Eviction
Landlords were responsible for paying the rates of every tenant who paid less than £4 in yearly rent. Landlords whose land was crowded with poorer tenants were now faced with large bills. They began clearing the poor tenants from their small plots, and letting the land in larger plots for over £4 which then reduced their debts. In 1846, there had been some clearances, but the great mass of evictions came in 1847. According to James S. Donnelly Jr, it is impossible to be sure how many people were evicted during the years of the famine and its immediate aftermath. It was only in 1849 that the police began to keep a count, and they recorded a total of almost 250,000 persons as officially evicted between 1849 and 1854.
Donnelly considered this to be an underestimate, and if the figures were to include the number pressured into "voluntary" surrenders during the whole period (1846–1854) the figure would almost certainly exceed half a million persons. While Helen Litton says there were also thousands of "voluntary" surrenders, she notes also that there was "precious little voluntary about them." In some cases, tenants were persuaded to accept a small sum of money to leave their homes, "cheated into believing the workhouse would take them in."
West Clare was one of the worst areas for evictions, where landlords turned thousands of families out and demolished their derisory cabins. Captain Kennedy in April 1848 estimated that 1,000 houses, with an average of six people to each, had been levelled since November. The Mahon family, Strokestown House alone in 1847 evicted 3,000 people, and according to John Gibney were still able to dine on lobster soup.
After Clare, the worst area for evictions was County Mayo, accounting for 10% of all evictions between 1849 and 1854. The Earl of Lucan, who owned over 60,000 acres (240 km2) was among the worst evicting landlords. He was quoted as saying 'he would not breed paupers to pay priests'. Having turned out in the parish of Ballinrobe over 2,000 tenants alone, the cleared land he then used as grazing farms. In 1848, the Marquis of Sligo owed £1,650 to Westport Union; he was also an evicting landlord, though he claimed to be selective, saying he was only getting rid of the idle and dishonest. Altogether, he cleared about 25% of his tenants.
According to Litton, evictions might have taken place earlier but for fear of the secret societies. However they were now greatly weakened by the Famine. Revenge still occasionally took place, with seven landlords being shot, six fatally, during the autumn and winter of 1847. Ten other occupiers of land, though without tenants, were also murdered, she says.
Lord Clarendon, alarmed that this might mean rebellion, asked for special powers. Lord John Russell was not sympathetic to this appeal. Lord Clarendon believed that the landlords themselves were mostly responsible for the tragedy in the first place, saying "It is quite true that landlords in England would not like to be shot like hares and partridges...but neither does any landlord in England turn out fifty persons at once and burn their houses over their heads, giving them no provision for the future." The Crime and Outrage Act was passed in December 1847 as a compromise and additional troops were sent to Ireland.
Under the notorious Gregory clause, described by Donnelly as a "vicious amendment to the Irish poor law, named after William H. Gregory, M.P. and commonly known as the quarter-acre clause, provided that no tenant holding more than a quarter-acre of land would be eligible for public assistance either in or outside the workhouse. This clause had been a successful Tory amendment to the Whig poor-relief bill which became law in early June 1847, where its potential as an estate-clearing device was widely recognised in parliament, though not in advance. At first the poor law commissioners and inspectors viewed the clause as a valuable instrument for a more cost-effective administration of public relief, but the drawbacks soon became apparent, even from an administrative perspective. They would soon view them as little more than murderous from a humanitarian perspective. According to Donnelly it became obvious that the quarter-acre clause was "indirectly a death-dealing instrument."
Read more about this topic: Great Famine (Ireland)