UPDATE: THIS MADE €1,700 AT HAMMER
There is a shameful history in this set of seven very rare original mounted photographs at Fonsie Mealy’s rare book and collectors sale in Castlecomer on April 30 and May 1. Mostly taken by T O’ Connor of Limerick they show evictions at the Vandeleur estate in Co. Clare in the late 1880’s. There are photographs of the police, battering rams, those who were evicted.
In the 1840’s it is estimated that up to 1,000 people were evicted from the Vandeleur estate. The evictions of 1888 do not compare in scale but they are the best remembered. By 1888 eviction was resisted in most instances, large crowds went along to watch, tenants had legal representation and were organised. In the famine years Captain Kennedy, the Poor Law Inspector in the area, calculated that over 6,000 people had been evicted in Kilrush Union between July and early December 1848. Less than a year later Mr. Poulett Scrope, a British M.P. who visited West Clare, estimated that 20,000 had been evicted in Kilrush Union in the previous two years-and that the greater number of these had died in the meantime. Not all were Vandeleur tenants. At Fonsie Mealy’s sale these photographs are estimated at €400-€600.