Author Topic: Book about Irish Famine 1840's  (Read 9616 times)

Offline lyndo

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Re: Book about Irish Famine 1840's
« Reply #9 on: Friday 11 September 15 06:51 BST (UK) »
 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.
MacDermott, Feeley, Ireland. 1850's Govan Lanarkshire
Scotland in the shipyards.

Offline eadaoin

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Re: Book about Irish Famine 1840's
« Reply #10 on: Sunday 20 September 15 01:04 BST (UK) »
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!
Begg - Dublin, Limerick, Cardiff
Brady - Dublin
Breslin - Wexford, Dublin
Byrne - Wicklow
O'Hara - Wexford, Kingstown
McLoghlin - Roscommon
Lawlor - Meath, Dublin
Lynam - Meath and Renovo, Pennsylvania
Everard - Meath
Fagan - Dublin
Meyler/Myler - Wicklow
Gray - Derry, Waterford
Kavanagh - Limerick

Offline Alison55

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Re: Book about Irish Famine 1840's
« Reply #11 on: Friday 30 October 15 00:21 GMT (UK) »
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.

Offline hallmark

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Re: Book about Irish Famine 1840's
« Reply #12 on: Friday 30 October 15 01:18 GMT (UK) »
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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Offline majm

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Re: Book about Irish Famine 1840's
« Reply #13 on: Friday 30 October 15 03:01 GMT (UK) »
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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Offline lyndo

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Re: Book about Irish Famine 1840's
« Reply #14 on: Friday 30 October 15 04:14 GMT (UK) »
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

MacDermott, Feeley, Ireland. 1850's Govan Lanarkshire
Scotland in the shipyards.

Offline lyndo

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Re: Book about Irish Famine 1840's
« Reply #15 on: Friday 30 October 15 06:07 GMT (UK) »
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.
MacDermott, Feeley, Ireland. 1850's Govan Lanarkshire
Scotland in the shipyards.

Offline Skoosh

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Re: Book about Irish Famine 1840's
« Reply #16 on: Friday 30 October 15 12:53 GMT (UK) »
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.

Offline hallmark

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Re: Book about Irish Famine 1840's
« Reply #17 on: Friday 30 October 15 13:09 GMT (UK) »
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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