An American Editor in Ireland – Observations on Life in 1875

Published by P&P on 25 April 202525 April 2025

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Impartial Reporter - August 1874 — The Impartial Reporter

Introduction

In May 1875 the ‘Impartial Reporter’ newspaper reported that an (unnamed) editor of the Danbury News (Connecticut) was “doing Europe“. The paper included extracts from the American Editor’s notes written during his “peregrinations through Ireland“.

The focus of the published notes centres on the author’s (often caustic) observations on everyday life in Ireland at the time.

Setting the Scene

The ‘American Editor’ commences with a brief introduction to Ireland as a land that

“has not influenced the outside world, it has operated only on itself, and for centuries it consisted simply of family and sectional broils”.

It has spilled blood enough to make it’s soil the richest in the kingdom”.
American Editor, 1875

The Lives of the Poor

Nature has designed the Irish race for apple peddlers. Nowhere else, except in New York, will you see so many old women peddling apples. I never saw them sell any but they peddle them.
American Editor, 1875

Poverty is witnessed everywhere

Most of the women of the poorer classes are bareheaded in the North part of Ireland, and both bareheaded and barefooted in the South.
American Editor, 1875

Public Domain - Poor — Public Domain – Poor

Visiting Galway, the author comments on the “narrow streets, dingy stone buildings, and not particularly clean streets“. Evidence of destitution is abundant.

Every time I went out of the hotel, or returned to it, I found a one-eyed lusty young fellow with a disagreeable breath on the walk in front, who besought me for the love of God to give him a copper or two for bread to save his perishing body. It was sad to see a fellow being starved, but I couldn’t help but wish I weighed as much as he did.
American Editor, 1875

Those begging draw no sympathy

On every street there was some deformed specimen crying for help for the love of a good God.

When I go to begging coppers, I shall try to do it on my own hook, and not shoulder the responsibility on to my Creator who has put it into the hearts of a good Government to make every provision for the destitute.
American Editor, 1875

The People and their Landlords

The Irish people are impulsive, warm-hearted, generous. Those at the North have got with their Scotch blood, the Scotch pertinacity (stubborn/ tenacious) and you couldn’t starve them if you kept them on a billiard table.
American Editor, 1875

Their landlords are “of the same blood and characteristics” and will not let their land lie unused as that amounts to money lost. Instead they use the money they take from tenants to indulge in a fine social life in Dublin and London.

The landlords here are good fellows, both in Dublin and London, but poor cusses at home. They hunt, gamble and drink, and the tenants can go to the devil, for all they care
American Editor, 1875

Their tenants are offered parcels of farming land (from 5 to 25 acres) without a lease. This ensures that they can be moved on easily if the landlord is unhappy or if an alternative tenant offers to pay more. The result is that tenants will not invest in the buildings, fences or stock as their future is always uncertain.

These poor farmers and their families have my heartiest sympathy, as they gain the sympathy of everyone who goes among them and sees their troubles, their toil, and the genuine goodness of their hearts. They are easily depressed and as easily buoyed, and then they forgive and forget, and are roughed on again, and the whole thing repeated.

Traveling the Countryside

The author notes that, in many counties, the greater part of the countryside is barren and the houses wretched – the majority consisting of one storey stone buildings with whitewashed walls and thatched roofs. The surrounding fields are largely unused, the land not fit for pasturing sheep or cattle.

The staple production appeared to be potatoes. And the Irish know how to raise potatoes.
American Editor, 1875

Market Days

Attending the local market in Galway, the American Editor witnesses the market square and nearby streets lined with farmers arriving to sell their produce. “Each one had a little pony or donkey hitched to a low cart filled with potatoes. Some of them had oats and a few brought in hay or straw”.

The farmer walks at the head of the animal with a hand on the bridle, while the wife either rides or walks behind. The wives generally wear full-length cloaks with a cape over their heads. The appearance of the wives drew particular attention from the writer:

They were well formed healthy-looking women, with faces and arms browned by outdoor work.

Some of them were very old and shrivelled, and worn out by years of toil. This was their life. Toil all the week, and trudge into town every market-day. The shrivelled was once buxom, and the buxom could look at the shrivelled and see the end as plainly as if she had already reached it.
American Editor, 1875

On paying their toll to the clerk of the market, the farmers proceed to the market square to sell their wares. Buyers demonstrate a tendency to examine the produce, shaking their heads despondently to indicate their disappointment with the quality on offer, before agreeing to make a purchase at a price below the market rate. The market soundtrack is characterised by “blarney, bickering and wit“.

Galway Fish Market by Walter Frederick Osborne

Comments on The Claddagh Women

Galway has a class of women peculiar to itself. They have a little village on the bay called ‘The Claddagh’ They live by fishing, the men catching the fish, and the women selling them in the streets of the town.

It is a community by itself believing that the Galwegians are inferior to themselves, refusing to intermarry with them, but consenting (of course with ill grace) to take their money.
American Editor, 1875

Visiting The Claddagh the author notes that the men were away in their boats. The Claddagh women “wore huge baskets on their back, full of small fry, or carried a bowlshaped basket on their head with a single fish in it”. These were cod fish weighing from 5 to 15 pounds.

Expressing annoyance at the women’s repeated attempts to sell him their fish, the author highlights that the ponderous baskets carried on their backs have sharp corners “and the women have a disagreeable way of stopping suddenly, and wheeling around abruptly to impart some information to an acquaintance, when the basket comes around too, and takes off the hat or skin of the individual who happens to be too close to their rere”.

Emigration to America

Acknowledging that “You don’t blame them of course, for getting out of here as soon as they can and striking out for America” the author is perplexed to learn that many of the emigrants come back again from that land of opportunity.

As badly off as they are here, and as fair and as free as is our country, these people, or many of them who have gone to America, have reached the conclusion that Ireland is the best place of the two to starve in.
American Editor, 1875

With nationalistic pride our American Editor has his final say on the subject

They are beginning to think that the land of the free and the home of the brave is a failure. And in some senses it is. But they ought to be glad they earned enough there to bring them back again. And if the trip has taught them that their worst enemy is their own kith and kin, they need never regret, but can always rejoice that they went to the States, and sojourned under the ‘stars and stripes’ .
American Editor, 1875

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