Social Class Impact of the Famine in Donegal
By Jim MacLaughlin

There is no denying that pre-Famine Donegal had a landed aristocracy which was conservative in politics and derived its wealth from the gentlemanly pursuit of farming. It was thicker on the ground in the east and north-east of the county than it was in the west and south of Donegal. Yet, outside the broad coastal sweep from the Bloody Foreland to Dungloe, few localities were entirely devoid of well-off landed families.

The 1841 census of population reveals that almost two thirds of all houses in and around Dungloe and Killybegs were one-roomed mud cabins with valuations below five pound per annum. Yet further north in Inishowen only four out of ten houses were in this category. In parts of south Donegal less than thirty per cent of houses were one-roomed cabins. Aside from a scattering of 'big houses' - which were comparatively scarce in Donegal anyway - the most prestigious dwellings were the substantial cottages containing three or four rooms belonging to improving farmers and the local business community. In and around Kilmacrenan more than one tenth of all houses belonged to this category, and in Inishowen and Tirhugh this figure was even higher. Similarly, thirty-eight of the 1,800 tenements in the Raphoe district were in the £50 plus category and thirty-five more were in the £40 to £50 category. The owners of these dwellings, together with those living in substantial cottages were the cream of Donegal society.

Even before the Famine, Roman Catholics were strongly represented in their ranks, and from their ranks were drawn recruits for the priesthood, the constabulary, the teaching profession and other lower middle class professions. The disappearance of small holdings, and the annihilation of the landless labourers through famine and emigration, allowed these substantial farmers to build up their farms as viable economic units, and as family units. Even at the height of the Great Famine these farmers were sending wheat, oats, butter, eggs, poultry, flax, pork and cattle to local fairs and to Derry. In January 1847 The Londonderry Standard, the mouthpiece of the tenant right movement in east Donegal, recorded bumper supplies of wheat, oats and butter for the export market. At Strabane it was recorded that 'the quantity of oats and wheat was increased, butter was plenty and much cheaper,and Indian meal, bran and turnips are in very great demand'.

Even before the Famine, members of the petty gentry were pleading exemption from government rules regarding the provision and administration of social welfare. In 1842 a resolution was passed by the Guardians of Glenties Poor Law Union which stated that a house capable of accommodating 500 inmates would be perfectly adequate for this poor district. In Poor Law Unions all over Donegal rural ratepayers, Catholic as well as Protestant, were extremely niggardly in the allocation of relief. It was not until the full force of famine made itself felt in the county that these sectors of Donegal society even considered extending relief to landholders with valuations lower than £5 per annum. Relief was generally conceded only on condition that its recipients would abandon all claim when they entered the workhouse system. This helped create a glut of small holdings which improving Catholic and Protestant farmers all over Donegal could snap up at low prices or low rents. These richer tenant farmers were growing in influence even before the Great Famine. They supervised the distribution of relief with a keen eye to economy. Thus for example in late August 1846 it was resolved by the Inishowen Board of Guardians that 'no part of a family should be admitted to the workhouse without the head of the family'. A ruling was also passed that any pauper who left the workhouse for whatever reason would not be readmitted until he or she had stayed outside for more than three weeks. In June 1847 it was resolved that a number of women and children then lodged in the Carndonagh workhouse should be discharged and not allowed to return until such time as they re-entered along with their menfolk. This measure was designed to ensure that poor men would not be able to rely upon the workhouse to feed and shelter their families in the lean months of the famine years.

Even the rich agricultural heartland centered on Raphoe experienced poverty and famine-related disease on a larger scale. Before 1840 also several districts in the east and centre of Donegal already possessed the rudiment of a social welfare and health care system. As early as 1843 the Poor Law Union of Inishowen had dispensaries for the treatment of contagious diseases. These were located in Buncrana, Moville, Clonmany, Culdaff and Carndonagh. Each was attended on a monthly basis by a qualified Medical Officer. In 1830 these dispensaries were receiving a total of £273 in subscriptions and an equal amount from public funds. They spent £353 on the payment of salaries for Medical Officers and, interestingly, allocated the small sum of £150 towards actual medicines. In that year alone they ministered to just under 10,000 patients. In the Poor Law Union of Glenties, on the other hand, Medical Officers were so hard to come by that the local apothecary or dispensing chemist was enlisted as Medical Officer to deal with the huge increase in sickness and distress that hit this Union in 1846. In 1841 there were only three dispensaries 'ill-distributed throughout this dreary, dismal, mountainous country'.

The Parliamentary Gazetteer of 1843 records that an inn was only recently built in the Glenties area for the 'accommodation of tourist of various classes'. In contrast to this coastal resorts around Inishowen were experiencing a booming tourist trade in the 1840s and 1850s. The Londonderry Standard regularly advertised day-trips to Moville and Redcastle in the summer months of 1846 to 1849 when famine was rife among the poorer classes in the countryside. The speed with which Poor Law regulations were enacted in Donegal differed significantly from place to place. As a rule those areas that suffered most from the effects of famine were latest in providing adequate facilities for alleviating rural destitution. The first workhouses in the county were built in those regions where a significant proportion of the local population belonged to the substantial tenantry, 'improving' farmers and rural middle class. The first of these workhouses were built in the north east. In the west and north west of Donegal the better-off sections of the local population were still debating the most economical way for implementing relief when the full force of the famine struck. The first meeting of the Inishowen Board of Guardians was held in Carndonagh as early as November 1840. Three years later the workhouse was completed and ready for the reception of paupers. However it was not until the autumn of 1846 that the members of the latter increased as rural destitution forced the sick, the deserted and the aged to seek refuge in the harsh environment of the workhouse.

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