Famine Graveyard event honours forgotten souls

The annual Famine Graveyard commemoration event drew its customary small gathering last Wednesday evening. Des Walsh, long standing member of the committee who organise the event, was MC, along with colleague Millie Walsh. Present were local clergy, Fr Phil Gaffney, Fr Norman Allred, and Rev Canon Alastair Graham, as well as other long-time committee members, Seamus O’Brien, who delivered the historical address, Eoin Corrigan and Peter Caffrey.

The gathering recited the Decades of the Rosary, one of which was offered in memory of Christina Mohan, Ann Sullivan, and Paddy Murphy, and recently deceased Mrs Hogan and Mrs Wade (sister of Des Walsh), and all deceased committee members.

In his remarks, Seamus O’Brien said: When we reflect on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on our town and county over the past few years, we get some sense of the effects of the continuous potato failures that occurred here between 1845 and 1849.

The cause of death associated with the food crisis seldom cited ‘death from starvation’ – the vast majority died from diseases associated with the Famine.

Fever, dysentery and smallpox were the epidemic triumvirate which led to one million deaths nationally in just four years, and many thousands in Westmeath, some of whom we commemorate in the Union Graveyard here this evening.

The state of the poor in towns like Mullingar was wretched in the decades leading up to the crisis, which began in 1845.

One third of the houses in the town were described as fourth class – single-room, mud-walled cabins without light, water or sanitation. Open sewers flowed through the almost 30 back lanes of the town and the dwellers had to rely on the Brosna or the canal for water, so dysentery was a major scourge. The cholera pandemic which struck here in 1834 and led to the opening of the Kilpatrick graveyard was a premonition of its successor which devastated the town in 1849 and led to the opening of this graveyard in March 1849.

Following the complete failure of the potato here in 1846, hundreds of the sick and dying clamoured for admission to the workhouse and numbers committed to the gaol also soared; workhouse numbers increased from 400 to 800 and inmates in the gaol from 80 to 300. Vagrants fleeing the effects of the famine in the poorer western districts camped on the canal banks in the town; diseases spread at food depots, public works and soup shops.

To cope with the crisis, a temporary fever hospital was opened in the Market House in September 1846. People attending the weekly market every Thursday objected to the presence of fever patients in the Market House and demanded that they be transferred to the workhouse.

Work on the workhouse fever hospital had commenced and when it was complete in 1847, patients were transferred there. That led to that part of the town becoming a centre for disease and death. The fever hospital later became St Mary’s hospital.

Black ’49 is the more appropriate description of the effects of the Famine here; as there was a total failure of the potato crop; the railway works had been completed (labourers were laid off); and the cholera pandemic arrived in March – 100 died each week in March, April and May 1849.

Paupers were requisitioned from the workhouse to whitewash the cabins in the back lanes and clean the streets. A special cholera hospital was opened in Hartley’s Grain Store on the Dublin Bridge and 16 paupers were employed full time burying the dead in this graveyard.

The socially selective nature of the famine deaths is obvious, as all but one of the victims were from the overcrowded and impoverished back lanes of Mullingar.

During the summer of 1849 the crisis eased. The railway connection to Athlone commenced in September 1849. Work on the new regional lunatic asylum also started and hundreds of able bodied paupers were instructed to gather at Footys Bridge to labour on the major public works.

The effects of the crisis lingered for years as numbers in the workhouse remained high. Burials in this pauper’s graveyard continued till the 1890s – later forgotten.

Our commemorations here over 30 years are an appropriate response to a terrible moment in our modern history.