Coffin Ship Read Free

reported again in 1816 and 1817. In 1822 Galway was already suffering from the effects of poverty and high unemployment, and the failure of the potato crop that year caused a minor famine. Hordes of people flocked to the city in search of food, but the town was already struggling to feed its own population. During the summer, fever was widespread, and grants were made available by the local authorities to combat the epidemic. By November, the scourge seems to have passed. Other food shortages occurred in 1831 and 1842; the latter resulting in food riots in Galway city where potato stores were attacked. However, the catastrophe of the Great Famine that swept across Ireland in 1845 was incomparable to anything the country had ever witnessed before. [1]

    A potato riot in Galway in 1842. (The Illustrated London News)
    The devastation of the famine has its origins in the introduction of the Penal Laws of 1695. These unjust laws deprived the Catholic majority of many civil rights in areas such as education, religious freedom and ownership of land, and paved the way for the rise of the Protestant ascendancy class. These landed gentry families exerted an almost limitless power over their tenants. Many were absentee landlords living in England who had little interest in their property except to make as much profit from their tenants as possible. Rents were high and if the tenants could not raise the necessary finance, they faced eviction. The saving grace for the Irish peasant was the potato, as it was cheap to produce, easy to cultivate and yielded large crops. The potato was also a good source of vitamins.
    At the time the population of Ireland was about eight million. Tenant housing consisted mainly of small thatched buildings or small one-roomed huts constructed of stone or sometimes turf. While both buildings were very basic, the huts were dreadful places to live. They had no windows or chimney, just a hole in the roof to allow the smoke from the fire to escape. Infant mortality was high because of such impoverished living conditions. Given the rigid land division and landlord policies, the vast majority of the Catholic population were forced to live on the brink of starvation and destitution on an ongoing basis.

    Boy and girl foraging for potatoes on the road to Cahera, County Cork.
(The Illustrated London News, 20-2-1847)
    Once the potato crop was planted, the tenants were then free to ‘work off’ their rent on the landlord’s estate. The situation was such that in 1843 the Devon Commission, having examined the Irish economic system, reported that the landlords and their policies were the main cause of the widespread poverty amongst the people. One member stated that the Irish people were the ‘worst fed, worst clothed, but were the most patient people in Europe’. [2]
    In June 1845, frightening reports began arriving from Europe that a new blight called Phytophthora infestans had been detected in Belgium. It was not known where the blight had originated but it was suspected to have come from South America two years earlier, perhaps carried to Europe in fertiliser. On 9 September 1845, the Dublin Evening Post reported that the curator of the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, David Moore, had stated that specimens of potatoes sent to him from Wexford and Waterford showed ‘convincing proofs of the rapid progress this alarming disease is making. Some of the stems looked fertile, but when dug up the roots were rotten.’

    Miss Kennedy distributing clothing in Kilrush, County Clare.
(The Illustrated London News, 22-12-1849)
    Reports from Mayo said that an ‘intolerable stench’ filled the air during the digging of potato crops. That same year, thousands of people died from starvation in France, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland because of huge crop failures. However, people living in these areas were not as dependent on the potato as the Irish and so the stage was set for disaster.
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