Dunmanway Board of Guardians
IE CCCA/BG/83
7.
30 Dec 1848 – 13 Oct 1849
Includes:
6 Jan 1849 Report of committee to arrange additional accommodation, recommending that a house which could take 200 boys and a hall which could serve as a school room be taken. ‘The committee are apprehensive that even this additional accommodation will not suffice for the increased demand’, and recommend the building of wooden sheds, to serve as work rooms. 20 Jan 1849 Resolution regarding repayment of advances from the relief commissioners, asking that it be deferred while ‘the present crisis’ and expenditure on accommodation make early compliance impracticable. [See 10 Feb, explaining the impossibility of repaying loans under the Labour Rate Act to the Western Division of East Carbery (including this union and part of Skibbereen), owing to ‘the continued failure of the potato crop’. See also 24 Mar: ‘the mere fact of striking [a further rate] would cause half the farmers to desert their farms and the other half to dismiss the few labourers they at present employ’.] Remarks adopted in response to 11 propositions received from the PLC, regarding local taxation, rates, electoral divisions, and national funding. It is thought that t he cost of building workhouses ‘should be defrayed nationally as a trifling remuneration for the injury which Ireland as an agricultural country has sustained by a repeal of the Corn Laws’, but it is added ‘we deprecate any dependence on national sources for the support of the poor as such an arrangement would make the local boards reckless of expenditure’. 27 Jan 1849 Total inmates: 1640. Deaths: 23. The medical officer reports outbreaks of measles and dysentery, with ‘the great majority [of deaths] from dysentery among the class of persons very recently admitted’. [See 3 Mar, ( deaths: 45), when the guardians note ‘the mortality was principally amongst those who have recently come into the house in such an exhausted state as to render all food and medicine useless’ ]. 3 Mar 1849 Resolution regarding consumption of milk in the dietary, it being ‘impossible to procure a sufficient quantity until May’. Resolution stating, with regard to contributing towards an agricultural instructor, that it will be ‘useless’ to attempt such work ‘as long as we are threatened with a sixpenny rate (miscalled a national rate)’. [Struck on 2 Jun] 24 Mar 1849 Visiting committee report noting ‘some confusion from the failure of water’ [an ongoing problem]. Resolution regarding the difficulty of repaying ‘ration money’ [loans under the Labour Rate Act; see note on 20 Jan above], noting that the union could not afford to send 42 female paupers as emigrants to Australia if also required to make a loan repayment out of present funds. [Emigrants: see 8 Sep] 7 Apr 1849 Resolution, in reply to PLC letter, stating ‘it is the bounden duty of this board to discountenance all idea of administering [out- door] relief’. [See 28 Apr, referring to the ‘evils and imposition’ experienced in the past ,
Cork City and County Archives 2011
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