The Famine – known in Irish as ‘An Gorta Mor’, or The Great Hunger – was a period of mass starvation and disease which caused the deaths of around 1 million people, and the loss of another million through emigration. Lasting from 1845 to 1852, it was nominally caused by the failure – due to blight – of the potato crop, a staple food source for the Irish people. However, the potato blight had also appeared in other countries, killing much fewer people; and so wider factors are necessary to explain why it was so devastating in Ireland.
Background to the Famine
Ireland, on the cusp of the Famine, was a country which had suffered from serious deprivation and instability for decades. Its population – 80% of whom were Catholic – was largely comprised of landless tenant farmers who eked out a living from farming on plots owned by English or Anglo-Irish landlords. The latter were mostly ‘absentee’, and left middlemen to extract the rent from tenants.
Because an increased number of tenants meant larger rent payments, middlemen were often incentivised to exploit the situation by splitting land into smaller and smaller plots, on which very little food could be cultivated. This gave rise to the growth of monoculture, with potatoes found to be a crop grown easily under the circumstances, and nutritious in the absence of other food. The situation was also exacerbated by a significant growth in Ireland’s population, which had increased from 2 million in 1700 to 8 million by the 1840s.
Ireland had become part of the United Kingdom in 1801, through the Acts of Union, and the British government was aware of its destitution – launching 114 commissions and special committees into the issue between 1801 and 1845. However, little could be done, especially since the majority of Irish representatives in Westminster were landlords themselves, providing little impetus for change in the underlying system. In 1841, on the cusp of the tragedy, Ireland had a population of just over 8 million, with most depending on agriculture to survive, despite not receiving a regular wage.
Starving on the streets…and awaiting death
By mid-1845, many countries in northern Europe had experienced bouts of infection or blight among potato crops, with the disease believed to have arrived by ship from the United States. By September 1845, it had arrived in Ireland, with between one third and one half of cultivated acreage being lost that year, and the percentage of destruction rising to three quarters in 1846.
Reflecting on the situation in 1845, an English MP, Edward Stillingfleet Cayley Esq, described what had happened:
“The Irish peasantry subsists almost universally on a patch of potato ground, which they fondly call a garden,” he said. “What little wages they receive in money and the price of the pig, hardly suffice for rent, rags, whiskey, and the priests.”
He added that although there was sometimes buttermilk or herring to add to the diet, both were rare, and “the potato out of his own garden unbought, or bought only by the labour by which he pays a species of rent, may be for all practical purposes be considered the sole resource of the Irish peasant…If that fails…he starves.”
Stillingfleet noted that the “scarcity was not of food, but of the money to buy food.”
In the early stages of the potato crop failure – in November 1845 – then-British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel arranged for maize and cornmeal to be sent from North America to Ireland. However, this did not arrive until February the following year, and much of it could not be consumed, given a lack of corn mills in Ireland. Food and relief works introduced by Peel were stopped by his successor, Lord John Russell – whose Whig party followed the laissez-faire ideology, dictating that the market would provide what was needed. A new programme of public works was introduced in December 1846 (Russell had done the same in March), but this proved impossible to administrate.
An infamous figure in the British administration was Charles Trevelyan – in charge of government relief- who argued in private correspondence that the removal of small tenant farmers could be beneficial to England, since landlords could sell the empty land to people who could ‘invest capital’, representing a favourable settlement of the country. Trevelyan reduced the government’s food aid program to Ireland – in-line with the laissez-faire approach, believing Britain should wait until the Irish could pay for food after being paid for public work labour.
The policy of ‘non-interference’ was abandoned in 1847, but it was too late for many. The government arranged for aid to be provided by workhouses (this being dubbed ‘indoor aid’), while ‘outdoor aid’ came through soup kitchens. The funding for both was to be provided by local landlords, prompting many of them to reduce their liability through eviction of tenants. Unpaid rent was often used as an excuse, but there were occasions when tenants were ready to pay, and were evicted anyway, their small homes destroyed with the collaboration of police and soldiers.
The image of the destitute and starving Irish being thrown out of their homes, and left to starve on the roads, horrified many commentators, and was reported critically in many British and international newspapers. Writing in April 1847, Henrietta Blake – whose husband was on a local Board of Guardians – commented that the poorer classes welcomed death with indifference, “as a kind friend come to release them from a suffering so extreme”. Alongside this, it can be observed that throughout the period of the Famine, food of all kinds was continually exported from Ireland.
As the majority of the population lost their access to secure shelter and food – often finding themselves huddled together in overcrowded workhouses, or living on the streets – they were also overcome by diseases such as dysentery, cholera and fever. Mass death from this, combined with starvation, could not be avoided, despite Trevelyan’s ordering of Royal navy surgeons in early 1847 to provide medical care for those afflicted.
Emigration from Ireland was also a major effect of the Famine, with around one million people believed to have left, mostly taking long-distance journeys to the United States and Canada, while a smaller number – approximately 200,000 – travelled the shorter distance to England. Many of the vessels journeying to North America from the west of Ireland came to be known as ‘coffin ships’ due to the deaths of many passengers through disease and starvation, as a result of overcrowding and poor provision of food.
Although Ireland had introduced some establishments to provide for the poor since the 1700s (known as ‘Houses of Industry’), a comprehensive response to the country’s enormous poverty among ordinary people was only introduced in 1838, with the passing of the ‘Poor Law Act’.
Initially there were 19 workhouses in Connaught, 36 in Leinster, 32 in Munster and 43 in Ulster, with most being built during the 1840s. They ranged from small institutions (housing 200 to 300 inhabitants), medium (providing for 400 to 600 people), or large (providing for 1000 or more). Although workhouses were often seen as hated institutions – or a last resort – among local people, they nevertheless experienced significant demand during the Famine years, when lack of hunger, and increasing evictions drove thousands to their doors.
For desperate people and families, the workhouse provided some respite, offering clothing, food and shelter – albeit very basic – in return for work. The food consisted of two meals a day for adults, and three for children, and inhabitants slept in dormitories segregated by age and gender. Often, people arrived there in rags, so the simple coat, trousers, shirt and cap (for men), and striped jerkin, petticoat, cap and shift (for women) provided to them marked an improvement. However, during the Famine, clothes were often not available, and the food was noted to be of poor nutritional value.
The Famine years were marked not only by widespread starvation, but also rampant disease, and by the 1850s, this was the biggest threat within the workhouses, as overcrowding meant people were living in extremely close quarters, and could fall victim to typhus, dysentery, scurvy and relapsing fever. In addition to this, the workhouse policy of separating inhabitants into groups – men, women, girls aged two to fourteen, and boys aged two to fourteen – meant families were split up and often didn’t know the fate of their loved ones.
This workhouse was built in 1841 by architect George Wilkinson for the Poor Law Commissioners, and was considered ‘large’, with the capacity to house 1000 inmates. However, after opening the following year, its numbers grew rapidly, and by the late 1840s, Ballinasloe workhouse held 4000 people inside, and another 4000 outside. As a result, it was marked by problems with providing sufficient food and accommodation, and this led to the deaths of 254 people (both inmates and officers) in the last two months of 1846.
Three years later, a letter written to the Westmeath Independent critiqued the authorities responsible for the workhouse, after the writer witnessed 50 to 60 people left outside in extreme weather without food or other relief. A second report by an English visitor – published in the Evening Packet, also in 1849 – documented the spread of diseases such as cholera, with local buildings being used as hospitals for the sick, marked by serious overcrowding, leading to hundreds of deaths in only one room.
From the early 19th century, a lack of economic opportunities drove many Irish to leave the country, especially when Canada began to offer cheap fares based on its booming timber industry, which was already making regular transatlantic journeys to sell its products to Europe. The arrival of the Famine in the mid-1840s made emigration an increasingly attractive option, and people often relied on support from family and friends overseas to secure a fare. But there was also a ‘push’ effect, as landowners and local officials saw an opportunity to reduce the number of people on their land, or those looking for a place in the workhouses. In the case of the former, landlords often chartered ships to enable tenants to leave, and sometimes paid them to do so. And when it came to workhouses, often part of the funding they received via the local ‘Poor Rate’ was put towards helping people to leave. Many people actually tried to enter their local workhouses hoping they would be selected to emigrate, but in 1849, this was restricted to those who had been resident for at least two years.
Following the introduction of male convicts to the Swan River Colony in 1850, the disparity between men and women in the colony became a serious issue, driving demand for women emigrants. Initially, young women in England were targeted, but many were uninterested in travelling to such a far-flung and isolated location. But British Emigration Commissioners found much more fertile ground in the workhouses of Ireland, asking Guardians of the latter to select girls for emigration to the colony.