Learn About the Great Hunger

The Famine was a disaster of major proportions, even allowing for statistical uncertainty as to its estimated effect on mortality. Yet the Famine occurred in a country that, despite concurrent economic problems, was at the center of a still-growing empire and an integral part of the acknowledged workshop of the world. There can be no doubt that, despite a short-term cyclical depression, the resources of the United Kingdom could have either completely or largely mitigated the consequences of consecutive years of potato blight in Ireland.

Within Ireland itself there were substantial resources of food that, had the political will existed, could have been diverted, even as a short-term measure, to feed the starving people. The policy of closing ports during periods of shortages in order to keep home-grown food for domestic consumption had on earlier occasions proved to be effective in staving off famine within Ireland. During the subsistence crisis of 1782–84, an embargo was placed on the export of foodstuffs from the country. The outcome of this humanitarian and imaginative policy was successful. The years 1782–84 are barely remembered as years of distress. By refusing to allow a similar policy to be adopted in 1846–47, the British government ensured that Black ’47 was indelibly associated with suffering, famine, mortality, emigration, and to some, misrule.

Between 1845 and 1855, nearly 2 million people emigrated from Ireland to America and Australia, and another 750,000 to Britain. The Poor Law Extension Act, which made landlords responsible for the maintenance of their own poor, induced some to clear their estates by paying for emigration of the poorer tenants. Although some landlords did so out of humanitarian motives, there were undoubtedly benefits to them, especially those who wanted to consolidate their land holdings or change from the cultivation of land to beef and dairy farming. Emigration soared from 75,000 in 1845 to 250,000 in 1851. This chaotic, panic-stricken and unregulated exodus was the largest single population movement of the 19th century.

Thousands of emigrants died during the Atlantic crossing. There were 17,465 documented deaths in 1847 alone. “Coffin ships,” plying a speculative trade, were often little more than rotting hulks. Thousands more died at disembarkation centers. On August 4, 1847, The Toronto Globe reported on the arrival of emigrant ships: “The Virginius from Liverpool, with 496 passengers, had lost 158 by death, nearly one third of the whole, and she had 180 sick; above one half of the whole will never see their home in the New World. A medical officer at the quarantine station on Grosse Île off Quebec reported that “the few who were able to come on deck were ghastly, yellow-looking spectres, unshaven and hollow-cheeked…not more than 6 or 8 were really healthy and able to exert themselves.” The crew of the ship were all ill, and 7 had died. On Erin’s Queen, 78 passengers had died and 104 were sick. On this ship the captain had to bribe the seamen with a sovereign for each body brought out from the hold. The dead sometimes had to be dragged out with boat hooks, since even their own relatives refused to touch them.”