In the latter half of the 1800s, Ireland was embroiled in a period of agrarian unrest known as the Land War, in which poor tenant farmers still struggling from the aftermath of the potato famine fought against exploitative landlords.

Rent prices had risen with farming profits through the 1850s and ‘60s, but the Long Depression which began in 1873 left many tenant farmers unable to pay their rent.

While organizations such as the Land League and legislation such as the Plan of Campaign aimed to provide struggling tenants with rent reduction and relief, evictions were still widespread.

Many evicted tenants did not give up their homes quietly. Though landlords enforced their property rights with armed police and British soldiers equipped with battering rams, tenants fortified their meager abodes with thorny barricades and fought back with boiling water, cow dung and whatever improvised weaponry they could muster.