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Ireland (Historical Counties) => Ireland Resources => Topic started by: lyndo on Friday 04 September 15 10:49 BST (UK)
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Found this book on-line yesterday.
Its a bit shocking.
I never knew it was so terrible, although I knew my family cleared out from there at the time.
I hope its OK to put the link here.
Moderator will govern that.
Anyway book is by Asenath Nicholson and is called "Annals of the Famine in Ireland" and was written at the time by eyewitness account.
Its on Irish Library site. If moderator removes link as you have to pay money for the ebook you could search the name of author and the title.
http://store.payloadz.com/details/1572833-ebooks-history-annals-of-the-famine-in-ireland-in-1847-1848-and-1849.html
If you live in another country like I do - its hard to imagine what happened and it lets you understand why they were desperate to find new life.
lyndo
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Hi Lyndo,
Thanks for your post and I am certainly going to take a look at this book. Unbelievable what they had to suffer and no wonder people left Ireland for a better life.
My own ancestors on my dad's side came over to Scotland from 3 different parts of Ireland.
The life that they had in Dundee - working in the Jute Mills and living in what we now consider to be slum conditions - was not ideal but must have been 100 times better. At least they could work and feed their families. I am so proud to be descended from them.
Dorrie
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Hi Dorrie,
Be prepared to shed some tears. Its heartrending.
A bit religiousy - she was some kind of missionary person I think - but I just absorbed that as part of the times they lived in.
And yes tough survivors who went to countries and worked their butts off to make a new life for their families. I share your pride in them.
Apparently many of the Irish lived in some kind of sod huts.
They had absolutely nothing.
Its a genocide kind of thing. I read that historians say that 4 million Irish died over 3 years timespan. Well not genocide because that is a planned thing.
Glad you want to read it. Its only $3.00
lyndo
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Worth noting that the text of this book is available for free on the Internet Archive.
https://archive.org/details/texts?and%5B%5D=Annals%20Of%20The%20Famine%20In%20Ireland (https://archive.org/details/texts?and%5B%5D=Annals%20Of%20The%20Famine%20In%20Ireland)
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Thanks for your info on downloading this book.
Afraid I am a bit old fashioned and like my books in hard copy - eyesight not what it used to be either.
Got a birthday soon and usually get some book tokens. See that Waterstones have it at £9.99 so I will treat myself.
Dorrie (Edinburgh)
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Apparently many of the Irish lived in some kind of sod huts.
You might like a read of this
http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history-heritage/architecture/the-thatched-house-of-co/thatched-houses/materials-in-walls-and-ro/
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Thanks pstainsthorp,
I am sending the link to everyone who has Irish family that I know, so they can download it.
I don't mind giving the Ireland library the money but it is nice to get something free.
I have learned a huge lesson from this.
I have pretty well finished my family history to my satisfaction. Now I realize that all I have is a few names on a bit of paper.
Now to redo the info I have, combined with history of the times and specific places.
To be truthful I was rocked to the core by the info in the little book.
I was too young to really understand the Biafra famine as a child, other than to have it said that a child in Biafra would be glad of the food I was turning up my nose at.
There have been famine's since, but they just passed over my head.
Never again. When someone asks for money for famine from now on I will be happy to give it.
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Hello Sinann,
Thanks for the link.
I have been unable to get onto the site from my home computer after numerous tries..
Can't even bring up askaboutireland.ie
Am going to the library to see if I can get it on their computers.
Its exactly the kind of site I need to learn about Ireland.
I will look at everything not just housing.
Thanks Rootschatters. Never too old to learn something new, are we? ::) ::) ::)
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Thank you Lyndo for the tip about this book. And pstainthorpe for the Internet Archive ref?
I downloaded it earlier today onto my IPad from The Internet Archive. Not read it all yet of course, but finding it to be very sad and a real eye opener. (Especially as the 3x great Grandaughter of an Irish Gentry Landowner). ???
Jeanne
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Hi Jeanne,
I found it really hard at first to deal with this subject from an objective view.
I wanted to blame someone.!!
That is silly really. It all happened because of weather conditions and crop disease.
The social conditions were appalling as we can read here. But huge parts of the western world were divided into classes and there were rich and poor. Its just how it was. No blame attached.
Even when they got away to other countries like in New York, their lives were sad and they were still fighting for jobs, food and housing.
Fortunately social conditions changed and in our Anglo countries we no longer see such a disparity. Also internet has made us aware what happens in other places when its happening.
I think if such a thing occurred in our time - food supplies would flood in.
I hope so anyway.
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I haven't read the book, but being Irish, we learnt about it in school.
One of the awful things was that so much food was being exported from Ireland at the time of the Famine - but that what "laissez-faire" Government is all about . . the market will sort everything out!
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The Famine did not occur because of weather conditions and crop disease. The conditions for it were created by the penal system under which the Irish lived during the centuries-long occupation by a foreign power. Most Irish could not own land and were forced to live on ever-smaller rented plots of land and thus to rely on potatoes for food.
When the blight struck in 1845, and for the next five years, food was exported from Ireland for profit for the benefit of the landowners. People starved while that food sailed from the land. Many died during or soon after their desperate emigration. The powers-that-were stood by and watched it happen. That is not a natural disaster.
I urge you to read more on this defining event of the Irish experience.
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LOL... you only get blight because of weather conditions!! You don't get it in dry sunny weather, the weather is what causes the blight to thrive!!
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Here is a link to another book that may be of interest.
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800111h.html#ch2-18
HISTORY OF IRELAND AND HER PEOPLE
by Eleanor Hull (1931)
Chapter 18 of Volume 2, "the famine"
Some extracts from that chapter (It cites many references including House of Commons Hansard)
Famines were becoming chronic, but those of the years 1846-47 were the worst ever experienced. The potato disease passed over westwards from the Continent and was felt in a lesser degree in parts of England and Scotland. I............ In one week in August the apparently abundant crop was stricken.........Distress and fear were pictured on every countenance, and there was a general rush to dig or sell..........."It is as if a destroying angel had swept over the country," exclaimed a Member in the House of Commons; "the whole population struck down; the air a pestilence; the fields a solitude; the chapel deserted; the priest and the pauper famishing together; no inquest, no rites, no record even of the dead:...death, desolation, despair, reigning through the land." .......
The wheat crop .......hardly up to the average,and the barley and oats were deficient; yet it is undoubted that if ... corn had been kept i...... multitude of lives ..... saved. The English Parliament was ..... struggle for the repeal of the Corn Laws, a........ a thirteenth century famine in a nineteenth century population was at its height. ......... prevention of corn leaving the country would have been ..... effective .....preserving life. But a host of objections from merchants and ship-owners put a stop to all hope of such direct measures of relief and the removal of impediments to import took their place. ......... ruined Ireland as a corn-producing country with a sure market close at hand. ..... turn arable land into pasture, producing cattle for meat instead of wheat and barley. ............ wholesale evictions for which the famine years furnished a plausible excuse, the reversion to pasture requiring fewer labourers a...... repeal of the Corn Laws was largely responsible for the very slow recovery of the country after the famine years. ...........the population had been reduced through death and emigration by nearly two million persons between the census of 1841 and 1851, there were still too many inhabitants for the means of livelihood.
The tide of emigration, once set in, has never come to an end. The population, which numbered in 1841 some 8,196,597 persons had been reduced, by the time the census was taken in 1911, to 4,390,219, hardly more than half the number. .................
ADD solving the potato blight mystery .... origins in Mexico :) ..... Mexico’s Toluca Valley ;D
http://www.history.com/news/after-168-years-potato-famine-mystery-solved
Cheers, JM
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Hi Alison55,
I don't have the slightest doubt that this disaster was fostered by overlords once it began to develop.
I also understand that the Irish had a boot on their neck, which kept them from being able to live.
I am trying hard not to let hatred fester inside me about it.
I have German ancestry who were not allowed to leave the place they lived in, until the lord of their particular manor let them.
I have generations of English who died in their 30's from appalling living conditions and shocking jobs, which was the only way that they could keep their bairns fed.
It was an appalling time in the Anglo and Irish history.
lyndo
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Its quite amazing that in Australia right at this moment 4:30PM CST the SBS channel is playing a program on the Irish Famine!!
I am watching it with great interest.
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What is really shocking is that this catastrophe happened in a country which was the richest the world had ever seen. Famines were common enough in British India, Ireland wasn't India.
Queen Victoria I believe sent £20.
Skoosh.
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In 1841 the population of Ireland was given as 8,175,124. By 1851, after the famine, the population had dropped by 1622739 to 6,552,385.
"The census commissioners calculated that, at the normal rate of increase, the total should have been 9,018,799 so the CALCULATED loss of at least 2.5 million persons had taken place, when in reality the
difference is 1,622,739 MATHEMATICALLY .
Emigration was at its minimum in 1838, the number that left our shores in that year being only 14,700; it rose in 1841, namely, 71,392. It rose still higher in 1842, the emigrants of that year being set down at
89,686. The year 1843 was named by O'Connell the Repeal year; the people were filled with the hope of soon seeing a parliament in College Green,and to this fact may probably, be attributed the great falling off in emigration; the number for that year being only 37,509.
It increased in 1844 to 54,289; and in 1845--the eve of the Famine, to 74,969 persons 1846 = 105955.. total of 433810 leaving 1189929 from which has to be taken the figures for 1847 215444/.. 1848 178519/..1849 214,425/ ..1850 209,054/ ...1851 est 1000000 of the 257,372 (pre census date) totalling 1,350,892...
Balance 271,847 Deaths.
The Government was of opinion that emigration, left to itself, would transfer the starving people to the United States and British America, as quickly as they could be provided for in those countries.
This calculation turned out to be correct enough, as the following
figures will show:-
Emigration from Ireland in the year 1845 is set down at 74,969; it increased in 1846 to 105,955, although the Famine had not to the full extent turned the minds of the people to seek homes in the New
World. The emigration of 1847 more than doubled that of 1846, being 215,444; it fell in 1848 to 178,159, but in 1849 the emigration of 1847 was repeated, the emigrants of that year being 214,425, of which 2,219were orphan girls from the Workhouses. The magnitude of the exodus was maintained in 1850, that year giving 209,054 voluntary exiles; but the emigration in 1851, which year closed the decade, quite outstripped that of any previous year, the figure in that year standing at 257,372.
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In "my" part of Ireland, which is the far south west of Cork,my family survived because they were lucky enough to have a good piece of land and they lived close to the sea. There are dreadful reports in the area of men being made to work on roads that started and went nowhere because the British land owners did not want them to think they got something for nothing.They were paid pennies which could not support a family. One man found collapsed in the townland my family came from had an autopsey which showed that he had had nothing to eat for days and his muscle was wasted away.
When families died there was no one to bury them.Some were eaten by the rats.
There is a huge pit in Skibbereen where no one knows for certain how many thousand are buried.
My grandfather born in 1864 always told my mother born 1918 that when they killed a pig the best piece of meat was to be taken to the neighbours. The neighbours did the same.Probably tradition which meant when you had little your neighbour would help you out.
Famine occurred. It was a disaster. The bit I can't cope with is the landed gentries attitude to the poor and starving. They were treated as disposable rubbish...read the accounts of the time.
I know things were bad elsewhere even in the UK but Ireland was worse because of the British .
:'(
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It's strange OK, the neighbouring Landlord in Clonakilty went broke trying to support his tenants even setting up Co-Ops and exporting Butter to markets in London where it got premium prices yet poor old Skibb suffered so badly.
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Hi Hallmark,
I know modern Con.and know what you mean.
I think Skibb was so out on a limb that no one bothered.There is a tragic article published in the Times (I think) from two journalists who went to see for themselves.They were told not to take food because they would be mobbed.They took bread and I believe had to run for their lives.
There is also a recipe I've seen somewhere for soup that was given out to the desperate.It was water ,salt and some sort of old veg.Nothing in it really but the powers that be thought it would do !
My great grandmother lived through the famine. My late mother would talk of her sitting by the fire wearing a linen cap.A cousin still has it.She was about 105 when she died and made the Southern Star Newspaper.Probably she wasn't quiet that old as there was no proof of birth and people added on years when pensions were brought in but she was still very ancient.Somehow they must have had food.
For info there is the 'Skibbereen and District Historical Society Journal' I only have Volume 10 but there are many references to the Famines in these volumes.
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http://www.irishhistorian.com/IrishFamineTimeline.html
Link "Timeline of Irish Famine"
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Many people came to Manchester to get away from the conditions in Ireland. Sadly it was at the time workers in the mills were trying to get better wages but with no success . The Irish immigrants were willing to work for low wages, after all they`d had severe deprivation and were literally starving. But they unwittingly undermined the cause of Lancashire textile workers and this caused dreadful bitterness for generations .The wages and conditions in the mills were dreadful too and the living conditions horrific in the hastily erected slum housing built for the rural workers who flooded into the towns when hand weaving and spinning became mechanised. I can remember how sectarian the Whit walks were for many years.Bitter memories prevailed.
Angel Meadow and Chorlton on Medlock had streets known as Irish Row.
I can never understand what good it did and who it benefitted to take the roofs off the turf cabins when the Irish poor could not pay the rent due. They then were homeless and had lost their main food crop --potatoes- and so illness followed and starvation.
How cruel and senseless.
Many thanks for the info re the book.I know it will be a heartbreaking read but I`m really
interested.
Viktoria.
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Thanks majm,
I went and got the book and read the chapter last night. I really appreciate you finding it and sharing it.
It shows that some people in gov't were trying to help. Just not enough.
Seems like an Enclosure Act enacted in a different way once people began suffering.
This probably gives us understanding of the French, who got fed up with their oversight, rebelled, and put them all to the guillotine -
only the Irish were starving and dying, and couldn't fight back. :'( :'( :'(
lyndo
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Thanks conahy calling,
I just read that article you posted the link for.
I think that it balanced my view of things a bit to see how much money was put into play in the face of this disaster. AND clearly a lot of people were trying to do something.
Miggs 191 - Thanks for that observation on your great grandma. Its easy to understand that if you lived through that time you might be drawn into yourself in reflection and sadness.
There is a Kerrisk memorial at Aghadowie Castle in Kerry. Its for all Kerrisks. That is my family.
Now that I am learning more about this I can understand why the descendants might feel the desire to do that.
lyndo