middlemen

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middlemen, tenants who held large properties directly from landlords on long leases (see land tenure), and who in their turn sublet these to their own undertenants for shorter periods and at advanced rents. The difference between these aggregate rents and the fixed head rent paid to the landlord provided the middleman's income. Middlemen holding under the long leases and low rents offered by landlords in the depressed late 17th and early 18th centuries were able to benefit spectacularly from the rapid rise in land values after c.1750 by raising their own tenants' rents in line with changing market conditions, but were increasingly criticized for rack‐renting. In fact, throughout the 18th century in dairying regions such as Kerry and Cork, many middlemen had played an important role in financing their undertenants' cattle buying. With the rise in agricultural values in the later eighteenth century, and the growth of a capitalized ‘strong farmer’ class, the importance of middlemen declined, as landlords increasingly let directly to occupying tenants, and their role as facilitators of agrarian investment was subsumed by land agents. The Great Famine completed the process by bankrupting those middlemen responsible for paying the poor rate on behalf of their own numerous impoverished smallholders.

Lindsay Proudfoot

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