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The
tragic eviction at Tonagh
By
Máire O Donoghue
As every true Cavan Gael knows, the Breffni county Senior
team was the only team in the country to have won an All-Ireland
Senior Championship outside Ireland.
The year was 1947, the month September, the venue was the
Polo Grounds, New York and their opponents were the mighty
men from Kerry. But 100 years earlier, the thoughts of Cavan
people were not on winning football finals, but on the very
unsporting landlords, bailiffs and agents, who were responsible
for one of the worst evictions ever witnessed in the county
and probably in the whole of Ireland. The year was 1847,
the month of September, the venue was the townland of Tonagh
near Mountnugent, a village in Cavan, about 60 miles from
Dublin and their opponents were members of the landed gentry.
First, let us have a look at the background to this eviction.
It all began with a potato blight which first struck Ireland
in earnest in 1845. It struck again in ‘46 and this
time, the crop was devastated. People who had limited resources,
used them to survive the winter of ‘46-’47. For
those who had none, the British government had operated
relief schemes during that winter which helped many survive.
But in 1847, they decided to suspend them. The responsibility
for feeding the poor was thrown on the Poor Law Unions,
local bodies that was funded by local property taxation.
Some landlords were kind and helped their tenants during
this difficult time. Others tried to relieve themselves
of the burden of paying local poor law tax by paying for
their tenants to emigrate. But the cruellest of all were
those landlords who evicted their tenants and hoped they
would move out of the local area. Unfortunately, in the
townland of Tonagh, near Mountnugent, the latter method
was chosen.
In the parish of Mountnugent in 1943, there were 1,769 Catholics
and 155 non-Catholics. A future Bishop Dr. Nulty, has left
a terrible but memorable picture of how that part of the
population was uprooted. In September 1847, while a curate
in the parish, he witnessed an eviction from the property
of Messrs. O’Connor and Malone, at Tonagh. The agent
was a Mr. Guinness, who was then M.P. for Kinsale. He later
lost his seat because of his involvement in bribery. Here
is Dr. Nulty’s very graphic description.
“In the very first year of our ministry, as a missionary
priest in this diocese we were an eye-witness of a cruel
and inhuman eviction, which even still makes our heart bleed
as often as we allow ourselves to think of it.
Seven hundred human beings were driven from their homes
in one day and set adrift on the world, to gratify the caprice
of one who, before God and man, probably deserved less consideration
than the last and least of them. And we remember well that
there was not a single shilling of rent due on the estate
at the time, except by one man; and the character and acts
of that man made it perfectly clear that the agent and himself
quite understood each other.
“The Crowbar brigade, employed on the occasion to extinguish
the hearts and demolish the homes of honest, industrious
men, worked away with a will at their awful calling until
evening. At length, an incident occurred that varied the
monotony of the grim, ghastly ruin which they were spreading
all around. They stopped suddenly, and recoiled panic-stricken
with terror from two dwellings which they were directed
to destroy with the rest. They had just learned that a frightful
typhus fever held those houses in its grasp, and had already
brought pestilence and death to their inmates.
“They therefore supplicated the agent to spare these
houses a little longer; but the agent was inexorable, and
insisted that the houses should come down. The ingenuity
with which he extricated himself from the difficulties of
the situation was characteristic alike, of the heartlessness
of the man and of the cruel necessities of the work in which
he was engaged. He ordered a large winnowing-sheet to be
secured over the beds in which the fever victims lay - fortunately
they happened to be perfectly delirious at the time - and
then directed the houses to be unroofed cautiously and slowly,
because he said that he very much disliked the bother and
discomfort of a coroner’s inquest.”
Dr. Nulty administered “the last Sacrament of the Church
to four of these fever victims next day; and save the above-mentioned
winnowing-sheet, there was not then a roof nearer to me
than the canopy of heaven. The horrid scenes I then witnessed,
I must remember all my life long. The wailing of women -
the screams, the terror, the consternation of children -
the speechless agony of honest industrious men- wrung tears
of grief from all who saw them. I saw officers and men of
a large police force, who were obliged to attend on the
occasion, cry like children at beholding the cruel sufferings
of the very people whom they would be obliged to butcher
had they offered the least resistance.
“The heavy rains that usually attend the autumnal equinoxes
descended in cold copious torrents throughout the night,
and at once revealed to those houseless sufferers, the awful
realities of their condition. I visited them the next morning,
and rode from place to place administering to them all the
comfort and consolation I could. The appearance of men,
women and children, as they emerged from the ruins of their
former homes - saturated with rain, blackened and besmeared
with soot, shivering in every member from cold and misery
- presented positively the most appaling spectacle I have
ever looked at.
“The landed proprietors in a circle all around - and
for many miles in every direction - warned their tenantry,
with threats of their direct vengeance, against the humanity
of extending to any of them the hospitality of a single
night’s shelter. Many of these poor people were unable
to emigrate with their families; while, at home, the hand
of every man was thus raised against them. They were driven
from the land on which Providence had placed them; and,
in the state of society surrounding them, every other walk
of life was rigidly closed against them. What was the result?
After battling in vain with privation and pestilence, they
at last graduated from the workhouse to the tomb; and in
little more than three years, nearly a fourth of them lay
quietly in their graves.”
What a terrible scene, Dr Nulty witnessed! Thankfully those
awful days belong to a darker era of our history but those
sad memories have become part of the Mountnugent folklore
and have helped the local people to appreciate the sacrifices
and hardships of those who have gone before them; an appreciation
which is expressed in local song, drama, story and craftwork.
As the parishioners of Mountnugent fish in Lough Sheelin
or explore the ancient O’Reilly keep of Ross Castle,
they must often spare a thought for those who suffered so
violently in the last millennium.
- Our thanks to Joseph Moynagh for all help provided.
Taken from Breffni Blue
April 2000
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