From Townland to Township

Introduction

   Commenting, with apparent certainty, on the identity of Irish immigrants to the County Durham Township of Crook, in the North East of England, the Northern Catholic Calendar of 1859 considered them all to be, ‘good and simple people’ who ‘cling to the spot……...to which they came in the days of the famine’.[i] In bestowing this certain and stereotypical description on a large group of Irish as all, ‘good and simple’, the writer failed to reflect the element of individual complexity that surely must have existed within that cultural sub-group. Seeking out determinism where it does not really exist and reducing the individual intricacy of human nature and society into neatly packaged clusters is, however, part of our inherent and compelling need for certainty. In spite of this, complex societies like our own are not entirely characterized by social, economic and cultural sureness.

   As well as the biographical diversity of individuals, we need also to understand the intensifying complexity of social institutions and how they relate to individual actors.[ii] Perversely, there is a tendency towards empiricism and partial exclusion of complex, meaningful theoretical interpretation in some Irish studies writing.[iii] Indeed, not only is the latter surely correct, a total absence of theory is encountered in some of the texts.[iv] Where synthesis does exist in the writing, however, an analysis based deterministically upon the Newtonian two-valued logic of order/disorder is often found. In its simplest form, sub-sets of this logic ask us to understand the Irish as, ‘included or excluded’, ‘drunken or sober’, ‘violent or peaceful’, and so on. At best, we may be asked by the writer to consider the possible positions along these dichotomies of neat packaging. A more sophisticated definition, and one which resonates more accurately with the present study, is a characterization of determinism as, ‘the setting of limits’,[v] where social systems are reproduced cycle to cycle, but never in exactly the same form.[vi]  Although calls for a more complex understanding in Irish studies may exist in the work of some writers, it is not being explicated in the texts. In many Irish Famine studies determinism successfully reduces complex social systems into lower order components, usually of education, religion and class,[vii] economy,[viii] culture[ix] or a coalition of all these. Even the more subtle economic analyses - some redolent with Gramscian overtones and the promotion of the process of incorporation[x] - still ignore the alternative possibility that the social system within which the tragedy of famine took place in the 1800’s, was evolved chaotically through processes affecting not just a one dimensional society but a multi-layered one.[xi] This is precisely the non-linear option, which would provide us with an understanding of the complex nature of society and change. In missing this opportunity, writers merely reduce the cause of the famine to the certainty of the British State’s expediency at a time of crisis.

   In this essay I seek to show the inherent nature of society as complex and dissipative, rather than simple and static[xii] - an analysis underdeveloped in historical studies.[xiii] The chronology of the narrative used here covers three phases, which occur in three geographical case study areas at the ‘meso’ level. Firstly, the concept of ‘dense periodic points’[xiv] is used to show that, episodically, an element of social regularity is reflected in the social characteristics of these areas. Secondly, because these sub-systems have a sensitive dependence upon initial conditions, uncertainty and unpredictability occurs within them. To assist in demonstrating this point on the ‘micro’ level as well as the ‘macro’, I focus on the life histories of two Irish famine immigrants to County Durham and other social actors influencing change. The enormous variety of human types and nature, however, disqualifies any certainty about their individual diversity, thus, promoting indeterminism over determinism. Thirdly, the system finally becomes locally itinerant in that people move on to more complex and promising futures.[xv] Because the model takes this multi-layered view of society, I am also able to reveal how it can provide a perfectly acceptable way of relating the macro worldview to the micro. Importantly, the term ‘meso’ is introduced in order to show that the micro-macro distinction is not an either/or situation.[xvi] This effectively elevates the use of local history studies to a more central position in historiography. Ultimately, dissipative social systems analysis also provides the interdisciplinary benefits corresponding to calls from within the academic world.[xvii]  

Characteristics of Complex Dissipative Social Systems

   The principle that each level of society affects the other’s existence; that systems self-organize; and that small causes can have large effects, are fundamental to a theory of complexity. Here the concepts of, ‘spatially intersecting causal processes’[xviii] and ‘nested, multi-dimensional levels of space’[xix] assist our understanding. Accordingly, like a biological cell, the social equivalent of dissipative systems has the ability to reproduce itself into other structures that increase the complexity of the system. This process of evolution is a one that moves historically from chaos to order through a series of perturbations and fluctuations, finally arriving at a point of bifurcation from where the system evolves into a new structure. Four fundamental features of this process can be evinced from the texts.

   Firstly, complex dissipative social systems are fixed in nature and history. At the macro level, they consist of a large number of fundamental components, that is, the people who make up the entire system and the various institutions of which they are a part. Fixed in nature, they range from the ecological and technical structures mediating between society and the natural world at one end, to historically constituted cultural systems at the other. Thus, the grounding of human history is to be found in natural history. Accordingly, history becomes, ‘a series of chaotic cascades – irreversible symmetry-breaking events giving form to the narrative line of history itself’.[xx] We see here the possibility of two important concepts in the model – ‘sensitive dependence on initial conditions’ and ‘small non-linear causes producing disproportionately large effects’. Thus, contrastingly different, yet related, experiences of local studies can be emphasized to show differing characteristics of the initial conditions that affect the process of change.

   Secondly, the ontologically layered entities of complex dissipative social systems consist of hierarchies of distinct levels. These are loosely integrated into a self-organizing, systemic constellation engaged in exchanging both matter and energy with its immediate surroundings. In opposition to Newtonian mechanics, these systems are thermodynamically based. Unlike a bound-energy environment, which is locked up in the structure of matter itself, the immediate environment of a complex dissipative social system is an enriched free-energy one. Examples at the meso level would include the rich fossil-fuel environment of the North East of England and the inherently solar one that existed in rural Ireland in the 1840’s. The slow-renewable resources that characterize this energy have the powerful capacity to increase populations, or alternatively, limit them.[xxi] Such environments are dynamically structured and have in their historical development the capacity to increase the internal complexity of the system. In any theory of change, therefore, it is important to understand how these energy transfers affect the practical activities of social existence and culture.

   Thirdly, complex dissipative social systems are not static. Although they are capable of settlement by reducing social problems through such devices as improved employment and welfare mechanisms, they are primarily systems far-from-equilibrium and will erupt if the circumstances are favourable. Dissipatively structured social systems are, therefore, inherently itinerate entities that can separate the system and its elements during change - which seemingly occurs in disjunctive transformational leaps. These transformations are ‘chaotic’ rather than ‘conservative’ in nature:[xxii]

Chaotic dynamics can rapidly increase the differences between neighbourhoods, and hence, send one point spinning off in a trajectory that is quite remote from its original neighbourhood.[xxiii] 

   Fourthly, complex dissipative social systems fundamentally evolve within a structurally layered hierarchy wherein the behaviour of human elements are autonomous, reflexive and affect the system at multiple levels. The comparative influence of various social actors on system evolution and complexity can be demonstrated along differing levels of the social hierarchy. An example at the micro level would be Irish immigrant coke and coal workers in the North East of England in the late nineteenth century. At the same time, they were occupied in producing future outcomes in the steel industry, economically engaged in yielding profit for another, and sustained themselves and their families in a work and social environment demanding discipline and conformity. Consequently, each level of their activity was irreducibly linked to the whole.

Complex Spaces: Crook, Kilronan and Pomeroy

   Between 1841 and 1851, thousands of Irish emigrants came to England, Wales and Scotland, increasing the Irish-born population from 417,000 to 727,000.[xxiv] In County Durham, the increase was from 5407 to 18501 - from three and a half per cent to six per cent of the total population of the county.[xxv] By 1861, however, this chaotic process had stabilized sufficiently to allow the system to settle into a new social, economic and political trajectory. In Ireland, the chaos and social dissipation that resulted from the catastrophe responsible for these levels of immigration had caused an extraordinary discontinuity of culture. In some parts of rural Ireland this transformation included subsistence peasant farmers resisting emigration, increasing their land-holding and becoming better-off graziers, while thousands of their landless neighbours became immigrant wage-earning coal miners, coke workers and general labourers in the North East of England and other industry-rich areas of the world.

   Importantly for Irish migrants of the time, the mid-west County Durham Township of Crook and Billy Row had already experienced a change of great magnitude and was well into its evolution from an agricultural society to a vibrant industrial one. Here immigrants could eventually settle into a new order of social, economic and political certainty and promise. Prior to the nineteenth century, however, Crook had been little more than a hamlet situated in a predominately agricultural environment. The village and its surroundings was one very insignificant element in a much larger world system of layered entities. Unlike Irish society of the time, though, Crook’s potential to evolve lay in what was below the ground rather than its agrarian surface. Based upon its ecological characteristics, a powerful potential capacity for social and cultural evolution existed beneath the ground at Crook – coal. Not just any coal but some of the very best quality coking-coal in the world. A free-energy environment indeed. At a time of massive industrial expansion in the West, the production of steel was a crucial factor in the growth of state economies and the potential of Crook’s coal deposits were not overlooked by capitalist entrepreneurs. Like many other areas of County Durham, the free-energy environment of Crook had been associated with coalmining well before the Industrial Revolution began. In 1425, on the death of Ralph Neville, the first Earl of Westmoreland, we learn that his family were the owners of a considerable area of land at Crook and ‘…..a mine of coal in Wodyfal, of the total value of forty shillings’.[xxvi] By 1800, this coalmine had developed considerably - it was ten fathoms deep and employed six men with an annual output of 2600 tons.[xxvii] However, because of the under-developed transport system of the time, the coal produced at Crook was sold purely as ‘landsale’ coal. This was soon to change as the transport system improved allowing ‘seasale’ coal to be moved easily to the coast for shipping into a wider and more dynamic world market.

    In 1801, the population of Crook was a mere 193 persons - forty families, who lived in a state of social regularity in thirty-six houses scattered about the area. Thirty of the forty families were employed in an agricultural economy.[xxviii] This social stability hardly changed for the next thirty years and in 1831 the population of 200 was much the same as it had been.[xxix] In subsequent years, however, chaotic processes leading to uncertainty and unpredictability began to eclipse the old social regularity eventually leading to a massive increase in social complexity. Where there had previously been only a few houses, a small coal pit and a water mill, the town developed considerably between the years 1831 and 1841 and the population increased almost five times as fast as it had in the preceding two hundred years.[xxx] In 1846, the West Emma and West Lucy Pits were opened and, incredibly, by 1849 over 500 coke ovens were being operated.[xxxi] Another important development was in the transport system. By 1841, we learn that seventy labourers were working on a new railroad in the area.[xxxii] The township was by this time expanding rapidly in consequence of its free-energy environment. This was being facilitated not only by the extension and improvement of a pre-industrial transport system but by the development of machinery for mining and transporting coal.

   In the 1830’s, a significant advance had been made in the design of machinery used in the processes of both mining and transporting coal. Most noteworthy here was the moveable steam engine. Such innovations are attributable to individuals whose originality influences every aspect of the system and every human agent within it. Accordingly, we can ascribe much of the engineering genius of the time to the great technologist George Stephenson. He remained the chief advocate for the development of steam railway locomotives and, additionally, safety lamps to avoid explosions in coalmines. His moveable steam engine allowed coal to be transported from the inland areas of County Durham and replaced horse and manual labour in the ascent of the coal from coalface to surface, accelerating production and dispersal. As the demand for the production of Crook’s coal and coke increased, there was a consequent need for human resources to ensure its production. By 1851, in this comparatively small area, the population had reached 2764, of which 134 were of a nationality previously unseen in Crook’s history – the Irish.[xxxiii]

   In less than two decades, the Crook area had experienced a transformation, from the parochial simplicity of an agrarian culture to a dynamic industrial, multi-cultural complex one. For the peasant Irish immigrants to Crook, whose journey would have probably taken five days, this meant that old orders slipped into the past as new evolutionary ones developed. Concomitantly, as Crook had at an earlier moment, parts of 1840’s Ireland had experienced a progressive degradation of the system’s internal structure and with it the dislocation and eventual transformation of an older culture. A fragment of this transformation saw capitalist landowners in parts of rural Ireland move from tillage to ranching, while their subsistence farmer tenants, who had hung on to the land rather than emigrate, became better-off through increasing their land holdings and the production of livestock. In a multi-layered society, these processes in Ireland remain embedded in the history of Crook. Accordingly, it will be helpful to consider these historical developments briefly and in a little more detail.

   One important historic similarity we can make between areas of rural Ireland in the 1840’s was the nature of the community setting. This is exemplified in the land unit called the ‘townland’ - a small rural division of the parish of about 350 acres. In early twentieth century Ireland 60,462 townlands existed.[xxxiv] As a principal aspect of Irish community life of the time, people identified socially with this land unit more than any other, and townland family associations had lasted for centuries.[xxxv] Townlands geographically constitute the lowest set of spatially bounded communities within a wider multi-dimensional space. As in Crook, what happened in other parts of the world affected what happened in the townland, although this would not have been entirely obvious to the townland peasant community. In an interdisciplinary sense, and because the system was fixed in nature, at one and the same time we can view the townland as both a natural, ecological dissipative system and a social one – a ‘cultural ecology’[xxxvi], an ‘ecosocial system’.[xxxvii] Dissipative systems are not self-contained; for survival, people need to interact with their environment, receiving energy from it and disposing waste products into it. Like Crook, system energy in the townland was renewable and inherently solar, thus, the capacity to either increase the population or limit it existed. On Irish townlands people cultivated potatoes, boiled and ate them, lived on the stored energy generated from them, then returned ‘absolutely all’ waste products to the soil. Another general energy source in the townland resulted from the sheer ‘muscle power’ of its residents.

   In abundance in the Kilronan area of County Roscommon, in the Province of Connaught, stored solar energy in the form of peat was cut, dried and burned in the hearth.[xxxviii] While at Pomeroy, in County Tyrone, in the Province of Ulster, the bogs were used, ‘wholly as fuel’, a good deal of turf being taken to Dungannon and sold at about one shilling and two pence per cubic yard.[xxxix] The ash from burning turf, together with a combination of lime, dung and bog, was returned to often-poor soil. This was assisted in both Kilronan and Pomeroy by locally mined limestone. In Pomeroy a great deal of limestone was brought from the Parish of Desertcreat, procured at the quarry for two pence halfpenny a car-load and burned at home with turf, [xl] while in Kilronan the good road systems facilitated the distribution of lime to the hills, where it was most needed to improve the poorer soil.[xli] Additionally in Kilronan, and relatively rare in the natural resources of Ireland, was the mining of coal and ironstone in the mountainous Arigna area around Slieve-a-neeran - The Iron Mountains. Nevertheless, a limiting economic factor here was the quality of the coal, which was inferior to that in the North East of England.[xlii] Some coal was used in the making of iron in Kilronan but because of its poor quality, success was restricted. The consumption of these storages of solar and earth energy were to be implicated in the abandonment of the landscape by these agriculturalist townland people of the 1840’s.

   In every respect of a dissipative sub-system, townland people were interacting with their environment - part of a complex network of arrangements for survival. Between 1790 and 1841, the population of Ireland increased by about three million to 8,175,124.[xliii] These were mainly Gaelic speaking Catholics, the poorer townland people not really engaged to any extent in a cash economy, and dependant upon subsistence farming to survive. Although, however, the townland represented a kind of cultural regularity, this is inconsistent with the notion of Ireland as a socially, culturally and economically monolithic nation. Much dissimilarity occurred within the cultural set. This point can be illustrated in both the diverse historical processes between two geographical areas of Ireland, and the differing personal characteristics of John McManus and Francis Harvey who originated from them.

   In 1838 my great grandfather, John McManus, was born into a peasant Gaelic culture in the Townland of Keadue in the Parish of Kilronan. Situated in the furthest north-easterly point of the county, the parish of Kilronan is part of a larger area of impressive natural beauty where the lanes are hedged with honeysuckle, blackthorn and fuchsia and the Arigna mountains host the meeting of the three counties of Roscommon, Leitrim and Sligo. We are told that in the eighteenth century Connaught was regarded as the most Catholic segment of Ireland and the few travellers who crossed the Shannon into it had the sensation of entering another world.[xliv] Historically associated with the domicile of a fervent anti-English populace, Oliver Cromwell’s cry, ‘To hell or Connaught’, well reflects the history of this province ‘beyond the pale’. Cromwell’s cry was used as a call to that population of Ireland who rebelled against his destruction of the old Gaelic system. Within a policy of divide and rule, the alternatives given to these people were death or exclusion from the pale. In 1585, the English, who had long regarded Connaught as a remote and lawless area where independent Gaelic chieftains badly needed to be brought to heel, began to introduce measures designed to annihilate the old Gaelic Brehon Law.

   One Gaelic practice attacked by these measures was Gavelkind - the sub-dividing of land among family on the death of the freeholder. This ancient Irish practice created insecurity of tenure and over time the acreage of land-holdings became insignificant, making it increasingly impossible for the poorer residents to grow sufficient crops for survival. The attempt to break the hold of the Brehon Law was, however, unsuccessful in County Roscommon, for sub-division of land was still taking place in the 1840’s - although by now under a quite different arrangement known as ‘conacre’. It was the minority in Kilronan who were able to rent land from the local landlord, Edward Tenison. Out of a total population of about 7,000 in the parish in 1838 a mere 415 persons were lawfully shown as landholders.[xlv] As in an earlier period, these 415 tenants usually sub-divided their land to kin. These sub-tenants were the majority population of landless labourers and their families.

   Over time, it can be seen that pastureland in Ireland became more important. From 1735, only tillage land had been titheable but in 1823, a provision was made that pasture should also be made subject to tithe.[xlvi] By 1847, four in every five persons living in County Roscommon were subsisting on the land through conacre.[xlvii] In such a system, personal conformity to general hegemonic standards was a requirement for survival. By this period the population of Ireland had increased to eight million and the shortage of land on which to produce subsistence crops, together with the incredible population increase of the landless labouring class, was an important factor in the social, political and economic chaos which pervaded 1840’s Roscommon.[xlviii]

   One hundred and twenty miles north east of County Roscommon, tenancy was also insecure in County Tyrone where it was a common practice of landlords seeking election to political positions to give short leases to elderly tenants. This ensured a vote for the landlord while at the same time subjugating the tenants.[xlix] During the 1800’s, most smallholders in Tyrone had to supplement their incomes through the cottage industries of spinning and linen weaving,[l] an industry already then in serious decline, whereas in Kilronan the women in the parish did no spinning.[li] In nineteenth century Roscommon, land was at a premium as agrarian capitalism, in the form of a move from tillage to ‘ranching,’ rapidly developed. The intricate system of sub-letting of land between tenants and landless labourer’s families aggravated this situation. To facilitate development, the clearance of hundreds of cottiers from the land was undertaken by many Roscommon landowners. In 1848 for instance, James Kirkwood, a landowner in the neighbourhood of Kilronan, carried out clearances by removing tenants, their houses and the dividing walls of the fields from which they had eked out their survival. A witness of 1848 recalled how house roofs and walls were tumbled and tenants were evicted into severe winter weather.[lii] As an influential actor in the system, Kirkwood’s actions were clearly calculated to break the cultural status quo tradition of tillage farming and land division. 

   As Poor Law Guardians, with influence in all aspects of social life, the creative power of Kirkwood and other landowners extended beyond land ownership. Their primarily inspiration in respect of the financial advantage of grazing over tillage was transmitted through the boundary spanning, communicative characteristics of the market. Such an information network is a crucial element of dissipative social structures because, ‘it is communicated through values which store energy in cultural structures and catalyse action’.[liii] By 1851, the catastrophic effects can be observed in the housing situation in Ireland. While increases in the three larger type houses were recorded, a massive decrease for the poorest is shown. 355,689 or seventy two per cent of the poorest houses disappeared, which, allowing six persons per house, represents the homes of over two million people. The actions of many landowners resulted in perturbations, which broke the cultural symmetry of the landless class and resulted in a bifurcation that had its trajectory in developing industrial areas throughout the world.

   In addition to these severe problems of subsistence in Kilronan, there were reports of starvation and death in the parish due to potato rot, disease and an under-response by the authorities to catastrophic conditions. In contrast, however, the residents of Pomeroy had little dependence on grazing and the poor farmers there tilled the land for subsistence, not profit. No land was sub-let and cottiers were usually given as much as they could manure for growing potatoes.[liv] Today, it is still a traditional boast of parishioners that not one person in that parish died of starvation during the famine period.[lv] In contrast to Kilronan in 1841, we are able to see less dependence on farming in Pomeroy and a greater dependence on the manufacturing trades, predominantly in the manufacture of linen. 461 families were employed in manufacturing in Pomeroy in contrast to 181 in Kilronan.[lvi]

   Hegemonic cultures beget subcultural bases of resistance, thus, the violent coercion ingrained in the culture of rural Ireland for centuries began to increase alongside the perceived injustice of the period. Secret societies, such as the Molly Maguires and the Whiteboys were brought together in defence of the poor. Generally, the poor supported these secret societies and saw them as critical to their survival.[lvii] At a time of great internal change, this political cause by secret societies was another reason serving to strengthen the resolve of the landowners, who were the main targets of these attacks. Hence, the demise of subsistence farming was accelerated. Between 1800 and the time of the famine, thirty-five coercion acts were ratified or amended to suppress conspiracy and collective action in rural areas.[lviii] Abstracts of police reports of some of the 237 principal outrages in County Roscommon during 1845 provide a good insight into the terror and violence which pervaded the county.[lix] Several Roscommon landlords were murdered. Over subsequent years the criminal justice system became under great strain. By January 1848 it was reported there were forty persons in Roscommon gaol charged with murder and Whiteboy offences.[lx] Although not precluded from the experience of violent coercion, such levels of violence were not experienced in County Tyrone. From the wider state perspective of the system, the resolving of the problems created by secret societies was reflected in a strong conviction of the British Government: the land system in Ireland would need to be reformed before peace and tranquillity returned.[lxi]

   Although the total populations of Kilronan and Pomeroy were almost identical, in 1841 there were contrasting differences between the extent and quality of education provided to the inhabitants of these two parishes. Four per cent more children attended school in Tyrone than Roscommon and whereas 1448 of the total population of Pomeroy could read and write, the number in Kilronan was 814 - twenty per cent less than Tyrone. Based on this, it is likely that Francis Harvey’s early education in Ireland was far more comprehensive than that of John McManus. The National School system was introduced into Ireland in 1831 for the combined attendance of children from all denominations for moral and literary instruction. Shame and subservience were powerful lessons learned by the first generation of children attending these schools. The prominence of Political Economy in the National School curriculum may have influenced Francis’ subsequent strong views on intemperance and improvidence. This can be illustrated in the school lesson that, ‘those who do nothing but drink and dance and sing in the Summer must expect to starve in the winter’[lxii] - a Protestant Ethic likely to have been more inherent in the administration of Ulster than Connaught. Between 1841 to 1851, it is worth noting the comparative effects of population decrease between these two parishes. The apparent social advantages existing in Pomeroy over those in Kilronan are likely to have influenced the comparative level of population change. Whereas the rural portion of Kilronan suffered a decrease in population of 2764, Pomeroy experienced the much smaller decrease of 1503. During this period, however, Crook’s population increased by an incredible 2226 - a 400.6 per cent increase overall. Those who were given the opportunity to emigrate took it, and in doing so acted creatively, becoming truly free from what had gone before. Their creativity became part of the system’s discontinuity and produced for them a future very distinguishable from their past. The order experienced by poor immigrants in their new industrial locations included many social improvements including the certainty of employment and income.

   Many of those who stayed behind also improved their circumstances. In the Townland of Keadue four landholders with the name McManus existed in the 1830’s.[lxiii] Each held between two and four acres of both arable and pastureland. It is likely these were close relations of my family and to whom they sub-let a small portion of their land. By1855 four McManus landholders still existed as tenants on the Keadue Townland, but by this time, their land-holding area had increased to fifty-one acres. As early as 1850 land records significantly showed many tenants as ‘herdsmen’ in this area of Roscommon.[lxiv] These ‘herdsmen’ had improved their financial status as well as increasing their property and emerged newly defined from constraints, which had historically sustained the structure ‘far from equilibrium’.[lxv] While this change was made possible by a land market created by the Famine, it also depended upon the conjunction of other conditions. These included, the availability of money capital and entrepre­neurship, a pool of expertise in stock rising, and the prospects of profit­able returns because of good price margins between cattle of different ages.[lxvi]

   Up to this point, the study has introduced only some examples of causation during this period of catastrophic change. There are, of course, many more examples of system stress, which could be considered. For instance, Byrne alludes to the, ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ as the failure of the potato crop and the failure of the British Government to take enough effective action to lessen the tragic consequences for the people.[lxvii] We are reminded, therefore, that complex emergent properties only arise through the interactive effects of all these variable perturbations and not just the ones focused upon in this study.

Transformation and Stability

   In 1848, at the age of ten, John McManus and Francis Harvey immigrated to England under very different domestic circumstances. John’s parents had not survived the famine, so he was accompanied by others. It is likely that this dispossessed John in many ways and was a drawback to his personal progress. By the mid 1860’s, he had married another emigrant from North Roscommon and they settled in Crook, where they brought up eleven children. John died at Crook at the age of eighty-four, having spent all his working life as a coke drawer in the township. His work kit was hardly sophisticated - a long handled rake used to remove the coke from the ovens. This was the hottest and dirtiest job in the process of manufacturing coke. In 1848, also at the age of ten, Francis Harvey arrived in England from Tyrone with his parents. Francis subsequently spent all his working life as a coalminer in the pits of County Durham – a relatively esteemed job for the first generation Irish of the time. In 1861, he was living in County Durham with his wife and three children at Thornley, but after the death of his wife, he moved to the west of Durham where he remarried and settled in the Crook area. Apart from favoured geographical advantages in Ireland, Francis Harvey appears to have had personal characteristics not seen in John McManus - he was a social, economic, moral and religious progressive. Within the new boundaries of the increased complex and industrial structure into which Francis’ and John’s families had emigrated, society was able to discriminate between the rich diversity of new individual aptitudes which John and Francis, and others like them, had brought to the area.

  In 1851 the developed Township of Crook and Billy Row, consisted of the town of Crook and several rows of colliery houses together with the areas of Sunniside, Stanley and Billy Row.[lxviii] In total at this time there were 134 Irish-born persons recorded - 101 males and thirty-three females. There were 108 employed Irish-born persons – ninety-nine males and nine females. Children under fourteen, married women at home and the elderly accounted for the l26 Irish-born persons shown as dependant non-wage earners. The youngest persons employed were boys of twelve years, often referred to as, ‘pit boys’, who looked after equipment on the surface. Not one Irish-born male over fourteen years was unemployed, while no Irish-born person over the age of sixty was employed. With the exception of one farm labourer, the Irish-born males were employed either in the coal or coke industry. Apart from one dressmaker, the employed Irish-born females worked as domestic servants. Young, Irish-born men were the dominant grouping. The Irish workers in the coke industry outnumbered the Irish in other work. The Irish coke workers were, at forty-eight, the largest single national group amongst the 129 coke workers and were considered as the most socially disadvantaged workmen in the town.[lxix] Twenty-four coalminers were Irish-born, however, and this may signify a relatively high level of access by the Irish to this higher status occupation.

   The colliery owners provided a house free of rent to the employed head of household.[lxx] Of the ninety-nine employed Irishmen, two thirds were single and three-quarters were lodgers or visitors. The high volume of young, single Irishmen, meant many were lodging in the homes of settled families. A good proportion of lodgers were with Irish families but twenty English householders also had Irish lodgers. It is apparent that the provision of accommodation for single men was inadequate; yet, the labour-power of single men was obviously of great value to the employers. Consequently, colliery owners must have ignored the practice of their employees taking in lodgers. Migratory workers, shifting about from colliery to colliery as wages fluctuated, took lodgings for various lengths of time and in 1853 it was reported that workers were living, ‘two in a bed usually, and six, eight, or ten to a room. Some of the rooms were under six feet high and no more than five yards square, and with but one small window’.[lxxi] By 1861 the number of Irish-born had increased to 517, of whom 318 were males and 199 females.[lxxii] Amongst the males, there were now 128 coalminers and 127 coke workers. Unlike a decade earlier, occupations amongst the Irish now included a cabinetmaker, a blacksmith, a bricklayer, several brickyard workers, a Moravian Minister and a rag gatherer. It appears, however, that the situation of employed Irish-born females had not improved - their numbers and occupations were identical to what they had been in 1851.  A comparative view of employment by age of the Irish workers in 1851 and 1861 shows that between fifty and sixty per cent of those employed were aged between twenty-one and thirty years.

   In the many, small, dispersed, Irish coal mining communities that existed in the west of Durham, young unmarried working men greatly outnumbered their female counterparts. At Crook, the marital status of Irish-born in 1851 and 1861 is striking in the contrast between eighty per cent unmarried males to twenty per cent unmarried females. The largest age group amongst the unmarried males was between eighteen and thirty years. The perpetuation of traditional Irish culture and religion would have required constant social interaction between these dispersed communities. If we make the assumption that the majority of Irish-born were Catholics then, at a time when the Catholic Irish were not commonly intermarrying with non-Catholics, it is interesting to consider the recreation pattern of this ‘socially’ active age group. The early registers of the nearby St. Wilfred’s Catholic Church at Bishop Auckland provide much evidence of variation in the topographical origins between Irish bride and groom. Opportunities for ‘soirees’, where male and female Irish Catholics came together, were provided by parish organizations such as the Catholic Young Men’s Society.[lxxiii] Through such societies, one of the Catholic Church’s objectives was to provide venues for social evenings as alternatives to licensed premises. Here young Irish Catholics could come together and enjoy themselves. As they totally outnumbered their female counterparts, the Irish Catholic men of Crook would have taken advantage of such opportunities.

 Indeterminacy and Welfare

   Within the multi-dimensional state space, the bounded sub-system of Crook had become an attractor region into which desperate Irish immigrants flowed from the places they had previously occupied. However, domains of uncertainty continually threatened. This state of indeterminacy[lxxiv] required incessant boundary-spanning in order to combat the potential demise of the system. Accordingly, the relative stability experienced in 1860’s Crook was constantly under threat from social, economic and political fracturing. Boundary-spanning was taking place throughout the hierarchy of development and the sub-system of Crook constantly moved back and forth from a position of stasis to a one close to equilibrium, finally repositioning itself within a configuration in which departures from equilibrium were ‘constrained within limits’.[lxxv] This state of indeterminacy was evident in the constant need for the provision of welfare - social, economic, moral religious and cultural. Two of the most important institutions that assisted with welfare were the Poor Law Unions and the English Catholic Church.

   Although there was full employment in industrial areas such as Crook, there was still a welfare requirement for those temporarily sick or out of work and, critically, those who were not able to support themselves whatsoever. With the latter group, who usually required permanent accommodation in the workhouses, the financial impact on the Poor Law system was great. One difficulty concerning the provision of poor relief for Irish immigrants to Britain in the early years was that they did not have a legal right to the status of ‘settlement’ in the area in which they made claim. After 1846 this status was achieved by residing in the parish for five years continuously, after which time they were classed as ‘irremovable poor’. If these categories of residence and time did not apply, then those claiming relief of more than a temporary nature could be physically removed to the parish in which they had legal settlement. Accordingly, newly arrived Irish immigrants to Britain in the middle and late 1800’s had no legal right to claim long-term poor relief. In 1861, the residential qualification for settlement was reduced from five years to three, and in 1865 the period was again reduced to one year, making many more immigrants eligible for relief.

   Some Poor Law Unions were unsympathetic towards the Irish and often returned them to their legal domicile in Ireland. This was a costly process for the Unions, and for those removed a physically arduous one.[lxxvi] As large numbers of destitute famine refugees arrived, individual Poor Law Unions were faced with protecting local ratepayers from the consequences of Irish poverty. In the port of Liverpool, poor law provision was obviously under severe strain [lxxvii] and the threat of removal was successful there and also in Glasgow and Newport. Expenditure on destitute Irish fell dramatically in these and other places after removal legislation was evoked between 1847 and 1848.[lxxviii] The newly arrived ‘unsettled’ Irish had the precarious alternative of applying for relief, thereby officially identifying themselves for consideration by the Board of Guardians for removal, or struggling on painfully without relief.

   If we consider early Poor Law records in County Durham, there is no obvious prevalence of Irish claimants and no mention whatsoever of matters concerning the Irish community.[lxxix] Crook and Billy Row Township was part of the Auckland Poor Law Union, the earliest records of which exist from 1863.[lxxx] The cost of maintaining the poor law in this union was of serious concern to the Guardians of the time. The total annual cost for all townships in the union was £2956.8s.9d., the second highest individual amount resting with the Township of Crook and Billy Row.[lxxxi] It would appear that the Auckland Guardians had no intention of allowing ‘unproductive’ Irish to benefit from the poor law account, for, if we equate ‘Catholic’ with ‘Irish’ in the minds of the Guardians, there is some evidence to show discrimination. Anti-Catholic feeling certainly did exist. In 1863, for instance, a letter from Charles Bird of the Protestant Alliance in respect of a bill, then before Parliament, for the appointment of Catholic priests as chaplains to prisons was presented to the Board. In support of the Protestant Alliance, two Guardians spoke for a petition against the bill and the board resolved that they send a petition to both Houses of Parliament against it.[lxxxii] A proposal for an amendment, that, ‘the petition be signed by individual members of the board’ was, however, lost. [lxxxiii]

   Although the absence of early Auckland Union records does not assist in identifying the numbers of Irish returned to Ireland before 1862, the records after that date are more helpful. On the same day that the Guardians showed support for an amendment to the Irish Poor Removal Bill, they enquired into the cases of Irish paupers who might be removed back home. The cases considered related to John and Thomas Quinn, Catherine Daignan, John Boyle, John, Thomas, Sarah and James McCaul, Cornelius Allon, Margaret Nolan or Fenwick and her three children, and James and Timothy Gorman, Patrick Flynn and Bernard Hoy. Although the reasoning behind the Guardians’ decision was not given, they considered it was not advisable to remove these unfortunate individuals at that time.[lxxxiv] Other candidates for removal were sought, however, and in the following month the Guardians were considering another potential removal case, that of the ill-fated children from the Eustace family. The Eustace children, Susannah, Margaret, and Daniel, all under twelve years of age, were resident in the workhouse, as one of the parents was dead and the other had deserted them. The cost of looking after the children was charged to the Common Fund for two weeks in order to get the clerk’s opinion on the case.[lxxxv] Later that month at least one of the Guardians felt the need for action in another Irish case. Mr. Kellett gave notice that on the next Board Day he would move that the case of Catherine Daignan be considered with the intention of, ‘removing her to Ireland, or to her husband in America’.[lxxxvi] At a later meeting the board resolved that Catherine Daignan of Crook, Bridget Griffin of North Bedburn, together with her five children and Sarah Toole of Crook, all be removed to Ireland.[lxxxvii] Subsequently, the Relieving Officer for Crook presented an account to the Board of £1.4s.0d. for his expenses in obtaining orders of removal for ‘….six Irish Paupers’.[lxxxviii]

   Early in 1864, the fate of the Eustace children, still residing in the workhouse at the ratepayer’s expense, was finally decided. Together with other Irish residents of the workhouse, Bridget Barnhill, Mary Collins and her five children and Alice Middleton, a widow and her children, they were removed to Ireland.[lxxxix] In contrast to the financial savings made through the removal of paupers, the minutes show that at a later date the resident boys’ band of the workhouse was provided with new brass musical instruments at a cost of £25.0s.0d., together with the tutorship of a music instructor who was to be paid an annual salary of £13.0s.0d. On the same page of the minute book, the removal of a second Eustace family to Ireland from Bishop Auckland is recorded - James, his wife and six children.[xc] These removals were followed by others in 1865 - Jane Stafford, Bridget Heapby, John Murphy and his family[xci] and Elizabeth Kennedy.[xcii] An additional order, for the return to Ireland of Patrick Collins and his dependants, was postponed after he produced a medical certificate showing he was suffering from lameness and debility, which totally prevented him from supporting his family.[xciii] Nevertheless, the Guardians sought tenders for provision for the family’s return to Ireland.[xciv] The submission of Patrick Collins’ medical certificate was followed by other certificates from his three children, suffering from fever at a time when many cases of typhus were being reported to the authorities.[xcv]

   During the year 1866, the Auckland Board of Guardians continued to pursue their policy of removing Irish paupers to Ireland, the first being William Cullen.[xcvi] Between 1863 and 1866, eight Scottish persons - Thomas Coulthard, his wife and five children and William Chambers, were removed. There is, however, no mention in the minutes of English or Welsh persons being removed.[xcvii] These rejected individuals comprised mainly of economically dispossessed women unable to support themselves and their families. The situation in which these individuals found themselves was similar to that which they would have experienced in the Irish Poor Law system. In the increased industrial complexity of West Durham, however, there was less sympathy for the unproductive. Here the dual problem of being Catholic, Irish and unemployable in a work-ethic-rich community guaranteed exclusion from it.

   Between the fifth of February and the twenty-fourth of December 1863, 475 medical certificates were produced to the Board of Guardians of Auckland Union by individuals claiming outdoor relief. Of these, sixty-nine were from persons having surnames of Irish origin. Thirty-three of these Irish claimants resided in the district of Crook, twenty-three in the district of Bishop Auckland and thirteen were from other locations in the Union.[xcviii] Examples from the minutes show a variety of ailments - tuberculosis, rheumatism, fever, and debility caused by, ‘hard work’. The relief of ‘meat’ was usually prescribed.

   The impact of Irish emigration on the volume of Catholic parishioners in Nineteenth Century England was phenomenal. In the North East of England, of the 100,000 Catholics estimated to be in County Durham and Newcastle in 1882 three quarters were Irish, or of Irish descent.[xcix] Earlier in the century the English Catholic Church anticipated increased work-loads for its priests as thousands of poor Irish emigrated to improve their social and economic situations. For the most part, the Catholic Church played its part compassionately in assisting the welfare of these immigrants. By the late 1840’s, Irish immigration to Crook was beginning to be noticed by the Catholic Church. Accordingly, Father Thomas Wilkinson, the parish priest, anticipating an increase in parishioners, ‘settled down in the winter of 1848 to open a mission and to evangelise the neighbouring hills and dales’.[c] Before the influx of Irish to Crook, only four Catholic families were dwelling in the village. The Catholic children went to school at Wolsingham, where Father Wilkinson had converted a house into a school and a chapel.[ci] These were hardly substantial arrangements for saving the great numbers of Irish souls who began arriving in the area. Therefore, by 1851 the Reverend Wilkinson had persuaded his wealthy father to give him a plot of land at the top of Dowfold Hill. A presbytery, church and school were built to provide a spiritual and educational base for the new rapidly developing Catholic community.[cii] On Wednesday, 25^th. October, 1854 the solemn dedication of the newly built Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady Immaculate and St. Cuthbert was performed by the Bishop of Hexham. The existence in Crook of a place of worship and Catholic education for Irish Catholics was an important attracter to the town. There is estimated to be a ten-year gap between the arrival of a substantial number of immigrants and their impact on parish statistics,[ciii] and over the next two decades the number of Irish parishioners at Crook increased rapidly. By 1870, the population of the mission was around 2,000; incredibly, only about 300 of them were English.[civ] It was said that they were, ‘good and simple people who cling to the spot…..….to which they came in the days of the famine’.[cv]

   The moral, religious and social welfare attractors provided by the Catholic Church included sickness and burial funds, saving schemes and building societies,[cvi] and, importantly, membership of The Catholic Young Men’s Society. The cultural upheaval that began in late 1840’s Ireland increasingly threatened religion and morality. Increasing numbers of public houses and brothels, together with illegal working class leisure pursuits, such as street betting, brought spirited pleas from the church for, ‘the formation of new soc­ieties in the larger towns and cities where innocent amusements were few and the demoralization of drink was ubiquitous’.[cvii] The Catholic Young Men’s Society had been founded about 1848 to combat this corrupting tendency, which had developed alongside industrial capitalism. Accordingly, as well as opening reading rooms and lending libraries for parishioners who were prepared to pay subscriptions, branches of the society sponsored concerts, theatre performances and public lectures on subjects like ‘temperance’.

   A branch of The Catholic Young Men’s Society, dedicated to St. Joseph, was in existence at Crook and Billy Row during the 1880’s.[cviii] The objects of the society were the intellectual and moral improvement of young men and the regular practice of their religion. The society particularly encouraged members to frequent the sacraments of Confession and Communion, seek out mutual improvement, and, ‘the extension of the spirit of religion and brotherly love’, which would be achieved through attention to religious practice, public lectures, private classes, a library and a reading room.[cix] The Society at Crook had a membership of eighty-two young men and boys[cx] who paid a quarterly subscription of one shilling and assembled weekly in the playroom of the school. We learn from the minutes of meetings that the club provided entertainment, often poetry readings, where non-members could be admitted for one penny. Such arrangements were given a, ‘vote of thanks to the President and a hearty clap of hands’.[cxi] The use of newspapers and magazines were procured on a daily and weekly basis for the use of members. These included the Daily Chronicle, Shamrock, Young Ireland, Weekly Freeman and the Universe.[cxii] Young Ireland published exciting Irish tales and sketches while The Weekly Freeman, an agricultural journal, contained a political cartoon and advocated the measures generally of the Liberal and Reform Party and of the Roman Catholics of Ireland. Shamrock published illustrated serials and complete stories.[cxiii] The society arranged for useful books belonging to the library to be newly bound as soon as the funds allowed and an instruction was given that the books be kept in good repair. The collection in the library included volumes one to eight of the Popular Educator and Pickwick. [cxiv] That the facilities in the reading room were used by club members in these years is evident from the high volume of gas supplied to warm the room.[cxv]

   In addition, under the auspice of The Catholic Young Men’s Society, a fund, entitled Our Lady’s Relief Fund, existed at Crook in the 1850’s and 1860’s.[cxvi] It appears to have been predominantly a sickness and burial fund, operating as a kind of credit union. The president of the fund was the parish priest, and fund members, all male, paid monthly instalments. Those who did not promptly repay loans were fined four pence on each occasion they defaulted. The disbursements of cash to members are not given in detail and we are not told the reasons and purposes for expenditure - absence from employment and funeral expenses are most likely to have been the main purpose.

After 1860, two additional, separate and indeterminate phases can be identified in Crook’s history - invariably economic, connected with the coal industry.[cxvii]  In 1874, the price of coal was reduced, prompting coal owners to reduce miner’s wages. Living standards deteriorated and a short strike took place, which the miners could not sustain. Further ineffective strikes followed in subsequent years as the price of coal continued to fall. The threat of a fifteen per cent reduction in wages in 1892 resulted in workers taking more concerted strike action over a twelve-week period. When they did return, however, the miners had merely succeeded in achieving the lesser reduction of ten per cent in their wages. Afterwards, countless workmen gave up their employment, many choosing to emigrate with their families. The 1920’s and 1930’s saw extreme levels of unemployment in the township. In 1938, it was reported that seventy one per cent of the long-term unemployed in Crook had been without work for five years or more and that Crook was, ‘an area that has for some time been considered as doomed without an industrial future’.[cxviii]  Thereafter, coalmines in the area were closed down at an alarming rate. By 1963, no productive coalmines existed and the last coke works were closed in 1965. By 1991, twelve and a half per cent of the workforce was unemployed, while one third of those in employment were working outside Crook.[cxix] The small cause of cheaper coal had resulted in a disastrously large effect. 

   Since the social structure can only be sustained by people who personify its primary attributes, ‘redefining society means redefining men’.[cxx] The writing of Francis Harvey conveys a potent example of the enthusiasm for economic, social, moral and religious progress amongst the Irish community of Crook as well as an individual illustration of cultural redefining. Within the new boundaries of a more complex industrial structure, society was able to discriminate between the rich diversity of individual capacities, some of which Francis personally demonstrated. Evidence of his interaction with the system exists in a notebook in which he recorded his poetry and the mathematical formula he needed to understand to progress his career.[cxxi] The notebook clearly shows Francis’s intention to gain promotion from miner, perhaps to check-weighman at the pit. The book exemplifies his fierce determination to improve his literacy, numeracy and creative ability.

   An important aspect of Francis’ character can be seen in his potential to break away from the status quo symmetry of working class culture. He had obviously been influenced by the politics of Daniel O’Connell. We can see this because some of O’Connell’s famous words were copied into the book. Like O’Connell, Francis too hoped, ‘……….to see Ireland what she once was and what she ought to be, a nation great, glorious and free, the first flower of the earth and the first gem of the sea’.[cxxii] In an extract from Francis’s poem, written in 1869, ‘The Warning by a Working Man’, there is a clear sense of his moral entrepreneurship and mission for prudence, temperance and family values - a religious and moral lesson clearly aimed at the welfare of his fellow countrymen:       

You true sons of Erin attention   The truth unto you I’ll display It being my utmost intention To keep you from going astray Since to work the Almighty decreed you And grants to your means for to toil Why spend it with men who deceive you And detest the Irish exile You know the landlord wants your money To which you in hardships did toil He’s civil he’s cheery and funny While he extracting the spoil But when he has emptied your pockets  You are showed to the door with distain Saying get out, you mere Irish blockhead  Else I’ll send for the Bobby and then Your health and your earnings are given Expressed by celestial decree The deed is recorded in heaven And you must accountable be To keep you on those that’s depending Or sent you by god to maintain Then hard is the judgment impending When you the omniscience disdain……..[cxxiii]

In contrast to Francis’s Harvey’s potential ‘symmetry-breaking’ motivation for progress, John McManus appears to have effortlessly maintained the status quo of a poor Irish immigrant and, thus, his social characteristics may be viewed as, ‘symmetry preserving’. Employed throughout most of his working life as a coke worker at Crook, it is possible that John held little ambition to better himself and he remained one of the least honoured and most disadvantaged workmen in the town.

Conclusion

   For some years, Newton’s claim of a universe unfolding logically in time, like a well-oiled machine working on predetermined laws, has been shown inaccurate in both the physical and social sciences. Thus, determinism - the philosophical belief that every event can be completely predicted - is a wholly inaccurate means of analysis. I have tried here to demonstrate this through some examples of ‘indeterminacy’ and the reality that even the smallest imaginable discrepancy between two sets of initial conditions can result in a huge inconsistency in the future. Accordingly, we can conceive of our cultural identity as a series of chaotic cascades defying definition, and because no reliable rule can be found in the output of the system, we are provided with an expectation of uncertainty as an important element of evolutionary structuring.[cxxiv]

   In support of this analysis, I identified three chronological phase characteristics in the process of change employed by the complex dissipative social systems model. Firstly, the element of social regularity reflected the concept of ‘dense periodic points’. An essential precondition of the industrial progress affecting the case study areas here was that the social, economic and political system was dynamically engaged in a process of boundary spanning and symmetry breaking. Secondly, an essential precondition necessary for the evolution of the social system at Crook, Kilronan and Pomeroy was the sensitive dependence upon initial conditions. Sensitivity at Crook concerned the availability of good quality coking coal, while at Kilronan and Pomeroy, sensitive dependence on subsistence farming and the linen industry respectively created uncertainty and unpredictability. In the two latter cases, these predispositions in 1840’s Ireland contributed to the disastrous consequences of a recurring annual failure of the potato crop, famine, disease and emigration. The small changes in these conditions led to a radically different evolutionary outcome in the case study areas to that which occurred in other areas of Britain with different environmental circumstances. Thirdly, the system finally became ‘topographically transitive’ as sub-systems within the whole state space affected each other, ‘cancer-like’ and holistically.[cxxv] As a consequence, old orders slipped into the past as new evolutionary and more complex ones developed with an increased ability to capture free energy by more effectively exploiting a denser energy net. The association of each of these three characteristics created a transformation which was conservative and stable in its early phase, unstable and chaotic in a later phase, finally returning to a stable form of behaviour where system complexity increased. The system change that took place depended crucially on energizing more people to act independently within societies better able to harmonize diverse individual activities through newly allocated roles.[cxxvi] The vague and poorly defined cultural identity of individuals sharing a common nationality was reflected in the contrasting personal characteristics and antecedents of John McManus and Francis Harvey. Other symmetry breakers, Stephenson, Kirkwood and Tenison, located in a more influential part of the hierarchy, were also an important part of the evolutionary process.

   When we listen for sounds of theoretical innovation in Irish famine studies, the silence is almost deafening. The complex dissipative social systems model provides a holistic analysis, which excludes the determinism and reductionism found in much of the literature on this subject. The model also incorporates an interdisciplinary element and allows a more important place for the study of local history. In respect of the chaos, uncertainty and randomness inherent in the model, we can see that this is exactly what Cormac O’ Grada is referring to when he claims that, ‘…..the Great Famine was utterly unpredictable’.[cxxvii] Believing, therefore, that, ‘…….we must plan our policies now’ so that…. it is possible to have a famine in which no one dies’,[cxxviii] is likely to be a premature expectation.

 Endnotes 

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