AN IRISH woman's account of her family's suffering during the Great Famine may have been the subject of the world’s first newspaper interview.
Bridget O’Donnel’s story was the first to travel to England, where Londoners who had previously only heard rumours about the Great Famine, read it with horror.
A picture of Ms O’Donnel and her family appeared in an issue of the London Illustrated News in 1849, alongside the interview.
It told of her plight in losing her 13-year-old son and the fear she had for the safety of her newborn baby, whilst also explaining how she had been deceived out of her crops.
During the Great Famine, a number of journalists were sent to Ireland from England, to verify the reports being published by the Irish press of the desperate situation in Ireland.
At the time many people could not comprehend that a disaster of such scale was taking place on the soil of Britain's closest neighbour.
Artist James Mahony, from Co. Cork, was sent to Ireland to meet Ms O’Donnel and draw the picture, but after she told him her story and concerns, she became an iconic face of Irish suffering.
It was previously believed that the first ever newspaper interview was carried out in 1859 in the US with Horace Greeley, the founder of the New York Tribune.
But Michael Foley, the author of a new folio on journalism and the Great Irish Famine, believes Ms O’Donnel’s story may not have been highlighted as she was an ordinary woman, the Journal.ie reports.
He said the dreadful conditions that journalists saw in Ireland during this period had a long-term effect on their careers.
“They were probably the only middle-class people, other than doctors and the like, who saw the famine and I think when we see later growth of the nationalist press in Ireland that was those same journalists,” he said.
"This woman and her children became an uncomplicated image of the famine.”
A brief account of Ms Donnel’s story:
I lived on the lands of Gurranenatuoha. My husband held four acres and a half of land, and three acres of bog land; our yearly rent was £7 4s.; we were put out last November; he owed some rent. We got thirty stone of oats from Mr. Marcus Keane, for seed.
My husband gave some writing for it: he was paid for it. He paid ten shillings for reaping the corn. As soon as it was stacked, one "Blake" on the farm, who was put to watch it, took it away to his own haggard and kept it there for a fortnight by Dan Sheedey's orders. They then thrashed it in Frank Lellis's barn. I was at this time lying in fever.
Dan Sheedey and five or six men came to tumble my house; they wanted me to give possession. I said that I would not; I had fever, and was within two months of my down-lying (confinement); they commenced knocking down the house, and had half of it knocked down when two neighbours, women, Nell Spellesley and Kate How, carried me out. I had the priest and doctor to attend me shortly after. Father Meehan anointed me.
I was carried into a cabin, and lay there for eight days, when I had the creature (the child) born dead. I lay for three weeks after that. The whole of my family got the fever, and one boy thirteen years old died with want and with hunger while we were lying sick. Dan Sheedey and Blake took the corn into Kilrush, and sold it. I don't know what they got for it. I had not a bit for my children to eat when they took it from me.
(Internet Archive, Way Back Machine - London Illustrated Press)
