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The Irish Potato Famine

Irish Potato Famine, also known as “The Great Hunger”, is the name given to a famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1851. By the 1800s, the potato had become the staple crop in the poorest regions. More than three million Irish peasants subsisted solely on the vegetable which is rich in protein, carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins such as riboflavin, niacin and Vitamin C.  It is possible to stay healthy on a diet of potatoes alone. The Irish often drank a little buttermilk with their meal and sometimes used salt, cabbage, and fish as seasoning. Irish peasants were actually healthier than peasants in England or Europe where bread, far less nutritious, was the staple food.

 

The Famine began quite mysteriously in September 1845 as leaves on potato plants suddenly turned black and curled, then rotted, seemingly the result of a fog that had wafted across the fields of Ireland. The cause was actually an airborne fungus (phytophthora infestans) originally transported in the holds of ships traveling from North America to England that almost instantly destroyed the primary food source for the majority of the population.  Making matters worse, the winter of 1846-47 became the worst in living memory as one blizzard after another buried homes in snow up to their roofs. The Irish climate is normally mild and entire winters often pass without snow. But this year, an abrupt change in the prevailing winds from southwest into the northeast brought bitter cold gales of snow, sleet and hail.  The immediate after-effects of The Famine continued until 1851 and was a watershed in the history of Ireland.  Some two million refugees are attributed to the Great Hunger (estimates vary), and much the same number of people emigrated to Great Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia.  Some men would purposely commit a crime so they would be sent away to Australia where they hoped conditions would be better.

 

Nicholas Cummins, the magistrate of Cork, visited the hard hit coastal district of Skibbereen. “I entered some of the hovels, ” he wrote, and “and the scenes which presented themselves were such as no tongue or pen can convey the slightest idea of. In fact, six famished and gastly skeletons, to all appearances dead,  were huddled in a corner on some filthy straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged horsecloth, their wretched legs hanging about, naked above the knees.  I approached with horror, and found by a low moaning they were alive — they were in fever, four children,  a woman and what had once been a man. It is impossible to go through the detail. Suffice it to say, that in a few minutes I was surrounded by at least 200 such phantoms, such frightful spectres as no words can describe [suffering] either from famine or from fever. Their demonic yells are still ringing in my ears, and their horrible images are fixed upon my brain.”

 

Most died not from hunger but from associated diseases such as typhus, dysentery, relapsing fever, and famine dropsy, in an era when doctors were unable to provide any cure. Highly contagious ‘Black Fever,’ as typhus was nicknamed since it blackened the skin, is spread by body lice and was carried from town to town by beggars and homeless paupers. Numerous doctors, priests, nuns, and kind-hearted persons who attended to the sick in their lice-infested dwellings also succumbed. Rural Irish, known for their hospitality and kindness to strangers, never refused to let a beggar or homeless family spend the night and often unknowingly contracted typhus. At times, entire homeless families, ravaged by fever, simply laid down along the roadside and died, succumbing to ‘Road Fever.’

 

Throughout the Famine years, nearly a million Irish arrived in the United States. The potato disaster of 1848 had sparked a new exodus to America. By the tens of thousands, the Irish boarded ships and departed their beloved homeland, heading to Boston, New York, Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans, arriving there in tattered clothes, sick from the voyage, disoriented, afraid, perhaps even terrified, but with a glimmer of hope.

                                                                                                          This information was from The History Place

Many of our relatives arrived in the US during the height of the potato famine.  Once in the US, the new Irish Imigrants were often ridiculed and became the new minority which the country discriminated against. Even those of Scottish descent in America who had lived in northern Ireland wished to be distinguished from this new sorry lot of Irishmen by identifying themselves as Scots-Irish.  The Irish took on any work they could find and in many cases did not find life much easier here than in their beloved Ireland, but still maintained hope for a better life.  One must have the greatest admiration for all they endured and what thy were able to accomplish in such a short time, starting with virtually nothing.

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