To the people of Ireland, the Irish Famine is known simply as “THE HUNGER.” The famine began in 1845 when an infectious mold quickly spread through every farm in Ireland. The disease destroyed one-half of the potato crop that first year, and nearly all of the crops over the next 7 years. The poor tenant farmers relied heavily on potatoes as both a source of food and income, especially during winter. So the terrible blight threw the Irish population into a devastating famine.
By its end, the Irish Famine resulted in the death of over One Million Irish from starvation and related diseases. The famine forced at least another 1.5 Million to leave their homeland and become immigrants abroad as famine refugees. The Hunger was also a catastrophic failure on the part of Great Britain to properly respond. Ireland was a colony of Great Britain at the time. How could this have happened?
Ireland became a colony of England in 1801. Together, the combined nations were known as the United Kingdom. Ireland would remain a British colony for another hundred years, until the Irish War of Independence in 1921.
Even before the famine struck, the Ireland colony lived in poverty.
The Irish population exploded in the first half of the 1800’s, reaching about 8.5 million by 1845. Unlike England, Ireland was not yet industrialized. English gentry owned most of the farms, who collected rent from tenant farmers living on small squares of land separated by miles of stone fences. Those peasant farmers grew predominantly potatoes to feed their families and pay rent.
Why potatoes? Because it produced more food per acre than grains, AND could be sold for a better price. Potatoes are also nutritious and could be fed to their livestock. They also grew well in Ireland’s wet soil. Potatoes stored well, BUT could not be kept for more than a year. So if a crop failed … like they did in 1845 … they had nothing to replace it.
The summer of 1845 looked like any other. But when the crop was harvested in October, there were troubling signs. Plant leaves curled up and turned black. Within just a few days after harvest, the potatoes rapidly began to wither and rot, releasing a noxious stench. Atlantic winds spread the fungus across all of Ireland. Various “cures,” like drying the potatoes in ovens, or treating them with lime all failed.
Over half the crop was lost that first year.
Dublin leaders petitioned Prime Minister Robert Peel in London for help. Tenant farmers hadn’t been able to produce enough to eat, let alone pay rent. By the spring of 1846, panic spread as families’ supplies dwindled and starvation set in. Helpless parents listened to the haunting crying of their malnourished children. Thousands began dying. Hundreds of thousands more died from diseases caused by malnutrition.
Prime Minister Peel came up with a lackluster solution. He purchased shipments of cheap Indian corn from America to be distributed. To distribute the corn meal, parliament formed local relief committees that sold it at one penny per pound. Peasants that had any money saved, soon ran out. Plus, the corn meal was difficult to cook, hard to digest, and caused diahhrea. By June 1846, the corn supplies were gone.
Throughout the summer of 1846, the Irish people prayed and prayed for a good potato harvest that fall. But the blight did not go away. At first, the crop appeared healthy. But by harvest time, the terrible blight had struck again. In the fall of 1846, the ENTIRE Irish potato crop was destroyed.
The desperate Irish people began living off nettles, seaweed, roots, and even bark, leaves and grass. They sold their livestock and even their own clothing to avoid eviction. Fish, although plentiful along the west coast, remained out of reach in water too dangerous for small Irish fishing boats. Starving fishermen could not afford salt to preserve it. They pawned their precious nets just to buy food.
Some Catholics saw the Irish Famine as Divine punishment for the “sins of the people.” Others saw it as Judgment against their abusive English landlords. Ironically, there was other food available in Ireland – wheat, meat and dairy, but the British gentry exported nearly all of it to Great Britain.
Starvation panic and riots swept the island again.
Hungry mobs stormed local relief committees demanding food. The Irish watched with increasing anger as boatloads of food sailed for England. Food riots erupted in ports where peasants tried to confiscate ships. British military escorts were sent in to guard shipments. As the Irish Famine worsened, the British sent in even more troops.
A British Magistrate reported to London: “Entire villages ravaged by hunger, with human specters in rags, skeletons with skin stretched across bone, huddled on hut floors, dying of fever. The half naked children looked like shadows of their former selves.”
In 1846, parliament tried another solution. 500,000 men, women and children were put to work on public work projects, building stone roads. Many desperate workers were poorly clothed, malnourished and weakened by fever. They often collapsed or even fell dead on the job. Those that could work were given paltry salaries inadequate to feed families.
By 1847, the new PM Lord John Russell tried but could not ignore the starving colony. He grudgingly made money available for soup kitchens. By that summer, 3 million Irish lined up across the island to get a vile-tasting soup. This was the only food they had each day. Demand quickly exceeded supply and after 6 months, the soup kitchens were bankrupt and shut them down.
The 1847 potato crop was only a quarter of normal so The Hunger marched on. Hundreds of thousands of starving Irish, now evicted, poured into towns for relief, begging for food or work. They were infected with lice, Typhus (Black Fever), cholera, dysentery, and fever. Little, if any, medical care was available. The doctors and priests who attended to the sick succumbed to the same diseases.
The massive numbers of new dead each day also had to be buried. But there were not enough coffins. Towns planted bodies just a few inches below the soil, to be gnawed at later by hungry rats and dogs. In some family cabins, the dead remained for weeks, amongst the living, who were too weak to bury them.
An Immigrant Refugee Crisis soon emerged.
Driven by desperation, starving emigrants began leaving Ireland in 1847. Because fares on Canadian timber ships were cheaper, many went by way of Canada. Most were dressed in rags, with not enough food onboard to last for a 40-day to 3 month journey across the Atlantic. They hadn’t enough money to buy food aboard ship, so were given starvation rations by the captains.
Shipowners were happy to carry the Irish, but their ships were not equipped for passengers. The conditions below decks were horrific. Hundreds of people, of all ages, huddled together for warmth, wallowing in filth and vomit, and breathing the foul air from sick bodies. Anyone who died during the voyage was simply tossed overboard, without any religious rites.
The Canadian ships became known as “Coffin Ships” because so many emigrants died before reaching America. Almost at third of the 100,000 immigrants bound for Quebec in 1847 died during their journey, or during quarantine in port. The ports places the sick in quarantine “fever sheds” onshore to either live or die.
Those who could afford it, arrived in Boston or New York City, where U.S. ship conditions were better. Most were illiterate though and many spoke only Gaelic. Their new life in America would not be easy at all as they were forced to take the lowest of jobs [READ MORE] in U.S. slums. Americans shunned the immigrants, but at least they now had jobs, earning enough money to finally buy food and fill their bellies.
The poorest of the poor never made it to North America. They boarded cheaper steamers and crossed the Irish Sea to Britain. Everyone in England shunned the ragged Irish refugees as well, treating them like a rat infestation. Englishmen also viewed them as rivals for unskilled jobs. They ended up in the slums of Liverpool and London.
Back in Ireland, the colony was going bankrupt.
An estimated half-million Irish were evicted. So landlords, with their own London mortgages to pay, were not receiving rents. Merchants went broke, closed up shops, and joined the beggars on the streets. The 3 million Irish with no cornmeal or soup, no employment, and no homes continued to die from malnutrition and disease.
In the fall of 1847, Prime Minister Russell demanded that the loans be collected from Irish landlords BEFORE any further aid would come. Such a heartless statement caused even more widespread starvation, riots and violence. Russell had to send some 16,000 Redcoats to Ireland to deal with it. Stopping the Irish food exports was also NOT acceptable to the Prime Minister.
“God sent the Blight, but the English caused the Famine.”
- Common Irish quote during The Hunger
Evicted Irish families wandered the countryside in tattered rags. Workhouses were jammed and had no heat or sanitary facilities. Anger and resentment grew over The Hunger happening year after year. The result was an intense hatred for British authority. Fearing the violence might spread, British officials sent another fifteen thousand soldiers to Irish coast.
Though hard to imagine, things got even worse. In the fall of 1848, the blight returned again and destroyed the entire potato crop. People watched in horror as their potato plants blackened, withered and rotted. Now more than ever, the Irish needed immediate British assistance to survive. But British officials were angry over the riots and resented the “ungrateful” Catholic Irish.
The return of The Blight sparked a second immigrant exodus. Tens of thousands of Irish departed for Montreal, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, arriving sick in tattered clothes, but at least with a glimmer of hope. Irish men in London deliberately committed crimes in order to be arrested and transported to the Australia penal colony. There, work and food were at least guaranteed.
The potato crops didn’t recover until 1852, seven long years later. By then, as many as 1 Million had perished of starvation and disease. Another 1 to 2 million emigrated to escape The Hunger. The immigrants who reached America began new lives in coastal states and Canadian provinces. Even there, they lived in squalid conditions at the very bottom of society [READ MORE].
Ireland was now a decimated island.
In the years following the Irish Famine, there were reforms enacted to the Irish agrarian and landlord system. But the intense Hatred toward the British never faded and in fact sparked a renewed call for Irish independence. It wasn’t until the end of World War I, after the Irish fought along side the British against Germany, that Irish Independence finally occurred in 1921.
The Irish Famine and immigration crisis was much more complicated than a Potato Blight. Parliament ignored the plight of Ireland’s starving poor out. Their inaction and poor responses could be attributed to sheer malice, utter obliviousness or political incompetence. The Irish could be faulted for depending too much on a single crop for their survival.
The Irish today refer to the famine simply as THE HUNGER. Dying of starvation is a terrible way for a human being to go, lasting up to two months of agony, usually ending in organ failure caused by malnutrition. Panic and desperation are an understandable human response.
British PM Tony Blair issued a statement in 1997 offering an apology of sorts from the British government to Ireland for ‘Failing their people in their inadequate handling and response to the Famine, leading to a massive human tragedy.’ Many in Ireland felt it was too little too late. National Famine Commemoration Day is observed in the Republic of Ireland, on a Sunday in May.
Sadly, famine-induced refugee crises continue around the world, even in our modern times. Climate change-induced droughts or social unrest caused by cruel dictatorships are often the cause. The difference is that today we can, and should, respond quickly and globally … something the Irish refugees of 1845 would have been very grateful for.