The Great Famine

Cause of the Irish Potato Famine

The Great Potato Famine in Ireland occurred between 1845-1847 and was caused by blight. Blight blackens the potato leaves and turns the edible root black and inedible. Blight lives and thrives in Ireland because it is cold and breezy but in other places, where it is hotter, blight doesn't like that as much. The farmers and peasants in Ireland in the 1840s ate eight pounds of potatoes per person per day. Because their diet was 80% potatoes, they were very susceptible to famine if there were no potatoes because all the crops died. When the blight hit, many people starved. The government was not very good in Ireland so the problem was on the people to solve. Other countries donated money to help Ireland but it was not enough. About 1,000,000 people died in the famine due to starvation and sickness, and about 2,000,000 people left Ireland to escape the famine. Those people went to the US in a boat. During those years of famine, 49% of US immigrants were Irish people.

Me in front of the replication of the famine ship called Dunbrody

The steerage class in the Dunbrody

Famine Cottages

On the Kerry Way, we saw lots of stone houses that we believed were famine cottages which are houses that people lived in during the famine and then abandoned due to death or emigration.

However, later after the Kerry Way, we learned that the poor people during the Famine lived in much worse houses made of mud that did not leave very much if any environmental trace. In a census taken a few years before the famine, housing in Ireland was grouped in four classes. In 1841 40% of the people in Ireland lived in the fourth class cottages. 

First class was a big house with glass windows and 10 rooms, so it was very fancy. Second class was a good farm house or a house on a small street. Third class would have 2-4 rooms with windows and a door, maybe sharing with a pig. The 4th class was one room with no windows and no door, only a doorway. Fourth class sometimes shared their household space with a pig. Before 4th class construction, the people would put four stones in the corners of where the house would stand and then put four more littler stones on top of the bigger stones and wait overnight. If the “little people” (for example, leprechauns and fairies) came, they would remove the stones and then the builders would know not to build there because it was in the little people's path, so they would build somewhere else.