Most Americans have at least heard of Ireland’s “Potato Famine” during which one million died of hunger and related diseases and another million fled Ireland for the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Australia, and Continental Europe in one of the most massive depopulations in European history. The Famine lasted from 1845 until 1852. Over the years from 1852 to 1855, another one million refugees left Ireland. When the Famine hit, Ireland had a population of 8.5 million. After the Famine and the resulting migration, Ireland only had 4.4 million inhabitants by 1901.
Dublin has a very moving memorial to the men, women, and children who died or left Ireland during these hard times. Unlike here in the United States where the catastrophe is called the Potato Famine, in Ireland it is The Great Hunger, or “an Gorta Mor” in Irish. While there was tremendous loss of life during these years, many survivors came to America and participated in the American Civil War.
The memorial was created by sculptor Rowan Gillespie and unveiled in 1997, There are six refugees from the countryside who walked all the way to Dublin and are inching along the docks next to the Liffey River. It is a few feet from the Talbot Memorial Bridge. There is no charge to visit it and it is open 24 hours a day.
There are several sites nearby, including EPIC which tells the story of Irish immigrants and a rebuilt Irish Famine Ship used to bring people across the Atlantic.
While this memorial is primarily a piece of art, there are also several panels that tell the story of the catastrophe.
While the memorial recalls all the hundreds of thousands of refugees that sought to leave Ireland during the Great Hunger, it also tells the story of 1,490 tenant farmers who were thrown off their land when they could not pay their rent on the Mahon Estate and walked one hundred miles to Dublin.
The monument was unveiled during the 150th Anniversary of the Famine. The figures of six refugees show them as coming together but coming alone. They have experienced the death of their families and they no longer have the reassurance of relatives. The faces show the trauma of the victims watching their husbands, wives, and children die in the countryside. They have lost their farms and crops, and their whole way of life. After a hundred mile walk they are tired and starving. They hope they can get on a boat, but even if they get transported, some may die at sea or immediately after landing.
The statues show the refugees carrying something; a package, blankets, a child. Everything they had was what they carried. What they could not carry would never been seen again.
The is also a panel pointing out the National Famine Way, a trail that you can walk in about four days to follow a common refugee route.
There is a small marker on the ground telling people that if they have family members who were traumatized by the Famine, they can donate to support the markers placed all around the country to raise awareness of the Famine.
The immediate cause of the Famine was the potato blight. The blight was native to Mexico but only made it to Europe in 1844. The blight hit potatoes all throughout Europe, but the total human deaths from all the countries other than Ireland totaled about 100,000. Ireland lost ten times as many as the rest of Europe combined.
While people today think that all provisions were wiped out during the Famine, Ireland was still producing other food like corn and wheat. The landlords insisted that the tenants turn the food over to them for export to England. In other countries hit by the blight, the governments prevented export of food to allow the farmer to have food. This was not allowed in British-controlled Ireland.
John Mitchel, who later moved to America and became a Confederate journalist, wrote in a much-quoted phrase that “The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine.”
While the blight brought a collapse of the potato as a food source, why did it kill some many more Irish than the rest of Europe? England had initially invaded Ireland in 1169. However, it was only after the Tudors came to power in England that the very existence of the Irish came into question. Indigenous Irish saw their land taken away from them and British overlords charged the Irish rent to pay to grow food on their own land. The dictator Cromwell made religion a part of the equation. He led a movement of Calvinists to power in England in the 1600s and he used his armies to push the Irish off their land. This was for English profit and to kill off the native Irish who were persecuted because they were indigenous Catholics.
By the 1840s, the tenant farmers were doing worse off than at any time. The poor ate potatoes with milk because it was the most nutritious meal they could afford. Most tenant farmers had less than twenty acres from which they had to support themselves and their families. For years, potatoes kept the poor alive. Roughly three million people were dependent almost entirely on potatoes to stay alive.
Charles Trevelyan, the man heading the English government’s response to the famine, saw its effects as possibly advantageous for Britain. He wrote to a colleague, “We must not complain of what we really want to obtain. If small farmers go, and their landlords are reduced to sell portions of their estates to persons who will invest capital we shall at last arrive at something like a satisfactory settlement of the country”. In other words, as the tenants were pushed of the land and into their graves, a more capital intensive agriculture could take over.
The potato is not native to Ireland. The wild potato originally grew in Bolivia and Peru. It became cultivated by Native Americans and by the time of Columbus, the potato was grown from What is now the United States to Argentina. The Spanish introduced the crop to Europe. The potato was supposedly planted in Ireland in the 1580s. When Cromwell invaded Ireland, he told the Irish they had to move to western Ireland which had poor soil or else he would move them to Hell. The potato could grow in the bad soil of Western Ireland and it produced prodigious tubers. The tenant farmers and landless agricultural workers could eat a large number of small potatoes each day and the potatoes became known as Irish Potatoes. Many of these potato farmers had only one acre to use for food for their families. Half of the farmers in Ireland had fewer than ten acres.
The master of a college at Oxford who taught during the Famine later remarked “I have always felt a certain horror of political economists since I heard one of them say that the famine in Ireland would not kill more than a million people, and that would scarcely be enough to do much good.” In a similar tone, Trevelyan described the Famine as a “direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence” in which the higher power showed “the deep and inveterate root of social evil.”
The Irish Protestant journalist John Mitchel said that “A million and a half of men, women, and children were carefully, prudently, and peacefully slain by the English government. They died of hunger in the midst of abundance which their own hands created…”
When the blight first came to Ireland, the colonial government did provide some poor relief, however in 1847, Black ’47, England imposed a Poor Law which said that the Irish should provide for the relief of starving farmers, even though most Irish taxpayers had their own food stuffs sorely lacking.
Alongside of one of the humans is an Irish dog, thin and starving. Dogs occupy a place of affection in Ireland, but during the Famine they would sometimes compete with humans for scarce food.
A father carries his daughter over his shoulders to the quay in Dublin. Has she perished along the last steps in Ireland?
Her childlike arms and feet remind us of the massive loss of life during the hungry times. Children and infants were particularly vulnerable.
As you can see below, the statues are oversized, yet they almost disappear on the street.
The father and daughter.
The child’s life is ebbing away, and you can see the pain in the father’s eyes.
Many people who visit the memorial from Australia, Canada, the United States, and Great Britain are descended from refugees who left Ireland during Black ’47.
The statues show the famine-ridden people of Ireland alone. While they were part of one of the four “kingdoms” of the United Kingdom, the richest country in the world, there were few plans to bring relief to them. Some Protestant sects did set up soup kitchens, but they made the Irish children listen to religious instruction while they ate their meals. Those who converted were called “Soupers” for having given into British imperialism for a bowl of soup.
An additional view of the refugees.
Throughout Ireland, there are these shoes showing where the Famine refugees walked to escape their hunger. According to the originator of the placing of the shoes:
“The Missing 1,490 refers to the people who had to leave Strokestown Park in County Roscommon in 1847, their sights set on Dublin, where they would board a series of famine ships bound for Liverpool, with Canada as their ultimate destination.
The 1,490 consisted of men, women, and children, escorted by Bailiff Robison, and they trekked the 165km journey through six-counties from Roscommon, through Longford, Westmeath, Meath, Kildare, and finally Dublin. Those walking were tenants of local landlord Denis Mahon, who gave them three bleak options: starvation, a place in the workhouse, or emigration.
The unfortunate fate for many of the 1,490 was that the vessels they boarded had some of the worst standards of care, living well up to the nickname of coffin ships.”
The British government’s policy in Ireland from 1847 onward was to help clear the land of tenant and tear down the houses that the farmers lived in. This greatly raised mortality in the West and South of the country. This death toll helped out English investors by making land owned by the indigenous Irish very cheap and easy to acquire. Farms were then turned into cattle ranches by wealthy Englishmen.
Near the memorial is a poverty stone expressing solidarity between the Irish and other famine victims throughout the world.
Where people starve, human rights are violated.
The stone says that poverty and hunger are not inevitable.
A block away is the famine ship the Jeanie Johnston. This is a recreation of a famine ship with a charge for entrance. These ships became known as “Coffin Ships” because the death toll was so high during the crossing. On many ships a third to half of the passengers died in just a few weeks. The Jeanie Johnston was considered one of the best of the ships. Most were run down, but the Jeanie Johnston was just built a year before it made its first Famine voyage. With an experienced captain, it carried 193 passengers on its maiden voyage and all of them survived.
The ship tells the story of the tall ships on its surface. Below deck you can meet some of the passengers who can tell you the story of the Famine’s effects on them selves and their whole communities.
This boat is right off the street and easy to reach. If you don’t want to go aboard you can still take photos of it from the dock.
The result of the Famine and the mass crossing to America made the Irish the largest immigrant group in the United States by the coming of the Civil War.
Before 1850, the foreign born population was largely from England, Scotland, and Wales. Those three regions began to be overshadowed in the new immigration era of the Civil War years. Irish immigrants, considered unassimilable by many Americans because of their Catholic beliefs and peasant origins, made up nearly four in ten of all foreign-born people in 1860. The newcomers tended to concentrate certain states while avoiding others, and nine out of ten new immigrants went to live in the North.
Foreign-born population by country of birth in 1860
Ireland- 1.6 million
Germany- 1.2 million
Other Western Europe- 900,000
China- 35,000
Mexico- 27,000
Canada- 250,000
If you are in Dublin, visit the Famine Memorial. It covers a tragic period of Irish history, but it also recalls immigration’s impact on America. During the American Civil War, approximately 180,000 Irish immigrants enlisted in the Union Army and helped reunite the United States.
Note: All color photos of buildings in this post were taken by Patrick Young except as noted.
Sources:
The Great Irish Potato Famine by James Donnelly
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