Irish Potato Famine (1845

The Great Famine or the Great Hunger (Irish: An Gorta Mór or An Drochshaol), known more commonly outside of Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine, is the name given to a famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1851. The Famine was at least fifty years in the making, and due to the disastrous interaction of British economic policy, destructive farming methods, and the unfortunate appearance of "the Blight" – the potato fungus that almost instantly destroyed the primary food source for the majority population. The immediate after-effects of The Famine continued until 1851. The number of deaths is unrecorded, and various estimates suggest totals between 500,000 and more than one million in the five years from 1846. Some two million refugees are attributed to the Great Hunger (estimates vary), and much the same number of people emigrated to Great Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia (see the Irish Diaspora).

The immediate effect on Ireland was devastating, and its long-term effects proved immense, permanently changing Irish culture and tradition. The Irish Potato Famine was the culmination of a social, biological, political and economic catastrophe, caused by both Irish and British factors.

The potato's benefits also led to a dangerous inflexibility in the Irish food system. The majority of food energy was being provided from a single crop. That alone is not unusual, and is still the case today for many subsistence farmers around the world. British penal laws, specifically the Popery Act, forbade Irish Catholics to pass the family landholdings on to a single son. As a result of this law, the practice of subdividing plots among the male children of a family, though diminishing, was still widely practised in the poorer areas of the country. The use of the potato and subdivision produced two interlinked side-effects; with increased food energy the number of surviving male heirs was quickly increasing, while with the prospect of inheriting a landholding, heirs married young and produced large families — hence increasing subdivision into smaller estates for their own heirs.

Irish landholdings

The Famine was the product of a number of complex problems which affected nineteenth-century Ireland. One of the most central was the nature of landholdings. From the Norman invasion in 1169 Irish ownership of the land of the island had been in decline. However, the assimilation of the Hiberno-Normans into Irish society rendered this land transfer of less importance by the end of the sixteenth century. Then, under Mary and Elizabeth, plantations of the country were undertaken. These plantations- in Laois, Offaly and Antrim respectively- did not survive. Landholding was, however, fundamentally altered by the Plantation of Ulster and the consequences of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. A practice of consolidation of lands into large estates was widespread in Europe, but, in Ireland, it was complicated by the discriminatory laws applied to all faiths other than the British imposed Church of Ireland, but which most directly affected native Irish Roman Catholics, the religion of the overwhelming majority of Irish people. Under the Penal Laws, Irish Catholics faced the threat of confiscation of property. While the enforcement of the law fluctuated both in terms of period and geography, and though by the time of the Great Hunger the laws had in any case been repealed, the cultural effect of the discrimination they embodied helped shape Irish attitudes towards land. As a result of all of this, by the time of the Great Hunger most Irish Catholics were restricted to holding small, frequently impoverished tenancies, lacking what came to be known as the 'Three Fs'; fair rent, fixity of tenure, and free sale. Many Irish were quite angered by this situation, causing a lashing out against the governement by an independent vigilante group known as the Freedom Patrol. Many IRA members have counted this early group as a major influence upon them. It also led to the Irish's trademark drunkness, causing the moral and psychological decay of much of the working class. This was further complicated by a cultural tradition known as 'subdivision', whereby lands and property, instead of being inherited by the first-born son (primogeniture) was divided equally among male heirs, both legitimate and on occasion illegitimate. The Penal Laws had decreed subdivision among the conquered Catholic Irish, in the hopes of forcing conversion to Protestantism. In its nineteenth-century landholding form, it meant that, over each generation, the size of a tenant farm was reduced, as it was split between all living sons, though by the 1840s, subdivision was increasingly only found among the poorest people on the smallest farms. In 1845, for example, 24% of all Irish tenant farms were of 0.4 to 2 hectares (one to five acres) in size, while 40% were of 2 to 6 hectares (five to fifteen acres). This included marshland and bogland that could not be used for food production. As a result, holdings were so small that the only crop that could be grown in sufficient quantities, and which provided sufficient nourishment to feed a family, was potatoes. A British Government report carried out shortly before the Great Hunger noted that the scale of the poverty was such that one third of all small holdings in Ireland were presumed to be unable to support their families, after paying their rent, other than through the earnings of seasonal migrant labour in England and Scotland.

As a result, the Irish landholding system in the 1840s was already in serious trouble. Many of the big estates, as a result of earlier agricultural crises, were heavily mortgaged and in financial difficulty. (10% were eventually bankrupted by the Great Hunger). Below that level were mass tenancies, lacking long-term leases, rent control and security of tenure, many of them through subdivision so small that the tenants were struggling to survive in good years, and almost wholly dependent on potatoes because they alone could be grown in sufficient quantity and nutritional value on the land left to native ownership, while many tons of cattle and other foodstuffs from estates were exported by absentee British landlords to foreign markets. Furthermore, efforts of tenants to increase the productivity of their land were actively discouraged by the threat that any increase in land value would lead to a disproportionately high resulting increase in rents, possibly leading to their eviction.

The blight

Potato blight is a fungal pathogen that is spread by airborne spores. It infects leaf surfaces and then spreads through the entire plant.

Although the point of origin is still unclear, in 1845 a potato blight struck across Europe, turning potatoes into a soggy and inedible mess. The Freeman's Journal (the main nationalist newspaper) on June 27 1846 carried the headline Disease in the New Potato Crop, recounting an early outbreak in County Mayo. By Black '47, the vast majority of that year's crop was ruined. Food stores and emergency supplies made up for some of this setback, but the blight appeared again in 1848. There was no reserve capacity remaining. The famine affected different parts of the island to varying degrees.

Famine

In a letter written to the Duke of Wellington: "…six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearance dead, huddled in a corner, their sole covering what seemed to be a ragged horse cloth, and their wretched legs hanging about, naked above the knees. I approached in horror and found by a low moaning that they were alive, they were in fever – four children, a woman and what had once been a man… In a few minutes I was surrounded by at least 200 of such phantoms, such frightful spectres as no words can describe. By far the greater number were delirious either from famine or fever… Within 500 yards of the Cavalry Station at Skibbereen, the dispensary doctor found seven wretches lying, unable to move, under the same cloak – one had been dead many hours, but the others were unable to move, either themselves or the corpse."

Letter from Josephine Butler, girl living in time of the Famine: "I can recollect writes being awakened in the early morning by a strange noise, like the croaking or chattering of many birds. Some of the voices were hoarse and almost extinguished by the faintness of famine; and on looking out of the window I recollect seeing the garden and the field in front of the house completely darkened by a population of men women and children, squatting in rags; uncovered skeleton limbs protruding everywhere from their wretched clothing, and clamorous though faint voices uplifted for food and in pathetic remonstrance against the inevitable delay in providing what was given them from the house every morning. I recollect too, when walking through the lanes and villages, the strange morbid famine smell in the air, the sign of approaching death, even in those who were still dragging out a wretched existence" ^*

Evictions

In a final disastrous twist, local relief was paid for through the Poor Law Union, which was funded by rates (local taxes) paid by landlords, on the basis of an estate's tenant numbers. This produced the perverse farce of increasing local reliance on the poor law leading landlords to evict impoverished tenants in order to control their rapidly rising rates bills, only to see those evictees, now reliant on the Poor Law Union pushing up rate bills further, leading to more evictions. But if they kept on tenants unable to pay rents, they then might be unable to meet their rates bill (many estates were already in financial trouble), meaning the Poor Law would not be able to offer local relief, leading to more starvation. Only central funding of Poor Law Unions from the exchequer could solve this conundrum, but Russell's government was opposed to this. Some landlords, to avoid ex-tenants relying on the Poor Law, provided passage to other countries, on what became known as coffin ships. Many emigrants, already weak, some with cholera, died during the passage to North America.

Ireland experienced a massive number of evictions for financial reasons, and infamously to 'clear' their lands to allow cattle grazing, similar to the Highland Clearances, which were happening in Scotland around the same time. Some evicted reluctantly because of their climbing rates bills, others with notorious brutality to take advantage from the Famine. 90,000 people were evicted in 1849 alone, though up to one third were allowed to return as 'caretakers'. 109,000 were evicted in 1850. Many estates did however provide help for their tenants, with reduced rents and the provision of soup kitchens, in some cases bankrupting themselves in the process. Many also initiated relief works, where workers were paid a pittance for building (mostly superfluous) roads and walls. The Shannon-Erne canal (recently reopened) was built as a relief work after petition from the landholders of South Leitrim. Ten percent of all estates were bankrupt by 1850, as heavily mortgaged estates could not cover their financial costs from tenants facing starvation and bankruptcy themselves. The failure of the United Kingdom to control the behaviour of landlords has often been criticised. However in the mid-nineteenth century, few states internationally restricted the rights of landlords; restrictions in Ireland were only imposed from the 1870s, as under the Land Acts which conceded the Irish nationalist demand for the Three Fs and which finally allowed tenants to buy their farms.

Large sums of money were donated by charities; Calcutta is credited with making the first donation of £14,000. The money was raised by Irish soldiers serving there and Irish people employed by the East India Company. Pope Pius IX sent funds, Queen Victoria personally gave the modern day equivalent of €70,000, while the Choctaw Indians famously sent $710 and grain, an act of generosity still remembered to this day, and publicly commemorated by President Mary Robinson in the 1990s. Lord Rothschild donated more than every other English aristocrat combined, although he had not the financial interests in Ireland that many others had. Nevertheless, charitable donations could not solve the scale of the problem.

**Decline in population 1841–51 (%)**
Leinster	Munster	Ulster	Connaught	Ireland
15.3	22.5	15.7	28.8	19.9
Table from Joe Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society (Gill History of Ireland Series No.10) p.2

Response of United Kingdom Government

The initial British government policy towards the famine was, in the view of historians such as F.S.L. Lyons, "prompt and relatively successful". Professor Joe Lee contends: "There was nothing unique (by the standards of pre-industrial subsistence crisis) about the ^* famine. The death rate had been frequently equalled in earlier European famines, including, possibly, in Ireland itself during the famine of 1740–41" . This 1740–1741 famine is commonly referred to as The Forgotten Famine.

In the case of the 1846–49 Irish Famine, the response of Tory government head Sir Robert Peel was to purchase some foreign maize for delivery to Ireland, and to repeal the Corn Laws, which prohibited imports of the much cheaper foreign grain to Ireland. The repeal of the Corn Laws was enacted over a three-year period from 1846 to 1849 and came too late to help the starving Irish, and was politically unpopular, resulting in the end of Sir Robert's ministry. Succeeding him was a Whig ministry under Lord John Russell. Lord Russell's ministry focused on providing support through public works and, after the summer of 1847, workhouses, as laid forth in the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. The "Gregory Clause" of the Act was introduced, making aid available only to those who owned less than one quarter of an acre (1,000 m²) of land. This forced poverty-stricken starving tenants either to give up their homes and land, and so become destitute after the famine, or hold on to them and risk starvation. For a brief time in 1847, soup kitchens were operated by the Poor Law Authority, but soon closed.

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' — and the nickname was only partly because of the yellow colour of the maize. 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 use: men filled in valleys and flattened hills just so the government could justify the cash payments.

Death tolls

No-one knows for certain how many people died in the Famine. State registration of births, marriages or deaths had not yet begun, while the Roman Catholic Church's records, where they exist at all, are understandably incomplete, given the sheer scale of deaths. Many of the Church of Ireland's records (which included records of local Catholics, who paid tithes to their local Church of Ireland), were destroyed when allegedly either the Free State Army or the IRA blew up the Irish Public Records Office in 1922 during the civil war.

One possible estimate has been reached by comparing the expected population with the eventual numbers in the 1850s. Earlier predictions expected that by 1851, Ireland would have a population of 8 to 9 million. This calculation is based on numbers contained in the ten year census results compiled since 1821. (However, a recent re-examination of those returns raise questions as to their accuracy; the 1841 Census, for example, incorrectly classed farm children as labourers, affecting later calculations on how many adults capable of childbearing existed to produce children between 1841 and 1851). In 1851 the actual population was 6.6 million. Making straightforward calculations is complicated by a secondary effect of famine, a key side-effect of malnutrition, namely plummeting fertility and sexual activity rates. The scale of that effect on population numbers was not fully recognized until studies done during African famines in the twentieth century. As a result, corrections based on inaccuracies in census returns and on the previous unrealized decline in births due to malnourishment have led to an overall reduction in the presumed death numbers. Modern historians and statisticians estimate that between 500,000 and 1,500,000 died. Some historians suggest the death toll was in the region of 700,000 to 800,000. One website claims a figure of over five million though most historians have dismissed this claim and the reliability of its calculations. ^* In addition, in excess of one million Irish emigrated in the notorious coffin ships to the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, while more than one million emigrated over following decades; by 1911, a combination of emigration and an abnormally high number of unmarried men and women in the population, had reduced the population of Ireland to 4.4 million.

The aftermath

Potato blights continued in Ireland, especially in 1872 and 1879–1880. These killed few people, partly because they were less severe, but mainly for a complex range of reasons. The growth in the numbers of railways made the importation of foodstuffs easier; in 1834, Ireland had 9.7 km (6 miles) of railway tracks; by 1912, the total was 5 480 km (3,403 miles). The banning of subdivision, coupled with emigration, had increased the average farm holding, enabling tenant farms to diversify in terms of produce grown. The increasing wealth in urban areas meant alternative sources of food, grain, potatoes and seed were available in towns and villages. The 1870s agricultural economy thus was more efficient and less dependent on potatoes, as well as having access to new farm machinery and product control that had not existed thirty years earlier.

Of particular importance was the wholesale reorganisation of the agricultural sector, which had begun after the famine with the Encumbered Estates Act and which in the period (1870s–1900s) saw the nature of Irish landholding changed completely, with small owned farms replacing mass estates and multiple tenants. Many of the large estates in the 1840s were debt-ridden and heavily mortgaged. In contrast, estates in the 1870s, many of them under new Irish middle class owners thanks to the Encumbered Estates Act, were on a better economic footing, and so capable of reducing rents and providing locally organized relief, as was the Roman Catholic Church, which was better organised and funded than it had been in 1847–49.

If subdivision produced earlier marriage and larger families, its abolition produced the opposite effect; the 'inheriting' child would wait until they found the 'right' partner, preferably one with a large dowry to bring to the farm. Other children, no longer with the possibility of inheriting a farm (or part of it at least) had no economic attraction and no financial resources to consider an early marriage.

As a result, later mini-famines made only minimal effect and are generally forgotten, except by historians. However, even though by the 1880s Ireland went through an economic boom unprecedented until the Celtic Tiger era, emigration, often of children who no longer could inherit a share in the land and who as a result chose to go abroad for economic advantage and to avoid poverty, continued. By the 1911 census, the island of Ireland's population had fallen to 4.4 million, about the same as the population in 1800 and 2000 and only a half of its peak population.

The same mould (Phytophthora infestans) was responsible for the 1847–51 and later famines. When people speak of "the Irish famine", or "an Gorta Mór", they nearly always mean the one of the 1840s, even though a similar Great Famine did in fact hit in the early 18th century. The fact that only four types of potato were brought from the Americas was a fundamental cause of the famine, as the lack of genetic diversity made it possible for a single fungus-relative to have much more devastating consequences than it might otherwise have had.

Emigration

As a result of the famine, many Irish families were forced to emigrate from the country. By 1854, between 1.5 and 2 million Irish left their country. In the United States, most Irish became city-dwellers. With little money, many had to settle in the cities that the ships they came on landed in. By 1850, the Irish made up a quarter of the population in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The 1851 census reported that about one third of the inhabitants of Toronto, Canada, were Irish. The Famine is often seen as an initiator in the steep depopulation of Ireland in the 19th century; however, it is likely that real population began to fall in 1841 with the Famine accelerating any population changes already occurring. Some may argue the Famine was necessary to restore population equilibrium to Ireland given that population increased by 13–14% in the first three decades of the 19th century (using Thomas Malthus's idea of population expanding geometrically, resources increasing arithmetically) nonetheless there is a tendency among Irish historians to dispute this. Statistics show that between 1831 and 1841 population grew by only 5% so this gives more value to those who argue that population was already falling by 1844.

The mass exodus in the years following the famine must be seen in the context of overpopulation, industrial stagnation, land shortages, declining agricultural employment and inadequate diet. These factors were already combining to choke off population growth by the 1830s. It would be wrong, therefore, to attribute all the population loss during the famine, to the famine.

Suggestions of genocide

The suggestion that the Famine "amounted to genocide" by the British against the Irish is a divisive issue. Few Irish historians accept outright such a definition, as "genocide" implies a deliberate policy of extermination. Many agree that the British policies during the Famine, particularly those applied under Lord John Russell, were misguided, ill-informed, and disastrous. Anglo-Irish poet Jonathan Swift had satirized the plight of the Irish in relation to English economic domination almost a century before the famine in his pamphlet A Modest Proposal (1729). Professor Joe Lee called what happened a holocaust. (See Democide). Others, however, note that over three million people were fed through soup kitchens (though much of it through non-governmental aid), and that factors such as poor communication, primitive retail distribution networks and the inefficiencies of local government had exacerbated the situation.

The "debate" is largely a moral one, attempting to ascertain whether within the policies of the British Empire lay a racist, forgetful, or simply inconsiderate mentality that, despite its power, made it impotent to handle a humanitarian crisis in its own backyard, or whether a large reduction in Ireland's population was looked on as a favourable outcome by a large segment of the British body politic, who then decided to let nature take its course. Some Irish, British and US historians (F.S.L. Lyons, John A. Murphy, Joe Lee, Roy Foster, and James S. Donnelly, Jr.), as well as historians Cecil Woodham-Smith, Peter Gray, Ruth Dudley Edwards and many others have long dismissed claims of a deliberate policy of extermination. This dismissal usually does not preclude any assessment of British Imperial rule as ill-mannered or unresponsive toward certain of its subjects.

The notable difference between the Famine and other humanitarian crises was that it occurred within the imperial homeland, at a time well into the modern prosperity of the Victorian and Industrial age. Even today, such crises tend to be far away from centers of power such that the subjects of empire, almost by definition, are of distant cultures, languages and religious beliefs. Within the imperial culture, the reportage of a crisis among its subjects more often uses dismissive and dehumanizing terms, and treats otherwise urgent matters with little relevancy or interest. With respect to geography, the famine would appear to belie many of the typical circumstances in which colonialist dismissal of native plight often occurred. With respect to era, the famine came at a crossroads of old world and modern world. Though human suffering during the famine was never photographed, the event immediately and profoundly altered the course of generations of Irish and Irish diaspora — for whom history has a rich and prosperous record.

Memorials to the famine

The Great Famine is still remembered in many locations throughout Ireland, especially in those regions which suffered the greatest losses, and also in cities overseas with large populations descended from Irish immigrants.

In Ireland

Strokestown Park Famine Museum, Ireland
Dublin City Quays, Ireland. Painfully thin sculptural figures stand as if walking towards the emigration ships on the Dublin Quayside.
Murrisk, County Mayo, Ireland. This sculpture of a famine ship, near the foot of Croagh Patrick, depicts the refugees it carries as dead souls hanging from the sides.
Doolough, County Mayo. A memorial commemorates famine victims who walked from Louisburgh along the mountain road to Delphi Lodge to seek relief from the Poor Board who were meeting there. Returning after their request was refused, many of them died at this point.

In the United Kingdom

Liverpool, England. A memorial is in the grounds of St Luke's Church on Leece Street, itself a memorial to the victims of the Blitz. It recalls that from 1849–1852 1,241,410 Irish immigrants arrived in the city and that from Liverpool they dispersed to locations around the world. Many died despite the help they received within the city, some 7000 in the city perish within one year. The sculpture is dedicated to the memory of all famine emigrants and their suffering. There is also a plaque on the gates to Clarence Dock. Unveiled in 2000 The plaque inscription reads in Gaelic and English: "Through these gates passed most of the 1,300,000 Irish migrants who fled from the Great Famine and 'took the ship' to Liverpool in the years 1845–52" The Maritime Museum, Albert Dock, Liverpool has an exhibition regarding the Irish Migration, showing models of ships, documentation and other facts on Liverpool's history.

Cardiff, Wales. A magnificent Celtic Cross made of Irish Limestone on a base of Welsh stone stands in the city's Cathays Cemetery. The cross was unveiled in 1999 as the high point in the work of the Wales Famine Forum, remembering the 150th Anniversary of the famine. The memorial is dedicated to every person of Irish origin, without distinction on grounds of class, politics, allegiance or religious belief, who has died in Wales.

In North America

In Boston, Massachusetts, a bronze statue located at the corner of Washington and School Streets on the Freedom Trail depicts a starving woman, looking up to the heavens as if to ask "Why?", while her children cling to her. A second sculpture shows the figures hopeful as they land in Boston. See ^*.
Buffalo, New York has a stone memorial on its waterfront.
Cambridge, Massachusetts has a memorial to the famine on its Common.
Chicago, Illinois
Grosse-Île, Quebec, Canada
Kingston, Ontario, Canada, Angel of Resurrection
Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the "Boulder Stone" in Pointe-Saint-Charles
New York, New York has the Irish Hunger Memorial which looks like a sloping hillside with low stone walls and a roofless cabin on one side and a polished wall with lit (or white) lines on the other three sides. The memorial is in Battery Park City, a short walk west from the World Trade Center site. See ^*. Another memorial exists in V.E. Macy Park in Ardsley, New York about 32 km north of Manhattan.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Phoenix, Arizona has a famine memorial in the form of a dolmen at the Irish Cultural Center.
Irish Hills Michigan — The Ancient Order of Hibernian's An Gorta Mor Memorial is located on the grounds of St. Joseph's Shrine in the Irish Hills district of Lenawee County, Michigan.

AnGortaMor_MI.jpg

In Australia

Sydney, Australia. The Australian Monument to the Great Irish Famine is located in the courtyard wall of the Hyde Park Barracks, Macquarie Street Sydney. It symbolises the experiences of young Irishwomen fleeing the Great Irish Famine of 1845–48. [http://www.hht.net.au/museums/hyde_park_barracks_museum/fact_sheet

Footnotes

Robert Kee, The Laurel and the Ivy: The Story of Charles Stewart Parnell and Irish Nationalism p.15.
Joe Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society p.1. Cormac Ó Grada suggests the higher number of one million.
FSL Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine p.42.
Lee, op.cit p.1.
Lyons, op.cit p.43.
ibid. p.43.
www.loughrynn.net for the story of the famine in South Leitrim under the management of the Earls of Leitrim
Joseph Judge, "The Travail of Ireland." National Geographic vol. 159 no. 4 (April 1981), pp.432-440

Additional reading

Cormac O'Grada, An Economic History of Ireland
Robert Kee, Ireland: A History (ISBN 0349106789)
John Mitchel, The Last Conquest of Ireland (1861) (out of print)
Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger, 1845-49 (Penguin, 1991 edition)
Marita Conlon-McKenna, Under the Hawthorn Tree

External links

Irish National Archives information on the Famine
Quinnipiac University's An Gorta Mor site - includes etexts
Ireland's Great Famine (Cormac Ó Gráda) from EH.Net Encyclopedia of Economic History
Irish Holocaust (appears quite biased)
History
Newspaper Reports on the Famine
Ireland: The hunger years 1845-1851
Local History Website on the Famine
Kids History Website about the Famine
Cork Multitext Project article on the Famine, by Donnchadh Ó Corráin
For more on the pathogen see http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/mar2001.ht

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