HISTORY: GERARD LYNEreviews The Depiction of Eviction in Ireland1845-1910 By L Perry Curtis jnr UCD Press, 386pp. ¤60
THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK does the author a disservice. L Perry Curtis jnr’s work consists not just of a critique of visual images of eviction in the contemporary press and elsewhere but also of a study of agrarian conflict in Ireland from the late 1840s up to the 1920s.
Evictions resulting from the Famine comprised an episode of unparalleled brutality. Between 250,000 and 700,000 people are estimated to have been left homeless. (The higher figure is probably the more accurate.) The starving and demoralised victims were incapable of resistance. A legacy of bitterness resulted, both in Ireland and among Irish emigrants to the United States. When large-scale evictions resumed in 1879, the resolve of the tenants to resist was steeled by those Famine memories.
The period circa 1855-78 constituted an interlude of relative stability. Evictions did occur, some controversial, but they were relatively few. Nonetheless, threat of eviction was omnipresent. It was a source of chronic anxiety and encouraged a rural culture of enforced deference.
The crash of 1878, due to bad harvests and cheap imports of foodstuffs from abroad, led to a resurgence of eviction by landlords, some of whom were heavily mortgaged and the author distinguishes four phases of conflict between 1879 and 1923. The last two – 1900-10 and 1917-23 – involved smallholders seeking additional land. These were backed by Sinn Féin after 1917. Violence was now directed mainly against graziers. At least some big-house burnings of the 1920s were probably intended to encourage the parcelling out of demesnes. The last to have their grievances addressed were agricultural labourers, long subject to ruthless exploitation by their tenant masters, which included evicting them from their cottages at a few weeks’ notice. Farmers, apparently, opposed extending to their labourers the security they demanded for themselves.
The author sets out to counter what he sees as a revisionist agenda (first mooted by Fr Brendan Bradshaw) designed to filter the trauma out of Irish history. He certainly succeeds in bringing home to readers the brutality of eviction – citing, for example, instances of sick and old people being carried out by bailiffs, sometimes in their beds, and left under freezing winter rains. Equally shocking were cocktails of boiling gruel, spiked with lime, poured on the heads of eviction parties.
Overall, fatalities were surprisingly few. The authorities rarely resorted to firearms, though police baton charges were frequent, brutal and indiscriminate. The Catholic clergy helped moderate tenant violence. They attended evictions and demonstrations and were generally active in support of the agitation. Some were imprisoned. In addition, numbers of northern Protestant farmers supported the movement until alienated by the burgeoning demand for Home Rule.
Rather than adopting an integrated approach, the book opts for case studies of individual estates. This leads to repetition and for this reader, at least, engendered a degree of eviction fatigue. However, it does provide a ready reference to all the main flashpoints in the struggle. Inevitably, in a work replete with statistical data, misprints and mistakes occur. William Steuart Trench, agent of the Lansdowne estate in Co Kerry, provided assisted emigration in the 1850s for some 4,000 (not 14,000) Kerry tenants. They did not walk to Cobh for embarkation; most of them were conveyed to Cork for that purpose on carts.
Due recognition is given to the important role played by women. Contemporary poems and songs on eviction are cited, sometimes at length. Surprisingly, few genuine folk songs on the subject (in English, at least) appear to survive. The author notes his lack of Irish – an honest and relevant admission, rarely made by historians similarly circumstanced. There is a wealth of handsome illustrations, with illuminating commentary. In deference to the sensitivities of a prosperous clientele, artists rarely portrayed starving persons and evicted tenants sometimes appear surprisingly well dressed. Eviction photographs (as in the Lawrence Collection) were occasionally contrived. Maud Gonne McBride was among the first to exploit their propaganda value.
This interesting work comprises a valuable addition to scholarship on the subject. The sprightly octogenarian author, who is professor emeritus of history at Brown University, in the US, and is already well known for his seminal work on the visual depiction of Irish people in 19th-century Britain, is to be congratulated on his latest achievement.
Gerard Lyne is the author of The Lansdowne Estate in Kerry under the Agency of William Steuart Trench, 1849-72, which won the National University of Ireland Prize for best historical research in 2001
L Perry Curtis jnr will give the RI Best Memorial Lecture at the National Library of Ireland on October 12th, at 7pm, on post-Famine perceptions of the Irish landlords
