THE Quakers were the Good Samaritans of the Famine. They did not belong to the stricken community, which made their witness all the more impressive. They were an unusual combination: successful entrepreneurs and committed Christians.
The Society of Friends also represented an influential network. One of its first objects was to obtain "trustworthy information respecting the real state of the more remote districts". English philanthropists such as William Forster and James Hack Tukc undertook fact finding missions. The sufferings endured by the Irish people might be dismissed as exaggeration were it not for the evidence of the Quakers.
The reports which form Appendix III of this book are among the most important sources of information about Famine conditions. One of those was compiled by W.E. Forster, who joined his father in Mayo in January 1847. W.E, then a sympathetic young man, would be transformed in the crucible of Anglo Irish relations into the hated Chief Secretary "Buckshot" Forster.
With the collapse of the public works system, the Quakers spearheaded soup kitchen relief By showing what could be done, they galvanized the British state into feeding three million Irish people during the summer of 1847.
In the autumn the emergency aid was suspended, with tragic consequences. Charles Trevelyan, the Treasury mandarin who administered relief with more logic than humanity, announced that the Famine was over. Parliament decreed that henceforth Irish property must pay for Irish poverty. Clearances mushroomed under the spur of the Gregory £4 rating clause of the Poor Law Amendment Act. The system intended to help the poor, by holding the landlord responsible for their welfare, made it in the interests of the landowners to get rid of them. Nearly half the premature deaths occurred between 1847 and 1852, when the Famine really ended.
In 1849 Lord John Russell offered the Quakers £100, through Trevelyan, to encourage them to resume food distribution. This pathetic offer speaks volumes about the man who was British Prime Minister throughout most of the Famine crisis. They declined, "seeing that the difficulty was so far beyond the reach of private exertion ... and believing that the government alone could raise the funds, or carry out the measures necessary in many districts to save the lives of the people".
Avril Doyle points out in her foreword that the record of the Quakers is one of the few bright pages in the horrifying story of the Famine. On behalf of the Government, she acknowledges "with heartfelt gratitude" their enormous contribution. Rather than blaming the poor, they saw poverty as a structural problem. Ms Doyle notes that of the £200,000 - some £11 million today - spent by the Central Relief Committee, only 2 per cent went on administration.
First published in 1852, this edition is a monument to Quaker compassion. It will become a collector's item, along with Jim Kemmy's Famine edition of the Old Limerick Journal (vol. 32, 1995, £9). It is a valuable historical record, comparable to another recent publication Poverty Before the Famine. County Clare 1835 (Clasp Press, £15). While Professor Donal Kerr's The Catholic Church and the Famine documents the heroism of many priests, the Transactions of the Society of Friends is a testimony to friends indeed.