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• 1 2016-03-02T13:12:24-08:00 Absentee Landlords 16 Landlords plain 2016-04-14T13:00:27-07:00 The second group of landlords was the absentee landlords. Sweeney and Lambeck argue that “this group was made up of about 10,000 absentee landlords who never or only rarely saw their estates in Ireland, but lived in England, typically in London, spending their rental income over there.” As both numerous scholars and authors of such novels as this one note, most absentee landlords negatively impacted the tenants. These negative effects often resulted from a practice in which “[these absentee landlords] employed middlemen to rent [the land] out for them and these agents were the ones who dealt with evictions of tenants who could not pay rents” (Sweeney & Lambeck). In his book titled The Irish Famine, Peter Gray argues that "most of these landlords either pursued their own self-interest or were powerless to act because of the debts, mortgages, and encumbrances on their estates" (69). Furthermore, Edward Laxton in his book titled The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America gives examples of the absentee landlords who did not care about their tenants. Major Mahon, an absentee landlord in the county of Roscommon, is blamed for evictions that caused the death of over three thousands tenants (74-5). Another absentee landlord, Lord Henry John Temple, who spent all his time in London, serving as Foreign Secretary for 15 years and later as a Prime Minister for two years, also supported, to a large extent, emigration of tenants who were very poor and without any means of support (76-7). Most of these tenants ended up dying as they sailed abroad.
  
  However, as it has been explored in the resident landlords’ section, not all the absentee landlords were bad. Gray gives an example of an absentee landlord who also showed sympathy towards his tenants, arguing that “[Lord] George Henry Moore, also a Member of Parliament, who refused to carry out evictions on his Galway estate, acted humanely during the Famine” (69). This notion supports the idea that just because some landlords were absentee does not mean that they were all bad, helping a reader understand how David Merridith, once living in London, remains deeply concerned about his tenants.
  
  Works Cited
  Gray, Peter. The Irish Famine. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995. Print.
  
  Laxton, Edward. The Famine Ships: Irish Exodus to America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996. Print.
  
  O'Connor, Joseph. Star of the Sea. Orlando: Harcourt, 2002. Print.
  
  Sweeney, Colm, and Susanna Lambeck. "Irish Potato Famine and the Murder of Landlords." Nov. 2014. Enjoy Irish Culture.com. Web. 13 Feb. 2016.

  Researcher/Writer: Kalai Laizer
  Technical Designers: John Huebner and Ashley Hacker