2-888-258 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Workhouse, Clifden, 1850. Poverty in Ireland during the Potato Famine. 'Clifden itself is an exotic in an unfavourable climate. It was reared by the patronage of the late Viscount; and since that ceased, if began to decline: ths Poor-law has almost finished it'. View of '...the workhouse, which I send as a memorial of this pet place of the late Viscount Clifden...As I see before me the sickening evidence of its operation, it is plain, whatever measures may be required to regenerate Ireland, that the Poor-law is only the climax of the ignorant legislation that, operating in silence through ages, has perverted the Irish, and made their naturally fertile abode one scene of desolation'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.