Grey didn’t so much mind that these cottiers had been forced from their land; that, after all, had been the point all along. But what he hadn’t anticipated and now deeply regretted was the fierce political fallout. The Encumbered Estates Act was intended as a way to reinvigorate the Irish landscape by forcing the sale of heavily mortgaged estates on which the owners had failed to pay tax. The government hoped that wealthy English investors would buy the estates; however, in many cases these lands continued to languish or were purchased by Irish Catholics. Neither result was considered an appealing option by those back in London. William E. Gladstone, who had risen to power in the previous government, went on record declaring that the Encumbered Estates Act was motivated by “lazy, heedless, uninformed good intentions,” the effects of which were “disastrous.”12 Edward Twisleton objected too and brought his concerns to Trevelyan. The assistant Treasury secretary was far from sympathetic and chastised his Poor Law commissioner. “We must not complain,” he wrote to Twisleton, “of what we really want to obtain.”13
So began the tension between two of the men most closely associated with the fate of Ireland. No longer bound by a desire to please his superior, Twisleton began making a series of increasingly pointed statements about the need for more attention to Ireland. Trevelyan shot back that Twisleton had a penchant for melodrama and was “lavish” in his handling of Irish relief. Twisleton countered that it was Trevelyan’s miserliness that continued to kill so many across Ireland.14
Trevelyan had always been as impatient as Grey when it came to opposition, and these recent developments prompted a vitriol that surprised even those closest to him. He blanketed the desks of his subordinates with polemical arguments for greater self-sufficiency on the part of the people and laissez-faire on the part of the government. He sent copies of Adam Smith’s treatise on the free market, The Wealth of Nations, to each officer and clerk of the Commissariat. He mailed Edmund Burke’s Thoughts on Scarcity to each relief officer. Both, he insisted, would surely prove the dangers of reliance on governmental assistance. When that didn’t work, he ordered copies made of any report that emphasized the dire state of affairs in Ireland and insisted that their study become a duty of all those who worked for him.15
Still, his reputation continued to suffer. The previous season, Trevelyan had announced publicly that the famine was over. That, along with his prediction that the potato would return stronger than ever in 1849, was proving patently false.16
Then, though it barely seemed possible, things took yet another turn for the worse. Trevelyan arrived at his office in early March to find an urgent letter from Colonel Stokes and the Tralee Board of Guardians. Lord Clements, a curmudgeonly former member of Parliament and a notorious landlord (he would later be murdered because of his draconian treatment and heartless evictions of tenants), was planning what they called “an awful attack” on Edward Twisleton, Ireland’s chief Poor Law commissioner.17 Clements, it seemed, objected to Twisleton’s commitment to aid and tenant rights.
It was the last straw for the commissioner. His budget was broke, and he no longer had funds to help even the most distressed Irish unions. Trevelyan had not only been given a bonus of twice his salary from the previous year but was now also ignoring his pleas for disbursements. Just a few days after receiving a copy of Stokes’s letter, Twisleton sent one of his own: a letter of resignation directed to the House of Commons. In it, he insisted not only that the destitution of the Irish was the fault of the British government, but that the government’s famine relief policy had become a policy of extermination rather than salvation. Twisleton was not about to play the part of executioner.18 In short, Britain’s handling of Ireland was a “deep disgrace.”19
But the former Poor Law commissioner didn’t stop there. As a final blow, he issued a parting public statement in which he denounced the Russell government: “I wish to leave distinctly on record that, from want of sufficient food, many persons in these Unions are at present dying or wasting away; and, at the same time, it is quite possible for this country to prevent the occurrence there of any death from starvation, by the advance of a few hundred pounds.”20
That stung, but not nearly as much as Twisleton’s harshest criticism, which he directed at Trevelyan and the Treasury Office:
There are many individuals of even superior minds who now seem to me to have steeled their hearts entirely to the sufferings of the people of Ireland, and who justify it to themselves by thinking it would be going contrary to provisions of nature to give any assistance to the destitute in that country. It is said that the law of nature is that those persons should die . . . and that you should let them alone; there is thus a sort of philosophical colour given to the theory or idea, that a person who permits the destitute Irish to die from want of food is acting in conformity with the system of nature. Now my feeling is, that it is wholly the contrary; that it is part of the system of nature that we should have feelings of compassion for those people, and that it is a most narrow-minded view of the system of nature to think that those people should be left to die.21
John Ball, the newly appointed assistant Poor Law commissioner, agreed. Trevelyan’s approach to famine relief, he insisted in a published tract against the Treasury secretary, was “the grossest infraction of justice, and the most insane defiance of common sense.”22
It was the harshest criticism against Trevelyan yet. Nevertheless the assistant secretary remained firm. Ireland was sick, it was true, but like any good doctor, he had issued a thorough treatment. What the patient now required, he insisted, was “rest and quiet and time for the remedies which have been given to operate. Continual dosing and dependence upon physicians is not good either for the body politic or corporate.”23
20
Clearances
1849
AT LEAST ONE Irish doctor thought Trevelyan’s prognosis required a second opinion. As he awaited the Jeanie’s next voyage, Richard Blennerhassett could see firsthand that the famine was showing no signs of abating. Although farmers and landowners alike had been initially hopeful about the potato crop that year, their hopes were dashed that spring by heavy rains prompting the return of the blight.1 Soon it was obvious that, at least in County Kerry, the potato crop would be a complete failure. Famine victims continued to flood relief sites: more than 800,000 impoverished Irish inundated outdoor aid stations alone, far exceeding the relief available to them.2Those turned away were dying by the thousands, and even doctors were helpless to prevent it.3
Life was little more secure in the Tralee workhouse. There several hundred of the one million total Irish inmates in workhouses across Ireland at that time toiled for their bread. Each week, Richard Blennerhassett’s father, who was serving as medical advisor for the region, would return from the Board of Guardians meeting, looking dismayed. He brought with him stories of the conditions there: families separated first by gender and then by age; over two dozen inmates sequestered with confirmed cases of influenza and smallpox. Most distressing of all, the mortality rates that season were already exceeding those of 1847, forcing many of the workhouse’s most needy inmates to flee lest they too become statistics.4
Those who remained were a bedraggled lot, with men, women, and children sporting shaved heads and weeping, blistered feet from the wooden shoes they were forced to wear. Their clothing—if one could call it that—was provided by Royal Navy surplus. The sight of bald young women wearing sailor’s jackets and warm-weather tunics was difficult for even a seasoned physician to bear.
To pay for this bizarre costume, the Board of Guardians had proposed what both Blennerhassetts insisted was a ludicrous plan: the guardians, it seemed, were determined to install a capstan mill in the workhouse. An enormous device capable of grinding over five hundred pounds of corn an hour, the mill would be employed by teams of forty workhouse paupers at a time. Even better, the chief Poor Law inspector avowed, it would provide “great health-fulness” for the inmates, who would surely enjoy the physical challenge of
pushing its immense spokes.5 The elder Blennerhassett had a feeling that that wasn’t the only physical challenge being asked of the female inmates. Some appeared to be with child. When asked how this could have occurred in a segregated building that allowed for no unsupervised contact between the sexes, all eyes turned to the workhouse master. He resigned shortly thereafter.
Conditions failed to improve. The Tralee Board of Guardians petitioned the Poor Law commissioners for permission to allow the paupers to cut turf to heat the workhouse; they were denied. They proposed that the inmates grow food; once again, they were denied. Meanwhile the workhouse—and those within it—continued to rot. Despite having made appeals to improve conditions, Henry Blennerhassett was blamed by the local press for the deteriorating situation. There was nothing, it seemed, that Henry Blennerhassett could do except endure the criticism.
Amid this censure, a fellow physician by the name of Crumpe visited both the Tralee workhouse and the jail to investigate allegations of neglect. He marveled later that, even as a seasoned doctor accustomed to misery and the stench of death, he could be as affected as he was by conditions there. Overcome by retching, Crumpe could barely make an investigation. But what he did see concerned him greatly: “In this horrid den those laboring under local disease, those ill from fever, those dying, and the dead from fever and dysentery, were promiscuously stretched together.” Crumpe warned in his published report that mortality, already troubling, was about to become catastrophic: cholera had been identified throughout Europe and was marching westward. Soon the dark angel would be upon all of England and Ireland, threatening to detonate in places like immigrant ships.6 No one had to tell Henry Blennerhassett or his son what that harbinger would bring.
• • •
Nicholas Donovan certainly would have benefited from Crumpe’s prophecy, assuming the importer had even been willing to listen. In the spring of 1849, that was more doubtful than ever; as far as Donovan was concerned, the season had brought him more than enough problems to keep him occupied.
On the surface, it seemed as if things were going well for Donovan. True, he had been criticized for his decision to import New York grain, which the Kerry Evening Post claimed had flooded the market and dropped prices of Irish grain to uncompetitive lows. But the editor had also acknowledged, as had much of the town, that this new delivery was succeeding in establishing Tralee at last as “an independent warehousing port.”7 Donovan had also just received word that the Incorporated Merchants of Tralee Company, of which he was the head, had been granted certified registry, which made them a full corporate body. He instantly set to work creating a new marketplace capable of hosting the trade of corn, potatoes, and other bulk produce in earnest. At long last, the merchants and farmers of Tralee were a single, unified entity. And that made them a force to be reckoned with.
Still, the importer found himself plagued by difficulties. Just a few months earlier, a series of freak storms flooded Tralee’s river and canal, causing what residents said was the “highest and most sudden risings ever remembered.” The “foaming torrent,” further exacerbated by an exceptionally high tide, rushed into the city, smashing stone archways and surging into cellars, as well as first-floor offices and homes throughout downtown. The surge was so sudden and unexpected that two young girls were swept off a town bridge they had begun to cross. That these were the only casualties was somewhat miraculous, particularly given the damage visible once the water receded.8
Denny Street had turned into a cesspool of mud, debris, and waste, rendering travel impossible and raising questions about the construction of the town’s grand business district. Detritus from the flood littered the Donovan supply yards, and stagnant water pooled in their first-floor offices, saturating paperwork and ultimately ruining everything contained there. The impenetrable swamp created by the flood, coupled with downed telegraph lines, severed communication in the town. At the center of it all stood the County Kerry Club House, with four feet of water in its hold; pumps ran for days to extract the water.
The same storms had wreaked havoc on Ireland’s agriculture that season, flattening many of the grain fields. That, along with the news of the potato’s failure, was enough to dismay anyone.
But what really shook Donovan was news from the sea. The Maria, the first ship Donovan had leased to transport emigrants, struck an iceberg and sunk in the North Atlantic. Twenty passengers managed to make it up on deck before she slipped beneath the waves. The impact caused a torrent of icy water to enter the hold, and the vessel’s twelve survivors reported that the screams coming from below deck were as deafening as they were brief. Those who jumped onto the iceberg itself were later saved by the first mate and cabin boy, who had the wherewithal to secure a lifeboat. There they floated for nearly twenty-four hours, enduring frostbite and life-threatening hypothermia until they were rescued by the barque Roslyn Castle. Everyone else—over a hundred people in all—perished in the icy water.9 The disaster was a sober reminder of just how dangerous these passages could be.
For over two years, Donovan had held a monopoly on emigration from the port of Tralee. Now, propelled by Grey’s commitment to market competition (not to mention their own dislike of Donovan’s business dealings), the town leaders appeared resolved to end Donovan’s reign as the emigrant baron of Tralee.
Earlier in the season, the American Passengers’ Corporation had set up an office on Canal Street, and its staff was now hard at work recruiting and processing potential passengers. On the short walk from his office to the Pikeman for lunch, Donovan had passed five large flyers advertising the company. As if proving the people’s confidence in this and other emigrant companies, the bay itself teemed with schooners, barques, and even full ships vying for mooring space. Fourteen vessels in all would depart that year, filled with the farmers and laborers Donovan had been working so hard to woo. A good number of these vessels had been pulled from Pacific routes: Henry Grey’s plan to send prisoners, orphans, and peasant women of a marrying age to places like Australia had received even more criticism than his North American plan. The controversy forced the earl to abort the project and ship owners to find new routes for their vessels. This included the Aliwal, an Irish-owned vessel rerouted from her Cape Horn course in order to take emigrants to New York, and the Rajah, the massive 560-ton ship that normally ran the Bombay route out of London. American ship owners were also quick to capitalize on the opportunity, and at least four of the ships in the harbor—the Lesmahagow, the New Brunswick, the Gypsy, and the Anne— hailed from U.S. ports.
Worst of all, thought Donovan, was the enthusiasm the town was showing for these new competitors. The relief committee had already begun sending down workhouse inmates in droves. And in a move that would have no doubt made Henry Grey proud, Sir Edward Denny determined to do his part to help evicted tenants by dedicating an enormous sum of his own money—£265 by most accounts—to place homeless cottiers on ships owned by people other than Nicholas Donovan.10
It was a clear affront, both to his business and to his family, and Donovan was furious. All interaction with the town would stop immediately, he determined. That included his work on the planning board and Katherine’s commitments to the soup kitchen. She would be upset, of course, but there would be other ways for her to dispense the Murphy fortune. So long as it did not involve Tralee officials, that would be fine with him. In the meantime, he would find a way to preserve his dominance in the emigrant industry—on his own terms.
Without preferential subsidies, London didn’t seem to need Ireland’s grain anymore, at least not the way it was being grown and harvested. That meant Irish farmers were no longer financially profitable to landowners. Even raising their rents would not result in the kind of profits that could be obtained through a large-scale farming enterprise. All around the island, landlords were realizing this. If the famine had taught them anything, it was that fewer people working and living on the land meant much greater financial returns. Donovan could help them on their way.
There would be additional criticism, he knew. Like every other newspaper subscriber, he had read the recent editorial posted by a Dublin correspondent based in the United States. “For god’s sake,” the correspondent had written, “if you know any who intend coming out here, whether you care about them or not, do not advise them to come out to America without means, as there are thousands of young men in New York with wives and families who are unemployed. . . . It is really enough to make one wish to be transported to Ireland for the purpose of preventing, if possible, any more from leaving it.”11
But Donovan was insistent. Jobs be damned, the residents of Ireland wanted to leave. Nearly 300,000 Irish men, women, and children would emigrate that year alone. Hoping to capitalize on these numbers, Donovan leased a second vessel, the brig Eliza, to take emigrants to Quebec. Then he announced that, instead of joining her, the Jeanie would sail to Baltimore, the American South’s largest port and one that promised unsurpassed opportunities for immigrants. What had begun as a modest outpost for the tobacco and grain trade during the colonial era had since blossomed into a formidable city, eclipsed in size and tempo only by New York and Philadelphia.12 That season, Baltimore was giving both a run for their money. The 1849 shipping season was already the largest on record for the port city. “Indeed,” wrote the editor of the Baltimore Sun, “we have never known our wholesale warehouses to be filled with such extensive stocks of goods of every variety.”13 Baltimore homes had their own extensive stock, and the average home had comforts potential passengers aboard the Jeanie Johnston couldn’t imagine: high post beds and mahogany tables, glassware and fine linens for every occasion, and of course the omnipresent sugar box, filled to capacity with newly arrived sweetener.
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