Discourses of Poverty, Insanity and Criminality in Thomas Reid’s Travels in Ireland, in the Year 1822 (1823)
Résumés
En m’appuyant sur les idées de Michel Foucault sur le discours, j’ai étudié la manière dont Thomas Reid met en exergue trois formes de discours dans Travels in Ireland, in the Year 1822 (1823). Reid utilise les discours sur la pauvreté, la folie et la criminalité pour examiner la situation dégradée de l’Irlande durant la période de la première famine du XIXe siècle (durant les années 1820) et démontrer l’urgence de proposer un plan pour améliorer la situation. En tant qu’Irlandais vivant en Angleterre, il visite son pays natal pour constater la condition damnée dans laquelle vit son peuple. Il démontre qu’une majeure partie de la société irlandaise est malheureusement confinée dans des espaces miséreux, des asiles psychiatriques ou des prisons. Reid établit un lien entre la pauvreté, la folie et la criminalité en raison des similitudes inhérentes à certaines de leurs caractéristiques et / ou d’une potentielle dynamique de cause à effet entre elles. Par conséquent, les formes de discours qui traitent de ces trois catégories sont également liées. De plus, l’origine irlandaise de l’auteur l’encourage à défier les principaux préjugés anglais sur l’Irlande du XIXe siècle.
Entrées d’index
Mots-clés :
XIXe siècle, criminalité, discours, Foucault (Michel), folie, Irlande, pauvreté, Reid (Thomas)Keywords:
19th century, criminality, discourse, Foucault (Michel), insanity, Ireland, poverty, Reid (Thomas)Plan
Haut de pageNotes de la rédaction
This article derives from a paper given at the 2023 annual conference of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association in the “Travel Writing” workshop in October 2023 at Golden, Colorado (USA). The title of the paper was “Discourses of ‘Poverty’, ‘Insanity’ and ‘Criminality’ in Thomas Reid’s Travels in Ireland, in the Year 1822 (1823)”.
Texte intégral
Introduction
1Writings about early 19th-century Ireland and its condition focused on a variety of issues including British interference in the country and its consequences, the clash between Protestants and Catholics along with severe social and economic crises. Some writers like Matthew Arnold emphasised Britain’s role in Irish affairs and the extent to which it contributed to Ireland’s improvement or degraded state. Others imputed Ireland’s critical condition to allegedly inherent flaws in Irish people and / or the religious disputes between Catholics and Protestants. These views were influenced by prevalent prejudiced representations of the country in the period emanating from English authors, including travel writers.
- 1 William H. A. Williams, Tourism, Landscape and the Irish Character: British Travel Writers in Pre-F (...)
- 2 William H. A. Williams, Creating Irish Tourism: The First Century, 1750-1850, London, Anthem Press, (...)
- 3 Martin Ryle, Journeys in Ireland: Literary Travellers, Rural Landscapes, Cultural Relations, Alders (...)
2This representation has been the focus of contemporary scholarship in Irish studies. William H. A. Williams in Tourism, Landscape, and the Irish Character: British Travel Writers in Pre-Famine Ireland (2008)1 and Creating Irish Tourism: The First Century, 1750-1850 (2011) deals with British travel writings on “Pre-Famine” Ireland as a consequence of the spread of British tourism to the country. Along with highlighting British tourists’ interest in Irish landmarks and scenery, Williams points out that they also considered Irish poverty as an almost inevitable touristic curiosity. According to Williams, British tourists visited the Irish countryside to enrich their experience. For this purpose, they visited peasants, their families and their poor dwellings, among others. Williams states that “even instances of Irish poverty became part of the tourist experience”.2 Similarly, in Journeys in Ireland: Literary Travellers, Rural Landscapes, Cultural Relations (1999), Martin Ryle claims that British travelers’ visits of Ireland in the period before and after the Famine of 1848 made them reach the “painful ‘knowledge’ of Irish poverty, hunger and discontent”.3 This close look or proximity led to travelers’ inability to distance themselves from Irish poverty, as recorded in their writings.
- 4 Niamh Howlin, “Nineteenth-Century Criminal Justice: Uniquely Irish or Simply ‘not English’?”, Irish (...)
- 5 Ibid., p. 71.
- 6 Ibid.
3Besides, in “Nineteenth-Century Criminal Justice: Uniquely Irish or Simply ‘not English’?” (2013), Niamh Howlin uses the social, cultural and political circumstances of the country to account for the 19th-century Irish criminal justice system. Among these circumstances, the critic highlights the question of “[o]utsiders’ attitudes [toward Ireland] – particularly in Britain – [which] could be diverse, and shifted in accordance with the changing political and economic landscape”.4 British commentators frequently insisted on Ireland’s inferiority on cultural, social, political and economic grounds. However, this perception was not “static”5 because it shifted over time. Howlin writes: “[…] it is clear that ‘Irishness’ was regarded as ‘otherness’ in the nineteenth century, and that the unifying theme of British discourse on Ireland was the latter’s inferiority”.6 This view is Anglo-centric and a recurrent description of Ireland’s condition.
- 7 Martine Monacelli, “England’s Re-Imagining of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century”, Études irlandaise (...)
- 8 Ibid., § 14.
- 9 Ibid., § 15.
- 10 Ibid.
- 11 Ibid., § 22.
4In her turn, in “England’s Re-Imagining of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century” (2010), Martine Monacelli studies the “re-imagining” of Ireland in 19th-century English imagination. She asserts that during “the century the condition of Ireland question gripped popular imagination, stirred a strange mixture of emotions and provoked a variety of responses in troubled English consciences”.7 She emphasises three ideas about the country. The first involves Ireland as a British colony “capable of being anglicised”8 and its “regeneration […] along English lines”.9 This view stresses Ireland’s uniqueness as a British colony capable of being improved as an extension of the Empire. The second views Ireland “as a sick land groaning under archaic feudal rule but with a tremendous economic potential” and in need of “modernization thanks to the liberalization of the economy”.10 This attitude refers to the economic reasons behind the country’s critical condition and its potential to be improved on the English economic model. Both views connect the fate of Ireland to English interference, leading to another representation of the country from a gendered and colonialist perspective. Thus, a third stance imagines the relation between Ireland and England as that of wife and husband, the former being controlled by the latter, but on the verge of divorce because their “marriage [is] left unconsummated”.11
- 12 Michael de Nie, “British Conceptions of Ireland and Irishness in the Nineteenth Century”, History C (...)
- 13 Glenn Hooper, Travel Writing and Ireland, 1760-1860: Culture, History, Politics, New York, Palgrave (...)
5While many 19th-century English authors adhered to views of Ireland’s alleged inferiority, others were less bigoted in their stances on the country because “British opinion on Ireland was never uniformly negative”.12 According to Glenn Hooper, another category of British writers on Ireland after the Act of Union of 1800 “travelled with an almost evangelical desire to improve the country and its inhabitants, and raise it, as they hoped, to a comparable level of civilisation with England, Scotland, and Wales”.13 Some Anglo-Irish writers were also interested in the Irish condition. For instance, Thomas Reid (1791-1825) is an author whose preoccupation with Ireland deserves special attention. In 1822, he travelled to Ireland with the intention to account for its degraded state and show how to improve it.
- 14 Rosemary Richey, “Reid, Thomas”, in Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy, 2009, DOI: (...)
- 15 Ibid.
- 16 William H. A. Williams, Tourism, Landscape and the Irish Character…, p. 86, 88, 92-94, 99; William (...)
- 17 Christopher J. Woods, Travellers’ Accounts as Source-Material for Irish Historians, Dublin, Four Co (...)
- 18 Richard J. Butler, Building the Irish Courthouse and Prison: A Political History, 1750-1850, prepub (...)
6According to Rosemary Richey, Reid was a “naval surgeon and author”.14 He joined the British Royal Navy as “surgeon-superintendent on the Neptune” in 1817 and on the “female convict ship the Morley” in 1820.15 On these ships, which carried prisoners to Australia, he started to form a morally-inspired opinion on the treatment of prisoners. Subsequently during his Irish tour in 1822, he used his observations to elaborate his stance on the necessity of reforming the Irish prison system and improving the overall condition of the country. Out of his voyages came two travel accounts: Two Voyages to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (1822) and Travels in Ireland, in the Year 1822 (1823). Previous scholars on British travel writing have cited Reid’s reflections on the condition of the country, or have, at the very least, mentioned his concern with Irish poverty as well as Irish penitentiary and mental health institutions. For instance, Williams16 cites his comments on poverty, beggars, peasants and prisons. Likewise, Christopher J. Woods, in Travellers’ Accounts as Source-Material for Irish Historians (2009), indicates Reid’s concern with the “poor esp. [sic] raggedness, dirtiness, women as well as men working in the fields, children ‘stark naked’”.17 For his part, in Building the Irish Courthouse and Prison: A Political History, 1750-1850 (2020), Richard J. Butler evokes Reid’s interest in Irish prisons. He states that Reid visited “Irish prisons […], in the summer of 1822, and though he was more interested in administrative issues, it was architecture and design that he most often commented upon on his travels”.18 These occasional references on Reid are interesting, but they lack depth because the prime focus of their works is not on him per se.
7The present essay proposes to examine Reid’s travelogue about Ireland. It intends to analyse how the author discursively represents three major aspects of Ireland’s critical condition during his visit to the country in 1822. Using Michel Foucault’s ideas on discourse in The Archaeology of Knowledge, my purpose is to study the way Reid implements three interrelated forms of discourse in Travels in Ireland, in the Year 1822. Reid uses discourses of “poverty”, “insanity” and “criminality” to demonstrate Ireland’s depraved condition and its need to be improved. He asserts that a major part of early 19th-century Irish society is confined in impoverished spaces, asylums for “lunatics” or prisons. The connection between poverty, insanity and criminality can be seen as causal and / or analogical; each of the categories can be considered as a factor that contributes to the others, and they are similar in certain aspects. Therefore, the forms of discourse that deal with them are also entwined. Reid’s discourses also seek to achieve two objectives: challenging English prejudiced views about Ireland, its people and their misery as well as providing possible solutions for the improvement of the country.
- 19 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge [1972], Alan Sheridan Smith (trans.), London – New Yo (...)
- 20 Ibid., p. 32.
- 21 Ibid., p. 44.
8In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault defines discourse as a set of statements on a given “object” of discourse. These statements are generally related to other sets of statements, hence engendering “unities of discourse”.19 These unities do not necessarily imply authorial intention. For him, emphasis can be put on “[r]elations between statements (even if the author is unaware of them; even if the statements do not have the same author; even if the authors were unaware of each other’s existence)”.20 He argues that discourse needs a set of statements on a given object to function as a nodal point to which the other types of statements relate. He uses the “discourse of psychopathology”21 as the point of reference, and he ties other discourses like that of criminality to it. In his text, Reid discursively focuses on poverty which he connects to the other objects of discourse pertaining to insanity and criminality. His statements on Irish poverty serve as the nodal point in relation to his observations on “criminality” and “insanity”. Foucault contends that discourse analysis must
- 22 Ibid., p. 30-31.
[…] grasp the statement in the exact specificity of its occurrence; determine its condition of existence, fix at least its limits, establish its correlation with other statements that may be connected with it and show what other forms of statements it excludes.22
- 23 Michael de Nie, The Eternal Paddy: Irish Identity and the British Press, 1798-1882, Madison, Univer (...)
- 24 Kenneth Charlton, “The State of Ireland in the 1820s: James Cropper’s Plan”, Irish Historical Studi (...)
In other words, any discourse analysis should take into consideration the circumstances in which it is produced – its context – and the extent to which it reacts to other forms of discourse prevalent at the time. Reid published his text after his visit to Ireland in 1822. The least that can be said about the country at the time was its impoverished condition and the predominance of negative views about it in some British intellectual circles and travel writings. Many contemporary scholars associate the factors behind Ireland’s condition with its archaic economic organisation in rural areas, British colonialism after the Act of Union of 1800 and the disputes between Catholics and Protestants which were intensified by the “struggle for Catholic emancipation from 1801”23 until after 1822. Additionally, Irish peasants in the period subsisted primarily on the potato as their major crop, which “had failed in 1822” and gave rise to a disastrous “famine”.24 Some English writers even exaggerated their views on Ireland’s misery by evoking the people’s alleged inherent flaws like idleness and propensity for violence.
Poverty as the nodal point of Reid’s discourse
- 25 Martine Monacelli, “England’s Re-Imagining of Ireland…”, § 4.
- 26 Thomas Reid, Travels in Ireland, in the Year 1822, Exhibiting Brief Sketches of the Moral, Physical (...)
9Reid decided to visit Ireland after his return from Australia in 1822 to bear witness to its miserable state and to look for possible remedies. To have a holistic overview of the situation, he did not limit himself to Dublin, where he landed, or its vicinity; he visited as many regions of the country as possible, including rural areas. For him, these areas constitute a more appropriate space for observing the condition of the country and its people. In Travels in Ireland, in the Year 1822, he not only testifies to the deplorable state of the country but also makes statements about its possible causes and how to remedy them. According to Monacelli, many English travel accounts viewed England’s “neighbour island either as a ghastly land, economically backward and peopled with brutes or, on the contrary, as a sort of pre-modern country on the verge of progress”.25 Unlike the category of English authors who are judgemental in their stances on Ireland, Reid “endeavour[s] to describe impartially what” he sees.26 He is also committed to the future well-being of the country.
10Reid asserts that his “visit to Ireland is purely with a view to inquire into some of the evils, both moral and physical, under which, unhappily, it has too long been permitted to labour” (p. 149). This statement is open to different types of discourse that correlate with Ireland’s degraded condition. He continues to stress that Ireland’s “wretchedness is not confined to a single spot; its pressure is felt by thousands, though in some places less severely than in others” (p. 264). An important aspect of this widespread wretchedness is Irish people’s misery. Reid opens his text with the statement: “The worst state to which a nation can be reduced is that of indigence, wherein the necessaries of life are withheld from the great mass of the population. Ireland has recently been in that state” (p. 1). Because of this state, some Irish people find themselves afflicted by insanity or criminality.
- 27 William H. A. Williams, Creating Irish Tourism…, p. 5.
- 28 Cynthia E. Smith, “The Land-Tenure System in Ireland: A Fatal Regime”, Marquette Law Review, vol. 7 (...)
- 29 William H. A. Williams, Creating Irish Tourism…, p. 178.
11To elaborate further on how poverty works as a nodal point in Reid’s discourse, it is important to draw attention to his description of the physical appearance of the Irish. When he arrives in Dublin, he encounters a crowd of “creatures, of whom it would be difficult to give a correct description. Their dress, or, more properly speaking, their undress, together with their emaciated, haggard looks, was well calculated” (p. 147-148). The words “creature” and “emaciated” suggest that the people are so miserable that their humanity and personhood disappear on their looks. As a crowd, it consists of people of nuanced backgrounds who share a similar state of emaciation and ruggedness. Williams claims that “Ireland’s capital city provided traveler’s [sic] with their initial experience of the country”.27 Reid moves from the crowd of Dublin, which gives him a general outlook on the situation, to several rural areas to examine the condition of Irish peasants and their families. He partially imputes this condition to the Irish “land-tenure system”.28 After having a holistic glance at the extent to which Irish people of all walks of life in Dublin undergo the effects of their country’s degradation, he turns his attention to people in the rural areas. Peasants are arguably most representative of Ireland’s wretchedness because Irish society at the time was mostly agrarian and going through episodic famines. Williams claims that the Irish peasant “with his rags, his pig, his mud cabin and numerous family” sparked the interest of British visitors.29
- 30 William H. A. Williams, Tourism, Landscape and the Irish Character…, p. 99.
12In order to account for the condition of peasants, Reid visits what is called “‘clachans,’ settlements of nucleated family groups” where “the signifiers of Irish peasant poverty concentrated”.30 Reid states about one peasant family:
On the 17th I rode into the county of Monaghan, and saw many of the poor peasants employed in planting potatoes. One had his ground prepared and the manure spread three weeks, but was unable to procure seed. This man had been ill during the spring; his little all was soon exhausted; starvation stared him in the face, and in order to eke out a weary existence, his wife and seven children “took the country,” – they went to beg. (p. 158)
- 31 Martin Ryle, Journeys in Ireland…, p. 17.
- 32 Williams H. A. Williams, Tourism, Landscape and the Irish Character…, p. 86.
- 33 Michael de Nie, “British Conceptions of Ireland and Irishness…”, p. 2.
- 34 Ibid.
The author demonstrates that the family is unfortunate because of their incapacity to maintain their farm. This is, however, not due to their supposed laziness but to their inability to procure grains, a consequence of the period’s “agricultural depression”,31 and the father’s ill health. Therefore, they have no other option but to beg. Williams views “beggars” as “Signifiers of Poverty”.32 Reid refers to this specific manifestation of Irish misery by evoking the spread of begging throughout the country. He uses the exemplary family to explain the reasons why people need to beg, which, according to him, have nothing to do with their idleness. According to de Nie, “[f]or British observers, Irishness represented the collection of characteristics and habits that differentiated the Irish from other peoples. It also often connoted everything that the British were not”.33 Being “lazy” was seen as one of these “innate qualities [that] left Ireland unstable and incapable of governing its own affairs”.34 Therefore, any prejudiced English commentator would take mendicity as a sign of Irish idleness. Reid rather emphasises the causes of their need to beg and excludes voluntary laziness. He continues his thought on laziness by demonstrating that “idleness is forced upon” (p. 360) people by other factors like the absence of employment options.
13Reid not only gives first-hand knowledge of the reasons why peasant families find themselves in the position of being beggars but also those behind their destitute situations. He uses another “clachan” family to assert that the tenant system and landlords’ greed constitute the chief cause of peasants’ poverty. He states:
At the door of another cabin a woman and three children were crying bitterly; on asking the cause, a little girl answered, “the rid cow and wee stirk (meaning the red cow and little heifer) is gone to jail, and my father is gone with them.” (p. 158)
- 35 Matthew Arnold, Irish Essays and Others, London, Elder Smith and Co., 1882, p. vii.
- 36 Kenneth Charlton, “The State of Ireland in the 1820s…”, p. 324.
- 37 Ibid.
Reid explains the condition of this family with the inhumane manner landlords respond to tenants’ failure to honour their engagements because of bad harvest, natural catastrophe and, most importantly, their landlords’ greed. He claims: “The labours of this family had failed to satisfy the demands of the landlord […] and for this their cow and calf, the former the support of the family, were driven away and canted” (p. 158-159). Reid strips landlords of their humanity because they do not hesitate to deprive families of the basic means of their subsistence. In this context, Matthew Arnold uses the phrase “extortionate landlords”35 to name such landlords. These landlords were also called “absentee landlords”,36 because they did not live on their properties to notice the suffering of their tenants. They either came to collect their benefits or sent “their agents”37 to collect them on their behalf.
14With respect to landlords’ treatment of their tenants, Reid rhetorically uses the case of John Waller as the exception that confirms the rule. Waller is a “landed proprietor, who constantly resides on his estate”, and he is praised by “every class of persons” (p. 295) for the way he treats his tenants. They “are said to have lived in comparative luxury amidst the late widely spread ravages of famine and disease” (p. 295). Consequently, Reid wants other landlords to emulate his example. He also appeals to pathos in order to arouse feelings of guilt or empathy in landlords towards the suffering of their tenants by emphasising the wretched state of their innocent children: “I have often seen nine, ten, and eleven children, all of one family, – some ragged, others quite naked, existing, rather than living” (p. 203) in shocking places. For him, such places “would shock the humanity of an English gentleman to see his dogs or his swine driven into” (p. 203) them. Clearly, Reid supports his comments on Irish peasant families by emphasising the deplorable state of their children, who merely “exist” rather than “live”. This is meant to strike at the very conscience of “absentee” and “extortionate” landlords. Some of these can be incited to follow the example set by Waller instead of being consumed by greed.
- 38 Martin Ryle, Journeys in Ireland…, p. 17-18.
- 39 William H. A. Williams, Tourism, Landscape and the Irish Character…, p. 94.
15Ryle claims that from the 1810s onwards, “agricultural depression and rapid population growth, and the intense exploitation of small tenant farmers and labourers, were combining to bring about in Ireland the endemic starvation which culminated in the Famine of the late 1840s”.38 Reid’s previous two exemplary families are victims of these very factors. On the one hand, the manner in which the second family is treated shows that the tenant system causes their destitute situation. On the other hand, the first family is forced into starvation because of the “scarcity of food” (p. 248) and its attendant consequences. Peasants’ miserable condition manifests through aspects like starvation, the state of their clothing, or lack thereof, as well as their dwellings. Reid states: “Two of the greatest evils under which the poor of any country can labour are scarcity of food, and want of clothing, and every day throughout this inquiry presents innumerable instances of both” (p. 248). Concerning clothing, Reid insists that “[t]he clothing of the poor is, if possible, worse than their dwellings” (p. 255). Many peasants wore rags; these were a perfect example of the “visual impact of Irish poverty [which] extended beyond the peasants’ dwellings”.39 Reid does not ignore the fact that in other situations “the poor are almost universally in a state of nudity” (p. 327).
- 40 William H. A. Williams, Creating Irish Tourism…, p. 178.
- 41 William H. A. Williams, Tourism, Landscape and the Irish Character…, p. 89.
- 42 Ibid., p. 93.
16Reid also observes Ireland’s impoverished, even destitute, dwellings. In rural areas, these involve “cabins”. Williams views “Irish cabins” as an illustration of peasants’ poverty.40 He adds: “[…] individual peasant cabins were specific sites of poverty”.41 This illustrative function of the cabins prompts Reid to focus on examining them. He states that he “entered not less than sixty-three cabins, in not one of which, and they were not selected on account of their exterior attractions, was there any thing indicative of comfort” (p. 254). Another sign of the wretchedness is the absence of hygiene, which characterises the cabins as well. Reid tells us that next to each cabin there is a pile of manure used as fertiliser. Williams claims that an “even more appalling signifier of squalor […] was the manure pile before the cabin door”.42 Reid contends that after the use of the manure, “such deposits will continue to be made a nucleus for contagious matter” (p. 250). This constitutes a serious threat to peasants’ health because it directly affects the place where their food is produced. What worsens the situation is that this absence of hygiene also affects the place where food is distributed, namely markets. Reid states about one market that it “was, in fact, a moving mass of rags and dirt” (p. 265).
17This lack of hygiene is not limited to the rural areas. It is a feature of urban spaces as well. For instance, Dublin’s streets “are miserably deficient [in cleanliness]. The disgusting filthiness of Patrick Street could not, I am positive, be surpassed in the worst parts of Lisbon or Constantinople. This part of Dublin […] has long been notorious for […] dirt” (p. 150). Comparing Dublin’s lack of cleanliness to the “worst parts” of other European cities is a discursive strategy that procures Reid authority because it shows that he knows the object about which he writes. For the author, Barrack Street displays an uncommon “depravity and consequent wretchedness […] and is filled with public houses, which are constantly frequented by soldiers and unfortunate females in the lowest state of degradation” (p. 150). Most of the people who have the power to eradicate this wretchedness are unwilling to do so. To prove his point, Reid notes about the city of Marshalsea that it “exhibits a crowded picture of human wretchedness, reflecting disgrace on the callous-hearted individuals who have the power, but want the humanity, to meliorate its condition” (p. 151-152).
- 43 Diane F. George, “Colonization by Documentation: British Representations of Ireland in Maps, Archiv (...)
- 44 Ibid.
18Reid’s interest in poverty and poor spaces is not only motivated by his desire to see poor people’s condition improved but also his will to respond to prejudiced British authors who believed that Irish “poverty was about character, not circumstance”.43 According to George, “[p]overty became emblematic of the entirety of Ireland, embodied in recurring images of beggars, thatched cabins, pigs in the house, manure piles by the door, and the ubiquitous potato”.44 George refers to how English commentators assimilate the lack of hygiene, impoverished dwellings and begging to Ireland as a whole. Though Reid evokes the lack of hygiene and the prevalence of begging, he views them both as circumstantial. He corroborates this idea with a group of peasants who “were willing to labour for their food” but were unable to “get employment […] [and] were obliged to beg, or driven to the alternative of committing robberies to save themselves and children from starving” (p. 239). This implies that Reid does not consider begging and laziness as character flaws of the Irish, but is, instead, interested in improving the country. As a matter of fact, he closes his book with sections devoted to his reflections on how to improve the condition of the Irish people. In section three titled “Employment and Education”, he stresses that employment is “indispensable” for the people. Concerning peasants, he concludes that “the greatest blessing that the wisdom of man could devise for the peasantry of Ireland […] [is] employment” (p. 361). This statement not only confirms the importance of employment but also reiterates Reid’s trust in Irish un-laziness. All they need are opportunities to prove it. Besides, common sense generally associates work with good health, so being busy working would not only improve economic and social well-being but also restore physical and mental balance.
Insanity and criminality in correlation with poverty in Reid’s discourse
- 45 William H. A. Williams, Creating Irish Tourism…, p. 45.
19Reid’s discursive focus on poverty and wretchedness extends to insanity and criminality. Williams states that “[a]s part of [Reid’s] inquiry into the condition of the poor, he inspected almost every asylum and prison on his itinerary”.45 His inspections give rise to discourses on penitentiary and mental health institutions that correlate with that on poverty. Foucault asserts that the formation of objects of discourse pertaining to madness or insanity can be related to
- 46 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 45.
[…] the family, the immediate social group, the work situation, the religious community (which are all normative, which are all susceptible to deviation, which all have a margin of tolerance and a threshold beyond which exclusion is demanded, which all have a mode of designation and a mode of rejecting madness […]) […].46
- 47 Ibid., p. 44.
- 48 China Mills, “The Psychiatrization of Poverty: Rethinking the Mental Health-Poverty Nexus”, Social (...)
- 49 Alice Mauger, The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: Public, Voluntary and Private Asy (...)
20The previous section demonstrated that the “work situation” of Irish peasants and others makes them live in wretchedness, which renders them “susceptible to deviation […] [and] madness”, to borrow Foucault’s words. Therefore, Reid’s description of their confinement in impoverished spaces is accompanied with an emphasis put on those who find themselves confined in “asylums”. Reid argues that another portion of the population is confined in psychiatric institutions or asylums, which is a 19th-century new “mode of exclusion and confinement of the madman in a psychiatric hospital”.47 Reid writes that a part of the House of Industry in the county of Tipperary “is appropriated to lunatics; there are fifty-four at present. […] Many of these aliens to social happiness implored my intercession for permission to go and visit a parent, – a sister, – a wife, or a child” (p. 260). The quote implies that the present condition of the country makes it easy for any Irish family to turn out having a relative suffering from lunacy and confined in an institution. In this regard, he joins the debate about the “association between poverty and mental health”.48 Scholars in Irish studies often evoke “pauper insan[ity]” when examining this category of population in Irish asylums. According to Alice Mauger, this category received “substantial surveys”.49 Reid’s travelogue can be seen as one of these surveys. In most situations, the condition of the “pauper insane” worsens, instead of improving. Reid uses the words “aliens to social happiness” (p. 260) to stress that what he sees at the institutions is a continuation of the overall critical condition of the poor throughout the country. He adds:
The most unfeeling heart would sicken at the indescribable misery of some of the receptacles for lunatics, both public and private. Let him who would censure this appeal remember, that not a single ray of joy can illumine the minds of those most unfortunate objects; – that they are shut out from all earthly happiness; – that almost every tie which can bind rational man to existence is severed; and surely his humanity must recognize their claim to have every physical comfort carefully administered. (p. 261)
It follows that an aspect in which Ireland’s “lunatics” resemble its poor is being deprived of all “earthly happiness” or any “single ray of joy”. In other words, Reid stretches the scope of Irish misery from the poor, like peasant families, to include the situation of those in the “receptacles for [Ireland’s] lunatics”. However, Reid reiterates the advantages of employment for people’s well-being. Though the institutional employment of “lunatics” is scarce, he recognises that its implementation in, for example, the “lunatic asylum” (p. 210) of Lifford is a blessing. He states:
[…] it must sound strangely to talk of employing lunatics; yet, however strange, it is here accomplished, Mr. Graham had thirteen working in the fields […]. He manages so completely to secure their affections, that very few of them ever think of running away. There are thirty-three in all, nor has any one of them been visited with the deranging effects of corporal punishment. (p. 211)
Clearly, for Reid, providing employment for the mentally sick contributes to improving their condition. In this regard, he reinforces his claim about employment’s importance to fighting poverty, hence preventing mental health issues.
- 50 Richard J. Butler, Building the Irish Courthouse and Prison…, p. 307.
21The parallel between the mentally sick and the poor is not Reid’s only strategy in his examination of Ireland’s critical state. He also draws another analogy between the mentally sick and prisoners. In visiting a penitentiary, Reid highlights the fact that next to it there is “a lunatic asylum capable of containing twenty persons: there are seventeen at present, – nine males and eight females” (p. 247). The idea of a prison put side by side with an asylum implies that the difference between them is slight. “Lunatics” are confined in an asylum like actual prisoners, who are put within prison “cells”. Prison reforms that had progressively been implemented before 1822 led to the separation of the spaces devoted to prisoners and the mentally sick. In the words of Butler, “the new provincial lunatic asylums built after 1817 […] replaced the haphazard assortment of cells previously allocated to the insane in county gaols and infirmaries across the country”.50
- 51 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 48.
- 52 Ibid., p. 46.
22Foucault argues that a relation can be drawn “between therapeutic confinement in hospital (with its own thresholds, its criteria of cure, its way of distinguishing the normal from the pathological) and punitive confinement in prison”.51 This can be explained by the fact that madness is seen as a form of “deviance” that is sometimes linked to criminality. Foucault writes: “criminality itself becomes […] a form of deviance more or less related to madness”.52 Therefore, a third type of discourse prevalent in Reid’s text is endemic to criminality, and it is elaborated through the author’s description of Irish penitentiaries, his comments on the incarcerated and the connection between Irish misery and criminality. For the author, some Irish people are confined in these institutions because of obvious criminal offenses, while others are there as a result of poverty. For instance, he alludes to the idea that peasants who cannot meet their obligations are treated as debtors, which is punishable by law. The previous case of a peasant father who is taken away from his family because of unmet debts illustrates this idea. His daughter tells Reid that their animals of subsistence are seized and “gone to jail, and my father is gone with them” (p. 158). Reid also explains that some of the socially destitute resort to committing minor crimes, because they prefer to be put in jail for the sake of spending winter sheltered and fed. He writes: “[…] offences are often committed in the beginning of winter for the express purpose of getting into gaol, where the culprit is sure of shelter and food” (p. 375). For him, this unfortunate solution could have been “resorted to by hundreds, whom I met in the streets and roads in a state approaching to nudity and starvation” (p. 375). He contends that “[p]overty is the nurse of crime […]. […] the great majority of the inhabitants is involved in misery, lamentable ignorance and necessarily imputable crime” (p. 2).
- 53 Niamh Howlin, “Nineteenth-Century Criminal Justice…”, p. 75.
23This is why Reid not only bears witness to Irish misery but also pays visits to penitentiaries. Nonetheless, his attitude to Irish criminality differs from that of most British commentators. Throughout his travels in the country and as a prison reformer, Reid visits Irish prisons and describes their conditions. He also opines about their deficiencies and how to amend them. About the penitentiary of Dublin, he states: the “Dublin Newgate […] is badly situated, badly constructed, and badly managed. In space, classification, inspection, education and employment it is eminently deficient” (p. 151). He refers to everything that is wrong with the Dublin prison, which can be extended to other prisons in the country. It is mismanaged, not equipped with a program for the rehabilitation of prisoners through education or employment and lacks in inmates’ proper classification. He argues that in terms of classification some prisons may receive more categories than others, but unfortunately it remains a chief deficiency in Irish prisons. He states that another prison could only receive four categories of inmates because it has “only four wards” for their accommodation, occupied, respectively, “by male debtors”, “felons”, “petty offenders”, and “females for every description of crime. Thus it is evident, that classification is deficient, and inspection is still more so” (p. 243). The list of inmates mentioned here revises the prejudiced idea that “Ireland was viewed by many as a hotbed of criminality, with a violent, sectarian and clannish population”.53 Most of them do not fall within the category of violent criminals. In other words, Reid challenges the prevalent idea of innate Irish criminality and evokes petty reasons why people find themselves in prison.
- 54 Kyle Hughes, Donald M. MacRaild, “Introduction: Crime, Violence, and the Irish in the Nineteenth Ce (...)
- 55 Ibid., p. 9.
- 56 Ibid., p. 16.
- 57 Virginia Crossman, “Attitudes and Responses to Vagrancy in Ireland in the Long Nineteenth Century”, (...)
24Reid insists that the violence associated with Ireland is not exceptional or exclusive to the country. What explains his stance is that, according to Kyle Hughes and Donald M. MacRaild, “successive British administrations had their own reasons to perpetuate a stereotype that depicted the Irish as violent and thus in need of coercion”.54 To dismantle this stereotype, Reid acknowledges the existence of cases of organised criminal acts related to agrarian rebels and religious factions, but he disproves the association of each crime with violence. Reid refers to instances of what Hughes and MacRaild call “agrarian outrage”55 and another of “confessional violence” perpetrated by members of the Orange Order.56 He mentions the “peasantry of the south of Ireland” and its acts of resistance against greedy landlords (p. 133). He also indicates a hideous crime perpetrated by Orangemen against “a poor Catholic” (p. 193). Opposing these minor examples, Reid negates the idea that the majority of cases are associated with violence. For example, for him, “idleness […] should be pitied as a misfortune rather than censured as a crime” (p. 360). In the 19th century, “vagrancy” which was predicated upon idleness was criminalised, leading to a “large-scale incarceration of the wandering poor”.57 Reid confirms his stance against the stereotype of the violent Irish by responding to “[f]oreigners of all countries [who] say that our thirst for blood is insatiable; their arguments in support of this calumnious assertion are unanswerable” (p. 371). Reid also claims that what allows the stereotype to prevail is the fact that the Irish judicial system does not function on the principle that “every man is innocent until he is found guilty” (p. 207). Therefore, it is highly probable that some of the inmates Reid encounters in the prisons have committed no crimes at all. He reinforces this statement with his comment on another penitentiary where there are prisoners of all sorts, “tried and untried, innocent and guilty” (p. 185).
- 58 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 48.
- 59 Rosemary Richey, “Reid, Thomas”.
- 60 Ibid.
25As I observed above, according to Reid, a chief deficiency in the Irish prison system is the lack of rehabilitation in many of its prisons. Thus, Reid laments the fact that many prisons are not able to provide education or training. For Foucault, a prison must have a “system of punishment and pedagogy, its criteria of good conduct, improvement and freedom”.58 Reid writes about one prison: “There is no weaving, nor any provision for education, or instruction of any kind to promote moral improvement” (p. 247). He argues that the education of inmates contributes to their rehabilitation: “Some mode of education appears indispensably necessary. A little attention to these particulars, however trifling they appear, would greatly promote the usefulness of this institution” (p. 254). Reid’s focus on the education of inmates illustrates his stance on prisons’ need to be sites of “moral improvement rather than punishment”.59 In this sense, he particularly points out the few prisons that provide some form of education for inmates. For example, he mentions the county of Antrim’s prison, in which a “schoolmaster” whose “services […] are invaluable” teaches prisoners “to read and write” (p. 174). Reid is a “religious”60 person who advocates for the moral rehabilitation of inmates. Thus, he regrets that in another prison the effort of some “benevolent persons” meant to improve the “moral condition” of inmates through reading “the Scriptures to them […] has been discontinued” (p. 253).
26Like education, employment contributes to rehabilitation. Reid deplores that it is lacking in many prisons like those of the counties of Tipperary and Fermanagh. About the former, he claims that it cannot be qualified as “a good prison” because “[t]here is no employment of any sort, nor have the prisoners an opportunity of learning aught but vice” (p. 257). The problem is similar in the county of Fermanagh’s penitentiary, where “[t]here is no employment” (p. 323). Nonetheless, he acknowledges that some form of employment is provided in a few prisons. He states about one prison: “Wheels and flax are provided for females to spin; and the males are employed sometimes in pounding hemp, sometimes in pulverizing sandstone” (p. 247). Reid acknowledges that the prison under scrutiny cares about employing inmates based on their gender. Admittedly, because the employment provided in this prison is organised by gender, the deficiency of classification Reid attributes to other prisons does not affect this one.
- 61 Christopher J. Woods, Travellers’ Accounts as Source-Material…, p. 13.
- 62 Rosemary Richey, “Reid, Thomas”.
27In the section on how to ameliorate the condition of Ireland, Reid also emphasises the role of employment in rehabilitating inmates. He claims that prisons should provide employment to prisoners at any price, because “[n]othing can be more short-sighted and fallacious than the narrow-minded policy of keeping prisoners in a state of idleness, under the specious plea too of saving the county expence” (p. 375). Reid connects the lack of employment programs for prisoners to idleness. The latter was attributed to the Irish as a character flaw that was used to explain their country’s misery. However, Reid points out that people are not at fault and have no choice but to wait for better options. Woods’s postulate that “the identity of the traveller” and his / her “purposes” count as two important criteria for evaluating the reliability of their observations61 can explain Reid’s benevolent perspective on Ireland’s underprivileged population. He was Irish by birth, but he was also a “religious man” and a “prison reformer” who was influenced by British prison reformers John Howard and Elizabeth Fry, whose “Christian faith was central in their attempts to improve the lot of prisoners”.62 The confluence of these factors make him advocate for the education and employment of Ireland’s prisoners and its destitute peasants.
28Reid argues that employment can affect the situation of peasants and prisoners in a positive manner. This requires changing completely the economic system of the country from being based on agriculture to opening it to industry, trade and services – in a New Deal manner. In this sense, Reid quotes an “enlightened patriot” according to whom the only manner Ireland “can be served in the way of employment, is, by government prosecuting works of great public utility, in facilitating internal trade by means of roads and canals” (p. 361). Reid elaborates this statement by enumerating the possible areas of application for this plan. He evokes:
[…] the improvements of harbours; the encouragement of fisheries; a little planting on every farm, and more extensively on every estate; reclaiming bogs and waste lands; rebuilding cottages on a cheap, comfortable plan; extending the manufacture of linen all over the country and giving adequate premiums on every species of industry. (p. 362)
- 63 Kenneth Charlton, “The State of Ireland in the 1820s…”, p. 336.
These solutions can contribute to getting Irish people out of their “forced” idleness. If they are offered effective opportunities for employment, they can prove their reliability as citizens capable of contributing to improving their situation and regaining their country’s prosperity. Like Reid, a British Quaker named James Cropper visited the country two years after Reid’s visit. Based on his experience, Cropper devised a plan for getting Ireland out of its misery. He emphasised investments that can turn “Ireland into a manufacturing nation”.63
- 64 Helen O’Connell, Ireland and the Fiction of Improvement, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. (...)
- 65 Ibid., p. 2.
- 66 Ibid., p. 13.
- 67 Ibid., p. 3.
29It follows that Reid opines about what needs to be done for the sake of improving the lives of each of the categories of people under scrutiny. His focus on the situation of the poor, especially the peasants among them, demonstrates that Reid can be placed among post-Union writers of “improvement”. According to Helen O’Connell, the period after the Act of Union witnessed the emergence of what she calls “Irish improvement fiction”64 emanating from writers who were interested in improving Ireland’s condition. O’Connell emphasises fictional works that are meant to lecture peasants and landlords on the “necessary conditions for modernization in Ireland”,65 but she also draws a correlation between “the discourse of travel and that of improvement”.66 Therefore, Reid’s travelogue’s references to how to improve the lives of both peasants and inmates place him squarely within “improvement discourse”.67 This makes his attitude toward his motherland no doubt benevolent.
Conclusion
30This Foucauldian study of Reid’s Travels in Ireland, in the Year 1822 puts Irish people’s misery, “lunacy” and “criminality” into the spotlight; they are treated as three interrelated “objects of discourse”. The analysis shows that each category easily intertwines with the other. Even if the text is a travelogue, Reid issues a discourse with at least three types of interrelated statements on the objects of his discourse. The analysis shows that Reid is committed to the improvement of Ireland’s condition. Therefore, he promotes solutions like encouraging education everywhere and creating employment opportunities for everyone. The study also demonstrates that Reid responds to prejudiced representations of Ireland in some English writings of the period between the close of the 18th and early 19th centuries by revising aspects of their stereotyped opinions.
Notes
1 William H. A. Williams, Tourism, Landscape and the Irish Character: British Travel Writers in Pre-Famine Ireland, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2008.
2 William H. A. Williams, Creating Irish Tourism: The First Century, 1750-1850, London, Anthem Press, 2011, p. xv.
3 Martin Ryle, Journeys in Ireland: Literary Travellers, Rural Landscapes, Cultural Relations, Aldershot, Ashgate, 1999, p. 14.
4 Niamh Howlin, “Nineteenth-Century Criminal Justice: Uniquely Irish or Simply ‘not English’?”, Irish Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2013, p. 69, online: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2559027.
5 Ibid., p. 71.
6 Ibid.
7 Martine Monacelli, “England’s Re-Imagining of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century”, Études irlandaises, no. 35-1, 2010, p. 9-20, § 4, DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesirlandaises.1738.
8 Ibid., § 14.
9 Ibid., § 15.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., § 22.
12 Michael de Nie, “British Conceptions of Ireland and Irishness in the Nineteenth Century”, History Compass, vol. 3, no. 1, 2005, p. 2.
13 Glenn Hooper, Travel Writing and Ireland, 1760-1860: Culture, History, Politics, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 2.
14 Rosemary Richey, “Reid, Thomas”, in Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy, 2009, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.007621.v1.
15 Ibid.
16 William H. A. Williams, Tourism, Landscape and the Irish Character…, p. 86, 88, 92-94, 99; William H. A. Williams, Creating Irish Tourism…, p. xiv-xv, 45, 176-177.
17 Christopher J. Woods, Travellers’ Accounts as Source-Material for Irish Historians, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2009, p. 102.
18 Richard J. Butler, Building the Irish Courthouse and Prison: A Political History, 1750-1850, prepublication, 2020, p. 312, Mary Immaculate Research Repository: https://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/2986.
19 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge [1972], Alan Sheridan Smith (trans.), London – New York, Routledge, 1989, p. 23.
20 Ibid., p. 32.
21 Ibid., p. 44.
22 Ibid., p. 30-31.
23 Michael de Nie, The Eternal Paddy: Irish Identity and the British Press, 1798-1882, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2004, p. 80.
24 Kenneth Charlton, “The State of Ireland in the 1820s: James Cropper’s Plan”, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 17, no. 67, 1971, p. 324.
25 Martine Monacelli, “England’s Re-Imagining of Ireland…”, § 4.
26 Thomas Reid, Travels in Ireland, in the Year 1822, Exhibiting Brief Sketches of the Moral, Physical, and Political State of the Country with Reflections on How to Improve Its Condition, London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1823, p. v. Henceforth, page numbers in brackets refer to this source.
27 William H. A. Williams, Creating Irish Tourism…, p. 5.
28 Cynthia E. Smith, “The Land-Tenure System in Ireland: A Fatal Regime”, Marquette Law Review, vol. 76, no. 2, 1993, p. 469.
29 William H. A. Williams, Creating Irish Tourism…, p. 178.
30 William H. A. Williams, Tourism, Landscape and the Irish Character…, p. 99.
31 Martin Ryle, Journeys in Ireland…, p. 17.
32 Williams H. A. Williams, Tourism, Landscape and the Irish Character…, p. 86.
33 Michael de Nie, “British Conceptions of Ireland and Irishness…”, p. 2.
34 Ibid.
35 Matthew Arnold, Irish Essays and Others, London, Elder Smith and Co., 1882, p. vii.
36 Kenneth Charlton, “The State of Ireland in the 1820s…”, p. 324.
37 Ibid.
38 Martin Ryle, Journeys in Ireland…, p. 17-18.
39 William H. A. Williams, Tourism, Landscape and the Irish Character…, p. 94.
40 William H. A. Williams, Creating Irish Tourism…, p. 178.
41 William H. A. Williams, Tourism, Landscape and the Irish Character…, p. 89.
42 Ibid., p. 93.
43 Diane F. George, “Colonization by Documentation: British Representations of Ireland in Maps, Archives, and Travelogues”, Radical History Review, no. 104, 2009, p. 157.
44 Ibid.
45 William H. A. Williams, Creating Irish Tourism…, p. 45.
46 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 45.
47 Ibid., p. 44.
48 China Mills, “The Psychiatrization of Poverty: Rethinking the Mental Health-Poverty Nexus”, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, vol. 9, no. 5, 2015, p. 214.
49 Alice Mauger, The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: Public, Voluntary and Private Asylum Care, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, p. 9.
50 Richard J. Butler, Building the Irish Courthouse and Prison…, p. 307.
51 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 48.
52 Ibid., p. 46.
53 Niamh Howlin, “Nineteenth-Century Criminal Justice…”, p. 75.
54 Kyle Hughes, Donald M. MacRaild, “Introduction: Crime, Violence, and the Irish in the Nineteenth Century; Themes and Perspectives”, in Crime, Violence, and the Irish in the Nineteenth Century, Kyle Hughes, Donald M. MacRaild (eds.), Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2017, p. 6.
55 Ibid., p. 9.
56 Ibid., p. 16.
57 Virginia Crossman, “Attitudes and Responses to Vagrancy in Ireland in the Long Nineteenth Century”, in Crime, Violence, and the Irish in the Nineteenth Century, p. 265.
58 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 48.
59 Rosemary Richey, “Reid, Thomas”.
60 Ibid.
61 Christopher J. Woods, Travellers’ Accounts as Source-Material…, p. 13.
62 Rosemary Richey, “Reid, Thomas”.
63 Kenneth Charlton, “The State of Ireland in the 1820s…”, p. 336.
64 Helen O’Connell, Ireland and the Fiction of Improvement, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 1.
65 Ibid., p. 2.
66 Ibid., p. 13.
67 Ibid., p. 3.
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Mouloud Siber, « Discourses of Poverty, Insanity and Criminality in Thomas Reid’s Travels in Ireland, in the Year 1822 (1823) », Études irlandaises, 50-2 | 2025, 23-38.
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Mouloud Siber, « Discourses of Poverty, Insanity and Criminality in Thomas Reid’s Travels in Ireland, in the Year 1822 (1823) », Études irlandaises [En ligne], 50-2 | 2025, mis en ligne le 05 décembre 2025, consulté le 12 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/20682 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15a9y
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