Surviving the Famine

silverharp

Just curious if anyone is well read on the famine if they have come across anything about people coming up with inventive ways of surviving the famine. For instance given the large coastline and many rivers, did people miss out on potential sources of food that could have made the difference between life and death?

brianthebard

People always used food sources that were available, like fish obviously, but there was a huge overdependence on the potato. A tenth of the entire country was planted with potatoes, and the average man/person ate 12kg of spuds a day! If you are eating one food on that sort of level its hard to replace it. Although as always you have to remember it was the disease that went with famine that killed the vast majority.

Aedh Baclamh

Brian - There was something on Newstalk the other week about the Famine, and I remember some guy saying there was something wrong with the fish at the time and that's why they couldn't eat much of it?

brianthebard

I never heard that before but that doesn't mean it couldn't be true. I've heard stories of bodies being found with their faces all stung from going mad with the hunger and trying to eat nettles, but in fairness, any good culchie knows if you boil nettles they don't sting and taste like cabbage! So while it may be true I find it somewhat suspect.

Do you remember who the speaker was? There are an awful lot of myths surrounding the famine, chief among them the notion that "the brits didn't try to help and didn't send food". I think at this stage though most people know that there was lots of food coming into the country, but the methods of distribution and the idea that people should work for their food (no concept of social welfare at this stage, the communist manifesto hadn't even been written) were as much or more to blame than the lack of food. Also there was a similar famine in Scotland around the same time, but Ireland received more money and help than Scotland, which goes some way to showing that the British govt did not plan on leaving the Irish to starve.

Aedh Baclamh

Can't remember I'm afraid. It was on the history show on a Sunday evening about 4-5 weeks ago, there may be a podcast on it? How it came about was someone asked why they didn't eat fish since there was so much about at the time. Maybe there wasn't something wrong with the fish, I'm probably wrong, can someone else shed some light on this?

Mick86

silverharp wrote:

...For instance given the large coastline and many rivers, did people miss out on potential sources of food that could have made the difference between life and death?

Your ordinary Joe Bloggs wouldn't have been allowed fish the rivers since the fishing rights belonged to the people that owned the land. Isn't the Irish distaste for sea food supposed to stem from it's association with the famine? I was in Normandy last year and THEY are going to starve if the harvest of the sea ever fails.

Shutuplaura

Someone told me that costal areas were not baldly effected because people always looked to the sea for food. I only heard this anecdotally. Gweedore in Donegal and Connemara are the two most densly populated rural areas of europe apparently and apparently the reason is that because of their communities ability to live off the sea they didn't suffer the depopulation of the rest of the country in the wake of the famine. (you'll remember that ireland was very rural and very densly populated pre famine.) Its all anecdotal but makes sense to me. I did once see a map of ireland which showed depopulation by county 1845 - 1850 and I think this backed it up. Roscommon was the worst effected.

mathias

I was up in Carndonagh in Donegal a few of months ago , while we were there we dropped in on this little museum of sorts called the famine village , there is a guy that runs the place and he probably knows more about the famine and Ireland at that time than anyone Ive ever seen.

This is according to him , its part of the tour ,
Shortly before the crop failed and the famine started there was a massive storm , ( called the "Big One") at the time , this destroyed most of the fishing boats , so there simply wasnt any boats to fish with near coastal areas , thats why a country surrounded by water still lost millions to famine.

Hagar

I would imagine buying sea-caught fish was beyond the means of most of the people who lived on 12kg of potatoes a day. Are you sure 12kg per person per day seems a lot?. I'm sure the fish didn't get any cheaper when the potato famine hit.

silverharp

Mick86 wrote:

Your ordinary Joe Bloggs wouldn't have been allowed fish the rivers since the fishing rights belonged to the people that owned the land. Isn't the Irish distaste for sea food supposed to stem from it's association with the famine? I was in Normandy last year and THEY are going to starve if the harvest of the sea ever fails.

I was thinking more in terms of foraging at the shoreline, shell fish, sea birds, migrating geese. Maybe watching too many of those Ray Myers progs.

SpitfireIV

mathias wrote:

Shortly before the crop failed and the famine started there was a massive storm , ( called the "Big One") at the time , this destroyed most of the fishing boats , so there simply wasnt any boats to fish with near coastal areas , thats why a country surrounded by water still lost millions to famine.

He was probably referring to the 'Night of the Big Wind', 6/7th January 1839 when Ireland had a hurricane! :eek:

brianthebard

CroppyBoy1798 wrote:

He was probably referring to the 'Night of the Big Wind', 6/7th January 1839 when Ireland had a hurricane! :eek:

Which if he was makes it even more confusing since they would've had 6-8 years to repair or build more boats!

SpitfireIV

brianthebard wrote:

Which if he was makes it even more confusing since they would've had 6-8 years to repair or build more boats!

Well I'm guessing that is what he was referring too, seen as he mentioned 'big one', havent heard of any other 'big ones' in that time frame other than the Night of the Big Wind. Perhaps they were slow at repairing there boats ....or werent counting on a famine happening.

brianthebard

CroppyBoy1798 wrote:

Well I'm guessing that is what he was referring too, seen as he mentioned 'big one', havent heard of any other 'big ones' in that time frame other than the Night of the Big Wind. Perhaps they were slow at repairing there boats ....or werent counting on a famine happening.

They had had a few though over the years, I dunno if you could say it was completely unexpected. The overdependence on potatoes was the subject of debate in parliament.
@hagar, yeah 12kg does seem a lot, although they were eating them for brekfast dinner and tea with no meat and very little veg. I read it in a New gill nineteenth century history book, although I'm open to correction, it does seem an awful lot of spuds.

Capt'n Midnight

I had thought a lot of fishermen had to sell boats to pay for food ??

boneless

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

I had thought a lot of fishermen had to sell boats to pay for food ??

That is a valid point. I have also read that elsewhere. The people believed that the blight was was once off as there had been smaller outbreaks in the 1820's. So they sold boats and nets to pay rent and for food etc., buying back the boats later when the crops recovered. However the successive outbreaks of blight in the 1840's meant that the boats and nets could not be recovered.

luckat

Fishing from currachs just wasn't possible for people already weak from starvation; you need great strength to row and steer a currach in rough seas.

The seas close to shore were quickly fished out; those who had heavier boats were mostly mortgaged up to the hilt for them, and since no one could afford to buy or trade for their fish, they lost the boats.

Creative ways: I heard of a mother and daughters who were accused of witchcraft; it transpired that they were eating slugs and snails.

Many people survived by emigrating; as today with eastern Europeans after the collapse of communism, many were thrown into prostitution as the only way to survive.

CrazyPJ

silverharp wrote:

Just curious if anyone is well read on the famine if they have come across anything about people coming up with inventive ways of surviving the famine. For instance given the large coastline and many rivers, did people miss out on potential sources of food that could have made the difference between life and death?

Ya mean like Bruce Willis type character turns up with great big fcuk-off trawler or summin?

CrazyPJ

silverharp wrote:

Just curious if anyone is well read on the famine if they have come across anything about people coming up with inventive ways of surviving the famine. For instance given the large coastline and many rivers, did people miss out on potential sources of food that could have made the difference between life and death?

Ya mean like Bruce Willis type character turns up with great big fcuk-off trawler or summin?

CrazyPJ

Also there was a similar famine in Scotland around the same time, but Ireland received more money and help than Scotland, which goes some way to showing that the British govt did not plan on leaving the Irish to starve.

So that British MP who resigned afer he claimed the government was in effect commiting a genocide was mistaken?

Fratton Fred

CrazyPJ wrote:

So that British MP who resigned afer he claimed the government was in effect commiting a genocide was mistaken?

which MP was that?

I knew the British response was considered poor and incompetant, but I didn't realise any MPs actualy resigned over it. Do you have a link?

brianthebard

CrazyPJ wrote:

So that British MP who resigned afer he claimed the government was in effect commiting a genocide was mistaken?

that's some spin you put on my comment there. What MP was this?Can you provide a quote from him?

CrazyPJ

LORD CLARENDON
The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Clarendon wrote a letter to Prime Minister Russell on April 26th, 1849, expressing his feelings about lack of aid from the British House of Commons:

"I do not think there is another legislature in Europe that would disregard such suffering as now exists in the west of Ireland, or coldly persist in a policy of extermination." (9.)

COMMISSIONER TWISLETON
When the Irish Poor Law Commissioner, Edward Twisleton resigned in protest over lack of relief aid from Britain, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Clarendon, wrote the following to British Prime Minister Lord John Russell:

"He (Twisleton) thinks that the destitution here [in Ireland] is so horrible, and the indifference of the House of Commons is so manifest, that he is an unfit agent for a policy that must be one of extermination." (7.)
In 1849 Twisleton testified that "comparatively trifling sums were required for Britain to spare itself the deep disgrace of permitting its miserable fellow subjects to die of starvation." According to Gray, the British spent 7 million Pounds for relief in Ireland between 1845 and 1850, "representing less than half of one percent of the British gross national product over five years. Contemporaries noted the sharp contrast with the 20 million Pounds compensation given to West Indian slave-owners in the 1830s." (8.)

CrazyPJ

It was one of the great illusions that the english pulled off magnificently it must be said, that they portrayed themselves to the world to be the epitome of civilization and high ideals as they still try to do today but the recent Iranaian fiasco let the mask slip.

The following historical record offers contrary evidence. Briefly consider five issues: British treatment of American prisoners during the Revolution, British domination of the slave trade, British government-backed "Opium War", British concentration camps used during the Boer War (yes, the brits invented them), and the 1943 mass starvation in British-ruled Bengal, India.

http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/unit_6.html

CrazyPJ

Sixty years after the end of the war, time has come to reopen the case and institute a fresh Nuremberg trial - this time against one of the prosecuting nations -- Great Britain -- for systematic and intentional murder of millions of people. This genocide was not confined to the Second World War. In fact, only its last episode was played out during the war. The ghastly genocide, which used hunger and starvation as tools, lasted for about eighteen decades and was carried out in Bengal, India (at present Bengal is partly in India and partly in Bangladesh) by the British colonial masters claiming about thirty million victims.

http://www.samarthbharat.com/bengalholocaust.htm

CrazyPJ

Anyways I thought famine was defined by a total colapse of the food chain like what happened in Ethiopa in the eighties. You just have to look at the evidence and draw your own conclusions.

One of the most remarkable facts about the famine period is that there was an average monthly export of food from Ireland worth 100,000 Pound Sterling. Almost throughout the five-year famine, Ireland remained a net exporter of food. Dr. Christine Kinealy, a fellow at the University of Liverpool and the author of two scholarly texts on the Irish Famine: This Great Calamity and A Death-Dealing Famine, says that 9,992 calves were exported from Ireland to England during "Black'47", an increase of thirty-three percent from the previous year.

In the twelve months following the second failure of the potato crop, 4,000 horses and ponies were exported. The export of livestock to Britain (with the exception of pigs) increased during the "famine". The export of bacon and ham increased. In total, over three million live animals were exported from Ireland between 1846-50, more than the number of people who emigrated during the famine years. Dr. Kinealy's most recent work is documented in the spring, 1998 issue of "History Ireland".

She states that almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women and children died of starvation and related diseases. The food was shipped under guard from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland: Ballina, Ballyshannon, Bantry, Dingle,Killala, Kilrush, Limerick, Sligo, Tralee and Westport.

During the first nine months of "Black '47" the export of grain-derived alcohol from Ireland to England included the following: 874,170 gallons of porter, 278,658 gallons of Guinness, and 183,392 gallons of whiskey.The total amount of grain-derived alcohol exported from Ireland in just nine months of Black'47 is 1,336,220 gallons! A wide variety of commodities left Ireland during 1847, including peas, beans, onions, rabbits, salmon, oysters, herring, lard, honey, tongues, animal skins, rags, shoes, soap, glue and seed.The most shocking export figures concern butter. Butter was shipped in firkins, each one holding nine gallons. In the first nine months of 1847,56,557 firkins were exported from Ireland to Bristol, and 34,852 firkins were shipped to Liverpool. That works out to be 822,681 gallons of butter exported to England from Ireland during nine months of the worst year of "famine".

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:MBE2WErFB7cJ:www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/pdf/irish.pdf+irish+famine+mp+resigned&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=uk

Fratton Fred

someones been reading communist weekly:rolleyes:

CrazyPJ

Fratton Fred wrote:

someones been reading communist weekly:rolleyes:

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

Sir Winston Churchill

Erin Go Brath

Fratton Fred wrote:

I knew the British response was considered poor and incompetant

That has to be candidate for understatement of the year! At least Commisoner Twisleton (classic name) showed a bit of integrity, and moral courage by resigning his post in protest.

CrazyPJ

Erin Go Brath wrote:

That has to be candidate for understatement of the year! At least Commisoner Twisleton (classic name) showed a bit of integrity, and moral courage by resigning his post in protest.

Thats it Erin Go Brath, a bit of imcompetence as alluded to by Blair in his letter of apology. He couldnt even bring himself to say it direct to the Irish peoples. I wonder why?


http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19970602/ai_n14104434

brianthebard

CrazyPJ wrote:

LORD CLARENDON
The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Clarendon wrote a letter to Prime Minister Russell on April 26th, 1849, expressing his feelings about lack of aid from the British House of Commons:

"I do not think there is another legislature in Europe that would disregard such suffering as now exists in the west of Ireland, or coldly persist in a policy of extermination." (9.)

COMMISSIONER TWISLETON
When the Irish Poor Law Commissioner, Edward Twisleton resigned in protest over lack of relief aid from Britain, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Clarendon, wrote the following to British Prime Minister Lord John Russell:

"He (Twisleton) thinks that the destitution here [in Ireland] is so horrible, and the indifference of the House of Commons is so manifest, that he is an unfit agent for a policy that must be one of extermination." (7.)
In 1849 Twisleton testified that "comparatively trifling sums were required for Britain to spare itself the deep disgrace of permitting its miserable fellow subjects to die of starvation."

That's fair enough, but this happened after the Famine, when people could see how much devastation had been caused. There had been several famines in Ireland down through the decades, it wasn't something new. As for your information on the export of food: the claim that Britain was taking food from the starving mouths of Irishmen is wholly inaccurate. More food was imported than exported. Also your source is a no go as far as historical accuracy and trustworthyness goes. I suggest you find a reputable source before telling only half the story.