St. Patrick's Day

Well, St. Patrick's Day was a bust as a tremendous storm roared in and it rained hard all day.  As usual, this was accompanied by a lot of wind, when we looked outside we could see the rain moving horizontally.

All of the parades and outdoor festivities were cancelled.  All we saw today was the inside of a pub.

The History of Ireland continues...  The Famine Part I

It is time to talk about the famine.  We are in Co. Mayo right now, Mayo was the hardest hit county in Ireland during those horrendous famine years.

The population of Ireland increased at an astonishing rate, from 2.6 million in 1750 to 8.5 million in 1845.  The largest increase in the population was among the poorest, those on tiny landholdings and more so, those who were landless agricultural labourers.  The increase in population put tremendous pressure on the landholding system; tenancies were divided into smaller and smaller holdings; for example, in 1800, one estate had 400 tenants, and by 1830, the same estate had 8,000 tenants.  The system was in disarray, as large, often absent landowners, rented to middlemen, which rented to farmers, which rented to tenants.

The poor were on the edge of catastrophe in the years prior to the famine, as nearly 50% of the population relied on the potato.  The land was subdivided into very small plots, 75% were less than 20 acres and 24% were less than 5 acres.  The potato was the preferred crop because it was high yielding and it only took about an acre to feed a family.  If eaten in sufficient quantity, which amounted to a lot, the average adult male required 12-14 pounds a day, it would provide enough nutrients to avoid malnutrition.  In combination with milk, cabbage and some fish, the nutrition level was high enough to reduce the rate of mortality in infants and nursing mothers, and the people were healthier.

The potato blight arrived from North American in September of 1845, it also affected France, Germany, Netherlands and northern Scotland, but the population in those countries did not rely on the potato for survival.  One third of the crop was lost in 1845 and 3/4 of the crop was lost in 1846; this resulted in very few seed potatoes available for spring planting in 1847; therefore, the 1847 crop was minuscule.  The crop recovered slightly in 1848, but until 1851, production was about 1/4 of the pre-famine output.

The poor were paid in the form of a cabin and a small plot of land, rather than in wages.  Since the labourers lost their food crop, they needed wages to purchase food.  Farmers refused to pay wages, this required the starving to give up their plots and try to get on with the public works scheme or as a last resort, go to the workhouses.

The British government, under Prime Minister Peel, responded to the famine by importing food and setting up food depots to sell food at cost and they established a public works, although the scheme paid lower wages than local rates, to protect the labour market.  However, after Peel left office, subsequent Prime Ministers believed that market forces would handle the inefficiencies in the economy, others thought the famine was punishment for Irish Catholicism and yet others believed the famine would solve the issue of overpopulation.

The British government was wary of the cost of preventing starvation and thought that the Irish property owners should pay.  The public works scheme was a costly failure as it did not pay enough wages and the effort expended by the starving in hard labour only added to their suffering.  By January of 1847, mass death had begun.  The system of public works was wound down in the spring of 1847 prior to the implementation of soup kitchens.  The local landowners had to fund the soup kitchens while the British government matched donations and supplied loans.  The soup kitchens were cheap to operate, but the nutrient content was abysmal, causing scurvy and the soup was too watery.  Along with the paltry soup, the ration was either one pound of meal or flour, or one pound of biscuit, or 1.5 pounds of bread; children less than nine years of age received a half ration.  By spring and summer of 1847, three million people were destitute, but by the fall of 1847, foreign grain and meal was reaching Ireland so that food prices declined.  However, the labour market had contracted to the point where there was a lack of employment and wages to stop the mass death.  By September of 1847, the soup kitchens were shut down.