LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A KERRY EMIGRATION SCENE.
170 THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
witnessed yesterday the departure of some 400 emigrants from the South of Ireland, in the steamship Lake Manitoba,' which steamed up the Kenmare River on her way £rom Queenstown to Quebec, for the purpose of taking the fifty-one families of the Kenmare contingent on board. These emigrants, consisting exclusively of unbroken families, are being sent out by the Guardians of the Poor, under the Emigration clauses of the Arrears Acts. It was high time that they should move in the matter, for the rates in the Kenmare Union amounted to 6s. in the pound, and I was assured that in winter-time the poor habitually got food but once a day. Yet the workhouse, capable of holding 600 inmates, actually contained but 106, so deep-rooted is the abhorrence in Ireland of entering its doors. And, indeed, although its cubic capacity may be sufficient for 600, a portion of the building itself is utterly unfit to receive inmates, from its neglected condition.
It was by the merest accident that I learned from the public car-boy of emigrants leaving Kenmare, through which place I was intending to pass hurriedly, in the usual tourist course, on my way to Killarney. Instead of the one hour, which the public car allows for lunch, I spent nearly forty-eight in and about Kenmare, mostly devoted to gathering particulars about the causes of its pauperism and the circumstances of the intending emigrants.
I was greatly assisted in these inquiries by the kindness of Captain Colomb, the energetic chairman of the Emigration Committee of the Kenmare Union, who permitted me to accompany him during the various processes of preparation for equipping and despatching the emigrants, with whom I conversed freely. I was likewise fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Major Spaight, the Inspector of the Local Government Board in the South-Western division of Ireland, of Captain Samson, Government Emigration Commissioner, and Captain Christian, Board of Trade Inspector of Emigrant Ships, all of whom gave me valuable information. But, in the limited space which I can reasonably ask for in the Spectator, I had better confine myself to the particulars gathered from the emigrants themselves, and to a description of the scene at the workhouse, where they assembled, and of their conveyance to and embarkation on the Lake Manitoba,' which lay off the point where the Blackwater joins the Kenmare River, some seven miles from Kenmare town.
Throughout the day—Friday, 18th—families kept dropping into the workhouse—the children mostly barefooted, and in a ragged condition—bringing the one box which contained all that remained of the family effects, on an enlarged sort of costermonger's cart, drawn by a half-starved horse or donkey. What would be the ultimate fate of this last vestige " of live and dead stock " of the small holding, I regret that I omitted to inquire particularly ; but I conjecture that the incoming tenant would, in most cases, take it at a valuation. The first family I became acquainted with was that of Michael Godfrey, consisting 'of father, mother, five girls and three boys, all under twelve, ragged and barefooted. The mother, too, was only half-clad, dark, with straight, black hair, sharp, pointed features, high cheekbones (reminding me strangely of the Mexican-Indian type), and nursing an infant. The four elder girls were the very image of the mother ; the boys favoured the father more, whose face was less pointed, but equally pinched. I accompanied them upstairs to the clothing department, where a very kind and gentle-mannered matron handed each a complete suit of brandnew clothes, hat or cap, and boots, even including the baby, somewhat in advance of her immediate requirements. After the lapse of the best part of an hour—the ladies were long in dressing —the whole family reappeared, wholly transformed, and hardly recognisable. The father had been brought to ruin partly by his own improvidence, partly by the barrenness of the plot of ground on which he had struggled in vain to get a living. He paid £12, rent of a small arable bit of land and eight cow-runs, which plot and cow-runs his brother would now take over and add to his own holding. This arrangement seemed eminently satisfactory, and was just what I was hoping to hear.
The next family was that of Patrick Leary, consisting of father, mother, four boys, and two girls. These I had not seen in their chrysalis state ; but as butterflies in their new clothes, they looked highly respectable, and Mrs. Leary had cheap artificial flowers in her black bonnet. I have every reason to believe, though it was too delicate a subject to inquire into, that this bonnet was not provided by the Guardians, but was the gift of a charitable lady, who was seeing them off. As far as I observed, it was the only bonnet worn by any woman present, most of whom made their shawls do double duty, for shawl and bonnet. Patrick Leary likewise had been brought to the verge of starvation, by the impossibility of getting a living out of a barren mountain-side, where for every rod of cleared ground is at least an acre of boulder-strewn bog. Leary had given up the hopeless attempt some years ago, even when agriculture was less depressed, and had since hired himself out as a cowherd to a master, from whom he produced an excellent character. Both Leary and Godfrey had made previous trips to America, without their families ; and both were provided with letters from friends there, without which the United States Government will not allow Irish emigrants to land.
The next case I inquired into was that of Margaret Lynch, a respectable, quiet-looking widow, a fact proclaimed by-no outward sign of cap or bonnet, for she had nothing but the usual shawl drawn over her head. She supports three children exclusively by her needle. A workhouse official gave her an excellent character. Her husband, she told me, had been a cardriver, but, to use her own words, "his three horses died one by one, and himself died after them." Although present at the workhouse yesterday, Margaret Lynch will only leave with the next batch of emigrants on June 1st.
The gathering at the workhouse for the cars and emigrants was fixed for 5 a.m., Saturday, May 19th. By 5.15 the first family had mounted the first of the line of cars, of which there were six large and about as many small. The whole fifty-one families were conveyed in two trips, and the whole were despatched by 7.30 a.m., so excellent were Captaiu Colomb's arrangements, and so docile were the emigrants in general. From time to time an occasional howl was raised by some, I think, semi-professional howler; and not a few women shed tears quietly at quitting their friends gathered round the workhouse, but during the embarkation I did not see a tear shed, except by a little girl, who was " sure she was going to be drownded."
Nor did I see but one case of drunkenness, and that was in the case of the only single man of the party. A striking example was made of him, for he was ejected by the fellowoccupants of his car on the road to the point of embarkation, and left behind.
The embarkation itself was effected in the most orderly manner, owing to the fact that the boats of H.M.'s gunboat Britomart ' were told-off for that service. Nothing could exceed the kindness of the under-officers and sailors to the women an3 children, and the whole two hundred and seventythree souls were got on board without the slightest accident. The weather was brilliantly fine, and the occasion was made a sort of fete by the whole neighbourhood, who swarmed round the Lake Manitoba' in boats. Not till the ship had got some half a mile off did the priest arrive, wearing a very shiny tall bat, in a boat with some ladies. From beginning to end, he had taken no part in the whole proceedings, so far as I could observe.
There can be no question as to the eagerness of the poor people to fly from starvation and stagnation to a land of abundance and enterprise. It is the change of moral atmosphere, which will be just as potent for good in America as the bettering of their material condition. An emigrant recently wrote back to his friends,—" Let priest and agitator say what they please against emigration, do you come out." Another wrote,—" If you worked as hard in Ireland as we do out here, you might get on at home." But the fact is that the spirit of work hardly exists in Ireland, and the priestly incubus, encouraging idleness, weighs heavily on the land. The driver of one of the cars, who gave me a lift for a short distance, had caught the infection of the emigration-fever, and exclaimed, "It's too enticing, sure I'll be off myself next trip !" Unhappily, the £100,000 voted by Parliament is all but exhausted, and several Unions who were late in their applications will, I fear, get no Government assistance, unless a fresh sum is voted. The urgency of the need is un
questionable.—I am,. Sir, &c., W. H. (BULLOCK) HALL.
.Killarney, May 20th.
P.S.—I may add that Ireland is crying out for tourists, that the weather is magnificent, and that you are as safe here, and far more welcome, than in Bond Street.
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