Research Catalog
Sable wings over the land : Ennis, County Clare, and its wider community during the Great Famine / Ciarán Ó Murchadha ; with a foreword by James S. Donnelly, Jr.
- Title
- Sable wings over the land : Ennis, County Clare, and its wider community during the Great Famine / Ciarán Ó Murchadha ; with a foreword by James S. Donnelly, Jr.
- Author
- Ó Murchadha, Ciarán.
- Publication
- Ennis, Co. Clare : Clasp Press, 1998.
Items in the Library & Off-site
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Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
---|---|---|---|---|
Text | Request in advance | DA950.7 .O68 1998 | Off-site |
Details
- Description
- ix, 332, [8] p. of plates : col. ill., map; 25 cm.
- Summary
- This case study of a town and its rural hinterland during the Great Famine highlights the cumulative and shattering impact of disastrous government relief policies on a population rendered prostrate by repeated failures of the potato harvest. It outlines the shambles of public works, the loathed soup kitchens, and most horrifically the appalling disease and mortality that occurred both inside and outside the Ennis Union workhouse and its auxiliaries after 1847. This book also illuminates the huge upsurge in crime, desperate individual attempts to survive by stealing, and collective attempts to prevent the outward movement of food supplies. The brutal outrages of secret societies, and harsh judicial reaction also feature, in addition to the unsympathetic and often indifferent attitude displayed by officialdom at all levels towards those whose misery they were appointed to relieve. New insights are also offered on the corruption of the boards of guardians, the bizarre election campaigns of 1847, the Special Commission of 1848 and the hangings which followed it, and the merciless campaign of evictions carried out by landlords in the district. Exhaustively researched and compellingly written, this book is sets the standard for future work on this topic. -- Publisher description
- Subjects
- Genre/Form
- History
- History.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 313-324) and index.
- Processing Action (note)
- committed to retain
- Contents
- The remote little town of Ennis -- The canker is not partial but general -- Legally and morally answerable: the Relief Committees in action -- The patience of a famishing people: summer to autumn 1946 -- Ploughing up the roads instead of the fields: the public works -- The people are dying in every corner of the land -- 1847: the elections of summer and the new Poor Law -- The good intentions of the present ministry -- Pseudo-patriotism and mendicancy: the 1848 rebellion and the workhouse bureaucracy -- A blighting desolation: 1849-1950 -- 1850-1851: the eve of better times? -- A considerable degree of prosperity: the community of Ennis after the famine.
- ISBN
- 1900545055
- LCCN
- ^^^98181437^
- OCLC
- 39924778
- Owning Institutions
- Harvard Library