Independent Aid
Many women took an active part in famine relief, usually in the distribution of food. They were usually members of a landlords' family, parsons' wives or from smaller sects (Langan-Egan, 1987). Newport had at least two such women who provided aid, Mrs Maiers and Mrs Arthur. Rev Stoney's wife was involved in relief work in Castlebar, but is not mentioned in Newport, but this may be due to the bad feeling between her husband and the Catholic clergy.
Mrs. Arthur Asenath Nicholson (1850) was a friend and admirer of Margaret Arthur, the widowed Methodist postmistress in Newport. She describes travelling by open car, in the rain, to visit Mrs. Arthur and being annoyed by a fellow passenger, a 'dissipated, tattered and repulsive' man who appeared to be inebriated (p. 283). The man alighted at Newport and went to Margaret Arthur's house where he fell in the door, suffering not from the affects of alcohol, but advanced starvation. He gave Mrs. Arthur his earnings from England to give to his wife and children as he thought he was dying. His money was sewn into his coat and he had been afraid to break the sovereigns to buy food for himself in case he would be robbed and his family die of want. The following morning, there were crowds of starving people outside waiting to be fed. Not alone was Mrs. Arthur running her own soup kitchen, she was also a very good organiser. She introduced Asenath to a seven-year-old orphan boy who was badly in need of help. He had walked with his four-year-old sister to Castlebar Workhouse, where she had been admitted but he had been refused entry, as he was old enough to work. She persuaded Asenath to provide the child with new clothes and pay for his feeding and schooling for the next year. Mrs. Arthur must have been well known for her charity. The little boy, a Catholic, walked all the way back from Castlebar to seek her help, not that of the priest. A man, who had been labouring in England, trusted Mrs Arthur to take care of his family, rather than the priest, rector or other authorities. There is no folk memory of this remarkable woman in Newport and she is not mentioned anywhere else. |
Mrs. Maeirs
Ó Móráin (1957) calls Mrs. Maeirs a souper and refers to the soup kitchen she set up in her back garden as 'the colony', but in Newport folklore, she is remembered as a saint. She lived in a small village outside Newport, the wife of a bible tract distributor, who was much maligned in the Freeman's Journal by Fr. Hughes. Mrs Maeirs fed everyone she could, regardless of their faith and is credited with saving the lives of almost everyone in Cuilmore. She died from Famine fever, probably cholera. In the neighbouring village, Carrowmore, there was a population loss of 80%, from starvation and fever exasperated by wholesale evictions. Mrs. Maeirs was not the only relief worker who died from cholera. Famine victims, who had pawned their clothes for food, were clothed in rags. They carried lice which spread cholera and relapsing fever. There was a high recovery rate from relapsing fever but cholera killed almost all its victims very quickly. The poor had a high resistance to cholera but richer people had never been exposed to the disease. Many people died helping their poorer neighbours. Click HERE for Conclusions
|