Findmypast has Applications from Irish Evicted Tenants



Findmypast Ireland has an unusual set of records that could help you determine if your Irish ancestors had been evicted tenants. The collection of Applications from Evicted Tenants offers a wealth of useful information including names, addresses, and circumstances of the applicant.

Findmypast.ie has a collection called Applications from Evicted Tenants. It includes 2,500 records from the Estate Commissioners Offices, Applications from Evicted Tenants (1907). The records provide a rare insight into eviction by listing applicants from evicted tenants from some of the most impoverished areas of Ireland, with extensive information about their circumstances.

Each report provides the following details:

* The Registered Application number
* The applicant’s name and address
* The name of the estate from which he or she was evicted
* The townland address of the evictee
* The extent of the evictee’s former landholding in acres
* The rent per annum paid by the tenant prior to eviction
* The name of the occupier at the time of the application to the Commissioners
* The circumstances of the applicant and additional observations.

This collection relates to the Evicted Tenants (Ireland) Act, 1907. It was part of the Irish Land Act. It included the following information:

“If it appears to the Estates Commissioners that it is expedient to acquire any land for the purposes of this Act, and if they have offered to the person appearing to them to be the owner of the land a price which appears to them to represent the value thereof, and he has not within the prescribed time accepted the offer, they may, subject to the provisions as to appeal contained in this Act, acquire that land compulsorily for those purposes in accordance with the provisions of this Act, and shall declare any land so acquired to be an estate.”

Irish Central states that the Evicted Tenants (Ireland) Act, 1907, sought to provide evicted tenants with some relief. The people who were being evicted were tenant farmers.

According to HistoryHomeco.uk, the greater part of the land in Ireland was owned by men who rented it out to tenant farmers rather than cultivating it themselves. Somewhere between the land owner, and the tenant farmers, was the landlord. This was so up until about 1900.

A blog called MaggieBlanck.com provides more details. Most of the tenant farmers were “tenant at will” and held no lease on the land. They could be evicted at any time, and had no recourse in disagreements with the landlord. Some landlords evicted tenants because the landlord realized he could make more money from grazing than from the rents of the tenant farmers.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

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