Social Class Impact of the Famine in Donegal - Part 2
By Jim MacLaughlin

Nowhere was greater care taken than in the measures taken to reduce the costs of maintaining paupers once they were inside the workhouse. The cost of maintaining a pauper in the Carndonagh Workhouse was just over two shillings per week prior to the Great Famine. By August 1847 this figure was trimmed to one and sixpence per week. By the start of the 1850s, when the Carndonagh Workhouse, like most other Donegal workhouses, was filled to capacity and faced with a continuing problem of catering to the endemic poor, this amount was reduced still further to a mere ten pence per pauper per week's provisions.

Strict economy was also observed in the disposal of the workhouse dead in Donegal. Fever generally peaked in the Donegal Poor Law Unions around the late winters of 1847 and 1848. It first appeared in February 1847 and was endemic in ill-equipped Unions like Glenties and Dunfanaghy where facilities for dealing with the rural sick were practically non_existent prior to the Famine. Similarly, it was fear of spreading contagious disease throughout close-knit rural communities which dictated that the workhouse dead should be buried within the walls of the workhouse. In May 1847 the Poor Law Commissioners found it necessary to urge the guardians in the Glenties Union to take greater care in the disposal of the workhouse dead. They directed the master of the workhouse' not to bury paupers nearer the walls of the Workhouse than can possibly be avoided' and urged that 'graves near the walls be covered with at least six feet of clay'. In Carndonagh, despite the fact that the workhouse was purposely built on well-drained elevated land at the edge of the town, fever threatened the contamination of the town's water supply. Here, as in Glenties and other Unions, the decision was quickly taken to confine the fever-dead within the grounds of the workhouse.

Care was also taken to ensure that burial costs be kept to a minimum. In some Donegal Unions, as also in the case of the Derry workhouse, coffins with a sliding false bottom were used when fever killed off many of the inmates. In June 1847 the Glenties Board of Guardians advertised for coffins and accepted the terms of a local carpenter who agreed to supply them at the following rates:

Persons above three years, price per coffin, one shilling and nine pence.
Persons three to nine years, price per coffin, two shillings and five pence.
Persons nine to fifteen, price per coffin, two shillings and ten pence.
Persons fifteen years and upwards, price per coffin, three shillings and five pence.

In that year also, the guardians of the Ballyshannon Union representing one of the most prosperous regions in the county, accepted a contract to supply coffins at three shillings and eleven pence for the 'large size' and two shillings for the 'small size'. In May 1847 guardians meeting at the Carn Workhouse were paying a local coffin-maker three shillings and eleven pence per coffin. Workhouse minutes record that a total of eight pounds, six shillings and ten pence was spent on coffins during one week in that month.

In contrast to the niggardliness with which paupers were treated, the costs of administering Donegal workhouses and supplying them with provisions were comparatively high. Workhouses here generated a significant amount of local business and give rise to a number of white collar positions. In March 1848, when the Carn Workhouse was filled to capacity, the clerk of the house received an increase in his salary which brought it from thirty pounds to fifty pounds per annum. The master of this workhouse received thirty pounds per annum. The matron, the schoolteacher and the porter received twenty pounds, eighteen pounds and six pounds respectively. In addition, each workhouse employed up to four Medical Officers. In Glenties the local Medical Officer was on an annual salary of twenty five pounds. The Inishowen Union had four medical officers, and each one received thirty pounds per annum. The minutes of January 1843 record that one William Wilson, valuator of the Inishowen Union, got one hundred and sixty two pounds for services rendered in evaluating lands throughout the Union. Priests and ministers who ministered to the workhouse poor also received an annual stipend. In the Inishowen Union the Catholic chaplain received an income of thirty pounds per annum in 1844. In 1846 the Glenties Union employed thirty wardens to administer relief in each of the electoral division of the Union. Each of these was on a salary of twelve pounds per annum. In Inishowen the Outdoor Relief Officer was on an income of thirty five pounds per annum in 1847.

Finally, Donegal's workhouses boosted business in areas where the demand for farm produce was low and prices were even lower. The expense account of the Glenties Union in January 1848 was recorded as follows.

The salaries recorder in the establishment of this Union were as follows:

All this suggests that few among the rate-paying farmers mourned the passing of the famine dead in Donegal. The rural economy of mid-nineteenth century Donegal was indeed underdeveloped. However, even then the county possessed a substantial business class and an expanding group of relatively well-off farmers. The latter were by no means exclusively Protestant, just as the workhouse poor were by no means exclusively Catholic. The emerging new middle classes of Donegal, particularly the substantial tenant-farmers, exercised political and moral clout out of all proportion to their numbers. They regarded the poor as a threat to social stability, an obstacle to social progress, and a lucrative source of cheap labour.

From: Journal of the North West Archaeological and Historical Society (1985)

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