‘Blue Death’ in Nenagh

New series of articles from around the county in 2024 Tipperary Historical Journal

All too recent memories of covid stalk the pages of Danny Grace's account of the cholera outbreak of 1849 in Tipperary.

Following hard on the heels of the Great Famine, the disease was coined the ‘Blue Death’ due to the sickly blue-grey colour victims’ skin turned as a result of their blood vessels being starved of oxygen.

Mr Grace’s article is one of 20 from around the county that feature in the recently published Tipperary Historical Journal 2024. The Knigh historian looks at cholera's impact on the Nenagh Poor Law Union against the national backdrop and that of County Tipperary. Nenagh - the 17th largest poor law union in Ireland, with a total population of almost 90,000 - had many areas that served as breeding grounds for the disease. In the town itself, which in 1841 had a population of 8,618, places like Ballalley Lane, Chapel Lane, Whitewalls, the Commonage and “that depot of filth and iniquity” Spout Road were homes to poor people living in crowded insanitary conditions where cholera could thrive.

There was disagreement between the local authorities over who was responsible for dealing with the “dread scourge”. Outdoor relief men were tasked to clean the streets, but the men available were “decrepit, wretched creatures” barely capable of doing any work and the “dung heaps and green cesspools [were] still as numerous and as noisome as on all previous occasions”. The Nenagh Guardian maintained that there was not a town in Ireland “where such neglect is so painfully flagrant”.

The article takes a particular look at Burr’s former brewery (now Sheahan’s premises on Martyrs Road), which was rented at the time as an auxiliary workhouse to the one at Tyone. The greatest number of Nenagh’s cholera deaths occurred in this “sink of sickness and disease”, denounced by a priest as “nothing better than a slaughterhouse”.

The first reported case of cholera in the Nenagh Poor Law Union was a Mrs Kennedy of Kiltyrome near the village of Silvermines, who fell victim to the disease on March 14, 1849. The first cases in the town of Nenagh were reported a week later when two men – each described as a “travelling man” from Limerick – collapsed in the street.

The author describes how the town was “swarming with beggars and unfortunates”, most of whom had been evicted from their homes. An ‘Inhabitant’ of the town described the scene in Nenagh in March 1849: “Hordes of the most wretched creatures infest the public streets from morning till night, many of them keeping up an endless cry and lamentation and terrifying the nervous with their death-like appearance.” While exact statistics for the cholera outbreak of 1849 will never be known, it would appear that Nenagh had the highest number of cases (590) and deaths (351) in Tipperary. Remarkably, the cost of treating a cholera patient in the Nenagh union was the equivalent of around €86,000 in today’s values.

THE BENEVOLENT BARONESS

Another article that will fetch interest from North Tipp readers is Miriam Lamb’s account of Angela Burdett Coutts (1814 – 1906). Known as the richest heiress in England, Angela, of the Coutts bank family, was sister of Sophia Otway Cave, wife of Robert Otway Cave, MP for Tipperary and one of the Otway landlords of Templederry.

The anti-tithe Otways are remembered as “good landlords” and Sophia Otway Cave was, like her sister, a benefactor of charitable causes. She was well-regarded in North Tipperary for her contributions to various famine relief schemes and is immortalised by a plaque in Templederry parish church.

While there is no direct evidence that Angela visited Templederry, it is highly likely that she did, given the frequency of her visits to Ireland. In her article, Ms Lamb, a Dublin academic librarian with special interest in North Tipperary, outlines the close relationship between these philanthropic sisters.

THE NEW LINE ROAD

Seamus J King of Cashel contributes an article to this year’s Tipperary Historical Journal about the building of the New Line Road between Ballincor Cross on the R489 road connecting Birr and Portumna with Lorrha village. Despite a shortage of accessible information, the author presents the case for constructing the road at the end of the nineteenth century, its cost and the key players involved.

Among his sources was Pat Hough - “a mine of knowledge on the history of the parish” - and Paddy O'Meara, who recalled an account of how a great many local men were employed in breaking stones down to suitable size for construction of the new road.

TEMPLEMORE'S MIRACLE PRIEST

Another regular contributor to the series, Donal J O'Regan returns to Castleiney, Templemore, to study the enduring story of miracle-working priest Fr John Mackey. Born there around 1800, Fr Mackey served in many local parishes, was affected by famine fever, yet reportedly lived to the age of 91. He is renowned for visiting a farmhouse at Ballinalassa in search of a glass of water to quench his thirst. He was informed that there was no drinking water on hand and the nearest well was over a mile away. But Fr Mackey indicated a patch of ground for the man and wife of the house to dig; he then blessed the ground and “a miraculous spring of water gushed from the ground where no water had previously been known to exist”.

The recently renovated Fr John Mackey's Blessed Well has since become known as a place of healing and it has drawn people from far and wide in search of cures, particularly for eye difficulties.

FOUNDER OF NEWPORT CONVENT

Seeking to document the “true history” of the establishment of the Convent of Mercy in Newport, John Phayer also gives due recognition to Mary Anne O'Brien for her role in that endeavour. Mary (c 1860 - 1937) took the entirely unexpected decision to become a nun following the death of her husband in 1884. Sr Ignatius, as she became known, “laboured unselfishly for all those in her entrusted care” in establishing the Mercy Order in Newport in the early 1900s. The Limerick city native went on to become Mother Superior of the convent. Mr Phayer, who lives in Limerick, was inspired to tell her story through his interest in family history.

THE ‘EVILS OF DANCING’

The 2024 THJ concludes with ‘Orgies of dissipation: Dancing Around Tipperary in the 1930s’. Clonmel's Maria Luddy takes an insightful look at Catholic hierarchy concerns over the sexual immorality perceived to arise from dancing halls.

Dancing halls - and indeed the motor cars parked outside many of them - were regarded by the archbishops and bishops of Ireland as having “deplorably aggravated the ruin of virtue due to ordinary human weakness. They have brought many a good innocent girl into sin, shame and scandal, and her unwary feet on the road that leads to perdition.”

Parish priests objected to dances to be held at a hall in Borrisokane and ‘The Old School’ in Portroe, though their views sometimes met with resistance from local authorities, such as the Tipperary North Board of Health, one member of which noted that if young people in the country did not have their “amusements”, they would move to the cities in search of them. In her fascinating account of differing attitudes of the time, Ms Luddy, a professor of Modern Irish History, includes observations noted by local garda officers.

The sergeant in Roscrea, for example, had five years' experience of dealing with the Sean Ross home for unmarried mothers “but he has not met any case to date in which the parties concerned attributed their downfall to attending public dances”.

Supt CB Heron of Newport believed dance halls provided an outlet for “exuberant spirits”, and those most interested in their licences were the clergy. He had known parish priests who “concentrated on keeping country couples off the dark roads to succeed only in driving them into fields where they had not even the distraction of walking.”

The above is but a selection of the contents of the 2024 Tipperary Historical Journal. It - along with many previous editions - can be purchased online through www.tipperarystudies.ie and in local bookshops.