The Great Hunger
This series will explore the history of what is arguably the most significant event in Irish history
Introduction
This series will explore the history of what is arguably the most significant event in Irish history.
In this short introduction I outline what the series is about, what I hope to achieve and what seems to an increasing controversy – why I chose the name – The Great Famine!
EP1/40
This podcast is the first in my series on the Great Famine and gives a background to Ireland in the 19th century. Entitled ‘Rebel Island’ it focuses on the life of one extraordinary Irish rebel – Anne Devlin.
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In this show we will see what life in Ireland was like after the Act of Union. Within a few decades inequality was soaring. Strikes, riots and assassination were becoming increasingly common.
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In 1845 the population of Ireland was heading towards 9 million with many people surviving on a diet of potatoes. This has lead many to claim that the island was overpopulated, but is it true?
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1845 is famous for one thing in Irish history – the beginning of the Great Famine. However contrary to what you might expect, if you lived in Ireland through most of 1845 there was little evidence to suggest Irish society stood on the brink of one of the greatest famines in history.
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As the harvest of 1845 approached, rumours circulated through Ireland that a mysterious disease was attacking the potato crop. While well informed botanists in London grew increasingly anxious about what lay ahead, many Irish peasants dependent on potatoes had little idea what was happening.
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Food riots and protests become common, while the crisis facing Ireland is consumed in bitter political disputes around ‘Free Trade’ in London.
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The summer of 1846 was a tense time in Ireland. As food grew scarce lawlessness, riots and violence became frequent. Everyone eagerly awaited May 15th when the British Government would open it’s emergency food depots.
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Through the summer of 1846 Ireland had endured terrible hunger and suffering. However against the odds the numbers who had starved to death were few. As many waited in great anticipation for the coming harvest, disaster struck when the potato blight returned on a much wider scale than in 1845. As the Irish MP Daniel O'Connell stated a 'death dealing famine' was on the cards. This show begins with a story of emigration and passengers on an early coffin ship.
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As the crisis worsened in Ireland in late 1846, the two Cork towns of Youghal and Skibbereen experienced the unfolding horrors in very different ways. The people of Youghal, due to local dynamics, were in a position to rise up against some of the causes of famine. Through the Autumn of 1846 they launched an insurrection in a desperate bid to stop food being exported.
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The show looks at how life in the town changed, detailing the horrifying lives many had to endure. However starvation was not the only way the famine changed Ireland and the show opens by looking at the unusual story of James Dillon, a coroner in Co Offaly who was tasked with investigating two suspicious deaths in December 1846.
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From January 1847 Irish people desperately trying to flee the famine began to leave the island in huge numbers.
220,000 left in that year alone and by 1853 more than one in six people who had lived in Ireland in 1845 had emigrated. While we know a lot about where they went and the horrendous conditions they faced, we know less about the lives they left behind. This show tells that story through the words of these Irish emigrants.
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The episode also delves into life in one of the city workhouses and the fever hospital before concluding by looking at how prostitution increased dramatically during the late 1840s.
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For this podcast I dug deep into the archives and found the story of the Nangle family whose lives were ripped apart after they were caught stealing sheep. Their story also gives us an insight into life in Dublin prisons during the famine.
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This podcast continues our journey through the summer of 1847 as we reach one of the pivotal moments in the history of the Great Famine. The British government finally realise a new policy is needed in Ireland but will it help or hinder?
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This show opens with the fascinating story of communities in Mayo who resorted to piracy to survive in 1847. This is only a prelude however before we look at two pivotal events later in the year. After two years of starvation, the only election held during the Great Famine took place in August 1847. In some constituencies this poll was more like a blood sport than modern elections.
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The crumbling ruins of workhouses are one of the last visible reminders of the horrors of the Great Hunger in the Irish landscape. During the Great Famine they became home to the unwanted in Irish society. Ultimately over 300,000 people Irish people died in these institutions during the Great Hunger.
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This podcast marks a return to the Great Famine Series (after a Chritsmas break). While coming podcasts will detail the later phase of the Great Famine including emigration and the bitter struggle that broke out between landlords & tenants this episode sets the stage for these crucial events.
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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?
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Emigration is arguably the greatest legacy of the Great Irish Famine. Between 1846 and 1851, 1.25 million Irish people passed through the port of Liverpool alone to escape the Great Hunger. This is their story.
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This sinister name – coffin ship – comes from the appalling death rates onboard these ships. This show opens with the hopes and fears of famine emigrants in Black ’47. Then I move on to the harrowing voyages and what awaited the emirgants when they landed in Canada, This fell far short of their expectations – this journey will take us onto the dreaded quarantine station of Gross Isle in the St Laurence river. Tune in to find out more.
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After Ireland, no country was more affected by the Great Famine than the USA. Millions of Irish people emigrated to the United States during and after the Great Famine. This is their story.
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This podcast is structured aroud an interview with Damian Shiels of www.Irishamericancivilwar.com someone who has tirelessly researched the stories of these people over the last eight years. Damian’s interview provides fascinating insights into the forgotten lives of the Irish who fought in the US Civil War.
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In this episode I look at the story of the famine survivor John Thompson who ended up in the Rainhill asylum in Lancashire in the 1860s. In this Victorian institution (which treated mental illnesses) he would find himself surrounded by other Irish people.
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Starring James Frecheville, Stephen Rae, Jim Broadbent & Hugo Weaving, Black ’47 is one of the most eagerly awaited Irish films of 2018.
What is the movie like?
Is it true to history?
Does it pass the Bechdal test?
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The episode tells the fascinating but forgotten story of Margaret Murphy. Margaret’s life is one of neglected stories of people who lived through the Great Hunger.
She was born in Ireland in the final years of the 18th century and was an eyewitness to the rebellions, wars and recession that set the stage for the Great Famine in the late 1840s.
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This episode focuses in on Clifden, Co Galway where the famine in 1848 was arguably even worse than it had been during Black ’47. I ask who was responsible, how the British Government created the illusion (that persists to the present day) that the famine was nearing an end in 1847 and why they did this.
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This podcast brings you the story some of these unlikely heroes from a Polish Count Pawel Strzelecki to the Evangelical Protestant from Vermont Asenath Nicholson. Their stories of sacrifice in the 1840s are remarkable.
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In this podcast we take a journey through radical politics in Ireland tracing the origins of the famine revolt in the extreme violence of the 1798 rebellion to the pacifism of Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal Movement.
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The podcasts also examines controversial topics such as the export of food and the violent resistence to those exports. I also reveal stories of those who profited during the famine and try to answer why many Irish people who seemed like decent people continued to export food in the midst of the famine.
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This podcast (the second show on the town of Clogheen the first is here) introduces Richard Burke, a man who had a very unusual experience of the Great Famine. Between 1845 and 1848 he was the clerk of Clogheen Workhouse and Richard’s life provide us with unique insights into this institution which was central to how the Great Hunger affected this community.
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This story provides us with an evocative, fascinating and revealing contrast to the royal visit while also explaining the strangely passive response to the monarch’s arrival in Ireland. This episode also covers later 1849 as Dublin finally emerged from the Great Famine.
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The show tries to understand why landlords and their agents acted in such a ruthless manner and why the government in London actually encouraged this process. This episode focuses in on the town of Kenmare and the surrounding Ring of Kerry to see how this played out in one community.
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This subject needs little by way of an introduction. It is one of the most controversial debates in Irish history. It continues to overshadow relations with our nearest neighbour – Great Britain. In the 1840s one million Irish people died and another million famine refugees fled the island. The Irish population fell by 25% in less than a decade.
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‘Winners & Losers’ looks at the how the Great Famine came to an end. It’s set to the backdrop of a News Year’s Eve Ball held in Kilkenny Castle on December 31st 1850. The castle was home to the Marquis & Marchioness of Ormonde, who had invited what was considered the elite of Kilkenny to the ball.
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The diet of the rural poor in Ireland prior to the Famine is one of the most unusual in modern history. Adult males consumed as much as 14lb (6.35kg) of potatoes per day.
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The Great Hunger is not something we associate with war and certainly not wars in other countries. However the Famine is inextricably linked to the story of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Around 200,000 Irish people, most of them famine or post famine emigrants, fought in the conflict making it one of the largest wars in terms of Irish participation.
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In 1851 there were nearly 90,000 orphans in Irish Workhouses. Many of these children had lost their parents to hunger and disease. Others had been abandoned. This podcast explores the lives of these resilient children as they turned into young adults and rebelled against a world that had forsaken them...
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Its often said that the Famine was a taboo subject and a 'Great Silence' surrounded the 1840s. In this podcast I challenge this myth and explore how grief, guilt, and trauma were expressed and processed by the survivors.
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In this episode, based on letters from the 1840s, I uncover a challenging chapter in our history. Among the stories recounted is that of widow Elisa Kelly, who was exploited by her neighbours, and John Molloy, who was left with no option but to beg for help. Their stories may be inglorious, but they reveal the harsh realities of life during the Famine.
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This podcast delves into the complex historical, economic, and social factors that contributed to the tragic paradox of people starving in a sea of plenty.