This article is from page 14 of the 2013-02-26 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 14 JPG
KILRUSH’S designation as host town for the 2013 National Famine Commemoration will be kickstarted in a big way this Tuesday as the ‘Famine in Clare Exhibition’ is formally opened in the West Clare capital.
The exhibition will be staged at Kilrush branch library, where it will be on display from now until the National Famine Commemoration on Sunday, May 12, which will be the highpoint of week-long events in the town.
The exhibition concentrates upon the famine in Clare (1845/52) and explores each Poor Law Union, its electoral divisions and workhouses.
Reports are included from those such as English Poor Law Commissioners and Relieving Officers, the Board of Guardians and Poor Law Inspectors.
Lists of names of those who died in the Kilrush and Ennistymon Workhouses will be displayed.
“This is an important part of the commemoration of the event,” said Paddy Waldron of the local Kilrush Historical Society, which was the prime mover in bringing the commemoration to Clare for the first time.
“The week itself will be a week of lectures and tours leading up to a commemoration ceremony on Sunday afternoon.
“It will bring what happened in Kilrush to national attention again. It will bring people with a history in that period to Kilrush.
“It will enable us to put up permanent memorials to some of the more tragic events of the period. It will hopefully engender an interest in history in the people of West Clare,” he added.
Among the memorials that will be put in place will be one to the victims of the Poulnasherry ferry tragedy of 1849 when 41 people drowned.
“They were turned away from the workhouse and were going home to the west and drowned. There should be some permanent marker on the shore that a terrible tragedy occurred there,” revealed Mr Waldron.
“What really happened to Kilrush town was that the people who were evicted anywhere from Quilty to Loophead to Kildysart all headed for the workhouse in the town. The town was swelled with the poor and the starving and the original workhouse was built for 800 and they ended up opening a total of six auxiliary workhouses and they were all overcrowded.
“There were 19,000 living in workhouses during the Famine and well over a quarter of them were in Kilrush at one time,” he added.