Other books and publications: Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, 25 Oct 1834

But MARSHALL, mind me well. You know that, at PEPPERHARROW (sic) (only about four miles from your cottage), there lives LORD MIDDLETON (sic). You know that he was a long while Lord-Lieutenant of our county. Now, Marshall, HE is one of the GREAT LAND-OWNERS OF IRELAND. His real name is BRODERICK (sic). He is the owner of a town, called Middleton (sic), half as big as Guildford. He is the owner of the lands for many miles around, and, it is supposed that he draws, yearly, from twenty five to thirty thousand pounds from this estate!

I came here to see things with my own eyes; and I have today been to see this BRODERICK’s estate, which begins at about sixteen miles from this City of Cork; and the land of this sixteen miles, taking in two miles on each side of the road, the finest that you can possibly imagine. Ah! But how did I find the working people upon this land of this BRODERICK? That is the question for you to ask, and for me to answer.

I went to a sort of HAMLET near the town of Middleton. It contained about 40 or 50 hovels. I went into several of them, and took down the names of the occupiers. They all consisted of mud-walls, with a covering of rafters and straw. None of them was so good as the place where you keep your little horse. I took a particular account of the first that I went into. It was 21 feet long and 9 feet wide. The floor, the bare ground. No fireplace, no chimney, the fire (made of potato-haulm) made on one side against the wall, and the smoke going out of a hole in the roof. No table, no chair; I sat to write on a block of wood. Some stones for seats. No goods but a pot and a shallow tub, for the pig and the family both to eat out of. There was one window, 9 inches by 5, and the glass broken half-out. There was a mud-wall about 4 feet high to separate off the end of the shed for the family to sleep, lest the hog should kill and eat the little children when the father and mother were both out, and when the hog was shut in; and it happened some time ago that a poor mother, being ill on her straw and unable to move, and having her baby dead beside her, had its head eaten off by a hog before her own eyes. No bed; no mattress; some large flat stones laid on other stones, to keep the bodies from the damp ground; some dirty straw and a bundle of rags were all the bedding. The man’s name was OWEN GUMBLETON.

Five small children; the mother about thirty, naturally handsome, but worn into half-ugliness by hunger and filth; she had no shoes or stockings, no shift, a mere rag over her body and down to her knees. The man BUILT THIS PLACE HIMSELF, and yet he has to pay a pound a year for it, with perhaps a rod of ground. Others 25s a year. All built their own hovels, and yet have to pay this rent. All the hogs were in the hovels today, it being coldish and squally; and then, you know, hogs like cover. GUMBLETON’s hog was lying in the room; and in another hovel there was a fine large hog that had taken its bed close by the fire. There is a nasty dunghill (no privy) to each hovel. The dung that the hog makes in the hovel is carefully put in a heap by itself, as being the most precious. This dung and the pig are the main things to raise the rent and to get fuel with. The poor creatures sometimes keep the dung in the hovel, when their hard-hearted tyrants will not suffer them to let it be at the door. So there they are, in a far worse state, Marshall, than any hog you have ever had in your life.

(Quoted in part in The Cause of Ireland: From the United Irishmen to Partition, by Liz Curtis (Beyond The Pale Publications, Belfast, 1994)

NOTE 1 from J Peter Swann: I think it becomes apparent that Cobbett, an independent and somewhat radical MP, then in his seventies and the last year of his life, was a very outspoken critic of injustice and inhumanity, to the point that he was not above squeezing every ounce of pathos out of any deserving situation he came across. It is clear from reading some of the obituaries printed after his death that he was regarded with some considerable tolerant amusement, and it might be felt that his readers knew that his stories were not entirely free of embellishment. I intend to look for other evidence of this Owen Gumbleton, of whom I have not been aware until I happened upon this item. ‘Marshall’ is the name (possibly fictional) of a labourer on his estate in Sussex to whom his commentaries on his travels, as published in the ‘Weekly Political Register’, are addressed.
J Peter Swann, July 1999.

NOTE 2 In the 20 years since receiving this from Peter Swann, I have tracked down the baptisms of some of Owen Gumbleton's children in the parish of Carrigtohill, (adjacent to Midleton)Co. Cork, in the early 1830s. Although I have not yet found his marriage records, it appears he was married twice and it is likely that his first wife, described as being ill by Cobbett, died and that he quickly remarried, as was virtually essential for a working man with several children. So, such records as have been found are entirely consistent with Cobbett's account.
Steve West, May 2019

The Cause of Ireland: From the United Irishmen to Partition by Liz Curtis 1994
25 Oct 1834

People mentioned

• Owen GUMBLETON