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The Great Famine
Prior to the Great Famine the Irish had suffered famine several times. Scorched earth warfare, as practised by the warring parties in the Desmond Rebellions, had caused a devastating famine in Munster and bad harvests caused by extremely bad weather conditions in 1741 resulted in the starvation of nearly a quarter of a million people in what is generally considered the first famine.
From a humanitarian point of view every famine, regardless of its cause, development and aftermath, is a horrible disaster. In retrospect however the Great Famine has seemingly constructed itself in the course of centuries. Aided by over-population, poverty and a food supply depending on one crop the process gained momentum at the end of the eighteenth century. Warnings from scientists and, from the mid-1810's onwards, from nature were neglected and in September 1845 the house of cards collapsed.
Almost overnight about 50% of the potato crops in Ireland had become inedible by the plant disease blight. The loss of this food supply could not be absorbed by the society which was weakened due to a complex accumulation of developments of demagogical, economical and agricultural character.
Ireland plunged in the blackest era of its history: the Great Famine, or An Gorta Mór.
An Gorta Mór
Scalp of Brian Conner, near Kilrush Union-House,
Illustrated London News, 22 December 1849.
(source: Views of the Famine)
The Great Famine would rage over Ireland for four years, but its impact is still noticeable. The most obvious outcome of these years appears when the census of 1841 is compared with the census of 1851.
According to the 1841 census 8,175,124 people lived in Ireland. This figure is flattering because it only includes people living in some sort of human worthy structure. A mud cabin without windows, the lowest class of housing included, was home for 45% of the population. People living in so-called scalps, a hole in the earth covered with twigs and turf, and scalpeens, almost similar to a scalp but with a loftier roof and slightly larger dimensions, were not counted, neither were the homeless. It is estimated that approximately one million people were not included in the census, consequently the actual population of Ireland in 1841 was probably just over the nine million.
The census of 1851 counted 6,522,285 people. Judging by the official figures the population of Ireland had decreased with 20% in just one decade. Because it is likely that the group which was not included in the census was more vulnerable for both starvation as diseases this 20% is the absolute minimum. The accurate figure is guesswork but estimations are between the 25% and 30%.
Emergency Relief and Relief Works
Initially, once it had become apparent that real problems approached Ireland, the British government acted. Sir Robert Peel, then the British Prime Minister, ordered in October 1845 to transport shiploads of maize, or Indian corn, to serve as emergency relief if necessary and to avert a raise of the local corn prizes. Public works to provide work and therewith income were initiated and by recommending the arranging of separate fever hospitals Peel displayed an ability to see beyond the issues of tomorrow.
More structural relief was sabotaged by import taxes on corn. This issue, known as the Corn Law Debate, has been on the agenda since 1815. During all these years the landowners, who benefited most of these protective measures, and the tradesmen, obviously opposed these trade restricting taxes, did not reach an agreement. Because these taxes made it effectively impossible to get corn to Ireland Robert Peel and the Irish delegates made the Corn Law Debate a hanging-matter. They lost and Peel resigned on 25 June 1846.
Peel's successor, Lord John Russell, tended to rely more on the Charles Trevelyan, the Permanent Secretary at the Treasury, a dour economist and fervent supporter of the free market and the law of supply and demand.
Measures under taken by Robert Peel, among which public relief works, were reversed, delayed or cut down beyond use. After all it was Trevelyan's opinion that there was plenty of food and that The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, preserve and turbulent character of the people..
For relief during the remaining years of the famine the Irish were thrown back on a system of workhouses and a Poor Law which was declared unfit for the specific Irish situation by several commissions.
It is useless to speculate about the progression of the Great Famine with an other interpretation of relief, but it is beyond every reasonable doubt that a lot of suffering has been caused by the laissez fair attitude of the Russell administration.
The taxes needed to enforce the Poor Law were passed on by the landlords to their tenants. The prices on the food market rocketed due to the economic law of supply and demand in which the government did not wanted to intervene. Relief works, which should provide some income, were scarce. Tenants, unable to pay the rent, were evicted and appealed to the charitable institutions which were founded in defiance of the disapproval by the government.
Due to malnutrition and poor general living conditions illnesses such as dysentery, typhus (or black fever), relapsing fever (or yellow fever) and scurvy started to occur. Besides these famine related diseases the weakened Irish were an easy prey for the cholera pandemic which raged over Europe at the end of the 40's and 50's of the nineteenth century. The highly infectious diseases caused the collapse of social structures as nobody was eager to provide shelter and food to strangers or even relatives.
Hordes of homeless, hungry and ill people moved to the workhouses and food depots in the cities. Without operational fever hospitals to accommodate the ill the cities became the focus of infection.
There are numerous reports describing the situation in Ireland. A traveller wrote for example the following moving comment while he was visiting Skibbereen in County Cork: The number of deaths and the multitude of starving people is shocking. People are screaming for food or dying in their houses, whole families are found dead, sometimes the living are lying with the decomposing dead, unable to move. People are dying on the roadsides. The traditions of waking and keening the dead are not being observed as they have been.
We do not want to overwhelm you with such quotes, because No pen can describe the distress by which I am surrounded. You may now believe anything which you have hear and read, because what I actually see surpasses what I ever read of past and present calamities. This was written by a representative of the British Association for the Relief of the Extreme Distress in the Remote Parts of Ireland and Scotland after he had visited the counties Sligo, Donegal and Mayo.
Obviously people did their utmost to flee the dead-end situation. By committing petty crimes, small and trivial crimes such as pilferage, people tried to get arrested and fed for at least a couple of days. An other serious option was to commit a larger crime with the prospect of being deported to Australia.
At the end of the famine the prisons were overcrowded. Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin for example was intended to intern 700 inmates and definitely not the 9000 which were imprisoned in 1849.
The last option to get away from the horrors was emigration.
Emigration
Since the first bad harvest of 1815 emigration began a gradually increasing flood of Irish set out on a journey to mainly Britain and the United States of America. As rule of thumb it is assumed that approximately one million Irish emigrated during the Great Famine. The exodus continued long after the horrors of the famine had blown out.
Emigration however was not per se beatifically. The passage was expensive, while the conditions onboard were appalling and the seaworthiness of many ships was questionable. If the ship had made it across the Atlantic it would turn out that the promise of arrival money, made by the landlord who could confiscate the land of the emigrated tenants, was rarely kept.
The greatest disappointment had yet to come. In contrast to the early emigrants, mainly young and strong educated folks from the north and east of Ireland, the bulk of the emigrants fleeing the famine consisted of poor, weakened and uneducated farmers from the countryside. These emigrants could not find their niche in the industrialised and urbanised receiving countries and this feeling was mutual. It took generations until the Irish immigrants had become full members of their new homelands.
The consequences of the Irish emigration can be seen in remote and depopulated areas of Ireland, but also in the strong cultural ties between Ireland and the United States.
In the post-famine years this connection would proof to be vital for the Irish struggle for independence and until this day Irish Republican movement can pride itself with a broad support base in the Unites States.
Young Ireland
Apart from the to be expected agitation near the corn depots the first years of the Great Famine passed without organised rebellion. On the background however the Daniel O'Connell's Repeal Association was on the verge of breaking apart. Especially the younger members began to get impatient. Eventually in 1846 they broke away from the Repeal Association and called themselves Young Ireland.
Like their predecessors Young Ireland tried to strengthen the bonds with France, by then not only a historical ally of the Irish and enemy of the British, but also the stage of a revolution. After a visit to France the delegation brought a green, white and orange tricolour to Ireland. This bunting would become the national flag of the Republic of Ireland.
Also among the common people discontent grew due to the increasing number of evictions, the grisly stories about coffin ships and the lack of relief. The appeal of Young Ireland to rise in July 1848 did not fell on deaf ears. Initially thousands of people joined the insurgents, but a shortage of food forced many to return home.
The 500 remaining rebels lay siege to a cottage in which some officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) had seek shelter. This Affray at the Widow McCormack's House ended in a disaster for Young Ireland. The leaders were arrested and transported to Australia.
Although Young Ireland ended inglorious, the leaders would play a major role in the post-Great Famine Nationalist and Republican movement in the Unites States of America and in Ireland.
The Aftermath
According to Charles Trevelyan the crisis was over in 1847, whereupon all emergency relief came to a standstill. The year 1847, also known as Black '47, would turn out to be the worst year of the Great Famine.
Although poverty was still common and several counties in the south-west (Clare, Kerry, Limerick and Tipperary) experienced bad harvests due to blight, the Great Famine was declared over at the end of 1849.
In their concluding report the 1851 Census Commissioners wrote:
In conclusion, we feel it will be gratifying to your excellency to find that although the population has been diminished in so remarkable a manner by famine, disease and emigration between 1841 and 1851, and has been since decreasing, the results of the Irish census of 1851 are, on the whole, satisfactory, demonstrating as they do the general advancement of the country..
Well, that is one interpretation!
The contemporary comment that God sent the blight, but the English made the famine is perhaps more appropriate. Please mind that this is not some sort of radical Republican opinion. Although the words are different the meaning of the words written by the British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1997 is the same:
The famine was a defining event in the history of Ireland and of Britain. It has left deep scars. That one million people should have died in what was then part of the richest and most powerful nation in the world is something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today. Those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy. We must not forget such a dreadful event..
National Famine Memorial
(authors collection)
The Great Famine has left deep scars in the collective memory of the Irish and Irish descendants abroad. The song Black '47, named after the most severe year of the famine, reflects these emotions.
The deaths, the misery and rural depopulation plus the abundant clear ignorance of the British government in Irish affairs and the nearly extinction of the Irish culture and language, has made the Great Famine undisputedly a pivot point in the Irish history. After the Great Famine the demands for land reforms, home rule and eventually independence gained volume and, supported by Irish emigrants and their descendants, the resistance against British rule became well organised.
Famine memorials can be found scattered all over Ireland and especially in Connacht and Munster. The National Famine Memorial, a truly impressive sculpture situated on the foot of Croagh Patrick in County Mayo, depicts the horrors suffered by those who tried to escape starvation by leaving Ireland with overcrowded and unseaworthy coffin ships.