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The Irish Potato Famine 1846-1850

History of Food in Ireland | Food in early Ireland | The Potato Arrives | The Great Famine | After the Famine

The almost total reliance of a huge part of the Irish population on the potato during the first part of the 1800's had not gone unnoticed and many people pointed out the potential danger.

Famine Memorial, DublinBy this time many rural families had barely half an acre to provide their food. Potatoes were the only viable option with such a small landholding.

At least those people, poor as they were, had houses. Others lived in mud cabins, or slept outdoors in ditches, and were forced to travel the country, living on what they could forage, get by way of charity, or steal. Life expectancy was short, just 40 years for men, and families were large, with many mouths to feed.

The gap between living and dying, even in a good year, was perilously narrow.

In 1836 a report from the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Irish Poor concluded that more than 2.5 million Irish people, more than a quarter of the population, lived in such poverty as to need some kind of welfare scheme. Poor law unions were established to provide work houses where the most impoverished would be fed but they were wholly inadequate even before famine stuck and overwhelmed when it did.

The Potato Crop Fails 

A healthy potato and one with blight.The disaster begain in earnest in 1845 when the potato crop was destroyed by infestation with the fungal disease Phytophthora Infestans, also known as Potato Blight. 

This devastating disease rotted the potatos in the ground, and rendered entire crops totally inedible,  obliterating the primary food source for millions of people. William Trench, a Co Cork land agent wrote:

"The leaves of the potatoes on many fields I passed were quite withered, and a strange stench, such as I had never smelt before, but which became a well-known feature in “the blight” for years after, filled the atmosphere adjoining each field of potatoes. The crop of all crops, on which they depended for food, had suddenly melted away"

There was effectively no potato crop in 1845, 1846 and although there was little blight in 1847 there had been too few potatoes planted for the harvest to be of any use. Crops failed again in 1848.

There was now nothing for the poor to eat. Even those with enough land to grow crops other than potatos were caught in an impossible bind - they had to sell these crops to pay rent or face eviction.

Widespread Evivtion & Destitution 

A family is evictedWhile some landlords allowed their tenents to retain grain crops for food, reduced their tenents' rents or even waived them, and in a few cases distributed aid to the poor in their vicinity,  many were remorseless.

This bailiff’s remark as quoted in the Freeman’s Journal in April 1846 was not untypical:

"What the devil do we care about you or your black potatoes? It was not us that made them black. You will get two days to pay the rent, and if you don’t you know the consequences."

The reality was that some wealthy people could have done little even if they had a mind to, as they too lost everything. Their tenants could neither pay rent nor work, thus the output of their land plummeted and their income dried up. Many were were forced to sell their land for what little money they could get and leave the country.

More than a quarter of a million labourors and tenent farmers were evicted between 1845 and 1854 and many more simply walked away from their homes, and certain starvation, never to return. Thousands of evicted families roamed the country in search of food, some even resorting to eating grass.

During the same period more than 1 million people died of starvation or disease and as many more again emigrated, many of those also dying on the dangerous and overcrowded ships in which they travelled. Whole families, even whole villages, left on masse, those who could afford to leave were considered to be the lucky ones.

William Bennett, a member of the Society of Friends who were very active in providing famine relief, visited Co Mayo in 1847 and sent a report of what he found:

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.

We entered upwards of fifty of these tenements. The scene was invariably the same.

Starving in the midst of Plenty

It must be remembered that only the potato failed, there was plenty of oats and barley being produced in Ireland throughout the famine. But they were considered 'cash crops', were owned by large landowners, not the laborours who grew them, and continued to be exported while people starved.

William Smith-O'Brien, a wealthy land owner from Dromoland Castle who was sympathetic to the plight of the poor observed in 1846: 

"The circumstances which appeard most aggravating was that the people were starving in the midst of plenty, and that every tide carried from the Irish ports corn sufficient for the maintenance of thousands of the Irish people."

In Cork in 1846, a coastgaurd officer, Robert Mann, reported:

"We were literally stopped by carts laden with grain, butter, bacon, etc. being taken to the vessels loading from the quay. It was a strange anomaly"

Indian mealInstead of retaining these crops and other food produced in Ireland, cheap Indian corn was imported in various relief programmes.

This corn was initially shunned by the Irish who had no idea how to cook it properly and, so accustomed were they to a diet of potatoes, had difficulty in digesting it. Many of those who tried it suffered terrible pain and indigestion and some even died as a result, though eventually they learned how it should be prepared.

In any case official attempts to provide relief, in the form of imported corn or in any other form, were sporadic, and either too short lived to have effect or insufficient for the numbers who were in need.

Official Famine Relief & Aid

What effective help was provided did not come from the government in England.

Although some efforts were made by the prime minister Robert Peel to reduce exports of grain and import cheaper American corn, these were not favoured by Lord John Russell, who succeeded him in 1846. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the prevailing economic doctrine, that of 'laissez-faire' - the belief that government must not interfere in the economy.

Charles Trevelyn, who was secretary of the Treasury in England and given reponsibility for famine relief, had an less than sympathetic attitude to the starving Irish:

"The only way to prevent the people from becoming habitually dependent on Government is to bring the food depots to a close. The uncertainty about the new crop only makes it more necessary".

As a result a government was not supportive of food provision programmes stood by, or even provided support, as people starved and landlords evicted the hungry natives from their homes.

Trying to get in to the WorkhouseThere were some government relief efforts: workhouses were given additional, though still totally insufficient, resourses. Work schemes were established, designed to give employment to the poor and thus enable them to buy food.

The latter in particular were singularly unsuccessful for the most part. The payments made were small and with food prices rising rapidly (when any was available) those who needed help most were too weak from lack of food to avail of any work. Some started work but died before the week was over and they could collect their pay.

Charitable Organisations & Aid to the Irish 

There were efforts by some charitable organisations in England to send help or provide food, in spite of their governments inaction.

Famine Relief Committees where also set up throughout America, raising large amounts of money and sending food on 'relief ships' which then returned with passengers on board, allowing people who could not otherwise afford the passage to America to emigrate.

The Society of Friends 

Probably the people who provided the most effective help to the Irish were members of the Society of Friends, the Quakers, in America who provided food, mostly American flour, rice, biscuits and Indian meal.

Soup Kitchen, CorkThey also provided funds to assist farmers to replant their fields and to support fishermen in coastal towns, measures which not only provided additional food but helped many people to get back on their feet. In all they gave approximately £200,000 for relief in Ireland, the equivalent of more than £30 million in today's terms.

Their efforts were widely supported:

 "The railroads carried, free of charge, all packages marked “Ireland.” Public carriers undertook the gratuitous delivery of any package intended for the relief of the destitute Irish. Ships of war approached our shores, eagerly seeking not to destroy life but to preserve it, their guns being taken out in order to afford more room for stowage."

Soup Kitchens

The Choctaw Donation

A well remembered donation to famine relief was that made by the Choctaw tribe of American Indians who in 1847 sent a donation of $710, the equivalent of more than $100,000 today. They had a special affinity with the hungry and those who had lost their homes, since it was only 16 years since their tribe had walked the "Trail of Tears" from Oklahoma to Mississippi, along which many of them died.

This extraordinary gift from a people who were not themselves wealthy has never been forgotten. In 1997, the 150th anniversary of that generous gesture a group of Irish people walked the 500 mile Trail of Tears in reverse, back to the Choctaw homeland, and in so doing raised over $100,000 for Famine relief in Somalia.

The most successful relief measure was soup kitchens, originally set up by the Quakers and later also funded by other voluntary charitable organisations in England and America. However there were too few to meet the incessant and ever increasing demand.

Of one Cork soup kitchen, the London Illustrated News reported:

"The average number supplied every day at this establishment for the past week has been 1300, and many hundreds more apply, whom it is impossible at present to accommodate."

"Soupers"

Some of the protestant charities running the kitchens demanded that people convert from Catholicism before receiving help. Those who did were derided and referred to as 'soupers', a term which persisted afterwords to describe anyone who 'sold out' to the English or to protestantism.

Black '47

In spite of these efforts, the numbers of dead and the numbers leaving continued to rise throughout 1847, a year which is still referred to as 'black '47', and in subsequent years up to 1856.

People living in Dublin, Cork and Belfast and other large towns were less affected by lack of food, but as the famine wore on these towns became crowded with those fleeing from the countryside who gathered in tenement areas and found little refuge.

They brought with them diseases, mainly Typhus, Dysentery and Cholera, which few, in their weakened state, could withstand, and disease became the primary killer in urban areas. Even the wealthy were vulnerable to these infections, and it was in fact disease rather than starvation that claimed most of the famine dead.

The Famine Comes to an End

By 1851 the famine had largely come to an end other than in a few isolated areas. This was not due to any massive relief effort - it was partly because the potato crop recovered but mainly it was a huge proportion of the population had either died or left.

During the years of the famine, between 1841 and 1861 the Irish population fell from 8,175,124 to 6,552,385, and with mass emigration continuing in the subsequent decades it was down to 4,458,775 by the turn of the century.

Not everyone viewed this as a calamity, as the preface to the Irish Census of 1851 makes clear:

"…we feel it will be gratifying to your Excellency to find that 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. "

Disaster or advancement, a less populous Ireland was again in a position to feed itself.

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