Castlebar man published Famine 'Transactions'
reprint
21 May 1997
Castlebar born publisher Edmund Burke has just published a facsimile reprint of 'Transactions of the Society of Friends during the Famine in Ireland' which was officially launched by Minister for State Avril Doyle, chairperson of the government's Great Famine Commemoration Committee.
This important work, incorporated a new introduction and a comprehensive index which will ensure that Transactions will be an essential addition to any library or collection of material relating to Irish history.
The work of the Society of Friends (Quakers) during the Famine is well known and is considered to have been a very important element of voluntary relief operations during those difficult years.
It was also a pioneering effort in relief work which has reflections in the tasks undertaken in modern food crisis.
The publication of Transactions by the Society of Friends ion 1852 was another pioneering work, laying before the public a very detailed report of the operations and accounts of the Society's Central Relief Committee.
This extended to nearly 500 pages, including some 30 appendices and represented a range of material, including harrowing accounts of the misery encountered, explanations of the relief measures adopted, detailed accounts, including American contributions, and comment on possible changes to the political system to ensure that such a catastrophe did not happen again.
The present reprint is being launched to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the relief operations of the Quakers on November 13, 1846 at 6, Eustace Street, Dublin. The full text of the original volume, including the contents list and appendices, is included in this facsimile of the first edition.
One serious deficiency in the original Transactions has been corrected in the present reprint with the inclusion of a very comprehensive index, extending to nearly 50 pages and including about 5,000 entries.
A new introduction has been added, written by Joan Johnson and Rob Goodbody on behalf of the Friends' Historical Committee and this gives background information on the relief operations, while putting them in the context of the Society of Friends, past and present. There is also a forward by Minister Avril Doyle.
Speaking at the launch Mr. Burke, a native of Mountgordon, Castlebar said he defied any Irish person to read unmoved some of the detailed testimony contained in this volume of the reports of the envoys sent out by the Central relief Committee of the Society of Friends, and to find out for themselves what was really going on in remote country areas.
Mr. Burke said:
"To quote just one example, here is part of a report of Richard Webb, writing from Belmullet on May 13, 1847. It is just one the passage among many throughout Ireland that are equally terrible.
"At the time of my visit to Erris, there was no collection of houses by the roadside, no village scattered over the country, in which fever was not prevalent in some families, frequently leaving children fatherless and parents childless. In many cases whole families were swept away by starvation, or fever, or both.
"In one cabin I saw six children lying heads and points on their miserable beds on each side of the turf fire, while the farther and mother, wasted and emaciated, sat crouching over the members.
"In another cabin, I saw the father lying near the point of dead on one side of the fireplace; over the ashes sat a wretched little boy, wholly naked -- and on the opposite side of the hut, beneath a ragged quilt, lay the body of an old woman who had taken shelter there and died. As she belonged to nobody. There was nobody to bury her; and there have been many instances of bodies lying five or six days unburied..."
Mr. Burke said this was not a book one could reads with pleasure -- but it was a book that should be read by all of us whose ancestors were somehow able to survive those terrible years..
Transactions is available for £27.50. from:
Edmund Burke,
Publisher
'Cloonagashel'
27 Priory Drive
Blackrock
Co Dublin
Tel: + 353 (0) 1-2882159
