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  George Douglas did not respond to Grey’s dispatch, which was sent to all colonial employees. Instead he quietly tended to the sixteen thousand people still on the island. As the shipping season came to an end in September, Douglas prepared to close the quarantine station for the winter. Those still living had been transported to Montreal and Quebec City, where their fate was left to someone other than the exhausted doctor. Once the island was empty of its patients, Douglas and his remaining staff fumigated the sheds and tents. They stacked bed frames and burned mattresses. They celebrated the birth of his new son, George—the first new life to visit the island after so many months of death and despair. Then, in late October, as the first snow swirled around the island, they made a somber processional to the hummocked rows of mass graves at the island’s west end. The eighteen men brought with them a small stone pillar marking the sacrifice of so many: the four quarantine doctors who died of typhus that summer; the attendants and nurses and priests and cooks who succumbed along with them; the thousands of immigrants who now lay in their quiet graves. It was a private ceremony, without fanfare or political agenda. And for that, it was all the more poignant.

  10

  Pestilence and Plague

  AS THE START of yet another winter bore down on Ireland’s west, Daniel Reilly struggled to make sense of the scene around him. Life was now marked by the kind of pestilence and plague suffered in the Old Testament. An unrelenting rain that summer had encouraged the blight to blanket all of western Ireland, taking with it the last of the remaining potatoes. That was bad enough, but now the grain crop was suffering as well. Just before harvest time, Daniel and the other farmers around Tralee battled a cloud of locusts miles long and more numerable than any army of insects on record. Once the insect cloud lifted, the farmers found much of their grain had been destroyed by the assault. Not long afterward, Tralee’s civic leaders made a discovery as inexplicable as it was troubling: the town lost all of its potable water. Somehow the entire supply had become poisoned with salt.1

  But the most apocalyptic stories were those of the continuing famine and subsequent epidemic. Landlords were hiring armies of local men to guard their meager patches of turnips and cabbage. The houses of fever victims were being pulled down on top of the victims inside; for most neighbors, the risk of going in to retrieve the bodies was just too great. Their fear was fed by newspaper reports and doomsday scenarios. “A pestilent fever, more mortal and destructive than cholera or plague,” wrote the editor of the Tralee Chronicle, “is carrying off the poor. The dead are barely pushed outside the thresholds, and there suffered to dissolve in an advanced state of putrefaction.”2 Throughout the region, every cemetery was overcrowded with uncoffined dead. Graves were shallow and often redug to accommodate additional victims. Some cottages were said to be surrounded by “ramparts of human bones,” often rising in a ring several feet high and encircling a dwelling; their surviving occupants were too weak to dispose of the bodies any other way.3 There were accounts of dogs and other animals tearing apart the dead.4 Those on the scene of such scavenging claimed that what remained of the bodies was better suited for a small sack than a coffin. And that was just the beginning. In one particularly horrible case, the Chronicle reported that a father and son were found lying dead in the doorway of their cottage, three of the father’s fingers still half chewed in the mouth of the son.5

  Meanwhile the death count kept climbing. Each morning, as Daniel walked the road connecting Ballybeggan and Tralee, the rising sun revealed additional casualties: three, four, five, sometimes even more famine victims who collapsed of hunger or fever while trying to make their way to the city workhouse. Their mouths and chins were stained green from a last meal of grass and nettles. He passed women with dead children slung over their shoulders, hoping to make their way to a cemetery—any cemetery—where their sons and daughters could at least receive a proper burial. Once there, they often had to dig the graves themselves; undertakers were just too stretched with their gruesome task of burying the mounting dead. In at least one case, grave workers were no longer even bothering to distinguish between the dead and the nearly so: both were piled into wheelbarrows and placed into the filling trenches, in which survivors crawled around in search of anything edible, their arms and legs discolored and bloated; others, barely alive, knelt or lay supine, begging for food.

  It wouldn’t take long before Daniel Reilly would have no choice but to join them. What remained of his crop that hadn’t been ravaged by the locusts had been all but wiped out by the pervasive rains that had deluged Ireland that summer. For the first time in his life, he was nearly penniless, and he was forced to harvest his grain weeks before it was ready. This early harvest would barely cover expenses; too much of it had to be dedicated to food for his family and his animals. Once his grain was sold, Daniel would be hard-pressed to find money for simple comforts like clothes and blankets. Margaret was doing her best to stretch what they had. She spent her days trying to patch Daniel’s work clothes and make new trousers for Robert. Nearly two years old now, the boy was growing rapidly. Thanks to Margaret’s care, he was largely oblivious to the catastrophe surrounding him. The meager profits from that year’s grain harvest were all but spent at the Tralee market, where food was at a premium and selections were abysmal. With the economic depression created by the famine, few shopkeepers even bothered to replenish their stores. Somehow Margaret found ways to make meals out of more than they had. For now, at least, no one in the Reilly house was going hungry.

  But that didn’t necessarily make them safe. The government’s decision to localize aid was proving ruinous, and residents were growing restless. The Quakers, having long since exhausted their own resources, shut down their soup kitchens after local governments assured them that similar stations would be established by the taxpayers. Certain that the government would succeed where they were failing, the Friends instead dedicated their remaining funds to establishing long-term relief programs. The local boards of guardians, however, soon discovered just how difficult the task of feeding the hungry was. They lacked the infrastructure needed to manage their food supplies, which soon ran out. Workhouses, poorhouses, and hospitals began to fill. Hungry people clamored for the opportunity to try Edward Twisleton’s repulsive work-for-food schemes; the lucky few selected soon found they were too weak to complete the work.

  Not surprisingly, desperation soon turned into violence. Throngs of famine sufferers stormed docklands, seizing bacon and bread from overwhelmed sailors. Not long afterward, a mob appeared at the Tralee workhouse gates, brandishing a black flag and shovels and shouting that if they were not given work they would starve. The workhouse overseer escaped to the nearby military barracks, insisting that his life—and those of Tralee’s residents—were in danger.6 Parliament agreed and quickly dispatched military troops to “repress any outbreak among the people,” as merchants like Donovan continued to move Daniel’s grain from Ireland to the markets in England. The dragoons, it was said in Parliament, were expected to be stationed in Tralee “for some time.”

  This was no place to keep a family or raise a child. Robert was now walking. Margaret was pregnant again. In a matter of months, they would have two children to shepherd into this uncertain world. It was time to leave, and Daniel knew just where they had to go: Indiana, a little state on the edge of the American West.

  It might have seemed a curious choice, this state Daniel had never visited and knew about only from letters. Still, it was the closest thing to home he would find in North America. No one remembered who had first settled there, but for two decades the people of Tralee had slowly been making their way to the heartland of the United States. Their successive journeys were part of the same chain of migration happening throughout Ireland: one family or group of families safely made their way across the Atlantic, found work, and set up homes. The next season, they sent money back to Ireland. A few months later, a father or brother or friend would join them, followed by another. It was comforting
to know that people you loved were waiting for you—that they had a place for you to stay, that they knew how and where to find work.

  Daniel had ties to Indiana: a man named Michael Reilly, age twenty-six, was listed as head of his household on the Indiana census. Living with him was Cornelius, age twenty-four; probably one of the men was Daniel’s brother. Certainly they were at least cousins, as were John, Patrick, and Honora, three teenagers who also resided in Michael’s home. Perhaps their parents—an older sister or brother of Michael’s—died on their voyage over. Maybe Michael and Cornelius agreed to become the teenagers’ guardians while the parents remained in Ireland, hoping to earn enough money for their own passage. Probably they sent money back to Ireland to assist people like Daniel in his own voyage. There were other people from Tralee living nearby as well. Together they offered the promise of community in a town with the reassuring name of Liberty.

  Indiana had big plans for the coming decade: hundreds of miles of railroad lines, canals, and roads, along with new schools and hospitals. There was plenty of railroad work already in Liberty, along with schools for Robert and shops filled with food. That was all Daniel needed to hear. When the next season’s coffin ships began departing Ireland, the Reillys would be on one. Whether they were among the fortunate ones who made it to the other side would be up to fate to decide.

  11

  An Audacious Plan

  FATE WOULD no doubt play a part in the Reillys’ future. But as it turned out, Nicholas Donovan played an even greater one. The Whigs’ decision to locate famine relief in Irish unions had been a boon for the ambitious importer, and although he would never admit to as much publicly, the famine was proving more profitable than he had imagined.

  His wife, Katherine, was a natural at public relations and a darling of the local press. She was decorous and pious without seeming sanctimonious; she wore her hair in elaborate coils and preferred the latest in French fashion: full-sleeved dresses with copious amounts of ribbon; a bare neck; and a large brooch her only jewelry. She was lovely and moved about society in the easy way of someone who had always been invited to do so. With her grace and pedigree, Katherine was a master of fund-raising, and she led the new Tralee ladies’ relief fund in donations garnered. Her efforts had been well rewarded with newspaper commendations. So too had Nicholas’s personal contributions to the general relief fund. Now seemed as good a time as any to push through some of his more ambitious plans for the town. And that meant doing what he could to get out from under Sir Edward Denny’s controlling thumb.

  Just as everyone had expected, Denny had named a group of his lackeys to the Tralee Board of Guardians, and they were wasting no time in doing his bidding. They proposed a new relief market where famine sufferers could buy discounted food; they began sourcing traders in America who could ship cornmeal at cost. But as far as Donovan was concerned, this was his purview, and he began rallying other merchants in opposition. It would be far more beneficial for everyone, he insisted, if the merchants were allowed to operate alone on this venture. The same was true for the importation of Indian meal from America. Why not let the moralists’ free market ideology do its work for Tralee? Besides, anyone could see that the new Board of Guardians was clearly in over its head. Already the town had the second largest Poor Union in all of Ireland and was tending to nearly 100,000 sufferers in its charge. Its overseer, Colonel George Stokes, a retired army commander recently returned from India, was proving little more helpful in his paternalism than Trevelyan and Grey. Both the fever hospital and the workhouse were filled well beyond capacity; women managing the soup kitchen complained that they were unable to meet the demand of so many hungry individuals. Meanwhile the poorhouse, which was intended to be a place of refuge for those who would otherwise certainly starve to death, was anything but. With dozens of residents dying each week, inmates braved pouring rain in order to scale the poorhouse walls without leave, desperate enough to try their luck begging in the streets. There they joined the six thousand people already seeking outdoor relief in Tralee.

  Donovan approached Denny and Stokes, suggesting that the three form their own importing venture. They agreed on a plan: they would sell the cornmeal to famine sufferers nearly at cost, and all profits would be returned to relief fund contributors.1 Such a system, they hoped, would sustain the cycle of support and consumption until the potato crop could be restored. It would also, the young merchant hoped, solidify his role at the center of what had heretofore been an exclusively Protestant-driven town.

  But Stokes and Denny soon had a change of heart, so Donovan hatched his own plan. If town leaders weren’t interested in the project, he alone would bring the first unsubsidized cornmeal to the west of Ireland. He alone would show that one could recoup any financial investment while providing food to people in need.

  While such a move raised the ire of Denny and his sense of paternal responsibility, it was precisely what leaders like Trevelyan and Grey were hoping would transpire across Ireland. And Nicholas knew he wasn’t alone. Katherine’s brothers, perhaps spurred by what was happening in Ireland, soon initiated their own entrée into the grain business. With the market for beer in its own famine spiral, they attempted to convert unutilized space in their brewery into a corn mill. But their insurers, seeing no profit to be made in selling cornmeal to people without the cash to buy it, objected. So instead the Murphys pursued importation, contacting correspondents in London about the grain trade there as well as wholesalers in New York and New Orleans about shipment availability.2 Financial depression aside, the Murphys decided the market looked good. Nicholas Donovan wholeheartedly agreed.

  He began bringing corn into town at his own cost and expanded his exportation of wheat and oats from the blight-stricken region to the Liverpool markets. All three decisions prompted local papers to accuse him of acting out of self-interest and neglecting civic process.3 The Kerry Examiner chastised him for refusing Denny’s offer of support; even the Catholic-leaning Tralee Chronicle questioned the motives behind his so-called charitable acts.4

  Still, Donovan held fast to his vision for the town—and his prominence therein. While Stokes railed against the idea of selling grain to the destitute, Donovan remained certain that a profit could be made. Even more, he sorely needed that to be true. The stockyards of John Donovan & Sons were filled with piles of slate, iron hoops, and coal awaiting buyers. Inventory was flush—too flush for his taste. For the first time since taking control of the business, Donovan found himself in the uncomfortable position of importing more goods than he could sell. It was undeniable: the famine and subsequent economic depression had stymied his import business. Newspapers reported that the commercial crisis was creating “frightful agitation” in the Liverpool markets. There were rumors of bank stoppages as well.5 In fact it seemed the only profitable venture was the exchange of natural resources for famine sufferers; throughout England and Ireland, merchants continued to find hefty profits in the new trade of Irish immigrants for North American timber.

  This realization was all the impetus Donovan needed to hatch his plan. Instead of ballast, why not send his corn ships back to North America filled with emigrants? He had seen the growing number of farmers and cottiers arriving at the Tralee Bank with checks from relatives drawn on American banks. He knew as well as anyone that they were eager to spend this money on passage across the Atlantic. Despite the harrowing conditions of the previous season, thousands would soon be clamoring for passage on those same ships.

  This was not the first time Donovan’s mind had settled on such a plan. He and his father had dabbled in the emigrant trade once before, leasing both the Maria and the now infamous British Queen to send subsidized emigrants from throughout County Kerry to North America. And unlike the British Queen’s current manager, the Donovans had succeeded in avoiding the notoriety that surrounded that vessel. True, they had not been plagued by a famine. True, an epidemic had not been racing across the globe. Yet Donovan was confident he could replicate his
previous success.

  It would be a risky enterprise. Donovan had read the accounts proffered by people like Robert Whyte, which illustrated the deplorable conditions on board the coffin ships. Just recently, Stephen Edward De Vere, a member of the Irish Parliament from nearby Limerick, had published his own account on the subject. A baron of considerable wealth and advancing age, De Vere nevertheless determined to sail aboard one of the coffin ships to gain a better understanding of what was happening therein. What resulted was a newly published treatise entitled The Elgin-Grey Papers, which had brought the abusive practices aboard coffin ships to light. With or without Earl Grey, Parliament was preparing action on the subject. In the meantime, ship owners and captains were enduring increasing scrutiny. To establish himself as a legitimate exporter of people, Donovan would have to distinguish himself from the other coffin ship owners.

  As far as he could tell, the problems aboard these vessels stemmed from the conditions in steerage. People were packed so tightly that they couldn’t even change their position, let alone walk about. Severe bed sores were common. Food was scarce or nonexistent. Water was insufficient and did not allow for washing—either bodies or soiled beds. The most iniquitous ship owners continued to charge anywhere from £5 to £10 for steerage passage aboard their vile ships. And even those with consistently high mortality rates could not keep up with the demand of famine sufferers yearning to climb aboard. Donovan saw in this a tremendous opportunity as well. If he could convey people from Tralee to North America—and keep them all alive in the process—he could fetch just about any price. Perhaps more important, he would finally become a social force few could ignore.