FROM THE ARCHIVES:The prospects for the tourist season in Connemara in 1913 did not look good, thanks in part to well-meaning reports about conditions in parts of the area from, among others, the Gaelic League and Sir Roger Casement, who had described Lettermullen as the "Irish Putumayo", a reference to his contemporary report into the plight of the Putumayo Indians of Peru who were treated barbarously by rubber plantation owners. This editorial aimed to put the state of Connemara into perspective. - JOE JOYCE
CONNEMARA HAS received an unenviable advertisement in the English Press. Sir Roger Casement's description of Lettermullen as an 'Irish Putumayo' is going the rounds of many newspapers. The English public, which knows that Sir Roger is a great authority on the real Putumayo, will take his lurid description of Lettermullen au pied de la lettre. It does not know that Lettermullen is far from the beaten track of tourists. Therefore, it is likely to give Connemara a wide berth during the coming summer.
Indeed, unless the false impression is quickly removed, this may be a disastrous tourist season for the whole West of Ireland. We have here a good illustration of the bad effects of misdirected philanthropy.
Typhus fever is always latent in the West. There has been a recent outbreak of it on three of the small islands which lie off the Galway coast. Our reporter, who has just visited the scene, describes to-day the extent of the outbreak.
Since last September, in a dispensary area of 10,000 persons, forty cases of typhus have been notified, and five of these have ended in death - that is to say, there has been one fatal case for every 2,000 of the inhabitants. Such an outbreak should hardly be described as an epidemic.
The three islands have been described as 'plague spots'. Alarmist articles have been sprinkled with such expressions as 'the fever-stricken West' and 'the Western scourge'. It is not surprising that residents in Connemara, who know the facts, are very angry about the whole business. At the Mansion House meeting [in Dublin, instigated by the Gaelic League,] last night an indignant message was read from the citizens of Galway.
The truth is that the outbreak has been far too lavishly advertised. These recurrent outbreaks of typhus are the result of local conditions which gifts of money will only remedy momentarily and partially, if at all.
The standard of life is frightfully low in these islands. The people are housed like pigs, they draw their drinking water from stagnant pools. It would be a miracle if typhus fever did not flourish in such conditions.
It will be eliminated, not by gifts to unhappy sufferers, but by the provision of decent houses and a pure supply of water.
Fierce attacks are being made on the Local Government Board for its alleged apathy in the matter. It appears to us that a greater responsibility lies upon the Congested Districts Board, which is the chief guardian of the health and comfort of these poverty-stricken districts.
The local authority is too poor to undertake the necessary reforms. It has approached the Congested Districts Board for help in the provision of a proper water supply.
The board refuses to interfere with the duties of another public body. The old 'aristocratic' Congested Districts Board would hardly have acted thus. Mr [Augustine] Birrell [chief secretary for Ireland] has just visited the West, and he will, doubtless, take steps to see that, in some way or another, the urgent needs of these poor districts are supplied.
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