Tipperary Famine records digitised
All of the surviving workhouse records from the Great Famine period in County Tipperary have been published online thanks to an ambitious digitisation project.
Tipperary County Council Library Service has digitised more than 90 Poor Law union minute books from Borrisokane, Cashel, Clogheen, Clonmel, Nenagh, Roscrea, Thurles and Tipperary, dating from 1839 to 1852.
You can browse and download the records from the digital archive at tippstudiesdigital.ie/ exhibits/show/famine-records/famine-records.
The 1838 Irish Poor Law Act divided Ireland into Poor Law unions. Each union was responsible for running a local workhouse, which housed parish residents who were unable to support themselves.
The Great Famine took place from 1845 to 1852, and saw an estimated one million people in Ireland die from starvation and disease. The minute books record the efforts of the local boards of guardians to deal with the impact of the famine in Tipperary.
For example, the Cashel and Clonmel minute books, dating from February and April 1849 respectively, reveal details of the ‘Earl Grey’ assisted emigration scheme to send orphaned girls from Ireland’s workhouses to Australia, including a list of 28 girls who emigrated.
Dr John Crowley of University College Cork, one of the editors of the Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (Cork University Press, 2012), said: “The Poor Law unions and the workhouses are an integral part of the history of the Great Irish Famine. The surviving records in many instances provide the names of those who perished within their walls. Tipperary County Council Library Service is to be congratulated on this excellent digitisation project. Making such records available online for the first time will facilitate not only a much greater public engagement with the history of the Famine but will also prove to be an invaluable resource for researching and understanding its impact at local level.”
The library service is now digitising its other Poor Law union minute books. The collection contains 885 books in total dating up to 1924.