We, the folks who live in eastern
Iowa
, know about the Famine Irish. Most folks don't. Death from starvation and
disease is perhaps the ultimate reason to migrate. For almost one-fourth
of all Irish in Ireland to survive the Great Famine (c. 1845-1849), they
would have to drag up from their disparate petty kingdoms and counties, live
long enough to reach a port of embarkation, leaving Ireland by whatever means
available, and reestablish their Irish identity in new lands. And, our Irish
Immigrant ancestors were part of this history.
The following recounts the story of the Famine Irish to
Canada
. At least the Famine Irish migration to
America
was slightly better received.
The great Irish famine
and pestilence will have a place in that melancholy series of similar
calamities to which historians and poets have contributed so many harrowing
details and touching expressions. Did Ireland possess a writer endued with the
laborious truth of Thucydides, the graceful felicity of Virgil, or the happy
invention of DeFoe, the events of this miserable year might be quoted by the
scholars of the age to come together with the sufferings of the pent-up
multitudes of Athens, the distempered plains of northern Italy, or the hideous
ravages of our own great plague. But Time is ever improving on the past. There
is one horrible feature of the recent, not to say the present, visitation
which is entirely new. The fact of more than a hundred thousand souls flying
from the very midst of the calamity [famine] into insufficient vessels,
scrambling for a footing on a deck and a berth in a hold, committing
themselves to these worse than prisons, while their frames were wasted with
ill-fare and their blood infected with disease, fighting for months of
unutterable wretchedness against the
elements without and pestilence
within, giving almost hourly victims to the deep, landing at length
onshore already terrified and diseased, consigned
to encampments of the dying and of the dead, spreading death wherever they
roam, and having no other prospect before them than a long continuance of
these horrors in a still farther flight across forests and lakes under a
Canadian sun and a Canadian frost -- all these are circumstances beyond the
experience of the Greek historian or the Latin poet, and such as an
Irish pestilence alone could produce.
By the end of the season
there is little doubt that the immigration into
Canada
alone will have amounted to 100,000; nearly all
from
Ireland
. We know the condition in which these poor
creatures embarked on their perilous adventure. They were only flying from one
form of death. On the authority of the Board of Health we are enabled to state
that they were allowed to ship in numbers
two or three times greater than the same vessels would have presumed to carry
to a
United States
port. The worst horrors of the slave trade which it
is the boast of the ambition of this empire to suppress at any cost have been
reenacted in the flight of British subjects from their native shores. In only
ten of the vessels that arrived at Montreal in July, four from Cork and six
from Liverpool, out of 4,427 passengers, 804 had died on the passage, and 847
were sick on their arrival; that is, 847 were visibly diseased, for the result
proves that a far larger number had in them the seeds of disease. "The
Larch," says the Board of Health on August 12, "reported this
morning from
Sligo
, sailed with 440 passengers, of whom 108 died on
the passage, and 150 were sick. The Virginius sailed with 496 -- 158 died on
the passage, 186 were sick, and the remainder landed feeble and tottering --
the captain, mates, and crew were all sick. The
Black Hole of
Calcutta
was a mercy
compared to the holds of these vessels.
Yet simultaneously, as if in reproof of those on whom the blames of all this
wretchedness must fall foreigners, Germans from Hamburgh and
Bremen
, are daily arriving, all health, robust and
cheerful." This vast unmanageable tide of population thus thrown upon
Montreal, like the fugitives from some bloody defeat, or devastated country,
has been greatly augmented by the prudent, and, we must add, most necessary
precautions adopted in time by the United States, where more stringent
sanitary regulations, enforced by severer penalties, have been adopted to save
the ports of the Union from those very horrors which a paternal Government
[Britain] has suffered to fall upon Montreal. Many of these ships have been
obliged to alter their destination, even while at sea, for the St. Lawrence. At
Montreal a large proportion of these outcasts have lingered from sheer
inability to proceed. The inhabitants have of course been infected. From the official
return of burials at
Montreal
, for the weeks ending August 7, it appears that in
the city there died during that period 924 residents and 896 emigrants, making
a total of 1,730 deaths. Besides these, 1510 emigrants died there at the
sheds, making a grand total of 3240 in the city of
Montreal
and its ex tempore Lazaretto; against only 488,
including residents and emigrants, for the corresponding weeks last year. A
still more horrible sequel is to come. The survivors have to wander forth and
find homes. Who can say how many will perish on the way, or the masses of
houseless, famished, and half-naked wretches that will be strewed on the
inhospitable snow when a Canadian winter once sets in?
Of these awful occurrences some account must be
given. Historians and politicians will some day sift and weigh the conflicting
narrations and documents of this lamentable year, and pronounce, with or
without affectation, how much is due to the inclemency of heaven, and how much
to the cruelty, heartlessness or improvidence of man. The boasted institutions
and spirit of this empire are on trial. They are weighed in the balance. Famine
and pestilence are at the gates, and a conscience-stricken nation might
almost fear to see the "writing on the wall." We are forced to
confess that whether it be the fault of our own laws or our men, this new act
in the terrible drama has not been met as humanity and common sense would
enjoin. The result was quite within the scope of calculation and even of cure.
For our own part, before one emigrant left our ports, and when thoughtless and
selfish men were first beginning to talk of a great systematic plan of
emigration, we called the attention of the Legislature to the dreadful scenes
that would be witnessed on board the emigrant fleet, crowded with wretches
already at death's door, predisposed to almost any malady, and certain victims
to the first existing cause of disease. We
subsequently exposed the wickedness of transporting our pauperism to shores
where no provision was made for its reception, and to a climate where the
necessities of life were at least as indispensable as our own. . . .
The
Tide of immigration to the United States and to the British colonies, The
Illustrated London News,
17 September 1847
<http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/sadlier/irish/Decks.htm>
10 January 2016.
