Ireland evictions
Farmers fight for their homes with tooth, nail and bee.
Alex Q. Arbuckle
c. 1888
In the latter half of the 1800s, Ireland was embroiled in a period of agrarian unrest known as the Land War, in which poor tenant farmers still struggling from the aftermath of the potato famine fought against exploitative landlords. Rent prices had risen with farming profits through the 1850s and ‘60s, but the Long Depression which began in 1873 left many tenant farmers unable to pay their rent.While organizations such as the Land League and legislation such as the Plan of Campaign aimed to provide struggling tenants with rent reduction and relief, evictions were still widespread. Many evicted tenants did not give up their homes quietly. Though landlords enforced their property rights with armed police and British soldiers equipped with battering rams, tenants fortified their meager abodes with thorny barricades and fought back with boiling water, cow dung and whatever improvised weaponry they could muster.
Two constables were burned by the red-hot pikes, the gun of another was broken to pieces by a huge stone, and a fourth was slightly wounded by a fork. - William Henry Hurlbert, account of Tully eviction, 1888
On the morning of the eviction we were up at the break of day and laid our plans, each to defend a certain point and none to waiver, whatever might come. We boiled plenty of water and meal, and, when all was ready, we kept a look-out for the bailiffs and the rest of them. At this time I was only home a few months from America, and during my absence, I may add, I did not learn to love Irish landlordism or English rule. - Frank O'Halloran's account of his family's eviction, 1887
What was calculated upon as one of the most formidable items in the program of defense and defiance was the letting loose of a hive of bees, but these took flight by the chimney. One of McNamara’s sons, who endeavored to keep them down, was very severely stung. - The Clare Journal, June 6, 1887
I got a big pole: there was a policeman at the top of the ladder; I put it to his chest, pushed him into an upright position. The policeman behind him pressed him on, while the crowd yelled, wild with delight. I shoved harder and he fell to the ground, amidst deafening cheers and shouts. Others pressed on, to meet the same fate. - Frank O'Halloran's account of his family's eviction, 1887
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