Living Conditions During the Famine
A visitor to Ireland in the year 1846 wrote a description of the typical house:
Written in script
The population of Ireland and of Ardee bog increased rapidly in the eighteenth century, facilitated by the growing dependence of the rural population on the potato. However, the great depression which succeeded the Napoleonic Wars made it impossible for tenants to meet the inflated land
rentals which were a by-product of the war years. After a cold, wet summer in 1816 unripened
potatoes rotted in the ground, and corn was still green as winter began’. In the famine that followed typhus erupted to an epidemic (O’Sullivan 1965, 8). In the Drumcondra area the resulting
agitation and disturbance escalated following the poor potato crop in 1829. By February 1831
labourers were stopping work to march. An assembly of 20.000 labourers demonstrated at Nobber.
At Drumcondra farmers held a meeting to discuss the relief of distress. Several thousand trees
were cut on the lands of H. C. Singleton. The police barracks was attacked. With continuing poor
harvests, the tithe resentment and the outbreak of cholera in 1832, attacks on houses and people
increased. The first reported outbreak of cholera in County Louth occurred in Ardee on 2 7 April.
The disease subsided in June, flaring again in August. There were 163 reported cases and 74
reported deaths in Ardee dispensary area (O’Sullivan 1965, 10). As the rising price of conacre and
reduction in tillage brought more migrant labour in search of work there were assaults and robberies in Syddan and Drumcondra. Migrant workers were forced to leave and a new secret society,
the Whitefeet, emerged (Mooney 1988-9, 51-118). The poor harvest of 1836, and rising food
prices brought further outrages and these continued over the following six years (Mooney 1990-1, 120 et seq).
Researched and Compiled by Kathleen McArdle, “Brookville”, Drumconrath. Source: Faith History of Drumconrath – Meath Hill.