Landlord, Rent, Eviction, Emigration.

This unique letter dated 1912, housed in the little museum in LetterMullen in Connemara, provides a very personal glimpse into the minutiae of our social history. Our modern society ironically resembles this early 20th century vignette, more than we might care to admit.
Today, as in 1912, renting is the norm. Back then, it was a rented house and farm, today an apartment or house. Today, so many renters are in financial difficulty, from covid19, or more likely, from an underlying social inequality, unemployment, refugee, single parent family. Our social services and charities strive to provide some support for those families, much as did this priest (and many other benevolent people), helping a family keep a roof over their head and stave off eviction.
Today it’s the banks, investors and hedge funds who are the landlord class, back in 1912, the landlord class had morphed from primarily Anglo-Irish landed estate, to a merchant and investor middle and upper class, who took advantage of the encumbered estates fire sale (think NAMA).
The old landlord system was bankrupted by the famine, tithe tax and the Land League, and were bailed out by the British Government (think NAMA). They had even less empathy and familiarity with their tenants, and the cautionary tone at the end of this letter reflects that distancing of tenant and land owner. That generational clan and community system was all washed away by 1912, with the arrival of the carpetbagger opportunist landlord and his ‘Agent’, as is the case here.
Connemara had rolling famines. Crop failure after crop failure, bad summer after worse winter. Emigration was their only escape. Most Connemara farms were in arrears. This agent had an unenviable and impossible task, which by 1921 became academic.
Lastly, the tenant's debt while small by our standards, was insurmountable by his. A ticket in third class on Titanic in 1912, the same year as this letter, was £7-10s., just shy of his overall rent arrears of £8-5s. So, I think that I will finish on a hopeful note. Sometimes the family had foregone paying rent in order to save up and pay the passage to America for one of the children.
Perhaps owing to the sacrifice of his or her family in 1910 and 1911, that young emigrant managed to save some money in Boston and paid off the family’s debt, avoiding eviction and eventually buying out the family farm in Rosmuc. Wouldn’t that have been a good end to a very sad, but not uncommon tale. Brian Nolan. Walking Tours of Galway

Order in Court

The stately Courthouse building in Galway is truly a beautiful piece of Georgian, not Victorian architecture, because it was built during the reign of King William III, he being the last king of Britain's Royal House of Hanover.

Now over two hundred years old, the Courthouse building was designed by the architect Sir Richard Morrisson, who had studied under James Gandon, designer the Customs House and Four Courts in Dublin. Gandon's architectural influence is quite evident in Morrisson's design. Our imposing building was built in 1818, as the County Courthouse, and it complemented the City Courthouse opposite it (now the Town Hall) on Courthouse Square, and the Galway prison (where the Cathedral now stands).

The Galway prison, jail or 'gaol', was built between 1807 and 1810, and the Salmon Weir bridge that connects the gaol to the courthouse, was built in in 1818.

Prisoners crossed the Salmon Weir bridge in chains, to face the judge (and sometimes a jury) and hear their fate. The jail held 68 prisoners in 1810, rising to 627 by 1847.

There were some 200 offences which merited execution by hanging if one was found guilty in 1810, though that sentence was by then uncommon, though not unheard of. One was far more likely to be sentenced to months or even years of hard labour (breaking stones), or to picking oakum, or to the treadmill, or to be whipped, or to be transported to Australia for a period of 7 - 30 years as a convict labourer, (both male and female prisoners were transported).

The photos below show the courthouse as it looked in 1923, as it stands today, a woodcut print of the courthouse with the bridge and gaol in the background (Hardiman), the gaol in 1936, a view today from Woodquay and finally the coat of arms that used sit atop the plinth above the columns at the Courthouse portico.

The massive stone coat of arms is now located in the University gardens, but the Post or Pillar box, is still in situ. It bears the insignia monogram of Queen Victoria (Victoria Regina).

Hmm .. If those grecian columns could only talk, sure we'd be here all day! These are the kind of stories I tell on my Walking Tours of Galway.

I just love a good mystery!

Mother and son. Lisdoonvarna, County Clare, Ireland Photo taken in Lisdoonvarna c. 1900.

These people, likely both of them had witnessed and survived another pandemic, the Irish Famine, where generations of whole families were swept away by starvation, typhoid and influenza. Their weather-beaten lined faces tell a story of resilience, and perhaps determination and pride. Their home-spun, bespoke clothes are not of the poorer quality, there is some money here, even for his cravat and her wool shawl. Were they in Lisdoonvarna, for the match-making festival, seeking a bride for the son, seeking health from the sulphur spa and the bracing cliff walks.

If so, why the elaborate and expensive photograph.

Look more closely. Aside from his cravat and bowler hat and bushy beard, he is holding some sort of memorial card, perhaps, or a boat-ticket, or even, a land-deed... he is holding it up very deliberately, he wanted it to be part of the photo, wanted it to pe recorded and preserved, it's definitely a message, perhaps intended for the recipient of this especially-posed photograph, not an inexpensive luxury for the time, this was taken professionally by a photographer in a studio.

For whom was the message intended?

Maybe he, or she was someone who had emigrated, to America, Canada, Australia?

Perhaps they'd paid for memorial cards, for the old lady's husband?

Or maybe, perhaps it is a travel ticket, to America, for one or both of them to reunite with the wealthier, now emigrated family member overseas?

Yes, to me this photo is an enigma, but it is a fascinating mystery? I don't have the right answer as to why they'd gone and had it taken, but using my imagination, my favourite explanation is that this is a land-deed document that he is holding, the title deed to a small farm, somewhere in county Clare.

Maybe these two had been sent money by their family overseas, to buy-out their Irish farm, perhaps from an encumbered estate, or an unwilling and previously harsh and uncaring land-lord and this was proof they'd done as requested, and had bought the family farm, or house, using the monies remitted to them from overseas.

So many people had been evicted over the previous 50 years in Ireland and in County Clare, where my dad's folks come from, evictions were commonplace and devastating.

That this is my guess, they had been evicted, with devastating consequences for the family, some of whom had emigrated, and now 50 years later, the farm is bought back, free and clear, 500 years of subjugation, brutalisation, degradation and eviction, yet, all made good by an emigrant's hard work and determination to right a wrong, to reclaim their land, their heritage and their pride.

Yes, I do love this photograph, and the quirky memories it evokes.

(Photo courtesy of Pat Herbert).

These are the stories I tell in O'Connors Bar in Salthill Galway O'Connors Bar Galway during my Fireside Tours, and on the streets of #Galway, on my Walking Tours of Galway ... hopefully all will be back to normal again soon and we can once again be walking and talking on the streets of Galway and Salthill. Stay well. Stay Safe. See you on the other side!