A sculpture by Mark Rode of a woman and child from the 1950s
in Swinford to remember the women who remained at home
while their husbands took up annual seasonal work in England.
In a recently published book, Swinford Spalpeens: Aspects of Emigration and Migration from the East Mayo Area 1815-1970 (Cork : Galley Head Press ,2017), its author Jack Foley pays tribute to generations of people from the Swinford/Charlestown district of East Mayo in the west of Ireland who went as seasonal migratory workers in England. This is a group of people regularly forgotten in Irish migration studies.
Emigration and migration are deeply ingrained in Irish tradition. This exodus from Ireland took place in waves from the 18th century. There was considerable poverty and destitution in Ireland from the 1820s, with a deep recession and a population explosion arising from early marriages and high birth rates. This led to a series of mini famines as the population of Ireland increased from about 5m in 1800 to well over 8m by 1841. Most farmers were forced by their precarious circumstances to take short leases or become tenants-at-will of landlords, with no security of tenure. The rundale system of farming was widespread, land held in a joint tenancy from a landlord and farmed on a collective basis by an extended family, or with neighbours. There were then few other employment opportunities. A tradition of seasonal agricultural workers (known as spailpíni in Irish or spalpeens in English) going to Britain every year to save the harvest started during this period.
While his book addresses emigration in general from 1815, it is not primarily about the people who left permanently, but about those that left as seasonal workers. Jack carefully places this seasonal migration in the general context of the overall emigration trend for each period from 1815 to 1970. He tells us that by 1841 over 10,000 were leaving County Mayo alone on an annual basis for the harvest in England. This movement continued during the Great Famine, with these migrant workers helping through their earnings to sustain their families on marginal holdings in the west of Ireland. Jack tells us that the number of seasonal migratory workers travelling from Ireland to Britain increased to about 100,000 in the decades after the famine and declined thereafter, but that the tradition continued in the east Mayo region down to the 1970s, when mechanisation replaced manual labour.
While some men went to work in the mines of Lancashire and Cheshire, most of them went to save hay in Lancashire and later the harvest and potato picking in the Fens, a vast area in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, especially around Peterborough, Spalding and Boston. Those travelling were organised in groups by various leaders and generally went back to the same places year after year. According to the Devon Commission Report (1863), a man could bring home about £5 from the hay season and about £3 from the harvest. These savings were required to pay the rent at home as well as keeping a wife, family and cabin.
Jack describes the conditions experienced by those people, which changed little over time. One thing that did change was travel. He reminds us that those going before the arrival of the railway to Mayo in 1861 had to walk to their port of departure, and that was Dublin for many. Accommodation, which was very basic to say the least, was provided by the farmer for whom they worked, and the cooking was undertaken either by one individual or on a roster basis. When the potato picking was complete, these men either came home or took up further work until Christmas. Farm work at home was carried out by their wives, who did Trojan work, and by their children who regularly missed school in the process. Between 1925 and 1935 the average seasonal migrant saved £35 to £40 for the period in England, a welcome supplement to the very low family farm income. When the migratory workers came home at Christmas many had to pay off debts incurred by their families during the year. Some young women also went as migratory workers to English cities during that period, but most left on a permanent basis to work in factories and with better education in various services like nursing and administration.
The second part of this book contains the personal stories of 37 people, most of whom were seasonal workers in England, with a few having gone on a permanent basis. Their stories make interesting and, in many cases, harrowing reading. With a few exceptions, most had only a primary school education, which was then the norm in Ireland up to the 1970s. Many common issues emerge from the personal stories in this book: a chronic shortage of paid local employment that persisted to the end of this study period in 1970; a local tradition of networking, with one person finding work for another; primitive living conditions on English farms; the desire to earn as much as possible on piecework, the sending of money home on a regular basis. After many years going back and over, it was interesting to see some state that they decided to remain at home to look after a sick or elderly parent. There were nursing homes at that time. There is one story where a member of a family of 13 in the 1930s and 1940s stated that her parents watched three of them leave for the USA on the same day, and that it was many years later before all the siblings met each other for the first time ever at a family wedding in New York, because the eldest had emigrated before the youngest members were born. One interviewee gave the following reasons for preferring seasonal work to more regular employment like construction:
    1. they were assured of work through prior contact with the farmer;
    2. there was a guaranteed price per acre agreed in advance of travel;
    3. lodgings were often free, with vegetables and potatoes supplied by the farmer;
    4. the wages were cash-in hand and outgoings were kept to a minimum;
    5. the work was available when farm work was slowing down in Ireland,
    6. the work-term was short, allowing workers to return home to their families for Christmas.
These personal stories capture the struggles and sacrifices made by a special segment of people from east Mayo to earn a living for themselves and their families during very difficult times. Their stories rescue this important, but rather neglected, social history from oblivion and records it for posterity. Only for the work of those people and their wives, many more homes in east Mayo would have been abandoned over the last 200 years. This is a book written with deep affection for and affinity with generations of seasonal workers from the Swinford and Charlestown district of east Mayo. By recording the stories of those men and women from 1815 to 1970, Jack Foley has created a permanent tribute to their sacrifices and toil.
Bernard O'Hara's latest book entitled Killasser: Heritage of a Mayo Parish is now on sale in the USA and UK as a paperback book at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk or Barnes and Noble
It is also available as an eBook from the Apple iBookstore (for reading on iPad and iPhone), from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (Kindle & Kindle Fire) and from Barnesandnoble.com (Nook tablet and eReader).
An earlier publication, a concise biography of Michael Davitt, entitled Davitt by Bernard O’Hara published in 2006 by Mayo County Council , is now available as Davitt: Irish Patriot and Father of the Land League by Bernard O’Hara, which was published in the USA by Tudor Gate Press (www.tudorgatepress.com) and is available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. It can be obtained as an eBook from the Apple iBookstore (for reading on iPad and iPhone), from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (Kindle & Kindle Fire) and from Barnesandnoble.com (Nook tablet and eReader).