1.
BACKGROUND TO THE
GREAT FAMINE
Agricultural Practices
The potato was the
principal source of nutrition for the vast majority of the poorer
classes because this crop produced more food per acre than wheat
and could also be used to generate income. The practice of
*Conacre/Land Division meant that peasants needed to produce the
biggest crop possible. The most variety of potato was the ‘Aran
Banner’ which, whilst producing high yields also was very
susceptible to Blight. Many farmers had a few animals; the
pig, easily fed on left-over's and requiring little space, was
quite common. In many cases , however, other crops and animals
were used to pay the rent and were never regarded as food.
*Conacre
"This is a term used to describe land rented for the
taking of a single crop, most commonly potatoes. Conacre was taken by
tradesmen and small farmers but most usually by agricultural labourers who
invested all or most of their earnings in potato ground from which to feed
their families. The practice illustrates the limited rôle of retail markets in
pre-Famine rural Ireland. Conacre rents were a frequent cause of agrarian
violent, as population pressure increased. Farmers were encouraged by price
trends to move into livestock farming and no longer found conacre lettings a
profitable means of providing crop rotation".
Social Conditions
At the start of the
famine over one half of the population of the country lived in
small 1 roomed dwellings. Little or no furniture and animals
would be accommodated with the occupants of the. The other half
would live in 2 storey houses or mansions - landlords or wealthy
tenants - mostly found along the East and the South Coast. Two
thirds of the population were involved in agriculture. The
arrival of the month of June indicated the start of the hungry or
meal months in rural Ireland as old potatoes were not dug until
August. People simply had nothing to eat or at best could manage
a meal of porridge. Hunger was commonplace and small scale
famines were therefore not unknown.
Dependence On The Potato
The potato became the
staple diet of much of the country during the early 1800s as it
was ideally suited to the Irish climate, could be grown even in
poor soils, gave a high return per acre and a single acre could
support a family of 5 - 6 people. By 1945, it is estimated
that about one third of the entire population was totally
dependent on the potato, and in poor regions, like Mayo, it was
the only food eaten by up to nine - tenths of the population.
LAISSEZ FAIRE
The policy of ‘Laisse
Faire’ (meaning to leave alone) meant that Governments did
not interfere in business markets or the economy in general. This
policy was disastrous when famine struck as it meant that there
was no way of quickly rectifying the crisis. Scarce food became
costly and the poor simply starved.
OVER-POPULATION
While the population of
Europe rose throughout the 19th Century, population growth in
Ireland was particularly dramatic. In 1800, the population was
about 5 million. By 1841, it had risen to over 8 million
according to the census of that year. This growth can be
explained by the fact that people married early in life and they
tended to have large families.
Unlike Britain, Ireland
lacked major industrial centres. Jobs were scarce and there was
little point in trying to save up by waiting to get married. a
part of the family farm on which to grow food and a house built
with stones and 'mud kneaded with straw' was the most any married
couple could hope for. Early marriages were followed by large
families - children were seen by parents as insurance against
starvation in their old age. As a result subdivision and holdings
were gradually reduced to tiny plots.
2.
THE FAMINE YEARS
THE FAMINE YEARS
In the early summer of
1845, on the 11th September of that year a disease, referred to
as blight was noted to have attacked the crop in some areas. In
that year, one - third of the entire crop was destroyed. In 1846,
the crop was a total failure. This report came from a Galway
priest. "As to the potatoes, they are gone - clean
gone. If travelling by night, you would know when a potato field
was near by the smell. The fields present a space of withered
black stalks". Though 1847 was free from blight, few
seed potatoes had been planted, and so the famine continued. Yet
the country was producing plenty of food. As the Irish
politician, Charles Duffy wrote: "Ships continue to leave
the country, loaded with grain and meat". As food was
scarce people would eat anything such as nettles, berries, roots,
wildlife, animals, dogs and cats in order to survive. In
the mid 1840's, Bishop Loras of Dubuque, Iowa, visited Ireland.
He was so appalled by the conditions that he found there that he
submitted a letter to the London Tablet. Here is a portion of
that letter: I assure you, dear sir, the scene of poverty
and misery in some quarters was wonderful (that is, awful), and I
am told that it is still worse in other counties. I saw many poor
cottages covered with straw, half buried in the ground, and
occupied by poor Catholic tenants, who cultivate in the sweat of
their brow small fields divided by poor green hedges or half-tumbled
walls. The manner in which many were clothed was a sure
indication of great poverty and unavoidable sufferings. At every
station, at least in towns, the stage was surrounded by whole
families of beggars, who, by their pressing demands, would elicit
charity from the most hardened heart. Many of those cottages were
crumbling in ruins and abandoned by their tenants, who had
emigrated to some more hospitable shore. As I was travelling along
I saw occasionally some of those extensive and princely estates
occupied by rich English lords, whose dwellings and parks are
surrounded by old lofty walls and shaded by quite annuated trees.
The contrast between great opulence and extreme poverty was truly
appalling, and one is at a loss to understand how this state of
things can be tolerated in this age of light and philanthropy.
Another contrast I cannot help noticing. As soon as I
crossed the Channel from Dublin to Holyhead, In England, I
perceived great change for the better in the face of the country,
and in the look of the people; so much so, that one could hardly
believe that Ireland and England were both under the same laws,
and protected by the same government; and more than that, the
poor Irish are either incarcerated or transported, whenever they
make any attempt to better their truly miserable condition.
DEATH DISEASE AND STARVATION
Subsistence-level Irish
farmers found their food stores rotting in their cellars, the
crops they relied on to pay the rent to their British and
Protestant landlords destroyed. Peasants who ate the rotten
produce sickened and entire villages were consumed with cholera
and typhus. Parish priests desperate to provide for their
congregations were forced to forsake buying coffins in order to
feed starving families, with the dead going unburied or buried
only in the clothes they wore when they died. The potato
crop of 1845 was destroyed by a fungus, Phytophthora infestans,
commonly known as Blight, which had spread from North America to
Europe. By the early autumn of 1845 it was clear that famine was
imminent in Ireland, but British government reaction was slow and
incapable of responding to the magnitude of the crisis.
WORKHOUSES
Landlords evicted
hundreds of thousands of peasants, who then crowded into disease-infested
workhouses. Other landlords paid for their tenants to emigrate,
sending hundreds of thousands of Irish to America and other
English-speaking countries. In many cases, these ships reached
port only after losing a third of their passengers to disease,
hunger and other causes. Conditions in the workhouses were
desperate and often the only way to get food was to fight for it,
leading to misery, violence and even more despondency.
Diseases in the workhouses were common and included Typhus,
Relapsing Fever, Dysentry, Bacillary Dysentry, Scurvy and Asiatic
Cholera. There was little in the way of medical care for the
victims.
THE COFFIN SHIPS
The condition of the
ships in which tens of thousands of people emigrated were
appalling as many middle-men used sub-standard vessels and
carried too many people, with a view to making a quick profit. On
one of these coffin ships, of the 348 passengers, 117 died at
sea; on another, going to Canada, 158 died of a total of 476
passengers.
RELIEF
During the winter of
1845-1846 Peel's government spent £100,000 on American maize
which was sold to the destitute. The Irish called the maize
'Peel's brimstone'. Eventually the government also initiated
relief schemes such as canal-building and road building to
provide employment. The workers were paid at the end of the week
and often men had died of starvation before their wages arrived.
Even worse, many of the schemes were of little used: men filled
in valleys and flattened hills just so the government could
justify the cash payments. The Irish crisis was used as an excuse
by Peel in order for him to the repeal the Corn Laws in 1846, but
their removal brought Ireland little benefit. The major problem
was not that there was no food in Ireland - there was plenty of
wheat, meat and dairy produce, much of which was being exported
to England - but that the Irish peasants had no money with which
to buy the food. The repeal of the Corn Laws had no effect on
Ireland because however cheap grain was, without money the Irish
peasants could not buy it. In 1846 the major disaster
began. This was due to number of factors. In 1845 the crop only
partially failed. It totally failed in 1846. Peel's government
was defeated in England and Lord John Russell became Prime
Minister of a Conservative Government. He had a different
attitude to that of Peel:
"It must be quite
clear that we cannot feed the people...
We can at best keep
down prices."
The starving people had
no money however to buy food at any price, so keeping the prices
down was useless. The Assistant Secretary of Ireland at this time
was Charles Trevelyan, who believed in laissez faire, the policy
of ‘leaving well alone’. To give anything to the people
for nothing would, he said, result in
"Having the
country on us for an indefinite number of years."
He stopped the public works and sent back a boat load
of Indian Corn which had arrived from the U.S.A. The death toll steadily
mounted, due to starvation and to the spread of typhus and cholera. Thousands
flocked to the overcrowded workhouses and into towns - spreading disease and
causing more deaths. In September 1847 Russell's government ended
what little relief it had made available and demanded that the Poor Law rate be
collected before any further money be made available by the Treasury. The
collection of these rates in a period of considerable hardship was accompanied
by widespread unrest and violence. Some 16,000 extra troops were sent to Ireland
and troubled parts of the country were put under martial law. The potato crop
failed once more in 1848, and this was accompanied by Asiatic cholera.
In 1847 the Government realised that their policies were not working and made
money available for loan and established soup kitchens. Russell's
Government ended what little relief it had made available in late 1847 and
demanded that the Poor Law rate, a tax on property to fund relief in Ireland, be
collected before any further money be made available by the Treasury. The
collection of these taxes in a period of considerable hardship was predictably
accompanied by widespread unrest and violence. Some 16,000 extra troops were
sent to Ireland and troubled parts of the country were put under martial law.
Government efforts were also helped by some local landlords who lowered rents
and distributed clothes and food to their tenants. As a result, many landlords
went bankrupt. The Quakers (The Society of Friends) also did much to help.
3.
EFFECTS OF THE GREAT
FAMINE
THE DEAD & CULTURAL
CHANGES
The Irish Famine of
1846-50 took as many as one million lives from hunger and
disease, and changed the social and cultural structure of Ireland
in a number of profound ways. The Irish language, which
was already in decline, suffered a near fatal blow from the
Famine, since it was the more remote areas which still used Irish
that were most affected by the famine. Land holdings
became larger, as the tendency to subdivide the family farm
declined. From now on, the farm was given to one son and the
others often had little choice but to emigrate. The Famine also
changed centuries-old agricultural practices, hastening the end
of the division of family estates into tiny lots capable of
sustaining life only with a potato crop. The famine
affected the poorest classes - the cottiers and labourers - most
of all, the cottier class being almost wiped out.
EMIGRATION
It is estimated that at
least one million people died from starvation and its attendant
diseases, whilst a further 1 million emigrated during the famine
years. The population of the island dropped from over 8 million
in 1845 to about 6 million in 1850. By 1900, over 4 million had
left Ireland and emigration continued well into the 1950's -
averaging 60, 000 a year. Early marriages almost disappeared and
a decline in the birth rate resulted.
NATIONALISM
The millions who left
Ireland on the emigrant ships took with them a hatred of England
and English rule that has survived to the present day. Suddenly,
Irish people realised that they had to take control of their own
affairs. England had failed in its obligations to the people that
it ruled and a new generation of rebels and agitators were born.
Parnell and Davitt fought for and achieved land reforms. The
Gaelic Athletic Association was formed to promote a greater sense
of Irish identity. Rebels such as Padraig Pearse were expounding
the need for national independence from England. The 1916 Easter
Rising and the subsequent War of Independence, Civil War and
ultimate Independence have roots in the Great Famine and the 1798
Rising by the United Irishmen that proceeded it.
The
Beginning Of The End For The Landlord System
The Landlord class was
ruined by the famine. The Government introduced the Encumbered
Estates Act in 1849, making it easier for landlords to sell off
their land. The land acts later in the century fought for by
Parnell and Davitt finally put paid to this hated system of
authority in rural Ireland.
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For a good historical perspective on
the whys behind the troubles that befell Ireland and its people,
there is a good essay entitled
"Lessons
of History: The Great Irish Famine" by Stephen Davies (S.J.Davies@mmu.ac.uk), a senior lecturer in history at Manchester
Metropolitan University, England, as published in the September
2001 issue of "Ideas on Liberty" (IOL) by the
Foundation for Economic Education (FEE).
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