The Famine in Ireland in the 1840s devastated Co Clare. Local historian Ciarán Ó Murchadha’s history of the calamity in that county lays bare the scale of the destruction of the potato harvests, the humiliation of the relief programmes, fever running rampant in the overcrowded workhouses, land clearances and emigration. Ó Murchadha notes that the first identified victim of starvation in Ireland during the famine was a widow near Dysart and the last recorded starvation death, in April 1851, was a man in Ennis. He quotes a reporter in West Clare in 1846 who observed how locals “died as the birds do when the frost comes”.
Ó Murchadha further highlights how, between 1849 and 1854, one in every 10 people in the county was evicted: “Suddenly, they found themselves transported thousands of miles, from a rural to an urban landscape, where the inhabitants did not speak their language and, in so many cases, loathed their Irishness and Catholicism. For those who stayed behind, there was another kind of devastation: the landscape was significantly emptier, and they were wrestling with guilt. Frequently, their survival had been at their neighbours’ expense. This sense of survivor guilt inevitably became embedded in the Irish psyche.”
In 1856, 278 emigrants from Clare arrived on assisted passages into Victoria in Australia and concentrations of Clare people settled at Ballarat and Bendigo. Many of the Clare migrants were illiterate; in 1841, 61 per cent of all Clare people over five years of age were classed as such.
The exodus from Clare continued long after the famine, amid further starvation in 1882 and the consequences of the land war where Clare land league branches were vigorously active. Clare County Library, through its emigration list project, has recorded entries relating to people from the district in which the village of Inch lies, as they passed through Ellis Island from the 1890s to the 1920s seeking refuge and a better future in the United States, the vast majority young single men and women.
The highest year for emigration was 1851, with 9,499, averaging 180 people per week, leaving Clare
Naoise Cleary, founder of the Clare Heritage and Genealogy centre, has recorded that “between 1st May 1851 and 31st March 1881, 100,496 Clare men and women left Ireland for foreign parts and remarkably, males led females by exactly only 100 souls. The highest year for emigration was 1851, with 9,499, averaging 180 people per week, leaving the county”. It is no wonder Clare people take their history so seriously. The population of the county in 1841 was 286,394; by 1901 it was just 112,334; last year it was 127,419.
Many emigrants found the better life and opportunities, or versions of them, they were seeking; many too, suffered from discrimination, hostility, dislocation, trauma and desperate homesickness. The mixed fortunes and the coded language used in correspondence home was captured in David Fitzpatrick’s landmark 1994 book, Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish migration to Australia, in which he provided the context for the letters on both sides of the ocean.
Being a refugee is like having someone press the pause button on the recording of your life and until the pause button is released you are stuck; your life is on hold while the years march by
— A Sudanese refugee in Ethiopia
What may surprise some readers is that the theme of forced exile is notably rare; some emigrated by choice, part of a universal desire to leave home to try something new or seek adventure or improve material circumstances; many were pious and grateful to God for what little they had and there was an acceptance of the finality of departure that it was believed they would be compensated for in the next life. Fitzpatrick’s book includes fifteen letters from Michael Normile of west Clare who settled in West Maitland and wrote to his father at home; the return letters, Michael wrote, provided him with “Oceans of Consolation”.
[ Walking away from the dead: What the Famine did to IrelandOpens in new window ]
Such scholarship as Fitzpatrick’s humanised an issue that defined Clare and Ireland generally, as a migrant people, dependent on refuge and asylum elsewhere; what many missed sorely, observes Fitzpatrick, was “energetic social interaction within networks defined by kinship and neighbourhood”.
Seeking solace
The thirst for those connections resonates down through the centuries for those seeking solace and protection away from home. Host communities, too, faced and continue to face the challenges of acceptance and integration, particularly at times of strained resources, but it is still imperative to try to empathise with the vulnerability of those in limbo.
[ Opinion Unspoken realities: The Great Famine eroded moral values in IrelandOpens in new window ]
Consider, for example, the feelings articulated by a Sudanese refugee in Ethiopia and cited over 20 years ago by Joan Roddy who was head of the Refugee Project at the Columba Centre in Maynooth: “Being a refugee is like having someone press the pause button on the recording of your life and until the pause button is released you are stuck; your life is on hold while the years march by. I have lost not only my human behaviour, culture and customs, homeland, belongings, but also confidence, dignity, hope and so forth. As I know my life, it is in the dark... My trust is spoilt. I become useless in the eyes of others... My heart and my soul know deep sorrow.”