The Cloonahee Petition

We passed a sobering and, at times, harrowing couple of hours at the National Famine Museum this morning after we left Lanesborough.  The Museum is housed at Strokestown Park which was once the home of local landlords, the Mahon family.  When the estate was bought in modern times by local businessman James Callery, he discovered a treasure house of documents linked to life at the house and the running of the estate.  He recognised that these documents were of significant historical value which inspired him to create the Museum.

The contrast between life for the family in the big house and the lives of their tenants couldn't be more stark.  In the first part of the Museum we viewed bills for entertainment and improvements to the house which suggested a wealthy lifestyle, yet the truth was that the estate was in debt and a land agent was employed to make it more profitable.  As the potato blight took hold and the tenants couldn't meet their rents, the agent came up with a plan in 1847 to force 1490 men, women and children to emigrate by paying their passage.

The already weak and starving emigrants had to walk the 167k from Strokestown to Dublin to catch boats to Liverpool and from there to Canada.  They were berthed on four ships, two of which already had reputations for cutting the corners on facilities and provisions.  Many arrived already diseased and were housed six to a rudimentary bed in the holds.  It is no surprise that a considerable number died on the voyage and others soon after their arrival.

My blip is not readable but I wanted to record the Petition written by  tenants in August 1846, begging the land agent to provide work so that they could feed their families: 'Our families are really and truly suffering in our present and we cannot much longer withstand their cries for food.  We have no food for them, our potatoes are rotten and we have no grain.  And gentlemen, you know but very little of the condition of the suffering poor.'