The Forgotten Holocaust (Ben Hope, Book 10) (12 page)

‘You are familiar with the potato, I presume?’ Brennan asked.

Ben heaved an inward sigh. His idea of travelling all the way out here to the island of Madeira hadn’t been to listen to a discourse on the topic of root vegetables. But he bit back his impatience. ‘As much as the next man,’ he replied.

Brennan leaned back in his chair, settling into lecture mode. ‘The Irish rural population of the 1840 – that is to say some six million out of the country’s overall population of eight million at the time – were very familiar with it indeed. It’s a highly versatile vegetable. It grows prodigiously, keeps well and is easy to cook. Eaten in sufficient quantities it’s a remarkable source of calories, protein and minerals, capable of maintaining health, preventing nutritional deficiencies like scurvy and supplying the energy needed for a hard day’s work in the fields.

‘There had always been plenty to go around in rural Ireland. Children would walk to school with their pockets filled with cold potatoes to eat at lunchtime. Labourers digging the fields would be allowed to roast as many of them as they could eat over an open fire. Fishermen’s wives would weave stocking bags in which their husbands could carry mashed potato to eat at sea. A traveller and observer named Arthur Young described what he found to be a typical scene in the rural Ireland of the time: “
Mark the Irishman’s potato bowl placed on the floor, the whole family upon their hams around it, devouring a quantity incredible, the pig taking his share as easily as the wife, the cocks, hens, turkeys, geese, the cur, the cat, and perhaps the cow – all partaking of the same dish. No man can often have been a witness of it without being convinced of the plenty, and I will add the cheerfulness, that attends it.
” He estimated that a barrel of around two hundred and fifty to three hundred potatoes could last a family of five, as well as the menagerie of livestock they often shared the same basic dwelling with, for a week. The father of the family would have taken the lion’s share, consuming something in the region of twelve to fourteen pounds a day in order to get the necessary nutrients for the very difficult work that was his livelihood. Not the most varied diet, to be sure, but Young was surprised how very well they appeared to do on it. He described them as “
athletic in their form, as robust and as capable of enduring labour as any upon earth
”, adding that “
When I see people of a country, in spite of political oppression, with well-formed vigorous bodies, and their cottages swarming with children; when I see their men athletic and their women beautiful, I know not how to believe them subsisting on an unwholesome food.
”’

‘Just one problem with that,’ Ben said. ‘Dependence on a single food source made them vulnerable, if anything happened to go wrong with it.’

‘Indeed it did,’ Brennan said, nodding. ‘An obvious risk, when you place all your eggs in one basket, so to speak. The potato harvest of 1846 was to have been the biggest ever. All of two million acres of land had been seeded across Ireland, and after the close shave they’d had the previous year with the blight that had narrowly missed devastating the crop, there was widespread optimism that this would be a year of plenty for all. And to begin with, it seemed as if all hopes would be fulfilled. Every planted field was teeming with the dark green leaves and purple blossoms of the thriving young plants.

‘Then in early June, the first signs of the disease began to appear in a few localised spots. Within just a few weeks, it was suddenly everywhere, spreading like gangrene. It was said that farmers who had gone to bed dreaming of their lush potato crop awoke the next morning to the stench of the rotting plants. From one end of the country to the other, a desperate race began to stem the disease by salvaging whatever might remain of the crop. Many believed that by ripping up the stalks, they might be able to prevent the “infection” from reaching the precious vegetables below ground, where the earth would protect them. But when they dug into the ground to check, all they found was the same putrid, liquefying mush of black rot. They had failed to understand that the disease wasn’t spreading downwards from the stalks. It was in the ground itself. A fortunate few who realised this fact in time were able to dig up a few surviving potatoes before the contagion hit them, saving a handful of their crop. But the vegetables that survived were small and soft, virtually inedible. All it did was to delay the inevitable.’

Brennan shook his head sadly and went on.

‘What began to unfold over the following weeks and months was a crisis completely unprecedented in the history of the western world. The sole food supply of millions of people turned to slime before their eyes. Soon the hungry were streaming through the countryside in their hundreds and thousands, searching for anything they could use to feed their children and themselves. To begin with, those with a little food generously shared it out, even to strangers, as is the Irish way. If they were lucky enough to catch a fish or shoot a rabbit, they would gladly divide it out between ten or even twenty people. But even the most warm-hearted of them couldn’t see their own families starve to death, and it wasn’t long before they started closing their doors to outsiders.’

Ben listened quietly. He was able to picture the scene all too clearly in his mind.

‘The weakest began to die. Some desperately tried to turn the black rot of their potatoes into something edible by drying it out into cakes. Others scoured the beaches, devouring seabirds’ eggs, shellfish and seaweed, often poisoning themselves in the process. Bodies littered the coastlines, the fields, the roadsides, many of them with their mouths stained green from the nettles and grasses they’d been forced to eat in their desire to stay alive. The first so-called “death carts” were seen on the country lanes, gathering up mounds of bodies to be taken and heaped in unmarked mass graves. Meanwhile, the towns were suddenly filled with gaunt beggars, wretched figures looking more like skeletons than human beings. No longer able to work or pay their rents, tens of thousands were turfed out of their homes by forced eviction, beaten to a pulp if they tried to resist. And it gets worse. Believe me, it gets a lot worse.’

‘Why didn’t they eat the chickens, or the pigs?’ Ben said.

‘Oh, they did, of course, especially now that there was nothing left to feed them. The situation was as much of a death sentence for the animals as it was for so many of the people. But for most, it was a cruel decision to slaughter such an important source of revenue. You have to remember that these people had no money to speak of. Livestock was often all they had in the way of currency, for barter, or to sell to pay the rent. By eating them, you were devouring your only savings. And they were a one-off source of food, not sustainable. Some people resorted to other ways. One son of a County Mayo farmer gave away his father’s last pig in return for an ounce of gunpowder, so that he could poach a few wild ducks. An ounce of powder wouldn’t have lasted long, either. In many cases the family pig was sold for oats, barley, or meal. When that quickly ran out, the Irish resorted to selling their furniture, their farming tools, their fishing rods, even their ragged old clothing if anyone would have it.’

Ben listened, his jaw set, as Brennan went on with the gruesome scenario.

‘Things became increasingly desperate. The starving would steal the swill from deserted pigsties. They’d seek out whatever was remotely edible in the offal bins of the fish markets. Those driven to crime often risked their lives to rustle sheep belonging to more affluent farmers, who protected them with rifles and often slept out on the hillsides to keep watch over their herds. Sometimes the poachers’ families devoured the mutton flesh raw so that the smell of roasting meat wouldn’t give away their crime. If they were caught, they were sometimes shot, sometimes beaten to death by the farmers’ men. Fearing that hordes of the starving would sweep across their land and bring ruin on them, some landowners dug out pits ten feet deep, concealed with grass and weeds, with spikes at the bottom to impale any hungry thief who might come in search of something to eat. Man turning against man. The fabric of the nation gone. The music, the dance, the poetry, all of it silenced, destroyed.’ Brennan gazed down at his lap, obviously deeply affected by the story he was telling.

‘It was a tragedy,’ Ben said. ‘Anyone can see that. If they hadn’t become so reliant on that single food source, things would have gone differently.’

Brennan looked sharply up at him. ‘I’m afraid you still don’t understand, do you? Have you ever considered the reason
why
the Irish diet was so limited to the potato? Do you think it was out of choice?’

‘I suppose I haven’t thought about it much,’ Ben admitted.

‘You and most other people,’ Brennan said. ‘Well, the fact is that the Irish peasant community, all six million of them, weren’t living just on potatoes for the pleasure of it. It was the
only
food allowed to them by the gentry.’

‘But why would that be?’

‘Pure economics. The potato was a uniquely efficient and cost-effective way of sustaining the three-quarters of the population who were of the least worth to the country’s rulers. For every poor peasant who might have been fed on wheat, you could keep three people alive, plus a pig and a small flock of chickens, on a potato diet – meaning that it would have taken three times the acreage to feed the same number of people. Even the type of potato allowed to them had been chosen for its growing efficiency. With so little land allocated to their needs, the rural Irish were forced to subsist on the most fertile, but also the worst-tasting, species, called the lumper.’

Ben remembered the ugly specimens he’d seen preserved in the famine museum in Glenfell. ‘Okay, I get it,’ he said, wanting Brennan to get to the point.

‘Do you? Then perhaps you begin to see why the slow, terrible deaths of as many as two million people didn’t result from some act of God. It was a disaster. But a famine, Mr Hope, a famine it was
not
. To use the term “famine” is to imply that the pathetic mounds of Irish bodies heaped like detritus upon the death carts and stacked twenty high in unconsecrated graves, often with their last breath still in their mouths, met such an end simply due to their foolish dependence on the vagaries of Mother Nature and a chance failing of the potato crop that they’d thoughtlessly relied on for all their needs. Well now, isn’t that a bit like saying that the half million Jews who starved to death in the Warsaw ghetto a century later somehow managed to do so spontaneously, or because they’d neglected to stock their larders? No, no. To refer to such events as a “famine” is to miss the point entirely, and to insult the memory of the millions of lives lost.’

‘So what would you call them?’ Ben said.

‘In the Irish language it was
An Gorta Mór
, the Great Hunger,’ Brennan replied. ‘Personally, I’d tend to side with George Bernard Shaw, as he went one step further in his
Man and Superman
. You may have seen the play?’

‘I never was much of a theatre goer,’ Ben said.

‘“Me father died in Ireland in the black forty-seven”, says Malone,’ Brennan replied, affecting a thicker accent. ‘“The famine?” asks Violet. “No,” says Malone. “The
starvation
. When a country is full o’ food, and exporting it, there can be no famine.” And that’s exactly what it was.’

‘A starvation,’ Ben repeated. ‘Implying what? That it was done …?’

Brennan’s lips curled into a distorted smile. ‘Why of course, Mr Hope. That it was done on purpose. Their so-called “famine” was in fact wilful murder. One of the worst acts of genocide you never heard of.’

Ben was silent for a moment as he tried to understand.

‘Shaw got his facts right,’ Brennan said. ‘Even as millions of its people lay starving in the ditches and in their beds, so helpless and weak that the rats would swarm over them to rip what little flesh was left from their bones, Ireland was a country full of food. It was
abounding
with food. How could that be, I hear you ask?’

‘Go on,’ Ben said.

‘The doomed potato, as widespread as it was, was hardly the only crop grown on Irish soil. During 1846 and ’47 alone, some half a million tons of grain were exported out of Ireland, enough to have saved the lives of thousands of people. Not to mention the vast quantities of other exports such as butter, eggs and meat, all of which were being transported in bulk from Irish ports, on ships bound for England, throughout the entire period of the so-called famine. And who was doing the exporting? The British government, who had supreme control over agriculture in Ireland. For years the country had been supplying England with more than eighty per cent of its beef, roughly the same proportion of its butter, and even more of its pork.’

Ben blinked at the figures. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘I suppose that’s because it’s not to be found in your average history book,’ Brennan said caustically. ‘Another thing that’s been conveniently forgotten is the pains the British took to ensure that not a scrap of their precious exports ever found their way into Irish hands. The escorts of heavily armed British troops guarding the convoys of wagons loaded with food on their way to the ports made certain that nobody could get near them. Any attempt whatsoever to steal a single egg, a single cup of grain or rind of meat to bring home to one’s starving children, would be met with lethal response, or arrest – in which case the lucky ones faced immediate deportation to the penal colonies of the British Empire. The not so lucky ones were simply hanged.

‘And even at the height of the famine,’ Brennan went on, ‘when their armed food convoys were passing within sight of the mounds of bodies and the death carts everywhere on the roads, the English rulers staunchly refused to turn over a single scrap of produce to feed the starving. Relief efforts devised by Whitehall were a joke, mere whitewash. It was largely left to humanitarian organisations such as the Quakers to set up soup kitchens and the like, while the British government simply sat on their hands. In contrast, other nations were doing what they could to alleviate the shocking situation in Ireland. Aid came from various quarters, saving untold lives: from Rome, from America. Even Turkish sultans sent shiploads of grain to the same ports from which British ships were snatching it away under military guard.’

Brennan shook his head in disgust. ‘And there were worse disgraces to come. As the food supply for the Irish peasants was being shut off, the British authorities passed laws to restrict their ability to feed themselves even further. It became illegal for ordinary Irish people to fish for salmon or trout, which only the wealthy landlords and their guests were now allowed to do. New legislation was introduced that forbade the keeping of hounds, so that starving families could no longer catch a rabbit or a hare for the pot. The shooting of game was strictly forbidden. Arms were confiscated, to prevent the poor from hunting even a squirrel – and, of course, to deter them from getting any ideas about rebelling against their gentrified masters who, while all this was going on, were having shooting parties on the big estates, bagging grouse, pheasant and hare in vast numbers and hanging their catch off poles from the carriages they went hunting in, right under the eyes of the barefoot starving masses. It was more than provocation. It was sadistic cruelty.’

‘Why?’ Ben asked. ‘These people were their workforce. The agricultural industry relied on them. Why starve them out like that?’

‘For the same reason that colonial powers and globalist business interests, past and present, have sought to eliminate whatever indigenous peoples whose existence impeded their ability to exploit resources for vast profit,’ Brennan replied. ‘The attempts to exterminate the Australian Aborigine people by mass sterilisation in order to mine their traditional territories. The tricks played on South American tribes by greedy cattle barons wanting to deprive them of their rainforests, to raze into ranches for the supply of a billion greasy beef burgers to the junk food industry. The devastation of Borneo’s natural habitats in the interests of the west’s insatiable demand for palm oil. And on, and on, all through history.’

He shrugged. ‘In short, the British government wanted the land. As far as they were concerned, these poor Irish peasants were a waste of space, taking up acreage that could be put to better use raising livestock and wheat for England. Consider the words of the influential British cleric Thomas Malthus at the time: “
The land in Ireland is infinitely more peopled than in England; and to give full effect to the natural resources of the country, a great part of the population should be swept from the soil.
”’

Brennan let those words hang in the air for a moment. ‘Swept from the soil,’ he repeated. ‘That’s what the English wanted, and that’s what they got. On top of the enormous numbers who died of starvation, at least another million people fled Ireland during that time, mostly destined for America. An editorial of the
London Times
proclaimed jubilantly in 1847 that “
they are going! They are going! The Irish are going with a vengeance! Soon a Celt will be as rare on the banks of the Liffey as a red man on the banks of the Hudson.
” And it was true. Thanks to the “famine”, approximately half of the rural population considered undesirable by the English rulers was eliminated, or should I say, ethnically cleansed, freeing up the land to create yet more produce for England. That’s not too far off the proportion of European Jews estimated to have been killed in the Nazi Final Solution. Little wonder that one of my more enlightened fellow historians, AJP Taylor, was moved to say of the Irish starvation that “all Ireland was a Belsen”.’

‘So the British government took advantage of this natural disaster to suit their own agenda,’ Ben said.

Brennan smiled coldly. ‘Very convenient, wouldn’t you say?’

Ben was silent for a moment as he sat digesting Brennan’s tale of injustice, greed and callous disregard for human life. It wasn’t the first one he’d heard, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last. It disgusted him to the core.

But nothing he’d heard so far did anything to explain Kristen’s murder. ‘All right, let’s say Kristen had uncovered everything you just told me,’ he said to Brennan. ‘Dug out all the dirt on the British government’s policies of non-action, or whatever it was, during the fam … during the starvation. It was more than a century and a half ago.’

‘You’re right,’ Brennan said. ‘Ancient history. Yesterday’s news. Who cares any more, now that everyone involved has been dead for so long? Nobody stands to gain, or to lose. Unless, of course …’

‘Unless what?’

‘I told you there were explosive revelations in the Stamford journals, and there are.’

‘There’s more?’ Ben said.

‘Oh, there’s more, all right,’ Brennan replied. ‘The deepest, darkest of secrets, ones that have lain dormant for over a hundred and fifty years. The question is, does the nature of those secrets constitute grounds for murder? Does it threaten anyone’s modern-day interests to such an extent? Who can tell?’

‘Enough games, professor. I came a long way to find out—’

Brennan shook his head. ‘It’s all in there,’ he said, pointing at the journals. ‘You came here to read them, didn’t you? That’s what I suggest you do.’

‘Anyone ever tell you you’re an awkward customer?’ Ben said.

Brennan smiled. ‘Privilege of a dying man. You won’t regret it.’

Ben leaned forward in his chair, rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed his temples in frustration as his mind struggled to put together the pieces of the puzzle. But even without knowing what deep, dark secrets the Stamford journal had to reveal, he could see a gap in the logic. ‘No copies were ever made of the journals, were they?’

‘None. It’s impossible. I was one of the very first people to see them after their rediscovery, and they haven’t been out of my possession since.’

‘Then these revelations couldn’t be known to anyone else?’ Ben asked. ‘There’s no way she could have come by the information some other way?’

‘I doubt it very much,’ Brennan said, after a moment’s consideration. ‘Quite a few letters and other artefacts relating to Elizabeth Stamford have surfaced over the years, scattered about in the hands of historians and collectors. But nothing of the importance of these journals, and what they contain. If this particular cat were out of the bag, it would have caused no little stir among historical circles. That’s the reason I was a little reticent about letting any old writer gain access to the material.’

‘Then it’s unlikely that she could have even known of the existence of these secrets you’re talking about.’

‘More than unlikely. I’m certain she had no idea at all. She wanted to view the journals only by way of general research. They were just another resource to her, albeit a key one she was keen on getting her hands on.’

‘None of this makes any sense,’ Ben said. ‘I need you to recap for me, from the beginning. Kristen contacted you a couple of weeks or so ago by phone. She’d found out that you were the current owner of the Stamford journals, and she was interested in viewing that material herself. She left you a message asking if you’d agree to that. You weren’t well enough to respond to her until after she was already dead.’

‘Which I truly regret,’ Brennan said. ‘And I’m equally sorry I didn’t have the chance to respond to the email she sent me. She must have written it not long before her death, two or three days at most.’

Ben looked up in surprise. ‘What email?’

‘Didn’t I mention that?’ Brennan said. ‘It was about the letter.’

‘Letter?’

‘Yes, the one to Henrietta Wainwright.’

Ben shook his head.

‘Let me see if I can find the email.’ Brennan got stiffly to his feet and went over to the desk to pick up a small laptop, which he brought back to his armchair and rested across his knees as he flipped up the lid and powered the machine up. A blue rectangle reflected in each lens of his spectacles.

‘Here we are,’ he said after a few moments. ‘I’ll read it to you: “
Dear Professor Brennan, you might remember I phoned you not long ago asking if it might be possible to view the journals of Lady Elizabeth Stamford. Since I contacted you, it’s become even more crucial for me to verify certain details that have come up recently in my research. I have in my possession a copy of a letter from Elizabeth Stamford to Henrietta Wainwright, written in October 1849, shortly after Elizabeth’s return to England, in which she pays thanks to all the people she’s indebted to for helping her: Stephen Wainwright and his sisters Henrietta and Cecilia, as well as one Padraig McCrory, whom she credits for having aided her escape from Edgar Stamford’s clutches.
”’

Brennan paused reading and looked up at Ben. ‘The Wainwrights were Elizabeth’s second cousins,’ he explained. ‘She often refers to them in her journals, as you’ll see. Stephen Wainwright was a well-known naturalist of the day, something of a reformist humanitarian. He and his twin sisters lived in Bath but were frequent visitors to Ireland in the years Elizabeth lived on the Glenfell Estate. When the marriage finally fell apart, they helped her to return to England and get back on her feet. They really were a very important influence on …’

But by now Ben was only half listening to what Brennan was saying. A startling connection had suddenly been made in his mind as the name had leapt out at him.
McCrory.
It wasn’t an uncommon surname. But the coincidence stuck in his mind like something hard to swallow.

Padraig
McCrory. Was this the same man, born in 1809, that Kristen had mentioned in her notes and about whom she’d gone looking for information at St Malachy’s church?

If it was, now Ben had the surname to attach to the first name: the missing piece that had tripped him up when he’d tried to follow in Kristen’s footsteps searching the parish records in Glenfell.

But what did it mean? Ben quickly pieced the bits together in his mind. Kristen had become interested in Padraig McCrory because of the letter. Quite why that was remained a mystery, but it had mattered enough that she’d contacted Gray Brennan a second time to try to find out more. Meanwhile, she’d been busy digging up information on the man herself from parish records. At the same time, she’d been in touch with her go-to guy Chris Ingram to get hold of the cellphone number of
Finn
McCrory, mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma. As a result of which, she’d spent thirteen minutes on the phone talking to the Irish-American.

Discussing what? Family trees?

Ben reached into his pocket and took out Kristen’s notebook. He flipped to the page and read it again.

PADRAIG BORN 1809

→
107!!!! HOW POSSIBLE?????

While the man’s identity and birth date now held no secrets, the line below was still baffling. What was the number 107 about? And what was ‘how possible’?

‘Did she say anything more about this Padraig McCrory?’ Ben asked, interrupting Brennan.

‘Just this,’ Brennan replied. ‘Let me read you the rest of her email. “
I’m now particularly interested in knowing more about Padraig McCrory, and anything that Lady S might have revealed about him in her journals. Looking forward to hearing from you,
” etc., etc.’ He looked up from the screen. ‘That’s it.’

‘And that’s the last you heard from her?’

Brennan nodded sadly. ‘I can only presume she was still waiting for my reply when …’ His voice trailed off.

‘And
is
McCrory mentioned in the journals?’ Ben asked, puzzled.

‘Oh, yes, a few times. But I was surprised that Miss Hall had suddenly become so interested in him. He was an Irish servant of the Stamford household, who looked after Lady Elizabeth’s horses.’