Sexual Intemperance and Money on an Irish Estate in the Eighteen Forties
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the author acquired about 30,000 letters written mainly in the 1840s. These pertained to estates throughout Ireland managed by James Robert Stewart and Joseph Kincaid, hereafter denoted SK. Until the letters - called the SK correspondence in what follows - became the author’s property, they had not been read since the 1840s. Addressed mainly to the firm’s office in Dublin, they were written by landlords, tenants, the partners in SK, local agents, etc. After about 200 years in operation as a land agency, the firm in which members of the Stewart family were the principal partners - Messrs J. R. Stewart & Son(s) from the mid-1880s onwards - ceased business in the mid-1980s. Since 1994 the author has been researching the SK correspondence of the 1840s. It gives many new insights into economic and social conditions in Ireland during the decade of the great famine, and into the operation of Ireland’s most important land agency during those years. It is intended ultimately to publish details on several of the estates managed by SK in book form. The proposed title is Landlords, Tenants, Famine - Business of an Irish Land Agency in the 1840s, a draft of which has now been completed. A majority of the letters in the larger study from which the present article is drawn are on themes some of which one might expect - rents; distraint (seizure of assets in lieu of rent); “voluntary” surrender of land in return for “compensation” upon quietly quitting; formal ejectment (a matter of last resort on estates managed by SK); landlord-assisted emigration (on a scale much more extensive than most historians of Ireland in the 1840s appear to believe); petitions from tenants; complaints by tenants, both about other tenants and about local agents; landlord and other relief of distress both before and during the great famine; major works of improvement (on almost all of the estates managed by SK); applications by SK, on behalf of landlords, for government loans to finance improvements; recommendations of agricultural advisers hired by SK, etc. Thus, most of the SK correspondence is about aspects of estate management. But the firm of SK was not only a manager of land. Unlike many of SK’s other clients in the 1840s, both the Sherlocks of Kildare and the Battys of Westmeath were commoners. The owners of the two estates shared another feature: their lifestyles got them into deep personal problems, and the firm of SK was called upon, not only to manage their estates, but to manage more personal affairs also. His interest in alcohol was a cause of William Sherlock's problems. Those of two males in the Batty family were related to their interest in females. It is not to be inferred that the owners of other estates managed by SK were immune from problems associated with alcohol or women. In fact, the handwriting styles of the Marquess of Westmeath and of Viscount Frankfort - both of them SK clients - suggest that they were in or on the verge of delirium tremens. Furthermore, while at Drumsna in the midlands in 1845, the SK employee Stewart Maxwell sighted the Marquess of Westmeath (then aged about 60) with a woman who he pretended was his wife. However, the firm of SK was not called upon to manage the very personal affairs of either the Marquess or Frankfort; hence, if their lifestyles led them into personal problems, the SK correspondence indicates little about such problems. At Buckingham Palace the third Viscount Palmerston, an important client of SK, was known as "Cupid". It has been reported that while staying at a royal palace he made "a violent and brutal" attack on a Mrs Brand; the source states that "her piercing screams were heard by half the inmates at Windsor Castle and she was rescued in the nick of time just as her knickers were being torn off"3. It seems that in 1865 his excessive arousal - reportedly with a maid on a snooker table - brought about his death4. None of Palmerston's interests of intimacy became the business of SK. It was due to the fact that SK were asked to manage some of the consequences of very personal matters among the Battys and the Sherlocks (one of which family, the landlord William R. Sherlock, appears to have had a mistress) that we know about them. What follows focuses on some members of the Batty family in the 1840s. According to Walford, the Batty family of Westmeath "came from England, and settled at the mansion of Ballyhealy [near Delvin] about the year 1690. In the early 1840s the house and surrounding lands were owned by Fitzherbert Batty, a magistrate for Westmeath. The estate was at least 2,400 statute acres in extent. It consisted of lands which were together known as the Ballyhealy estate.
Year of publication: |
2002-03-08
|
---|---|
Authors: | Norton, Desmond |
Institutions: | School of Economics, University College Dublin |
Saved in:
freely available
Saved in favorites
Similar items by person
-
Viscount Frankfort, Sir Charles Burton and County Carlow in the 1840s
Norton, Desmond, (2001)
-
On "Lord Palmerston and the Irish Famine Emigration" by Tyler Anbinder
Norton, Desmond, (2001)
-
Progress and Distress on the Stratford Estate in Clare during the Eighteen Forties
Norton, Desmond, (2002)
- More ...