Ron,
It’s sometimes possible to see our ancestors’lives through rose tinted glasses.
Sometimes they didn’t live all that well, whether through fecklessnessor simply
poverty. You are scathing about the description of houses where youcan see
“pigs and fowls in the kitchen and everything is dirty.” The thing is,that is
factually correct. That is how poorer folk did live. My own grandmotherwas
brought up in a farm labourers cottage in the 1890s and she described abare
earth floor where chickens and ducks wandered in and out through the
door,defecating all over the place. They weren’t wealthy enough to have a pig
but itwas common enough for livestock to be kept under the same roof, for
securityand warmth. It must have been dirty and smelly, just as the OS
descriptiontells us. You can see cottages like that today in the Cultra Folk
Park museumoutside Belfast. But that way of livingwas common enough in the
1700s and 1800s, across Europe not just here inIreland. Up on the famous
Scottish Island of St Kilda (150 miles north ofIreland) they had a dreadful
neo-natal death rate. During the winter months, thesheep and cows were kept in
the house alongside the family, at one end of thebuilding. A visiting nurse
eventually discovered that whenever a child wasborn, the family dipped the end
of the umbilical chord in the animal and humanmanure inside the building “for
good luck.” Consequently half the babies caughtfatal diseases. And that was in
the late 1800s.
Yousay: “The time period scribes never seems to mention how hard working
thesepeople are, how close knit the families be, the way communities work
togetheror the weight of unfair and unjust economic burdens they struggle under
andstill survive and more they insist on thriving in the face of
greatadversity”. What’s your evidence for that? Unless people have changed a
lotover the past 200 years, I would expect they were the much same as today, a
mixof hard workers, some who worked less hard and quite a few who led
fairlydissipated lives. (Some of whom you can read about in the court
newspaperreports on the Co Tyrone website.)
The men who compiled and wrote the OS memoirswere a mix of Army Officers and
civilian assistants. (There’s a goodexplanation of who they were and how they
worked at the beginning of everyvolume of the Memoirs). They weren’t all crusty
upper class British Armyofficers. Many were non commissioned soldiers and
civilian assistants. And the themesin the example Len quoted can be found
elsewhere in reports for other Ulstercounties. So was there some vast
conspiracy, do you think, or might thedescriptions (pejorative as they may seem
at times) perhaps be reasonablyaccurate?
Elwyn
From: Ron McCoy via CoTyroneList <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Cc: Ron McCoy <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, 26 October 2018, 12:52
Subject: Re: [CoTyroneMailingList] Observations on the Inhabitants of Clogher
Parish, Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland 1833-5
Hi Len and allThank you Len for sharing this with all of us. I read this and
many other pieces of history. I notice the trend through out of the lack of
mention of positive attributes of the common people. Empathy for another human
being is completely devoid in these reports. The time period scribes never
seems to mention how hard working these people are, how close knit the families
be, the way communities work together or the weight of unfair and unjust
economic burdens they struggle under and still survive and more they insist on
thriving in the face of great adversity. I think these Ordinances are
important pieces of history not as much about what they report or say on the
surface to us but because they tell us a lot about the writer and the class
structure he dwells in. It seems important to him to paint a portrait of the
Irish working class people at a level of sub human strata (you may see pigs and
fowls eating in the kitchen and everything is dirty ). The considerable
hardships people are forced to live in are justified because of their moral
depravity, "49th: It is believed that there is at least an improvement in the
morals and cleanliness of children attending Sunday Schools". This article to
me paints a picture of a people who are brave in the face of over whelming
poverty, and unjust taxation without representation overseen by absentee land
lords. It speaks to me of a devotion to preserve the family and traditions at
all costs. As people who are forced to struggle, their hope lies in their
children and their children's, children, in other words "us". They would not
allow themselves to quit, be broken, or trodden under, despite the written
word, legal system and their betters opinion. They refused to think of
themselves as less then any mans equal. They put all their hopes in the
generations to come, they sacrificed everything to bring "us" into a safer , a
better place... may we not let them down, may we never forget who they were and
what they sacrificed for ,"us", for ,"me". What they did was not easy and it
was not pretty but they did it, a better world for us, those like us, those
like them and those still to come. May we be able to say the same.... Thank you
Len for bringing these pieces of history to us.CheersRon McCoy
On 2018-10-25 10:20 PM, Gail Mooney via CoTyroneList wrote:
Thanks Len - Even knowing the history of those hard times, this piece paints a
pretty grim picture of the environments our people endured as they struggled to
survive. I imagine depression was common in the population - reminds me to be
more grateful for my lucky circumstances. From: "Len Swindley via
CoTyroneList" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Cc: "Len Swindley" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2018 7:02:19 PM
Subject: [CoTyroneMailingList] Observations on the Inhabitants of Clogher
Parish, Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland 1833-5
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Hello Listers; There has been recent interest expressed in the lives of our
Tyrone forbears (thanks to Elwyn) and here is an extract from the Ordnance
Survey Memoirs of the 1820s-30s that offers some observations on living
conditions in Clogher parish. Having read through many of the memoirs covering
the parishes of Co. Tyrone, this report could be applied similarly to all
parishes. Len Swindley, Melbourne, Australia EXTRACTED FROM ORDNANCE MEMOIRS
OF IRELAND: PARISHES OF COUNTY TYRONE VOL. 1 (INSTITUTE OF IRISH STUDIES,
QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST) (1990)STATISTICAL MEMOIR BY LIEUTENANT R.
STOTHERDANSWERS TO QUESTIONS:THE HABITS OF THE PEOPLE42nd: There is very little
order, cleanliness, or neatness in general to be found either in the houses or
of the more wealthy farmers or in the cottages of the poor. The turf stack
often approaches within a few yards of the door and thus intersects the view
and stops the currency of the air. The yard in front of the house is full of
the odour of the cow house and stable, for they are often built in the very
front and sometime adjoining the dwellinghouse. The lanes and approaches to the
house are narrow, rough and filthy in the extreme. Within no order is visible;
you may see pigs and fowls eating in the kitchen and everything is dirty and
confused, the furniture a few pots and noggins, a stool or a broken chair. The
potatoes at meals are thrown out in a basket and so laid on the table or on a
stool, and the whole family gather round, master, mistress, children and
servants in a mass, and eat out of the basket without knife, fork or any
appendage at meals. A man who can give his daughter in marriage 50 or 100
pounds will live in this manner. But this is not universally the case:
sometimes everything is seen comfortable, neat and clean, both within and
without the farmhouse, the furniture good and decent, the kitchen neatly tiled,
the outside of the house well whitewashed and thatched, the yard and lanes
about the house in good repair and clean. It is, however, to be regretted that
very few instances occur where this order and decency is observed. FOOD44th:
Potatoes and milk is the general food of the farmers of this barony, for
breakfast, dinner and supper during 9 months of the year. This is sometimes
varied by a bit of bacon for dinner, sometimes butter and oaten bread or eggs
are added to the potatoes for dinner. In 3 of the summer months when potatoes
begin to fail, stirabout or flummery is substituted for potatoes, for breakfast
or supper.45th: The same report will serve for the manufacturing class and
tradespeople.46th: Potatoes and milk, or when milk grows scarce potatoes or
herrings, or potatoes and salt is almost the only food of the poor inhabitants
during the entire year. Occasionally a little stirabout is added for supper or
breakfast in the summer months. EDUCATION47th: There is certainly a general
desire of instruction in all classes of the people, both Protestants and Roman
Catholics. The poor are anxious to teach their children reading, writing and
arithmetic, and although the facilities for the education of the Roman
Catholics is not so great as for the Protestants, being hindered by their
priests from attending Sunday and other schools, yet there is certainly a
desire in the minds even of the Roman Catholics for the education of their
children.48th: The children of the poor pay for their education according to
the following rates: for spelling and reading, for writing for arithmetic, for
book-keeping [blank]49th: It is believed that there is at least an improvement
in the morals and cleanliness of children attending Sunday Schools. They are
not permitted to attend unless they are clean and they are expelled if any
gross immorality be committed. It is also hoped that there is in the
inhabitants in general, a greater respect for the laws, fewer quarrels and less
fighting than formerly Sent from Mail for Windows 10
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