"I ventured through that parish this day, to ascertain the condition of the inhabitants, and although a man not easily moved, I confess myself unmanned by the extent and intensity of suffering I witnessed, more especially among the women and little
children, crowds of whom were to be seen scattered over the turnip fields, like a flock of famished crows, devouring the raw
turnips, and mostly half naked, shivering in the snow and sleet, uttering exclamations of despair, whilst their children were
screaming with hunger. I am a match for anything else I may meet with here, but this I cannot stand."
Captain Wynne, Inspecting Officer, West Clare, 1846
The Starvation in Ireland
New York Evening Post.
March 31, 1847
The following is an extract from a letter of Elihu Barrit, published in the Christian Citizen, at Worcester, in Massachusetts. This gentleman has passed a week in Ireland, with the object of investigating the actual condition of the peasantry. His remarks are of a character to kindle emotion in every feeling bosom, and to make the contributors to the Irish relief fund rejoice in having aided the good work of ameliorating the dreadful sufferings of a famishing nation.
SKIBBEREEN (Feb 20) - Rev. Mr. Fitzpatrick called, with several gentlemen of the town, and in their company, I took my first walk through the potter's field of destitution and death. As soon as we opened the door, a crowd of haggard creatures pressed upon us, and with agonizing prayers for bread, followed us to the soup kitchen. One poor woman, whose entreaties became irrestistably importunate, had watched all night in the grave yard, lest the body of her husband be stolen from its last resting place, to which he had been consigned yesterday. She had five children sick with the famine fever in her hovel, and she raised an exceedingly bitter cry for help. A man with swollen feet pressed closely upon us, and begged for bread most piteously. He had pawned his shoes for food, which he had already consumed. The soup kitchen was surrounded by a cloud of those famine spectres, half naked and standing or sitting in the mud beneath a cold drizzling rain. The narrow defile for the dispensary bar was choked with young and old of both sexes, struggling forward with their rusty tin and iron vessels for soup: some of them upon all fours like famished beasts.
There was a cheap bread dispensary opened in one end of the building; and the principal pressure was at the door of this. Among the attenuated apparitions of humanity that thronged this gate of stinted charity, one poor man presented himself under circumstances that distinguished his case from the rest. He lived several miles from the centre of the town, in one of the rural districts, where he found himself on the eve of perishing with his family of seven small children. Life was worth the last struggle of nature, and the miserable skeleton of a father, had fastened his youngest child to his back; and, with four more by his side, had staggered up to the establishment. The hair upon his face was nearly as long as that upon his head. His cheeks were fallen in, and his jaws so distended that he could scarcely articulate a word. His four little children were sitting upon the ground by his feet, nestling together, and trying to hide their naked limbs under their dripping rags. How these poor things could stand upon their feet
and walk, and walk five miles as they had done, I could not conceive.
Their appearance, although common to the thousands in this region of the shadow of death, was indescribable. They did not look as if newly raised from the grave and to life before the blood had begun to fill their veins anew; but as if they had just been thawed out of the ice, in which they had been embedded until their blood had turned to water. Leaving this battle-field of life, I accompanied Mr. Fitzpatrick, the Catholic minister, into one of the hovelilanes [sic] of the town. We found in every tenement we entered, enough to sicken the stoutest heart. In one we found a shoemaker who was at work before a hole in the mud wall of his hut, about as large as a small pane of glass. There were five in his family, and he said when he could get any work he could earn about three shillings a week. In another cabin we discovered a nailer by the small light of his fire, working in a space not three feet square. He too had a large family, half of whom were down with the fever; and he could earn but two shillings a week.
About the middle of the filthy lane we came to the ruin of a hovel which had fallen during the night and killed a man, who had taken shelter in it with his wife and child. He had come in from the country; and ready to perish with cold and hunger had entered this falling house of clay. He was warned of his danger, but answered that he must unless he found shelter before morning. He had kindled a small fire with some straw and bits of turf, and was crouching over it, when the whole roof and gable end of earth and stones came down upon him and his child. The child had been pulled out alive and carried to the workhouse; but the father was still lying there upon the dung heap of the fallen roof, slightly covered with a piece of canvas. On lifting this, a humiliating spectacle presented itself. What rags the poor man had upon him, were mostly torn from his body in his last faint struggle for life, his neck and shoulder and right arm were burnt to a cinder. There he lay in the ruin, like the carcass of some brute beast thrown upon a dunghill. As we continued our walk along this filthy lane, half naked women and children would come out of their cabins apparently in the last stage of the fever to beg for food "for the honour of God."
As they stood upon the wet ground, we could almost see it smoke beneath their bare feet, burning with the fever. We entered the grave yard, in the midst of which was a small watch house. This miserable shed had served as a grave where the dying could bury themselves. It was seven feet lang and six in breadth. It was already walled around on the outside with an embankment of graves half way to the eaves. The aperture of this horrible den of death would scarcely admit the entrance of a common sized person. And into this noisome sepulchre diving men, women and children, went down to die; to pillow upon the rotten straw, the grave clothes vacated by preceding victims, and festering with their fever. Here they lay as closely to each other as if crowded side by side on the bottom of one grave. Six persons had been found in this fetid sepulchre at one time, and with one only able to crawl to
the door and to ask for water. Removing a board from the entrance of this black hole of pestilence, we found it crammed with wan victims of famine, ready and willing to perish. A quiet, listless despair broods over the population, and cradles men for the grave.
In 1800, some five million people lived in Ireland. By the autumn of 1845, when the Great Famine struck Ireland, there were more
than eight million. Many of them were wretchedly poor, eking out a precarious living on tiny plots of land, and dependent on each
year's potato crop. Hunger was no novelty to peasant families, for there had been partial failures of the potato crop in other years.
However, these had always been of limited duration, and confined to a small number of counties.
The Great Famine lasted from 1845 to 1848, and crop failure affected the whole island. The cause of the famine was a fungus disease which made the potato plants to rot in the ground, giving off an appalling stench. The blight first destroyed crops on the eastern seaboard of America in 1842, then appeared in England in the summer of 1845. In September, the counties of Wexford and Waterford reported the
disease. More than half the Irish potato crop failed in 1845. Sir Robert Peel, the British prime minister, appointed a commission to
investigate the problem, but scientists were unable to explain the disease, let alone find a cure In 1846, the potato crop was a total
failure. Peel, to his credit, also introduced relief measures. In November 1845, the government spent £100,000 on buying grain
from America, in the hope of keeping food prices down in Ireland. He appointed a relief commission which set about forming local
committees to raise money and to distribute food. At Westminster, in part prompted by Ireland's problems, Peel succeeded in
repealing the protectionist corn laws in June 1846. This opened up the prospect of cheap imports from America. A month later he
was out of office, defeated over a bill to deal with the growing agrarian disturbances in Ireland. The new Whig government, led by
Lord John Russell, believed in a free market and was content to leave the supply of food to private merchants. However, the Irish
peasants were unused to a cash economy, for they had traditionally worked for a landlord in return for a plot of land on which to
grow potatoes. The government hoped that Irish landlords would bear the major responsibility for their tenants' welfare, but many
landlords already faced ruin. The most successful relief came from soup kitchens, originally set up by bodies such as the Society
of Friends.
Where public works continued, they were often delayed by bureaucratic procedures, and workers' health suffered
from the inadequacy of wages to buy what food was available. Evictions were common. Even the weather contributed to the
distress, for the winter of 1846-47 was exceptionally cold and wet. To starvation was added typhus and relapsing fever, both
commonly called "famine fever". Scurvy and dysentery flourished, and in 1849 an outbreak of cholera claimed many lives,
particularly in the larger towns. Many sought to escape to America, only to drown at sea in over-crowded "coffin ships". Those
who did reach the New World were often weakened beyond recovery. Eventually the government reformed the Poor Law
system, so that outdoor relief was added to the limited accommodaton of the workhouses. Medical services were improved with
the establishment of temporary fever hospitals. By the end of 1849, the potato blight had passed and crops returned to normal.
About one million people had died, and another million had emigrated. The population continued to decline, not only through
emigration but through later marriages, lower birth rates and an end of the subdivision of farms which had made Ireland so
vulnerable to crop failure. The famine was to prove a watershed in Anglo-lrish relations, for the inadequacy of government
measures left an enduring legacy of bitterness in Ireland and among those thousands of Irish emigrants who found a new life
across the Atlantic.
An excerpt from A Little History of Ireland by Martin Wallace.