An Eye for An Eye: Evictions & Assassinations (The Great Famine XVIII)

Over the course of the Great Famine, hundreds of thousands of Irish people were evicted from their homes. As ruthless landlords showed no pity, eviction was a death sentence for many starving tenants who were made homeless.

It was inevitable these evictions provoked resistance. On November 2nd 1847, the most famous assassination of the Great Famine took place in North Roscommon.

This podcast details the background of this assassination and how it relates to the wider story of other mass evictions in Ireland in the late 1840s.

The episode also tries to assess who exactly was to blame for the evictions – Irish landlords facing bankruptcy or the British Government in London?