Free A Girl Called Eilinora by Nadine Dorries Page A

report on the effect of the famine upon the peasants. It was felt that a report from one of the landed gentry who had farming interests in the worst hit areas, would be more readily believed by Parliament than the findings of the scientific committee.
    Before the famine began, Owen had left his land and his tenants in Ireland in good shape. He resented having to leave his family in London to return to his estate alone, but Owen was a man of principle and if the prime minister desired his considered opinion, it was his duty to ensure it was provided in full.
    Since news of the first crop failure had arrived in London, he had dedicated his time to the needs of the country where he felt most at home. He argued with his fellow landowners for the repeal of the Corn Laws and for the British Government to ban imports from Ireland, so that the country could become self-sufficient. He had even made a speech to that effect in Parliament.
    ‘What is the use of establishing a board of works, Mr Speaker? Of paying good English pounds to employ men for work which has no purpose? When all that is required is to place a ban on imports. It would cost a paltry amount in food subsidy until the crops grow healthy once more and the Irish peasant is able to feed himself and his family, as he has always done.’
    Since that day Owen and his wife, Lydia, had been shunned by their peers. Too many of their friends made vast amounts of money from the grain imported from Ireland. This ostracization did not make Lydia happy, and she was less than supportive of Owen’s journey back to Ballyford, the home he loved best of all.
    ‘Why you? Why can’t the prime minister pick someone who doesn’t have to neglect business interests in London to go? For goodness sake, I haven’t even visited the place since before the children were born. You aren’t even on the scientific committee. Let him send someone else.’ Lydia was strident and relentless in her opposition.
    Owen, a man of few words and deeper feelings than most, let his wife remonstrate and she knew, by the mere fact that he chose not to argue with her, he had won.
    This infuriated Lydia. She controlled and ran their London home with meticulous precision and she never ceased to try and spread her tentacles of control further into Owen’s life.
    Owen considered himself to be a Christian man and was deeply shaken by the lack of compassion shown towards the Irish in the midst of their plight by people he had attended school with and known for most of his life.
    Unlike other Irish landowners, Owen had taken no rent from his tenants during the blight and had arranged for them to be secretly supplied with bread from the castle. Owen could not pray to the Lord for forgiveness for his sins every night without knowing that he had done his best to help his tenants survive disease and starvation, during the darkest days Ireland had ever known.
    Typhus had followed quickly on the tail of the famine heaping a double disaster on the poor. Death was audacious and roamed freely. It slipped quietly into homes where families assumed it had passed them by unnoticed. It strode out across fields and farms into even the most remote sod houses and hovels. Babies were first. Elders second, mothers next. Finally death went hungrily in search of youth and took down the men. It was never quick. Always slow. Agonizingly slow. Death waited patiently, as muscle wasted and skin yellowed. Flesh fell from bones before the spirit succumbed. It appeared that death was insatiable. Back in London, MPs argued about a law which taxed Irish grain, and meanwhile, the death bell tolled.
    Entire families starved to death. Owen had himself seen bones in the fields where they had fallen. He noticed candles burning in the church throughout the night, while the church doors stood open and gravediggers struggled to bury the dead, before they were themselves struck down. Now, there were too many dead to count. Parish priests were overwhelmed as