Bryan MacMahon, *The Great Famine in Tralee and North Kerry*. Cork, Ireland; Mercier Press, 2017.

In this study, Bryan MacMahon prioritizes human stories over simple statistics, as he depicts the remarkable occurrences, upheavals, and challenges of the famine years through the eyes of those who lived through them, revealing insights that have remained concealed and unexplored for 170 years.

This publication narrates events in Tralee and North Kerry, offering a thorough overview and a compassionate understanding of the suffering experienced by thousands in the area. The contemporary narratives allow readers to revisit the distressing events and comprehend the severe dilemmas faced by individuals who were not directly affected by hunger or illness.

Additionally, this work presents the names and inquest information of some of the deceased, along with moving portrayals of life in the workhouses of Tralee and Listowel. The book also addresses stories of scandals and possible sexual abuse within the workhouse, alongside numerous instances of altruistic humanitarian actions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello. Welcome to the Dialogues in International History podcast. I am your host, Ari Barbalat. Today I'm grateful to engage a dialogue with Brian McMahon regarding his recently published book, The Great Famine in Traley and North Kerry, published in Cork, Ireland by Mercier Press 2017. Brian McMahon has published two books on the Great Famine in County Kerry, Ireland. This was a tragedy of seven years' duration, starting with the first failure of the potato crop of 1845 until the year 1852. The first book was published by Mercier Press in 2017. This is the book we are discussing today. The second book, entitled Calamity and Controversy, The Famine Years in Dingle and West Kerry, was published by Wordwell Books in 2025. Brian has also written a related book on the pre-famine years entitled Faith and Fury: The Evangelical Campaign in Dingle and West Cery, 1825 to 1845, published by Wordwell Books as well. He is also the author of several journal articles on aspects of the famine in County Kerry. Brian was born in Ballyhague in Kerry County and now lives in Stillorgan in Dublin County, where he has spent 30 years as a secondary school teacher. In his two books on the famine period, Brian McMahon emphasizes human narratives over mere statistics as he illustrates the extraordinary events, upheavals, and trials of the famine years through the perspectives of those who experienced them, uncovering the information that has remained hidden and untapped for 70 years. His first book, The Great Famine in Trailea and North Kerry, providing a comprehensive overview and heartfelt insight into the suffering endured by thousands in this region. The contemporary accounts enable readers to relive the harrowing events and grasp the stark dilemmas faced by those who were not directly impacted by hunger or disease. The book reveals the names and inquest details of some of the deceased, along with the poignant descriptions of life in the workhouses of Trailley and Listowell. The book includes stories of scandals and exploitation, as well as numerous examples of selfless humanitarian efforts. Bryan's most recent book, Calamity and Controversy, focuses on the Dingle Town and the peninsula in which it is situated. This is the first detailed account of the tragedy of the Great Famine and Garthamore in this part of Kerry County. Brian has uncovered a wealth of archival detail, enabling readers to experience the impact of the famine through the graphic and greatly moving accounts of eyewitnesses. The book is a record of the events of the year 1847, known as Black 47, and it chronicles the trauma of the desperate years that followed the blight which destroyed the potato crop. The controversy of the title refers to the passionate debates and divisions incited by the success of the Protestant conversion campaign in the Dingle Peninsula, whose leaders played a crucial humanitarian role in providing fame and relief. Robust sectarian jousting between Catholic and Protestant clergymen continued until the mid-1850s, and echoes of the conflict rippled on into the 20th century. Brian, it's an honor to be in dialogue with you today.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Thank you very much, Harry. I'm delighted to chat to you.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

To begin, can you kindly tell us about yourself? Can you comment on your personal relationship to this subject matter?

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Well, I come from County Kerry originally, although I've spent a lot of my life outside of it in Dublin and other places as a teacher. But I have a strong interest in local history and in particular in finding out how the great events of history impacted in my own particular area and in the hinterland around the county. And I was fortunate enough to discover a wealth of primary sources on which I could base my research and out of which grew these books that you have already summarized.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Can you comment on the events of the year 1845? Can you comment on the first crop failure and its broader impact on the people and on the authorities?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

So it was in the autumn of 1845 that a particular kind of mold and uh rotting smell um and um failure of the the flowers of the stalks of the potato crop were being affected. And um it was a most unusual uh kind of experience because it happened overnight. And people uh uh one man said this green country turned black almost overnight because the crops in the field were seen to to wither, and this kind of pungent smell came from them. People were bewildered to begin with, although partial crop failures of for different reasons had happened on different occasions. People were accustomed to having uh kind of limited crop failures, but this one was more widespread, and it wasn't that it had come without warning because the the um the cause of the disease, phytoptera infestans, which was a kind of mould, traveled across the Atlantic from the Americas and came to Europe first, and then to Britain, and then eventually to Ireland. So it in some ways had been anticipated and it affected other countries, but not as severely as it was to affect Ireland. So this was the first failure of the potato crop, leaving the people um bewildered about it. Although some people were prescient, one man in this area of Kerry, uh, when he saw what was happening around him, said, I fear a famine. And those words proved prophetic. But in fact, it did not happen immediately. That first failure of 1845 with food. Now that leads me into the the conditions at the time, which are worth uh noting. This was a time when there was a lot of debate about uh the corn laws, as it was called. And basically, the corn laws were a taxation on imported corn to prevent British growers, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, from being affected by cheaper corn coming in from the United States. So it was uh the corn laws prevented cheap imports of corn. Um other aspects of the mindset of the period are worth noting as well. There was uh an economic system called laissez-faire, meaning non-interference or light touch regulation on the part of governments, letting market forces decide prices and decide the direction of travel. Other ingrained um beliefs or prejudices, if you like, were to do with class and privilege and attitudes towards the poor, and attitudes towards those who were dependent or who were on the margins of society. They were ingrained attitudes which could be summed up in the in the um the two lines of verse. The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them high and lowly and ordered their estate. In other words, that that was the status quo, and that was what that was designed by the Almighty. And uh, in connection with that, there was another prevalent belief, and which was that whatever happened was the will of God, that that it was providence at work in some mysterious way. And these all all these kind of ingrained beliefs had an impact on um government attitudes and government decisions.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Can you say something about the first responses of government and of local communities? What insights are presented in the study regarding public works in Ireland?

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Right. So the government response under Robert Peel, as I said, was quietly and secretly to import American corn, breaking the principles of the government that he was leading, in effect. And this corn, this Indian corn, was maize, and it was imported to Ireland in order to alleviate what was believed to be a temporary problem, that this was going to be a seasonal shortage of potatoes on which people depended. I should have said earlier, of course, that um Ireland was greatly dependent on the potato crop at that time, as a kind of a mono crop, a monoculture, because it was so nutritious and so successful on poor soil, and it involved such little labor. There was planting seed potatoes and waiting it for it for it to mature and to grow. So that it was extremely successful in Ireland, and a huge percentage of the population was entirely dependent on it for their own food and also food for the animals, which they kept. And typically they were they were uh pigs and poultry, and perhaps if they were a little more higher up the economic ladder, maybe a cow or two. So the the the government response then, in order to uh establish a system of uh distributing this relief, as it was called, this Indian corn, set up committees, invited local people to set up committees, and promised that if they could raise money locally, the government would present matching funding. The government therefore would give 50% of what was required for purchasing this corn because it was not to be distributed freely, that would go against the great beliefs of in market forces, so it was to be bought by the people. And local committees were to supervise uh the distribution and sale of this maize and also to um to make decisions on those who were eligible for it. So that was a government response, which was set out on paper and uh acts of parliament, but of course, when it came down to local level, it didn't always function as efficiently as was intended.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

If you don't mind me asking the follow-up question, um earlier on you alluded to the idea that was prevalent at the time that the famine was caused by God. If you don't mind me asking, can you compare and contrast Protestant and the Catholic theological responses to the famine? Did Catholics and Protestants have similar ways of thinking about the religious significance of the famine?

SPEAKER_01 12:15

I think it is true to say that yes, both Catholics and Protestants would have a strong belief in what was called the will of God. There's an expression in Irish called taledei, the Irish language, and that it meant uh the will of God, and it was powerful. Yes, it was powerful. It was often referred to as um an act of the Almighty in his wisdom. He had sent this famine. But there was a twist, as you as your question implies, there was a little twist because uh it wasn't too much of a step from that to say that it was not just um uh an act of the Almighty, but it was a judgment of the Almighty. And there was certainly an attitude that it was a judgment on, some people took the attitude that it was a judgment on the um the Irish people and their uh behavior there. It was a kind of a moral judgment because another prevailing view at the time was was one of um racism and colonialism, let's put it, let's put it that way. Capitalist forces and imperial imperialist forces and and beliefs were very prevalent. Um and so there was a belief that the Irish were lazy, for example, and that the Irish had a tendency to drink too much, and that they were um that they were accustomed to using violence too frequently, and that they were um poor because it was their own fault. That that attitude prevailed very strongly, I think, in in the world in general, but in in Britain and Ireland as well, that if you were poor, it was your own fault. It was a moral failure on your side. So, as I say, it was a very uh um close step to see this as a judgment of God on the Irish for their immorality. And sometimes British preachers, extreme British preachers, missionary Protestant preachers in Ireland, uh took this attitude and were able to depict the events of the day as a judgment of the Almighty on the people of Ireland and a judgment on the religion of the majority of the Irish people, which of course was Roman Catholic. So there were unfortunately uh cases, instances of of that, especially among extreme elements. So so then was this uh a success, these measures that were taken to alleviate the hardship of the people? Well, yes, they were, because they instituted public works. Public works then was a tried and tested way of dealing with uh temporary crisis, and it was a way whereby governments would set up um uh engineering works, repairing roads and bridges and piers and public buildings and so on, and provide work for the people. They would employ people then to um earn a wage, and with the wage, they would be able to buy this Indian maize, this um food that was brought in. But there was a big problem with the maize which came into Ireland, and it was that it was an unfamiliar crop, and people did not know how to cook it properly, and it required a different method of cooking. So that presented problems for local people. They just were not familiar with it. It was called yellow meal, and I think it is the same now as um polenta, it would be called nowadays. It was unfamiliar and it wasn't as nutritious as the potato. As well as that, the uh machinery, the local committees by which the um the maize was to be distributed, and that was no easy task task when you think of the logistics of of transport, of importing into uh a harbor and then getting it on on roads that were not not the very best to distribute it to the rural parts. And the the famine, the the shortage of food was at its worst in rural parts. So it was referred to as Peel's brimstone. It became a kind of a the term of the people for the Indian meal that came in, the maize that came in, and it was an unsatisfactory um solution. But still, everybody believed that when the next crop would come in the autumn of 1846, late summer and autumn, that things would be back to normal.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Can you comment on the activities of landlords, the phenomenon of landlord clearances, and the phenomenon of evictions, as you allude to them in the book, in the context of making conditions of the famine worse.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Evictions came a little later than 1846, Harry. Um just just for the moment, perhaps I'll stay with 1846. As it happens, it's it's 180 years ago this year. So this very summer of 2026 is the 180th anniversary of the arrival of the full force of the famine. And that really stretched all the resources of support that were available to the poor. Um, the public works that I mentioned um were successful to some extent, but you know, they did involve people who were debilitated by extreme hunger and the gradual loss of strength and loss of energy that that involved. It involved them walking long distances to get to a place where the road works were being done or the works on the pier were being done or the bridges, and then to walk home the same evening. They were working long hours, working uh through winter weather, and as it happened, the winter of 1846, 1847 became one of the harshest, most severe winters ever endured in the country. As well as that there was chaotic organization, and often people who were meant to be paid at the end of the week to allow them to buy provisions for themselves were not paid because the money had not arrived from central headquarters in Dublin. So soon after the realization that the public works was not going to be effective, it was decided to institute a relief system called soup kitchens. This involved giving direct aid, direct food to people, handing out food to people to enable them to survive. And this happened at a central location. It was government sponsored, but it was taken up as um by the example of the Quakers or the Society of Friends, who had done this in the city of Cork as a way of bringing emergency relief to starving people. The Quakers were the first to um give out what was called gratuitous relief in the form of soup. However, of course, when the government brought in soup kitchens, first of all, it was it was the public works were suspended in order to bring in this alternative form of relief, but there was a hiatus, there was a gap between the public works ending and the soup kitchens beginning, and that meant people had hardship in that in that hiatus. And secondly, when the soup kitchens were established, of course, there was a lot of penny pinching and saving, and the soup was not really very nutritious. It was just about, it had enough to keep people alive, but not it wasn't, it could not be considered wholesome or healthy. It was more um watery than anything. Water and some vegetables and some some flavoring and very little meat. So these were the relief systems that were when I said that the British government did not do enough to in their decisions, they these just weren't adequate to meet the crisis as it evolved in the winter of 1846.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Can you comment on the Poor Law Act of 1838? What were its effects and consequences?

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Yes, the Poor Law Act of 1838, so that really was quite a a good bit before the famine, it set up, it divided the country into 130 poor law unions. And these were um areas, the whole thing, the Poor Law Act was to address the problem of Irish poverty, which had been a feature of Irish life, that there were very, very many thousands of people who were on the margins of society and who were to be seen in the towns and in the villages and the roads begging. And tourists in particular, and government officials were aware of this issue. So the Poor Law Act divided the country into 130 unions, and each union was to have a board of guardians who administered the Poor Law Act. And the chief effect of it was to build 130 workhouses in each union. Area. And the workhouse, typically built to accommodate maybe 800 or 1,000 people, was intended for the uh as a kind of a cushion for the very poorest of the poor to have uh a form of institutional shelter and care so that they would not live and die on the roadsides in conditions of extreme squander. So these workhouses were to be seen in the in the main towns, the county towns and other towns around the country. Ireland has uh 32 counties, so in each county there might be several poor law unions and um maybe and several workhouses as well. But of course, the act was 1838, by the time the workhouses were built, and so they had only really just opened and begun to function when the famine struck. And yet they were at the front line of support for the the the um impoverished people. The workhouses were like uh prisons, to be honest with you. They were looked like prisons, they were very institutional buildings, and when people went into them, um it is you had to apply for entry, and you had to be your your your uh state of your your your your your health and your poverty had to be estimated by the Board of Gardens, and you had to be um given permission to enter. But it was only if you were in extremis, if you were really at the end of your tether that you would apply to go into the workhouse because it was, as I say, prison-like. It was a place of regulations. Um, it was a place where families were divided. There was a male's section, a female's section, and a children's section. So you might not see your children again or your spouse again if you went in there. It was regulated by rules from eight o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock at night when you went into your dormitory. And of course, like a lot of things in society of that time, it was not well uh managed. And it was funded by the uh by a tax on property owners in the area, who were, of course, reluctant to hand over too much of their income, their income being rent, rent on their to on their farms. So they were reluctant. So again, it would they were running it on a shoestring. The regular this the main condition was that the condition that that uh that conditions inside the workhouse could not be better than the worst conditions outside. To make it as unattractive as possible, it was ruled that it could not be better than the worst conditions outside. Now, this in some ways was uh um worked in England as a solution for the problems that they had, but it was not an ideal solution for Irish social conditions, which in which there was no, there were no there were no prospects of industrial work. There was only agricultural work in the most part of the country. So people hated the workhouses, and it was a mark of shame and humiliation to have to apply for entry into it. But very soon, in that awful winter of 1846-47, the workhouses which had been built, say a workhouse which had been built for a thousand people, was inundated by applications from people, and it became completely overstretched. People were crowded in. And if it was built for a thousand people, it might have 1,200 or 1,300 or 1,400 people under its roof after a while. And of course, these could not be uh housed and fed and uh and and looked after um in any proper way. So they became uh dens where um disease spread. The winter of 1846-47, how in hunger was a huge problem, but so was disease, which spread, and spread whenever people gathered together for public works or gathered together at soup kitchens, that was where um diseases were spread, and the diseases were um dysentery and typhus and typhoid fever and diarrhea, and ultimately a few years later, uh an epidemic of cholera affected people as well. So it was not just hunger alone uh which killed people, it was the diseases which were perhaps responsible for more. And of course, when people became debilitated through lack of food, then they were more prone to disease and illnesses. So it began a tsunami of horror and death, which went on from that year, 1845, until the crisis eased in about 1852 or so.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Can you comment on the evictions that occurred in the years eighteen forty-eight and eighteen forty-nine?

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Well, imagine the evictions made the problem even worse and prolonged the hardship of local as I've described it, was replicated in many, many other parts of the west of Ireland. The system of land holding as it was in Ireland. Most Irish farmers were tenants, and the land was owned by the landlord, and typically the landlord was described as Anglo-Irish, and that opens up the whole history of Ireland before the famine, which involved the plantation. And these were typically uh Anglo-Irish, in other words, Irish English or Irish Welsh in some cases from Wales. These were the owners of the land, and these had a tremendous uh amount of power and privilege, and they would the typical landlord would have lived in a big house, their big house as it was known, and he would have lived a wealthy lifestyle based on the rent of his tenants, his many, many tenants. So Irish farmers were not the owners of their land since that historical dispossession. In famine times, the ones who were whose crop failed, and the land had no income, or their incomes were dramatically reduced. And in many cases, landlords had left the management, the day-to-day management of their affairs to their agents, and they perhaps literally came to visit their estates in Ireland. So there was a long history of mismanagement of the land system, which involved subdivision, subdividing small holdings, so that when a person passed on, the land that he had held was subdivided among all his sons, for example. And that, on top of the dependence on one crop, the potato, the subdivision into very small little units was a disaster in the making. People could see it, and the famine, the arrival of the blight and the famine conditions hastened this economic crisis for landlords whose incomes dried up. And so after the worst year of the famine in 1847, landlords began to look for ways out of their own economic difficulties, ready up, as it were, their estates. And this involved amalgamating all those small holdings, bringing them together, consolidating them, and eventually selling parts of their estate or even all of their estates. Landlords were on the brink of bankruptcy because of the famine as well. And as a callous and cruel, but the landlords would have argued a necessary way of regulating the land that they owned, they began wholesale evictions of people from their estates for legal reasons, so that they could then proceed to benefit from government aid that was available to them, and so that they could make their owners more economically viable. So once again, it was economics versus humanitarian concerns. And so large-scale clearances were undertaken, particularly in the poorest areas of the Dingal Peninsula, as discussed. To give you an example of what the effects of that were, here's a description of the aftermath of the large-scale evictions which took place in the Dingle Peninsula. This is from a newspaper account. The occupiers were dislodged. And where now, think you, are they living? Where have they found shelter in the inclement weather we have had? They are lying out by the ditches with no other covering to protect them from the drenching rain or the piercing cold than old boat sails, which they have begged or borrowed, and under porous or torn canopies of that kind, it is that they are spending their lives. They have no other asylums under heaven. Their former friends and neighbors dare not, on penalty of sharing their fate, admit them to a knight's lodging. The wretched creatures have no other home than the wet ditch below and the rotten canvas above them. So these people who were evicted on a large scale were left to fend for themselves on the side of the road. They built makeshift shelters of the kind described there, or they dug a hole under trees or in areas where they could find some shelter, and they lived in that for as long as they could until they then drifted into the towns and became homeless in the towns, or else they went to the workhouse or tried to get some form of assisted emigration. I didn't introduce the topic of emigration because it's another whole big area. But so on top of the hardship of the food, the hunger, and the diseases which accompanied it, accompanied it, now there was the hardship of people made homeless. And it fell on the workhouses to try to accommodate these people, or if not accommodate them, to provide them with food for survival. And that put great strain on the existing systems of the institutions, as you can if you don't want me asking as a follow-up question, can you elaborate on the workhouses?

SPEAKER_00 34:01

What was their purpose? What were conditions like? Who managed them? Can you describe deaths that occurred in workhouses? Can you describe the number of workhouses? What were auxiliary workhouses and what was distinctive about them?

SPEAKER_01 34:17

Yes. Well, the the 130 workhouses, as I said, became inadequate. So the decision was to extend their range by taping on other buildings. And these were the auxiliary workhouses. So that in a certain town, um, there might be an empty warehouse, or there might be a mill, or there might have been an old distillery or a brewery or an empty building of any kind, a farmhouse, a stables, and these were um rented or requisitioned as auxiliary workhouse. But this really stretched the system to its limits. And even though the um original workhouse or poor house as it was sometimes referred to might have had a fever shed and might have had uh staff, including uh uh teachers and nurses and others, the auxiliary workhouse would not have that kind of support. I think what I could do to give an impression of what one workhouse was like is to read a description of a journalist from Dublin who came to the town of Dingle and described what he saw in one of these workhouses. He saw what he said was a perfectly appalling scene. In this horrible place, more than two hundred grown women were sitting, or rather squatting, on the floor, the room being totally destitute of seats of any kind of description. Some were clad in the Union clothing, the official clothing of the workhouse, and more in their own wretched rags, as they sat packed together on the bare floor as closely as it was possible for them to huddle. It was so hot, stifling, and intolerable that I was obliged to give up my task and to get into the open air as quickly as possible. How the wretched people endured the fated smell, God alone knows. He went on to say the miserable prison house was dimly lighted, the walls moist and dirty, the floor paved with coarse stones, filled in with damp earth in a state little differing from mud, and on this the half clad, half fed, shoeless inmates stood and sat alternately for the greater part of the day. He compared it to the black hole of Calcutta, this journalist did, and went on to say, I am really at a loss how to describe in words the miserable condition of the poor creatures who were jam together in this day room, mostly without shoes or stockings, and the place they were in was little better than a pigsty farm building. So that I think is gives an insight into the conditions under which hundreds of people spent their time in the workhouses.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Can you comment on the division between Treley and Dingle over the response to the crisis?

SPEAKER_01 37:32

Yeah. Treley is the county town of County Kerry, the main town. And uh Dingle, like other towns like Listole and Castle Island and others, is a is a not far away, 30 or 40 miles away, with a hinterland, a hinterland of its own. So the main workhouse for County Kerry, for that part of County Kerry was in Trilee. But initially the people of Dingle, 40 miles away, some of the Dingle Peninsula, some of them had to walk to Tralee to get into the workhouse. And that presented a real problem in itself. The distances were too far. The workhouse in Tralee had little connection with the most the furthest away parts, the most distant parts of the Dingle area, so that in time it was decided that Dingle should have its own workhouse, which would make it easier for people to access and uh would allow Dingle people, the business people of Dingle, to regulate their own affairs and to be responsible for the poverty of their own area. The thinking at the time was that Irish property must pay for Irish poverty. The initial crisis went on through 1846-1847, and by the end of 1847, Britain and the British people were tiring a little of the demands being made on them, the demands being made on the Central Exchequer to bring relief to Ireland. So they passed responsibilities back to local landlords who resented the responsibility, and who indeed, many of whom were becoming impoverished themselves because of the crisis and the lack of income. So in time, Dingle got its own workhouse to serve its own area. And it was clear that there were relief in Trilee that the poorest parts of the county were being shed from them because they had resented the demands being made on them by the more impoverished parts of Dimble.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Can you comment on the eyewitness reports of deaths and of suffering alluded to in this study?

SPEAKER_01 40:01

Yes, uh most of my sources or a huge part of my sources were newspapers, local newspapers. And in the county town of Trile, three newspapers were being published at that time, which was is quite incredible really because the readership was very small. But nevertheless, um they managed to survive. And uh they are a fantastic resource. And of course, with modern technology, it's possible to search these newspapers online. And in these papers, um I have found first-hand reports, eyewitness accounts of what conditions were like in the county. And these were I ha I I I have been um tapping these for the first time really in a in a comprehensive way. There have been occasional extracts from the newspapers published, but I tried to take a completely comprehensive view and gather as many as possible and put them together in the pages of the two books that I have published on the famine. It has been said that newspapers are the first draft of history. So it was um a privilege for me to read these and to realize that I was uh getting eyewitness accounts. And um, so for example, in that awful winter of 46-47, the first accounts of death began to appear in the month of November-December. And I'd just like to read you a little uh heartbreaking account of the deaths of the first children in uh December 1846. And this was the report. It appeared from the evidence of their mother several days prior to his death, and that the younger had also been for days without any nourishment, owing to the complete drying up of its natural sustenance, the consequence of hunger in the mother. Cornelius Harnett stated that the mother of the children applied to his wife on Saturday last for lodging, which she gave her for charity. She then had four children with her, and before any food could be prepared for any of them, Michael died on the Hunts. On Sunday evening, the infant also died. Both he had no doubt from want of food. A postmortem examination of both bodies was made. No sign of disease was to be found on either. Both were wretchedly emaciated, but the younger one more especially, and not the least trace of food was to be discovered in the stomach or bowels of either. In the coroner's opinion, they both died of starvation. That deeply moving report was published on the 23rd of December 1846. That was two days before Christmas. And that was the beginning of that year of horror, then the year 1847, which is known in Irish history as Black 47, on account of the scale of tragedies. So for me and all Irish people, we know that one million people in the country died of famine and disease in that period, and another million and a half people emigrated to Britain and to the United States and to Canada to get away from the horrors, um, and that it had a long impact on Irish society and on uh Irish life in general, so that the population of Ireland uh fell and remained very low until it began to rise again in the 1970s, 1960s, 1970s. But to make to bring that kind of macro picture down to little family tragedies like this one makes all the difference to me, I think. It it it it's more it it's it's um it hits you harder, doesn't it, than reading of the the big picture. So for me, although it is very much a local study, these two books, they are also illustrating the big picture, micro studies that illustrate the overall picture. And they're heartrending, as I say. An editorial in one of the newspapers in January 47 stated, all the land is steeped in poverty, want, misery, and wretchedness. And that sums it up. But when you um bring it down to named individuals, as in that newspaper account, and also in that you can see what was happening. The woman with her family was walking from the Dingle area towards the town of Trilee, hoping to be admitted into the workhouse. And the children died on the way. But there it's also noteworthy that she found shelter in the house of another man, a complete stranger, Cornelius Harnett, whose name was mentioned there. And his wife gave the family shelter, in spite of the risks perhaps to themselves, if they were aware of the possibility of disease being spread or uh contracting disease, and that the little children at least died by the fireside, the heart that was mentioned. So there was an example of charity as well, of which there were to be many others at that time as well. If I could just read, perhaps again from the Dindal area, um, another account of an eyewitness, a man who was standing at his own door in the month of February 1847. And this is what he described he wrote the letter on the 4th of February, Wednesday, the 4th of February, and it was published two days later. And this is what he saw, and this is what he described. I went yesterday to a village at the foot of Mount Eagle, having been told tales of scenes of woe, of half-star and half-skeletoned creatures. I was shown a house in which there was a family of four, a widowed mother and her three children, the former dead and the latter, as far as I could judge, dying, without anyone to bring them even a cup of water. While standing at my own gate at about ten o'clock this morning, the first salutation I got was from a poor woman who requested aid towards procuring a coffin to cover the remains of her father, who had just died of starvation. About two hours after, I passed by the house of a dece of the deceased man and was further informed that his mother had just died of the same fell cause, starvation. The foregoing are cases within sight, I might almost say within call of my own door. And so the immediacy of that, he's standing in a village called Ventry, and this is what he saw on a particular day in February in 1847. He has a further description of another family, a family of five, father, mother, and three children who were laid on one bed by starvation. In a short time, the mother and one child died, leaving the father and the other two to drag out a miserable existence. On Wednesday last, the father also closed his eyes in death, having stretched beside him the two little survivors. The mother and child were now buried, the father was dead, and you will now naturally ask, what has become of the two surviving children? Frightening to relate, they were left for three days stretched beside their father. And when first visited by an aged relative, one was found lying on the father, hugging his lifeless form and having the hand of the other in his mouth. So that writer was a man called Matthew Moriarty, and he wrote in the village of Ventry, he wrote ten or twelve letters to the newspapers describing his experiences. His last letter started: The angel of death is fast fulfilling his mission, and the traces of his footsteps are on every side, marked in famine and pestilence. The voice of gladness is ceased. It is a day of trouble and distress, a day of waste and gloominess. Our land is darkened, it is darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof. So I wanted to read those because they are so powerful and so immediate and bring the distress so vividly to life. One of the newspapers said, on publishing those accounts, no further word of ours is necessary, and that's how I feel about it as well.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

Thank you for sharing. If you don't mind me asking a follow-up question, you personally, as an individual, when you read these accounts or when you went through the process of compiling these accounts, did you experience any vicarious trauma coming to terms with them as a reader, despite the passage of time?

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Yeah, oh they're deeply shocking. They are deeply shocking. And they were to me when I first came across. Undoubtedly. But nevertheless, any time I go back to it and read it slowly, it it it it was work for a long while, I suppose, in the process of bringing the book together and working with an editor to to make it as good as possible. But when I do now, uh I reflect on it again, I find it equally as moving as it was the first time I read it. And the other compulsion that I felt was that this must be shared. People who live in these areas ought to know about these events. And younger people today, who are very, very distant from the life and the experience of those times, ought to have these words recorded and uh people in the future ought to be able to access them. So that became a kind of a an imperative for me to make sure that the book was was brought to completion. So on the positive side, however, Larry, there was there were examples of great charity and great solidarity and great support, and perhaps that is something we could look at now.

SPEAKER_00 51:01

Sure. Um in fact, in light of that, can you comment on the international responses? Your book refers to some interesting details about the British Relief Association, the role of Paul Strelenki, the roles of the Quakers and the Quaker Society of Friends, donors from the Choctaw and Cherokee Nations, as well as from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Can you place these responses in context for us?

SPEAKER_01 51:37

Yes. Through the year 1847 in particular, there was a huge amount of attention on Irish affairs and on newspaper reports such as the ones I have read there. And so there was a very generous, charitable response from people within Ireland, from people in the neighboring island and from the continent of Europe and from America and from Canada, and as you mentioned, as far away as India and Turkey, even. Because people were deeply moved by the accounts that they read in the newspapers, notwithstanding that some newspapers in England were inclined to say that the reports were exaggerated and were over-emotional and were not uh that matters were not quite as extreme as they were being depicted. They were the Times in particular was responsible for that kind of um uh response to the hardship. So it is uh uh it's a it's a matter of um admiration that so much was contributed in in monetary terms, and so many efforts were made by others. It has been described in by one author as the kindness of strangers. That's the title of a book of on the charitable response to the Irish crisis. And um, it was founded in the home of Baron Lionel de Rothschild, a Jewish banker based in London, and an Irishman called Stephen Spring Rice. And they called on their peers and other and wealthy people in England in particular to make a donation towards the British Relief Association, which raised about 400,000 pounds to be distributed uh in aid in Ireland and in Scotland, which was also affected by famine, it should be said. Matters in Scotland were never as acute or as extreme as in Ireland, but nevertheless they suffered also. So the British Relief Association hired a man or employed a man called Count Paul Streleski to be the um manager, the um the man in place in Ireland to oversee the distribution and the use of the funds which were gathered. And these people these three men that I've mentioned were extremely interesting in their own right. Paul Steleski had had a whole career already in Australia as a geographer and geologist and explorer, and he now took on the responsibility of being the manager of the British Relief Association funds. And they they did remarkable work in the West of Ireland in bringing relief to the poorest of the poor. And he, in particular, uh devised a system whereby they would use the school system, which was in existence around the country, the system called the national schools, which had been in existence for over 20 years or so, um, not quite 20 years, almost 20 years in the country, um, and to improve the health of the children in particular. And it was an incentive for children to attend school, and therefore, when they were in school, matters of um food and hygiene were addressed. And then they went back to their parents with messages uh uh on the same uh on the same. The the work of the British Relief Association is quite remarkable, and they had an impact in the area in which I am focusing in County Kerry, especially through the schools that they set up and that they funded. Um so um i eventually um something called donor fatigue set in in England, in Britain in particular, um, and people um while there was a a rush of uh donations, inevitably in the year 1848 the funds ran out and the work of the British Relief Association came to an end. But their work was remarkable. I mentioned the Quakers earlier in connection with the soup kitchens. The Quakers are the Society of Friends, a religious community, and they too, even though their numbers in Ireland would have been very small, they were uh uh involved in the cities in Dublin and Belfast and Cork and Limerick and places. And two Dublin families in particular, named Bewley and Pym, took a leading role in providing and setting up soup kitchens and in providing a model for the government to follow. And in fact, when the government instituted the soup kitchens, they didn't have enough of the boilers in which to make the soup. So probably their funding also ran out, and the distribution of seeds and um works like that. There were also some remarkable examples of charity, for example, from the Choctaw Nation in America, in Oklahoma, and the charity nation. When they heard of the um poverty, the crisis in Ireland, they, in spite of their own di particular difficulties with being dispossessed, and after their trail of serving Irish. And also in faraway Turkey, the Sultan of Turkey made a donation of £1,000 towards famine. Queen Victoria, it should be said, also donated an amount of money, and the Sultan was advised that his should not exceed hers. Queen Victoria gave a donation of two thousand pounds. Converting those sums of money to the equivalent nowadays is um a difficult task, but I'm told that a kind of a rule of thumb of multiplying by a hundred, so that two thousand pounds would become two hundred thousand pounds in today's terms. Um there was also aid which came through Protestant missionaries, and that was particularly relevant in the Dindle and West Kerry area because um they were very active in that area and that they they already had a network of subscribers and supporters to whom they could appeal for support for the people among whom they worked. And they also raised lots of money to be um used for famine relief and for the improvement of um um farms and uh farming methods and providing alternatives to the potato, such as turnips, for example. So it's a matter of debate to what extent this occurred and whether the aid given by Protestant missionaries was indeed tied to conversion or not. It certainly happened in certain cases, in extreme areas, but by and large I'm of the opinion that it wasn't very widespread and that the people involved were uh wise enough to assess and to um to see that converts gained in that way were not genuine. Converts are not likely to remain for too long.

SPEAKER_00 58:47

Can you elaborate on superism and its impact on daily life?

SPEAKER_01 58:52

It had a divisive impact, it's been happening for a while. As I mentioned earlier, there had been a missionary campaign in the Dingle and West Kerry area for over for about over a decade before the famine struck. And it had been moderately successful in the sense that churches and schools and glebe houses or um rectories had been built in the area, and a number of people had convert people that there was a growing momentum with the wife or brother or sister, uh, decided to convert and decided to attend the Church of Ireland or the Protestant school, the Anglican school or the Anglican church, and uh the other uh relatives remained um remained uh with the Catholic religion. So it became a matter of um uh great uh the the media and the um commentators on both sides. People came from England to visit um Dingle and Ventry, which were regarded as being particularly successful mission areas, uh to describe what they saw, and they saw it as the beginning of a great movement. As it happened in later years, um the movement the movement petered out, and uh the um missionary um endeavors of the Protestant church did not succeed to a great extent, but it left great bitterness among the uh local people for many years, something that it was difficult to um discuss and difficult to write about and even to remember. So that was uh superism and taking the soup.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:32

What were the most difficult aspects of your research and writing process? How did you overcome such challenges? Likewise, what were the most fulfilling and exciting aspects of your research process? How did you feel about discoveries that you made that inspired you?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:54

Okay. One of the most difficult aspects was dealing with parliamentary paper material that is in the archives of the Westminster Parliament. Well, there's a lot available online now, and a lot can be searched. Um, nevertheless, they are they are difficult to deal with. Um so that was one part of it. The other, another difficult thing was just trying to forge it all together into a readable narrative for an ordinary reader. I'm amazed at how much was recorded and written on on the period. So the material was very dense at times, and I must say that there were times when I felt I was snowed under by um the amount of material. So ordering the chapters and um subdividing what was available was difficult. Also, just getting to terms with the um the social affairs, the social structures, uh, rate paying, economic issues, uh, landlords, uh, the lives of landlords. Um it's a lot of it was hidden. So in some ways, what I was doing was salvaging what I could. For example, uh some of the landlord families that I encountered in the Kerry area, there are no records available publicly. There may be uh in uh private archives or in family, I wasn't able to access them to get that perspective on the store. Shed more light on the period and on the personalities and on the areas on which we uh I my study was based. Um and um the discoveries, the best moments, I would have to say one of the most satisfying experiences was um having read about a gentleman called um Greenwell, who was a young man who became um a coffee grower, a coffee the owner of a coffee plantation and uh in the in in the corner district, and that his company, his uh the Greenwell Coffee, still survives to this day, and that his family are very much involved in it. So I was able to make contact with his family, and the amazing thing was when they replied, they told me that in their own little museum that they have commemorating him his business in Hawaii, they had the journal that he kept while he was in Kerry for a six-month period. The journal covered six memory sources written by him. Another discovery was finding a journal uh from the workhouse, the workhouse minutes, the minute books or the ledgers, which kept uh weekly accounts of uh incidents and affairs in the workhouse. The crucial one for 1847 had been missing. People could um uh copy of it in the National Library of Ireland, which again was very revealing. Finding handwritten letters by people whose names I had come across and who whose work I had been familiar with. Coming across those in the archives was wonderful. And finding the signatures, there was a petition, and in that petition was something that became a kind of an ambition of mine. And the um result of my researches in the Dingle and West Kerry area was that I was able to list the names of over 40 individuals who had died of either hunger or disease during the worst period of the famine, 1847, 48, that kind of period, and and record these and some details about them for posterity. The other um the other aspect of the research that pleased me was being able to find images of people, um uh, including a man, a man called Moriarty, who was uh a Protestant minister in the Dingle Hinterland, and um and finding a sketch of his appearance was wonderful. So that's it. The other the other uh uh pleasing aspect of it was being able to make connections with locations that are familiar today. For example, as a famine relief project, one uh the one of the Protestant clergymen in Dingle erected five towers on hills around Bingbo Bay to guide ships into the harbor from the open sea. And these were famine relief projects. In other words, um people went, they were public works, people went to work on them and in return from a stone tower, stone by stone, they got a wage. And the wage so some of these, one of these is still standing. So, and in in other parts of the area, there are locations which have specific reference back to that period. And uh for future generations again, I was very pleased to be able to record these links and uh highlight the significance of particular places. And finally, Larry, I would Say that having contact with some of the descendants of the people whom I had profiled in my book was particularly pleasing as well. There was a wave of emigration of the uh Church of Ireland members and descendants from the Dingle area to New Zealand, and a group of them settled in New Zealand in a particular area. So it gave me great pleasure to have contact with people who were able to tell me that I had referenced their ancestors in my book in one connection or another. So these um these uh experiences helped to balance the kind of traumatic experience of reading those awful descriptions of hardship and distress and the difficulties of bringing the book together. So altogether, um that's that was a happy conclusion to a tragic uh story.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:59

What does your research teach us about collective memory?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:04

Well, no, yes, memory and the famine is a big area. It's true to say that it seems that in Ireland people prefer to forget about the famine for many, many decades, understandably because of its impact and its unknown impact. The social and psychological impact of the famine was immense and something that we have not yet perhaps entirely fully understood. It was a severe trauma for a nation, and it's perhaps not surprising that it was suppressed, I think. Very, very little was written or published by historians on the famine in the 150 years after its uh occurrence, so I mean up to up to the 1990s or so. In the 18 in 1947, for example, a hundred years after the famine, Ireland was still a poor country and still struggling to uh make its way to economically. It was still uh it was still right through the 1950s, affected by immigration and by poverty, uh lack of uh economic progress, um uh based on being the main the mainstay of the lives of many, many people. But there was no real commemoration of the famine at that time, the hundred years. But when it came to 150 years, 1997, it was around then that historians began to devote a good deal of attention to it, and around then also that um sculptors and uh painters and artists of all kinds and writers turned their attention to the famine. So that since then we have had novels and films and public sculptures and public commemorations, there's uh, um, and much more awareness of it. And that in itself is remarkable. So um, but socially uh among ordinary people in society and ordinary um um researchers and historians, there was very little interest until now. But there has been a surge in recent times, and um we are all the better for that because it is good that people should know a lot about it. As regards its relevance to today, um there's a very fine historian in the University of Toronto called Podrick X. Scanlon, and he has written recently about the famine in a book called Uh Rott, A History of the Irish Famine, and he is making a strong case about the aspects of uh colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism having an impact on the famine, having a uh relevance to the famine. And that uh it's another perspective on events that um makes us look again at the whole impact of it. I'm my my brief is as a local historian, but I like to read uh an overarching view like Scanlan's as well, and it's an interpretation of the famine and an application because we live in an age of um uh what appear to be economic empires, for want of a better word, where you have overarching economic um uh interests, overriding um uh overriding national interest and people's lives. And um, I think there is um there is a relevance um in that sense. Our understanding of colonialism and capitalism as it was at the time of the famine helps us to have another perspective on today's um events as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:13

As we bring our conversation today to a close, can you tell us about where you've devoted your attention since completing this research?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:26

Well, it's just about six months or so since my most recent book, Calamity and Controversy, was published. So I've been taking a rest, I have to say, Ari. I do a lot of my work in the winter period when when I am indoors and housebound and when I can get access to the research. But there are many spin-off um sides of the story that I would like to pursue, but not perhaps in such a detailed way. In other words, I would be able to do some short articles for journals rather than perhaps a long book. I think I would find a long book of the length of either of these two, The Great Famine in Trulli or North in North Kerry, and Calamity and Controversy, um, The Famine Years in Dingle and West Kerry, would be a big challenge. But I look forward to writing shorter pieces for the many journals which are in existence here in Ireland and which are very happy to have contributions from people such as myself, amateur historians.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:37

As we end today, I'd like to emphasize how thankful and grateful I feel for your time and attention during this conversation. This was my hallowed honor.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:52

And my privilege to be with you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:59

As we end today, I'm signing off as Ari Barbalat, your host on the Dialogues in International History podcast. Today I've been grateful to engage in a dialogue with Brian McMahon, discussing his recently published book, The Great Famine in Tralee and North Kerry, published in Cork, Ireland by Mercier Press 2017. Brian McMahon has published two books on the Great Famine in County Kerry, Ireland. This was a tragedy of seven years' duration, starting with the first failure of the potato crop of 1845 until the year 1852. The first book was published by Mercier Press in 2017 entitled The Great Famine in Trailea and North Kerry. The second was published by Wordwell Books in 2025 regarding calamity and controversy. The famine years in Dingle and West Cary. Brian has also written a related book on the pre-famine years entitled Faith and Fury: The Evangelical Campaign in Dingle and West Kerry, 1825 to 1845, published by Wordwell Books. Brian McMahon is also the author of several journal articles on aspects of the famine in County Kerry. Brian was born in Ballyhague in County Kerry and now lives in Stillorgan in County Dublin, where he spent 30 years as a secondary school teacher. In his two books on the famine period, Brian McMahon emphasizes human narratives over mere statistics as he illustrates the extraordinary events, upheavals, and trials of the famine years through the perspective of those who experience them, uncovering information that has remained hidden and untapped for 170 years. His first book, The Great Famine in Tralee and North Kerry, which we have discussed today, provides a comprehensive overview and a heartfelt insight into the suffering endured by thousands in this region. The contemporary accounts enable readers to relive the harrowing events and grasp the stark dilemmas faced by those who are not directly impacted by hunger or disease. The book reveals the names and inquest details of some of the deceased, along with poignant descriptions of life in the workhouses of Trailley and Listowa. The book includes stories of scandals and exploitation, as well as numerous examples of selfless humanitarian efforts. Brian's most recent book, Calamity and Controversy, focuses on Dingletown and the peninsula in which it is situated. This is the first detailed account of the tragedy of the Great Famine and Gortamore in this part of County Kerry. Bryan has uncovered a wealth of archival detail, enabling readers to experience the impact of the famine through the graphic and deeply moving accounts of eyewitnesses. The book is a record of the events of the year 1847, known as Black 47, and it chronicles the trauma of the desperate years that followed the blight which destroyed the potato crop. The controversy of the title refers to the passionate debates and divisions incited by the success of the Protestant conversion campaign in the Dingle Peninsula, whose leaders played played a crucial humanitarian role in providing fame and relief. Robust sectarian jousting between Catholic and Protestant clergymen continued until the mid 1850s, and echoes of the conflict rippled on into the 20th century. Thank you wholeheartedly.