3-028-216 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches from Ireland: cottagers at Kildare, 1870. Depiction of the occupants of 'miserable mud cabins...as they lounge in listless despondency about the village...[They are tenants of the Duke of Leinster,] the largest landed proprietor and best landlord in all Ireland, it is said. The women and children must speak for themselves, as no inquiries were made respecting them; but the old man seated beside them, and who is upwards of eighty years of age, was born on the property, and remembered the cabins as they now are when a boy. His condition is, no doubt, a sufficiently forlorn one, as he described himself as being "only a lodger." The young man standing next to him is the eldest son of the widow already spoken of, and the other old man at the extreme right is a poor debilitated-looking creature, with hacking cough and glassy eyes, and having death at no remote period plainly written in his countenance. The cabin occupied by him contained two rooms, and, save its sleeping accommodation, which was alike rude and unclean, was tidily enough furnished of its kind'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.