3-071-073 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches among the Irish peasantry: winter fuel, 1881. 'Carting Peat, Co. Roscommon; Drying the Peat; Turf Cutter; The 'Cup o' Tea'; Peat Cutting...A quarter of a million Irish families...dwell in cabins with one room...This may or may not be their own fault...but it is a social condition which must be lamented in the case of so large a part of our fellow-subjects in the sister island...[Our illustrations]...are particularly occupied with one branch of rural and domestic life...The absence of coal and the scarcity of wood might inflict yet more severe privation upon their wretched households, but for the abundance of bog-peat, which is frequently used by the peasantry as fuel, and which is also, to some extent, made an article of profitable trade. Our illustrations show different groups of men and women employed in cutting peat-turf, setting out the pieces to dry, in little stacks arranged so as to let the air pass through, and conveying them home in wheel-barrows or carts, to be stored up for winter consumption. It is some little compensation for the unproductive quality of the soil...that there is a great natural supply of this commodity, which serves to alleviate the misery of the poor in the winter season'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.