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miss_johnsto's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
monicamjw's review against another edition
4.0
Unbearably tragic that a nation known for it's laws, governance and order could so badly bungle the overseeing of relief for the great famine. The author lets history speak for itself.
kellyroberson's review against another edition
5.0
Wise words: "If the famine has any enduring lesson to teach, it is about the harm that even the best are capable of when they lose their way and allow religion and political ideology to traduce reason and humanity."
cancermoononhigh's review against another edition
challenging
informative
sad
medium-paced
2.75
This was my first book on any Irish history despite both families having heavily Irish blood. It was an overall a very sad but wonderfully detailed look at a specific time in Ireland's history.
Heavy summer rains always brough ill tidings, In Ireland in 1845 that would ring true. In June potato farmers noticed a powerful stench in the air and went to investigate, fresh white spots formed on the leaves of the potato plants. The next day the spots turned brown and gangrenous, the potato stalks were wilting and blackening. Some potato fields were dead in a space of a night. At a low estimate half of the 1845 crop had been lost. By January and February of the following year the fields would be crowded with men and women down on their hands and knees in the snow digging for nettles and grass. The Duke of Norfolk encouraged curry powder. Imported curry powder would not increase the Irish food supply but it would make hunger more tolerable, eating curry powder would make warm in his stomach and could go to bed more comfortable.
Sir James Graham declared "if the potato fails famine becomes a fetal certainty." In England a crop failure would produce a hardship, but factory workers and agricultural laborers earned a cash wage and English shops were stocked with food. In rural Ireland where provision shops and cash wages were scarce more than half the population depended entirely on home grown potatoes. In Wateford, a center of the coffin-making industry on any given day one can see a dozen or more county women each balancing an empty coffin walking towards the distance. In areas were coffins were unavailable or unaffordable burials were held at night to hide the shame of putting a family member into an uncoffined grave.
In a matter of 72-96 hours the better part of the 1846 crop was obliterated and not just the early crop. So swift and comprehensive was the P.Infestans destruction that a kind of mass disorientation seized Ireland. In the two months between November 6, 1846 and January 5 1847 the morailty and morbidity rate at the Skibbereen workhouse was over 50%. By New years day 1847 there were barely enough paupers in the workhouse to bury the dead.
For the Irish medical community, the great threat was famine fever. In September 1845 when the first case appeared only forty-two workhouses made arrangements to treat fever cases. On March 23 John Smith, a Galway man, was the reported first starvation death of scarcity. Epidemic fever was widespread by midwinter of 1847. In Ireland the most common form of famine fever was typhus. However during the 1847 epidemic many patients with symptoms that resembled typhus were relapsing some times as many as 5 times with the same sickness. It took memory and science to solve the mystery. The epidemic was being driven by two different illnesses: typhus and relapsing fever, a disease uncommon during the time so many Irish physicians were unfamiliar with it. In the postmortem report on the epidemic, they emphasized the close relationship between food prices and the incidence of fever. In 1845 when the food prices were at normal levels there was no epidemic. In 1846 the scarcity of food was first felt, and fever began to show itself. In the spring of 1847, the effects of the want of food were seen in an alarming increase of fever.
Also during the winter of 1846-1847 scurvy, a disease uncommon in prefamine Ireland also increased dramatically. The potato is a good source of vitamin C. Indian corn is not and without vitamin C the body is unable to synthesize collagen. Dysentery also made an appearance. In periods of social unrest unclean fingers, contaminated food and flies become common. The disease in Gaelic is called "bloody flux." No one can say for sure, but pestilence may have killed ten famine victims for everyone who died of starvation.
In 1846 emigration was large 116,000 people left Ireland. By the spring of 1847 people weren't just leaving, they were fleeing. 215,000 men and women sailed to North America and another 150,000 to Britain. The ships did not just carry Ireland's middle class and upper peasantry, groups with long history of emigration. The ancient Gaelic speaking peasant were also fleeing Ireland, men who never ventured five miles from their birth places were talking of Albany, Boston and Philadelphia. 98,000 emigrants were enroute to Canda. Next to the famine and the Crimean war, the Irish passage to Canada produced the greatest British mortality of the Victorian era. The number of those who immigrated through the Port of New York between 1847 and 1851 was 1.8 million. When the famine immigrants arrived in 1847 to America they found their new identities to be Paddies, Catholics and Democrats.
In 1847 Ireland had a heathy potato crop. Mass evictions, widespread unemployment and the reappearance of pervasive hunger, disease and death plunged Ireland back into chaos the autumn of 1847 and persisted into the early 1850s. Between 1847 and 1851 the eviction rate rose by nearly 1,000% overwhelming the Irish Poor Law system. During the 1850s Irish farms grew steadily larger and agricultural profits steadily grew bigger. On the eve of World War one 11.1 millions of Ireland's 20 million acres were again owned by Irish proprietors and as before the famine, many of the proprietors were small farmers.
A million people died and over two million fled abroad. Ireland's population reduced by a third or more.
Heavy summer rains always brough ill tidings, In Ireland in 1845 that would ring true. In June potato farmers noticed a powerful stench in the air and went to investigate, fresh white spots formed on the leaves of the potato plants. The next day the spots turned brown and gangrenous, the potato stalks were wilting and blackening. Some potato fields were dead in a space of a night. At a low estimate half of the 1845 crop had been lost. By January and February of the following year the fields would be crowded with men and women down on their hands and knees in the snow digging for nettles and grass. The Duke of Norfolk encouraged curry powder. Imported curry powder would not increase the Irish food supply but it would make hunger more tolerable, eating curry powder would make warm in his stomach and could go to bed more comfortable.
Sir James Graham declared "if the potato fails famine becomes a fetal certainty." In England a crop failure would produce a hardship, but factory workers and agricultural laborers earned a cash wage and English shops were stocked with food. In rural Ireland where provision shops and cash wages were scarce more than half the population depended entirely on home grown potatoes. In Wateford, a center of the coffin-making industry on any given day one can see a dozen or more county women each balancing an empty coffin walking towards the distance. In areas were coffins were unavailable or unaffordable burials were held at night to hide the shame of putting a family member into an uncoffined grave.
In a matter of 72-96 hours the better part of the 1846 crop was obliterated and not just the early crop. So swift and comprehensive was the P.Infestans destruction that a kind of mass disorientation seized Ireland. In the two months between November 6, 1846 and January 5 1847 the morailty and morbidity rate at the Skibbereen workhouse was over 50%. By New years day 1847 there were barely enough paupers in the workhouse to bury the dead.
For the Irish medical community, the great threat was famine fever. In September 1845 when the first case appeared only forty-two workhouses made arrangements to treat fever cases. On March 23 John Smith, a Galway man, was the reported first starvation death of scarcity. Epidemic fever was widespread by midwinter of 1847. In Ireland the most common form of famine fever was typhus. However during the 1847 epidemic many patients with symptoms that resembled typhus were relapsing some times as many as 5 times with the same sickness. It took memory and science to solve the mystery. The epidemic was being driven by two different illnesses: typhus and relapsing fever, a disease uncommon during the time so many Irish physicians were unfamiliar with it. In the postmortem report on the epidemic, they emphasized the close relationship between food prices and the incidence of fever. In 1845 when the food prices were at normal levels there was no epidemic. In 1846 the scarcity of food was first felt, and fever began to show itself. In the spring of 1847, the effects of the want of food were seen in an alarming increase of fever.
Also during the winter of 1846-1847 scurvy, a disease uncommon in prefamine Ireland also increased dramatically. The potato is a good source of vitamin C. Indian corn is not and without vitamin C the body is unable to synthesize collagen. Dysentery also made an appearance. In periods of social unrest unclean fingers, contaminated food and flies become common. The disease in Gaelic is called "bloody flux." No one can say for sure, but pestilence may have killed ten famine victims for everyone who died of starvation.
In 1846 emigration was large 116,000 people left Ireland. By the spring of 1847 people weren't just leaving, they were fleeing. 215,000 men and women sailed to North America and another 150,000 to Britain. The ships did not just carry Ireland's middle class and upper peasantry, groups with long history of emigration. The ancient Gaelic speaking peasant were also fleeing Ireland, men who never ventured five miles from their birth places were talking of Albany, Boston and Philadelphia. 98,000 emigrants were enroute to Canda. Next to the famine and the Crimean war, the Irish passage to Canada produced the greatest British mortality of the Victorian era. The number of those who immigrated through the Port of New York between 1847 and 1851 was 1.8 million. When the famine immigrants arrived in 1847 to America they found their new identities to be Paddies, Catholics and Democrats.
In 1847 Ireland had a heathy potato crop. Mass evictions, widespread unemployment and the reappearance of pervasive hunger, disease and death plunged Ireland back into chaos the autumn of 1847 and persisted into the early 1850s. Between 1847 and 1851 the eviction rate rose by nearly 1,000% overwhelming the Irish Poor Law system. During the 1850s Irish farms grew steadily larger and agricultural profits steadily grew bigger. On the eve of World War one 11.1 millions of Ireland's 20 million acres were again owned by Irish proprietors and as before the famine, many of the proprietors were small farmers.
A million people died and over two million fled abroad. Ireland's population reduced by a third or more.
firerosearien's review against another edition
5.0
Conservatives take note: when you blame the poor for being poor, a lot of people will die.
cvictorias's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.5
sigo's review against another edition
5.0
An excellent book about all facets of the Irish Famine. It is very dense, it was good but would work better as reading for a college course on public policy