Sir Robert Gore-Booth Letters (1846–1849), Appendix X, Minutes of Evidence Before Select Committee on Colonisation from Ireland, Submitted By Sir Robert Gore-Booth, British Parliamentary Papers, Emigration, V 5, PP. 122–132

Sir Robert Gore-Booth was landlord of Lissadell House, County Sligo, who assisted his tenants to emigrate in 1847 and then submitted some of their letters from Saint John, New Brunswick, to be published, along with the testimony of Stephen De Vere, by the House of Lords Select Committee on Colonisation from Ireland. Like his neighbouring Sligo landlord. Lord Palmerston, Gore-Booth has been accused of clearing his estate, but most of the historical evidence is exculpatory. Tyler Anbinder and Gerard Moran argue persuasively that he was a progressive landlord whose tenants fared much better than most during the Great Hunger. ¹ Nevertheless, they faced considerable hardship and often perished during the Famine voyage and in Saint John, New Brunswick, as their letters attest, though they did not blame their landlord for their misfortune. Their letters are also written in the vernacular of the steerage class in contrast with most accounts of the Famine migration.