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Trevelyans corn- should there have been more of it?

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    #32
    jonniebgood1
    Registered Users Posts: 3,577 ✭✭✭jonniebgood1


    Trench's description is in contrast to some of the scenes that describe bodies dead on the side of the roads from disease that seem to have been common in the famine.

    I think the government considered providing funding at one stage to assist emigration. I read this recently but am unsure where. There were various other schemes often funded by landlords to help the poor to emigrate. They are described here:
    Three main types of assistance were availed of by Famine emigrants:

    Emigrant Remittances Emigrants who had already settled abroad and managed to save, sent home money to enable other members of their family to join them in exile.

    Landlord Assisted Emigration Prior to the famine, landlords anxious to clear their estates of wasteful tillage and uncertain rents of cottiers, had been assisting tenants to emigrate as an alternative to eviction. There was however great resistance to going. The Great Famine was to change all that.

    Poor Law Assisted Emigration This consisted of two schemes: an Orphan Emigration Scheme and a General Emigration Scheme. The general emigration scheme was introduced in 1849, in order to allow Boards of Guardians to help paupers to emigrate to America and Canada. People who were judged as able to work and who had been in the workhouse for over a year were eligible. Between 1849-51, 1592 men, women and children emigrated under the terms of this scheme.
    http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/history/workemigrate.htm

    From the same article the details about the current population of Co. Clare against the pre-famine population is very striking:
    The present population of the county is around 88,000. According to the census returns of 1841 the population of Clare was 286,000. In 1851 it was reduced to 212,000, a drop of 74,000. In the 10 years between 1841-51 over 13,438 Clare homes became uninhabited.

    Over 50,000 people died of starvation between 1845 and 1850 and thousands emigrated, many of them to Australia. Between 1851 and 1855, for instance, over 37,000 people emigrated from the county.


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    #33
    MarchDub
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭MarchDub


    jonniebgood1 wrote: »
    I think the government considered providing funding at one stage to assist emigration.


    People were leaving Ireland and the government saw the opportunity to settle Canada - so the fare to Canada from Ireland was greatly reduced. The figures I have is that Canada for a family of six would then cost six pounds whereas the USA would cost 25 pounds for the same group. But many of the Irish were distrustful of anywhere in the British Empire so a majority of Canadian immigrants then walked into the northern US states eventually settling in Maine, Vermont and especially Massachusetts.


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    #34
    CDfm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,649 ✭✭✭✭CDfm


    Interesting point MD -Canada's Black Donnelly Massacre was something else and not without a "racist" slant.

    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=66623045&postcount=23


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    #35
    jonniebgood1
    Registered Users Posts: 3,577 ✭✭✭jonniebgood1


    RTE had a documentary about the ships to canada recently which followed a familys trip during the famine in which they all died during the trip or soon after.

    http://www.deathorcanada.com/main.html
    http://www.rte.ie/tv/deathorcanada/


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