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During this time, she was visited by Irish scholars, folklore collectors and was recorded by the Irish Folklore Commission, Radio Éireann, and the BBC until her death in 1958. Peig Sayers, the noted storyteller from Dunquin & the Great Blasket Island was a patient in the 1950s. Nineteen of the survivors came ashore at Ballyoughtra, Ballyferriter and were admitted to St Elizabeth’s Hospital. In February 1941 the merchant vessel, The Nailsea Lass, was torpedoed 60 miles southwest of the Fastnet Rock. Analysis of Montreal Irish Famine victims bones gives sad insight into their health issues.Patients were now allowed their own clothes and bedsteads and mattress were ordered as “the Guardians did not understand the necessity.” Conditions are reported to have improved with a change in attitude evident in patients and visitors. Saucepans black from the fire were the only utensils they had, no knives or forks-each one kept his own saucepan, mug and spoon-but everything was dirty. At that time patients “slept on straw mattresses placed on planks, the bed clothes were soiled, and the attendants were dirty and careless.” The wards on the ground floor had only earthen floors and upstairs there were platforms 18 inches high.
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In 1889 four nuns from the St John’s Convent of Mercy, Tralee – Sr M Elizabeth, Sr Baptist, Sr Ursula and Sr Colman arrived in Dingle to work in the hospital part of the Dingle Workhouse. Kerry’s population drop is not evident in the census figures as emigration only accelerated here in the 1850s. The greatest falls in population in the Dingle Peninsula were in Ballyferriter ( -49.9%), Dunquin and the Blasket Islands (-48.2%) and Minard (-48.4%) followed by Kilquane (-43.3%), Kilmalkedar (-43%), Garfinny (-44%), Kinard (-43%) and Ventry (-42%). Ireland’s population fell by 20% and Kerry’s by 19% between 18. A group of twenty girls left Dingle Workhouse for Australia under the Earl Grey scheme. The Tralee Chronicle details a total of 674 people who left here via assisted emigration including one group of 116 who left on the Hurron from Blennerville on June 19, 1851. Most emigration during the famine in Ireland was voluntary. Sign up to IrishCentral's newsletter to stay up-to-date with everything Irish! Subscribe to IrishCentral Emigration The ratio of workhouse inmates to the general population gives an indication of the devastation of hunger and disease – the ratio was 1:7 in Dingle, 1:14 in Skibbereen and 1:200 in Ballymena, Co. At a time when Dingle was described as “one monster pauper asylum,” the total number in the main and auxiliary workhouses was 4,848-17.7% of the population of the peninsula. The first admissions were in August 1850 with 1281 inmates recorded by May 1851. It was proposed that it would have accommodation for 700 inmates. The workhouse building cost £6,850 with £1,380 for fittings. The Report of the Poor Law Commissioners for Ireland in 1839 stated that “the style of the building is intended to be of the cheapest description compatible with durability and effect is aimed at by harmony of proportion and simplicity of arrangement, all mere decoration being studiously excluded.” It was to be built to architect George Wilkinson’s standard plan. “No individual capable of exertion must ever be permitted to be idle in a workhouse” – the Poor Law Act of 1838.ĭingle Workhouse was one of 33 extra workhouses and the last one built in Kerry, opening in 1850.