The compiler of the return, probably a representative of the local clergy, appended the following note in relation to the recently deceased James Carty and his wife, from Kilclogh, whose two children had died some time previously:

The man died of exhaustion. Whilst making some stirrabout he fell on the pot [,] unable to recover himself till his person was frightfully burnt, by his child (3 years old) continuing to supply fuel to the pot – and in one hour afterwards his wife also died – Corroborated by the coroner’s jury, whose finding is, ‘exhaustion by starvation’.

A decision had been taken prior to the Jamestown’s departure from the United States that the cargo would be reserved for the sole use of the people of Cork city and county. On 17 April, a representative body, named the New England Relief Committee after its Boston progenitor, was appointed in Cork, with Lord Francis Bernard (1810-1877), Conservative MP for Bandon, as its nominal chairman, Major North Ludlow Beamish (1796-1872), as vice-chairman, and N. M. Cummins as secretary, to oversee the distribution of the cargo. Forbes had previously pledged some of the cargo to the Cove Sick Relief Fund, the Cove Relief Committee, and to a number of others, including a supply of seed potatoes to Fr Mathew. The New England Relief Committee in Cork estimated that about 600 tons of the original cargo remained, and they proceeded on the basis that 572 tons were available for distribution.

Captain William E. D. Broughton, an inspector for the Irish Poor Law Commission and a member of the New England Relief Committee, proposed a distribution scheme that was adopted by the committee: Cork city was allocated twenty tons of food, and the city’s hinterland, the so-called Cork district, received sixty tons. The rest of the county was divided into eighteen districts, subdivided into a varying number of localities, with each locality receiving four tons of food, including three casks of pork. The supplies were consigned to a named individual for distribution within each district. About half of the cargo was carried by sea to the coastal towns of Youghal, Bantry, Glandore, Clonakilty, and Kinsale, and a sub-committee was responsible for distributing the remainder of the relief supplies in the interior of the county, in mid, north and north-west Cork.

Despite Mount Cashell’s personal plea to Captain Forbes, and his membership of the New England Relief Committee, the Kilworth district was not privileged in relation to the Jamestown cargo. When Mount Cashell expressed his surprise at the district’s omission from the distribution scheme during a meeting of the relief committee, he received a waspish response from Broughton, to the effect that as a resident and wealthy landlord Mount Cashell ought to take responsibility for his own tenants, provide for their welfare and employment, and not leave them dependent on charitable relief from America or elsewhere. The victim of this public rebuke was greatly offended, regarding Broughton’s intervention as an attack on his integrity, which was motivated by personal dislike and ill-will. However, Broughton was not the only one to question Mount Cashell’s actions and probity. The Kilworth landlord was a controversial figure and was severely censured in the press, for the divisiveness and politicking he brought to the Kilworth Famine Relief Committee, among other perceived transgressions.

It appears that a combination of financial mismanagement and Mount Cashell’s personality was the root cause of his unpopularity. By 1846-7, those most critical of famine years, Mount Cashell was in dire financial straits, a victim of swindling agents and solicitors, and at the mercy of creditors who were pressing from all sides. It was very different a quarter of a century earlier, when, in 1822, as a thirty-year-old, he succeeded to his father’s title and the family estates, consisting of more than 60,000 acres in counties Antrim, Cork and Tipperary, and miscellaneous properties in Limerick, Waterford, Dublin and Kildare. In the following decade, he speculated in Canadian property to the extent of 25,000 acres. Mount Cashell resided at Moore Park, on a 1,000 acre demesne which was part of his 5,961 acre property in and around the parish of Kilworth in north Cork. This multi-propertied individual was a pious, evangelical Protestant and a man of strong Tory principles, who, since his accession to the family title and estates in the early 1820s, had offended political and religious sensibilities in Cork and elsewhere. He was arrogant, opinionated and tedious. More critically, according to his biographer, he was an inept administrator of his extensive and scattered estates and a disastrously incompetent financial manager. These personal and administrative shortcomings were to land him in the Encumbered Estates Court in the early 1850s, and culminated in his bankruptcy a few years later.

Mount Cashell’s plea for famine relief for his Kilworth tenants was genuine and heartfelt, but unavailing. Forbes had some discretion in relation to the Jamestown cargo but by the time of Mount Cashell’s appeal he had ceded responsibility to the New England Relief Committee, among whom Broughton appears to have been influential, and the relief supplies were distributed in accordance with his scheme. The American philanthropic intervention came at a critical time, Spring 1847, during that interregnum in government relief policies, between the slow winding down of the public works programme and the introduction of soup kitchens to feed the starving. Under these circumstances the Jamestown supplies prolonged and maybe even saved the lives of an unknown number of individuals, though not specifically in the Kilworth district.

08/04/2013

Laurence M Geary teaches in the School of History at University College Cork.