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Notes on some agricultural units of measurement in use in pre-famine Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

P. M. Austin Bourke
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Extract

By no means the least of the obstacles which hinder a quantitative analysis of Irish agriculture prior to 1847 is the chaotic state of weights and measures. Successive statutes had been introduced in an effort to secure uniformity, but had little effect even in official quarters. Thus, although 5 Geo. IV c. 74 set up, as from 5 January 1826, the ‘imperial standard’ as the only standard measure of distance, area, volume and capacity, the Irish Post Office continued to use the Irish mile in its cancellations at least up to 1856, and used the same unit in its published list of distances. Variations in the stone, hundredweight and ton, together with non-standard grain measures, were declared illegal in Ireland as from I July 1835, but practice again lagged far behind the law.

In the absence of any comprehensive survey of the actual state of weights and measures in Ireland in the first half of the nineteenth century, historians dealing with the period have tended to bypass the problem at the expense of ambiguity and inaccuracy.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 55 , March 1965 , pp. 236 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1965

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References

1 I am indebted for this information to my philatelist colleague, Mr F. E. Dixon.

2 Irish Farmer’s and Gardener’s Magazine, ii (1835), pp. 77-82; 373-4; Irish Farmers’ Journal, 1845, P- 5°5? Doyle, Martin, A cyclopaedia of practical husbandry (Dublin, 1839), pp. 492–6.Google Scholar It is officially claimed (Returns of agricultural produce in Ireland in the year 1847 : tillage, p. iv, H.G. 1847-8, (923), lvii. 1) that, by 1847, at least the stone of 14 lbs was in universal use throughout Ireland; yet an 1852 report from Galway, , quoted in Transactions of the central relief committee of the Society of Friends during the famine in Ireland in 1846 and 1847 (Dublin, 1852), p. 193 Google Scholar, mentions a stone of potatoes as containing 16 lbs.

3 The familiar comparison of 1841 and 1847 Irish farm sizes, as quoted, for example, in Edwards, R. D. and Williams, T. D. (ed.), The great famine : studies in Irish history, 1845–52 (Dublin, 1956), pp. 123–4Google Scholar, suffers from a confusion of units of area. ( Bourke, P M. A., ‘Uncertainties in the statistics of farm size in Ireland, 1841–51’, in Stat. Soc. Ire. Jn., 20, pt m (1959–60), pp. 20–6.)Google Scholar Failure to take account of the difference between the Irish and statute acres has sometimes distorted the economic picture of pre-famine rents. Again, in O’Neill, T P.,’Food problems in the great Irish famine’, in R.S.A.I. Jn., 82 (1952), pp. 106–7Google Scholar, a uniform conversion rate of 440 lbs to the quarter has been applied to the trade figures of all kinds of grain.

4 Evidence taken before her majesty’s commissioners of inquiry into the state of the law and practice in respect to the occupation of land in Ireland, H.G. 1845, (606), xix. 57; 1845, (616), xx. 1; 1845, (657), xxi. ι (subsequently referred to as Devon commission) : Witness no. 609, Question 4. See also W. 669, Q. 7 and W 679, Q. 14.

5 Returns of agricultural produce in Ireland in the year 184.7 : Part II [live stock), p. iii5 H.G. 1847-8, (iooo), lvii. 109.

6 Young, A., Tour in Ireland (1776-1779). Bohn edition (1892), 2. 13 Google Scholar; Mr and Mrs Hall, S. G., Ireland : its scenery, character, etc., 2 (1842), p. 198 (footnote).Google Scholar

7 The Irish acre was also used locally in England. The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1844, p. 185, in reviewing the multiplicity of units employed in Britain, mentions that the Irish acre was used in Lancashire, and the Irish perch of seven yards in parts of Yorkshire and Sussex, and, for some purposes, near Chepstow. Apart from Scotland and parts of Ulster, the Scotch acre was used in Cornwall.

8 Devon commission, W. 317, Q. 21-2. Readers of the Irish Farmers’ journal, 1845, p. 505, protested against its references to the statute acre on the grounds that ‘not one in ten’ of its readers was familiar with that unit.

9 Appendix to minutes of evidence taken before her majesty’s commissioners of inquiry into the state of the law and practice in respect to the occupation of land in Ireland, pp. 303-19, appendix 104, H.C. 1845, (672), xxii. I.

10 Witnesses from Kerry before the Devon commission (W. 658 and 664-82) named only the Irish acre. In Poor inquiry (Ireland), Appendix (F) and Supplement, H.G. 1836, (38), xxxiii. 1 (subsequently referred to as Poor inquiry), common use of the Irish acre is reported for the barony of Trughenackmy (p. 278). Mention is made (p. 275) of the use in the barony of Iveragh of the ‘reduced acre’ a unit of uncertain size but containing about 60-90 statute acres and therefore incapable of being confused with the smaller units of area. Respondents in Kerry to the Poor inquiry questionnaires used the Irish acre exclusively.

11 The main sources of qualitative information are the Devon commission and the Poor inquiry. In the latter, the baronial examinations relative to the nature and state of agriculture summarise local usage regarding land measure in nearly every case (pp. 210, 215, 220, 226, 231, 236, 244, 246, 250, 256, 259, 266, 270, 271, 278, 284, 289, 293, 297, 302, 306, 310, 312, 315, 318, 320 and 322). Further information will be found in the supplement to the Poor inquiry in the replies to Q. 23 (as renumbered) of the commissioners’ questionnaire. In the case of Q. 26 — ‘Does the conacre prevail in your parish’ — one or two of the respondents (pp. 197, 280) mistook ‘conacre’ to mean yet another unit of land measurement, and replied by stating the kind of acre used in their neighbourhood.

12 Doyle, Martin, Cyclopaedia of practical husbandry, p. 496 Google Scholar; Townsend, H., Statistical survey of the county of Cork (Dublin, 1810), p. 242 Google Scholar, footnote; Poor inquiry, pp. 297, 302; Third report from the select committee appointed to inquire into the state of agriculture, p. 261, Q. 14284, H.C. 1836, (465), viii. I.

13 Large, E. C., The advance of the fungi (1940), p. 23.Google Scholar

14 Irish Farmer’s and Gardener’s Magazine, v (1838), p. 193.

15 Wakefield, E., An account of Ireland, statistical and political (1812), 2. 195.Google Scholar

16 Young, Tour, ii. 21. These equivalents, in which the bushel of wheat, barley and oats weigh, respectively, 5, 4 and 3¾ stone, are mentioned by Wakefield (ii. 200, 202) as being in use in co. Glare and co. Dublin.

17 Wakefield, , Account of Ireland, 1. 368, 369, 376, 377, 385.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., ii. 197.

19 Doyle, Martin, Clycopaedia of practical husbandry, p. 495.Google Scholar

20 Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1846, p. 606. Irish Farmers’ Journal (newspaper section), 1846, p. 391. Devon commission, W. 130, Q. 22. Irish Farmers‐ Journal, 1847, p. 182.

21 Returns of agricultural produce in Ireland in the year 1849, p. vi, H.C. 1850, (1245), li. 39.

22 Irish Farmers’ Journal (newspaper section), 1846, p. 391.

28 Martin Doyle, op. cit., p. 495.

24 A local value of 16 stone for the barrel of wheat is quoted by Wakefield, op. cit., i. 384. Before the Devon commission, the great majority used the barrel of 20 stone but W. 643 instanced a value of 40 stone and W. 955 one of 24 stone.

25 A barrel of barley of 36 stone is used by W. 773 (co. Cork) before the Devon commission. Wakefield, op. cit., i. 376, 396, quotes values of 36 stone (co. Cork) and 21 stone (cos Derry and Donegal).

26 A value of 33 stone for the barrel of oats is used by several Cork witnesses before the Devon commission (W. 727, 729, 768, 773 and 778); and equivalents of 20 and 24 stone are also mentioned (W. 188 and 473). Wakefield gives variant values from 12 to 33 stone for the earlier period.

27 Witnesses before the Devon commission. The extreme values were used by W. 802 and 591. The values quoted by Wakefield range from 18 to 128 stone.