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One of the most notorious Irish mass evictions of the turbulent 1880s took place around the small County Clare village of Bodyke in June 1887 on the 5000 acre estate of Colonel John O’Callaghan, which supported around 100 tenants. The landlord lived in the splendid Maryfort House in nearby Tulla. O’Callaghan had inherited the estate from his father in 1849.Through much of the 1880s O’Callaghan’s property was closely guarded by armed members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. This was because he had conducted a series of evictions in 1881 at the height of the Land War during which the land arbitration court reduced his rents by a whopping 35%.In 1887  O’Callaghan went to war again with  tenants unable to pay even the already reduced rents. Arrears of £2000 had built up. The tenants offered O’Callaghan £900, which he refused. Instead he called in the bailiffs, who were protected by a large force of Royal Irish Constabulary and military.On the side of the tenants, and visiting Bodyke to observe proceedings were future MPs Michael Davitt, founder of Land League in 1879 and Henry Norman, at the time a journalist working for the liberal London evening daily the Pall Mall Gazette, who  would write a lengthy account of the evictions in a  book.    

The O’Halloran sisters of Bodyke