The disaster of Great Famine which struck Ireland in 1845 can trace most of its causes to the introduction of the dreaded Penal Laws in 1695. These unjust laws deprived the Catholic majority of many civil rights including education, religious freedom and ownership of land;

paving the way for the rise of the Ascendancy class. These Anglo-Irish and English families had almost limitless power over their tenants. Many were absentee landlords living in England and had little interest in their property except to extract as much profit from the tenants as possible.  The saving grace for the Irish peasant was the potato as it was cheep and plentiful. The potato was easily-grown and was a good source of vitamins for the peasants. Because of the rigid land division and landlord policies the vast majority of the Catholic population of Ireland were forced to continually live on the fringes of starvation and destitution.  The population of Ireland at the time of the famine was over eight million people; which was drastically reduced during the following years.

In June 1845, frightening reports began arriving from Europe of a new blight, Phytophtora infestans that was noticed in Belgium. It was not known for certain where the blight had originated, but it was believed to have come from South America two years earlier and was carried to Europe in fertilizer. In 1845, thousands of people died in France, Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland because of huge crop failures. However, people living in these parts of Europe were not as depended on the potato as in Ireland. A severe drought in Europe during the following year, helped kill the blight, thus avoiding the catastrophe which struck Ireland. Charles Edward Trevelyan, was permanent head of the Treasury and was responsible for famine aid. While some would argue that he worked hard on relief schemes, he was against the idea of giving out free famine aid. His appalling attitude towards the Irish was simply diabolical; believing that the famine visited on Ireland was a punishment by God on an idle ungrateful and rebellious county.  The fact that so many died, and so many more fled the country proves his worth in a country that should not have starved if the authorities had paid attention to situation as it developed.  By November 1846, with food prices on the increase, a labourer would have to be able to earn twenty-one shillings per week in order to sustain his family.  However, wages were only six or eight shillings per week, even if one could find work on a relief scheme.  This meant that families would continually grow more and more undernourished, creating a recipe for disaster.

These people had worked hard and long hours in a landlord system; backed by a government that failed them and which simply showed little interest in their plight. If they could not pay the enormous rents being expected from them for their miserable homes, they faced evection. The landlord’s agents backed by a police presence forced many from their homes. The indifference and contempt of some members of the British Government, and indeed government policies towards Ireland in the years prior the famine had in a sense sealed the fate of the Irish people by 1845.  By 1847, hundreds of thousands of people were starving; disease was of epidemic proportions forcing mass immigration. These people risked everything in order to escape; they faced the hazardous journey across the Atlantic Ocean on overcrowded unsafe ships. The voyage to the ‘New World’ was long and perilous; of those who sailed from Irish shores during that period, about one-fifth perished on route.  It has been estimated that as many as 20,000 people who sailed for Boston in 1847 never reached their destination, killed off by disease and hunger during the voyages; their remains being consigned to the sea.

Mass Emigration

Between the famine years, 1845 to 1850 some 100,000 Irish people arrived in Boston alone. They took any work that was available and lived in squalid tenements struggling to keep their families alive.

Life proved very difficult in the early years and many of them also suffered rejection as anti-Irish bigotry was strong. They struggled throughout those years and despite the slogan ‘No Irish Need Apply’ many of them succeeded and reached the highest offices and positions in their adopted country. It was from the descendants of this scorned refugee population, fleeing famine and disease, and suffering every misery known to man, bigotry, evection, rejection, fear, poverty and death that a powerful force arose in America.  Nothing deterred these impoverished, yet powerfully spirited people; who had the ability to transform themselves from destitute foreigners to accomplished leaders in just over a generation.

Many of them became leaders in politics, arts, sports; religion and business.  In 1849, Patrick Kennedy, founder of the Kennedy dynasty sailed from Wexford on The Washington Irving. His grandson, John F. Kennedy, became one of the most famous presidents of the Untied States.  He never forgot his Irish roots and once said: ‘We are a nation of immigrants.  …the experience of our ancestors paves the way for our achievements.’ Another very famous Irish American was Henry Ford.  His father left Cork for Quebec in 1847, and eventually made his way to Detroit.

Greater New York's Italian population in the 1890's equaled [sic] that of Naples; its German population equaled [sic] that of Hamburg. Twice as many Irish lived in New York as in Dublin. The flood of arrivals alarmed many nativeborn Americans concerned, as one of them confessed in the 1890's, "at the prospect of adding enormously to the burden of the municipal governments in the large cities, already almost breaking down through corruption and inefficiency." And yet the real surge of immigration had hardly begun.

The United States: The History Of A Republic, Second Edition, by Richard Hofstadter, William Miller, Daniel Aaron. © Copyright 1957, 1967 by Prentice-Hall, Inc

Today some forty million Americans claim to have Irish ancestry; in Boston alone over twenty percent are Irish American. A large portion of these people also claim that their ancestors arrived there during the famine times. Boston has a flourishing Irish community with Irish study programmes, International Irish organizations, Gaelic football, Irish gift stores, pubs, and radio and television programmes. The Irish Famine Memorial Park in Boston was dedicated on 28 June 1998 at the corner of School and Washington Streets, forever ‘enshrining a timeless tale of tragedy and triumph’ of a determined people. 

About the Author

William Henry is a historian, archaeologist and author from Galway City, he lectures at NUI Galway. His most recent book; Coffin Ship: The Wreck of The Brig St John was published by Mercier Press in 2009. Previous books include The Shimmering Waste, the Life and Times Robert O'Hara Burke and Fields of Slaughter, the Battle of Knockdoe 1504.

Images courtesy of Flickr user sliabh and cc.