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Emigration
by Naoise Cleary Founder of Clare Heritage
Centre
To all intents and purposes, emigration from Co Clare
began with the dreadful famine of 1822, which followed a
disastrous harvest in 1821. To understand the background to
this emigration, some statistics and changing circumstances
should be noted. In 1821, the population of Co Clare was
208,089, having doubled during the previous twenty years.
This explosion was a rural phenomenon, and continued until
the mid-1840s. What sustained this dense rural population?
Since 1792 vast tracts of mountain land were reclaimed.
People felt that the potato on which they subsisted could
never fail. A family of six persons could be maintained on
less than one acre of ground. With the rising population
tenants, invariably without the consent of their landlords,
sublet and subdivided their farms into two or three acre
holdings which provided sustenance for landless sons and
neighbours. The Napoleonic wars also inflated agricultural
prices, which were good for landlord and tenant and provided
employment for subtenants, cottiers and labourers. People
had no apprehension of poverty. Consequently early marriages
took place and children were regarded as being of little or
no burden.
Destitution in Ireland - Failure of
the potato crop, Illustration from the Pictorial Times 22
August 1846 - courtesy of the National Museum,
Ireland
After the peace of 1815, rural Ireland underwent a
transition period. The collapse of the war boom tumbled
grain prices. Landlords were still demanding war rents after
peace prices had returned. This led to conflict - tenants
were unable to meet the demands being made on them. Many
resident landlords were in dire economic straits. They
sought a solution to their problems through consolidating
the small farms into large tillage holdings or into pasture
land for the grazing of cattle. This pushed thousands of
families off the land, and demolished their habitations.
 The
disastrous famine of 1822 was especially severe in Clare.
Daniel O'Connell in a letter to his wife, dated 4th May 1822
states: 'All are actually starving in Co Clare and nearly so
in Kerry. The distress is extreme and the want spreading'.
Any emigration resulting from this famine generally ended up
on Merseyside, with Irish labourers building docks, water
ways, public buildings and factories in Lancashire and
beyond. It was not long however until English economists
proclaimed that the swarming of Irish pauper workers evicted
from the land, into English factories at reduced wages,
threatened the standard of living of British workers and so
in time the English Government established a Poor law or
'workhouse' system for Ireland.
Photo - Searchng for potatoes
during the famine; Illustrated London News, c1847 - courtesy
of the National Museum, Ireland
After 1822 emigration to Australia was more attractive
than to America due to the fact that it was mainly
aid-provided. Convict transportation from the county
pre-1822 was insignificant, amounting to only 82 people, 9
of whom were females. Between 1821 and 1840, however, 636
Clare people were transported to NSW, principally for petty
crime - stealing bread, butter, clothing, killing sheep for
meat, all done in the name of survival. More serious crimes,
including the stealing of cattle, earned life sentences.
These convicts sent home word about the superior kind of
life available in the colonies, which set the pattern for
subsequent emigration especially from Tipperary, Clare and
South East Galway, evoking memories of Whiteboys, Terry Alts
and Ribbonmen.
In the 1820's quite a number of free settlers with
capital entered Australia. They were mostly the sons of
landlords, of merchant and professional classes. Some
commissioned officers at British Army outposts such as
India, sold their commissions and for the money purchased
ranches in Australia. For £1,000 one could purchase
more than 2,000 acres of good land. They needed shepherds,
stockmen, ploughmen, artisans, miners, and they in turn came
from amongst evicted tenants and others as 'indentured'
labourers, whose passages were mostly paid for.
'Improving' landlords such as Col Wyndham, offered free
passage to tenants and their families to emigrate to Canada
or Australia. Many families availed of the offer; the only
alternative was eviction. The poor law was enacted in 1838
and the county was divided into Poor Law Unions each
administered by a Board of Guardians. Originally, there were
only four unions in Clare - Ennis, Kilrush, Scariff and
Ennistymon. Each had a workhouse which at Ennis and Kilrush
could accommodate 800 inmates while Scariff and Ennistymon
were expected to cater for 600. Between 1850 and 1852 other
workhouses were provided at Corofin, Ballyvaughan, Kildysart
and Tulla. Most of the inmates were evicted tenants and
orphans, and others left destitute, by the Great Famine. The
Boards of Guardians discovered that it was cheaper to pay
the passage to Australia for an able-bodied inmate, than to
maintain him in the workhouse, and very many of those in
receipt of poor law aid availed of such offers. At that time
also there was an imbalance in the colony between males and
females, and the governors were clamouring for greater
female immigration. The Boards of Guardians in the Poor Law
Unions considered that they should lessen the burden on
their finances, by offering free passage to Australia to
orphan girl inmates between the ages 14 and 18 years. The
workhouses during the period 1840 -1862, were homes for the
most destitute children in Ireland. One boat the Thomas
Arbuthnot arrived into Sydney on the 3rd February 1850 with
a cargo of orphans, including eighty-two girls from Co Clare
workhouses. A number of wealthy citizens in Australia to-day
are direct descendants of those girls.
The colonial bounty system, to aid would-be immigrants,
came into being in 1837 but was revised in 1840. It granted
pecuniary aid under certain conditions to persons bringing
into NSW from the UK (including Ireland) agricultural
labourers, shepherds, tradesmen, female domestics and farm
servants. The sum of £38 would be paid as a bounty for
any married man, of the above description, and his wife,
neither of whose ages on embarkation to exceed 40 years;
£5 for each child between 1 and 7 years; £10 for
each child between 7 and 15 years and £15 for each
above 15 years; £19 would be allowed for every
unmarried female domestic or farm servant not below 15 nor
above 30 years, coming out under the protection of a married
couple as part of a family.
The Gold Rush of the 1850's brought thousands of
emigrants, almost overnight into Victoria. In the year 1856,
278 emigrants from Clare arrived on assisted passages into
Victoria; Tipperary were next with 206 and it is remarkable
that all Leinster including Dublin City only provided 222.
Large concentrations of Clare people settled at Ballarat and
Bendigo.
Emigration to South Australia only began in the 1840's
and was much encouraged by Charles Bagot, land agent for
Bindon Blood who lived at Rockforest, Kilkeedy and who was
supervisor of the Burren road system. He chartered a boat,
the Birman, which arrived into Adelaide in 1840! His son
discovered copper at Kapunda. Several North Clare families,
probably prompted by Bagot, settled in the district - Kerin,
Canny, Linnane, Davoren etc and all have descendants there
to-day. Dr Blood, first medical doctor in Kapunda and first
Mayor of the town, emigrated from Corofin in 1844. Part of
the town of Clare, in the nearby Clare Valley, the great
wine-producing area in South Australia is called Inchiquin.
One sees 'Inchiquin Port Wine' in every bar in South
Australia.
Very many Clare people attained eminence in the
professional and business life of Australia. An account of
all of them would make a substantial volume. We shall
mention but a few. Michael Durack and his family from
Maherareagh, in the Parish of Iniscaltra, arrived as an
'indentured labourer' into NSW in May 1853. His son Patsy
Durack extended his ownership of land over thousands of
square miles. Dame Mary Durack now living in Perth, wrote
Kings in Grass Castles describing in detail the fabulous
achievements of the Duracks. Paddy Hannon born at Gurteen,
Quin, on 24 April 1840, son of John Hannon and Bridget
Lynch, discovered two nuggets of gold north of Coolgardie on
15th June 1893 and this was the beginning of the fabulous
'Golden Mile'. A statue of him stands on the main street of
Kalgoorlie and a bust of him is to be seen in the DeValera
Library in Ennis which was presented to the Clare Co Council
in 1988 by the Corporation of Kalgoorlie. A Clareman Patrick
Lynch owned two hotels in Kalgoorlie in the last century and
was an ardent supporter of Home Rule for Ireland.
Captain Charles Fitzgerald, born at Kilkee in 1791, was
Governor of Western Australia from 1848 to 1855. He is
buried at Kilkee. Now we shall turn our attention to Irish
emigration to America. This really began before migration to
Australia, but for the same causes. The Erie Canal started
in 1817 was completed in 1825; it covered a distance of 350
miles across NY state from Albany on the Hudson to Buffalo
on the Lake Erie. Fifty thousand people almost entirely
Irish lived along the route. The Irish Catholic emigrant
settled in cities and towns rather than in the open
country.
The deserted village of Moveen,
parish of Moyarta, County Clare in 1849 - courtesy of the
National Museum, Ireland
The Catholic Irish who landed in America before the
mid-1850's arrived on sailing ships. April and May were the
recommended months for the emigrant to take passage. July
and August were to be avoided as the prevalence of
south-west winds made for a tedious journey. Those
travelling to the US depended almost entirely on their own
devices, relations already in America frequently providing
passage money. There are records of girls in domestic
employment, walking more than 25 miles to New York to send
passage money home to Ireland, or make a booking with a
shipping agent. Migrants generally bought tickets at an
agency in the nearest town and there could be a delay of
weeks waiting to obtain a passage, meanwhile living as best
they could in the overcrowded seaports. Each migrant had to
have sufficient provisions to last the journey, which
usually took from 50 to 70 days. Those early emigrants were
much to be pitied. What a traumatic experience it was for
people who had not been more than fifteen miles away from
home and who could not read nor write, (in 1841, 61% of all
Clare people over 5 years were illiterate). The Irish
peasant's knowledge of life ahead of him was often
fragmentary and fanciful. Many Irish emigrants availed of
cheap passages out of Liverpool on outgoing cotton ships and
so we find that New Orleans, in the Cotton Belt, was second
to New York in its reception of migrants. Boston, the new
home of so many Clare people, held only third place. The
extent of emigration from Ireland to Australia was very
great up to 1870, which is reflected to-day in the fact that
one in every three Australians has Irish roots - over five
million in a population of 16 million. Enumeration of
emigrants began in 1851. We can only speculate on the extent
of emigration before that date. However between 1st May 1851
and 31st March 1881, 100,496 Clare men and women left
Ireland for foreign parts and remarkably males led females
by exactly only 100 souls. The highest year for emigration
was 1851 the figure 9,499 - averaging 180 people per week,
leaving the county.
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