Food for the
Poor in 19th and Early 20th Century
Letter from James Mourne from Coolbanagher
In 19th
century
Another favourite
food of the masses was brawn, or collared pig’s head, which is still eaten in
some parts of the country today. Although traditionally made from pig’s heads
set in gelatine, it might also contain pieces of the feet, tongue or heart, and
was therefore a convenient way of preserving offal. In the early 20th
century, brawn could be bought from grocers such as that of George Ardill in Maryborough, whose 1911
advertisement in the Leinster Express also mentions
that they took butter and eggs in exchange for goods. Brawn was often served
with cabbage as a poorer substitute for bacon and cabbage. Tripe was also eaten
by the poor and was a popular remedy for excess of alcohol.
The Famine,
Soup Kitchens and Food Relief
By the mid-19th
century, the poorer Irish had increasingly come to rely on the potato as their
sole foodstuff. In pre-Famine
In the early
years, some lives were saved by the introduction of Indian maize (known as
Peel’s Brimstone) and by the establishment of soup kitchens (following the ‘Temporary
Relief Act/Soup Kitchen Act’ of 1847). The recommended daily ration to be doled
out by the soup kitchens was two pints of soup thickened with meal and 4 oz of
bread.
One of the soup
recipes used was created by Alexis Soyer, a celebrated
French chef from the London Reform Club, more used to handling truffles than
poor broth, who was invited to
On many Irish country
estates the practice of providing soup and bread for the poor was of older
tradition however. At Abbeyleix, for example, a bound
recipe book belonging to Viscountess de Vesci (dated 1839) contains recipes for ‘soup for poor
people’ which would have been served to labourers and the local poor. While these
recipes use beef, the household accounts show that poor veal (the head, sides
and feet) was often substituted instead. As beef was expensive, it was a rare
luxury for the poor, and was sometimes donated as a special treat. In 1863, for
example, as a Poor Law Guardian, the Earl of Portarlington recommended that the
impending wedding of the Prince of Wales should be celebrated by providing the
poor of the workhouses with a substantial dinner of beef and pudding. On the day
of the wedding, he treated his tenants, labourers and household to this hearty
meal. Another typical Victorian charity food was ‘poor man’s pie’, which consisted
of inferior meat cooked with dripping, tapioca, potatoes and onions. While this
food paled in comparison to what was eaten by the rich, such handouts were no
doubt gratefully received by the hungry poor of Victorian Ireland.
Letter
from James Mourne from Coolbanagher concerning
the Great Famine (dated 1849)
The following
extract comes from a letter from James Mourne of Coolbanagher to his daughter in
“..I got no tidings of you these
twelve months past, although you say you wrote three (letters)…I am happy to
inform you I got very good health…As you wish to know about the crops we had a
very good harvest. Wheat, oats and barley in general throughout the kingdom
(are) good but the prices of each are…almost impossible to pay…
I am sorry to inform you the potatoes
have failed again. We had a good sowing made but the one half of them in
general are black, and I fear will be useless…
Not hearing from you for so long left
us all quite in a melancholy state, fearing you were dead on account of hearing
of so much sickness and the papers mentioning so many deaths in America. Thank
God you are alive and well, and may you both long enjoy good health and
prosperity…
The prayer of your affectionate father”
(National Library of