Whether it was to defuse the call for Home Rule, or whether Chief Secretary Arthur J Balfour was genuinely moved at the shameful poverty that existed among the western counties of Ireland, his ‘walkabout’ among the people was generally very well received.
In the late autumn 1890, in often inclement weather, and with no police protection, he travelled through Donegal, Mayo, and entered Connemara from Achill Island, visiting Kylemore, Letterfrack, Costello, Carraroe, and Galway city. Along the way he was met by representatives of the churches, landed gentry, and members of the Poor Law Guardians. He visited cottages and spoke to the people, and concluded most evenings addressing a public meeting. It is unlikely anyone had ever met such a high-up representative of British rule, and equally unlikely that, in all the years of British government, an important member of its hierarchy actually met the peasant people. He was applauded and cheered, and made welcome along the way.
His reputation had gone before him. He had introduced a number of Land Acts where landlords were being bought out, and their land redistributed among their former tenants giving them what was long promised by the Land League, ‘fixity of tenure’. Within a short period of time some 200,000 former tenants quickly availed of this generous opportunity. Many more would follow.
He introduced the Congested Districts Board to build piers and harbours, to develop fishing and agricultural skills, to improve breeding stock, and develop forestry. He was now introducing new light-railways to open a new world of communication between remote communities with markets and cities.*
Balfour’s brother Gerald, who would also serve as chief secretary (1895 - 1900 ) later remarked, while on a trip to the west, that he ‘found a kind of hero worship of Arthur wherever a light railway has been made’.
People’s gift
Obviously pleased with his work in Ireland, Balfour returned to London leaving his reforms in the capable hands of his secretary George Wyndham. Balfour’s talents as a politician were clearly recognised: in 1902 he became prime minister.
His five year term as chief secretary of Ireland, was a whirlwind of activity and success. However,
while he was warmly regarded by the people of the west, he earned the nickname ‘Bloody Balfour’ for his strict enforcement of the law. In September 1887, three men were shot dead by police trying to control a large demonstration in Mitchelstown, east Cork. He showed little patience for rule breakers, or for Home Rule.
Yet a year after the Galway-Clifden line was opened Balfour was thanked by the people who would benefit from the railway. He was presented with an album of 50 photographs, showing scenes of Connemara landscapes and its people, taken by Belfast photographer Robert J Welch. It was paid for by subscription from the local landed gentry, and the boards of Poor Law Guardians of Leenane and Maam Valley, Letterfrack, Gorumna Island, Lettermullen Island, Clifden and Roundstone, Galway and Oughterard. The album remained in the Balfour family until 1987 when the then Earl of Balfour offered to sell it to the National Library of Ireland. It was felt that it more properly belonged to Galway, and it is now part of James Hardiman Library, NUIG.
Great engineering
Special Collections librarian Marie Boran tells us that the photographer R J Welch gave up the world of fashionable wedding and social event photography to concentrate on antiquities and nature. He is remembered as a man having ‘restless energy, boundless enthusiasm and an insatiable curiosity’.
‘The selection of his photographs in the Balfour Album are illustrative of the type of subjects Welch was particularly keen on depicting. Some were originally taken as part of a commission from the Midland and Great Western Railway Co as illustrations for their publications.’
Ms Boran writes that it is sad that the railway only lasted 40 years, opening in 1895 and closing 1935. ‘Were it still in existence it would surely count as one of the world’s great railway journeys, steering a course through that rugged mountain landscape so faithfully captured by the camera lens of RJ Welch in 1893. Instead, only some station buildings, bridges and the Balfour Album remain as witnesses to that great feat of late Victorian engineering’. **
Next week: The man who raced the Connemara train.
NOTES: *Balfour also sponsored railways in Donegal; and an extension to the Dublin-Westport line to Achill. The first section, Westport-Newport opened in February 1894. By August it had extended to Mulranny, and finally to Achill Sound in May 1895. These lines were also closed in the 1930s
** ‘A Galway Tribute to Arthur J Balfour’, by Marie Boran, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, Vol 54 2002.
Some people greatly benefited from the Connemara railway. My former neighbour and friend the late Tony O’Flaherty, the retired garda sergeant from Salthill , whose family business, B O’Flaherty, Grocers and Provision Merchants, Ardmore , Carna, sent lobsters and scallops directly from Recess station to the great Billingsgate fish market in London. The shellfish were packed on sawdust in wooden crates. They travelled from Recess to Galway, Galway to Dublin, crossed the Irish Sea to Holyhead, and immediately left for London before dawn the next morning. All fish arrived within 24 hours, fresh and alive. It would put DHL to the pin of its collar to equal that today.
Listen to Tom Kenny and Ronnie O'Gorman elaborating on topics they have covered in this week's paper and much more in this week's Old Galway Diary Podcast.
