Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
The Curse of Emigration
I am editing up a long interview I did with an Undertaker/Publican called Joe Hammel from Kilmuckridge, Co. Wexford back in 2019 and it has aged with time.
I had to stop and share these few minutes with you as he tells me how there was no work or opportunity in the village in the late 1940s/early 1950s and how 100 local people from Ballygarrett, Kilmuckridge and Blackwater emigrated one year.
These men (and women) worked as farm labourers mostly and when the harvest finished, work was scarce so off to England and America they went. In this case, 100 young men and women from 3 small villages left before Christmas came.
Text: Michael Fortune
The Curse of Emigration
I am editing up a long interview I did with an Undertaker/Publican called Joe Hammel from Kilmuckridge, Co. Wexford back in 2019 and it has aged with time.
I had to stop and share these few minutes with you as he tells me how there was no work or opportunity in the village in the late 1940s/early 1950s and how 100 local people from Ballygarrett, Kilmuckridge and Blackwater emigrated one year.
These men (and women) worked as farm labourers mostly and when the harvest finished, work was scarce so off to England and America they went. In this case, 100 young men and women from 3 small villages left before Christmas came.
Text: Michael Fortune
