Landlords and tenants

Landlords and tenants

The plight of the poor

The plight of the poor and landless were continuing political and social forces that fed Irish nationalism but by 1878 internal strains on reformists were made worse by potato famine, depressed prices and disenfranchisement of the rural poor who struggled to pay their rent to landlords such as Kate Digby.

An undated letter written to Kate by her Aunt shows the level of fear the failure of potato crops had, not only on the tenants.

My dear Catherine,
Having no opportunity to hear anything about you or George I am very anxious to know how you both are and hoping sincerely you
are both in good Health and as Comfortable as the Times will admit, which here are greatly Agitated and full of gloomy
Anticipations may the Almighty bring us out of this dreadful Crisis which is threatening us and avert these Calamaties which I fear
we have too much merited...I hope the Potatoes in your part of the Country are free of disease which from reports are said to
attack them elsewhere...Your Affec't Aunt, Sarah Gibbon, 14 Molesworth St, Dublin.

Whilst some landlords had not raised their rents for decades, since the Famine period , there were others where rent had been increased to such an extent that the original tenants had been forced to quit and many went to America or into the workhouse. One of these was John Nolan who wrote the following letter to his wife in 1848 from Cincinatti where he had gone with his daughter Mary. In it he makes desperate plans for his wife to join him, calling on the financial assistance of their employer, Mr. Chas. Hawkes, Kate Digby's father.

   February the 27th - 1848
Dear Wife/
At length I sit down in a far distant Climate to write you these few line, Hoping they My find you and the children in good health as this leaves me and your daughter...Thanks to the Lord Almighty for his Mercies towards us...my mind has been in a very Miserable  State of Uneasiness thinking and Fearing, I am at a loss of some of your lives. Moreover in the storms of raging Famine and could give no relief up to this...Although I have gone through severe dangers and hardships I have borne them  with patience and resignation to the will of the Lord, yes my dear family which depends on the will of the lord for you and me to Meet once more. You  may be very certain I have gone through some purgatory of any man torn away and separated from that One Only pure being which I loved above all other men living he is...Mr Chas. Hawkes of Briarfield...(if) he is gone I hope to that happy place called paradise where all the true souls of the Just are placed in Glory...My second Loving friend for neglecting to write to her as I did Cincerely Promis I would when I landed is Mary H. Nolan. I do Give my Love and Respects...I owe  the care and gratitude of any little family to Dear Mary. We landed in Oilens by 45 days sailing from Lifferpool Very Much Exhausted by the heat...I had not one farthing I met with a kindly friend who knew me before which is Patrick Hoban...I started from Oilens three days after and landed in Cinunatt...the first of August. Neither Mary or me got in to employment for three weeks after then went to a family for one month...By the address of Patrick Lane's letter I found he lived in Illinois...I addressed him with a letter stating to him My Crosses. He answered me he intended to go to Indiana...I want to working in or about One Month after he wrote to me. To go...and take Mary with me so I got out of Work...and lose my wages which I intended to send home as a relief...I took then the route to Illinois and landed there on Dec. 5th  which took my Earning from me. I do remain there...and Could not find an Earlier opportunity of relieving you Earlier which I know was a  suffering pain to me. I have this day prepared...to the Office of Hamden & Co. Chicago per John Dodge 12 pounds sterling to which I do expect you will have the Check Letter before you will this...Mary when you receive this check let Miss Nolan manage for you. I cannot know how the passage is charged from Lifferpool to Orleans. Fear very much you have nothing like enough money to take you out...you must manage what you will do if you have not Money Enough to defray your passage...you must see if you can get it from them that was always your best friends I do expect to repair any Cost or loss you put them to. You will Take Care to answer this letter as quick as possible and let me know the True circumstances of all particulars I am sure if not for Miss Nolan or Mr Chas Hawkes ye are all done for...I do still hold My Confidence in the Lord I hope he will hear my prayer. If you think you can come on you will do very well here...we must work hard and have good payment and food. I never took a Breakfast or Supper by daylight. I work Every day in this month. I grieve vey much that I did not write before this...This is a very good Country for persons presiding Good Health and Professed prudence and good conduct...Cincinattee has the Most Christianly appearance...Mrs Chas Hawkes my former Mistress give her my best respects...My love and respect to Miss Catherine Hawkes and also to Miss Louisa Hawkes...Please send my love to my sister Ann Nolan...I am your most affectionate husband John Nolan Cincinnatti, State of Ohio, America...Let me know your answer quick as I intend to meet you in Cincinnati or Orleans

Letter from John Nolan to his wife Mary, sent from Cincinatti where he had gone searching for a better life for his family.

Hardship and rent

In early 1876 a branch of the Tenants Defence Association was established in County Roscommon in order to prevent the threat of evictions by providing tenants with funds to use for legal assistance to protect their interests, giving them a voice for their concerns and requests, as seen in the correspondence that survives from the Digby tenants.

There were many families on the Digby lands which, in the 1870’s, were recorded as extending over 1300 acres. Tenants paid rent twice a year (conacre), but hard times saw letters arriving at Kate Digby’s door begging for rental reduction, often written by someone such as the local priest on their behalf.

A letter to an unnamed tenant, written on November 1st, 1881, is directed at those tenants who had not taken up the offer put forward to them.

Dear Sir,
I desire this letter, a copy of which I send to every tenant of the Drumdaff Estate, to offer you then opportunity of seriously considering the proposition I made to you on the occasion of out late interview. It will now rest with you to decide whether to pay your rent on ??? terms before Saturday evening next for by refusing to do so is to force me to adopt a course that I feel assured will be both unpleasant and expensive to you as well as painful to me but which, being my duty I shall unquestionably take. While I shall truly regret any conflict it will be a satisfaction to me to know that not I, by attempting any unfair exaction- but you by refusing to pay a just and lawful debt - have caused it. My statement was to the following effect:- I had neither obtained nor asked permission for an abatement to any tenant but was not on this account pronouncing an opinion as to whether the Rents were too high or otherwise. A system of haphazard abatements, however useful in dealing with an exceptional condition of circumstances or before the creation of the more perfect mode which the Land Act provides, has nothing to recommend it at present. I invited every tenant who thought his rent too high, to serve the invitation notice. I offered to fill out the forms; accept service and have the service recorded in the Land Commission Court, without any expense to the person giving it, and undertook on receiving the Notice an evaluation of the holding either by myself or some person in whose judgement I had more confidence, and if the valuation so made should be less than the Rent, to reduce the rent. Accordingly and in every case in which I was unable to come to an arrangement I promised to meet --- on a fair and friendly spirit in the Land Court by whose decree I would loyally abide and I was ??? if anyone got his rent reduced in this way to allow the new rent in the gale which fell due on the 1st after last, and to return to him any money he had paid in excess of it. To any tenant whose rent is too high this offer must be more favourable than a small percentage abatement. To the person who is conscious that his rent is a fair one it has a different aspect and I am logically bound to regard as belonging to the latter class all who refuse to accept my terms. I also said that the non-payment of your rent at present would no doubt be productive of some inconvenience to Mrs Digby's family but it was such as could be got over altho' it was not the return I believe you owed to her in exchange for having never altered your rent fixed on a valuation made in 1850 - when land was less valuable than it has been ever since and I pointed out - what I now wish to impress on you - that the question has two sides - that it would be something more than a temporary inconvenience to the Tenant who, put out his farm before spring, had no means of planting a crop. I have nothing to add except to remind you that you owe a half-year's rent more than I am now prepared to accept b ut which must be paid before a settlement can be made - if the affair passes out of my hands. I have endeavoured to be Candid and plain spoken in this letter because I write as
Your sincere friend
Michael Flynn.

The following petition comes two weeks after the letter from Michael Flynn, and is signed by twenty tenants, both men and women.

To Mrs Kate DIgby Esq. Kilroosky & Corry
November 16th 1881

Dear Madam,
We the tennants on your Corry and Kilroosky or Drumdaff estate, Co. Roscommon, respectful beg to know what terms if any you are
disposed to come to us with in fixing a fair rent that we have been paying a rack rent for years past everyone acquainted with our
condition must admit most of us are without stock and have to struggle out our existence in a very short rope, we do not repudiate
rent but we ask for a fair rent, on these terms we are prepared to meet with you without going in to Court to have a fair rent fixed.
Requesting a reply on receipt we remain Dear Madam respectfully on behalf of all tenants.
f

Second page of the petition to Mary Digby from November 1881, signed by twenty tenants

Four years later on November 16, 1885, after having received a rent reduction, further hardship saw tenants asking for a 30 per cent reduction, the petition this time bearing signatures of thirty-two people.

We, the undersigned tenants of Drumdaff estate, join in petitioning you for a reduction of 30 per cent on the rent accruing due on
the 1st instant. Owing to the prevailing depression in the price of stock, and the proportionally low prices of all agricultural products,
we find it very difficult to meet even the reduced rent.

On the back is an affidavit written by the Rev. Pat O’Connor of Corry.

I have been, this evening asked to sign my name to this petition not as a tenant but as the P. P. of the District, and I do so believing
that the letter is respectful, and not unreasonable, owing to a very large depression at present, in the price of everything the farmer
has to dispose of.

Signatures of or for the thirty two tenants seeking a 30 per cent reduction in their rent in November, 1885

Two articles from the Roscommon Messenger of October 8th and 15th 1889, show the issue continued, with claims and counterclaims from both sides.

  DRUMDAFF SQUIBS
...The angel of landlord vengeance has been abroad. It appears the unfortunate tenants in the immediate neighbourhood of this
historic spot had the unaccountable misfortune to fall into the iron grip of the landlord by running into arrears by the amount of one
half year's rent. The Sword of Damocles which hangs over the heads of these tenants in the shape of a hanging gale has, aided by the
half year's rent, descended sharp and suddenly...now they must not only disburse to the landlord these two sums, but pay over to a
certain firm of attorneys...their pound of flesh weighed out.

    DRUMDAFF SQUIRES
Dear Sir, Under the above heading...appears a communication largely calculated to give a false impression...relative to the Kilroosky
tenants and their landlord. Anyone reading it would imagine that all the tenants on the estate were made the recipients of legal
notices whereas, the fact is, that only two or three struggling tenants have been noticed the gale due last May, and for which they got
time until now. (It) is not only unfair to the landlord who has never been known to quench the fire on a tenant's hearth, but grossly
insulting to all the tenants who always pay their debts without grumbling, not like ...fellows...who never discharge their liabilities
without the lash of the legal whip. I may add...the oldest inhabitant cannot point to a single eviction having occurred on this
estate...I am, Sir, Fair Play.

Surviving letters to Mary Digby show the issue of rent continued long after her mother Kate's death in 1892. In November 1899 tenants again called on their Parish Priest, B. J. Donellan, who wrote the following from The Presbytery, Kilroosky Roscommon.

    Miss Digby
Your tenants in the town of Clonagera & Kilroosky request to solicit your kind interference on their behalf with your agent Mr
Holmes who has refused to accept from them the usual gale of rent due by them - but insists that some of them viz - those whose
names are attached to the enclosed petition, paying also the hanging gale - always tolerated on your estate as also on many others
from time immemorial - I hope therefore to prevent trouble and of course expense that you will in the interest of peace & mutual
good feeling intervene on behalf of those who were always inclined to pay their debts &  maintain the same kindly & cordial
relations that always existed in the estate.
Hoping that you will kindly accede to the prayer of their petition - & trusting you are very well,
Yours faithfully & respfully
B J Donellan pp

Included in the above letter is this petition, signed by six tenants from Kilroosky, dated November 26 1899.

    To Miss Mary Digby
That we consider ourselves aggrieved at being pressed to pay what is commonly known as hanging
gale along with the current rent accruing due up to and ending Nov 1st.
That we feel it is owing to our having had judicial rents fined on our holdings that we are specially
selected for this harsh enactment on the part of your agent Mr Holmes
That we would respectfully refer you Madam to the friendly relations that existed between us in the
art of rent payers as a reason for your intervention now on our behalf. That unfortunately the present
crisis in farmers prospects is inopportune for harshness on the parts of the landlords who have their
duties as well as their rights.
That our offer of 1/2 years rent is not exceeded by other tenants on the adjoining estate & that to
presume the friendly relations above referred to it might be graciously accepted.
That we would in the present state of things respectfully ask of you worthy Madam only to exercise
your prerogative with Mr Holmes in the interests of Justice & humanity & we shall ever pray
We remain Madam
Your humble servant..

First page of letter from Fr. Donellan

Final page of petition with tenant signatures

Many of the names in these records from 1902 to 1904 are found on earlier petitions for reduction of rent.

Some of the rental records for Corroy townland for 1904 and 1906, showing rentals paid and owing. The first column shows Present Yearly Rents vary from 1 to 8 pounds; the second gives the dates for Orders for Judicial Rent; next is Arrears from last account to 1st May 1904; then Further rent accrued to 1st May 1906, followed by the total.

Rental records for 1906 show tenants continued to fall behind in their rental payments, but that these amounts were carried over, in this case for two years. Most of these names appear on earlier petitions, showing they continued on at Drumdaff despite their debts. Thomas Oats, for instance, was a signatory to the 1881 petition for rental reduction, and by 1904 was in arrears for four pounds ten shillings, with a further nine pounds due on 1st May 1906, making a total of thirteen pounds and ten shillings.

Continue...