1. The Irish Potato Famine

2. “On some straw, soddened upon the ground, moaning piteously, was a shriveled old woman, imploring us to give her something, - baring her limbs partly, to show how the skin hung loose from the bones, as soon as she attracted our attention. Above her, on something like a ledge, was a young woman, with sunken cheeks, - a mother I have no doubt,-who scarcely raised her eyes in answer to our enquiries, but pressed her hand upon her forehead, with a look of unutterable anguish and despair.”

3. Irish society was dominated by the wealthy English landowners and most Irish were at the bottom of the social pyramid. Irish farmers could rent land from English landlords by working the landlords farm in exchange for a plot of land to work for himself.
There were also large numbers of farmers that traveled from farm to farm looking for work.
However, “in 1835, an inquiry found that over two million people were without employment of any kind.”(8)
Poor farmers who could not afford to rent large farms could rent small plots to grow enough food to feed their families.
The crop of choice was the potato.
The potato was introduced to Ireland in 1590 and could grow in poor conditions.
Potato crops required very little care which was significant because poor farmers had to spend most of their time working for their landlords.

4. Population Growth
At the beginning of the 1800s, Ireland had a population of over 8 million people, and was one of the most densely populated regions.
Between 1799 and 1841, it had increased by 172%.
This was due to:
A healthy diet of potato plus milk
Early marriages
High birth rate
High infant survival rate

5. Pressures on Land
In County Mayo, there were 475 people for every square mile of farmland.
80% of the Irish people lived in the countryside and worked the land
Land did not belong to them; it belonged to 20,000 English landlords.
Each landlord had 1000 acres of land that was divided into farms and rented out to the Irish Catholic tenant farmers
If you did not pay your rent, you would be evicted

6. Subdivisions of Land
Sub-division created many small farms in Ireland as this practice continued with each generation
In 1845, almost 200,000 farming families lived on less than 5 acres of land per family.
In 1845, 135,000 farming families lived on less than 1 acre of land.
Whiles the farms got smaller, their rents increased by 100%.

7. Importance of the Potato
Due to the limited amount of land per family, the potato was relied heavily upon.
On one acre of land, you could produce 8 ¾ tons of potatoes a year.
It would take almost four acres of land to produce the equivalent in wheat.
The potato could grow on most types of land, even bogland.
Crop rotation was not necessary
The potato was also nutritious and had many uses.

8. The Potato
Large estates were owned by the British and run by agents, and these were under pressure to maximize income from rents for the benefit of absentee landlords.
Many agents were corrupt; all were committed to the greatest possible exploitation of the estates and their tenants.
One of the consequences was that Irish agriculture adopted the potato as the staple food-crop of the peasantry, and economic forces acted to bring about what would prove a disastrous dependency on a very few varieties.

9. That’s just what happened to the Irish people
The Potato
To Irish, potato-growing, land renters, the potato was everything. It was both food and cash. Part of the crop was sold to pay the rent and buy what the family needed. The rest of the crop fed the family. There was very little, if any, crop diversity.
An Irish potato crop failure in 1845 would not merely harm a family’s financial well-being. It would jeopardize that family’s ability to provide for basic physical needs. And if the reason for the failure was a potato blight that affected the whole country, the negative impact could have
national proportions.
That’s just what happened to the Irish people
between the years of

10. Importance of the Potato
The potato when supplemented with milk provided most of the calories and vitamins needed for a healthy life.
Poverty may have been a problem in Ireland, but the children grew healthy and strong, and fatal illnesses were rare.
Per 10 pounds of potatoes:
3000 calories
45 grams of protein
1.92 milligrams of calcium
21.34 milligrams of iron
1,600 milligrams of vitamin A
444-1,218 milligrams of vitamin C

11. All those who relied on potatoes had to find something else to eat.
The Potato
In 1845, the fungus Phytophthora infestans arrived accidentally from North America.
A slight climate variation brought the warm, wet weather in which the blight thrived.
Much of the potato crop rotted in the fields. Because potatoes could not be stored longer than 12 months, there was no surplus to fall back on.
All those who relied on potatoes had
to find something else to eat.

12. The Blight
Winds from southern England carried the fungus to the countryside around Dublin.
The blight spread throughout the fields as fungal spores settled on the leaves of healthy potato plants, multiplied and were carried in the millions by cool breezes to surrounding plants.
Under ideal moist conditions, a single infected potato plant could infect thousands more in just a few days.
The attacked plants fermented while providing the nourishment the fungus needed to live, emitting a nauseous stench as they blackened and withered in front of the disbelieving eyes of Irish peasants.
There had been crop failures in the past due to weather and other diseases, but this strange new failure was unlike anything ever seen.
Potatoes dug out of the ground at first looked edible, but shriveled and rotted within days.
The potatoes had been attacked by the same fungus that had destroyed the plant leaves above ground.

13. THE POTATO AND THE BLIGHT
THE LUMPER IS A WHITE POTATO THAT WAS COMMONLY GROWN IN IRELAND BECAUSE IT PRODUCED A LARGE CROP AND GREW ON POOR SOIL.
HOWEVER , IT WAS ALSO PRONE TO DISEASE- THE BLIGHT. IT ARRIVED, IN 1845, FROM EUROPE AND QUICKLY SPREAD.

14. Potato Fungus
The next spring, farmers planted potatoes again. The potatoes seemed sound, but some harbored dormant strains of the fungus. When it rained, the blight began again. Within weeks the entire crop failed.

15. Visual sources 2/5 Lesson 12

16. THE DISEASE
THE FUNGUS HIT THE POTATOES FIRST, BEFORE SHOWING BLOTCHES ON THE LEAVES AND STEMS. EVEN POTATOES THAT SEEMED FINE WHEN DUG UP, ROTTED LATER.

17. Views on the Blight
By October 1845, news of the blight had reached London. British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, quickly established a Scientific Commission to examine the problem.
After briefly studying the situation, the Commission issued a gloomy report that over half of Ireland's potato crop might perish due to 'wet rot.'
Meanwhile, the people of Ireland formulated their own unscientific theories on the cause of the blight.
Perhaps, it was thought, static electricity in the air resulting from the newly arrived locomotive trains caused it.
Others reasoned that 'mortiferous vapors' from volcanoes emanating from the center of the earth might have done it.
Some Catholics viewed the crisis in religious terms as Divine punishment for the "sins of the people" while others saw it as Judgment against abusive landlords and middlemen.

18. Views on the Blight
In England, religious-minded social reformers viewed the blight as a heaven-sent 'blessing' that would finally provide an opportunity to transform Ireland, ending the cycle of poverty resulting from the people's mistaken dependence on the potato.

19. The Great Hunger
Famine Hits Ireland

20. Poetry During the Famine
THE FAMINE YEAR (THE STRICKEN LAND) By Jane Francesca Wilde
Weary men, what reap ye? -- Golden corn for the stranger. What sow ye? -- Human corpses that wait for the avenger. Fainting forms, hunger-stricken, what see you in the offing? Stately ships to bear our food away, amid the stranger's scoffing. There's a proud array of soldiers -- what do they round your door? They guard our masters' granaries from the thin hands of the poor. Pale mothers, wherefore weeping -- Would to God that we were dead; Our children swoon before us, and we cannot give them bread.
We are wretches, famished, scorned, human tools to build your pride, But God will yet take vengeance for the souls for whom Christ died. Now is your hour of pleasure -- bask ye in the world's caress; But our whitening bones against ye will rise as witnesses, From the cabins and the ditches, in their charred, uncoffin'd masses, For the Angel of the Trumpet will know them as he passes. A ghastly, spectral army, before the great God we'll stand, And arraign ye as our murderers, the spoilers of our land.

21. HUNGER
BY OCTOBER 1845, ONE THIRD OF THE CROP HAD BEEN LOST AND 87,000 PEOPLE HAD DIED OF HUNGER. FOOD PRICES ROSE QUICKLY AND THOSE WHO NEEDED FOOD MOST, COULD NOT AFFORD IT.

22.  "I ventured through that parish this day, to ascertain the condition of the inhabitants, and although a man not easily moved, I confess myself unmanned by the extent and intensity of suffering I witnessed, more especially among the women and little children, crowds of whom were to be seen scattered over the turnip fields, like a flock of famished crows, devouring the raw turnips, and mostly half naked, shivering in the snow and sleet, uttering exclamations of despair, whilst their children were screaming with hunger. I am a match for anything else I may meet with here, but this I cannot stand."- Captain Wynne, Inspecting Officer, West Clare, 1846

23. December 16, 1846
"Our accounts from the northern parts of this country are most deplorable. What the poor people earn on the public works is barely sufficient to support them. All their earnings go for food; and the consequence is, that they have nothing left to procure clothing. Since the extreme cold set in, sickness and death have accordingly followed in its train. Inflammation of the lungs, fevers, and other maladies, resulting from excessive privation, have been bearing away their victims. Many have died in the course of last week; and the illness in every case was traceable to the want of clothing and firing, if not of sufficient food."

24. Food Riots
Note: The following article is taken from Pictorial Times, October 10, 1846.
“Famine, the most pinching, has added its horrors to the misery previously unbearable. Fathers see those they love slowly expiring for the want of bread. Men, sensitive and proud, are upbraided by their women for seeing them starve without a struggle for their rescue. Around them is plenty; rickyards, in full contempt, stand under their snug thatch, calculating the chances of advancing prices; or, the thrashed grain safely stored awaits only the opportunity of conveyance to be taken far away to feed strangers.”

25. The poor in Ireland became homeless.
Eviction
The poor in Ireland became homeless.
Many had no houses in which to live. When they could not pay rent to their landlords, family after family were evicted from their homes. It did a family little good to defend their home.

26. Unable to pay rent, thousands of families were evicted from their dwellings.
Starving people with their possessions on their back, walked with their children to nowhere. Many dropped dead on the roads.
To make sure the evicted would not return as squatters, landlords tore off the thatched roofs and burned them.

27. Many homeless, Irish people built hovels on the moors.
“Many of the cabins were holes in the bog, covered with a layer of sod, and not distinguishable as human habitations from the surrounding moor, until close down upon them. The bare sod was about the best material of which any of them were constructed. Doorways, not doors, were usually provided at both sides-back and front-to take advantage of the way of the wind. Windows and chimneys, I think, had no existence.”

28. BLACK '47
1847 SAW THE GREATEST NUMBER OF DEATHS IN IRELAND.BY NOW OVER £5MILLION HAD BEEN SPENT ON RELIEF SCHEMES.(AID) OVER 3 MILLION PEOPLE DEPENDED ON THIS AID.

29. English officials most directly involved in Irish relief “believed in the economic principles of laissez-faire, or non-interference by the government.”
The government did provide help to those suffering from the resulting famine, but the Irish criticized the actions taken by the English authorities as being slow and inadequate to deal with the problem of widespread starvation.
The government simply did not react quickly enough to deal with the famine.
Between 1845 and 1855 nearly a million Irish had died from starvation and nutrition related diseases.
“Black ’47” was the worst year of the famine, nearly 400,000 died.
Ironically, Ireland was exporting more than enough food to feed the starving.

30. Laissez-Faire and Aid
In the first year of the Famine, deaths from starvation were kept down due to the imports of Indian corn and survival of about half the original potato crop.
Poor Irish survived the first year by selling off their livestock and pawning their meager possessions whenever necessary to buy food.
Some borrowed money at high interest from petty money-lenders, known as gombeen men.
They also fell behind on their rents.
The potato crop in Ireland had never failed for two consecutive years.
Everyone was counting on the next harvest to be blight-free.
But the blight was here to stay and three of the following four years would be potato crop disasters, with catastrophic consequences for Ireland.

31. Laissez-Faire and Aid
In deciding their course of action during the Famine, British government officials and administrators rigidly adhered to the popular theory of the day, known as laissez-faire (meaning let it be), which advocated a hands-off policy in the belief that all problems would eventually be solved on their own through 'natural means.'
Great efforts were thus made to sidestep social problems and avoid any interference with private enterprise or the rights of property owners.
Throughout the entire Famine period, the British government would never provide massive food aid to Ireland under the assumption that English landowners and private businesses would have been unfairly harmed by resulting food price fluctuations.
In adhering to laissez-faire, the British government also did not interfere with the English-controlled export business in Irish-grown grains.
Throughout the Famine years, large quantities of native-grown wheat, barley, oats and oatmeal sailed out of places such as Limerick and Waterford for England, even though local Irish were dying of starvation. Irish farmers, desperate for cash, routinely sold the grain to the British in order to pay the rent on their farms and thus avoid eviction.

32. Aid
With the threat of starvation looming, Prime Minister Peel made a courageous political decision to advocate repeal of England's long-standing Corn Laws.
The protectionist laws had been enacted in 1815 to artificially keep up the price of British-grown grain by imposing heavy tariffs on all imported grain.
Under the Corn Laws, the large amounts of cheap foreign grain now needed for Ireland would be prohibitively expensive.
However, English gentry and politicians reacted with outrage at the mere prospect of losing their long-cherished price protections.
The political furor in Britain surrounding Peel's decision quickly overshadowed any concern for the consequences of the crop failure in Ireland.

33. Aid
A Relief Commission was established in Dublin to set up local relief committees throughout Ireland composed of landowners, their agents, magistrates, clergy and notable residents.
The local committees were supposed to help organize employment projects and distribute food to the poor while raising money from landowners to cover part of the cost.
The British government would then contribute a matching amount.
However, in remote rural areas, many of the relief committees were taken over by poorly educated farmers who conducted disorganized, rowdy meetings.
Local landowners, upon seeing who was on the committees, balked at donating any money.
There were also a high number of absentee landlords in the remote western areas with little first-hand knowledge of what was occurring on their property.
They also failed to donate.

34. Aid
The shaky Irish relief effort soon came under the control of a 38-year-old English civil servant named Charles Edward Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary of the British Treasury.
Trevelyan was appointed by Prime Minister Peel to oversee relief operations in Ireland and would become the single most important British administrator during the Famine years.
He was a brilliant young man of unimpeachable integrity but was also stubborn, self-righteous, overly bureaucratic, and not given to a favorable opinion of the Irish.
Unwilling to delegate any authority in his day-to-day duties, he managed every detail, no matter how small.
All communications arriving from his administrators in Ireland were handed directly to him, unseen by anyone else.
Important decisions were thus delayed as his workload steadily increased.
He often remained at his office until 3 a.m. and demanded the same kind of round-the-clock commitment from his subordinates. .

35. Aid
Trevelyan would visit Ireland just once during all of the Famine years, venturing only as far as Dublin, far from the hard-hit west of Ireland.
Remoteness from the suffering, he once stated, kept his judgment more acute than that of his administrators actually working among the people affected
In the spring of 1846, under his control, the British attempted to implement a large-scale public works program for Ireland's unemployed.
Similar temporary programs had been successfully used in the past.
But this time, Trevelyan complicated the process via new bureaucratic procedures that were supposed to be administered by a Board of Works located in Dublin.
The understaffed Board was quickly swamped with work requests from landowners.
At the same time, local relief committees were besieged by masses of unemployed men.
The result was confusion and anger.
British troops had to be called in to quell several disturbances.

36. Aid
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Peel came up with his own solution to the food problem.
Without informing his own Conservative (Tory) government, he secretly purchased two shipments of inexpensive Indian corn (maize) directly from America to be distributed to the Irish.
But problems arose as soon as the maize arrived in Ireland.
It needed to be ground into digestible corn meal and there weren't enough mills available amid a nation of potato farmers.
Mills that did process the maize discovered the pebble-like grain had to be ground twice.
To distribute the corn meal, a practical, business-like plan was developed in which the Relief Commission sold the meal at cost to local relief committees which in turn sold it at cost to the Irish at just one penny per pound.
But peasants soon ran out of money and most landowners failed to contribute any money to maintain the relief effort.

37. Aid
The corn meal itself also caused problems. Normally, the Irish ate enormous meals of boiled potatoes three times a day.
A working man might eat up to fourteen pounds each day.
They found Indian corn to be an unsatisfying substitute.
Peasants nicknamed the bright yellow substance 'Peel's brimstone.'
It was difficult to cook, hard to digest and caused diarrhea.
Most of all, it lacked the belly-filling bulk of the potato.
It also lacked Vitamin C and resulted in scurvy, a condition previously unknown in Ireland due to the normal consumption of potatoes rich in Vitamin C.
Out of necessity, the Irish grew accustomed to the corn meal.
But by June 1846 supplies were exhausted.
The Relief Commission estimated that four million Irish would need to be fed during the spring and summer of 1846, since nearly £3 million worth of potatoes had been lost in the first year of the Famine.
But Peel had imported only about £100,000 worth of Indian corn from America and Trevelyan made no effort to replenish the limited supply.

38. Responses to the Great Famine
Scenario 5
The Labour Act was passed in 1846 which further worked on landlords to provide work, punishing them if they did not by forcing them to pay a ‘labour rate’. However, by the spring of 1847 the situation was worsening.
If you were Russell (PM after Peel) would you…
Begin freely distributing food through soup kitchens, like the Quakers had done?
Double the ‘labour rate’ – find work for the poor or go bankrupt?
Do nothing. You have already done enough?
Scenario 6
From late 1847 the Poor Relief system (allowing the poorest people to go to workhouses to be looked after) was failing. c.200,000 people were sheltered in workhouses, double the number they should have held. Conditions were appalling and the unions which ran them were bankrupt.
Should Russell…
Build more workhouses to cope with the problem?
Begin giving relief to the poor still living at home – outdoor relief?
Expand the public works schemes?

39. Responses to the Great Famine
Scenario 5
Correct Answer
a) Begin freely distributing food through soup kitchens, like the Quakers had done.
Volunteer and religious groups like the Quakers had already begun distributing food in this way. Once again, the scheme was chosen because of the laissez-faire approach - it was paid for through local rates. By August, 3 million + were fed this way. Scheme ended in September 1847.
Scenario 5
The Labour Act was passed in 1846 which further worked on landlords to provide work, punishing them if they did not by forcing them to pay a ‘labour rate’. However, by the spring of 1847 the situation was worsening.
If you were Russell (PM after Peel) would you…
Begin freely distributing food through soup kitchens, like the Quakers had done?
Double the ‘labour rate’ – find work for the poor or go bankrupt?
Do nothing. You have already done enough?
Scenario 6
Correct Answer
Begin giving relief to the poor still living at home – outdoor relief.
Around 800,000 people were given aid in their home. Building workhouses would have been too much involvement and public work schemes were dropped in 1847.
Scenario 6
From late 1847 the Poor Relief system (allowing the poorest people to go to workhouses to be looked after) was failing. c.200,000 people were sheltered in workhouses, double the number they should have held. Conditions were appalling and the unions which ran them were bankrupt.
Should Russell…
Build more workhouses to cope with the problem?
Begin giving relief to the poor still living at home – outdoor relief?
Expand the public works schemes?

40. AID
‘SOUP KITCHENS ‘ RUN BY QUAKERS, WERE SET UP TO FEED THE STARVING PEOPLE.THE POTATO CROP WAS GOOD IN 1847, BUT ONLY A SMALL CROP HAD BEEN PLANTED. PEOPLE WERE EITHER TOO WEAK TO SOW THE PLANTS OR HAD EATEN THE SEED POTATOES.

41. Laissez-Faire and Aid
On June 29, 1846, the resignation of British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel was announced.
Peel's Conservative government had fallen over political fallout from repeal of the Corn Laws which he had forced through Parliament.
His departure paved the way for Charles Trevelyan to take full control of Famine policy under the new Liberal government.
The Liberals, known as Whigs in those days, were led by Lord John Russell, and were big believers in the principle of laissez-faire.
Once he had firmly taken control, Trevelyan ordered the closing of the food depots in Ireland that had been selling Peel's Indian corn.
He also rejected another boatload of Indian corn already headed for Ireland.
His reasoning, as he explained in a letter, was to prevent the Irish from becoming "habitually dependent" on the British government.
His openly stated desire was to make "Irish property support Irish poverty.“

42. Laissez-Faire and Aid
As a devout advocate of laissez-faire, Trevelyan also claimed that aiding the Irish brought "the risk of paralyzing all private enterprise."
Thus he ruled out providing any more government food, despite early reports the potato blight had already been spotted amid the next harvest in the west of Ireland.
Trevelyan believed Peel's policy of providing cheap Indian corn meal to the Irish had been a mistake because it undercut market prices and had discouraged private food dealers from importing the needed food.
This year, the British government would do nothing.
The food depots would be closed on schedule and the Irish fed via the free market, reducing their dependence on the government while at the same time maintaining the rights of private enterprise.

43. Laissez-Faire and Aid
Trevelyan's free market relief plan depended on private merchants supplying food to peasants who were earning wages through public works employment financed mainly by the Irish themselves through local taxes.
But the problems with this plan were numerous.
Tax revues were insufficient.
Wages had been set too low.
Paydays were irregular and those who did get work could not afford to both pay their rent and buy food.
Ireland also lacked adequate transportation for efficient food distribution.
There were only 70 miles of railroad track in the whole country and no usable commercial shipping docks in the western districts.
Meanwhile, the Irish watched with increasing anger as boatloads of home-grown oats and grain departed on schedule from their shores for shipment to England.
Food riots erupted in ports such as Youghal near Cork where peasants tried unsuccessfully to confiscate a boatload of oats.
At Dungarvan in County Waterford, British troops were pelted with stones and fired 26 shots into the crowd, killing two peasants and wounding several others.
British naval escorts were then provided for the riverboats as they passed before the starving eyes of peasants watching on shore.
As the Famine worsened, the British continually sent in more troops. "Would to God the Government would send us food instead of soldiers," a starving inhabitant of County Mayo lamented.

44. The Famine (Roisin Hambly)
In the Spring of ’45
I planted my potato crop,
But when I dug them up in Winter
They were black and brown from rot.
There were seven in my family,
Four children under five,
I had to find some food for them,
To keep them all alive.
It wasn’t too bad to start with,
But by Autumn ’47,
Two members of my family
Had died and gone to Heaven.
That Winter it was long and cold
And every thing was bare,
Then when my lovely wife passed on
I thought it so unfair.
My family were now so thin,
Their faces were so hollow
They decided to emigrate
But foolishly I didn’t follow.
I saw a soldier selling corn,
No one was around,
I took this opportunity
To knock him to the ground.
I robbed him of his food and money
And quickly ran away,
But sadly I was caught and killed
And left there to decay.
How does it make you feel?
How does the narrator feel?

45. Narrative of a Recent Journey of Six Weeks in Ireland. William Bennett
1847
“My hand trembles while I write. The scenes of human misery and degradation we witnessed still haunt my imagination, with the vividness and power of some horrid and tyrannous delusion, rather than the features of a sober reality. We entered a cabin. Stretched in one dark corner, scarcely visible, from the smoke and rags that covered them, were three children huddled together, lying there because they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly, their little limbs-on removing a portion of the filthy covering - perfectly emaciated, eyes sunk, voice gone, and evidently in the last stage of actual starvation. Crouched over the turf embers was another form, wild and all but naked, scarcely human in appearance. It stirred not, nor noticed us.”

46. Eye Witness Account
“On some straw, soddened upon the ground, moaning piteously, was a shriveled old woman, imploring us to give her something, - baring her limbs partly, to show how the skin hung loose from the bones, as soon as she attracted our attention. Above her, on something like a ledge, was a young woman, with sunken cheeks, - a mother I have no doubt,-who scarcely raised her eyes in answer to our enquiries, but pressed her hand upon her forehead, with a look of unutterable anguish and despair.”

47. Some people were dead as long as 11 days before they were buried.

48. Mothers who had no food to give their children gave them seaweed.”
The famine grew worse.
“There wasn’t enough wood to make coffins. Undertakers developed coffins with sliding bottoms so they could be reused after people were buried in mass graves. Later, the Sliding Cross Memorial was made from one of those temporary boxes.
Mothers who had no food to give their children gave them seaweed.”

49. Black 47
Nicholas Cummins, the magistrate of Cork, visited the hard-hit coastal district of Skibbereen.
"I entered some of the hovels," he wrote, "and the scenes which presented themselves were such as no tongue or pen can convey the slightest idea of. In the first, six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearances dead, were huddled in a corner on some filthy straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged horsecloth, their wretched legs hanging about, naked above the knees. I approached with horror, and found by a low moaning they were alive -- they were in fever, four children, a woman and what had once been a man. It is impossible to go through the detail. Suffice it to say, that in a few minutes I was surrounded by at least 200 such phantoms, such frightful spectres as no words can describe, [suffering] either from famine or from fever. Their demoniac yells are still ringing in my ears, and their horrible images are fixed upon my brain."

50. Black 47
The dead were buried without coffins just a few inches below the soil, to be gnawed at by rats and dogs.
In some cabins, the dead remained for days or weeks among the living who were too weak to move the bodies outside.
In other places, unmarked hillside graves came into use as big trenches were dug and bodies dumped in, then covered with quicklime.
Most died not from hunger but from associated diseases such as typhus, dysentery, relapsing fever, and famine dropsy, in an era when doctors were unable to provide any cure.
Highly contagious 'Black Fever,' as typhus was nicknamed since it blackened the skin, is spread by body lice and was carried from town to town by beggars and homeless paupers.
Numerous doctors, priests, nuns, and kind-hearted persons who attended to the sick in their lice-infested dwellings also succumbed.
Rural Irish, known for their hospitality and kindness to strangers, never refused to let a beggar or homeless family spend the night and often unknowingly contracted typhus.
At times, entire homeless families, ravaged by fever, simply laid down along the roadside and died, succumbing to 'Road Fever.'

51. Dublin, Ireland May 23, 1849
Accounts of the famine appeared in the London Times.
"In a neighboring union a shipwrecked human body was cast on shore; a starving man extracted the heart and liver, and that was the maddening feast on which he regaled himself and his perishing family!”
"What, in the name of Heaven, is to become of us? What are we to do? The country is gone!"

52. The Potato Famine in Ireland
By 1847, the potato famine had reached full strength and much of the population of Ireland was malnourished and weak.
This is an account written by a visitor to Ireland who notes much of the misery he witnessed.
“We have just returned from a visit to Ireland, whither we had gone in order to ascertain with our own eyes the truth of the reports daily publishing of the misery existing there. We have found everything but too true; the accounts are not exaggerated--they cannot be exaggerated-- nothing more frightful can be conceived. The scenes we have witnessed during our short stay at Skibbereen, equal any thing that has been recorded by history, or could be conceived by the imagination. Famine, typhus fever, dysentery, and a disease hitherto unknown, are sweeping away the whole population. The poor are not the only sufferers: fever is spreading to every class, and even the rich are becoming involved in the same destruction.”

53. The Great Migration
During that same time, nearly three million Irish would flee Ireland in hopes of finding a better life.
250,000 would migrate to England and nearly 2,000,000 would flee to North America and Australia.
In 1847 alone 100,000 immigrants sailed to the United States.
The Irish journeyed to America in search of work.
Many, for example, hoped to gain employment working in the growing factories of the northeast.
Immigrants were packed into “coffin” ships bound for ports in English speaking countries.
Many thousands died in the long journey across the Atlantic succumbing to disease and starvation only to have their bodies thrown overboard.
The Irish arrived in America all at once it seemed.
Port cities like Boston, New York and New Orleans were flooded with strange people, many of whom were near death.

54. The consequences of the Famine

55. The Exodus Begins
By the middle of the 19th Century, thousands of Irish immigrants were arriving in the U.S. in an effort to escape the devastating famine in Ireland.
The excerpt here deals with the initial stages of the Irish flight.
“The splendid emigrant ships that ply between Liverpool and New York, and which have sufficed in previous years to carry to the shores of America an Irish emigration, amounting on the average to 250,000 souls per annum, have, during the present spring, been found insufficient to transport to the States the increasing swarms of Irish who have resolved to try in the New World to gain the independence which has been denied them in the old.”

56. EMIGRATION
DURING THE FAMINE YEARS ABOUT 2 MILLION PEOPLE EMIGRATED TO ENGLAND, AMERICA,CANADA AND AUSTRALIA.CONDITIONS ON BOARD THE SHIPS WERE DREADFUL, WITH VERY LITTLE FOOD. THE 8 WEEK LONG VOYAGES TO CANADA AND AMERICA WERE THE WORSE.DISEASE WAS WIDESPREAD AND THOUSANDS DIED.THE SHIPS WERE KNOWN AS ‘COFFIN SHIPS’

58. Emigration
One of the most obvious effects of the famine was emigration. Although the famine itself probably resulted in about one million deaths, the resultant emigration caused the population to drop by a further three million. About one million of these are estimated to have emigrated in the immediate famine period, with the depression that followed continuing the decline until the second half of the 20th century. These immigrants largely ended up in North America, with some in Australia and in Britain.

59. Emigration 1815-45 – 1.5 million emigrated.
– 1.5 million people emigrated.
– million emigrated.
¼ went to England and Scotland; majority went to America.
Before the famine, it was mainly single, landless men who emigrated.
Early years of the Famine – mainly cottiers and labourers, plus some richer people emigrated.
After 1850 it was only smallholders and labourers. Whole families now went too.
Emigration was hard.

60. The Great Migration
Wave of New Americans Begins
In hopes of a better future a number of Irish immigrated to the U.S. between
1820 and 1830 and nearly 2 million during the decade of the 1840s.
Altogether, almost 3.5 million Irish people entered the United States between
1820 and 1880.
Most of the migration was due to the Irish Potato Famine between 1845 and 1852.
Forms such as this were used to document the arrival of immigrants to the U.S.

61. Coffin Ships
With many of the emigrants suffering from fever, coupled with the cramped and unsanitary conditions on board what became known as the "coffin ships", disease was rampant.

62. Coffin Ships
Although they were regulated, many of the ships were privately owned, and some captains grossly overcrowded them in order to get more fares. Only the slave ships of the previous century would have had worse conditions.

64. Coffin Ships
During the trans-Atlantic voyage, British ships were only required to supply 7 lbs. of food per week per passenger.
Most passengers, it was assumed, would bring along their own food for the journey.
But most of the poor Irish boarded ships with no food, depending entirely on the pound-a-day handout which amounted to starvation rations.
Food on board was also haphazardly cooked in makeshift brick fireplaces and was often undercooked, causing upset stomachs and diarrhea.
Many of the passengers were already ill with typhus as they boarded the ships.
Before boarding, they had been given the once-over by doctors on shore who usually rejected no one for the trip, even those seemingly on the verge of death.
British ships were not required to carry doctors.
Anyone that died during the sea voyage was simply dumped overboard, without any religious rites.

65. Coffin Ships
Below decks, hundreds of men, women and children huddled together in the dark on bare wooden floors with no ventilation, breathing a stench of vomit and the effects of diarrhea amid no sanitary facilities.
On ships that actually had sleeping berths, there were no mattresses and the berths were never cleaned.
Many sick persons remained in bare wooden bunks lying in their own filth for the entire voyage, too ill to get up.
Another big problem was the lack of good drinking water.
Sometimes the water was stored in leaky old wooden casks, or in casks that previously stored wine, vinegar or chemicals which contaminated the water and caused dysentery.
Many ships ran out of water long before reaching North America, making life especially miserable for fevered passengers suffering from burning thirsts.
Some unscrupulous captains profited by selling large amounts of alcohol to the passengers, resulting in "totally depraved and corrupted" behavior among them.

66. Coffin Ships
It is estimated that perhaps as many as 40% of steerage passengers died either en-route or immediately after arrival.

67. Coffin Ships The first coffin ships headed for Quebec, Canada.
The three thousand mile journey, depending on winds and the captain's skill, could take from 40 days to three months.
Upon arrival in the Saint Lawrence River, the ships were supposed to be inspected for disease and any sick passengers removed to quarantine facilities on Grosse Isle, a small island thirty miles downstream from Quebec City.
But in the spring of 1847, shipload after shipload of fevered Irish arrived, quickly overwhelming the small medical inspection facility, which only had 150 beds.
By June, 40 vessels containing 14,000 Irish immigrants waited in a line extending two miles down the St. Lawrence.
It took up to five days to see a doctor, many of whom were becoming ill from contact with the typhus-infected passengers.
By the summer, the line of ships had grown several miles long.
A fifteen-day general quarantine was then imposed for all of the waiting ships.
Many healthy Irish thus succumbed to typhus as they were forced to remain in their lice-infested holds.
With so many dead on board the waiting ships, hundreds of bodies were simply dumped overboard into the St. Lawrence.

68. Coffin Ships
Others, half-alive, were placed in small boats and then deposited on the beach at Grosse Isle, left to crawl to the hospital on their hands and knees if they could manage.
Thousands of Irish, ill with typhus and dysentery, eventually wound up in hastily constructed wooden fever sheds.
These makeshift hospitals, badly understaffed and unsanitary, simply became places to die, with corpses piled "like cordwood" in nearby mass graves.
Those who couldn't get into the hospital died along the roadsides. In one case, an orphaned Irish boy walking along the road with other boys sat down for a moment under a tree to rest and promptly died on the spot.
The quarantine efforts were soon abandoned and the Irish were sent on to their next destination without any medical inspection or treatment.
From Grosse Isle, the Irish were given free passage up the St. Lawrence to Montreal and cities such as Kingston and Toronto.
The crowded open-aired river barges used to transport them exposed the fair-skinned Irish to all-day-long summer sun causing many bad sunburns.
At night, they laid down close to each other to ward off the chilly air, spreading more lice and fever

69. Coffin Ships
Many pauper families had been told by their landlords that once they arrived in Canada, an agent would meet them and pay out between two and five pounds depending on the size of the family.
But no agents were ever found.
Promises of money, food and clothing had been utterly false.
Landlords knew that once the paupers arrived in Canada there was virtually no way for them to ever return to Ireland and make a claim.
Thus they had promised them anything just to get them out of the country.
Montreal received the biggest influx of Irish during this time.
Many of those arriving were quite ill from typhus and long-term malnutrition.
Montreal's limited medical facilities at Point St. Charles were quickly overwhelmed.
Homeless Irish wandered the countryside begging for help as temperatures dropped and the frosty Canadian winter set in.
But they were shunned everywhere by Canadians afraid of contracting fever.
Of the 100,000 Irish that sailed to British North America in 1847, an estimated one out of five died from disease and malnutrition, including over five thousand at Grosse Isle.

70. Coming to America
Even as the boat was docking, these immigrants to America learned that life in America was going to be a battle for survival.
Almshouses were filled with these Irish immigrants. They begged on every street.

71. First Immigrant to Enter U.S. through Ellis Island
Irish Girl First Immigrant to Arrive at
Ellis Island
A young Irish girl by the name of Annie Moore was the first immigrant to ever enter the U.S. through Ellis Island.
Since then, more than 17 million people have entered the United States through Ellis Island.
Today, in addition to the Cobh County Cork statue, on the left, there is also a bronze statue on display at Ellis Island depicting her arrival.
Statue at Cobh, Co. Cork, of Annie Moore and her two brothers
leaving for America.

72. Quarantine centers were set up for diseased emigrants.
Coming to America
Quarantine centers were set up for diseased emigrants.
Some settled in new territories in the West.
Most stayed in cities on East Coast where they took poorest jobs.
Emigration continued for almost a century.
Emigrants brought with them a deep hatred of England, which they blamed for the famine and their suffering.
Click movie to see Irish emigrants on Ellis Island.

73. Coming to America
All major cities had their "Irish Town" or "Shanty Town" where the Irish clung together. Ads for employment often were followed by "NO IRISH NEED APPLY."

74. Immigrants

75. Coming to America
The emigrants were forced to live in cellars and shanties, partly because of poverty but also because they were considered bad for the neighborhood...they were unfamiliar with plumbing and running water.
These living conditions bred sickness and early death. It was estimated that 80% of all infants born to Irish immigrants in New York City died. Their brogue and dress provoked ridicule; their poverty and illiteracy provoked scorn.
Irish crosses

76. Nativist Response to Irish Immigration
The influx of large numbers of Irish Catholics during the 19th century disturbed many conservative Americans who viewed the ethnic shift in American society as a potentially damaging phenomenon.
Many publications argued that the Irish would place their loyalty to the Catholic Church above their loyalty to the U.S.
Also, the 1856 platform of the briefly influential "Know-Nothing" party stressed the need for native born Americans to take charge.

77. How does this cartoon portray Irish immigrants?
This political cartoon from Harper's Weekly, by W. A. Rogers, ran with the caption, "The balance of trade with Great Britain seems to be still against us. 630 paupers arrived at Boston in the steamship Nestoria, April 15th, from Galway, Ireland shipped by the British Government."
How does this cartoon portray Irish immigrants?