack of food leading to severe nutritional deficiency diseases such as kwashiorkor, marasmus, and, ultimately, starvation. These conditions are witnessed only when famine is intense and prolonged.36 33

Somerville, Letters from Ireland, 96. Cormac Ó Gráda, Black ’47 and beyond: the Great Irish Famine in history, economy, and memory (Princeton: 35 Princeton University Press, 1998), 168–9, 173, 175. Murphy (ed.), Annals of the Famine, 43, 44. 36 E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Subsistence crises and famines in Ireland: a nutritionist’s view’, in E. Margaret Crawford (ed.), Famine: the Irish experience 900–1900 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1989), 198–219. 34

144     Starvation is not strictly a disease but the painful climax of prolonged hunger. The first stage is the depletion of fat deposits in the body; a loss of about one-third of normal body weight has to occur before death intervenes.37 As the body weight falls, the basal metabolic rate declines and physical and mental activity are reduced. Less obviously, the abdominal and thoracic organs degenerate and the intestinal mucosa become thin and smooth and lose some of their absorptive ability. Blood pressure falls significantly and atrophy sets in. Eventually ‘famine oedema’ [i.e. the retention of fluid in the body] occurs. The hair of victims becomes dull, the eyes gaunt, and, among children, lanugo hair grows on the forearms and back.38 The skin assumes a paper-like, inelastic quality, is dull and grey in hue, and marked by brown blotches. Starvation is numbingly slow. ‘A fast lasting the biblical forty days and forty nights is well within the reach of any healthy adult. When human beings are deprived of food, vitamin requirements are reduced because of low levels of general and basal metabolism.’39 For a time starving people survive on their nutritional reserves. Eventually, though, they arrive at the terminal stages of starvation: intractable diarrhoea and cardiovascular collapse. Children aged between about 6 months and 5 years are particularly vulnerable to starvation because of their exacting dietary requirements. Nutritional marasmus or kwashiorkor, collectively known as protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) often accompanies starvation among children. The visible differences between the two are well defined. Marasmic children have low body weights in relation to age, their reserves of fat fall, and their muscles waste away. Children take on a wizened and shrunken appearance and come to look like little old men or women. Kwashiorkor is characterized by swelling, usually concentrated in the abdomen and lower limbs. The muscles of sufferers are wasted, pigmentation and lesions appear on the skin, and they often suffer from diarrhoea. It is unclear why some victims contract kwashiorkor and others marasmus. The physical signs of starvation, kwashiorkor and marasmus show through repeatedly in accounts of famines in Ireland. They appear as ‘Anatomies of death’, in Spenser’s description at the end of the sixteenth century; and as the ‘very aged men with women and children . . . [whose] skin was black like an oven’, who roamed Ireland in the 1650s. We meet them again in the cases of ‘marasmus or atrophy, especially among the aged and young children’, observed by a physician in Waterford in 1819.40 The stigmata of starvation were everywhere seen during the Great Famine: on the Mayo children with ‘their heads . . . bald and their faces wrinkled like old men and women of seventy or eighty years of age’; and the children witnessed by William Bennett, ‘too weak to rise, 37 W. R. Aykroyd, ‘Definition of different degrees of starvation’, in G. Blix (ed.), Famine: a symposium dealing with nutrition and relief operations in times of disaster, vol. ix (Uppsala: Symposia of the Swedish National Nutrition Foundation, 1971), 21. 38 Lanugo hair is very fine hair found on new born infants. 39 Aykroyd, ‘Definition of different degrees of starvation’, 19. 40 Barker and Cheyne, An account of the rise, progress and decline of the fever, 266.

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pale and ghastly, their little limbs . . . perfectly emaciated, eyes sunk, voices gone . . .’; or the children ‘worn to skeletons, their features sharpened with hunger, and their limbs wasted almost to the bone’, whose images haunted another Quaker; and on those observed by the rector of Schull, County Cork, ‘swollen and ripening for the grave’.41 In the spring of 1847 a woman approached Asenath Nicholson for money to buy a coffin for her husband. ‘He died yesterday on me, and it would be a pity to put him into the ground without a board, and he so swelled, ma’am, not a ha’porth of his legs or belly but is ready to burst. . .’42 Wilde’s analysis of the causes of death during the 1840s gives us some indication of the relative importance of starvation and the nutritional diseases (see Table 7.1). Well over half of nutritional deaths were accounted for by marasmus, almost a quarter by dropsy and the rest by starvation. These proportions are rough and ready. There was no registration of the causes of death in Ireland before 1864 and during the Famine it was difficult to collect reliable statistics of any sort. Furthermore, the terms themselves are ambiguous. As Wilde explained, ‘marasmus was adopted as a generic term [for] all those various afflictions of infancy and early youth returned . . . as “consumption (infantile), wasting, decay, decline, emaciation, general debility and loss of strength” ’. Dropsy was a symptom of several diseases, although during food shortages it frequently indicated famine oedema caused by kwashiorkor. But even lumped together starvation, marasmus, and kwashiorkor caused fewer deaths than diseases associated with famine. T 7.1. Deaths from marasmus, dropsy, and starvation, 1844–1850 Year

Marasmus

Dropsy

Starvation

Total

1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850

3,871 4,341 6,390 11,711 10,551 11,823 8,721

1,700 2,078 2,774 5,246 4,027 4,407 3,852

286 516 2,041 6,058 4,678 4,717 2,392

5,839 6,935 11,175 23,015 19,256 20,947 14,965

Source: The census of Ireland for the year 1851, part v. Table of deaths, vol. ii, PP 1856 [2087–II], XXX.

41 Quoted by E. M. Crawford, in Líam Kennedy, Paul S. Ell, E. M. Crawford, and L. A. Clarkson, Mapping the Great Irish Famine: a survey of the famine decades (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999), 106. 42 Murphy (ed.), Annals of the Famine, 94–5.

146     Vitamin deficiency diseases Starvation was accompanied by vitamin deficiency diseases including scurvy, xerophthalmia, and pellagra. Neither scurvy nor pellagra were major causes of deaths.43 Xerophthalmia was not fatal at all. However, the severity of vitamin deficiency diseases increases the longer shortages persist. Their prevalence is also affected by the composition of customary diets. Some vitamin deficiency diseases, therefore, are made worse by the chronic disruption of normal food supplies and others erupt because of a shift to ill-conceived food-aid programmes. An example of the former is scurvy that results from a lack of vitamin C in diets. Scorbutic patients suffer from tiredness, breathlessness, and mental depression. Cutaneous haemorrhages—bleeding under the surface of the skin—produce purple blotches (purpuric spots), usually first on the limbs and then on other parts of the body. The joints swell and grow painful as blood haemorrhages into joints and muscles. The gums become red, soft, spongy, swollen, and they bleed easily. Eventually the patients’ teeth loosen and fall out. Unrestrained scurvy is a killer because of haemorrhaging into the heart muscle or brain. Scurvy was uncommon in Ireland before the Great Famine. Gerard Boate, writing in 1652 commented that, ‘the Scurvy, an evill so generall in all other Northerly countries confined upon the Sea, is until this day utterly unknown in Ireland’.44 Boate possibly misjudged the extent of scurvy. He spent less than a year in Ireland. On the other hand, he obtained much of his information from his brother Arnold, a physician who had been in Ireland with the parliamentary army since 1642 and who was presumably well informed. Scurvy was described several times during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1847, Dr J. O. Curran, of Dublin, was sceptical about an account of scurvy written in the 1740s. Curran claimed that, ‘epistaxis [nose-bleeding] was then exceedingly common, whilst intense rheumatic pains, and large ecchymoses [bleeding under the skin], seem to have been tolerably frequent in fever; but whether any of these were really symptoms of scurvy it is now impossible to say’.45 In Curran’s opinion, what had been witnessed in the 1740s was typhus. But there was an earlier account of scurvy by Dr John Burges of Dublin published in 1725 that Curran did not know about. Burges described the symptoms as follows: 43

Aykroyd, ‘Definition of different degrees of starvation’, 19. Gerard Boate, Ireland’s natural history (London, 1652), 141–2. 45 J. O. Curran, ‘Observations on scurvy as it has lately appeared throughout Ireland, and in several parts of Great Britain’, Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science, 4/7 (1847), 111. Curran’s source was Maurice O’Connell, Morborum acutorum et chronicorum quorundum observationes medicales experimentales, sedulâ compluorium annorum praxitum corcagiæ, etc. (Dublin: 1746), 333–5. 44

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Those persons then are truly scorbutick, or have a great degree of the scurvy, who have spots first red, then growing livid and Blackish, infesting the limbs and several Parts with an unusual lassitude or weariness, And who have dark red, itching and corrupted Gums with a looseness of Teeth, that can’t bear the least rub without bleeding . . . with wandring shifting Pains frequent about the limbs and Gums, joined with a very irregular pulse . . .46

Burges believed scurvy to be the consequence of digesting food ‘parched, or crisped, beyond their natural Tone and Tension, with high-seasoned Meats, [and] Fretting Wines’. His (useless) remedy for ‘that Raging Distemper of our Climes, the SCURVY’, was to take the waters of Ballispellan, County Kilkenny.47 The extent of scurvy in Ireland was still uncertain in the early nineteenth century. ‘That at least some cases of scurvy were met with during the famine of 1800 I have positive, though not professional evidence’, wrote Curran in 1847. With greater certainty, he referred to the writings of a Dr Francis Rogan, who ‘distinctly remember[ed] the prevalence of scurvy during the famine of 1817, caused by a partial failure of the potatoes’.48 Rogan had treated patients suffering from ‘bleeding gums and distinctive very dark and well defined petechiae [spots] on the skin’. His remedy was ‘fresh lemon juice, yeast and mineral acids. When lemons could be procured an ounce of the juice was given every two hours . . .’49 Scurvy became rampant during the Great Famine among a population that had become accustomed to a high dietary intake of vitamin C provided by the potato. The first signs appeared in Naas, County Kildare, late in 1845 where a Dr O’Brien treated several patients who complained of ‘rose-coloured patches . . . swollen state of the muscles of the neck, shoulders, and arms, with pain so acute that the patients winc[ed] on the slightest pressure . . . [also] pains in all the bones’.50 O’Brien diagnosed these as cases of ‘a new form of gastro enterite’. Dr McCormack of Buncrana, County Donegal, who had read descriptions of scurvy in Calcutta, suggested instead that the Naas symptoms were ‘in fact cases of land scurvy’. McCormack had seen similar symptoms in Donegal. The gums of one patient were ‘swollen, painful, spongy, and bleed on the slightest touch’, her joints were excruciatingly painful, and there was ‘a sense of weight, accompanied with pain, in the region of the heart: palpitation excited by the 46 John Burges, An essay on the waters and air of Ballispellan (Dublin, 1725), Royal Irish Academy, Haliday Pamphlet Collection, vol. 64, no. 6. 47 Ibid. 8, 10. 48 Curran, ‘Observations on scurvy’, 111. 49 Francis Rogan, Observations on the condition of the middle and lower classes in the north of Ireland, as it tends to promote the diffusion of contagious fever: with the history and treatment of the late epidemic disorder, as it prevailed in an extensive district of that country, and a detail of the measures adopted to arrest its progress (London: Whitmore & Fenn, 1819), 43, 159. 50 J. D. O’Brien, ‘Symptoms produced by eating diseased potatoes’, Dublin Hospital Gazette (15 Jan. 1846), 166.

148     slightest movement’. According to the patient’s father, his daughter ‘had got the “complaint” that was going through the country’.51 Scurvy sufferers clogged the county dispensaries. Dr Tanner ‘prescribed for twenty scorbutic patients per day at the south Cork infirmary’.52 In the Ballygar Dispensary, County Galway, ‘acute scurvy was . . . very prevalent, and in the months of June and July the symptoms became more serious’.53 Its extent prompted doctors to investigate its aetiology. Dr Curran’s account was published in 1847. He described scurvy as once ‘the very rarest of diseases in Ireland, [that] has within the last two years been making its appearance in various towns and rural districts, and has latterly become exceedingly prevalent in all parts of the kingdom’.54 There was much debate about causes. Dr Bellingham of St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, noted the similarities between scorbutic symptoms seen in Ireland and those observed among sailors by Lind in the 1770s.55 Bellingham discovered that none of his own patients had eaten vegetables for a considerable time and concluded, correctly, that the cause of scurvy was the absence of potatoes from diets.56 Potatoes are not a rich source of vitamin C, but they provided the population with more than an adequate amount by virtue of the quantities eaten. Here, indeed, lay a danger. Pre-Famine potato diets were rich in vitamin C and this helps to explain why scurvy appeared so quickly after 1845 when the potato failed. Human beings cannot manufacture vitamin C endogenously and levels fall quickly unless replenished regularly.57 Furthermore, infections and gastrointestinal diseases reduce vitamin C levels in the body.58 People accustomed to high intakes of vitamin C become depleted more quickly than those used to a low intake because ‘the body becomes conditioned to the “de-luxe” treatment, [and] sudden withdrawal does not allow the physiology of the individual to accommodate immediately to a lower intake’.59 Strong evidence supporting the withdrawal syndrome came from Scotland. Dr Christison of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary treated 149 scurvy patients over a period of three months in 1847.60 All but three were Irish men who 51 M. J. McCormick, ‘A case of land scurvy produced by eating diseased potatoes’ Dublin Hospital Gazette (15 Apr. 1846), 263, 264. 52 Curran, ‘Observations on scurvy’, 129. 53 A. French, ‘Report of the Ballygar Dispensary, County Galway for 1847’, Dublin Medical Press, 18 54 (1847), 389. Curran, ‘Observations on scurvy’, 84. 55 O’Bryen Bellingham, ‘Cases of scurvy: with observations’, Dublin Medical Press, 18 (1847), 37. 56 Bellingham, ‘Cases of scurvy’, 37. 57 S. Davidson and R. Passmore, Human nutrition and dietetics (Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone, 1965), 218. 58 John H. Crandon, Charles C. Lund, and David B. Dill, ‘Experimental human scurvy’, New England Journal of Medicine, 223 (1940), 365; C. W. M. Wilson, ‘Vitamin C: tissue saturation, metabolism and desaturation’, Practitioner, 212 (1974), 483. 59 Silvia Nobile and Joan M. Woodhill, Vitamin C: the mysterious redox-system—a trigger of Life? (Lancaster: MPT Press Ltd., 1981), 129. 60 R. Christison, ‘On scurvy. Part II—Account of scurvy as it has lately appeared in Edinburgh, and of an epidemic of it among railway labourers in the surrounding country’, Monthly Journal of Medical Science, 79/13  (July 1847), 6.

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had arrived in the early summer to work on the railways. None of the railway workers, Irish and non-Irish alike, were eating potatoes but were living on bread, salt pork, butter, cheese, sugar, tea, and coffee. Yet it was mostly the Irish who developed scurvy. Heavy physical exertion hastens the onset of scurvy.61 Many Irish labourers toiling on public works schemes dropped dead on the job, just as scorbutic seamen fell dead from the mainsail. In 1846, a man digging a road in the parish of Aghabologue, County Cork, ‘died suddenly on the work’. An inquest returned a verdict of ‘died a natural death’, although local opinion was that he had died of starvation.62 In a similar case in County Cork, a jury brought in a verdict of ‘died of starvation caused by the gross neglect of the Board of Works’.63 Both men had laboured hard for money wages that had not been paid and almost certainly were suffering from scurvy. Often workmen on the public works were not paid daily but at the end of the week, but died before the week was up. ‘Many have been carried home to their wretched cabins, some dead and others dying, who had fallen down with the spade in their hands.’64 More males developed scurvy than females. In 1847 over 90 per cent of scurvy patients treated by Dr Curran in Dublin were male.65 There was a similar pattern in the North Dublin workhouse hospital and also in Glasgow and Edinburgh where a majority of patients were Irish.66 Modern studies also show that scurvy attacks more men than women. This suggests that there may be differences in the metabolism of vitamin C between males and females.67 Scurvy vanished quickly from Ireland once the potato was again available to supply vitamin C. Scurvy mortality during the Famine can never be measured. The census gives a figure of 167 deaths from ‘scurvy and purpura’ between 1841 and 1851, but this simply cannot be believed. As Sir William Wilde remarked at the time, this total was ‘but a small proportion of those which absolutely occurred throughout the country’.68 Just as the history of scurvy before the Great Famine is uncertain, so too is that of xerophthalmia. This is an eye disease that causes blindness and is 61 J. Lind, A treatise of the scurvy (Edinburgh: Kincaid & Donaldson, 1753); Crandon, Lund, and Dill, ‘Experimental human scurvy’, 364; John Norris, ‘The “Scurvy Disposition”: heavy exertion as an exacerbating influence on scurvy in modern times’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 57/3 (1983), 325–38. See also E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Scurvy in Ireland during the Great Famine’, Journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, 1/3 (1988), 297–8. 62 Correspondence relating to the measures adopted for the relief of distress in Ireland (Board of Works Series, First Part, PP 1847 [764], L, 149. 63 Ibid. 253. 64 Murphy (ed.), Annals of the Famine, 39. 65 Curran, ‘Observations on scurvy’, 85. 66 Charles Ritchie, ‘Contributions to the pathology and treatment of the scorbutus, which is at present in various parts of Scotland’, Monthly Journal of Medical Science,  13 (1847), 40; Christison, ‘On scurvy’, 4, 5. 67 Kenneth Carpenter, History of scurvy and vitamin C (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 246. Wilson, ‘Vitamin C: tissue saturation, metabolism and desaturation’, 485. 68 Wilde,‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 250

150     induced by a prolonged lack of the fat-soluble vitamin A. William Wilde’s survey of diseases showed that an eye affliction that contemporaries called ophthalmia had long been endemic in Ireland for centuries. It sometimes flared to epidemic proportions in years coinciding with or immediately following food shortages, as in 1701, 1740, 1758, 1801, 1825, 1840, and 1849–50.69 Ophthalmia, however, is not a vitamin deficiency disease, but a contagious infection that spreads in unhygienic, overcrowded living conditions. The evidence from the Great Famine, however, at least raises the possibility that some of the earlier outbreaks might have been the vitamin deficiency disease xerophthalmia. As long as diets contain vitamin A there is little chance of the disease occurring. Foods rich in vitamin A include fish oils, such as cod-liver oil, liver, butter, cream, cheese, whole milk, and egg yolks. It is not present in cereals or potatoes. Vitamin A is a storable substance, the reserves being located in the liver. Because Irish diets had traditionally included milk and milk products, and herrings, xerophthalmia was rarely to be found. But even before the Famine the poor were coming to rely on skimmed milk and buttermilk, which contain only negligible amounts of vitamin A. During the Great Famine the chances of xerophthalmia occurring increased, especially among children whose stores of vitamin A are small, but whose dietary requirements are high. Xerophthalmia damages the iris, conjunctivae, and cornea of the eye, and ultimately leads to blindness. It broke out in workhouses in the late 1840s. In 1849 the poor law commissioners were alarmed by an epidemic of what they termed ‘ophthalmia’ among workhouse inmates, but which was clearly xerophthalmia (see Table 7.2). The commissioners invited two ophthalmic surgeons, Professor Arthur Jacob and Sir William Wilde to investigate the infection. Wilde described symptoms that were clearly those of xerophthalmia. T 7.2. Number of so-called ‘ophthalmia’ cases in Irish workhouses

Contracted in workhouses Admitted with ophthalmia Total in original sourcesa

1849

1850

1851

1852

11,368 532 13,812

24,882 758 27,200

42,067 963 45,947

28,765 1,360 31,876

a

The compilers of the statistics explained the discrepancies on faulty record keeping in some unions. Sources: Annual reports of the poor law commissioners 1850–3.

The early symptoms of xerophthalmia are night blindness, frequently followed by dryness of the conjunctiva. Wilde reported none of these, but they are subtle indicators and they may have escaped him. The next stage of the disease is ulceration causing irreversible damage to the eye; in advanced cases the ulcers lead to complete perforation of the cornea. Wilde observed these 69

Census of Ireland for the year 1851, part iii. Report on the status of disease, PP 1854 [1765] LXIII, 45.

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symptoms in several patients in the Tipperary Union and described corneal changes that conform to the classical clinical symptoms of xerophthalmia. If left untreated, blindness frequently occurs in one eye only. Here again, this pattern corresponds to that found by Wilde. Of the 340 cases he examined in Tipperary, sixteen had irrecoverably lost the sight of both eyes and thirty-two had lost vision in one eye. A further thirty-three had one eye blemished so as to impair vision although not altogether to destroy sight. Throughout Ireland there were 1,352 cases of blindness in the workhouses in the years 1849–51. Seventy-two per cent of victims were blind in one eye and 28 per cent in both eyes.70 Xerophthalmia occurs mainly among children whose vitamin A requirements are high, but whose storage facility (the liver) is small: 326 of the 340 cases in the Tipperary workhouse were children, their ages ranging from 4 to 14 years. The explanation for xerophthalmia is not hard to find. Many poor law unions were bankrupt and the temptation to use cheap skimmed milk and buttermilk in place of whole milk was great. In Tipperary, children’s daily diets, except for the under fives, consisted of Indian meal, oatmeal, rice, bread, and gruel washed down with skimmed milk or buttermilk. The quantities of food and skimmed milk served ensured that the vitamin A content was well below what we now recognize as necessary to prevent xerophthalmia, providing only around 130 µg retinol equivalents (RE) instead of the 300 to 725 µg RE necessary for health. The treatment prescribed by Wilde provides the final proof that he was dealing with xerophthalmia: ‘the plentiful use of cod-liver oil, of which medicine a large supply should at once be procured, and a tablespoonful given to each child, two or three times a day. I saw I am sure fifty cases among those under your care which would be greatly benefited by the use of this remedy.’71 An unwelcome newcomer in the nineteenth century was pellagra.72 This is an affliction common in maize-eating countries and is caused by an absence of the B vitamin, niacin (nicotinic acid), in the diet. Cereals generally are a moderate source of niacin, but maize differs from other grains in that the greater part of the niacin in maize meal is unavailable for use by the human body. However, niacin can be synthesized from tryptophan, a protein constituent found in some foods. The tryptophan content of maize is low, but as long as people eat other foods containing sufficient tryptophan all will be 70 Fourth annual report of the commissioners for administering the laws for relief of the poor in Ireland, PP 1851 [1381], XXVI; Fifth annual report of the commissioners for administering the laws for relief of the poor in Ireland, PP 1852 [1530], XXIII. 71 Fourth annual report of the commissioners, 145; W. R. W. Wilde, Observations on the epidemic ophthalmia which has prevailed in the workhouses and schools of the Tipperary and Athlone unions (Dublin, 1851). 72 The following paragraphs are based on Crawford, ‘Subsistence crises and famines’, 213–14; and E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Indian meal and pellagra in nineteenth-century Ireland’, in J. M. Goldstrom and L. A. Clarkson, Irish population, economy, and society: essays in honour of the late K. H. Connell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 124–33.

152     well. Traditional diets in Ireland provided sufficient vitamin B directly or via tryptophan. But when the population was forced to depend on Indian meal during the Great Famine the chances of pellagra increased, although the symptoms were obscured by other ailments, or remained unrecognized by doctors. The clinical manifestations of pellagra are popularly known as the three Ds—diarrhoea, dermatitis, and dementia. Usually the first stage is abdominal pain, followed by diarrhoea. The dermatological symptoms commence with a reddening of the skin, which then peels, leaving a brown pigmentation. Since discoloration of the skin is also a symptom of typhus, the two diseases could easily be—and probably were—confused in their early stages. Finally the patient becomes demented. Almost certainly, pellagra existed in Ireland during the Great Famine, if only in its pre-clinical form. There is no doubt about the presence of pellagra during the severe but localized famine of 1879–80 when Indian meal was used extensively as a relief food in the west of Ireland. Two doctors in Galway and Mayo saw patients suffering from rashes, diarrhoea, abdominal tenderness, and head symptoms. Both had treated typhus and relapsing fever during the 1840s, but they could not identify the symptoms presenting themselves in 1879–80 with those they had seen earlier. They strongly suspected that Indian meal was somehow implicated. After examining a case in Killala, County Mayo, Dr George Sigerson concluded that, ‘some symptoms . . . resembled those of the first stage of pellagra. But the subject is one that requires continued observation.’ 73 Had Sigerson been able to peer fifty years into the future his suspicions would have been confirmed. The relief rations available in the west of Ireland contained significantly less nicotinic acid equivalents than were contained in diets used deliberately by the American physician, Goldberger, in 1923 to induce pellagra in volunteer patients.74

Fevers and infections More people die of fevers and infections during famines than from starvation.75 A fever is an ‘abnormally high body temperature, usually accompanied by shivering, headaches, and in severe instances, delirium’.76 For much of the nineteenth century the word was employed to mean both typhus and relapsing fever and occasionally other infections such as scarlatina or dysentery. In earlier centuries, words such as ‘pestilence’, ‘disease’, and ‘fever’ were used 73 The Irish crisis of 1879–80. Proceedings of the Dublin Mansion House Relief Committee, 1880 (Dublin: Browne & Nowlan, 1881), 166. 74 Quoted by Crawford, ‘Indian meal and pellagra’, 133. 75 For a recent general discussion see Massimo Livi Bacci, The population of Europe: a history (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 40–60. 76 Concise Oxford Dictionary (10th edn., 1999).

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interchangeably. Here we are concerned with a whole range of infections and contagions that have coexisted with famines, but particularly with typhus and relapsing fever, the two fevers most closely associated with famine. Typhus and relapsing fever are not the direct consequences of hunger, but the mass movement of people in search of food creates an ideal environment for their spread. Both are bacterial diseases transmitted from person to person by lice, though the pathogens are different. The typhus bacterium is Rickettsia prowazekii (so named after its discoverers in 1907) carried by lice. Victims contract typhus when bitten by lice, enabling the bacterium to enter the bloodstream and damage the blood vessels, especially those of the skin and brain. Humans can also catch typhus by inhaling faecal dust left by lice in clothing and bedding. Doctors and nurses, clergymen, and government officials caring for the sick in Ireland became infected in this way.77 Relapsing fever is caused by a spirochete (i.e. a spiral-shaped bacterium) that multiplies in the body of lice and is deposited on the host’s skin if the insects are crushed. The organism enters the host’s bloodstream through broken skin. Unlike typhus, relapsing fever cannot be contracted through the air, but requires direct contact with infected lice. Most cases, therefore, are confined to lousy households and institutions. Typhus and relapsing fever spread with great speed. Old clothing, bedding, and the folds of unwashed garments provide an ideal environment for lice eggs. Fully developed lice feed on the blood of their hosts four to six times a day. When food shortages force people to congregate in feeding centres, in houses of industry, in poor houses or to huddle together in cramped urban squalor, lice enjoy lush grazing grounds. In the nineteenth century physicians often confused typhus and relapsing fever. Both are transmitted by the same vector, both flourish in wretched living conditions, and they share certain symptoms. There are, however, important differences. The febrile condition of typhus lasts about two weeks. A marked spotted rash appears on the skin and the patient develops delirium that often climaxes in death. The symptoms of relapsing fever are a sudden rise in temperature, violent rigour, sickness, and vomiting. Some victims develop jaundice. After about five days the temperature falls. Patients may suffer one or several relapses until they either recover or die. The level of mortality from typhus is generally higher than that of relapsing fever. During the Great Famine it sometimes reached 70 per cent of cases. Typhus is particularly severe on young adults. The highest incidence in Dublin between 1813 and 1818 was among persons aged between 10 and 30.78 77 Sir William MacArthur, ‘Medical history of the Famine’, in R. Dudley Edwards and T. Desmond Williams (eds.), The Great Famine: studies in Irish history 1845–52 (Dublin: Browne & Nowlan, 1956), 265. 78 William Harty, Historic sketch of the causes, extent, and mortality of contagious fever, endemic in Ireland in 1741 and during 1817, 1818, 1819 (Dublin, 1820), 30–1; John Crampton, Medical report of the fever department in Steevens’ Hospital (Dublin, 1819), 61–2.

154     Mortality was also higher among males than females during the Famine.79 Typhus was particularly severe on the professional classes. Dr Dominic Corrigan observed in 1846, that ‘it is a curious circumstance in the history of Epidemic Fevers in Ireland, that while the poor are attacked in greater numbers, the rich suffer more in mortality’.80 Many of the poor possessed immunity as a result of a mild attack in childhood. The death rate from relapsing fever is lower than that from typhus.81 There was a lively debate in the mid-nineteenth century about the relationship between typhus and relapsing fever, and food supplies. Dr Corrigan was adamant that fever was caused by famine. He rested his case on a detailed analysis of famished years over the previous century. Dr Henry Kennedy, the physician at the Cork Street Fever Hospital, Dublin, on the other hand, pointed out that there had been many feverish years even when food had been plentiful. A colleague, Dr Robert Graves, agreed with him. Graves wrote that ‘a vast amount of mischief was produced by the attempt made to connect fever epidemics with a deficiency of food . . . [and] ascrib[ing] . . . prominence . . . to famine, as an exciting cause of typhus fever in Ireland’.82 The debate was important because it determined the care of fever patients. If typhus and relapsing fever were caused by hunger, the separation of the sick from the healthy was unnecessary. The matter had not been settled when, in 1852, the Commissioners of Health in Ireland declared that, ‘experience had shown that a scarcity of food in Ireland, if of any duration, had been inevitably followed by an epidemic of Fever’.83 The policy implications of this belief were unfortunate for it resulted in many fever patients being nursed in general hospitals, thus spreading infection. Accounts of famines in Ireland from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries were littered with references to ‘fevers’. The early descriptions were brief and imprecise. During the terrible famine in 1601, ‘decaiss by sicknesse’ was great.84 In the 1640s and 1650s, the descriptions become more specific. ‘Pestilential diseases’ including fever, plague, smallpox, and dysentery infected great tracts of the countryside.85 The ‘plague’ might have been bubonic plague 79 E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Typhus in nineteenth-century Ireland’, in Greta Jones and Elizabeth Malcolm (eds.), Medicine, disease and the state in Ireland, 1650–1940 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999), 124–8. 80 MacArthur, ‘Medical history of the famine’, in Edwards and Williams (eds.), The Great Famine: studies in Irish history 1848–52, 279; D. J. Corrigan, On famine and fever as cause and effect in Ireland (Dublin: J. Fannin & Co., 1846), 5. 81 MacArthur, ‘Medical history of the famine’, in Edwards and Williams (eds.), The Great Famine: studies in Irish history 1848–52, 267–8, 275–80; Joseph Robins, The miasma: epidemic and panic in nineteenth century Ireland (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1995), 33. 82 Corrigan, Famine and fever; Henry Kennedy, Observations on the connexion between famine and fever in Ireland and elsewhere (Dublin, 1847); Robert Graves, Clinical lectures on the practice of medicine (2nd edn., Dublin, 1848), 90–1. For a discussion see Crawford, ‘Typhus in nineteenth-century Ireland’, 130. 83 Report of the Commissioners of health (Ireland), on the epidemics of 1846 to 1850, PP 1852–3 [1562], XLI, 245. 84 Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, quoting from Moryson’s Rebellion of Tyrone, 105. 85 Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 108–10.

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in the summer, followed by its more virulent, pneumonic, form during the winter. More likely, both bubonic plague and typhus raged during these years, the former in the summer and the other throughout the year.86 In 1690, ‘after the departure of James from Ireland, famine and disease spread throughout the country on the approach of winter’.87 The ‘disease’ was probably a mixture of typhus and dysentery.88 The years 1727–8 saw a crop of fevers. A Dr Joseph Rogers described a fever that ‘attain’d to its State’ in winter, that seemed to have disappeared in the early 1720s, but which from 1728 ‘hath visibly every Year gain’d ground’. The symptoms correspond to those of typhus. In Ulster, the people ‘suffered greatly, and intermittent fevers raged among them’. This was probably relapsing fever.89 The crisis of 1740–1 precipitated a deluge of fevers, ‘This universal Scarcity’, wrote the author of the Groans of Ireland, ‘was ensued by Fluxes and malignant Fevers, which swept off Multitudes of all Sorts; whole Villages were laid waste by Want and Sickness, and Death in various Shapes; and scarce an House in the whole Island escaped from Tears and Mourning.’90 The most important observer of these years was John Rutty, an English-born doctor who settled in Dublin in 1724, and whose long life spanned the crises of the late 1720s and 1740–1 and who in 1770 published a detailed account of these years.91 During the winter of 1739–40 Ireland was swept by violent colds, sore throats, and acute fever accompanied by intense headaches.92 ‘A large spontaneous sweat proved critical to some of them: others have eruptions on the skin of various kinds.’ January and February were ‘very prolific in coughs, attended with sore throats, pleurisies and peripneumonies, which were very frequent both in town and country’. The winter ‘was a fatal season to many, not only the old, infirm, and asthmatic, but to children also’. The weekly death rate in Dublin soared to three times its normal level. During the spring and summer of 1740 smallpox joined the fevers, coughs, sore throats, and pneumonia of earlier months and ‘Dysentaries made their appearance in July . . .’. As summer moved into autumn and winter, dysenteries, ‘having first begun among the poor (several of whom died for want) they spread to the rich’. As the shortage of food intensified, proceeding ‘almost to a famine in winter’, there ‘also appeared an epidemic continual fever, which did not wholly cease in winter’. 86

Lenihan, ‘War and population’, 20–1. Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 115. Creighton, A history of epidemics in Britain, ii. 229–34. 89 Joseph Rogers, An Essay on Epidemic Diseases; and more particularly on the endemial epidemics of the City of Cork . . . Also the method of cure found most successful . . . To which is added . . . a course of statical experiments and observations made by a curious person [G. R., i.e. George Rye?] during a twelve-month . . . (Dublin, 1734), 3–5, 18; Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 121 90 Groans of Ireland, 3. 91 John Rutty, A chronological history of the weather and seasons, and of the prevailing diseases in Dublin . . . (London: Robinson & Roberts, 1770). For a brief account of Rutty see Dickson, Arctic Ireland, 44–5. 92 The following paragraphs are based on Rutty, A chronological history, 77–91. 87 88

156     Hunger, colds, and dysentery persisted into the spring of 1741. During the summer they were joined by a renewed outbreak of the ‘continual fever’ that had occurred the previous autumn. This fever ‘was common to this city [Dublin], to Cork, Bristol and London, and often eluded the skills of physicians’. It spread through Munster, Leinster, and Ulster; but was ‘most fatal to the first, where the poor were worse provided for, and from whom the disease spread to the richer sort’. This account is strongly suggestive of typhus. The fever generally attacked men, ‘and those of a middle age, and strong, and but few women’. Children were more rarely infected. But there was also relapsing fever, ‘altogether, without the malignity attending the former, of six or seven days duration, terminating in a critical sweat, as did the other also frequently, but in this the patients were subject to a relapse, even to a third or fourth time and yet recovered’. By the autumn of 1741 the worst was over. But during the shortages of 1756–7, ‘agues were rife; diseases of the mucous membrane, especially the Eyes and the bowels followed; and then an outbreak of Influenza spread with unwonted mortality over the country . . . Fever and Dysentery, Scurvy and Small-pox, appeared in the train of calamities. . .’93 Rutty reported, ‘I met with some dysenteries among the poor, promoted, perhaps, by the badness of their bread, as it was a time of great scarcity.’94 The turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries again were sickly years. ‘Contagious Fever’ raged throughout the country during the autumn and winter of 1800. Dysentery, scarlatina, and ophthalmia became widespread towards the end of 1801.95 In Waterford the managers of the fever hospital in 1800 were fearful of the consequences: The immediate effects of want of food are weakness of body, and depression of mind: causes which contribute to an eminent degree to the production and extension of contagious fever. But a still more powerful cause exists in the necessity which the poor are under of pawning their clothes for daily sustenance, which occasions increase of filth, exposure to cold, and the crowding of several members of a family in the same bed.96

Cities and towns throughout the land were clogged with fever-stricken beggars. There were 4,000 fever cases in the Cork dispensary in 1800. In December, in Drogheda, there existed a ‘very deplorable situation [among] our Tradesmen and Labouring poor, some of whom within the last six Months died thro’ actual want, very many indeed, at this moment are in a starving condition, and to add to this calamity a slow infectious fever rages among them, which where it falls upon a constitution debilitated by famine, seldom fails of putting an end to the sufferings of the . . . victim’.97 93 94 95 96 97

Wilde, ‘Table of cosmical phenomena’, 138. Rutty, A chronological history, 201. Barker and Cheyne, An account of the rise, progress and decline of the fever, 15–19. Ibid. 15. Roger Wells, ‘The Irish famine of 1799–1801: market culture, moral economies and social protest’,

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A decade and a half later, the hunger and accompanying fevers in 1816, 1817, and 1818 constituted the most severe nineteenth-century crisis before the Great Famine.98 Two physicians, Barker and Cheyne observed ‘the frequency of fever in places remote from the capital, both in the North and South of Ireland’. They estimated that a million and a half people suffered an attack of typhus or relapsing fever between the beginning of 1816 and the middle of 1819. In Dublin alone a quarter of a million people were infected. Nevertheless, they concluded, almost cheerfully, that ‘the most striking part of the distress caused by the epidemic fever now claims notice, namely, the destruction of human life which attended it. . . . It is satisfactory to find that the mortality rarely proceeds at the same rate with the frequency of fever.’99 The government appointed a select committee to investigate the fever epidemic. It concluded that in Munster the ‘fever’ was initially dysentery, followed by relapsing fever and then typhus. In the autumn of 1818, dysentery had reached epidemic proportions in the Waterford fever hospital. The medical director later wrote: The young children of poorer classes must die in great numbers, during the prevalence of epidemic disease, in a country crowded with a population, unable to procure sufficient subsistence. There is arithmetic proof of it in the records of this Fever Hospital; and every one who has given attention to the subject knows that many, very many infants and young children sunk under the epidemic dysentery in 1818. Many of the children under ten years of age, died in the hospital, not so much of fever as of other disorders which supervened: some of dysentery and diarrhoea, others of atrophy or marasmus.100

The streets of Dublin were full of ‘country labourers, followed by their families, with countenances despondent and emaciated’. In several cities ‘starving labourers and manufacturers’ attacked grain stores and food shops. In County Kerry, ‘the whole country was in motion’, including ‘female mendicants, often carrying about children suffering from fever in their arms’.101 Years later, Humphrey O’Sullivan remembered 1818 as ‘the year of the plague and the dire sickness, when thousands met their death, in consequence of food that had rotted or was only half ripe’. There were parts of Cork, ‘so filled with disease, plague and sickness that a wall had to be built at both ends of them, in A. Randall and A. Charlesworth (eds.), Markets, market culture and popular protest in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996), 168–9. 98 Barker and Cheyne, An account of the rise, progress and decline of the fever; Harty, Historic sketch of the causes, extent, and mortality of contagious fever; First report from the select committee appointed to inquire into the state of Ireland as to disease, and how far measures adopted by the legislature or otherwise, during the last year, have been effective for its removal or mitigation; and also into the condition of the labouring poor of that part of the United Kingdom, PP 1819 (314), VIII; William Stoker, Sketch of the medical and statistical history of epidemic fevers in Ireland from 1798 and of pestilential diseases since 1823 (Dublin: Milliken & Son, 1835). 99 Barker and Cheyne, An account of the rise, progress and decline of the fever, 49, 59–61, 62–3, 86. 100 Ibid. 199, 207. 101 Ibid. 40–1; First report from the select committee on the state of disease, and condition of the labouring poor, in Ireland, PP 1819 (314), VIII, 20.

158     that healthy people might not go through them, as they do in Turkey in time of plague’.102 In Connacht, ‘numbers of the poor villagers formed themselves into vagrant hordes, and traversed the country, fever often broke out amongst them: hence they generally carried contagion with them, and often gave it to those who gave them sustenance and shelter’. Typhus was found throughout Monaghan where it was spread by clothing and bedding as well as by wandering beggars. In Leinster conditions varied in different parts of the province, but Dr Cheyne was gloomy about how to stop infection spreading other than by quarantine measures enforced by ‘medical police’ and the army. Well-managed fever hospitals in large towns would help, but small country hospitals, ‘when zeal became cold’ would be of little use.103 The Great Famine unleashed a deluge of infections: typhus, relapsing fever, diarrhoea, dysentery, measles, scarlatina, tuberculosis, smallpox, influenza, and, finally cholera.104 The burden of disease began to rise in 1846 and reached a climax in 1847. It remained high in 1848 and 1849, and then declined. Once the Famine was well under way in 1846, typhus and relapsing fever were the worst of the killers. In some of the most badly affected counties in the west and south-west, death rates from the two diseases exceeded 1,000 per 100,000 of the population; in 1847—the worst year—the national average was 700 per 100,000. With the coming of better times after 1849 the incidence of typhus declined. There was an upsurge in the scarce years at the beginning of the 1880s, but thereafter the trend in typhus mortality was downwards.105 In addition to typhus and relapsing fever, other infections, such as tuberculosis, measles, whooping cough, scarlatina (scarlet fever), respiratory infections, diarrhoea, and dysentery carried thousands of people to early graves during famines. As with typhus and relapsing fever, the connection with hunger is indirect. Malnutrition intensifies the duration and severity of many infections. Measles mortality, for example, increases when nutritional status is poor, with death rates sometimes reaching 50 per cent.106 Measles and scarlatina are both highly infectious and spread as people moved from place to place in search of food. Dysentery and diarrhoea were always near neighbours of human beings living where water and sewerage disposal depended on the whims of nature, but they became acute when food was scarce. Severe malnutrition triggers 102 Michael McGrath, SJ (ed. and trans.), The diary of Humphrey O’Sullivan, Part II (London: Irish Texts Society, 1929 [1936]), ii. 333. 103 First report from the select committee on the state of disease, 12–14, 42, 59–63, 81–2. 104 The following paragraphs are based on entries written by E. M. Crawford in Kennedy, Ell, Crawford, and Clarkson, Mapping the Great Irish Famine, 104–24. 105 Crawford, ‘Typhus in nineteenth-century Ireland’, 128, 134. 106 Massimo Livi-Bacci, Population and nutrition: an essay on European demographic history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 36; William H. Foege, ‘Famine, infections and epidemics’, in Blix (ed.), Famine: a symposium, 64–5.

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non-infective famine diarrhoea as the digestive system struggles, unsuccessfully, to absorb food of any kind. Dysentery is highly infectious and is transmitted from person to person by food, fingers, and flies. Starving people devour rotting vegetation and carrion and their bowel discharges contaminate drinking water. Tuberculosis (popularly called consumption) is a bacterial infection and squalid living conditions in the past ensured high levels of urban infection. In poor societies consumption has always been a common cause of death, even when food supplies were normal. Smallpox is a viral infection and in the past was no stranger to communities even in good times. Nevertheless, badly nourished people became extremely vulnerable both to tuberculosis and smallpox. Before the Great Famine, tuberculosis had been responsible for large numbers of deaths in Dublin and other towns, as well as in the countryside. There was a doubling of consumption deaths between 1844 and 1847. After 1849 the number of deaths fell to pre-Famine levels.107 Deaths from smallpox also increased during the Famine. Mortality had declined in the early 1840s, probably because of the introduction of vaccination by the poor law authorities in 1840, but mortality climbed between 1844 and 1849. Deaths were highest in the west and south-west and there were black spots in cities such as Belfast, Dublin, and Londonderry.108 Deaths from measles and scarlatina rose sharply during the Great Famine. Measles peaked nationally in 1847, 1848, and 1849, but scarlatina only in 1850. The former was most severe during 1847 in the north of the country, and in the south and west two years later. The south-east escaped relatively lightly, perhaps because—as one or two doctors commented at the time—hunger was less acute. Scarlatina (scarlet fever) was more serious in the east, particularly in towns. In 1849 a Dublin doctor observed that the current epidemic had ‘assumed a character of violence to which we had . . . been utter strangers, sweeping away entire families of children, and not sparing adults’.109 According to one survivor, the population of ‘Coolgarra [County Westmeath] was wiped out at the time with scarlet fever. There were forty houses in it and there is only one there now.’110 Dysentery and diarrhoea increased dramatically during the Great Famine. Deaths from both soared between 1846 and 1847 and remained high until 1849. Mortality was highest in the west and south-west where starvation was most severe, and in overcrowded towns and cities.111 The final year of the Great Famine, 1849, was assaulted by cholera. This was an exotic visitor from Asia and had not been a feature of earlier famines. It was 107 108 109 110 111

Crawford, in Kennedy, Ell, Crawford, and Clarkson, Mapping the Great Irish Famine, 113, 116. Ibid. 121–2. Ibid. 112–15. Quotation at 115. McHugh, ‘The famine in Irish oral tradition’, 417. Crawford, in Kennedy, Ell, Crawford, and Clarkson, Mapping the Great Irish Famine 119–21.

160     spread rapidly by contaminated water and food, and was especially severe on hungry people. Its incidence was initially greatest around the ports, but death rates were high also in the south-western counties. In 1849 cholera killed more people than other causes except fevers.112 Cholera was a cruel, final twist to the agonies of the Great Famine. Sir William Wilde was an assiduous chronicler of fevers and other infections during the Great Famine. Table 7.3 summarizes his findings. Over half a million people were recorded as dying from infections. This figure is an underestimation; nevertheless the relative proportions are probably fair enough. Two features are worthy of note. The first is that before the Famine, in 1844 and 1845, consumption was the major cause of deaths arising from infections. Thereafter ‘fever’—i.e. typhus and relapsing fever—became the dominant killer with the other infections trailing in their wake.113

A hidden agony? ‘Another feeble, dying woman I found upon the street one rainy day, who had reached a state of half idiocy; . . . and though she had a tolerable supply of food, her mind had never rallied.’114 There were consequences of starvation that are difficult to discern. Cormac Ó Gráda has speculated about the effects of the Great Famine on the physical and intellectual performance of children who were born at the time. Arguing by analogy with the effects of the Dutch winter famine in 1944–5 on the development of the Dutch population, he concluded that there was little ‘likelihood of long-lasting cohort effects in post-famine Ireland’.115 However, the Dutch famine was short-lived and medical services were good.116 The circumstances of the Great Irish Famine were very different. Can we assume that what might have been true for Holland in the 1940s and after, was true also for Ireland a century earlier? The evidence even for Holland is not clear-cut. A major study of the Dutch winter famine published in 1975 seems to support the position adopted by Ó Gráda. Thirty years after the Dutch famine, it reported: Complete recovery had occurred; the young men who had been undernourished in fetal life were no different in height, weight or mental ability from those who had not been undernourished. In the continual debate about the possible effects of prenatal 112

Crawford, in Kennedy, Ell, Crawford, and Clarkson, Mapping the Great Irish Famine, 123–2. Ibid. 112–22; Ó Gráda, Black ’47 and beyond, 87–95. Murphy (ed.), Annals of the Famine, 45. 115 Ó Gráda, Black ’47 and beyond, 226–7. 116 For an account see G. C. E. Burger, J. C. Drummond, H. R. Sandstead (eds.), Malnutrition and starvation in the Western Netherlands, September 1944–July 1945 (The Hague: General State Printing Office), part 1, 5–27. 113 114

7.1 45.4 8.6 32.0 6.9

1844

1,745 11,109 2,098 7,841 1,695 24,488

1844

6.4 43.3 10.9 33.7 5.7

1845

1,890 12,682 3,190 9,888 1,657 29,307

1845

5.5 34.3 19.7 37.2 3.3

1846

2,544 15,792 9,087 17,145 1,508 46,076

1846

4.4 18.4 29.6 46.4 1.2

1847

5,416 22,664 36,464 57,095 1,533 123,172

1847

5.3 21.2 25.6 45.8 2.0

1848

5,343 21,293 25,694 45,948 2,009 100,287

1848

5.4 22.1 29.6 39.6 3.3

1849

5,358 21,968 29,446 39,316 3,231 99,319

1849

3.6 28.6 27.8 34.1 5.8

1850

2,512 19,755 19,224 23,545 4,002 69,038

1850

4.3 31.1 32.9 27.3 4.4

1851

1,561 11,299 11,963 9,918 1,614 36,355

1851

5.0 25.9 26.0 39.9 3.3

Total

26,369 136,562 137,166 210,696 17,249 528,042

Total

Sources: The Census of Ireland for the year 1851, part v. Table of deaths, vol. ii, PP 1856 [2087–II], XXX; The Census of Ireland for the year 1861, part iii. Vital statistics, vol. ii. Report and table relating to deaths, PP 1863 [3204–2], LVIII.

Measles Consumption Dysentery, diarrhoea Fever Scarlatina

(b) Percentage

Measles Consumption Dysentery, diarrhoea Fever Scarlatina Total

(a) Number

T 7.3. Mortality from various infectious diseases in Ireland, 1844–1851

162     malnutrition . . . the result is important. So long as post-natal nutrition was adequate . . . then the effect on mature height was nil.117

Later investigators of the Dutch experience have been less sanguine. One study demonstrated that, ‘an acute reduction in intra-uterine nutrition of women can indeed have long-term health effects on them and on their offspring. These effects depend on the timing of exposure in relation to the stage of pregnancy and are mostly independent of the mother’s own birth weight.’ The worst time for exposure to malnutrition was during the final three months of pregnancy, which was associated with a sharp decrease in the birthweights of the infants. Low-birthweight daughters themselves produced small babies twenty and more years later.118 The implications for Ireland are that females who were in their mothers’ womb during the Famine were born small and may, in turn, have produced low-birthweight babies. Another Dutch study found that early pre-natal famine is ‘robustly associated’ with congenital anomalies of the central nervous system, schizophrenia, and schizophrenia spectrum personality disorders.119 The timing of malnutrition is important in determining whether or not individuals suffer long-term damage. PEM (protein-energy malnutrition) children, who were undernourished before the age of 3 to 5 years, were ‘already stunted at those ages, [and] will in all probability remain small throughout the growing years, eventually becoming a small adult’.120 Infants who became malnourished later in childhood or even in adolescence, however, can achieve ‘catch-up’ growth with the benefit of supplementary feeding. Protein foods are important for brain growth, 80 per cent of which takes place by the age of 3. If children are deprived of protein at this crucial stage, their brains and their future intellectual development will probably be impaired. Much depends on whether the restricted development of the brain takes the form of a reduced number of cells in the brain or a smaller size of cells. Intra-uterine malnutrition reduces the size of brain cells. Malnutrition shortly after birth curtails the rate of cell division and so results in a reduced number of cells.121 The effects of intra-uterine malnutrition are not reversible. 117 Z. Stein, M. Susser, G. Saenger, and F. Marolla, Famine and human development: the Dutch hungry winter of 1944–5 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975). Summarized in J. M. Tanner, A history of the study of human growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 390 118 L. H. Lumey, ‘Reproductive outcomes in women prenatally exposed to undernutrition: a review of findings from the Dutch famine birth cohort’, Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 57/1 (Feb. 1998), 129–35. Quotation at p. 129. 119 H. W. Hoek, A. S. Brown, and E. Susser, ‘The Dutch famine and schizophrenia spectrum disorders’, Soc. Psychiatr. Epidemiol. 33/8 (Aug. 1998), 373–9. 120 R. Martorell, ‘Child growth retardation: a discussion of its causes and its relationship to health’, in K. Blaxter and J. C. Waterlow (eds.), Nutritional adaptation in man (London: John Libbey, 1985), 20. 121 Crawford, ‘Subsistence crises and famines in Ireland’, 203; Myron Winick, ‘Nutrition and brain development’, in George Serban (ed.), Nutrition and mental functions, advances in behavioral biology, 14 (New York: Plenum Press, 1976), 65–73.

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The physiological consequences of brain development impaired by malnutrition depend therefore on the timing of the malnutrition and the quality of nutrition following periods of undernourishment. They depend also on the environments in which the individuals grow up. Children ‘affected with either marasmus or kwashiorkor exhibit marked retardation in sensorimotor development that is not reversed after physical and biological and biochemical rehabilitation have occurred’.122 Even children who enjoy seemingly healthy environments after famines do not fully recover. In the words of one study: Even after a period of several months, children who make a successful recovery from severe malnutrition and who medically are considered cured still show developmental lags not only in psychomotor behavior but also in several other areas, including hearing and speech, social personal behavior, problem-solving ability, eye-hand coordination, and categorization skills.123

The most obvious inference of modern famine studies is not that the surviving children of the Great Famine emerged unscathed, but that they carried into the future the physical and behavioural scars of starvation suffered in their mothers’ womb or in the weeks and months immediately after birth. Ireland’s post-Famine children probably included a substantial number who had been damaged fundamentally by undernutrition or by starvation.124

Conclusion Famine was a dreadful experience for communities. Writers as skilful as Spenser and as work-a-day as the journalists employed by the Illustrated London News stretched their imaginations and vocabularies to capture the suffering. The nineteenth-century engravers did their best. Medical men from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century discussed the diseases that accompanied famines and attempted to distinguish between cause and effect. The miseries inadequately conveyed by word, picture, and description can be enhanced by nutritional and epidemiological studies that add detail and depth.125 But the nutritional literature is not one that is familiar to most historians. 122 Joaquín Cravioto and Ramiro Arrieta, ‘Nutrition, mental development and learning’, in F. Falkner and J. M. Tanner (eds.), Human growth: a comprehensive treatise (2nd edn., New York: Plenum Press, 1986), 504. Sensorimotor development is concerned with the physiology of nerves or their actions. 123 Ibid. 511, 514–16. 124 T. E. Jordan, Ireland’s children; quality of life, stress, and child development in the famine era (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998), 37–8. 125 Alfred J. Zerfas, Derrick B. Jelliffe, and E. F. Patrice Jelliffe, ‘Epidemiology and nutrition’, in Falkner and Tanner (eds.), Human growth: a comprehensive treatise, 489.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Food and Nutrition Introduction The food that human beings eat provides them with nutrients and it is the correct mix of nutrients that determines whether they are healthy or not. An enjoyable diet may or may not be a healthy diet. This chapter is concerned mainly with technical issues associated with nutritional analysis of diets in the past and revisits some of the evidence discussed in earlier chapters. Readers may wish to skip the technical sections, but arguments elsewhere depend on an understanding of the mechanics of nutrition and methods of nutritional investigation. We might ask, why bother with nutritional history at all? After all, people eat food, and nutrition is the by-product of eating. The first answer is that nutrition affects health. It is not the only influence. The conditions in which individuals live, their wealth or poverty, and the quality of medical advice available to them, all play a part. Before the late nineteenth century, towns were less healthy than the countryside, and the rich—generally—healthier than were the poor. Medical care was more accessible in towns than in rural districts, although it was perhaps as much a threat to health as a protector. Income, location, custom, and taste all determined what people ate and therefore affected nutrition and health. The second reason for bothering is that historians are becoming interested in nutrition. As early as 1950 Professor K. H. Connell evaluated the nutritional standard of Irish diets dominated by potatoes. Later research confirmed his central finding that, eaten in the large quantities which had become common in the early nineteenth century, potatoes accompanied by milk or buttermilk were rich in many of the requirements necessary for human existence.1 Since the 1960s historians in Europe, North America, and elsewhere have increased the range of nutritional investigations. Too often, though, they are unaware of the pitfalls of nutritional science, which—as with so many branches of the natural sciences—is not nearly as cut and dried as it appears to be to the outsider. 1 K. H. Connell, The population of Ireland 1750–1845 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), 154–6; E. Margaret Crawford, ‘A nutritional analysis of diets in Ireland’s workhouses 1841–1869’, unpublished BA dissertation (The Queen’s University of Belfast, 1978), 63; L. A. Clarkson and E. Margaret Crawford, ‘Dietary directions: a topographical survey of Irish diet, 1836’, in Rosalind Mitchison and Peter Roebuck (eds.), Economy and society in Scotland and Ireland 1500–1939 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1988), 190.

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Dietary surveys in Ireland The first requirements of nutritional analysis are dietary surveys. These fall into two types: quantitative and non-quantitative. The former measures the amount of food that an individual or group of individuals consumes in a specified period of time, while the latter merely records the range of foods eaten. The first is essential for full nutritional analysis, but non-quantitative studies can be used to establish patterns of food consumption. In earlier chapters reference has been made to several surveys taken in Ireland, most of them during the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. Here we explore the reasons why they were carried out and how they were structured. All the surveys focused on particular sections of society: the young, the poor, the sick, soldiers, or criminals, and they tell us more about how the poor were nourished than about the rich. There are no non-institutional quantitative surveys dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and only one from the eighteenth century. This was Philip Skelton’s attempt in 1741 to calculate the amount of food eaten by a farming family.2 A century later Thomas Campbell Foster, a correspondent for the London Times carried out a similar exercise in County Donegal.3 Then, during a sixty-five-year period there were seven surveys of people living in their own homes. The first dates from 1839, the second was undertaken in 1859, and a third in 1863. The remaining four were taken in 1903 and 1904. Six of the seven were carried out by or on behalf of government. The seventh was an investigation conducted among its own workers by Guinness’s Brewery.4 The 1839 survey was organized by the poor law commissioners who instructed the assistant commissioners to collect information about the diets served in public institutions and the food eaten by the labouring classes in their 2 Philip Skelton (pseud. ‘Triptolemus’), The necessity of tillage and granaries in a letter to a member of parliament (Dublin, 1741), 11. 3 T. C. Foster, Letters on the condition of the people of Ireland (London : Chapman and Hall, 1846). 4 The references are as follows: (1839)—Sixth annual report of the poor law commissioners for England and Wales, PP 1840 [245], XVII, appendix (D), no. 22, ‘Report on workhouse dietaries’, 244; (1859)— Thirteenth annual report of the commissioners for administering the laws for relief of the poor in Ireland, PP 1860 [2654], XXXVII, appendix A, no. 2, ‘Report on labouring poor in Ireland’, 31–81; (1863)—Sixth report of the medical officer of the Privy Council, PP 1864 [3416], XXVIII, 282–329; (1903/4)—J. Lumsden, An investigation into the income and expenditure of seventeen brewery families and a study of their diets being a report made to the directors of A. Guinness, Son Co. Ltd., St James’s Gate, Dublin (Edinburgh: Morrison & Gibb, 1905); Second series of memoranda, statistical tables, and charts prepared in the Board of Trade with reference to various matters bearing on British and foreign trade and industrial conditions, PP 1905 [Cd. 2337], LXXXIV. (These memoranda contain a paper (pp. 19–44) entitled, ‘Consumption and cost of food in workmen’s families in urban districts in the United Kingdom’; Second report of Mr Wilson Fox on the wages, earnings and conditions of employment of agricultural labourers in the United Kingdom . . ., PP 1905[Cd. 2376], XCVII, 247–608; Royal Commission on the poor law and relief of distress, PP 1910 [Cd. 5070], L, appendix vol. X, appendix no. II (D), ‘Note on the social condition of certain working-class families in Dublin’, 339–87. To avoid repetitious footnoting, these sources will be identified by date or name of the compiler, except in the case of direct quotation.

166    localities.5 The purpose was to devise a dietary scale for use in the new workhouses. The report of W. H. T. Hawley, the assistant commissioner in counties Limerick, Clare, and Tipperary was exceptionally detailed. He recorded the precise quantities of the food eaten by labourers and noted their meal patterns. Another assistant commissioner, Joseph Burke, surveyed unions in counties Galway, Mayo, and King’s County in somewhat less detail. This survey was never published but it contains useful information.6 The poor law commission was also responsible for the 1859 investigation. It gathered information concerning labouring diets in towns and rural districts. A major intention was to obtain data about children’s diets, but the only details collected specific to children were the numbers living in households, how many meals a day they ate, together with some general comments. The information came from more than 200 families, 161 of which are suitable for analysis. The families contained 1,021 people (6.3 per family), of whom 672 were children under 15 years. In 1863 Dr Edward Smith investigated the diets of the ‘lowest-fed classes’ in the United Kingdom on behalf of the Privy Council. The Irish section consisted of only 52 families comprising 269 people (5.2 per family), of whom 66 were children under the age of 10.7 Although the Irish sample was biased towards the west of the country, Smith included a few families from the south and north.8 The survey was carried out during a period of economic depression in the United Kingdom. The civil war in America had disrupted the supply of cotton to the Lancashire mills, although the Belfast linen industry benefited as a result. In Ireland agriculture was depressed because of bad weather. Forty years elapsed before any similar studies were undertaken in Ireland. At the turn of the century the government of the United Kingdom became worried about the poor physical condition of men recruited for the Boer War and so embarked on a clutch of surveys. In Ireland there was an additional alarm about the rising incidence of tuberculosis that ran counter to trends in other parts of the United Kingdom. In 1903, Dr James Lumsden, the Medical Officer to the Guinness Brewery, conducted a small investigation among the company’s manual employees and their dependants.9 His subjects included twenty families: ten ordinary labourers, three foremen, two tradesmen, a pensioner, and four widows of pensioners of the brewery. Three of the samples were later rejected. Lumsden modelled his study on Rowntree’s study of York and Dunlop’s survey of Edinburgh.10 5

Sixth annual report of the poor law commissioners, 244. National Archives of Ireland, SP 1A/50/27, Poor Relief 1822–57, vol. 1. Poor Law Commission Papers, Letters of Joseph Burke, Assistant Commissioner. 7 Sixth report of the medical officer of the Privy Council, 282–329. 8 Ibid. 282. 9 Lumsden, An investigation. 10 Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty: a study of town life (London: Macmillan, 1901); D. N. Paton, 6

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A year later, in 1904, T. J. Stafford, the medical commissioner to the Local Government Board of Ireland, and C. D. La Touche, examined labourers’ diets in Dublin for the Royal Commission on the Poor Law and Relief of Distress.11 Their investigations included 21 households containing 51 adults and 45 children. The household heads were ten unskilled labourers, six skilled labourers, and five people following miscellaneous occupations. Like Lumsden, Stafford and La Touche used the methods developed by Rowntree and Dunlop. Also in 1904, the Board of Trade inquired into the conditions of urban and rural labouring classes in the United Kingdom.12 The Irish urban section consisted of 123 households in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Londonderry, and Drogheda. The households were classified ‘according to the aggregate weekly income of the family (not of the principal wage earner only)’: under 25 shillings; 25 shillings and under 30 shillings; 30 shillings and under 35 shillings; 35 shillings and under 40 shillings; 40 shillings and over. The numbers of households in each income bracket were 17, 14, 21, 30, and 41 respectively.13 This inquiry was part of a wider investigation by Mr Wilson Fox into wages, earnings, and conditions of employment of agricultural labourers in the United Kingdom. He collected information from the inspectors of local government boards, landowners, land agents, farmers, farm stewards, the clergy, and others. The methods he used had been devised for a study of ‘Food consumed by Farm Labourers in England’ in 1902. The Irish investigation took place in 1904 and contained only 37 returns.14 There is more information about diets of people in institutions than there is about people living in their own homes. The earliest are accounts of military rations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The eighteenth century is poorly covered, but in the nineteenth century dietary surveys of prison, workhouses, schools, and hospitals become relatively abundant. The prisons first attracted attention in 1818–19. In 1824 the government, perhaps alarmed by what it had learned earlier, tried to standardize diets across the country. Prison food was examined again during the Great Famine because the authorities feared that paupers preferred the prison to the poorhouse. There is plenty of information about pauper diets in the early 1840s as workhouses came on stream and there were further investigations in the 1860s and in 1887.15 Diets in J. C. Dunlop, and E. Inglis, A study of the diet of the labouring classes in Edinburgh (Edinburgh: Otto Schultze & Co., 1902). 11 Royal Commission on the poor laws, 143–91. 12 Consumption and cost of food in workmen’s families, 1–28; Second report of Wilson Fox, 247–56. 13 Consumption and cost of food in workmen’s families, 4. 14 Second report of Wilson Fox, 247. 15 Return of what is strictly called the able-bodied dietary and the cost of the same per week now in use in the Cork, Limerick, Tralee, North Dublin, Clonmel, Waterford, Newry, Belfast and Lisburn Union workhouses, PP 1861 (533), LV; Dietaries in certain workhouses in Ireland, including North and South Dublin: and 10 workhouses in Scotland . . ., PP 1864 (260), LII; Return of the scale of dietary in force in each union workhouses in Ireland on the 25th March 1887, PP 1888 (83), LXXXVII.

168    schools and hospitals were inquired into periodically by various government bodies. If dietary investigations are to be used for nutritional analysis, we need to know how they were conducted and whether the information can be relied on. The accuracy of surveys taken in the past cannot be verified directly. Sometimes, though, nutritional analysis can demonstrate that the information must be wrong or imperfect. The collection of trustworthy information is always a problem unless carried out under strictly controlled conditions. The nineteenth-century inquiries were not conducted in identical fashions. A few measured daily food consumption, while others recorded a family’s weekly diet. Some detailed the make-up of the family; others stated only the average family size. Hawley, who inquired into labourers’ diets in 1839, seemingly had no worries about methodology. He simply asked the questions himself.16 But he had an eye for detail. For example, he was aware of seasonal variations and noted that during the dark days of November, December, and January the farming population usually ate only two meals a day. In summer people enjoyed three meals daily. Hawley calculated the average consumption by men and women, but he made no adjustments for children. Later investigators were more alert to the problems of obtaining accurate information. The poor law inspector for counties Donegal, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan, and Londonderry in 1859, ‘found the people rather unwilling to give particulars; and therefore . . . [I] had to collect the information through parties on whom [I] could place reliance’. Another inspector, whose district included parts of Cork, Limerick, and County Kerry, complained of ‘a disinclination on the part of those classes themselves to answer, except in very general and unsatisfactory manner, any interrogatories relative to their household economy’. W. P. O’Brien was unhappy about the accuracy of his returns from counties Cork, Limerick, and Waterford, because ‘the people themselves observe no regular scale’. For Dr Brodie in the west of Ireland the problem was similar: it is not easy to obtain precise and definite information upon the habits of the labouring poor in matters of dietary, as there is a good deal of variety in their mode of living, according as the locality is favourable to obtaining good wages, to the ability of the children to contribute to the support of the family, etc.17

When Dr Edward Smith tried to establish the ‘average diet’ of labourers he realized they did not understand the concept of averages. He therefore, ‘found it necessary to exercise patience and tact, and to suggest such help as my knowledge of the quantities of food usually consumed, and their value enabled me to offer’.18 Round figures turn up in many surveys, suggesting a good deal of 16 17 18

Sixth annual report of the poor law commissioners, 242. Thirteenth annual report of the commissioners, 40, 75, 79, 49. Sixth report of the medical officer of the Privy Council, 217.

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guesswork, as does the use of conventional measures such as sacks of meal. Whether households always consumed the amounts of food they stated is doubtful, especially since families apparently using identical quantities varied in size. To complicate matters further, there were the non-human consumers: the pig and the chickens. Lumsden’s methods in 1903 were superior to anything previously attempted. He chose his families carefully, selecting only housewives with sufficient intelligence to keep accurate records. They were issued with journals and Lumsden instructed them personally what information he required and how it was to be documented. ‘By inspecting their books every week to fortnight I was able to keep them up to the mark, correct any mistakes made, and insist on a true and accurate statement.’19 He demanded detailed statements of spending and the daily menus. On average, his respondents kept records for nine weeks. A few continued for as long as fourteen weeks, but others gave up after only two weeks. But the very care Lumsden took in choosing his subjects introduced a bias into his work. Stafford and La Touche modelled their work on the methods used by Rowntree in York. The printed ‘Quantity, Cost and Fuel Value of Food’ forms they used indicate a high degree of analytical work. The published findings give details of a specimen week’s income and expenditure, with a daily breakdown of all purchases for every household. The analyses of the quantities and costs of food were based on averages and the nutritional levels of the diets were tabulated. The length of the individual records ranged from four to ten weeks. The Board of Trade recorded information on ‘forms of inquiry’ distributed through working men’s organizations and co-operative societies. In some cases Board of Trade officials obtained information by personal inquiry. Of the 2,283 questionnaires returned from all parts of the United Kingdom, 475 were rejected because they were not detailed enough. The number of unsuitable replies from Ireland is unknown. The original questionnaires have not survived, but the summaries for each income group remain.20 The investigators appointed to inquire into rural diets acknowledged that ‘the difficulties of obtaining accurate particulars . . . have been considerable and have involved much correspondence’.21 Whether they used a standard form and, if so, who filled them in is unclear. The quality of information was varied, but the Board of Trade was unwilling to waste any detail. Returns not suitable for statistical purposes ‘contained much valuable information as to the consumption of food, and were thus very useful in checking the information supplied in the other Returns’.22 19

Lumsden, An investigation, 4. A nutritional analysis cannot be carried out on the 123 families in the Irish section because the individual family diets were not published. 21 Second report of Mr Wilson Fox, 247. 22 Ibid. 247. 20

170    The Board of Trade realized that in Ireland families grew a larger proportion of their food than did families in Britain. Consequently, food was classified into two groups: articles purchased; and ‘articles the whole of the principal part of which are produced or obtained as allowances’. Wilson Fox’s published report was based on 37 returns summarizing ‘the average quantity and value of the various kinds of food consumed in a week by a farm labourer, his wife and four children in Ireland’.23 The Board of Trade aimed for a ‘representative sample’, but its survey was biased towards families with above average incomes because, ‘the more intelligent operatives have supplied returns more readily and more accurately than those belonging to the unskilled labouring classes’.24 The Irish section was beset with problems. It was difficult to find farm labourers who depended solely on wage labour, especially in the west of the country. Many returns related to the consumption patterns of small farmers, not farm labourers, and were therefore discarded by the Board. Some investigators explicitly recognized the problem of choosing representative individuals and families. Edward Smith laid down four criteria for selecting his subjects. They should live by their labour; their occupations should be of a defined character; their earnings should, under all circumstances, be small; and they should be typical of the class of which they were members. This procedure gave the Privy Council the confidence to ‘feel assured that every selected case may be deemed representative of considerable numbers of families, and that therefore the results of the inquiry may at least be acceptable as true for large masses of population’. Smith chose only families in good health. Perhaps, as the Medical Officer pointed out, ‘if this rule had not been acted on, . . . the evidence would have expressed far more privation than it does’.25 Stafford and La Touche thought that their study ‘may be taken as furnishing a typical picture of the conditions under which persons residing in a labouring district in Dublin live’. The authors conceded that there were poorer districts than the ones they investigated, ‘but the object of the inquiry was to determine how the typical Dublin labourer lives, what are the conditions under which he and his family are housed and fed and what are their average family earnings’. All the surveys contained fewer subjects than a statistician would be satisfied with. Their weaknesses are obvious. But if we apply modern criteria to almost any kind of social data drawn from the past, nothing would be acceptable. Historians have to make do with what they have.

23 24 25

Second report by Mr Wilson Fox, 247–8. Consumption and cost of food in workmen’s families, 4. Sixth report of the medical officer of the Privy Council, 14, 12, 216.

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The methods of nutritional analysis Nutritional analysis requires food composition tables. Most British nutritionists use The Composition of Foods compiled by McCance and Widdowson, first published in 1940, and revised on several occasions since.26 This manual contains the values of protein, fat, carbohydrate, energy values (measured in kilocalories), minerals, and the vitamin content of foods. The values are averages calculated from many samples of individual foods. Consequently, variations in individual items of food produced in different ways or environments, at different stages of maturity, and subjected to different methods of cooking, are smoothed out. These points are important when interpreting nutritional analysis based on historical dietary surveys. There are other difficulties when applying modern nutritional tables to food in the past. Several foods that were once eaten are no longer consumed regularly and do not appear in modern food consumption tables. Examples include ox, cow, and sheep heads used to make soup. This problem can be overcome by using the values of surrogates such as cheap cuts of meat. Another example is Indian meal. This is rarely eaten today in Britain and Ireland and is not included in McCance and Widdowson. In this case values taken from composition tables relating to societies where Indian meal is eaten can be employed. There are variations in the chemical composition of apparently identical foods. For example potatoes grown in Cambridge in the twentieth century are not the same as those grown in Connemara in the mid-nineteenth. Soil types, climate, modes of production, and varieties all affect the composition. Labourers in pre-Famine Ireland normally ate the high-yielding but watery lumper. In 1839 Hawley observed that the use of the lumper and white potato varieties resulted in a ‘loss in cooking [which] reduce[d] them in weight much more than the superior kinds’.27 The weight of food eaten was rarely the same as the weight of the food harvested or purchased. Losses occurred in storage, preparation, and cooking. Meat is the obvious example where bone and gristle might account for more than 30 per cent of the purchased weight. Army contractors in the sixteenth century bought in quantities to allow for wastage. At the beginning of the twentieth century, John Lumsden believed that ‘there was very little waste, and the maximum nourishment was extracted from the materials bought’.28 Poor people threw away as little as possible. Bones were boiled to make soup and bacon fat was rendered down and used to flavour cabbage and other 26 R. A. McCance and E. M. Widdowson, The Composition of Foods (London: HMSO, Medical Research Council, Special Report Series, no. 297, 1960). Fourth revised edition by A. A. Paul and D. A. T. Southgate (1978). 27 Sixth annual report of the poor law commissioners, 243, 245. 28 Lumsden, An investigation, 5.

172    foods.29 Allowances for loss of weight in cooking, nevertheless, have to be made and in the absence of other evidence we have adopted those employed by McCance and Widdowson. Scientific advances in food technology have altered the nutrient composition of some foods. Modern white bread, for example, is made with low extraction rate flour, but the techniques required to produce highly refined white flour were not available before the late nineteenth century.30 Government legislation now requires the fortification of flour by the addition of iron, calcium, thiamine, and niacin. Thus the bread of today is very different from bread eaten in the past. These problems can be remedied to some extent by using the nutritional analysis for flour with a high extraction rate of 85 per cent.31 Bread and flour, weight for weight, are not the same things and it is necessary to convert the weight of bread recorded in dietary surveys to an equivalent amount of flour.32 Weights and measures pose their own difficulties. The quantities in the Irish surveys were expressed in units such as bushels, stones, pounds, ounces, gallons, quarts, and pints. These might not even have been imperial measures, although they probably were by the nineteenth century. Volume measures have to be converted into weights (how much does a bushel of potatoes weigh?), and pounds and ounces into grams and milligrams. Pints, quarts, and gallons have to be translated into litres and millilitres.33 Nineteenth-century investigators sometimes focused on individuals and at other times on groups. Workhouse dietaries prescribed menus for men, women, and children. The Hawley survey noted the quantities of food eaten daily by men and women. Later inquirers studied weekly family food budgets. They usually studied nuclear families consisting of parents and children. The 1859 survey distinguished between children and adults within the household, using age 15 as the division. Dr Smith in 1863 remarked that ‘the younger members of the family . . . as they grow up, leave their father’s home in search of employment and sustenance, so that the families consisted for the most part of the parents and the younger children’.34 He used 10 years as the cut-off age between childhood and adulthood. The Board of Trade’s urban survey in 1904 divided its information into five income groups and recorded an average quantity of foods eaten by families within each group. There was no information about individual family struc29 Base-Line reports of the Inspectors of the Congested Districts Board, 1892–8 (Dublin 1898 lodged in Manuscript Room, Trinity College, Dublin, Press A.7.11) 277, 394, 412, 574, 589, 596, 608. 30 The term low extraction rate is confusing. It refers to what is left in the flour, not what is taken out. 31 D. J. Oddy, ‘Working class diets’, Economic History Review, 23 (1970), 323; D. J. Oddy, ‘The working class diet, 1886–1914’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (London University, 1971), 207; T. C. Barker, et al., The dietary surveys of Dr Edward Smith 1862–3 (London: Staples Press, 1970), 36. 32 S. Davidson, R. Passmore, J. F. Brock, and A. S. Truswell, Human nutrition and dietetics (Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1979), 171. 33 Stafford did his own conversions to metric measures. 34 Sixth report of the medical officer of the Privy Council, 283.

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tures. The average number of children in each income group was stated, but not their ages. The number of adults per household was not recorded, but the investigators sought ‘the main items of expenditure on food . . . for one week by a workman, and his wife and children’.35 The study of agricultural families was organized in a similar fashion, although the family structure was even more vague. Wilson Fox assumed the average rural family to be composed of a labourer, his wife, and four children.36 By contrast, Lumsden and Stafford gathered detailed information about household structures and converted the family members into man equivalents using a scale devised in 1895 by the American nutritionist W. O. Atwater.37 Atwater set the consumption of an adult male at 1.0 and other members of the household in proportion as shown in Table 8.1 T 8.1. The Atwater scale Man Woman Boys aged 14–16 years Girls aged 14–16 years Child aged 10–13 years Child aged 6–9 years Child aged 2–5 years Child aged under 2 years

1.0 0.8 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3

Source: Dorothy E. Lindsay, Report upon a study of the diet of the labouring classes in the city of Glasgow carried out during 1911–1912 . . . (Glasgow: Physiological Department, University of Glasgow, 1913), 5

The Atwater scale was based on empirical observations about American patterns of eating according to sex and age. Its use requires a detailed knowledge of the ages of household members rarely available in the Irish surveys. Nevertheless, we need to reduce the nutritional information to a common basis related to individuals. The Atwater scale has therefore been simplified by weighting a man as 1.0, a woman as 0.8, and a child of 15 or under as 0.5. Thus, for a family containing a labourer (1.0), his wife (0.8), and four children (0.5 × 4 = 2), the total amount of food and its nutritional content would be divided by 3.8 to give the intake per male equivalent. We have christened this creature a LAM, an acronym for a labouring adult man. The LAM formula produces results similar to those generated by the Atwater scale. But both yield figures different from those derived simply by dividing the nutritional content of food by the number of persons in the family regardless of age or sex. Examples of the differences are set out in Table 8.2, 35

Consumption and cost of food in workmen’s families, 19. Second report by Mr Wilson Fox, 247. 37 W. O. Atwater and C. D. Woods, Dietary studies in New York City in 1895 and 1896 (n.p., 1898), extracts printed in Rowntree, Poverty: a study of town life, 122. 36

174    using three family food budgets taken from the 1859 survey for which ages of children are known. The use of simple per capita calculations are misleading if we are interested in the nutritional intake of adult males who in the nineteenth century made up the bulk of the labouring population. T 8.2. Examples of energy values (in kilocalories), per capita, per man, and per LAM

Dublin family, 2 adults, 4 children Tullamore family, 2 adults, 3 children Limerick family, 2 adults, 3 children

Per capita

Atwater (per man)

Per LAM

1,396 (100)a

2,234 (160)

2,204 (158)

2,605 (100)

4,070 (156)

3,947 (152)

2,573 (100)

4,188 (162)

4,188 (162)

a Figures in parentheses are index values. Source: See text.

In many cabins there was an additional mouth to be fed: the pig. Foster estimated in 1845 that ‘refuse and six pounds of potatoes per day’ were left for the pig, though on enquiry he was told that ‘a middling-sized pig [would] require . . . about 20 pounds of potatoes per day’.38 It must have been a very greedy pig. Austin Bourke much later reckoned that a pig ate ‘12 pounds of potatoes a day over ten and a half months’.39 A safe approximation is that a pig consumed the same amount as an adult male. Once we have determined the nutritional levels of diets per individual or per adult, we need to judge whether the levels were adequate. A common method is to compare intakes with recommended dietary allowances (RDAs). There is considerable debate about whether modern RDAs are appropriate for use with historical material.40 At the root of the scepticism is that RDAs have been recalculated over time and there are marked differences from country to country.41 For example, in 1950 the British Medical Association recommended four different levels of energy values for physical activity: 2,500 (sedentary), 3,000 (moderate), 3,500 (active), and 4,250 (very active) kilocalories respectively. These were reduced in 1969 and again in 1979.42 The changes reflected 38

Foster, Letters on the condition of the people of Ireland, 76. Austin Bourke, ‘The use of the potato crop in pre-Famine Ireland’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 2/6 (1967–8), repr. in Austin Bourke, ‘The visitation of God’? The potato and the great Irish famine, ed. Jacqueline Hill and Cormac Ó Gráda (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1993), 101–2. 40 M. Ayward, ‘Towards the history of nutrition: some methodological remarks’, Annales E.S.C., 30 (1975), 440; English translation in Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (eds.), Food and drink in history (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 12; John C. Super, ‘Sources and methods for the study of historical nutrition in Latin America’, Historical Methods, 14/1 (1981), 26. Super defines RDAs as recommended daily allowances. Another term is RDIs, (recommended dietary intake). The terms are interchangeable. 41 J. O’Hara-May, ‘Measuring man’s needs’, Journal of the History of Biology, 4/2 (1971), 251. 42 Department of Health and Social Security, Recommended intakes of nutrients for the United Kingdom 39

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not changes in physiological needs, but differences in concepts of the ideal standard of nutrition.43 However, Davidson and Passmore, have argued that one of the most useful functions of RDAs is for making comparisons across societies and over time.44 The components of nutrition Nutrition is ‘the sum of the processes by which a living organism receives material from its environment and uses them to promote its own vital activities’.45 Nineteenth-century nutritionists analysed food according to its chemical components, carbon and nitrogen. This was the method employed by Dr Edward Smith in the 1860s. By the early twentieth century nutritional science had progressed sufficiently so that Lumsden and Stafford were able to measure the protein, fat, carbohydrate, and energy values of diets, using food composition tables developed by Atwater and Bryant in 1899.46 Nutrients fall into five groups: proteins, fats, carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins. The first three are fuel providers, supplying energy; the energy is measured in kilocalories or joules. Proteins, fats, and carbohydrates also have other vital functions. Minerals and vitamins do not provide energy but they are important for sustaining good health. Proteins are essential for body-building and tissue construction, replenishment and repair. High levels of proteins are required during childhood, adolescence, and pregnancy, although the need for a good protein intake continues throughout life. Body tissue is constantly being worn out and proteins are necessary for its renewal. When setting a protein standard the objective is to establish a ‘level at which there is minimal risk of the actual requirement . . . not being met’.47 The protein content of food can be measured both quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantity of a protein in a food is determined by chemical analysis. Estimates of the amounts of protein needed by individuals for fulfilling its biological role have changed over time. In 1881, Voit calculated that a labouring man required 118 grams of protein a day.48 Since then nutritionists have generally reduced the recommended intakes. For example, the Joint (London: HMSO, 1969); Department of Health and Social Security, Recommended Daily Amounts of food energy and nutrients for groups of people in the United Kingdom (London: HMSO, 1979). 43 Erica F. Wheeler, ‘Recommended dietary intakes’, in Alan N. Howard (ed.), Nutritional problems in modern society (London: John Libbey, 1981), 148. 44 Davidson, Passmore, Brock, and Truswell, Human nutrition and dietetics, 152. 45 M. Beck, Nutrition and dietetics for nurses (Edinburgh: E & S Livingstone, 1962), 1. 46 W. O. Atwater and A. P. Bryant, ‘American food-stuffs’, United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin, 28 (1899). Extracts reprinted in Royal Commission on . . . relief of distress, 387. 47 Report of a Joint FAO/WHO Group (WHO Technical Report no. 301), 91. 48 Kenneth J. Carpenter, Protein and energy: a study of changing ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 102.

176    FAO/WHO report published in 1985 advocated a mean daily requirement of between 0.60 grams per kilogram of body weight, when diets are good, and 0.88 grams when diets are poor. These estimates suggest that a ‘reference man’ weighing 70 kg requires between 42 and 62 grams a day.49 The other method of assessing the protein content of a food is to evaluate the quality of protein by the technique of protein scoring. Protein molecules are constructed of amino acids. Protein scoring rates the quality of a protein in a food according to the essential amino acid (EAA) content. Some amino acids can be synthesized in the body, but there are nine that cannot. These nine are the EAAs.50 They must be provided by the diet because, without them, protein synthesis would cease and this would restrict the manufacture and replenishment of body tissue. Furthermore, EAAs need to be eaten at the same meal and in the correct ratios for protein synthesis to take place. The most common method of protein scoring is to measure the EAAs present in a particular food against the amino acid pattern of the protein contained in a reference food, that of the egg. For each food, the amino acid with the greatest deficiency from the reference amino acid pattern is known as the limiting amino acid. In many grains the limiting amino acid is lysine; in milk, meat products and vegetables it is methionine and cystine combined. In a few foods such as maize it is tryptophan. Protein scoring is marked out of 100. A good nutritious diet would score about 80.51 Protein foods containing adequate quantities of EAAs are considered to be of high biological value. Such foods include meat, fish, eggs, and dairy products, apart from butter. The proteins in cereals and vegetables are generally of low biological value. An important exception is the potato. The protein obtained from the potato is of high biological value provided the potato is cooked in its skin.52 The significance of the high quality of protein obtained from potatoes for Irish dietary history does not have to be stressed. Turning now to fats, they fulfil many important functions. They are the most efficient suppliers of energy because they are a more concentrated fuel source than either carbohydrates or proteins.53 Fats also provide satiety value to 49 Cited in Carpenter, Protein and energy, 189. In 1905 the American nutritionist Chittenden advocated no more than 50–5 grams of protein daily as an optimum requirement. Thirty years later the Technical Commission of the Health Committee of the League of Nations pitched the value at 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight, which would equate to approximately 65 grams of protein daily for the average man. By 1969 UK Recommended Dietary Intake for protein was set at 90 grams for an active male, see Department of Health and Social Security, Recommended intakes of nutrients for UK. 50 The nine essential amino acids are isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, valine, and histidine. 51 The method of estimating the protein score used in this analysis is that proposed in the Report of a Joint FAO/WHO Group, 69. 52 I. D. J. Tilgner, ‘More on Potatoes’, British Nutrition Foundation, Bulletin, 19/4, No. 1 (1977); D. A. T. Southgate, ‘Vegetables, fruit, fungi and their products’, in J. S. Garrow and W. P. T. James (eds.), Human nutrition and dietetics (9th edn., Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1993), 290. 53 Fats provide 9 kilocalories per gram compared with approximately 4 kilocalories per gram from carbohydrate or protein.

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the diet; that is, they give a more prolonged feeling of satisfaction than other nutrients by delaying the passage of food through the digestive system. A third role is to act as carriers in solution of the fat-soluble vitamins, A, D, E, and K. Fats also lubricate the intestines, insulate the body, and are part of cell structures. Some fats can be manufactured endogenously, but there are certain fatty acids, such as linoleic and linolenic acids that are essential and have to be supplied by the diet. Carbohydrates are providers of energy, particularly for the nervous system and brain. They are contained in foods rich in starch and sugar. The largest percentage of our energy comes from these foods. Carbohydrates are also ‘protein sparers’. The human body needs an adequate supply of carbohydrates to ensure that proteins are not diverted from their primary roles of body-building and maintaining tissue. Energy is obtained by oxidation of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. The process of oxidation releases heat, which is measured in kilocalories or megajoules. The kilocalorie is equal to 1,000 calories, but for convenience the ‘kilo’ is sometimes dropped. One megajoule is equal to 1,000 joules. In a well-balanced diet approximately 15 per cent of kilocalories are derived from proteins, 35 per cent from fats, and the remaining 50 per cent from carbohydrates The relationship between proteins, fats, and carbohydrates is important. Each of these nutrients has a specific purpose, and in order for these functions to be fulfilled efficiently the balance must be right. Proteins, for example, are vital for body-building and tissue renewal. The body must be able to derive enough energy from carbohydrates so that proteins are available for their primary role and are not diverted to produce energy. If the balance is wrong, the body is vulnerable to disease.54 Minerals are essential for a healthy body. Some minerals are required in greater quantities than others. Two, calcium and iron, are especially important. Deposits of calcium on the soft bone matrix give rigidity and strength to the skeletal frame and provide for strong, hard teeth. The body absorbs calcium poorly and makes use of only between 20 and 50 per cent of what is consumed. Individuals therefore need high intakes of calcium, although the amounts vary across the lifespan. Adults require a daily intake of about 700 milligrams and children and adolescents between 525 and 1,000 milligrams.55 Without sufficient calcium children may develop rickets and adults osteomalacia. Several influences affect the absorption of calcium. Some substances, such as vitamin D, assist in absorption, but others, notably oxalic and phytic acids, inhibit the process. Of the two, oxalic acid is of little consequence for Irish nutritional history. It is contained in several foods not commonly eaten in Ireland before the twentieth century, such as sorrel, spinach, bananas, and 54

Committee on medical aspects of food and nutrition policy (London: Department of Health, 1991). Department of Health, Dietary reference values for food energy and nutrients for the United Kingdom. Report on health and social subjects, no. 41 (London: HMSO, 1991). 55

178    rhubarb. Phytic acid, though, is of great importance. It is present in high extract flour and even more in oatmeal, which was a major component of Irish diets.56 Even so, rickets does not seem to have been a serious problem in Ireland. One possible explanation is that the digestive juices of people who regularly eat oatmeal acquire the ability to split calcium phytate, formed by the combination of phytic acid and calcium, and so release calcium for the formation of healthy bones and teeth.57 Furthermore, the large quantities of milk that Irishmen, women, and children drank offset the rachitogenic properties of oatmeal. Perhaps the strongest proof that individuals managed to absorb sufficient calcium was the rapid rise in population during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Had osteomalacia been widespread, Irish women would have suffered from progressive deformities of the pelvis and the consequential obstetric difficulties would have caused high maternal and infant mortality, therefore checking population growth. Iron is vital for good health. It is necessary for the formation of haemoglobin, an essential element of red blood cells. Haemoglobin carries oxygen to the organs of the body. Dietary iron exists in two forms: haem and non-haem. Haem iron comes from animal products, while that from plant origin is nonhaem. This difference is important because non-haem iron is not absorbed easily. Approximately 15 to 35 per cent of haem iron is taken up by the body, and is therefore considered as being of high bioavailability, whereas only 2 to 20 per cent of non-haem iron is absorbed. The amounts vary according to the presence of inhibiting or facilitating conditions.58 Inhibitors to iron absorption are phytates, commonly found in cereals, phosphates, polyphenols (i.e. tannin), calcium, and zinc. The facilitators are ascorbic acid, fermented foods, meat, fish, and poultry.59 The combination of foods eaten at a meal influences iron absorption. With cereal-based diets, the total intake of iron per se may be high, but the bioavailability poor. For example, a meal of cereal and milk will have a low bioavailability, but if the meal also includes a food rich in ascorbic acid, the iron absorption doubles.60 Dietary requirements of iron vary with age, sex, and the type of iron being 56 Many cereals contain the phytic acid splitting enzyme phytase, which permits calcium absorption to take place unimpaired. Wheat contains enough phytase to destroy much of the phytic acid during leavening. Oats have little phytase, and even that small amount is likely to be destroyed by the drying process. 57 E. W. H. Cruickshank, J. Duckworth, H. W. Kosterlity, and G. M. Warnock, ‘Digestibility of phytate-P of oatmeal in adult man’, Journal of Physiology, 104 (1945), 41. 58 Leif Hambraeus, ‘Meat or wheat for the next millennium? Animal- and plant-food-based diets and iron status: benefits and costs’, Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 58 (1999), 236, 268. 59 W. J. Craig, ‘Iron status of vegetarians’, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 59 (1994), cited in Y. M. Ryan, ‘Meat avoidance and body weight concerns: nutritional implications for teenage girls’, in Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 56 (1997), 523. 60 C. Geissler, and George Agbley, ‘Iron absorption from fortified breakfast cereals’, Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 56 (1997), 284A.

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absorbed. Modern recommendations range from 11 milligrams of iron daily for women consuming iron with a high bioavailability diet and between 32 to 59 milligrams for a low bioavailability diet. The figures for men range from 5 milligrams to 28 milligrams daily.61 If adults and children do not get a regular supply of iron from the diet they become anaemic.62 This is one of the most widespread deficiency diseases, occurring in both affluent and poor countries. In nineteenth-century Ireland, diets of the poorer classes contained relatively little meat and their dietary iron came primarily from non-haem sources such as cereals, milk, and tea that contain the iron inhibitors, phytates, calcium, and polyphenols.63 Here was a potent recipe for anaemia. Small wonder that George Russell in 1913 claimed that virtually every girl in Ireland was anaemic.64 Vitamins are essential for good health. They fall into two broad categories: fat soluble and water soluble. The fat-soluble vitamins are A, D, E, and K; the water-soluble are the B complexes (such as thiamine, riboflavin, niacin), and vitamin C. Vitamin A is necessary for growth, for good vision and the formation of viscous fluid. A deficiency of vitamin A is first manifest in defective vision and, if unchecked, leads to blindness. An important source of vitamin A is whole milk. During the Great Famine many workhouse children drank only skimmed milk. As a result they contracted xerophthalmia, the eye disease that causes blindness. Several substances form the group known as vitamin B complex. Thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin are the best known. All three are necessary for the release of energy from food. They are contained in a wide range of foods, though the richest sources are cereals, red meats, and eggs, and—in the case of riboflavin—milk. A lack of any of the B vitamins produces different ailments. In the Irish context, the B deficiency disease, pellagra, is of particular interest. Pellagra will occur if niacin is absent from the diet. Cereal maize contains very little niacin and so when Indian meal was used as a relief food during famines, the risk of pellagra was high. Vitamin C assists in the absorption of iron and is necessary for the manufacture of healthy connective tissue that binds the cells together. If individuals do not get enough vitamin C they contract scurvy. Scurvy was rife during the Great Famine among a community deprived of its main source of vitamin C, the potato. 61 Daily recommended intakes used to be 10 milligrams for men and between 15 to 20 milligrams for women. Now that the bioavailability of diets is taken account of, there are three classifications according to the percentage of iron absorbed: high (>18%), intermediate (11–18%), and low (