Ireland’s loss of 1 million to starvation and disease and up to two million to emigration (out of a population of just over 8 million) is the equivalent of America losing 100 million people – a very difficult number to get one’s head around.  That’s why many of the posts on the site look to the individual stories of the Famine’s victims as a tool to make the horror more accessible.  Take, for instance, the evictions carried out by Lord Lucan of Castlebar*.  Lord Lucan (George Bingham) owned approximately 61,000 acres in County Mayo – land he thought better suited for the grazing of cattle than tillage by Catholic tenants.  He is famously quoted as saying he “would not breed paupers to pay priests”.   During a three-week period in 1848 (three years into the Famine), Lord Lucan destroyed 29 homes on his land, evicting the 126 people within (7 of which were noted as being ‘widows’ or women with small children).  29 houses, 126 people.  What became of them?  Lord Lucan’s agents kept records of the evicted – most moved to small sheds, lean-tos or caves in the area, some were able to immigrate to American, some sought relief from the workhouse.  How many died outright or soon after?  How many families were split as a result, with the youngest and strongest emigrating and the weakest and most vulnerable being left behind?  We’ll never know.

Lord Lucan’s dirty work was carried out by his estate agents and what were known as  “crowbar brigades” of desperate men who, for the price of a meal and the chance to survive another day,  wielded crow bars to knock down the homes of their neighbors.  One of these unfortunate souls recounted to the newspaper, The Telegraph, how he worked six days a week ‘pulling down’ sometimes twenty homes a day.   The sick and elderly would be dragged outside, their possessions left to “rot in the open air” while the estate agent responsible had “the curse of those evicted fall on him.”**

Using Irish to subdue or betray other Irish was standard practice by the British during their 800 year subjugation of Ireland.  Doubtless those who took part in the crowbar brigades were hated and ostracized by their own.  The man interviewed by the Telegraph confessed that “I dread …when I am called to go before my God that I belonged to the cursed Crowbar Brigade.”**

* the 3rd Earl of Lucan, not to be confused with the 7th Earl who, facing murder charges, went missing over 37 years ago.  The 3rd Earl is best known as being the commander who ordered the ill-fated charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War.

** Interview of events taking place in 1847 given to The Telegraph, August 21, 1880.