Analysis: women were amongst the most active combatants in the Land War when it came to evictions and resistance to them
Contemporary accounts of the Irish Land War point to the centrality of women to evictions and their disruption. Verbal taunts, scalding water, boiling gruel, burning turf, manure, mud, rocks and sticks were amongst the weapons employed by rural women in this key combat zone against process servers armed with eviction notices and protected by the police and military.
In June 1879, the Connaught Telegraph reported that a process server in Co Mayo "had a narrow escape" at Newton Clogher, when he was chased by "about one hundred" women wielding "tongs, sticks, stones, etc." On the same day, the newspaper reported that Sir Arthur Guinness' land agent was "warmly received by a young woman named Noonan, who, it appears, was not content with giving him the contents of a bucket of boiling water until she let the empty vessel fly at his cranium."
In Michael Davitt's 1904 book, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland, he described events he witnessed during a trip to the village of Carraroe in Co Galway in January 1880. These events, which have since being dubbed the "Battle of Carraroe", centred on an attempt by a local process server, accompanied by a Sub-Inspector and a contingent of police, to serve eviction notices on tenant farmers living on Thomas Kirwan’s estate.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime in 2016, Myles Dungan examines the contribution to Irish History of the Land League founded by Michael Davitt in 1879.
When the process server approached one house, he was "set upon by the women and the process snatched from his hand and torn to pieces. A skirmish ensued in which a few bayonet wounds were received by boys and women." The process server subsequently attempted to serve a process on a woman who "succeeded in throwing a shovelful of burning turf upon Sub-Inspector Gibbons, and thereby driving him from the house."
When a process server with a bodyguard of 17 constables attempted to serve eviction notices on an estate managed by Captain Charles Boycott, thereby inaugurating the infamous "Boycott Affair", a woman reportedly waved a red flag to warn of his approach. The women who gathered as a result of this signal stopping the remaining notices being served by pelting the process server and the constabulary with mud, stones and manure.
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From RTÉ Archives, Eamonn Andrews interviews some of the cast of the 1947 Captain Boycott film at Dublin's Theatre Royal
In his 1881 book, Talks About Ireland, journalist James Redpath claimed that the wife of this process server received a visit that night from a woman who warned that "the women had found out that a process-server had no legal right to nail his writs on a cabin door, unless it was closed against him, nor to take in a constable unless he was resisted, and that they had determined to leave the doors partly open and not to fight him until he should enter and, then, every woman of them’ll have a kettle of hot water handy, and fling it in his face."
Redpath, an American reporter and political activist who travelled around Ireland during the Land War, claimed that it was a relatively common practice for women in the West of Ireland to wave red items in the air to warn other women of approaching process servers. The object most frequently employed for this purpose, he indicated, was a red petticoat, a garment traditionally associated with the women of the area. When asked by an interviewer whether men also gathered at the signal, Redpath stated that the assembled women "won’t allow the men to resist the process-server because they are sent to jail so long for doing so, and, besides, these women think they can take care of the process-server themselves."
Records suggest that the women who resisted evictions were right to assume that they were less likely to be arrested than men engaged in similarly confrontational behaviour. Nonetheless, some of these women did face possible imprisonment for their actions. In the later Plan of Campaign, for example, 43 people, most of them women, were arrested on charges of assault and obstruction when 200 soldiers and between 300 and 400 policemen were drafted into Co Claire to evict tenant farmers on Colonel O'Callaghan’s Bodyke estate.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Countrywide, Frances Shanahan talks to Pat Finnegan about his book on the history of the Land War in Co Galway
Among those detained were possibly the woman reported in the Freeman's Journal in June 1887 as having thrown "an iron hoop at one of the emergency men" and hitting a district Inspector of Constabulary instead, and the three girls who threw "bucketful after bucketful of [...] boiling gruel" at emergency men holding umbrellas.
Furthermore, women who resisted evictions in late 19th-century Ireland were not exempt, by virtue of their sex, from violence on the part of the authorities. Davitt claimed that following the failed attempt to serve a process during the aforementioned "Battle of Carraroe", a "fierce battle" broke out between the women present and the bayonet-wielding constabulary who had accompanied the process server. It was only after some of the women were injured that the men present entered the fray, surrounding the constabulary and attacking them with "stout blackthorns and stones".
One woman received a terrible gash in the arm, whilst several were knocked down, trampled upon, their faces blackened, and their garments torn
Women who attempted to disrupt evictions on Hans Browne’s estate near Claremorris in the same month as the "Battle of Carraroe", were reported in the Connaught Telegraph on 17 January 1880 as having been stabbed with bayonets, hit with fists and clubbed with the butts of rifles. One young woman was said to have "received a terrible gash in the arm, whilst several were knocked down, trampled upon, their faces blackened, and their garments torn."
In historical accounts of Ireland in which the political is defined in terms of that which directly affects the state, and historical change is believed to be powered by these narrowly-defined political forces, the women who took part in anti-eviction agitation during the Land War tend to be assigned a marginal role. The focus instead is on the words and actions of the mostly male leaders of the land movement. But when reading contemporary accounts of the Land War it becomes clear that evictions and resistance to them were the "front" of this war, and that women, often at great risk to themselves, were amongst its most active combatants.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
