Ballinlass incident
The term Ballinlass Incident refers to a police eviction operation on March 13, 1846 in County Galway during the Great Famine in Ireland (1845-1849).
Ireland was then part of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland , the land in Ireland belonged to large landowners (landlords). The Irish farmers tilled the land, grew grain and potatoes and raised cattle. Grain and cattle were used to pay rent to the large landowners. The farmers essentially only had potatoes for their own food. The tenants had little legal protection against the landowners.
This system was maintained when the potato blight destroyed the potato crop and caused famine . Grain and animal products were transported from Ireland under military guard. Farmers who could not pay the rent in this situation were driven from their homes and farms and lost all means of livelihood.
The approximately 300 inhabitants of the village of Ballinlass in County Galway were relatively wealthy by Irish standards at the time. They wanted to pay the (defaulted) rent for their land. Nevertheless, they were evicted because the landowner Marcella Gerrard, who owned the land, wanted to set up a cattle ranch there. She had refused payment. On March 13, 1846, the army and police evicted the people of Ballinlass and demolished the houses in the village. The displaced people spent the following night in the ruins of their homes. The next day the army and police came back to chase them away for good. The neighbors were forbidden to give them shelter.
The action was reprimanded by the government in London. The English newspapers criticized the eviction and questioned the Irish tenancy system. This event went down in history as the Ballinlass Incident . It was not an isolated incident; Tens of thousands were displaced in Ireland at the time, exacerbating hunger and misery.
literature
- Cecil Woodham-Smith: The Great Hunger. Ireland 1845-1849 . 1991, ISBN 0-14-014515-X , pp. 71-72 (English).
Web links
Coordinates: 53 ° 29 ′ 3 ″ N , 8 ° 20 ′ 25 ″ W.