The Bothy Fire and all that

IN EARLY June 1937 a squad of 23 young seasonal agricultural workers left Achill Island, County Mayo to work on the annual Scottish potato harvest. There were 13 young women and girls and 10 young men and boys; the average age of the latter being around 16, the youngest, 13 years of age. Half were from four families—Cattigan, Kilbane, Mangan and McLoughlin. All were from the townlands of Shraheens, Achill Sound, Salia and Dooagh. In addition, their gaffer or foreman, Patrick Duggan, brought along his teenage son and daughter.

Within three months, the 10 young men and boys were dead, killed in a bothy fire in Kirkintilloch, Scotland, on their last assignment before heading home.

Voyage of necessity

Achill on Ireland’s west coast is the country’s largest—and Europe’s most westerly—island. Its mainly Irish speaking population lived communally on subsistence agriculture for thousands of years. However, the Great Hunger (An Gorta Mór) of 1845 had a devastating effect. Villages were abandoned, landholding became less communal and pressure on rents forced families to rely on seasonal migration, mainly to Scotland, to supplement income and pay rents in order to maintain a permanent foothold on the island.

Therefore, the annual journey to Scotland was not a lifestyle choice, but rather an essential survival mechanism for family and community alike.

Once in Scotland, the work of harvesting was difficult and carried out in all weathers. Workers were nomadic, moving from farm to farm and were housed in ‘bothies,’ often converted barns or other farm out buildings, which, in winter months, were used to store implements and sometimes livestock.

In 1937, pay was roughly £20 per day in today’s money. Workers were provided with potatoes, fuel, rudimentary straw bedding and blankets by the potato merchants who employed them and the farmers whose crops they harvested. A British Government report in 1936 regarded Achill workers as fit, highly-skilled and organised, much more so than comparable Scottish workers. Notwithstanding, they were regarded by many as low in the pecking order of labour in Scotland.

It was also dangerous work. In 1887 and 1924, workers were burnt to death in bothy fires in Bute and in Ayrshire. In 1894 workers were drowned near Achill on the journey to Scotland and in 1935 on the last leg of their journey home from Scotland to Arranmore Island in Donegal.

Arrival, accommodation

The Achill squad arrived in Girvan, Ayrshire after a 10-hour rail journey from Achill to Dublin and then a 12-hour overnight crossing to Glasgow in third class steerage beside the cattle stalls on board. After a few weeks harvesting the early potato crop, they travelled by lorry to farms in Lothian and finally, on September 15, to the town of Kirkintilloch about 10 miles north east of Glasgow.

Because there was no suitable accommodation on nearby farms, the potato merchant employing them, WA Graham’s of Glasgow, housed the squad in premises on the outskirts of the town at 67 Eastside. This was a dormer cottage where female workers were to sleep and a newly constructed storage shed where—for the first time—it was planned to provide very basic sleeping accommodation for the 10 young men and boys. The two buildings were connected by a narrow passage.

The shed was in three sections. The first, nearest the cottage, was a small dining area where food was cooked on a cast iron plate on top of a coal fired brick stove—this plate was cracked in three, but apparently not deemed in need of repair. Before retiring to bed, it was the job of a senior female member of the squad to stoke the fire for the night to ensure it was ready to cook the morning breakfast.

Separated by a wooden partition, lay the middle part of the shed, which stored farm implements and machinery and, ominously, a barrel of tar. Despite an instruction to the Graham’s foreman to have these removed, they were still there when the squad arrived. Access to the outside was through a 12-foot long sliding door in two halves. On the evening of the squad’s arrival, Graham’s local foreman padlocked the door, from the outside. Although it was said that, though locked, the sliding door could still be partially opened by a slip bolt on one side, the foreman told a subsequent inquiry that he had not informed the workers of this critical information. There were also a number of windows in the shed but they were substantially out of reach at approximately seven to eight feet off the ground and were covered by wire on the outside.

The final section was separated from the middle part by—what turned out to be a highly flammable—tarpaulin curtain. This was where the young men and boys were to sleep on straw filled sacks laid over upturned potato boxes. There was no heating or lighting. No one had ever slept there before.

Tragedy strikes

Around 1am in the morning, the foreman’s 15-year-old son, Thomas, who was staying in the cottage, noticed the light of a fire in the shed. On further investigation he discovered smoke and flames around the stove. He raised the alarm and woke his father who evacuated all the young women and girls and tried, unsuccessfully, to prise open the sliding door from the outside. Thomas then ran to get Graham’s foreman to open the padlock on the sliding door. When the door was opened they found the shed full of smoke and fumes with no sound of life. The fire brigade arrived to an inferno with flames 40-feet high as the wooden partition and the tarpaulin caught fire. When the fire was under control they found the bodies of the 10 young men and boys in the shed opposite the sliding door.

When news broke, there was widespread shock in both Scotland and Ireland. On Achill there were ‘weeping mothers torn with grief,’ while newspaper headlines reflected not only horror at the deaths, but also at the working and living conditions of the workers.

The community in Kirkintilloch came immediately to the aid of the survivors. Money was raised across Scotland, England and Ireland from among the Irish diaspora and beyond, eventually totalling £18,000.

It had been originally expected to bury the victims in Kirkintilloch. However, a telegram arrived from Achill which simply said ‘Beir Abhaile Ar Marbh’ (‘Bring home our dead’). Thousands lined Glasgow’s Broomlielaw and later Dublin’s North Wall Quays as the bodies were brought home. Many more paid their respects at stations and crossings along the long train journey home to burial in Achill’s Kildownet Cemetery.

Fatal Accident Inquiry

A Fatal Accident Inquiry to establish the facts relating to the cause of death was held on October 18, 1937 in Dumbarton. Of the many witnesses called only four were from the surviving Achill squad. In addition, the Irish Government believed Graham’s would ‘lawyer up,’ and advised the families do so as well.

The inquiry jury accepted medical evidence that the young workers died from carbon monoxide gas and from asphyxia from inhalation of soot, and not from the fire itself. They also accepted that the likely cause of the gas was significant overloading of the brick stove with coal. In addition, evidence was given that the hot plate was cracked in three thereby contributing to the escape of the deadly gas.

However, the jury could not reach a conclusion as to the exact cause of the fire. The presiding Sheriff said: “Fire has destroyed the only witnesses who could speak to the facts.” The inconclusiveness of the findings later fuelled speculation as to whether there had been arson, possibly driven by anti-Irish prejudice, though this was discounted by others.

It also left questions. Why had the Burgh of Kirkintillloch not adopted the new improved Fire Safety Bye Laws in operation in the rest of the county, which could have saved the lives of the workers? Why was it necessary to lock the sliding doors from the outside when they could have been more safely secured from the inside? Why did Graham’s foreman not tell the workers about the slip bolt? Why were the machinery and the tar barrel not removed?

In the end the jury recommended the introduction of mandatory fire safety protections for all premises housing seasonal agricultural workers, regardless of whether they were provided by farmers or, as in this case, by potato merchants.

Responses and remembrance

In 1938, the British Government closed these gaping loopholes, for which they alone were responsible, and which had contributed to the deaths of the young Achill workers.

Under blistering criticism, particularly from the Irish Labour and Trade Union movement, the Irish Free State Government established an inter-departmental committee to enquire into problems faced by seasonal agricultural workers to the UK. However, ‘the mountain laboured and brought forth a mouse.’ While the committee made several recommendations dealing with economic issues, when it came to the critical question of improving employment conditions, they declared this was up to the workers themselves, while that of accommodation lay with the British authorities.

In stark contrast to indifference and neglect at a high level among governments and employers alike and rather than remain helpless victims, seasonal workers responded to the disaster by forming their own ‘Achill Migratory Workers Union.’ They sought the help of trusted long-time advocate, former ITGWU trade union organiser, freedom fighter and champion of migrant workers, Peadar O’Donnell, and the Scottish Farm Workers’ Union leader, Joe Duncan, who had both helped secure improvements for Achill workers 20 years earlier. Together, they organised a successful ‘stay at home strike,’ with workers refusing to travel to Scotland until concessions were won from the employers. Another initiative taken by the Achill community was to establish an association to develop local industry.

Approaching its 90th anniversary, the Bothy Fire disaster of 1937 is still fresh in the memory of both the people of Achill and those of Kirkintilloch, where a plaque today marks the location of the fire. Moves are being made to raise funds for a more substantial memorial in Kirkintilloch to mark that anniversary (see news section).

While mechanisation, together with improved economic and social conditions at home rendered annual seasonal migration mostly a thing of the past for the people of Achill, their hard won experience holds enduring lessons for such migrant workers from other communities today both in Scotland and in Ireland.

This is an edited version of a talk delivered recently at Grace’s Irish Centre in Glasgow and later at Kirkintilloch History Month earlier this year.

The title is borrowed from that of a 1937 pamphlet on the disaster by Peadar O’Donnell and published by Liberty Press Limited, Dublin.

Those wishing to learn more could consult the East Dunbartonshire Information and Archives (William Patrick Library Kirkintilloch), which has material on the fire including contemporary newspaper reports and research by Scottish historian, Dr Heather Holmes who along with others, such as Irish historians Dr Anne O’Dowd and Brian Coughlan, have contributed greatly to the study of the events and to the story of Irish migrant workers in Scotland and beyond