1. The Great Famine Timeline
1886 First Home Rule Bill
1916 Easter Rising
1789
French Revolution
1775
American Revolution
1913
Dublin Lockout
1861 American Civil War

2. THE FAMINE AN GORTA MOR

3. The Great Famine Timeline
1886 First Home Rule Bill
1916 Easter Rising
1789
French Revolution
1775
American Revolution
1913
Dublin Lockout
1861 American Civil War
1845 The Great Famine

4. Ireland before the Famine
United country dominated by wealthy English landowners
Irish farmers rented their land
Hierarchy system land was ‘subdivided’
Landlords
Wealthy Farmers
Strong Farmers
Family Farmers
Poor Farmers
Cottiers/Labourers

5. What was a labourer’s home like?

6. Homes Cottiers/Labourers: -1 room mud hut, no windows or chimneys
If they did not pay their rent they were evicted

7. Work Some mixed farming but mostly potatoes and hens/turkeys
Along the coast they would fish and sell at a market
Hiring Fairs for men and women

8. If you were a Cottier/Labourer
Hope to be hired by a wealthy farmer or landlord. You would have to work long hours everyday all year round. You would be paid very little and be under enormous pressure to produce a certain amount of crops.
You would also rent a small amount of land (5 acres) and farm it yourself. You would rely on the crop to feed your family.
You would also rely on the crop to bargain for necessities or sell to pay your rent .

9. Why did people reply so heavily on potatoes?

10. The potato was acted as 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.
Potatoes required very little care which suited the poor farmers because they had to spend most of their time working for their landlords.

11. Food Before the famine: Potatoes Milk (skimmed - butter) Herring
Sometimes they ate rabbit and birds
‘Hungry months’ – June and July
During the famine:
Grains/Oatmeal replaced potatoes
Berries, nuts, nettles and wild mushrooms

12. If you were a child in the famine what would you have worn?

13. Clothes
Men:
Trousers to the knee, linen shirt, woollen socks and heavy shoes/boots
Women:
Long shirt tucked into a long woollen skirt with linen undergarments and a linen headscarf or shawl.
Many women didn’t wear shoes but if they did they were similar to the men’s with woollen socks.
Winter: Very heavy cloak made from wool.

14. Children’s Clothes Boys:
Often wore dresses until the age of 5 or 6 but sometimes until they were 12.
(superstition they would be stolen by fairies)
Switched to trousers – sign they were a man and referred to as ‘breeching’.
Girls:
Always wore skirts from the knee to their ankles.

15. What caused the Famine?

16. The Blight
“Phytophthora infestans”
The fungus first noticed by Dr. David Moore at Botanical Gardens in 1845
Introduced to Ireland through a new fertiliser called “guano” - imported from South America.
⅓ of crop affected in 1845
⅔ unfit to eat in 1846

17. The blight was highly contagious.
With moist conditions, a single infected potato plant could infect thousands in just a few days.
Potatoes dug out of the ground at first looked edible, but shriveled and rotted within days.
The fungus blacked the potatoes leaving them withered and emitted a nauseous stench.
There had been crop failures in the past due to weather and other diseases, but this strange new failure was unlike anything ever seen.

18. What did the people think?

19. Some people thought static electricity in the air resulting from the newly arrived locomotive trains caused it.
Some religious Catholics thought it might have been divine punishment for the "sins of the people"
Some religious people believed it was a blessing, opportunity to rid Ireland of poverty

20. The short term effects:
The poor in Ireland became homeless
When they could not pay the they were evicted from their homes.
To make sure the evicted would not return as squatters, landlords tore off the thatched roofs and burned them.

21. Starving people with their possessions on their back, walked with their children to nowhere. Many dropped dead on the roads.
Many homeless, people built hovels on the moors.

22. The long term effects: 1845-1850 – the population fell by 2 million
(1 million died and 1 million emigrated)
Subdivision of land ended
Irish language declined
Anti-English feelings among emigrants
Bankrupted landlords and shift to cattle farming.

23. What is the most shocking fact we know about the Famine?

24. Ireland was exporting more than enough food to feed the starving
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

25. What did the English Government do to help people?

26. Reaction from the Government.
1846 ‘Public Works Schemes’ To build roads, walls, bridges ect 1 shilling a day (cost 2-3 shillings a day to feed average family) 1847 ‘Soup Kitchen Act’ fed 3 million Throughout the entire Famine period, the British government never provided food aid to Ireland

27. The Layout of a Work House

31. The Workhouses 1845: 40,000 people in them. 1848:
Overcrowding
Disease

32. The Workhouses Very over crowded.
Dirty and unclean with lots of disease.
Sometimes people wore a uniform.
Strict rules to follow and punishment for breaking rules.

33. What would have happened to you if you entered the workhouse with your family?

34. Separated from family member Parents allowed see their children in Sundays only. If someone from your family passed away no one would tell you. Many people never saw their families again.

35. These people were punished in Newry Work House
Look at their ‘crimes’ do you think their punishment was fair?

36. Sickness Most died not from hunger but from diseases.
Typhus was nicknamed 'Black Fever,' it blackened the skin, is spread by body lice and was carried from town to town by beggars and homeless paupers people.
Numerous doctors, priests, nuns, and kind-hearted persons who attended to the sick in their lice-infested dwellings also succumbed.
At times, entire homeless families, ravaged by fever, simply laid down along the roadside and died, succumbing to 'Road Fever’

37. Desperate Times
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.
Some dead were buried without coffins just a few inches below the soil.
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 mass graves were created

38. Dublin, Ireland May 23, 1849
I saw 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!"