Search Results for 'Gerard Moran'

One of the reasons for the success of Mr Tuke’s Fund, which sponsored emigrants to America and Canada in the 1880s, was that as far as possible Tuke personally interviewed those wishing to go. He insisted that only families with at least one member capable of hard, physical work could participate. Proper clothes and money were provided to start their new life, and arrangements made in advance where they would stay and find work.

Although assisted emigration was frowned upon by some bishops and by the Land League leaders Michael Davitt and Charles S Parnell, there were some assisted schemes that were carefully planned, and in many cases worked well. The schemes that worked best were those which helped Irish families to avoid settlement in the great eastern cities of America where large numbers were caught in huge, stinking slums where it could take a generation or two to escape from.

JAMES HAKE Tuke, who initiated an assisted emigration scheme, known as the ‘Tuke Fund’, that supported nearly 10,000 people leaving the western seaboard for a better life in America and Canada, will be remembered in Galway at a special two-day event.

Week III

Week II

Apart from overcrowding and disease, the biggest problem in many of the workhouses was the behaviour of young women. The women, who perhaps had been brought there as children, were now adolescent, many of them unruly and wild. They tended to be the most troublesome, involved in fighting and, on occasions, rioting. Their behaviour resulted from boredom. While males could be employed breaking stones, or farm work, there were not enough jobs for females, and no effort made to educate them or train them in any skill. By June 1850 in the Mountbellew workhouse, Co Galway, females made up 60 per cent of the inmate population. Three hundred and eighty two were adult; while 199 were aged between nine and 15 years.

Emigration and the Galway County Diaspora will be the focus of a major conference to be held by Galway County Council next Thursday September 8 in Clarinbridge.