The Famine

E.A. D'Alton says in his book "History of Ireland"

"The miserable patches of land on which so many of the people lived, if planted with corn, could not produce sufficent food for a family, and the scanty and ill-paid labour of the occupiers would not enable them to effectually supplement their food supply. But if potatoes were sown instead of corn, hunger might be kept from the poor man's door. Except rice, the potato is the cheapest food for sustaining human life. The ordinary produce of an Irish acre will feed a family of 8 for a year, while at least 2 acres planted with corn would be required. The latter, too, was subject to tithes but the potato was not. Under these influences it grew in favour, until in Young's time potato-culture had so completely supplanted corn, that for 9 months of the year potatoes and milk were everywhere the food of the poor."

There were famines in 1821, 1822, 1831, 1836, 1837, and 1842.

However D'Alton states "In 1845 the landlords were still as grasping, the laws as unjust, the government as unsympathetic, the skies as changeable as of old but in that year, for the first time in Ireland, the potato was attacked by a mysterious disease".

D'Alton says of Peel (British Prime Minister) "He had crushed the Repeal Association, and in maintaining the Union (In 1800 the Irish Parliament, which had gained legislative independence in 1782, was abolished through bribery and intimidation and a Union between Britain and Ireland was formed), protested that the British parliament was both able and willing to redress every Irish wrong. And yet, though occupying a commanding position among public men, he had done nothing to make his words good. He had resisted every reform of a hated and alien Church, he had not curbed the excessive powers of the landlords, nor improved the condition of their tenants. He had done nothing to check the division and sub-division of small holdings. He had been told by Drummond that the population of Ireland was rapidly increasing without any corresponding increase in the means of subsistence, that an urgent need was to change tens of thousands of the smaller tenants into labourers, and furnish them with employment in the building of railways and the reclaimation of waste lands and if this was not done a famine would surely come. But he had not heeded Drummond's warnings, he had defeated Drummond's plans, he had left the people without employment, the railways unbuilt and the waste lands unreclaimed. And now Drummond's prophecy was being fulfilled, the famine had come and more than 8,000,000 of Irishmen were crying out in vain for food. Nor did the Premier (Peel) show any anxiety to hearken to the appeal. In spite of the Viceroy's letters and the scientific experts' reports, he refused to summon parliament, and did not call the cabinet together till November. Even then he would not stop distilling, nor the export of Irish corn, nor set up public works and he petulantly declared that the Irish had alienated the sympathy of England by their monster meetings and their support of (Daniel) O'Connell. What he proposed was to reduce by Order in council the duty on imported corn, to call parliament together and then to partially repeal the Corn Laws. But to this the cabinet would not agree and Peel resigned office in December. Lord John Russell then essayed to form a government but failed and Peel returned to office."

D'Alton continues "In the Tory party the landlord interest had always been strong and the Tory squire favoured Protection because it kept up the price of corn and enabled the farmer to pay his rent. This he selfishly considered of much more importance than to cheapen the poor man's food." With growing anti-Corn Law feeling in England Peel repealed the Corn Laws in early 1846. He also introduced an Irish Coercion Bill. D'Alton says of this Bill "The English poor man's cry was harkened to by the cheaping of his bread, the Irish poor man, whose stomach cried out for food, was to have instead the lash applied to his back." 1846 also saw the complete devastation of the potato crop "not half the crop, as in 1845, but the whole crop was thus suddenly blotted out of existence.....it would be a low estimate to put the loss at £20,000,000 and it has been put at twice that amount".

In July Lord John Russell and the Liberals took up office. However the Public Works that he set up were found to be inefficient. D'Alton says "Public works supported by public funds ought surely to be works of public utility, if government food depots were to be established they ought to be within easy reach of the people and the food ought to be cheap and it is unfair to burden the rates with the weight of a national calamity. Yet this is what the Premier did. By his Labour rate Act the Viceroy was empowered to call together extraordinary presentation Sessions, which might present public works, and then these, when passed by the Treasury, were carried out by the Board of Public Works. Repayment was to be made by half-yearly instalments levied on the poor-rate. Relief Committees might be formed, but only to prepare lists of those to be employed. Government relief depots, stocked with Indian meal were set up but were not to supercede or undersell the local shopkeeper and the works undertaken were not to be reproductive but only for the sake of employment......To superintend these public works a horde of 7,000 officials were spread over the country. Some being insolent refused work to the destitute, others being corrupt, delayed to pay for it when done and many minimized the famine in the midst of famishing crowds. The rule of the government depots not to interfere with the shopkeepers was unfotunate, for heartless corn merchants were found to traffic on the people's miseries and buying the corn cheap they sold it dear.......Starving crowds paraded the streets demanding work and food, deaths from starvation began and continued....doctors were worn out attending the sick and dying, coroners inquests became frequent with died from starvation as their verdicts; Mitchel calculates that in 1846 "not less than 300,000 perished either of mere hunger or of typhus fever caused by hunger." "

In 1847, believed to be the worst year of the famine in which at least 500,000 people died, the public works were gradually discontinued and D'Alton states "On the 20th of March one-fifth of the men were paid-off and by the end of April all works started under the Labour Rate Act had ceased. This was dismissing the men too quickly, for the Relief Committees in many districts were not yet in working order and to stop work and wages without having anything to give as a substitute produced much misery."

Aid poured into Ireland "from the cities of England, from France and Italy and Austria and Switzerland, from the West Indian Islands, from Canada, from distant Madras and Calcutta, from Australia........the Sultan of Turkey sent a large donation; individual Englishmen gave as much as £1,000; and the English railroads and shipping companies carried parcels of clothes free. But the supplies sent from America were on a scale unparalled in history. Not a city from Boston to New Orleans but held its meeting and formed its Relief Committee ........Rich merchants gave princely subscriptions, professional men were not behindhand, all the churches aided, and poor men readily laid down their dollars. From Philadelphia alone eight vessels were sent with provisions, the States of Alabama and Mississippi sent large consignments of Indian corn; railroads carried free of charge all packages marked Ireland; free storage for such was offered to any extent; public carriers would accept nothing for conveying what was destined for Irish relief; even war vessels had their guns removed and were used to transport food to the starving nation across the sea." The Choctaw people also sent money and "by these donations, generously given and gratefully received, many lives were saved."

However "the famine still marched in triumph over the land, and every day fresh victims were offered up to satisfy its insatiable demands. People died in the cities and in the towns, even in Dublin and Belfast and Cork and Limerick; as well as in the country districts; they died in the fields; they died at the public works and on the way to the Government depots for food; they died at the workhouse door vainly seeking for admission; they died in the workhouses themselves, where fever and dysentry, following on famine, did what famine was unable to do."

D'Alton says that with so much death "Coroners were unequal to the task of holding so many inquests and often when inquests were held the jury, enraged at what they saw, brought in a verdict of wilful murder against Lord John Russell. In the midst of such horrors the living began to envy the dead, for they had ceased to suffer while the living had their sufferings still to go through."

D'Alton continues "The law allowed them (The Landlords) - and shame for parliament that it did - to seize for rent, and in the midst of hunger and horror, baliffs and agents supported by police laid hands on everything. They seized the people's sheep, cattle and oats or their scanty furniture or the potatoes grown from seed given in charity. They turned the people out-of-doors, levelled their cabins or set them on fire and sent their starving tenants adrift without money or clothes."

With so many emmigrating to England to escape the famine the British government raised the rates for deck passage and so stopped the influx of Irish emmigrants. "Scrapping together what little money they could gather or helped by the landlords, who were delighted to get rid of them, thousands then turned their faces to the setting sun, and every vessel which left Ireland for Canada and the United States was filled with Irish fleeing from famine and disease." However their problems didn't end there as the "Coffin Ships" were overcrowded "the ventilation defective, the food scant and unhealthy, the water impure, medical attendance wanting; and soon, generated by unsanitary conditions or perhaps carried on board by some passenger, fever broke out...........and when the survivors landed on American soil they landed to die. Along the banks of the St Lawrence were to be found "one unbroken chain of graves, where repose father and mother, sisters and brothers in a commingled heap, no stone marking the spot"."

The British parliament passed another Coercion Bill in 1848 and later that year the Treason Felony Act was passed but little was done to save the starving people.

From 1845-1848 approximately 1,500,000 were killed and around 1,700,000 emmigrated. Although the Famine didn't properly end until 1851. The Famine killed proportionally more people, and in a shorter time, in Ireland, than Communism in Russia, or Nazism in Germany.

John M. Feehan says in his book Operation Brogue "these figures may well be somewhat conservative since many historians now believe that the census was not very accurate and that the population was much larger than estimated. If this is correct the number of deaths would, of course, be much larger. Nassau Senior, a British government advisor on economic affairs, said that he feared the famine would not kill more than a million people and that would scarcely be enough to do much good. Senior's attitude expressed fairly accurately British political thinking of the day."

This attitude is confirmed by the English historian A.J.P. Taylor who said in an interview with the Sunday Press a number of years ago: " I'm perfectly clear that the underlying policy and structure of planning was manufactured by the British and that it was a form of genocide."