Trevelyans corn- should there have been more of it?

jonniebgood1

By a lonely prison wall
I heard a young girl calling
Micheal they are taking you away
For you stole Trevelyn's corn
So the young might see the morn.
Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay

Lyrics from the Fields of Athenry.

The 'Michael' may be fictional but Trevelyn certainly wasnt, mores the pity!
Charles edward Trevelyan is villified in many reports for his attitude to Ireland suring the famine:

Within a month of taking office it became clear to the government that the Irish potato crop was going to fail for a second year. The prospect could only be one of unmitigated disaster. What was Trevelyan's response to this? He said:

'The only way to prevent the people from becoming habitually dependent on government is to bring the operation to a close. The uncertainty about the new crop only makes it more necessary. Whatever may be done hereafter these things should be stopped now or we run the risk of paralysing all private enterprise and having this country on you for an indefinite number of years. The Chancellor of the Exchequer strongly supports this policy.'

In other words we're going to leave things as they are to market forces and even cut the limited amount that was done by the Peel government. And therefore they promptly announced that the following would happen--all government food depots which had become crucial in 1845 to feeding sections of the population would now be closed, apart for some special cases in the west of Ireland. Public works should continue, but would now have to be entirely paid from the local rate in Ireland--that's the uncollectable rate. Meanwhile the export of food from Ireland was not to be hampered in any way, shape or form. And so food was being exported whilst people were starving.

http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr189/stack.htm

By accounts he was dedicated but seemed out of touch with the reality on the ground. Perhaps this was due to his lack of time spent in Ireland?

The shaky Irish relief effort soon came under the control of a 38-year-old English civil servant named Charles Edward Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary of the British Treasury. Trevelyan was appointed by Prime Minister Peel to oversee relief operations in Ireland and would become the single most important British administrator during the Famine years. He was a brilliant young man of unimpeachable integrity but was also stubborn, self-righteous, overly bureaucratic, and not given to a favorable opinion of the Irish.

Unwilling to delegate any authority in his day-to-day duties, he managed every detail, no matter how small. All communications arriving from his administrators in Ireland were handed directly to him, unseen by anyone else. Important decisions were thus delayed as his workload steadily increased. He often remained at his office until 3 a.m. and demanded the same kind of round-the-clock commitment from his subordinates.

Trevelyan would visit Ireland just once during all of the Famine years, venturing only as far as Dublin, far from the hard-hit west of Ireland. Remoteness from the suffering, he once stated, kept his judgment more acute than that of his administrators actually working among the people affected.

In the spring of 1846, under his control, the British attempted to implement a large-scale public works program for Ireland's unemployed. Similar temporary programs had been successfully used in the past. But this time, Trevelyan complicated the process via new bureaucratic procedures that were supposed to be administered by a Board of Works located in Dublin. The understaffed Board was quickly swamped with work requests from landowners. At the same time, local relief committees were besieged by masses of unemployed men. The result was confusion and anger. British troops had to be called in to quell several disturbances.

http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/begins.htm

So what were his efforts to lead to. Trevelyan and Prime minister Peel imported Maize from india which is where we get the references to 'Trevelyans corn' in the Fields of Athenry song. But there was not enough corn by a long way- why was this, the famine was known to be widespread?

The corn meal itself also caused problems. Normally, the Irish ate enormous meals of boiled potatoes three times a day. A working man might eat up to fourteen pounds each day. They found Indian corn to be an unsatisfying substitute. Peasants nicknamed the bright yellow substance 'Peel's brimstone.' It was difficult to cook, hard to digest and caused diarrhea. Most of all, it lacked the belly-filling bulk of the potato. It also lacked Vitamin C and resulted in scurvy, a condition previously unknown in Ireland due to the normal consumption of potatoes rich in Vitamin C.

Out of necessity, the Irish grew accustomed to the corn meal. But by June 1846 supplies were exhausted. The Relief Commission estimated that four million Irish would need to be fed during the spring and summer of 1846, since nearly £3 million worth of potatoes had been lost in the first year of the Famine. But Peel had imported only about £100,000 worth of Indian corn from America and Trevelyan made no effort to replenish the limited supply.

So was Trevelyans role significant or was he just a minor civil servant? Could he have done more or was he just fulfilling his role, doing what he was told to do? And what the hell was he rewarded for in 1847- in the middle of the famine?

jonniebgood1

Trevelyan in 1848.

Some of his views were quite right wing for the era-

In the middle of that crisis Trevelyan published his views on the matter. He saw the Famine as a

‘mechanism for reducing surplus population’.

But it was more:

‘The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated. …The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people’.

http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/Charles_Edward_Trevelyan

He really does not seem to have done anything positive during the famine years, or at least nothing positive succeeded.

He was against railway construction as a form of relief and successfully opposed Russell’s scheme for the distribution of some £50,000 worth of seed to tenants. The failure of government relief schemes finally became clear to Trevelyan and early in 1847 soup kitchens were organised under a high-level government commission. It worked badly.

In the autumn of 1847, Trevelyan ended government-sponsored aid to the distressed Poor Law districts although there was an outbreak of cholera. He declared that the Famine was over, and that from now on Irish landlords were to be responsible for financing relief works. He gained a well-deserved reputation as a cold-hearted and uncompassionate administrator. On 27 April 1848 he was given a knighthood for his services to Ireland. The Irish Crisis published in 1848 contains his unsympathetic views on the Famine and its victims.

CDfm

"Trevelyans Corn" & the " Soup" any connection ???

Fratton Fred

When Trevelyans corn was brought into Ireland, how was it distributed?

Was it handed out free, or was it sold to merchants? I have heard reports of some merchants exploiting the food shortage and making a fortune speculating on grain, thereby preventing the poor from buying it.

Maybe this could be the moral evil of which he wrote?

jonniebgood1

It was sent to store depots Fred, that had been set up for this purpose only. These stores released the maize onto the market slowly through 1846 and had to be sold at 'cost price'. After 1846 it was sold at 'market price' The main depot was in Cork and smaller depots were spread around the country. (*info from pg 61 of the great hunger in Ireland by Christine Kinealy)

This imported government corn was held back until may 15 1846 by Trevelyan. Prior to this the free market traders also imported corn which they sold exhorberantly resulting in food riots in several areas. The purpose of Trevelyans imported corn was to regulate the prices of the market rather than feed everyone. He believed that in time the free market would help solve the food shortage without more government help. He was wrong. without money how could the people buy corn? His principle seems to have from the same book as Marie Antionettes 'let them eat cake' sentiment.

I think the soup kitchens followed later than this when the 1846 corn ran out.

Nhead

Fratton Fred wrote: »

When Trevelyans corn was brought into Ireland, how was it distributed?

Was it handed out free, or was it sold to merchants? I have heard reports of some merchants exploiting the food shortage and making a fortune speculating on grain, thereby preventing the poor from buying it.

Maybe this could be the moral evil of which he wrote?

From what Trevelyan stated in the quote he meant that the famine was God's judgement on the moral evil of the Irish (as Trevelyan saw it). He was basically following the laissez faire orthodoxy of the time seen in The Economist which believed that if the government provided food it would violate natural law.

Fratton Fred

Nhead wrote: »

From what Trevelyan stated in the quote he meant that the famine was God's judgement on the moral evil of the Irish (as Trevelyan saw it). He was basically following the laissez faire orthodoxy of the time seen in The Economist which believed that if the government provided food it would violate natural law.

That's not what he is saying at all.

People were clearly profiteering due to a shortage of food, which is where the real problem was. There was enough food, but a lot of people did not have the money to buy it, fuelled by merchants making vast sums of money.

I believe that is the evil he is talking about.

Btw, does anyone have the complete transcript, one where there isn't a gap between "mitigated..." And "the real evil"

Nhead

Fratton Fred wrote: »

That's not what he is saying at all.

People were clearly profiteering due to a shortage of food, which is where the real problem was. There was enough food, but a lot of people did not have the money to buy it, fuelled by merchants making vast sums of money.

I believe that is the evil he is talking about.

Btw, does anyone have the complete transcript, one where there isn't a gap between "mitigated..." And "the real evil"

Well maybe he didn't mean it that way, either way I don't know what you are coming from with the idea:that's not what he meant at all? As I said the ruling government at the time had some strange ideas. He doesn't come across as a very pleasent man from his letters. To be clear I'm not one of these: the perfidious English committed a genocide people nor am I saying that there wasn't people profiteering just that I honestly do believe that he saw the Famine as a way of curing the ills of Irish society (as he saw them). Now, I also don't think he wanted to see the death of the Irish population as a whole I am not saying that at all.

Fratton Fred

Your assumption is that he is blaming the famine on the moral evil of the Irish people, that is not what he says.

He states that the famine is a devine judgement on the Irish (ok, pretty right wing thinking there) but then goes on to say (and the quote has been edited so he doesn't say it straight afterwards) that the real evil they have to contend with is the people.

Now, is he saying the starving people are evil, or is he saying that the merchants and Landlords (whose job Trevelyan saw at as to feed their tennants) are being evil in exacerbating the famine.

If you look at the work he did in India, why would his attitude to the Irish be so very different?

He got it wrong, I wouldn't argue that in the slightest, but I think he may be a convenient scape goat for a lot of people, particularly the Cork merchants who made fortunes out of other people's suffering.

jonniebgood1

I suspect his 'judgement of god' quote was in relation to Ireland being a catholic country predominently as against the mainly protestant rest of UK. There is a cryptic quote from Trevelyan that is also difficult to fathom here:

A Trevelyan letter to Edward Twisleton, Chief Poor Law Commissioner in Ireland, contains the censorious, "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".

What was he really at here?

From an interesting independent article in 1998 at http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/historical-notes-god-and-england-made-the-irish-famine-1188828.html

Nhead

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Your assumption is that he is blaming the famine on the moral evil of the Irish people, that is not what he says.

He states that the famine is a devine judgement on the Irish (ok, pretty right wing thinking there) but then goes on to say (and the quote has been edited so he doesn't say it straight afterwards) that the real evil they have to contend with is the people.

Now, is he saying the starving people are evil, or is he saying that the merchants and Landlords (whose job Trevelyan saw at as to feed their tennants) are being evil in exacerbating the famine.

If you look at the work he did in India, why would his attitude to the Irish be so very different?

He got it wrong, I wouldn't argue that in the slightest, but I think he may be a convenient scape goat for a lot of people, particularly the Cork merchants who made fortunes out of other people's suffering.

Yeah I'd agree with you on the merchants thing and as I said maybe he did mean that as the evil but he does seem pretty right wing in his sentiments.

CDfm

Fred and I had an aside on the religious persecution thread

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=72647704&postcount=19

This is relevant on distribution.

Edit



http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/past/famine/summer_1847.html

And on laissez faire - the landlords did not see it as their job to feed the tenants and they were tenants and not serfs.

Did you have incidents of potato blight in Britain and how were the poor treated.

Fratton Fred

CDfm wrote: »

Fred and I had an aside on the religious persecution thread

http://m.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=72647704&postcount=19

This is relevant on distribution.

And on laissez faire - the landlords did not see it as their job to feed the tenants and they were tenants and not serfs.

Did you have incidents of potato blight in Britain and how were the poor treated.

Soup kitchens run by religious orders were separate from those run by the authorities though were they not?

All of europe had potato blight but only Ireland (or more specifically only the poor in Ireland) were so dependant on potatoes. The poor were treated in the same way though, pay your way or go to the workhouse. Am I right in thinking the majority of deaths occured in workhouses, or was that just the ones that died from cholera.

One thing I've never really understood is why so many landlords went bankrupt during the famine, was this simply a case of their tenants not being able to pay the rent they depended on, or were there actually some that did try and help out?

I noted in Powerscourt that there was a lot of work carried out there during the mid 19th century, would this have been an attempt at relief works?

CDfm

And this link here shows that the English had no real experience of famine in England since 1315

http://books.google.com/books?id=eGsCGAdH4YQC&pg=PA66&dq&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false

Its worth reading 5 to 10 pages

PatsytheNazi

CDfm wrote: »

Edit



http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/past/famine/summer_1847.html

I'd be extremely skeptical of that map even though it claims to be based on a Relief Commissioners report.

CDfm

In what way ?

I have found a study that may be of interest and it includes statistics by Sir William Wilde.

Famine Disease and Famine Mortality:
Lessons from Ireland, 1845-1850
Joel Mokyr Cormac Ó Gráda
Departments of Economics and History Department of Economics
Northwestern University University College, Dublin
30 June 1999

http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jmokyr/mogbeag.pdf

jonniebgood1

CDfm wrote: »

In what way ?

I have found a study that may be of interest and it includes statistics by Sir William Wilde.

This shows that the majority by a large number died from disease rather than hunger, linked to the weakness. I wonder did Trevelyan or anyone else attempt to do anything about this?

Fratton Fred

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

This shows that the majority by a large number died from disease rather than hunger, linked to the weakness. I wonder did Trevelyan or anyone else attempt to do anything about this?

The fact that the majority of people died from disease rather than hunger is, I believe, fairly undisputed. However cholera and dysentery would be more prevalent in weak people living in close proximity such as the work houses. A lot of relief workers also died from disease and of course, cholera onboard a ship crammed full of people would go through it like wildfire.

Cholera was a real killer (and is today, look at Haiti after the earthquake) and the people of the mid 19th century would not really have understood it. It was cholera that killed 20,000 Boers in the concentration camps and also killed 12,000 British soldiers. If they didn't know how to cope with it in the 1890s I expect they were a lot less able in the 1840s.

jonniebgood1

The BBC Have a list of what they suggest should have been to help Ireland during the famine:

First, the government might have prohibited the export of grain from Ireland, especially during the winter of 1846-47 and early in the following spring, when there was little food in the country and before large supplies of foreign grain began to arrive. Once there was sufficient food in the country (imported Indian corn or maize), from perhaps the beginning of 1848, the government could have taken steps to ensure that this imported food was distributed to those in greatest need. Second, the government could have continued its so-called soup-kitchen scheme for a much longer time. It was in effect for only about six months, from March to September 1847. As many as three million people were fed daily at the peak of this scheme in July 1847. The scheme was remarkably inexpensive and effective. It should not have been dismantled after only six months and in spite of the enormous harvest deficiency of 1847.

Third, the wages that the government paid on its vast but short-lived public works in the winter of 1846-47 needed to be much higher if those toiling on the public works were going to be able to afford the greatly inflated price of food. Fourth, the poor-law system of providing relief, either within workhouses or outside them, a system that served as virtually the only form of public assistance from the autumn of 1847 onwards, needed to be much less restrictive. All sorts of obstacles were placed in the way, or allowed to stand in the way, of generous relief to those in need of food. This was done in a horribly misguided effort to keep expenses down and to promote greater self-reliance and self-exertion among the Irish poor.

Fifth, the government might have done something to restrain the ruthless mass eviction of families from their homes, as landlords sought to rid their estates of pauperized farmers and labourers. Altogether, perhaps as many as 500,000 people were evicted in the years from 1846 to 1854. The government might also have provided free passages and other assistance in support of emigration to North America - for those whose personal means made this kind of escape impossible.

Last, and above all, the British government should have been willing to treat the famine crisis in Ireland as an imperial responsibility and to bear the costs of relief after the summer of 1847. Instead, in an atmosphere of rising 'famine fatigue' in Britain, Ireland at that point and for the remainder of the famine was thrown back essentially on its own woefully inadequate resources.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.shtml

One of the most galling aspects is the decision to close soup kitchens that had been quite cheap to run and had fed massive numbers of people due to government feelings of principle!

the decision to terminate the soup-kitchen scheme in September 1847 after only six months of operation. The idea of feeding directly a large proportion of the Irish population violated all of the Whigs' cherished notions of how government and society should function.

EDIT: also see http://books.google.ie/books?id=agfvVQnBu9MC&pg=PA381&lpg=PA381&dq=trevelyan+closed+soup+kitchens&source=bl&ots=B4XEteYkH1&sig=7ApYJ5kVeAOxO_d5iNvvZidByGo&hl=en&ei=T5PwTazREJK0hAeTuIxG&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=trevelyan%20closed%20soup%20kitchens&f=false

MarchDub

Some observations:

Firstly, I have a copy of Trevelyans' report written in 1848. I got it from the original about 20 years ago.

The Indian Corn mentioned in a post was not from India. It was corn imported from the United States - which is why there had been a heavy duty on it so as to discourage merchants from importing it and putting it into competition with local UK corn or Canadian corn or corn coming in from any other part of the Empire.

One of the major problems with 'selling' this corn in Ireland, in spite of the relaxation of the duty, was the fact - as Trevelyan himself admits - that 'money-wages' were virtually unknown in Ireland. The Irish tenant and labourer did not ever have access to cash. In England labourers were paid in money - in Ireland no such situation exited as labourers were paid by a barter system. Because of this the Government set up 'public works' so the starving could 'work' for the corn or for any food.

MarchDub

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

So was Trevelyans role significant or was he just a minor civil servant? Could he have done more or was he just fulfilling his role, doing what he was told to do? And what the hell was he rewarded for in 1847- in the middle of the famine?

Charles Trevelyan was permanent Head of the Treasury. He was the highest civil servant in treasury and as such represented the face of British Government policy in Ireland during the Famine.

His first response to the situation in Ireland was to order that Edmund Burke's book Thoughts on Scarcity be distributed to relief agencies in Ireland as a way of warning against starving people becoming dependent on Government.

He was knighted in 1848 for his work on the Irish Famine. Really.

MarchDub

Fratton Fred wrote: »

One thing I've never really understood is why so many landlords went bankrupt during the famine, was this simply a case of their tenants not being able to pay the rent they depended on, or were there actually some that did try and help out?

In 1847 The Poor Law Extension Act eliminated all Public Works in Ireland and ended all Government aid to Ireland. The burden for feeding the starving was then passed onto the local Irish landlords who then became responsible for the poor and starving in their districts. They had the double whammy of unpaid rents and having by law to support those who could not enter the overcrowded work houses. Many went bankrupt as a result of this law.

Edit: Should add that this law also increased the taxes paid by Irish landlords by over 50%. The taxes landlords paid went for the upkeep of their local work houses and all British government support dropped off. The work houses were becoming increasingly overcrowded. Some work houses saw their populations sour by as much as 400% within a very short time.

jonniebgood1

MarchDub wrote: »

In 1847 The Poor Law Extension Act eliminated all Public Works in Ireland and ended all Government aid to Ireland. The burden for feeding the starving was then passed onto the local Irish landlords who then became responsible for the poor and starving in their districts. They had the double whammy of unpaid rents and having by law to support those who could not enter the overcrowded work houses. Many went bankrupt as a result of this law.

Edit: Should add that this law also increased the taxes paid by Irish landlords by over 50%. The taxes landlords paid went for the upkeep of their local work houses and all British government support dropped off. The work houses were becoming increasingly overcrowded. Some work houses saw their populations sour by as much as 400% within a very short time.

This was part of the attempt to make Ireland pay for its own famine induced deficits. The famine had become an old news story in England and paying for relief schemes had become unpopular amongst government supporters. Was this a common feeling in England though- who had voting rights there in 1847?

MarchDub

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

This was part of the attempt to make Ireland pay for its own famine induced deficits. The famine had become an old news story in England and paying for relief schemes had become unpopular amongst government supporters. Was this a common feeling in England though- who had voting rights there in 1847?

The change in attitude occurred in the early days of the Famine mostly because of a change in Government. This occurred in the summer of 1846 when Peel's government fell and was replaced by the Liberals with John Russell as PM. Russell immediately stated in Oct 1846 that "It must be understood that we cannot feed the people. It was a cruel delusion to pretend to do so". Unfortunately for Ireland the worse of the Famine had still to come.

CDfm

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

This was part of the attempt to make Ireland pay for its own famine induced deficits. The famine had become an old news story in England and paying for relief schemes had become unpopular amongst government supporters. Was this a common feeling in England though- who had voting rights there in 1847?

Famines and shortages were annual as commented on by the Duke of Wellington.

He uses the phrase the "proprietors of the country".

Comments of the Duke of Wellington (1830)

Politicians were well aware of the underlying causes though they did nothing to tackle them. For example, on 7 July 1830 the Duke of Wellington wrote:

I confess that the annually recurring starvation in Ireland, for a period differing, according to the goodness or badness of the season, from one week to three months, gives me more uneasiness than any other evil existing in the United Kingdom.
It is starvation, because it is the fact that, although there is an abundance of provisions in the country of a superior kind, and at a cheaper rate than the same can be bought in any other part of Her Majesty’s dominions, those who want in the midst of plenty cannot get, because they do not possess even the small sum of money necessary to buy a supply of food.
It occurs every year, for that period of time that elapses between the final consumption of one year’s crop of potatoes, and the coming of the crop of the following year, and it is long or short, according as the previous season has been bad or good.
Now when this misfortune occurs, there is no relief or mitigation, excepting a recourse to public money. The proprietors of the country, those who ought to think for the people, to foresee this misfortune, and to provide beforehand a remedy for it, are amusing themselves in the Clubs in London, in Cheltenham, or Bath, or on the Continent, and the Government are made responsible for the evil, and they must find the remedy for it where they can—anywhere excepting in the pockets of Irish Gentlemen.
Then, if they give public money to provide a remedy for this distress, it is applied to all purposes excepting the one for which it is given; and more particularly to that one, viz. the payment of arrears of an exorbitant rent.
However, we must expect that this evil will continue, and will increase as the population will increase, and the chances of a serious evil, such as the loss of a large number of persons by famine, will be greater in proportion to the numbers existing in Ireland in the state in which we know that the great body of the people are living at this moment. [Wellington to Northumberland, 7 July 1830, in Despatches, vii 111–2; repr. in P. S. O’Hegarty, A history of Ireland under the Union (London 1952) 291–2]


http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/Famine

This was not the first one and there had been another in 1740-41.

MarchDub

CDfm wrote: »

Famines and shortages were annual as commented on by the Duke of Wellington.

He uses the phrase the "proprietors of the country".





This was not the first one and there had been another in 1740-41.

All this was well known at the time and in fact the history of famines in Ireland and to a lesser extent in the rest of the UK were all part of Trevelyan's report. However, a distinction was made between these previous events and the 1840s - most especially as regards the scale and duration.

O'Connell had warned in the House of Common in 1839 that a massive famine was likely in Ireland given the demographics of Irish society as it developed since 1800, the collapse of the Irish economy after the Napoleonic Wars - and the dependence on a single crop by so many.

CDfm

When you look at it that way there was a concensus amongst the Irish and Emglish that it was going to happen.

Wellington had analysed it (as had O'Connell.) and he recognised that the high rents and subsistence farming made it structurally inevitable. Tenants were not left with any surplus.

He also stated that aid ended up paying rent arrears etc rather than allieviating the problem.

So by using the same mechanism's and systems Trevelyan would get the same outcome. Did Trevelyan understand this or did he ignore it ?

Wellington on the other hand called the system "evil". He uses evil recurrently to describe it and is very blunt.

So how come others did not see it this way ?

The other curious thing is that it seemed easier to move people out via emigration than move food in.

Was this official policy ?

Of course, the tenants were tenants at will and there were no leases. A farmer who improved has holding faced eviction without compensation for improvements unlike Ulster.

MarchDub

The word "evil" was thrown around quite a bit in the writings of the period - especially by Christian fundamentalist authors who held that people pretty much were responsible for the infliction of evil on themselves. Trevelyan uses the word quite a bit also - and he puts the onus for this 'evil' on Irish land customs - especially the Rundale system in the west - for the evil now so widespread. No where does he accept it is the responsibility of the government either for the evil or the alleviation of it.

CDfm

I came accross this

The famine in Skibbereen

The 'Great Hunger' was one of many famines in Ireland during the first half of the nineteenth century, but the size of the disaster dwarfed those that preceded it. A contemporary comment was that "God sent the blight, but the English made the famine": and to some extent this was true because the governments of both Peel and Lord John Russell did little to help the Irish population.
On 15 December 1846, one of the Cork magistrates, Mr Nicholas Cummins, visited Skibbereen and sent a letter describing what he saw to the Duke of Wellington and a copy to The Times. The letter was published in the newspaper on 24 December 1846.
The Whig government headed by Lord John Russell did not send food to Skibbereen. There were plentiful supplies of meat, bread and fish in the area, according to the Board of Work’s Relief Inspector’s report and no one seemed to realise that the starving Irish had no money with which to buy it. However, on 8 January 1847, Charles Edward Trevelyan, the permanent head of the Treasury, wrote a minute on behalf of the Lords of the Treasury. This was the sole response of the British government.

Being aware that I should have to witness scenes of frightful hunger, I provided myself with as much bread as five men could carry, and on reaching the spot I was surprised to find the wretched hamlet apparently deserted. I entered some of the hovels to ascertain the cause, and the scenes which presented themselves were such as no tongue or pen can convey the slightest idea of. In the first, six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearances dead, were huddled in a corner on some filthy straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged horsecloth, their wretched legs hanging about, naked above the knees. I approached with horror, and found by a low moaning they were alive - they were in fever, four children, a woman and what had once been a man. It is impossible to go through the detail. Suffice it to say, that in a few minutes I was surrounded by at least 200 such phantoms, such frightful spectres as no words can describe, either from famine or from fever. Their demoniac yells are still ringing in my ears, and their horrible images are fixed upon my brain. My heart sickens at the recital, but I must go on.
In another case, decency would forbid what follows, but it must be told. My clothes were nearly torn off in my endeavour to escape from the throng of pestilence around, when my neckcloth was seized from behind by a grip which compelled me to turn, I found myself grasped by a woman with an infant just born in her arms and the remains of a filthy sack across her loins - the sole covering of herself and baby. The same morning the police opened a house on the adjoining lands, which was observed shut for many days, and two frozen corpses were found, lying upon the mud floor, half devoured by rats.
The Times, 24 December 1846
***
It is their Lordships desire that effectual relief should be given to the inhabitants of the district in the neighbourhood of Skibbereen the local Relief Committees should be stimulated to the utmost possible exertion; soup kitchens should be established under the management of these Committees at such distances as will render them accessible to all the destitute inhabitants and ... liberal donations should be made by Government in aid of funds raised by local subscriptions.
Correspondence ... relating ... to the Relief of the Distress in Ireland (Commissariat Series), H.C. (1847)


http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/ireland/skibber.htm

CDfm

Scotland was also affected

The Highland Potato Famine was a famine caused by potato blight that struck the Scottish Highlands in the 1840s. While the mortality rate was less than other Scottish famines in the 1690s, and 1780, the Highland potato famine caused over 1.7 million. people to leave Scotland during the period 1846–52. The Highland Potato Famine is now in widespread use as a name for a period of 19th century Highland and Scottish history. Famine was a real prospect throughout the period, and certainly it was one of severe malnutrition, serious disease, crippling financial hardship and traumatic disruption to essentially agrarian communities. The causes of the crisis were in many respects similar to those of the Great Irish Famine at the same time, and both famines were part of the wider food crisis facing Northern Europe caused by potato blight during the mid-1840s.
In the mid-19th century, most crofters in the Highlands of Scotland were very dependent on potatoes as a source of food. The potato was perhaps the only crop that would provide enough food from such land areas. The land was generally of poor quality in exposed coastal locations. (See Highland Clearances.) Very similar conditions had developed in Ireland.
In the Highlands, in 1846, potato crops were blighted. Crops failed, and the following winter was especially cold and snowy. Similar crop failures began earlier in Ireland, but famine relief programmes were perhaps better organised and more effective in the Highlands and Islands. During 1847, Sir Edward Pine Coffin used naval vessels to distribute oatmeal and other supplies. Nonetheless, in Wick, Cromarty and Invergordon, there were protests about the export of grain from local harbours (this grain being privately owned). Troops were used to quell the protests. Crop failures continued into the 1850s, and famine relief programmes became semi-permanent operations.
Crofters were not simply given their oatmeal rations: they were expected to work for them, eight hours a day, six days a week. Relief programmes resulted in the building of destitution roads. Also, they produced projects with very little (if any) real value, and their administration was very bureaucratic, employing legions of clerks to ensure compliance with complex sets of rules, though clerks feel hunger too and might have taken another job if one, which they thought would feed them better, had been available.
The daily ration was set at per man, per woman and per child.
Some landlords worked to lessen the effects of the famine on their crofting tenants. Rather than accept any real responsibility for the plight of crofting tenants, many landlords resorted to eviction. In particular, John Gordon of Cluny became the target of criticism in Scottish newspapers when many of his crofters were reduced to living on the streets of Inverness. Gordon resorted to hiring a fleet of ships and forcibly transporting his Hebridean crofters to Canada, where they were simply dumped on Canadian authorities and news of the famine led to the Scottish diasporia including Scottish-Americans to organise relief efforts..
To put it another way, for whatever reasons, some landlords supplied a free passage to what was hoped would be a better life, in Nova Scotia and Canada. It should be made clear that the eviction of people unable to pay their rents was not peculiar to this area.
During the ten years following 1847, from throughout the Highlands, over 16,000 crofters were shipped overseas to Canada and Australia. In 1857, potato crops were again growing without serious blight.


http://highland-potato-famine.co.tv/

CDfm

Here is a figure from the time who was critical of Trevalyan.

William Stuart Trench first became associated with the Lansdowne estate in Kerry in 1849, when he compiled a detailed report on its distressed condition in the wake of the famine for the proprietor, the third marquess of Lansdowne. As agent he devised a scheme of assisted emigration which between 1850 and 1855 shipped 4,000 of the population from Kenmare to America. Through use of contemporary estate records, and by drawing on the work of modern American scholars, the present study not only analyses Trench's emigration scheme in detail, but also provides a fascinating reconstruction of the lives of the Lansdowne emigrants in the slums and ghettos of New York.

http://www.geographypublications.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=34

He describes a famine scene

I did not see a child playing in the streets or on the roads; no children are to be seen outside the doors but a few sick and dying children. In the districts which are now being depopulated by starvation, coffins are only used for the more wealthy. The majority were taken to the grave without any coffin, and buried in their rags: in some instances even the rags are taken from the corpse to cover some still living body.

On arriving at Cappagh, in the first house I saw a dead child lying in a corner of the house, and two children, pale as death, with their heads hanging down upon their breasts sitting by a small fire. The father had died on the road coming home from work. One of the children, a lad seventeen years of age, had been found, in the absence of his mother, who was looking for food, lying dead, with his legs held out of the fire by the little child which I then saw lying dead. Two other children had also died. The mother and the two children still alive had lived on one dish of barley for the last four days. On entering another house the doctor said, "Look there, Sir, you can't tell whether they are boys or girls." Taking up a skeleton child, he said, "Here is the way it is with them all; their legs swing and rock like the legs of a doll, they have the smell of mice."



Source: W. Stewart Trench, Realities of Irish Life (London: Longmans, Green, 1847).

http://college.cengage.com/history/west/resources/students/primary/potato.htm#source

You can read the original here and chapter 7 has the Potato Rot

http://books.google.com/books/about/Realities_of_Irish_life.html?id=fEQ9AAAAIAAJ


Trench was not popular with everyone but he was critical of Trevelyan & others

William Steuart Trench

Life
1808-1872; b. near Portarlington; 4th son of Thomas Trench, dean of Kildare; ed. Royal School, Armagh, and TCD; land agent to estates of Marquis of Lansdowne in Kerry, 1849, and properties of Marquis of Bath in Monaghan, 1851, and Lord Digby in Offaly, 1859; also agent to the Shirley estates in Monaghan; object of several unsuccessful assassination attempts by Ribbonmen; issued Realities of Irish Life (5 edns. in 1868), in which he spoke of it as his ‘lot to live surrounded by a kind of poetic turbulence and almost romantic violence, which I believe could scarcely belong to real life in any other country of the world; deemed by some to give the best account of pre-Famine Irish district; held that emigration ‘gives us room to be civilised; also Ierne, a novel from the same material; d. Carrickmacross; bur. Donaghmoyne Churchyard, Co. Monaghan. ODNB DIB DIW FDA OCIL IF

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Works
Realities of Irish Life (Longmans 1868; 3rd. edn. 1869); Do., with Preface by Patrick Kavanagh (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1966) URL="http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/t/Trench_WS/life.htm#Realities"]infra[/URL; Ierne, A Tale, 2 vols. (Longmans, Green 1871).
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland holds Report on the Shirley Estate (1843) as D3531/S/55.

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Criticism
See references in Colm Toibin & Diarmaid Ferriter, The Irish Famine: A Documentary (London: Profile Books 1999).

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Commentary
Hubert Butler, Grandmother and Wolfe Tone (1990), “In Monaghan” [chap.], writes of Donaghmoyne Church, relics of W. S. Trench, author of Realities of Irish Life, under white marble Celtic cross; agent to Mr Shirley and Marquess of Bath, with a sway over 44,000 acres; Canon OHanlon, writing of Donaghmoyne, refers to him as the notorious calumniator and exterminator of the people of Farney, and DC Rush, historian of Monaghan, has him a liar and a briber of agents provocateur; Lord Bath, a humane and progressive landlord, thought highly of him. Hubert remarks, ‘his first book (1868), suggests that his considerable literary gifts tempted him sometimes to colourful exaggeration but [that] on the whole he brought peace to the barony and served an unpopular regime with a loyalty that was tempered by humanity. His son illustrated the book with a superabundance of filial piety. In picture after picture Trench, a figure of scriptural beauty, faces alone and unarmed a mob of drink-sodden paddies brandishing shillelaghs and hurling bottles and turnips. Though his shirt is torn from his back and his limbs are bleeding, he is undaunted. [...; 116] The ensuing pages contain a reference to a Thornton [O Draignean], called in Trench ‘an idle, good-for-nothing fellow, weak, small and cunning, who plotted to kill Trench, and next turned informer, so that two companions were hanged in Monaghan gaol [118]. Even Rush and OHanlon would not deny that ‘even at his worst he gave his tenants the care that a good stock-breeder gives to his stock. They prospered and multiplied &c. (p.118.)

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Sr. Una Agnew, The Mystical Imagination of Patrick Kavanagh (Dublin: Columba Press 1998), gives an account of the disgrace of Kavanagh's grandfather Peter Kevany, Principal of Kednaminsha Nat. School, Inniskeen, ending: ‘The full tragedy of the story [of Peter Kevany and Nancy Callan] becomes evident from official records at the National Archives in Dublin. It was Stuart [sic] Trench, then manager of the Bath Estate schools, who compounded the injury further by reporting his teacher to the Commissioners of Education. [...; 144] On 4 April 1855, the Commissioners received a letter from Stuart Trench stating that he had suspended a teacher for “immorality” as “he has been for some time living with a widow who is with child by him and not married to him.” Trench enclosed a letter from Kevany requesting forgiveness and promising amendment. Three weeks later came the dreaded ultimatum that Kevany would be “immediately removed from the school [and that] they would not again recognise him as a National School teacher. This action ensured Kevany's public disgrace. His salary was suspended forthwith, and a notice served that the school would be closed until further notice. / Kevany was forced to leave the area though he continued to plead his case with the Commissioners [...]’. (pp.144-45.)




http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/t/Trench_WS/life.htm

And a bit more

http://www.magoo.com/hugh/donaghmoyne.html

His version of emigration is given in the Chapter Mary Shea .

Edit - A bit more on the Patrick Kavanagh connection

http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/k/Kavanagh_P2/life.htm