Clifden Poor Law Union archive collection, Descriptive List, GPL3.pdf

Clifden Poor Law Union
population of the Union were in absolute want. The Grant to the Union under the Act was
entirely inadequate to meet the widespread distress existing and the poverty of the Union is so
great that it is simply impossible to pay the large balance due...’ (GPL3/73, p492).
In December 1893 the minutes record that the work on the railway was ‘virtually suspended,’
and had thus ‘...thrown out of employment the greater number of the people working thereon’
(GPL3/75, p250).
However, the railway finally opened in January 1895, and operated until its closure in 1935 10 .
Due to the distress in 1890-91 caused by yet another crop failure relief works were again
introduced. In 1890 Stephen Joyce, the Relieving Officer (RO) for the Renvyle district,
reported that many of the people in the district were in ‘…a most destitute condition and stand
in immediate need of relief, many of them have not a potato for the last month and some,
having found their crops not worth digging have decided to leave them in the ground. They
have been refused credit, a fact I have learned not alone from the statement of the parties
themselves, but from inquiry I made in the shops. Though distress is more intense and
widespread in Renvyle Division than in any other, equally extensive portions of my District
there are other isolated spots where a very unsatisfactory state of things prevails....’
(GPL3/69, p282d). The statement made by the RO was disputed as being „untrue‟ by the
Board of Guardians.
However, at its meeting of 4 th February 1891 the Board of Guardians (BG) expressed their
„…alarm at the large increase in number of persons in receipt of outdoor relief in the Union
and the still more increasing demand for it. Last week the number was 725, the amount £31,
this week the number was 694 the amount £32…‟. The Board applied to the Government for
assistance, advising that they could not afford to provide all the required relief. They advised
they would ‘…be obliged in future to refuse to sanction such provisional relief unless the LGB
come to the aid of the Guardians. This will involve the breaking up of the homes of many
families and becoming paupers in the workhouse and consequently a burthen for ever on the
Union. Like the Turbot Island families who abandoned their homes last week and came into
the workhouse…’ (GPL3/70, pp32j-k).
In April 1891 the Guardians advised the LGB that the Union was „indebted‟ in the sum of
£4,500, primarily due to the grants issue for seed, instigated by the Seed Supply Act of 1880,
10
Finance Committee Minute , „Clifden Railway Line: Submitted letter dated 11 April from the Department of Industry & Commerce
stating that train service will be discontinued as from the 29th April 1935' (GCCA, GC/3/6, 13 Apr 1935, p150). Also „Galway -Clifden
Railway: Co. Cooke proposed & Co. Ashe seconded that the County Surveyor of the Western Division and the County Secretary be
requested to accompany a deputation from the Galway Urban Council to the Gt. S. Rly Co. Dublin with a view to prevent the
removal of the Railway Bridge over the Corrib and the removal of the line with particular reference to that part of the line between
Galway and Menlo' (GCCA, Galway County Council, Financial Committee Minutes, GC/3/6, p195).
Cartlann Chomhairle Contae na Gaillimhe „…cuimhne dhoiciméadach Chontae na Gaillimhe a shealbhú, a chaomhnú agus a dhéanamh inrochtana’
Galway County Council - Archives „…to acquire, preserve and make accessible the documentary memory of county Galway’
xv.