Poverty in Athy of old and Athy's Workhouse

With Christmas time fast approaching our thoughts turn to festive celebrations. Sadly, the festive season offers no respite from the daily struggle facing many households. The local St. Vincent de Paul Society which tries to help out families in need throughout the year, makes extra special efforts to bring some comfort to many at Christmas time. Last weekend the local Lions Club held it’s annual food appeal collecting funds to enable the St. Vincent de Paul Society to offer some extra help to needy families during the Christmas period. Athy, despite its impressive history as a market town of regional importance, a position which it held up to fifty years ago, was always home to a substantial number of poor families living in the laneways and alleyways of pre-slum clearance days. The two roomed and one roomed hovels built by private landlords in the 18th and 19th centuries were still part of Athy’s townscape up to the mid-1930s. It was the Slum Clearance Programmes of the third decade of the last century which did away with many of the town’s unfit and unhealthy slum dwellings. It is quite revealing to look back at Athy of 1846 and to see the enormous progress the town had made following the opening of the Canal in 1792 and the expected opening of the railway line to Athy the following year. Athy had adopted the commercial sophistication of a prosperous market town with an impressive number of craft persons trading in the town. Bakers, blacksmiths, boot and shoemakers, butchers, carpenters, saddlers, tailors with a tin plate worker and a tanner spoke of a thriving commercial town life existing side by side with many for whom the prospect of work was limited to seasonal farm work or summer work in the local brick yards. Athy’s economic lifeline in the early years of the 19th century were its fairs and markets, with its weekly market of particular importance. There was substantial unemployment in all Irish provincial towns during the 19th century and here in Athy with a history as a fortified garrison town inevitably the lure of army life saw many Athy men enlisting in the English army. The Crimean War saw many Athy men joining up, while the Boer War and especially the First World War saw high numbers enlisting. The unemployed men enlisted during times when State aid was not yet in place to assist the unemployed. Indeed, in the absence of State involvement the philanthropy of what was identified as the ‘gentry and clergy’ of the time established a dispensary system in Athy in 1818 to meet the medical needs of the poor. Those same people would later help fund the building of a fever hospital at a time when cholera outbreaks presented great risks for the general public and not just those living in unfit houses bereft of sewerage facilities and served by streetside water pumps supplying contaminated drinking water. A letter published in the Athy Literary Magazine in March 1838 claimed that Athy was ‘completely neglected ….. sickness and starvation visited alike the able bodies and the aged poor.’ The Workhouse in Athy planned to accommodate 360 adults and 240 children was opened on 9th January 1844. Within a few years two auxiliary workhouses had to be opened to accommodate the 1528 starving men, women and children who towards the end of the Great Famine sought shelter and food within the high walls of the Workhouse. Nowadays we do not have the same level of poverty as that witnessed by our predecessors of earlier centuries. What we have is deprivation and in many cases hunger which can only be helped by neighbours or community members coming together and working through charitable organisations such as the St. Vincent de Paul. If you missed the opportunity to make a donation during the Lions Club Food Appeal, you can still drop your contributions into the local St. Vincent de Paul shop in William Street. While writing of the Workhouse I was reminded that it is now almost four years since the then chairman of Kildare County Council agreed to my request for a suitable memorial to be erected in St. Mary’s Cemetery to honour the memory of the more than 1200 unfortunate Workhouse inmates who died during the Great Famine. A recent report in this newspaper would seem to indicate that any memorial to be erected was intended to highlight the deaths of women and children in the Workhouse which one Councillor seems to regard as a Mother and Child Home. Athy’s Workhouse, later the County Home, was never part of the Mother and Child Home regime. It was the Workhouse where sick and hungry men women and children from Athy and district died. The memory of the Famine dead who now lie in unmarked graves in St. Marys cemetery should never be forgotten. A stand-alone Famine memorial should be put in place without further delay.