1. The Great Famine

2. About 160 years ago in Ireland most people were very poor
About 160 years ago in Ireland most people were very poor. The didn’t own their houses or their land. Instead they rented them from landlords who were extremely rich and owned huge amounts of land. The houses they rented looked like this:

3. Families slept on thin mattresses made from straw, usually all the children slept in one bed
They cooked their food on a fire at one end of the room.
Most people ate mainly potatoes because they were easy to grow even on bad land and you could grow lots of potatoes in just a little space. They would eat the potatoes from a flat basket placed on the floor. They didn’t use forks or knives. You ate all the potato including the skin because nobody could afford to waste food. People ate very little meat, eggs, fish, fruit or other vegetables because they couldn’t afford them, they had to keep any money they had to pay their rent to the landlord or they would be evicted.
Inside these houses there was usually only one room. Families lived all together in this room. The inside of a one roomed cabin looked like this; 3

4. Potatoes
That summer was cold and wet. The days were often foggy and misty.
People noticed that the leaves of the potato crop had turned black and then wilted but they didn’t know how bad the problem was until it was time for the harvest.
When people began to try and dig their potatoes they very quickly realised that they had rotted in the ground.
The potato crop all over the country had gotten a fungus called Blight.
The blight had eaten away at the potatoes making them soft , gooey and black. Most of the crop couldn’t be eaten.
A potato which has been attacked by blight looks like this;
William Trench, an agent who worked for a landlord in Co. Cork wrote this about the Blight;
Potatoes were a very good food for poor Irish people.
They had lots of vitamins and minerals and a small amount of potato filled people up for a long time.
Potatoes were very cheap and easy to grow. They even grew very well in bad soil so even people living in places where other crops didn’t grow well could grow a lot of potatoes.
The potato meant that poor people had food. They didn’t have a huge amount of food but they had enough to eat to keep them healthy and feed their children.
That was until the summer of 1845….
“The leaves of the potatoes on many fields I passed were quite withered, and a strange stench, such as I had never smelt before, but which became a well-known feature in “the blight” for years after, filled the atmosphere adjoining each field of potatoes. The crop of all crops, on which they depended for food, had suddenly melted away”

5. What Happened Next?
In 1846 the potato crop was attacked by blight again.
This time almost all of the potato crop in the country was affected by the blight.
There were no food stores left and there were no seed potatoes to plant the crop for the following year.
Famine had come to Ireland.
In 1845 only one third of the potato crop was affected by the blight.
People had some potatoes stored from the previous years and most were able to manage for one year.
At that time Ireland was still ruled by England. The English government didn’t do very much to help in 1845, but they did send some corn, which the Irish people called yellow corn over to Ireland to help feed the hungry.
The problem with the “yellow corn” was that nobody knew how to cook it properly because they were only used to cooking potatoes.

6. Help for the Hungry
There wasn’t very much help for the hungry people of Ireland during the famine.
Some people managed to get work provided by landlords building roads, walls or railways. This work was known as a “relief scheme” but often people were so weak and sick that they died doing the work and so no money ever got home to their families.

7. Soup Kitchens
In some areas charitable organisations or sometimes even landlords started Soup Kitchens.
These were places where soup was made in huge pots given by the government. These pots became known as famine pots. The soup was given out to the starving people on a number of days in the week.
The soup was made mainly of water and cheap vegetables with some meat.
This a recipe for soup which was used in soup kitchens;
Grattan's Soup This recipe was used on the estate of the Right Hon, James Grattan, Vicarstown, Co. Laois:
1 ox head without tongue
28 lbs turnips
3 ½ lbs onions
7 lbs carrots
21 lbs pea-meal
14 lbs Indian meal
30 gallons water.
The soup recipes were generally not balanced for minerals and vitamins and over time gave rise to scurvy and other diseases. Some were too thin (watery) leading to diarrhoea.
Often there would be queues which stretched from one end of a village to the other of people waiting to get some soup and it often ran out.

8. The Workhouse
Nobody wanted to end up in a workhouse.
They were not nice places.
Families were not allowed to stay together. Mammies could stay with their small children but older boys and girls were sent to separate parts of the workhouse and Mams and dads had to saty in separate places aswell. Nobody was allowed to talk to other members of their families and if they were caught doing it they would be punished.
The workhouses were very overcrowded. Often people had to wait on the side of the road for days and days before they were let in.
When they were let in people often died from diseases because they were living too close to a lot of other people.
In the workhouse people were given gruel, bread and water. They were allowed a small piece of meat on Christmas day and Easter Sunday.
Most people who went into the workhouse never came out.
After a few months without food most families were very sick, people were dying and there was no money left.
Very often people had no choice but to leave their homes and go to the Workhouse.
There were workhouses all over Ireland and each area would have a workhouse for poor people to go.
Workhouses looked like this;