Previously, I wrote about the Poor Law Act of 1834 as an attempt to address the widespread poverty and hunger in Ireland and I will attempt to put some context around what was life was like in the pre-famine years.
Under the dry and official title of The First Report from His Majesty’s Commissioners for Inquiring into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland (1835) comes an enormous amount of opinion, reminiscence and description of life by ordinary Irish people in the early nineteenth century.
Ireland was the subject of innumerable investigations throughout this period, due to a large extent to the growing economic and social crisis in rural Ireland after about 1820. Grain prices declined, the textile industry collapsed outside north-east Ulster (the weavers of Ennistymon are described in the report as being completely destitute) and the population continued to grow.
The result was a society of massive unemployment, tiny landholdings and large-scale poverty. This poverty struck all observers at the time, and contemporary accounts are full of descriptions of poor housing, lack of clothing and enormous numbers of beggars. In the summer months in particular, before the potato harvest, tens or even hundreds of thousands of people would take to the road temporarily.
Under the dry and official title of The First Report from His Majesty’s Commissioners for Inquiring into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland (1835) comes an enormous amount of opinion, reminiscence and description of life by ordinary Irish people in the early nineteenth century.
Ireland was the subject of innumerable investigations throughout this period, due to a large extent to the growing economic and social crisis in rural Ireland after about 1820. Grain prices declined, the textile industry collapsed outside north-east Ulster (the weavers of Ennistymon are described in the report as being completely destitute) and the population continued to grow.
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| Beggars, County Kerry |
