I wrote this post last year for Third Age, and thought why not repost it this year because so few people know about the Great Hunger. The Irish who fled the famine emigrated around the world and were such successful immigrants, so completely integrating into the mainstream culture wherever they landed, they lost touch with their own history.
Some say the potato first arrived in Ireland when they washed up on shore following the shipwreck of the 130 ships of the Spanish Armada in 1588 in a violent storm. It didn’t take long for the potato to become popular as a healthy and reliable source of food and soon the mainstay of the Irish peasantry. Grown underground, it was plentiful even during times of war, surviving when other crops and livestock were destroyed. The population of Ireland soared with more than two thirds living on the land, dependent on a potato harvest that, unlike grain, could not be stored.
When the potato blight appeared in 1845 and spread in 1846, people were left with nothing to eat, with no way to make money to support themselves. By the end of the worst years of the potato famine, 1847-1849, more than one million Irishmen women and children died of starvation in "The Great Hunger." Another 1.5 million emigrated.
About a half million were evicted by their landlords, many sent away in overcrowded "coffin ships" to Canada with little food, almost no water and no doctors. Already weak and sick, often more than half died. It was said that sharks could be seen following the ships because so many bodies were thrown overboard.
Remember now, Ireland was part of Great Britain and in this time of greatest need, the English government washed their hands of the "Irish problem" by dumping the entire cost and responsibility of famine relief upon the Irish property owners. They closed down the public works programs and soup kitchens which were a "temporary solution" for the first crop failure.
With the passage of the Poor Law, anyone seeking relief who owned more than a quarter acre in land had to forfeit their land.
Men could only get relief if they went as destitute paupers to workhouses already overfull with widows, children and the elderly. People were turned away in droves. They wandered the countryside, living in holes and under bridges, eating grass and dying in ditches.
In Donegal Union, ten thousand persons were found living "in a state of degradation and filth which it is difficult to believe the most barbarous nations ever exceeded," according to the Quaker, William Forster. His organization, the Society of Friends, had refused to work in cooperation with the new Poor Law.
Still, it was not enough as the British Government called for maximum pressure to collect taxes and tax collectors seized livestock, furniture, clothes and tools from homeless paupers. As a matter of policy they would not supply food to the starving people who were considered feckless and reckless for depending on the potato. In 1861 in The Last Conquest of Ireland, John Mitchel wrote: "The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight but the English created the famine."
Little wonder that intense hatred grew against the British. Unrest by a group of Irish nationalists known as ‘Young Ireland’ caused the British government to send in troops to quell any sort of popular uprising. Habeas corpus was suspended and the Treason Felony Act was passed that made speaking against the Crown or the Parliament punishable by deportation to Australia for life.
Ireland was forced to pay for its own relief. Landlords tore down houses so they wouldn’t have to pay taxes, evicting tenants in the winter with nowhere to go. Men and women who had never committed any crimes deliberately committed crimes so they could be deported. The horrors of the Great Hunger are unimaginable to us today and deeply shameful to those who survived it.
Michael Shaughnessy, a barrister in Ireland, described children he encountered while traveling on his circuit as "almost naked, hair standing on end, eyes sunken, lips pallid, protruding bones of little joints visible." In another district, there was a report of a woman who had gone insane from hunger and eaten the flesh of her own dead children. In other places, people killed and ate dogs which themselves had been feeding off dead bodies.
So shameful is the memory of the famine that those who survived rarely spoke of it. Those of Irish descent now living in the U.S or Canada or Australia are only beginning to learn about the Great Hunger, through contemporary Irish bands like Black 47, recent books like the National Book Award winner, Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett and the PBS series on the Irish in America.
What’s most often told is the glory of a new life in a new land. The most famous of which is the story of "Nine Famous Irishmen’ reprinted on countless restaurant placemats.
In the Young Irish disorders, in Ireland in 1848 the following nine men were captured, tried, and convicted of treason against Her Majesty, the Queen, and were sentenced to death: John Mitchell, Morris Lyene, Pat Donahue, Thomas McGee, Charles Duffy, Thomas Meagher, Richard O’Gorman, Terrence McManus, Michael Ireland.
Before passing sentence, the judge asked if there was anything that anyone wished to say. Meagher, speaking for all, said, "My lord, this is our first offense but not our last. If you will be easy with us this once, we promise, on our word as gentlemen, to try to do better next time. And next time - sure we won’t be fools to get caught."
Thereupon the indignant judge sentenced them all to be hanged by the neck until dead and drawn and quartered. Passionate protest from all the world forced Queen Victoria to commute the sentence to transportation for life to far wild Australia.
In 1874, word reached the astounded Queen Victoria that the Sir Charles Duffy who had been elected Prime Minister of Australia was the same Charles Duffy who had been transported 25 years before. On the Queen’s demand, the records of the rest of the transported men were revealed and this is what was uncovered:
THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER, Governor of Montana
TERRENCE MCMANUS, Brigadier General, United States Army
PATRICK DONAHUE, Brigadier General, United States Army
RICHARD O’GORMAN, Governor General of Newfoundland
MORRIS LYENE, Attorney General of Australia, in which office
MICHAEL IRELAND succeeded him
THOMAS D’ARCY MCGEE, Member of Parliament, Montreal, Minister of
Agriculture and President of Council Dominion of Canada
JOHN MITCHELL, prominent New York politician. This man was the father of John
Purroy Mitchell, Mayor of New York, at the outbreak of World War I.