Longford Workhouse during the Great Famine

The workhouse at Glack, on the outskirts of Longford Town, opened on 24 March 1842. Longford Poor Law Union had been established three years earlier. Its purpose was to offer relief to people who could no longer support themselves, though admission meant entering an institution with strict rules.

By the autumn of 1847, the potato crop had failed repeatedly and the demand for relief had outgrown the buildings. The Board of Guardians’ minutes for 23 October record 1,058 residents, the first time the workhouse exceeded its 1,000-place capacity.

The guardians secured additional premises at Mullagh, intended chiefly for children. Houses on Market Square and a former brewery on Great Water Street were also used. Between late May and late July 1849, more than 3,000 people were accommodated across the union’s premises in Longford. The number counts those housed in the institutions, not everyone who was hungry or displaced.

Minutes and accounts survive from the union’s operation between 1839 and 1921. They document relief, illness, staff, spending and the decisions made by the guardians. They rarely capture what it felt like to arrive at the workhouse door. For that, the administrative record needs to be read with other evidence, and with an awareness of what was never written down.