Famine commemoration of Black 47
THIS COMING summer the town of Drogheda will host the National Famine Commemoration which is a wonderful achievement and is all the more poignant considering that the year 2012 will also mark the 165th anniversary of 'Black 4', referring to the year 1847 which was one of the harshest years of the Great Famine of the mid-19th century.
The town of Drogheda was to witness some terrible, pitiful and dreadful scenes of people, men women and children, famished by the hunger and riddled with disease after they had landed in town from the mid-west and west of the country in the vain hope of catching a boat to Liverpool to escape the calamity. People had walked from places such as Longford, Sligo, Roscommon and Mayo, often taking three to four weeks for their journey, some gave interviews on their arrival to reporters in Drogheda stating that the road behind them was littered with people, ' The dead in the ditches are coffin-less thrown, the living are dying, unshrouded unknown'.
The people who arrived in the Boyneside town were not entitled to any relief either from the Union Workhouse or the local Poor Law Guardians and so many ended up lying waste on the streets and in the port area where it was witnessed and recorded of women and children trying to snatch pieces of turnips that was being fed to the cattle in their holding pens along the port before being exported to Britain.
On Thursday, February 18th 1847, a family of four fell with the hunger in Shop St. after they had arrived here from Mayo, the Union Workhouse refused to take them in and the two young kids died the following morning.
During the third week in February 1847, the number of destitute poor in the Drogheda Workhouse was 889 in a place built for 800. The number of local people who were employed as famine relief workers was that totalling 178, while the numbers who were attending the ' bread and soup' kitchens on a daily basis was that totalling 3,000.
A report in the 'Nation' newspaper from May 1847 regarding Drogheda stated that, 'About mid-day on Wednesday a crowd of between three and four hundred famished-looking beings, who were once 'able-bodied' Irishmen, broke into the extensive bakery of Mr Galbraith and seized on all the bread in the shop; they subsequently plundered other bakeries and provision stores. Having appeased the cravings of hunger they then separated'.
During the third week in February 1847, the number of destitute poor in the Drogheda Workhouse was 889 in a place built for 800. The number of people who were employed as famine relief workers was that totalling 178, while the numbers who were attending the ' bread and soup' kitchens on a daily basis was that totalling 3,000.
The Drogheda Argus newspaper also carried a report from the Board of Guardians condemning the actions of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood who refused to subscribe to the famine relief fund stating that they (the gentry) were looking on with silent contempt and that they would publish their names in the local newspapers.
- BRENDAN MATTHEWS
