by Charles Egan
‘I thought our rate of spending was supposed to be dropping.’
‘Damned right, it should,’ said one of the other men. ‘What’s the explanation for this?’
Everyone looked at Pat.
‘There are a number of reasons,’ said Pat, ‘but the main one, as you will see, is that the number of inmates is going up again.’
‘Why is that?’ Clanowen asked.
Pat was about to respond, but Voisey put his hand on his elbow.
‘I don’t have to tell you about the closing of the Soup Kitchens.’ Voisey answered. ‘That’s forced a lot of families back to the Workhouse. Also, there’s been a number of evictions locally.’
Including Clanowen’s, Pat thought. How many families did his agents throw on the road?
‘So what have we now?’ Clanowen asked, sharply. ‘How many?’
‘Over nine hundred,’ Voisey answered, ‘which, with respect, is an improvement on April when we had well over twelve hundred. Some weeks ago, it had dropped to eight hundred, as I told you. But since then, the death rate has been dropping, and more of the inmates are living, and increasing the numbers.’
‘A pity, that,’ another man interjected. ‘Fever helps keep the numbers down.’
‘Though not in a Christian way,’ Voisey said.
‘It’s true, nonetheless.’
‘Enough of this,’ Clanowen said, abruptly. ‘Pray continue, Mr. Voisey.’
‘Yes, well. As you know, we sent two hundred inmates to Quebec back in May, mostly from Lord Clanowen’s estates…’
‘Surely we can do that again?’ the other man asked.
‘Yes,’ Clanowen said. ‘We chartered the ship, we…’
Pat was about to speak, but Voisey silenced him again.
‘In all Christian conscience, I don’t think we should do that again.’
‘But why not?’ the other man asked. ‘Didn’t we send them out through Westport? And not that many died on the passage. Nothing like the deaths on the Liverpool ships.’
‘That’s as may be,’ Voisey replied, ‘but it’s the Canadian side, that’s where the problem is now. The fever we suffered here has followed our brethren to Canada. They’ve some dreadful quarantine station in Quebec which is killing thousands. It’s just as bad, if not worse, in Montreal, Bytown and Toronto. Tens of thousands are dying of fever in British Canada, and the people are blaming the Irish migrants.’
‘But how do you know all this?’ Clanowen asked.
‘Mr. Edmundson, who went to direct the journey. He has sent me a page from one of the Quebec papers. It’s true, right enough. Like I said, the fever is killing tens of thousands. The doctors, the nurses, the nuns, are all working hard to stem the tide of death in the fever sheds, but they too are dying. In their hundreds,’
There was a silence around the room. Then Trinder spoke.
‘At least if they died in Canada it wouldn’t be at our cost. Nor on our conscience either.’
‘I don’t think we can see it that way any longer,’ Voisey said. ‘We’ve got to do our best with them here, not send them three thousand miles away for burial in Canada. This is a Christian country.’
Silence again. Clanowen was thrumming his fingers on the table. Pat knew it was not his place to speak. He was thinking about Luke. Tens of thousands dead in Canada. And on the Liverpool ships too. Would Luke get through?
The silence dragged.
Voisey whispered to Pat. ‘That’s fine, we’re finished with you now.’
He turned back to Clanowen, as Pat left the room.
‘Well, how did it go?’ Sarah asked.
‘Damned if I know,’ said Pat. ‘I hardly said a word.’
For an hour, he and Sarah worked on long columns of figures. Pat was relieved that his attendance at the meeting was over, but it had been replaced by other concerns.
An hour later, Voisey came into the room.
‘You did well there, Pat.’
‘I barely said anything.’
‘No, but your report gave them the facts pretty straight, and I think the Workhouse might survive for a month or two longer. ‘
‘That’s great,’ Pat said. ‘But tell me just one thing. What’s this you were saying about Canada?’
‘Canada? Frightful entirely. The quarantine stations are overflowing. The Mayo ships aren’t so bad though. The lumber ships out of Liverpool, they’re the ones. They’re in a terrible way when they reach Canada. The reports from St. Johns and Quebec are of ships arriving with a quarter or half their passengers dead, and spreading fever everywhere.’
Through August, everyone watched in fear as the potato was harvested, but there was no blight.
Then some of the inmates trickled away from the Workhouse. Some made their way home to fathers or sons who had kept their holdings, and many, who had no such choices, made for Dublin and Liverpool. Some begged as they went, or worked their way digging the harvest for the bigger farmers in the east of the country.
Even as people left the Workhouse, there were more waiting for admission. Many families had eaten all their seed potatoes as a result of the blight of 1846. They had planted no crop for 1847. Many no longer believed in the potato after two years of blight. But the Workhouse admitted very few.
So the hunger went on.
Every second weekend, Pat went back to Carrigard, walking through the dark on Friday nights, no matter what the weather. Some nights he arrived drenched to his skin.
One Friday evening, he finished his work and left his desk in the Workhouse to walk to Carrigard. As he walked across from the Administration block towards the Workhouse gate, he could see the death pit, still edging closer to the front wall, day by day. Even so, it was slowing from what it had been. The fever was killing fewer people in the Workhouse than it had been in March and April.
He nodded at the three inmates guarding the gate from the inside, quickly pulled himself up the bars to the top, balanced over the spikes, and jumped. There was still a crowd of gaunt men, women and children outside the gate, but less than it had been even a few weeks before.
He walked fast out the Kilduff road. It was raining already, and got heavier. It was two hours before he reached Carrigard, and well dark. He pushed the door open.
‘God with you, mother.’
Eleanor spun around.
‘Pat! I wasn’t sure you were going to come. It’s late enough.’
‘I know. I’d far too much to do, and perhaps I shouldn’t be here at all.’
‘You’re drenched. You should take better care of yourself,’
‘Arra, what. Sure it has to be done.’
‘Not at the cost of your health.’
He took off his coat, and Eleanor draped it over the back of a chair by the fire.
‘Where’s father?’
‘Up guarding the potatoes.’
He poked at the fire, and the flames soared.
‘And Luke? No word from Luke?’
Eleanor reached over to the dresser and picked up Luke’s letter.
‘Here, read this,’
Pat read through it quickly.
‘He seems to be doing well enough so far. But you’ve nothing back from Quebec?’
‘Sure how could we have heard from Quebec in this time? God, you’re as bad as Winnie.’
‘As bad as who?’ a voice said from the hall. Pat turned around.
‘By God, Winnie, is it? Hiding out in the back room were you?’
‘Just making sure Brigid was asleep.’
She sat at the table.
‘Have you eaten,’ Eleanor asked.
‘I have, and well,’ Pat said. ‘Don’t be worrying about me.’ He reached into his pack. ‘And I brought you a sackeen of corn. It’s not much, but it might help.’
‘It surely will,’ Eleanor said. ‘But tell us this, how’s the Workhouse?’
‘Oh, I’ll tell you about it some other time,’ Pat replied.
He went to the door. The rain was lessening.
‘You’re still wet.’
‘I can’t get any wetter so.’
He took his coat again and left.’
‘He didn’t seem too happy about the Workhouse,’ Winnie said.
‘No, he didn’t’ Eleanor replied. ‘I reckon we’ll hear all about it soon enough though.’
Both women knew the desperate stories of Knockanure Workhouse. Pat had told them enough about it, and Winnie herself had witnessed it, even if only briefly. They too knew that the real killer in the Workhouse was fever rather than direct starvation or cold. Black Fever. It brought back to Eleanor all the horror of the death of her daughter Alicia at the time of the Big Wind of 1839.
Fever was part of Mayo life. Most women had watched their babies die. It was something that they just accepted, even in normal times. Still, as Eleanor had explained to Winnie, if her daughter, Alicia, had not died of fever, and her niece, Nessa, had not died in childbirth seven years later, she herself would never have fostered Brigid and raised her as her own daughter.
For Eleanor, Knockanure Workhouse had come to symbolise the horror of Black Fever, right across the county. If Pat was to be believed, the epidemic had been killing hundreds of the Workhouse inmates during its horrific climax in March and April of 1847. And the epidemic had spread far beyond the Workhouses, killing thousands of people in all the villages of Mayo. Eleanor had heard enough of that from Michael’s brother-in-law who had travelled around the county working as a surveyor for the many Famine Relief Roads. In the end, the fever had killed him too. Both women knew well that fever spread fast anywhere that people gathered. Workhouses, churches, bars – they avoided them all. But Pat still worked in Knockanure Workhouse as a clerk, and this terrified Eleanor.
Pat walked across to the potato patch. It was still raining.
‘Father,’ he shouted.
‘Over here’ Michael called from the darkness. Pat went across, and down between ridges. He found the hut. He could just see his father’s figure. He sat alongside. Rain dribbled through the heather scraws and down the back of his coat.
‘Any more stolen?’
‘Not since a few weeks. And that wasn’t much anyhow. I wouldn’t worry about it.’
‘Maybe ye should dig them all and take them into the house.’
‘We’ll do that soon enough,’ Michael replied. ‘There’s still growth left in them, I don’t want to lose that. Might give us another few hundredweight yet.’
‘The crop’s well enough, from what I can see here in the dark.’
‘It is. One of the best ever. For those who have planted it.’
‘Yes, I know. A good crop, but the hunger is going to get worse.’
‘It is,’ Michael said. ‘And what happens then, I just don’t know.’
He stood.
‘Come on, let’s go back to the house a while. The potatoes can look after themselves. There’ll be less fellows out in this rain.’
Eleanor poured out four cups of poitín.
‘I’m delighted you brought him back in so fast,’ she said to Michael. ‘I hadn’t even the chance of talking to him, and he was away out the door.’
‘Talk away,’ Pat said, as he sipped the harsh spirit. ‘There’s not much I can tell you that would cheer you up.’
‘How’s the county? What are you hearing?’
‘Well, the Poor Law is in a terrible way. We’re still seeing it in the Workhouse. They’re not dying as fast as they were, but the fever’s still there, and the Workhouse doesn’t even have the money to feed them all.’
‘Not as overcrowded though?’ Michael asked.
‘Not as bad as it was. It was in a terrible way after Clanowen’s evictions on the Mountain, and the evictions he ordered over by Killala made it even worse. But the crowding is less now. They just don’t let them in, so the crowds outside aren’t like they were. They know they can’t get in, so they don’t come rattling the gates like they used to.’
‘So what’s happening?’ Winnie asked suddenly. ‘What about Brockagh…?’
‘Brockagh’s not as bad as you might expect. Sure, there’s fever and hunger, but it’s not as bad as everywhere else. So I’d reckon your people are fine.’
‘And the area around?’
Pat sighed.
‘Oh God, I don’t know. Knocklenagh, Lisnadee, all that area, all the way up to Croghancoe, it’s in a terrible way. They were depending on the Soup Kitchens for feeding them, but now they’re gone. They know the Workhouse is full, so they don’t bother coming. I heard a crowd of them went walking to Sligo a while back. Some talked of ships going to Quebec after some clearances up that way. Some government minister in London, Palmerston or something, he was chartering ships, clearing his own land…’
‘A damned absentee?’ Michael said. ‘They leave it to the agent, that’s the way, isn’t it?’
‘So I’d guess,’ Pat replied. ‘But anyhow – the story got around that there was room on the ship, and because it was a chartered ship no-one would have to pay. How many others got on, or even if any others got on apart from the Palmerston lot, I just don’t know. There were stories of bodies along the road from Knocklenagh all across the gap by Croghancoe, and down to Sligo itself.’
‘That’s enough now,’ Eleanor said. ‘Just drink your drink. And would you be leaving him alone, Michael, he’s enough to be thinking about.’
Pat sipped the poitín, saying nothing. The silence dragged.
Michael poked at the fire. ‘Surely they could have gone over by Westport?’
‘Westport’s too far,’ Pat said.
‘So’s Sligo. There isn’t much difference in the distance between the two from Knocklenagh.’
‘More than you might think.’
‘Killala then. Killala is surely closer.’
‘Yes, but they charge for the crossing from Killala. The people high up the Ox, they’ve no money at all.’
Pat put his cup to his mouth. He had noticed that no one else was drinking.
‘What’s wrong with ye all? Are ye not thirsty?’
Michael shook his head.
‘And what about the west and all over that way? What have you been hearing?’
‘Desperate stories. Whenever the fellows from Castlebar come over, we hear all about it. Partry, Achill, Erris, they’re all in a terrible way. Worse than the mountains, if you could believe them all. And the landlords, they’re all near bankrupt out that way. There’s talk of evictions coming.’
‘And Knockanure?’ Winnie asked. ‘What about…’
‘Near bankrupt.’
There was a shocked silence. Eleanor was the first to speak. ‘But…if the Workhouse goes bankrupt, where does that leave you?’
‘God only knows, mother,’ Pat replied. ‘For the moment, no one is saying anything, and they’re still paying me. But as to how long it will last, who knows. So ye’ll understand why I can’t get back late to Knockanure, or leave early.’
‘I understand it well,’ Eleanor said. ‘It’s hard on you though, and we all depending on you. It’s not fair, is it?’
‘Arra, he’s well able for it,’ Michael said.
‘It’s not a matter of fair or not fair,’ Pat said. ‘It just has to be done. For as long as it lasts. Isn’t that it?’
All through the evening, Pat was thinking of Canada and fever, but said nothing. Perhaps he lacked courage. On the other hand, there was nothing any of them could do, and if Luke survived, and a letter arrived from Canada, he would only have upset the family for no reason.
As everyone went to bed, Michael made for the door.
‘Someone has to guard the potatoes.’
‘I’ll go,’ Pat said.
‘No, you’ve had enough of a drenching already.’
Pat spent the next two days helping his father around the farm, and guarding the potato patch. He insisted on doing so on the Saturday night, and thought he saw s
ome figures moving through the bushes. He stood and shouted, and then there was silence.
On the Sunday night, Michael insisted on guarding the potatoes himself, while Pat slept in the outshot, beside the kitchen fire.
He was up early the following morning, but Eleanor was already in the kitchen, preparing breakfast.
‘What you said about the Workhouse, it worries me,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ Pat replied.
‘And what about Sarah? How’s Sarah taking it?’
‘Much as you might expect. She’s helping me all the time with the figures, but she’s terrified of her mother working in the fever sheds. God knows, we’ve heard enough of them dying in the sheds – matrons, doctors, what have you, the fever gets them all in the end.’
‘And you?’
‘Oh, I don’t go near the fever sheds, Sarah neither. Nor the death pit. So you needn’t worry about either of us, we’ll live.’
‘You’ll have to bring her over again someday. She’s a nice girl.’
‘She is, mother, she is.’
Pat finished the porridge that Eleanor had prepared for him. Then he embraced her and walked back to the potato fields. After a quick farewell to his father, he walked out the Knockanure road, and back to the Workhouse.
The relationship between Pat and Sarah Cronin intrigued Eleanor. Pat had brought her to Carrigard before. Sarah was in a different class to the Ryans. Her father had been Master of the Workhouse before he died, and her mother was Matron. Pat would hardly be seen as the best chance for Sarah, but the fact that he was working in the administration of the Poor Law Union, and in a clerical position too, meant he could, in time, do better than being a tenant farmer. What was odd, in Eleanor’s eyes, was the easy relationship between Pat and Sarah, together with the way they pretended there was nothing between them. But why else should Pat bring Sarah to meet his family. Time would tell. But was it wrong to be thinking of such things as the hunger deepened around them?
She thought of Luke and Winnie. They had married at the height of the fever epidemic in the spring. At first, Eleanor had been shocked at this, but slowly she had begun to see it differently. Through the horror of the Famine and fever in the mountains, neither Luke nor Winnie had ever given up. Nor would she.
One night she woke from a nightmare of being buried alive. She lay awake, listening to Michael’s gentle breathing. It was the first time that he had been in the bed for two weeks.
