Clare’s Great Famine letters up for auction

A NUMBER of letters, which give a unique insight into the impact of the Great Famine on people in County Clare will go under the hammer at James Adam and Sons Ltd, in Dublin on Tuesday next.

Adam’s Auctioneers have described the auction as a once-off event due to the rarity of the objects being sold. The letters are taken from a collection by a Dublin law firm, Stewart and Kincaid, which acted as agents for landlords in the 1840s.
Among the letters are a selection sent by John Blackwell, the sub-landlord for the West Clare townland of Toureen near Miltown Malbay.
In one letter, he details a potato crop failure in the townland in May 1843, less than two years before a more widespread potato blight outbreak resulted in the Great Famine.
The letter states, “We have very wet weather this good while back, a great report about a failure in the potato crop, I know a man in this neighbourhood to have six men last week striking potatoes in a place that failed. The early plots I put down myself is coming on very well thank God.”
The dreadful situation in 1845 is detailed by Mr Blackwell in other letters to be auctioned. “Respecting the distemper on the potato crop it is, I am sure, all over the estate, a neighbour of mine brought nine men with him last week to dig Conacre in the west part of this parish and [when] they came back home, there was not a potato in what they dug but was infected.” [16 November]
“I travelled through the estate according to your direction to take a view of the potato crop, which is dreadful to be looked at. I walked from garden to garden through the estate and indeed it was a melancholy view, it is the whole cry among the people in general that they would be satisfied if the seed remained alive but I am much in dread it will not. It is a general distemper whatever time the Lord of Glory is pleased to remove it.”