@RobLooseCannon

Poaching in Ireland during the British occupation wasnt just about illegal hunting or fishing. It was about using hunger as a tool of colonial power.

Now long before the Great Famine, the Irish countryside was already a contested landscape. Our rivers were teeming with salmon, and our luscious forrests and hedgerows were alive with hares and birds. But the poorest inhabitants, disenfranchised from their ancestral lands were legally barred from touching any of it.

Under British rule, Ireland’s land was dominated by the Anglo-Irish landlord class, whose property rights extended far beyond soil. They “owned” the rivers and lakes and land on their estates and all the livestock, game and fish contained their. Freshwater fishing rights for salmon, trout, and eels were strictly private. Game laws reserved hares, pheasants, grouse, and deer for landlord sport. What had once been shared resources, governed by custom and necessity, were now enclosed by statute even amid the cycles of famines.

The Night Poaching Act of 1828 was particularly feared. It made it a serious offence to hunt or fish after dark, precisely the time when the poor could act unseen. To be caught at night, armed, or in the company of three others transformed hunger into a criminal conspiracy. Punishments ranged from imprisonment with hard labour to transportation for seven years. A rabbit taken to feed a family could end with exile to Australia.

Informers were despised, yet they were often forced in to it to save their own skins after being caught by the feared gamekeepers. Magistrates were heartless and distrusted. The civil law was really just an extension of landlord power, designed to protect sport for aristcrats rather than starvation.

An Gorta Mór, the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849 shattered whatever fragile balance had existed between breaking poaching laws and desperation. When the potato failed, the grain, cattle, butter, and bacon continued to leave Irish ports in vast quantities, bound for Britain.

When gobshites ask why people didnt “just fish” when the rivers still ran thick with salmon and the lakes teemed with trout and eels. Well fishing meant trespass on landlord property. Being caught meant being shot, prison or transportation or eviction. During the Famine eviction was effectively a death sentence for whole family. And dont forget that man jailed for stealing food could miss a relief distribution.

A family evicted for poaching could be dead within weeks. So wild game like rabbits or hares or birds, anything that could be trapped or shot became food. The ecological impact of famine poaching was real. The desperate hunting of birds and animals during these years is believed to have contributed to the decline of native species such as the Irish Grey Partridge.

Nature itself became another casualty of starvation and law. Contemporary accounts are full of people eating hedgehogs, crows, and rats. Even frying worms for protein. Turnip stealing from fields became widespread, another small crime punished harshly under the law. Please support the Dublin Time Machine Book https://ko-fi.com/buchanandublintimemachine