The Great Famine and Athy

Started in 2008 the National Famine Commemoration Day gives the Irish people one dedicated day each year to reflect on one of the most significant tragic events in our history. The Great Famine which started in 1845 resulted in the deaths by starvation or disease of one million Irish men, women and children and the loss of a million and a half others to emigration. The third Sunday in May was officially designated by the Government as the National Famine Commemoration Day and this year the Athy commemoration ceremony will be held in St. Mary’s cemetery across the Canal bridge from the former local workhouse, now St. Vincent’s Hospital, on Sunday the 15th of May. In December 1995 Kildare County Council published “Lest we Forget – Kildare and the Great Famine” and by doing so allowed our knowledge of a significant and sad period of our history to overtake the silence of those who survived the famine. By and large those survivors did not pass on to the next generation their accounts of the unimaginable horrors of the Great Famine and so it was left to a later generation of historians to broaden our knowledge of those distressful days. I was one of the contributors to the County Council’s publication and in researching Athy’s Great Famine story I was astonished to learn of the emigration scheme which saw young girls from Athy’s workhouse sent to Australia after the famine. The death of 1,205 inmates of Athy’s workhouse during the Great Famine was another fact from our local history with which I was not familiar. Indeed that lack of knowledge extended not only to everyone of my generation but also to all post famine generations. A Catholic priest, Fr. John O’Rourke, who served as a curate in Athy from 1851 to 1852 wrote “The History of The Great Famine of 1847” which was one of the earliest accounts of the famine. It remained a standard work for generations but even his account has no reference to Athy’s famine story. The town of Athy was estimated to have lost upwards of 1,036 persons in addition to the 1,205 who died in the workhouse. The population of Athy Poor Law Union fell by 10,701 in the ten years to 1851. Within that part of the union area located in County Kildare the actual decrease was 19.04% while in the County Laois area of the union the population loss was a staggering 28.26%. At the height of the famine 16,365 persons from the Athy Poor Law Union were fed from local soup kitchens. This represented 34% of the total population. The highest dependency on soup kitchen rations was in the Ballyadams electoral division where it was almost 100%. The possibility of hungry distressed poor people exacting retribution on the prosperous merchant class was a matter of concern for local Justice of the Peace, John Butler who lived in St. John’s, Athy. He wrote as follows to Dublin Castle in April 1848 “As the only resident magistrate in this town I beg leave to state to your excellency that a few days ago the troops quartered here were withdrawn and the town left to the protection of a few police. I beg to refer that this is a county town with a jail and nearly 100 prisoners in it, 16 of whom are under sentence of transportation and only the Governor and three turnkeys to guard them. There are two banks in the town, a barrack for either cavalry or infantry and not a soldier. I do not like my native town in these alarming times to be left to the protection of 10 or a dozen policemen”. Athy was to remain peaceful despite the revolutionary events in Europe that same year and the short lived revolution led by William Smith O’Brien which ended with what became known as the battle of widow McCormacks cabbage patch. Throughout the first six months of 1849 the workhouse numbers in Athy increased so as to require the provision of additional workhouse accommodation. A grand canal store at Nelson Street was requisitioned to accommodate the overflow from the workhouse while five houses in Barrack Street were taken over for use as an auxiliary workhouse. It was only in recent years that we have come to understand how the Great Famine physically and emotionally shattered the lives of so many families from this area. It was for generations an unrecorded and unspoken period in our local history until it gradually became part of the community’s folk memory which helped define the relationship between a decolonised 26 counties and Britain. Here in Athy our famine dead from the local workhouse were brought across the road to be buried in unmarked graves in the workhouse cemetery. St. Michael’s cemetery also holds the remains of those residents of the town who died during the Great Famine. On Sunday, 15th of May at 3.00pm a short service will be held in St. Mary’s cemetery to remember Athy’s famine dead and to recall what was the single most important event in Irish history.