Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)Hurlbert, William Henry
History
Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)
Hurlbert, William Henry
Ireland -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
Neither did Dr. Dillon mention the fact that one of the demands made of
Captain Hamilton, Mr. Brooke's agent, in December 1886, was that a
Protestant tenant named Webster should be evicted by Mr. Brooke from a
farm for which he had paid his rent, to make room for the return thither
of a Roman Catholic tenant named Lenahan, previously evicted for
non-payment of his rent.
When Mr. Brooke's grandfather bought the Coolgreany property in 1864, he
adopted a system of betterments, which has been ever since kept up on
the estate. Nearly every tenant's house on the property has been slated,
and otherwise repaired by the landlord, nor has one penny ever been
added on that account to the rents.
In the village of Coolgreany all the houses on one side of the main
street were built in this way by the landlord, and the same thing was
done in the village of Croghan, where twenty tenants have a grazing
right of three sheep for every acre held on the Croghan Mountain,
pronounced by the valuers of the Land Court to be one of the best
grazing mountains in Ireland.
Captain Hamilton became the agent of the property in 1879, on the death
of Mr. Vesey. One of his earliest acts was to advise Mr. Brooke to grant
an abatement of 25 per cent. in June 1881, while the Land Act was
passing. At the same time, he cautioned the tenants that this was only a
temporary reduction, and advised them to get judicial rents fixed.
The League advised them not to do this, but to demand 25 per cent.
reduction again in December 1881. This demand was rejected, and forty
writs were issued. The tenants thereupon in January 1882 came in and
paid the full rent, with the costs.
Eleven tenants after this went into Court, and in 1883 the
Sub-Commissioners cut down their rents. In five cases Mr. Brooke
appealed. What was the result before the Chief Commissioner? The rent of
Mary Green, which had been £43, and had been cut down by the
Sub-Commissioners to £39, was restored to £43; the rent of Mr. Kavanagh,
cut down from £57 to £52, was restored to £55; the rent of Pat Kehoe
(one of the two tenants "ejected" from Mr. Brooke's office as already
stated), cut down from £81 to £70, was restored to £81; the rent of
Graham, cut down from £38 to £32, 10s., was restored to £38. Other
reductions were maintained.
This appears to be the record of "rack-renting" on the Coolgreany
property.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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