Eviction in Ireland during Famine Years

 EVICTION IN IRELAND

During the famine years in Ireland it is estimated that over a half million Irish were made homeless as a result of eviction. Many Irish rented small plots of land from absentee British Protestant landlords.  Half of all landholdings were less than 5 acres in 1845.

The Irish potato famine was not simply a natural disaster. It was a product of social causes. Under British rule, Irish Catholics were prohibited from entering the professions or even purchasing land.  

The Cruel British Landlord

The Coyles made their livelihood on a small, rented farm of 6 acres in the Fanad peninsula of Ireland, where there was little arable pasture; a hard, barren land. 

In April 1869 Eunice Coyle travelled to the local justice of the peace.  Their landlord, the Englishman William Sydney Clements, 3rd Earl of Leitrim, had informed the Coyles that he had decided to reclaim the land and therefore was evicting Eunice and her husband.  The Earl was notorious and hated by his tenants because of his practice of constant raising of rents and frequent evictions. 

The Coyles were in their seventies, John Coyle had health problems and they were vulnerable to a severe economic shock and faced utter destitution.

Eunice was turning to the United States government for support, applying for a pension for the service of her son Hugh, who had died 5 years previously.  Hugh had worked as a laborer in America and served with a Pennsylvania regiment of the Union Army in the United States Civil War.   

Eunice did eventually receive funds for the US government.  It is unclear whether it was sufficient to stave off the impending hardships. 

Murder of the Landlord

A little less than a decade after he issued his Notice to Quit to the Coyles, disaffected Fanad tenants played a central role in the landlord’s demise.  In 1878 a group of Fanad men lay in wait along a road for the 72-year-old Earl, killing him and his driver.  The assassins were never captured.  However, a Memorial was placed at the site remembering the “patriots” who put an end to the despised landlord.

Read more on Irish eviction and immigration to America:



This book also contains many eyewitness accounts of Jewish migration;  immigrants from Russia, the Eastern Europeans in New York and Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazis, Chinese immigration, Polish, Germans and Hispanics.  Available on Amazon books.

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