Mayo history: 224 famished paupers marched to Mass during storm
By Tom Gillespie
ON June 5, 1850, the Telegraph or Connaught Ranger reported on the state of the poor in Ballinrobe:
On Thursday last, May 30, 1850, the Ballinrobe Guardians were besieged by vast crowds of starving creatures, looking for relief. It was melancholy to behold the numbers of skeletons and their frightful appearance.
The guardians were obliged to give a good many of them out-door relief, having no workhouse accommodation.
Some of the elected guardians are now, at the eleventh hour, we understand, doing their duty, and will not be dragged by the tail of the landlords or ex-officios, who only wish to cram the houses - their motto being, ‘get the vermin into the houses, and though it may cost us, for a year or two, five times as much as it would by relieving them outside, we will redelivered of them - They must die in two years’!
There are, we understand, at present in the workhouse about 30 deaths a week, and many prefer dying by the road side to entering the house, as was the case with a poor woman who died on the public street of that town on Thursday last.
She, it appears, came from Galway, with her sister, begging about, sooner that enter the pest house, ‘her husband and five children having died in the Galway poor house: her sister’s husband and six children died there also’.
Those were the depositions of the sister. Such is the refuge provided for the poor by our paternal rulers!
When this poor wretch died she had in her hand and mouth some raw cabbage waste picked up on the street.
The houses at Ballinrobe are crowded to excess - the Assistant Poor Law Commissioner, Mr. Burke, is too important to inspect them, when he comes, only very seldom.
He does his duty by the poor by looking at the house. Mr. Lucas, the Inspector of many unions, would not for the world disagree with the landlords. It is a consolation, however, that Doctor Phelan pays an occasional visit, else we would have many more in the house.
On Monday the number of applicants at the office of the relieving officer was so great he could take none of their names - all rushing to get in. He was obliged to go for the priest, as no force could keep the people from rushing to the door.
This union is in a frightful state. The guardians have done well in keeping up the funds, in building houses and sheds, and purchasing auxiliary houses, the cost of which would have saved many a life: and were the people assisted for those two months, they would, with the Divine assistance, be independent of the houses which at present are but shells of coffins.
Later that year - October 8, the newspaper carried the following headline: ‘Unheard of cruelty - female paupers’.
The article read: The storm, rain and cold of Sunday (October 6) was such as to prevent many comfortably clad householders of this town (Castlebar) from attending Divine Service at their several houses of worship - nay, so turbulent was the storm that even the warm-clad military could not venture out of barracks, to hear prayers at the parish chapel.
Notwithstanding the fierce howling of the wind, and the merciless pelting of sleet, and rain, the young female paupers of Nos. 1 and 2 Auxiliaries - without any covering whatever save little frocks of the lightest texture - are marched out in the forenoon, to hear Mass at the main house, a distance of over half a mile.
The number of the female paupers thus dragged out in the storm were 224, other of 350 - leaving 126 behind who could not be coerced to face the storm.
We have seen these daughters of misery passing through the streets on that day - we have heard their cries and lamentations as the strong wind flapped their saturated little frocks about their cold legs and bodies, and we asked ourselves is this a specimen economy adopted by the board of guardians?
If Eve sinned surely the punishment for her transgression has been well and cruelly awarded to her fair daughters by the Castlebar Board.
With every respect for the Medical Superintendent, we put it to his conscience as a doctor, a Christian, and a parent, and we ask him - what is to prevent those poor, innocent afflicted children of the great God from contracting disease, to an alarming extent by their exposure to cold and hardship such as that they endured on last Sunday?
Had they even a change of raiment, to enable them to cast off the wet ones? Had they fires whereat to dry their scant covering, or warm their famished limbs? To these questions we answer no.
These 224 famishing children were forced to remain in their wet clothing during the entire day.
We copy from the Freeman’s Journal, an article on the subject, and we perfectly coincide with our talented contemporary that the guardians, in preventing the Chaplain of the Establishment from reading Mass in the auxiliary house (No. 1) have done infinite injustice to the poor female inmates and have far exceeded their power in a religious point of view.
We respectfully call upon them to rescind their order and direct their officers not to prevent a Roman Catholic clergyman reading Mass when and where he may think fit.
Should, however, the guardians pertinaciously adhere to their prohibition, we call upon the commissioners, in charge of their duty, to step in and rescue the female paupers from the awful fate that awaits them.
While the sad cruelty is being practised under the orders of the Board of Guardians of dragging 224 nearly naked female children thro’ the public streets, over half a mile, we consider It an act of cruelty that 126 other females possessed of imperishable souls should be deprived on the Lord’s day from hearing the consolations of religion, and all this to save the paltry sum of £30, a deduction from the chaplain’s salary - and it is universally supposed to punish him for the patriotic, manly and independent course he pursued at the late election.
We deem it necessary to observe that the resolution of these gentlemen was not passed unanimously: and we further add that it is our intention to brig the subject under the consideration of the guardians at their meeting on Saturday next.