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.

Poverty in 19th century Athy and later

When I wrote some years ago of the influenza epidemic of 1918-19 and its deadly impact on the people of Athy and district, I had little thought that the world was soon to face into another pandemic. COVID-19 has already brought so many changes in society – and not only a huge loss of lives but also, sadly, loss of employment that has led to family deprivation on a scale never before experienced by the current generations. Reading the minute books of Athy Town Commissioners of the 19th century, and press reports from that time, confirms that poverty and social deprivation were once all too common features of life in Athy. Three years before the start of the Great Famine, Athy’s Town Commissioners wrote to a Mr Bunbury seeking to have the brickyards continue working throughout the year “to assist in employing the poor” (the name “Bunbury” is currently in use with reference to Bunbury Bridge – what, I wonder, is the connection?). In December 1848 the Town Commissioners considered using (not employing ) “paupers from the workhouse to sweep the street.” It was a suggestion which would repeatedly arise at future meetings of the Town Commissioners, and it had little to do with offering help to the poor. It was, rather, an attempt by the Commissioners to save public funds. The Board of Guardians of the local workhouse were not willing to cooperate and so the Commissioners in 1849 appointed two local men, supplied with wheelbarrows, to clean the streets. The men were appointed as “scavengers”, a rather impolite term which would not be acceptable to use nowadays. Three years after the Great Famine saw the first mention in the official records of flooding at Rathstewart. This was a perennial problem which was always described as causing “distress for the poor people”. Poverty was widespread in the town of Athy in the 19th century, and the Athy Loan Fund gave what was described as a “liberal donation” of £30 for the “labouring poor of Athy” in 1856. The Town Commissioners gave a less liberal donation of £1 to purchase seeds for distribution amongst the poor. Poverty, coupled with the constant presence of soldiers in the local cavalry barracks and the nearby Curragh camp, gave rise to what the Town Commissioners described as “the scandal of public prostitution in Athy.” The Town Clerk, Henry Sheil, was required in 1858 to publish the following public notice in the town: “Caution to persons keeping any place of public resort within the town for the sale of refreshments of any kind who knowingly supplies any common prostitute or resorting therein to assemble and continue in his premises after this notice will be prosecuted according to the law.” The notice did not have the desired effect, so the following year Thomas Roberts was appointed for the purpose of prosecuting public prostitutes and street beggars for which he was paid a salary of 4 shillings per week, and two shillings and sixpence for each conviction of a prostitute. Another indication of the widespread poverty in Irish society of the 1850s was the Athy Town Commissioners’ request to the local magistrates “to try and sentence vagrant beggars to fines or imprisonment who shall be found standing at doors or loitering about.” Ten years later the Town Commissioners were still concerned by the presence of vagrants and prostitutes in the town, and decided to appoint a man “to take care that all vagrants and beggars shall be kept out of Athy and all prostitutes shall be brought before a magistrate.” The parsimonious Commissioners next wrote to the Board of Guardians in charge of the local workhouse seeking recoupment of this man’s wages “as his work greatly lessened the cost of nightly paupers in the workhouse.” The final years of the 19th century were marked by several outbreaks of typhoid fever in Athy town, leading to many deaths. The outbreaks were caused by contaminated drinking water in the town’s public water pumps. For several years the medical officer of health, Dr Kilbride, had complained of the dangers presented to the poor people of the town who relied on the public water pumps for drinking water. The Ratepayers’ Association, whose members no doubt had their own private wells, resisted the attempt to provide the town with a piped water supply. It eventually arrived in 1906, but not before many of those living in the unsanitary hovels of the laneways and courtyards of Athy had lost their lives. Nearer to our time was the report in January 1915 that “there are about 60 children attending national school in Athy who are unable by reason of lack of food to take full advantage of the education provided.” About 36 of these children were provided with breakfast by the Sisters of Mercy. The Urban District Council, as successors to the Town Commissioners, provided a grant of £18 in 1923 to fund a midday meal for 96 children in the convent school. The early years of the Irish Free State were very difficult, with little employment and disastrous harvests in 1923 and 1924. By 1926 the local convent school provided meals for poor children consisting of bread and syrup, leading the Urban Council to provide extra funds so that a more substantial meal could be served. Today COVID-19 has brought huge social challenges, one of which is the plight of families left without an income. Athy Lions’ Club has agreed to organise a fundraising event over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend to help the local St Vincent de Paul Society to assist local families in need. More about this at a later date.

Poverty in 19th century Athy

During the 1860's widespread poverty and the precarious state of public health in Athy were constant sources of concern and worry. In January 1863 the local Medical Officer reported that the mortality rate in Athy was unusually high. He claimed that "six persons died on Old Christmas Day, two of them of the Low Fever alarmingly prevalent. The extensive use by the poor and the labouring classes of a cheap American bacon, which judging from appearance and smell hardly seemed fit for human food, is considered by many to predispose delicate or enfeeble constitutions to the attacks of disease".

On the 7th of March of the same year the Athy Town Commissioners decided not to illuminate the town on the occasion of the wedding of the Prince of Wales, on the grounds of "the extreme poverty at present existing in the town". For all the concern expressed by the Towns Commissioners their principal contribution to the eradication of disease in the town consisted of the periodic purchase of a load of lime to be given to the poor for whitewashing their houses. Street cleaning was still of the most rudimentary type and complaints of unsightly heaps of manure on the public roads in the town were common. The extent of the public health problem in Athy was obvious to all when the returns for the local Fever Hospital for the first three months of 1863 showed 107 new cases of fever.

At around midnight on Saturday 5th November 1864 a thatched cottage on the outskirts of Athy was burnt to the ground. Patrick Roche, a farm labourer, his wife Mary and two of their teenage children John and Bridget died in the fire. Following an inquest in the Workhouse on the following Monday the bodies were immediately brought to St. Michael's Cemetery where they were buried by candle light. The Medical Officer had refused to allow the friends of the Roche family to wake the bodies overnight.

An Editorial in the following week's local newspaper read "In the small hovel seven adults slept - four in one bed and three in the other. There was not a back door through which effectual or timely aid might have been extended. No back yard and but one small window. Their pig was a constant resident day and night in close proximity to the very bed where slept Roche, his wife and their son and daughter. If such is the true picture of the state of cabins on the outskirts of Athy, what must be expected from a close examination of the abodes of want in the courts and lanes in the heart of the town?"

The question went unanswered in an age when disease and poverty stood side by side with wealth and rank. The welfare state was to await another age.

The poverty on the streets and lanes of Athy of the 1860's was readily traceable to the bad employment situation then prevailing in the market town. Such jobs as were available tended to offer seasonal employment only at low rates of pay. For many family men the employment situation was never to improve even if jobs in the local mills were occasionally available. When the oat mill at Clonmullin owned by Michael Keating was burnt to the ground in March 1864 several local men were thrown out of work. The large four storey building was the victim of an arson attack by a disgruntled former worker.

Unemployed labourers in Athy saw their only possible hope in joining the ranks of the English army which for so long had a small detachment in the town. The Crimean War of 1853/1856 saw the first large scale influx of recruits from Athy, creating a tradition which was to be followed during the Boer War and the First World War. For those who remained at home the prospects were not encouraging. Shortly before Christmas 1864 the local builder W. Crampton found a family of four living in a twelve foot square, four foot high space dug out of a rick of straw on his land at the Carlow Road. The resulting publicity in the local newspaper prompted a meeting in the Town Hall on December 27th. It was there decided to raise funds to relieve "the distressing labouring poor by employing them in works of improvements in the town."

This showed a new social awareness for the problems of the poor of Athy. Despite this the townspeople's uphill struggle against hunger and disease took on an even greater urgency with the outbreak of cholera in the winter of 1866. The Fever Hospital was filled to overflowing and many deaths occurred.

The Town Commissioners response to the situation was the appointment in August 1868 of a man responsible for ensuring that all vagrants and beggars were kept out of Athy. Dressed in the overcoat and top hat supplied by the Town Commissioner Pat Walker was soon active in arresting vagrants, beggars and prostitutes whom he brought before the local Magistrates Court every day.

Throughout the 1870's the town’s only Medical Officer was constantly reporting to the Towns Commissioners on the unsanitary state of the town and the resulting dangers to public health. Time and again he reported in adverse terms on the state of the town and in 1873 complained directly to the local Government Board in Dublin. Accusing the Town Commissioners of Athy of being inactive and remiss in their duties the Medical Officer suggested that the local Government Board needed to pressurize the Towns Commissioners into taking necessary action to improve the sanitary state of the town. His efforts were in vain as by 1872 the "principal inhabitants" were more concerned with land tenure than they were with the unsanitary state of Athy.

Many more years were to pass before the necessary improvements were noted in the living conditions in Athy.