The Famine--The Times--and Donegal Number 1 Between August, 1845, and January, 1846, just at the onset of the Famine in Ireland, The Times newspaper published a series of letters written by one Thomas Campbell Foster of the Middle Temple, barrister-at-law, whom The Times had appointed as its own Commissioner to study the condition of the people of Ireland. Foster took the task seriously, travelled extensively throughout the country, and in all wrote forty letters which, following publication in The Times, appeared in book form, published by Chapman and Hall, London, in 1846. Foster was a peculiar fish. He was a keen observer and a good reporter. For these qualities his letters are a valuable source of information on the conditions under which a poverty-stricken peasantry existed prior to the Famine. His summation, however, written on March 15, 1846, revealed an abysmal failure to comprehend what he had witnessed, and an utter inability to recommend realistic solutions to stave off the impending disaster. In his own words, found in the preface to his published volume: I can arrive at no other conclusion--looking at the general absence of all enterprise and all exertion, and at the general want of industry, which are existing facts that all observers have noticed--than that, for the poverty and distress and misery which exist, the people have themselves to blame. To be fair, Foster included absentee landlords in his finding, but hastened to add: It is an unfair conclusion to attribute the evils which afflict Ireland to any influence out of Ireland; and it is an unfair conclusion to attribute its social evils to any one class. Notwithstanding his bias, the 771 pages of his book, including index and appendices, provide a valuable window through which to view contemporary life at the onset of the Famine, and none more so than the letters Foster wrote during his travels throughout Donegal in August and September of 1845. Many of his observations are not pleasant reading, but are given without emendation in order to shed light on contemporary English ruling-class views of Ireland and all things Irish. His statistical tables show conclusively that enough other food, sufficient to stave off much of the starvation, was being exported from Ireland in order to pay exorbitant land rents to absentee landlords and their agents. To set what follows in perspective, the following quotation from The Ballyshannon Herald of September 29, 1845, is pertinent: Almost all of the wheat in this County is reaped and safely made up; it is an average crop. The barley is reaped and is more than an average crop of excellent quality. Turnips look well. The potato crop looks most luxuriant, but some are complaining that a disease has prevailed to a partial extent; a considerable number of cows and pigs have fallen a sacrifice to the prevailing distemper in different parts of this Country.
Posted on: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 09:08:28 +0000
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