Smiths of Baltiboys: a Co. Wicklow family and their estate in the 1840s

Abstract

This thesis sets out to examine a medium-sized Co. Wicklow improving estate before, during and immediately after the great famine. The basic primary resourse used is the journal kept by the wife of the landlord throughout the 1840s ; using it and corroborative material, the lives led by Colonel Henry and Mrs. Elizabeth Smith on their estate of Baltiboys near Blessington, some twenty miles south of Dublin, are described and the condition of all living on the estate investigated.