Time line

The Census returns for 1901 and 1911 can be read online and you will occasionally see differences in the ages recorded for the same people. Some seem to have aged more than 10 years between both censuses. This might have some connection with the fact that the old age pension, for those over 70, was introduced in 1909 and an extra few years helped.
One applicant in Limerick said he believed he was 60 but that a number of his neighbours persuaded him he was 70, so he applied and got the pension. By March, over 80,000 had applied and, of those, 70,000 were in Ireland. This led to an investigation.
Not many births were registered in Ireland before the 1860s, so some other means had to be devised to establish the applicant’s age. One of the tests was to ask if the applicant was alive on the “Night of the Big Wind”. This was in 1839 so, if they were alive on that night, they had to be over 70.
The Night of the Big Wind referred to the great storm that struck Ireland suddenly in January of that year. Winds reached hurricane force and caused more widespread damage than any storm in recent centuries. More people were left homeless that night than in the evictions later in the 1800s and between 200 and 300 lost their lives. It became a landmark date for people in the 19th century, akin to the assassination of Kennedy or the World Trade Centre bombing a century later.
Saturday, January 5 brought the first snow of the winter but on the Sunday, most of it melted in the unusually mild temperatures. The air was very still and it was really the calm before the storm. In the early afternoon, the rain and wind started, by evening there was hail and by 10pm, the full-blown hurricane was raging. It would continue right through the night. There were reports that the waves broke over the Cliffs of Moher, large boulders were blown up onto the Aran Islands, the steeple of the cathedral in Carlow was knocked and it blew the water out of a canal in Tuam. Each county had a list of the damage caused. The fact that it occurred over night added to the terror. The Freeman’s Journal reported that the darkness added to the horrors and that “the Aurora Borealis burned brightly a great portion of the night, mantling the hemisphere with sheets of red and corresponding well with the lurid gleams which ascended to the zenith from the flames of burning houses that the tempest threatened to fan into a general conflagration”.
The countryside suffered enormously. One landlord, The Earl of Clanrichard near Ballinasloe, reported that he lost 20,000 trees on the estate. John O’Donovan, who was working on a geographic survey around Glendalough, County Wicklow, said it was as if the entire country had been swept clean by some gigantic broom.
The storm abated over land during Monday morning but on the Irish Sea nearly 100 fishermen lost their lives and the packet ship, the Pennsylvania, was lost with all hands. It continued to wreck similar damage along the west coast of England.
The Night of the Big Wind occurred on the night of Sunday, January 6 and into the morning of Monday, January 7, 1839 – 171 years ago this week.

n Michael Torpey