The workhouse was the most dreaded and feared institution in Ireland. The workhouse system of poor relief was imposed on the Irish people in spite of the opposition of Catholic and Protestant, landlord and labourer. Everyone predicted it would not work- and it did not work. During the famine years countless thousands died within the workhouse walls. Even more, denied admission, died outside. This book traces the workhouse system from its introduction to its phasing out. It makes an unique contribution to our understanding of the social history of Ireland. -- Publisher description.
The true story of the Kerry girls who were shipped to Australia from the four Kerry Workhouses of Dingle/Kenmare/Killarney and Listowel in 1849/1850, as part of the Earl Grey Scheme. From scenes of destitution and misery, the girls, some of whom spoke only Irish, set off to the other side of the world without any idea of what lay ahead. This book tells of their 'selection' and shipping to New South Wales and Adelaide, their subsequent apprenticeship, marriage and life in the colony.
This publication explores the impact of the Famine on children and young adults. It examines the topic through a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including literature, history, visual representations, folklore and folk-memory.
What was it like in a Victorian Workhouse? Was the food really as bad as we imagine? Take a step back in time with Alan Gallop and ask yourself if you could have survived in such harsh conditions.
With one million dead, and just as many forced to emigrate, the Irish Famine (1845-52) is among the worst health calamities in history. In 2006, archaeologists discovered a mass burial containing the remains of nearly 1,000 Kilkenny Union workhouse inmates. In the first bioarchaeological study of Great Famine victims, Jonny Geber uses skeletal analysis to tell the story of how and why the Irish Famine decimated the lowest levels of nineteenth century society. By examining the physical conditions of the inmates that might have contributed to their institutionalization, as well as to the resulting health consequences, Geber sheds new and unprecedented light on Ireland's Great Hunger.
Over one million people died in the Great Famine, and more than one million more emigrated on the coffin ships to America and beyond. Drawing on contemporary eyewitness accounts and diaries, the book charts the arrival of the potato blight in 1845 and the total destruction of the harvests in 1846 which brought a sense of numbing shock to the populace. Far from meeting the relief needs of the poor, the Liberal public works programme was a first example of how relief policies would themselves lead to mortality. Workhouses were swamped with thousands who had subsisted on public works and soup kitchens earlier, and who now gathered in ragged crowds. Unable to cope, workhouse staff were forced to witness hundreds die where they lay, outside the walls. The next phase of degradation was the clearances, or exterminations in popular parlance which took place on a colossal scale. From late 1847 an exodus had begun. The Famine slowly came to an end from late 1849 but the longer term consequences were to reverberate through future decades.
The Magdalen laundries were workhouses in which many Irish women and girls were effectively imprisoned because they were perceived to be a threat to the moral fiber of society. Mandated by the Irish state beginning in the eighteenth century, they were operated by various orders of the Catholic Church until the last laundry closed in 1996. A few years earlier, in 1993, an order of nuns in Dublin sold part of their Magdalen convent to a real estate developer. The remains of 155 inmates, buried in unmarked graves on the property, were exhumed, cremated, and buried elsewhere in a mass grave. This triggered a public scandal in Ireland and since then the Magdalen laundries have become an important issue in Irish culture, especially with the 2002 release of the film The Magdalene Sisters. Focusing on the ten Catholic Magdalen laundries operating between 1922 and 1996, Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment offers the first history of women entering these institutions in the twentieth century. Because the religious orders have not opened their archival records, Smith argues that Ireland's Magdalen institutions continue to exist in the public mind primarily at the level of story (cultural representation and survivor testimony) rather than history (archival history and documentation). Addressed to academic and general readers alike, James M. Smith's book accomplishes three primary objectives. First, it connects what history we have of the Magdalen laundries to Ireland's “architecture of containment” that made undesirable segments of the female population such as illegitimate children, single mothers, and sexually promiscuous women literally invisible. Second, it critically evaluates cultural representations in drama and visual art of the laundries that have, over the past fifteen years, brought them significant attention in Irish culture. Finally, Smith challenges the nation—church, state, and society—to acknowledge its complicity in Ireland's Magdalen scandal and to offer redress for victims and survivors alike.
The first systematic study of famine in all parts of Europe from the Middle Ages to present. It compares the characteristics, consequences and causes of famine in regional case studies by leading experts to form a comprehensive picture of when and why food security across the continent became a critical issue.
