Conference tallis::celt

  What was the "role the landed Irish played in the disaster"?
  It's my understanding that the other crops produced were usually
  turned over to a British landlord as rent for the land the British
  landlord had previously stolen?

  It's interesting that during the Great Hunger, enough food to stop
  the starvation was regularly being shipped out of Ireland by
  British landlords.

                      Mark

    Aye But,
    
    	The same thing was happening all over Europe and the governments
    there put a stop to exports of food. Why was this not done in Ireland,
    if it had, there probably would have been less loss of life. 
    	It was interesting the similarities between the hunger of Ireland
    and the clearances of Scotland, basically the English government was at
    the root of it.... At leasty Ireland is now free from England bet alas
    we are not, and to be realistic I dont see it happening in my life time
    and Iam only 29.....
    
    			AB
     

  re. .2

   Anything can happen if enough men and women put their hearts and
   minds into it.

                    Mark

 	
  According to the programme, the land sub-division went from the huge estates
  owned by "often" absent Anglo-Irish landlords to tracts comparable to your 
  average Irish farm of to-day, say 40-60 acres, to the "peasant" workers who 
  subsisted on about 2-5 acres. The farmsize chunks were run by the Irish. Now
  as is typical, the poorest were also the most populous (apparently the 
  population virtually doubled from around the turn of the 1800's to about 9M)
  and became totally dependent on the potato. The "farmers" typically grew an
  assortment of crops and raised cattle like today.

  As the famine worsened, around 1847, many "farmers" took to using the land
  for other than potato growing and unfortunately humanities worst instincts    
  prevailed. There was a ready market for grain and livestock so the lure of the
  filthy lucre overshadowed their ability/willingness to help out the starving  
  peasants. So the Anglo-Irish landlords were not the only ones making something
  out of the catastrophy unfortunately. I think what the programme demonstrated 
  was that while most people recognise that the politics of the day were 
  instrumental in actually causing the famine once the potato was blighted,     
  there were a lot more reasons than the generalities we were taught in school  
  for its endurance.

  Anyway it was a very worthwhile documentary, the second part is on next Monday
  at 8.00PM I think.

	Sean

  

Wasn't the potato the only crop that was not taxed?

Julie

    
    For those of you interested in a much deeper understanding of this era
    there is a superb book called "Land Settlement in Ireland 1100- 1900.
    It was written by William Nolan. It draws much of its data from
    original documents (of landlords and others) which are held in the
    Irish National Library.
    
    One of the more interesting facets of this book is an examination of 2
    townslands side by side. One was directly let by the landlord to the
    tenants. The other was let to the tenants through a number of
    middlemen. The book follows the tenants (through parish records- Both
    catholic and tithe) over the century 1800-1900.  
    
    There is also a small but superb exhibition on the famine at present in 
    the Irish Botanical Gardens. They even have samples growing of the potatoe 
    type mainly grown at that time (called the Lumpar). It also details the
    efforts made to counteract the blight. These tests included dipping the
    seed in a copper sulphate solution (bluestone) mixture. It was only the
    discovery of "Bordeaux Mixture" (Copper Sulphate mixed with lime) that a
    preventative was found for blight.
    
    The Bordeaux mixture was known in 1846 -1847 in the botanical gardens.
    Huwever it was not widely used in Ireland until about 1900. In the
    meantime there were several other smaller famines.
    
    On the export of corn. Yes this did occur mainly in 1845. However much of
    it was cattle feed and unfit for human consumption. There is a major
    difference between millable and unmillable wheat barley and oats - the
    main grain crops grown in Ireland.  
    
    MBr

  re. .6

> On the export of corn. Yes this did occur mainly in 1845. However much of
> it was cattle feed and unfit for human consumption. There is a major
> difference between millable and unmillable wheat barley and oats - the
> main grain crops grown in Ireland.  

  Where did this information come from?  I'd really like to know.  When a
  population is reduced to eating grass, and someone says they wouldn't want
  the corn because it's "unfit" I'd like to know who comes up with these
  statements.

  Unfit for human consumption?  If you were starving you would eat cattle corn.
  I've not been starving and I've eaten it, it might be a bit tough
  and tasteless but it's still corn.

  I've never heard of "unmillable" wheat barley, but I would imagine that if
  it contains starch, and your hungry, it would keep you alive.

                           Mark    

  >>If you were starving you would eat cattle corn.
  >>I've not been starving and I've eaten it, it might be a bit tough
  >>and tasteless but it's still corn.
    
    Wrong kind of corn.  You're talking about maize, which I don't believe
    was grown in Ireland at that time.
    
    Cereal grains (millable wheat, barley, oats, rye, etc.) can be broken
    down in the human digestive tract.  However, unmillable grains (grains,
    I believe are called "corn" in the UK and Ireland) when ingested can
    cause a rather painful death.  The intestines burst.
    
    A number of kids died this way in rural Canada when eating the wrong
    grains that they "liberated" from the cattle feed bins.
    
    Pat

    
The data on exports comes from the Irish Central Statistists Office. Though 
how it is calculated, I do not know, as the UK and Ireland, was at that time, 
regarded as a single entity. Its like asking how much food is exported from 
N.I. to the UK. Or how many calves are exported form Cork/Kerry to Meath.

Maize corn was not grown in Ireland at the time of the famine. It is only in 
the last 10 years or so, that varieties of maize corn were developed which 
would survive in this climate. Even so it is not generally suitable for human 
consumption as it does not ripen properly. Only in rare years - like this 
one - is it possible to ripen it. It is usually cut - stalks and all- and 
turned into cattle silage.

The cereal grains mainly grown in Ireland - then and now - are barley oats and 
wheat.

The previous note describes, quite well, what happens with unmillable 
grains. The human digestion system cannot deal with them properly. Its 
been a long time since I looked at this type of stuff but I understand 
that it has something to do with enzimes not being present in the human
stomach. Cattle and horses on the other hand have these enzimes and thus 
can deal with this particular grain.

My old brain also remembers -  through a haze - something about levels of
moisture in the grain. Remember these were 1845-47 were damp years. 
This leads to the growth of some dangerous spores and growths in the 
grain which are very poisonous to humans. Exact details escape me at the 
moment but should be in any good book on milling or grain pathology etc. 
And no, I am NOT talking about alcohol!!!!!!!!!!

One of the other major factors in dealing with famine then (and indeed now)
was the lack of transport. Many of the places where the famine was worst
were quite insolated. It was difficult to get food in sufficient
quantities into these areas quickly. 


MBr
      

>>This leads to the growth of some dangerous spores and growths in the 
>>grain which are very poisonous to humans. Exact details escape me at the 
>>moment but should be in any good book on milling or grain pathology etc. 
>>And no, I am NOT talking about alcohol!!!!!!!!!!
    
    Martin, I think the mould you are alluding to is that which is found
    predominantly on grains (including most grasses which are related to
    grains) and is called ergot.
    
    It does indeed cause some serious problems in humans, even death.  It
    was believed that the incidences of madness amongst so-called witches
    was actually a symptom of ingesting ergot-laden bread.  Not that only
    witches ate it, they were accused of being witches, or warlocks,
    because of their odd behaviour (after eating the ergot).
    
    By the way, don't eat grass, or stick stalks of grass between your
    teeth.  Grass seeds are known carriers of the ergot.
    
    Pat

    I thought in extreme emergencies humans could eat grass
    and sustain themselves for some period of time - even despite
    the lack of certain enzymes that the cows have.
    
    I remember involuntarily eating grass while being pinned
    down on the ground by some neighborhood bullies. But that
    is another story. 
    
    /g

An Phoblacht/Republican News
Sept. 7, 1995


     THE Irish famine, An Gorta Mor, was unparalleled. No famine
ever claimed such a high percentage of a country's population.
Only two famines this century have claimed more lives. Below,
MEADBH GALLAGHER looks behind the stories of its horror to the
thinking which allowed it to happen.


                            The Cure
POVERTY WAS THE DISEASE. Over four million died of it. Over two
and a half million became refugees, fleeing Ireland to seek new
lives abroad. This horror took place in the space of five years,
beginning this week 150 years ago.

     Poverty is never a natural disaster. Impoverishment was the
cause. Poverty for the many was, as always, the byproduct of
wealth for the few. But the catalyst for what we call An Gorta
Mor, was natural. It was a blight, a fungus growth which began to
take effect on potato crops in Ireland in September 1845.

     The blight had visited other European countries, but none of
these experienced famine. Ireland's poor depended upon the potato
for survival - for over three million people it was their only
food. When blight damaged nearly half the crop in 1845, millions
of peasants faced a winter of partial famine not new to their
experience. Continuous rain until March 1846 provided ideal
conditions for the spread of the fungus and the worst conditions
for those already succumbing to starvation and disease.

     In 1846 there was total crop failure and total famine. By
1847, the blight was less severe, but the effect of the famine
had multiplied. Most vulnerable were the poorer, densely
populated, Irish-speaking areas in the south and west. Two
thirds of the peasant farmers of Connacht were cottiers,
surviving on less than five acres of land.

     Throughout the island, 130,000 families were trying to
survive on less than one acre. This massive class of the poor and
the poorer grew grain to pay their rent. For as long as they
could sell their grain, they could pay the landlord and avoid
eviction. The grain they sold was exported to feed the working
class of England, whose staple diet was increasingly bread. On
the worst land, the Irish peasants grew potatoes, their food.
About 40% lived in one-room mud cabins without windows or
chimneys. They shared that cabin with an average of ten other
people.

     The English establishment had a word for this extreme
poverty. They called it "pauperism". Economic advisor to the
British government, Nassau Senior, railed against the "cancer of
pauperism". The establishment's magazine of wit, Punch, described
Irish paupers as "the blight of their own land, and the curse of
the Saxon". Pauperisation was blamed on the paupers themselves.
     The size of the Irish peasant population had come to be seen
as a threat to the economic viability of Britain as well as the
future incomes of Irish landlords - in 1841 Ireland's popula
tion was one third that of Britain's. With a mindset reminiscent
of the right-wing response to the spread of AIDS amongst the gay
communities of the US and the general population of Africa in the
early 1980s, establishment Britain deemed the famine to be the
cure for "Irish overpopulation". The permanent undersecretary to
the British Treasury, Charles Trevelyan, a civil servant with
responsibility for Irish famine relief, believed the famine was
divine retribution. The overpopulation of Ireland, he wrote,
"being altogether beyond the power of man, the cure had been
applied by the direct stroke of an all-wise Providence in a
manner as unexpected and as unthought of as it is likely to be
effectual".

     Aided by a natural blight on potato crops recurring three
years in a row, Trevelyan and other servicers of the creed of
political economy directed Irish land into totally different
patterns of use over a relatively short period of time. The
 fact that millions of Irish peasants were in the way of this
land clearance was of little consequence to the end game. Mass
eviction was encouraged. In one case, in March 1846, the entire
village of Ballinglass was evicted in order to turn the land use
to grazing.

     Some landlords paid their tenants' emigration fares. The
Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerstown was typical. Half his income
came from his Irish estates and in 1847 alone, his agents
'emigrated' 2,000 people from his Sligo land. To Nassau Senior,
who regarded the unfolding horror as an invaluable experiment for
political economists, a million deaths "would scarely be enough
to do much good". Trevelyan's superior in 1848, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer Charles Wood, wrote to an Irish landlord:  "I am
not at all appalled by your tenantry going. That seems to me a
necessary part of the process... We must not complain of what we
really want to obtain."

     The prime minister, Lord Russell, whose father had served as
Viceroy in Ireland, was content to hide behind evasive
parliamentary rhetoric when confronted with factual accounts
owhat was happening in Ireland. And these accounts were ever fo
rthcoming. By 1848, Russell's own appointee in Ireland, the Lord
Lieutenant Clarendon, was calling his government's policy there
"extermination".

     During the period of the Great Starvation, two British
governments held office; one Tory, under Robert Peel, the second
Russell's Whig administration. Laissez-faire economics was the
creed of the day and neither government deviated much from this.
The role of parliament was to protect the interests of the few
against the plight of the many. Politicians of the day were busy
replacing the interests of landlords with those of traders. Under
the banner of free trade, one form of protectionism was being
swept aside to make way for another. Supply was to feed demand,
but demand was only recognised as such when it came with purse in
hand.

     The Irish peasantry had no purchasing power. Neither did
they have political power. Their impoverishment was helped by
their disempowerment, and the support they lent to Catholic
middle-class agitation led by Daniel O'Connell had done nothing
to change their status. O'Connell, himself a landlord of some
ill-repute, summed up his politics thus: "I desire no social
 revolution, no social change. In short, salutary restoration
without revolution, an Irish parliament, British connection, one
King, two legislatures." The politics of the man they called the
Great Advocate was hardly 'power to the people'.


     The churches in Ireland also offered little hope to the
peasantry in forcing change. The Church of Ireland was the
established church, it was entitled to collect taxes from tenants
regardless of their religion. It was vehemently on the side
 of the landlords, and it was left to the Society of Friends (The
Quakers) to seek long-term relief for the Irish poor. The
Catholic Church hierarchy remained largely silent on the
holocaust taking place. It is worthy of note that in the ye
ars following the famine, the Catholic Church multiplied its
ownership of property in Ireland.

     The group that offered most hope of democratic revolution in
the period of the starvation, the vanguardist Young Irelanders,
were themselves largely of the landlord and urban professional
classes and had little grass-roots appeal. They offered
high-minded ideals but no change from the property system
impoverishing the people. One voice which did offer an
alternative politics was that of James Fintan Lalor, but his
appears as a voice in the wilderness at the time. He stated in
1848:  "I acknowledge no right of property which takes the food
of millions and gives them a famine... I assert the true and
indefeasible right of property - the right of our people to live
in this land and possess it."

     Lalor was also clear that "this full right of ownership
maynd ought to be asserted and enforced by any and all means." He
saw through the Young Irelanders' rhetoric and pointed out that
"they desired, not a democratic, but a merely national
revolution."

                           Resistance

     Resistance to the Great Starvation did take place, but it
was sporadic and disorganised. In addition, both the
constitutional nationalists and the British government responded
predictably to it. Daniel O'Connell frequently called for more t
roops to be sent to quell the secret societies which resisted
landlord oppression.

     The British government had heavily armed escorts
accompanying Irish food transports within six months of the first
potato crop failure. Within a year, a mobile force of 2,000
troops had been deployed and the military guarded food depots,
export ships and harvest fields. In mid-October 1846, extra
troops were drafted into 'trouble spots', where food riots were
taking place. In November, the Chancellor, Charles Wood, wrote to
his Irish Lord Lieutenant urging him to go "to the verge of the
law and a little beyond" in suppressing revolt. A month later, a
new emergency powers act was in place, the Crime & Outrage Act,
voted in with the help of most Irish MPs. Fifteen thousand extra
troops were sent to Ireland that same month and an additional
10,000 in 1848. The degree of destitution among the people was
enough to quell any hope of organised revolt, but that did not
stop the English government from crushing any show of revolt that
did take place.


                             Relief

     Local responsibility and private charity were stressed as
the methods of famine relief. Between 1846 and 1853, Britain
spent 9.5 million in Ireland on famine relief while its system of
Poor Rates and landlord borrowings in Ireland collected 8 million
for the same purpose. Much of the British exchequer outlay was
originally given in loan form only, thus hindering its ability to
be used where it was most wanted.

     Management of the economy in the interests of the landlord
and trading classes was such that Irish food exports continued
unhindered while millions fell victim to starvation and disease.
Between July 1845 and February 1846 alone, over 1 million worth
of food was exported. In 1845, Robert Peel's administration
bought 100,000 worth of Indian corn in America but this was
stored rather than distributed immediately. The policy was to
offer it for sale when local Irish prices rose, thus keeping
prices down without affecting the ability of local traders to
make a profit. 'Poor rates' on landlords were used to fund local
relief schemes.

     The country was divided into Poor Law Unions based on
district electoral divisions. Each Union had a workhouse. Only
people who became inmates of the workhouses could receive
assistance. Each Union was managed by ex-officio and elected
Guardians, overseen by a network of inspectors answerable to the
English government.

     Workhouses were designed to deter 'spongers', and conditions
were so bad in them that inmates often committed misdemeanours in
order to get transferred to jail, where their chances of survival
were better. By 1847, providing work was of little use as people
were physically incapable of working by that stage. Nevertheless,
a layer of public works schemes was already in place. These were
largely unproductive, as the government didn't wish to upset the
chances of profit for private developers.

     The system of government famine relief in Ireland was
elaborate and widespread. It was designed to contain the Irish
problem, not to relieve it. The physical design of the workhouses
speaks volumes: at the end of each was an exit point known as the
Dead House. A few years after the Great Starvation, Britain was
to spend 69.3 million on the Crimean war. As today, money was
thrown at imperialistic ventures whilst famine victims were left
to die by 'natural causes'.

                           The cause

     In his analysis of the famine, James Connolly strongly
argued that within the lines of capitalist political economy, the
actions of the English capitalist class and the Irish landlord
class were "unassailable and unimpeachable." No one "who accepted
capitalist society and the laws thereof can logically find fault
with the statesmen of England for their acts in that awful
period. They stood for the rights of property and free
competition and philosophically accepted their consequences upon
Ireland".

     In words which must surely dominate the great debate
currently being waged about what has been described as 'the Irish
holocaust', Connolly wrote: "The non-socialist Irish man or woman
who fumes against that administration is in the illogical
position of denouncing an effect of whose cause he is a
supporter. That cause was the system of capitalist property."
In 1849, Queen Victoria paid her first visit to Ireland. Punch
magazine pleaded with a nation ravaged by famine, "Let Erin
forget". Today, the call to forget is more widespread and closer
to home. For the sake of an understanding of what continues to be
called famine in today's world, none should forget the cause of
the Irish Great Hunger, and none should ignore the cure accepted
for it.

____________________

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An Phoblacht/Republican News
news and views of Sinn Fein--the Irish Republican movement
Sept. 7, 1995



                     Great Hunger 1845-'49

     The Great Famine in Ireland, 1845-'49, caused by the
widespread failure of the potato through blight, was undoubtedly
one of the worst disasters of modern Irish history.

     The first sign of the blight, reported in the Dublin Evening
Post, appeared in the South-East of the country in early
September 1845. By the following month, when the digging of the
crop began, the full extent of the disaster was soon realised.

     The blight, the phytophthora infestans, when it first struck
in the autumn of 1845, created a sense of powerlessness and
disbelief among the people. Although famines of short duration
had occurred in earlier parts of the century, nothing of this
magnitude, the complete failure of the potato crop, had happened
before. Nobody knew what caused it and it spread rapidly. From a
partial crop failure in 1845, the potato crop failed totally in
'46 and partially for a further three years.

     In the autumn of '45 as the extent of the disaster became
apparent, Sir Robert Peel, the British prime minister, provided
100,000 worth of Indian corn which was distributed during
November. In a further effort to alleviate the situation, relief
schemes, which were often corrupt, were introduced in march 1846,
whereby destitute peasants, who had undertaken to deliver up all
their land to the landlord, would be employed for meagre wages,
digging holes and mending roads.

     While tens of thousands were engaged on the 'out of door
relief schemes' many more were forced to abandon their homes and
seek refuge in the overflowing workhouses. John Mitchel, the
Young Ireland leader, described this as ''passing paupers
 through the workhouse'' - a man went in, a pauper came out.
In the spring of 1847, as food prices continued to rise and men
could not earn enough to feed their families, the government
stopped the relief works and in their place set up soup kitchens
in an unsuccessful attempt to feed the starving population. The
soup kitchens were eventually closed the following autumn.

     Throughout the years of hunger as tens of thousands of
people died of hunger, the British government in keeping with
their laissez-faire economic doctrine of the day, refused to
''interfere with trade'' and argued that traders should be all
owed to make a profit. In addition, huge quantities of food,
grain, livestock and dairy produce, etc, more than twice that
needed to feed the starving people, was exported from the ports
heavily protected by the military.

     By 1847, in addition to starvation, famine Fever ravaged the
land. As epidemics of typhus ('Black Fever'), cholera, dysentry,
relapsing fever ('Yellow Fever') and scurvey ('Black Leg') swept
the country, claiming almost as many lives as from hunger, the
medical resources were totally inadequate to deal with the
problem.

     During the Great Hunger an estimated million people died of
starvation and disease while a further one and a half million
emigrated to England, mainly to Liverpool, Canada, America and
Australia. By 1851 the population was reduced from a pre-Famine
total of eight and a half million to just over six million.

     The first appearance of potato blight was reported on 9
September, 1845, one hundred and fifty years ago this week.



         I read with interest those last 2 articles posted on the
         famine. However there are a number of comments I would like to
         pass on them. I don't have time to go through the whole
         articles with a fine comb. It would take tooo long and bore
         everyone. So I will just concentrate on a few small points.

>         The first sign of the blight, reported in the Dublin Evening
>	Post, appeared in the South-East of the country in early
>	September 1845. 

         This is not quite correct. There wre reports in the Feemans'
         Journal as early as August 1845. These reports came from the
         Wexford, Waterford, Kilkenny area. 

	 Aug 20 Blight reported in Botanical Gardens, Dublin.

	 Aug 27 80%+ crop failure reported in Fermanagh.
	 
         Sep 1845 David Moore isolates fungus causing blight. This was 
	 reported in the Irish Farmers Journal Sep 1845. David Moore was
         a scientist working in the Botanical Gardens.  

	 Now I know that this may appear  to be nit picking. 
         However it must be remembered that the months May - Aug were
         known in Ireland as "Meal Months". The potato will not store
         for 9 months in the best of times. This is still true today -
         even with anti-sprouting chemicals. It must be processed for
         storing.  

         Grain was not used for native diet because:

-	 Yield was not high enough. It was nowhere near potatoes and not
         as bulky.

-	 It cost money to mill. This was not available at the lower
         levels of society.

         An extra month without potatoes was regarded with disaster so
         the dates are quite important here.

          

>         In the autumn of '45 as the extent of the disaster became
>	apparent, Sir Robert Peel, the British prime minister, provided
>	100,000 worth of Indian corn which was distributed during
>	November. 

         An interesting side note to this was that the corn was paid for
         by Baring's Bank. Slush funds were used long before Oliver
         North.

         Robert Peel also did one other thing which is not mentioned. He
         repealed the Corn Laws. These laws were a tax on the importation of
         food. This measure was deeply unpopular among the landowners of
         Britain as it lead to a drop in the price of grain. For this
         measure he was voted out of office the following year.

         As mentioned the repeal of the grain laws caused a drop in the
         price of grain. As the sale of grain was used to pay rents, it
         meant that the tenant class had greater difficulty in paying
         rents. Thus on the one hand it was cheaper to buy for food. But
         also more was needed top pay rents so there were pros and cons
         to the above. 



>         In a further effort to alleviate the situation, relief
>	schemes, which were often corrupt, were introduced in march 1846,
	
         Oh, the schemes were introduced much earlier than March 1846. In
         fact schemes were in existance before 1845 in many parts of the
         country. Even before the famine. Details of these can sometimes
         be found in the local papers of the time.

         Also show me a scheme which someone doesnt find a way to cheat.
         The present EC CAP or the US SETASIDE farm schemes are cases in
         point.



>         whereby destitute peasants, who had undertaken to deliver up all
>	their land to the landlord, would be employed for meagre wages,
>	digging holes and mending roads.

	 This was known as the "GREGORY CLAUSE". It was introduced by the
         family of Lady Gregory of YEATS and Celtic Twilight fame. This
         clause deserves a note of its own. 


>     	While tens of thousands were engaged on the 'out of door
>	relief schemes' many more were forced to abandon their homes and
>	seek refuge in the overflowing workhouses. John Mitchel, the
>	Young Ireland leader, described this as ''passing paupers
>	 through the workhouse'' - a man went in, a pauper came out.

	 Many of the schemes were much more useful than that. They can
         easily be compared to the FAS SCHEMES in Ireland at the
         present. They included building re-furbishment, buildings for 
	 the poor and other projects of benefit to the total community. 
         In many areas much urban and rural renewal schemes were put
         into being. Also many small "factories" were set up to employ
         people. I believe Foxford Mills in Foxford Co Mayo was one such
         example. There are lots others.   

         Again details can often be found in the local papers of the times. 
	  


> 	In addition, huge quantities of food,
>	grain, livestock and dairy produce, etc, more than twice that
>	needed to feed the starving people, was exported from the ports
>	heavily protected by the military.


-	Ireland was A NET IMPORTER of food between 1845 - 1850.

-	 Total Exports of Grain in 1845 and 1846 was about the
         equivalence of 1 Million Tonnes of potatoes. As mentioned in a
         previous note much of this was unmillable.

-	 No grain was exported in 1847

-	 The population of Ireland in 1845 was about 8 Million. Each
         grown person needed about 1 Tonne of potatoes per year (7 -10
         LBS of potatoes per person per day). Add in an extra 25% to sow the 
         following seasons crop plus losses and a simple calculation of 
    	 Ireland's potato requirements can be achieved. If one takes even the 3 
    	 million most vulnerable people the sums do not ADD UP.

         With the total failure of the potato crop there is no way that
         the figures add up. 


This note has got too long I am ending it.

         MBr

    
    An nieve question here but I am curious what role FISH played in the
    Irish diet at the time of the famine.
    
    /jen

  Jen,

	On the programme I watched, seems a long time ago now, there was a
record from the west (Mayo I think) describing the winter of 1846/47. It was
extremely stormy which prevented the local fishermen going out to sea in their
little currachs...so compounding the starvation caused by the potato blight. 
Inland, the pototo was effectively the only food source for about 8/9 months 
of the year. As Martin mentioned, there was normally a "hungry time" when the
last of the potatoes were eaten/had rotted but as this was in the spring/early
summer, the weather was warmer so people needed less food to sustain them and
managed to get by somehow...I imagine that their diets would have been
supplemented by some fresh water fish as this would be the time of salmon runs.

Sean

Sean, Jen,

	My understanding is that all land & waterways were owned by the
landlords, fishing & hunting in general were regarded as poaching and punishable
by deportation.

    
    Very little fishing Inland. As previous note said all the water was
    controlled. Poaching was rampant however.
    
    This era had bad stormy weather. So very little offshore fishing was
    possible. Also what fish (mainly herrings) which was caught was not
    eaten at first because of the lack of potatoes. The fish did not travel
    well so very little sea fish travelled inland. Also many of the
    fishermen had pawned their nets to get some money.
    
    The Herring also disappeared off the Irish coast for about 5 years at
    this time so this also contributed to the lack of fish.
    
    What was eaten were mullosks and other limpet fish. The rocks were
    cleaned of these small crustations. Also seaweed was eaten. The main
    types of seeweed are edible.
    
    On the question of eating grass it was more likely to be Nettles and
    another weed which is a relative of cabbage. Its name escapes me at the
    moment.   
    
    Finally the people of Tipp had their own solution. They came into
    Kilkenny and started breaking windows by throwing stones. They were then 
    locked up in Kilkenny Gaol where they were well fed. Eventually the people 
    in Kilkenny got wise and shipped them off to Tasmania.-)
    
    MBr
    
    
    P.S. There was a series of lectures on the famine on RTE radio earlier
    this year. The series - Called the Famine - Is published by Mercier
    Press. Well worth a read.
    
    MBr   

    
    yes alot of poaching went on ok...I Know around Tipp the rivers flowing
    from the east had little or know fish..Folk from Kilkenny/carlow
    were notorious with the old bag of lime in the river...(taking all the
    oxygen from the water and so the fish floated to the top.
    
    Not all the Tipp folk that went across to educate the Kilkenny folk
    were sent to Tasmania...many of them stayed and indeed settled down
    where they taught the Kilkenny folk the ancient game of hurling...
                                                                       
    rgs,
    
    Mick
    

>     were notorious with the old bag of lime in the river...(taking all the
>     oxygen from the water and so the fish floated to the top.

Are you sure no Tipp men were at that Mick?  Certainly there isn't as
many fish in the Mulcair as there was one time.  For those of you that
don't know your geography, the Mulcair rises in Tipperary and flows
through East Limerick and into the sea near CastleConnell.  They must 
still be hungry up near Limerick Junction ;-).

                            James.

  "In the early autumn of 1848, to an Ireland already reeling under
   successive years of famine, came the final blow: news that all over
   the country the new potato crop was once again almost totally blighted.
   1849 was to be the most terrible year of all.  And yet it was that very
   autumn that a list of exports of food from Cork on a single day, 14
   November 1848, ran as follows:

                       147 bales of bacon
                       120 casks and 135 barrels of pork
                       5 casks of hams
                       149 casks miscellaneous provisions
                       1,996 sacks, and 950 barrels of oats
                       300 bags of flour
                       300 head of cattle
                       239 sheep
                       9,398 firkins of butter
                       542 boxes of eggs
  "

   - Ireland, A History by Robert Kee (The book of the major BBC/RTE
     Television Series


  
  "On one ship alone, the steamer Ajax, which sailed from Cork in 1847 for
   England, the cargo consisted of 1,514 firkins of butter, 102 casks
   of pork, 44 hogsheads of whiskey, 844 sacks of oats, 247 sacks of
   wheat, 106 bales of bacon, 13 casks of hams, 145 casks of porter,
   12 sacks of fodder, 28 bales of feathers, 8 sacks of
   lard, 296 boxes of eggs, 30 head of cattle, 90 pigs, 220 lambs, 34
   calves, and 69 miscellaneous packages "

   - The Nation, October 16, 1847, p. 851



  "The same journal reported a short time later that "twenty vessels sailed
   out of the Shannon this week with grain and provisions for London,
   Liverpool, Bristol, Gloucester, and Glasgow".  Counting all Irish ports,
   about twenty such vessels sailed every day from Ireland with the
   same general cargo: the country's prime produce and, on the same
   vessels, the unwanted produce -- the surplus humans on their way
   to Liverpool to board ships for America."

   - Paddy's Lament (Ireland 1846-1847) by Thomas Gallagher

  "In the early autumn of 1848, to an Ireland already reeling under
   successive years of famine, came the final blow: news that all over
   the country the new potato crop was once again almost totally blighted.
   1849 was to be the most terrible year of all.  And yet it was that very
   autumn that a list of exports of food from Cork on a single day, 14
   November 1848, ran as follows:


	Mark, 
	
	I am going to assume that the above is a verbatim quote from
        Robert Kee as I do not have the book here to verify it.

        Congratulations!! You have, I believe,  found a major error in 
        the book.
        This pig will not fly. The worst year of the famine was 1847. 
        I base this assertion on 3 bits of evidence.

1	Popular opinion. It is not still referred to as "Black 47" for
        nothing.

2	Official Mortality rates, which in 1847 reached 18.5%. This was
        the highest it ever reached. It had dropped back to 15% in 1848
        and most of those were in the first half of the year.
	
3	Emigration reached 220,000 in 1847. By 1848 it had dropped back
        to 180,000.
        1848 in comparison was a relatively good year. There was a smaller but
	relatively blight free crop of potatoes. By 1849 the famine was over 
        more or less.  There were lesser famines in various areas up to 1923.
   	 

	In fact a Telegram to W.T. Cosgrave (Nat Lib) suggests that famine 
	occurred in Connemara in 1923.


  
  "On one ship alone, the steamer Ajax, which sailed from Cork in 1847 for
   England, the cargo consisted of 1,514 firkins of butter, 102 casks
   of pork, 44 hogsheads of whiskey, 844 sacks of oats, 247 sacks of
   wheat, 106 bales of bacon, 13 casks of hams, 145 casks of porter,
   12 sacks of fodder, 28 bales of feathers, 8 sacks of
   lard, 296 boxes of eggs, 30 head of cattle, 90 pigs, 220 lambs, 34
   calves, and 69 miscellaneous packages "


        Maybe this is being pedantic but in the interests of proper
        research regarding this and the other manifest I have a number of
        questions?

-       I see Cattle Pigs, Lambs, Calves etc. on the manifest but no
        cattle food (Unless oats and wheat were regarded as fodder,
        which I doubt). Am I correct in assuming that these animals were alive.

-	Were the above passinger ships. If so how many passingers. It
        has a huge bearing on the manifest.

-	Where was it bound from. For example was it bound from Boston to
        Liverpool Via Cork. If bound from America for example where was
        the cargo loaded. It says nowhere in the above it was loaded
        in Ireland.

                        

        I mentioned before that Ireland was a Net importer of food. For
        example in 1846 The following grain was imported from England.

        Wheat		22,918 tons
        Flour		18,263 tons
        Oats		   163 tons
        Barley		 3,692 tons
        Rye		   414 tons
        Maize		34,447 tons
        Maize meal	 5,231 tons

        Makes the above manifest look puny 

        In 1847 Net grain importations were 743,000 tons. None of these
        figures - as far as I can ascertain- include the grain which was
        imported by the British Government from India and Egypt for
        famine relief is included in the figures. This appears to have
        been regarded as an inport into England but it is very hard to
        tell from the official documents. 

	Should the food being have been siezed to feed the starving. I
        contend that what would have happened is it would have
        aggrivated the situation by making more people destitute.
         
	This food was used to pay rents and other bills by the small 
	farmer class in Ireland.    
	
	If the food had been put on sale in Ireland the destitute people 
	had nothing to buy it or even cook it. They were not even able to 
    	mill the meal which was given out free. Many died tyring to eat 
    	unmilled grain.  

	The amount of food mentioned in the above manifests  would not have 
	fed even the Skibereen Union Poorhouse.
        
        MBr
    

>        This pig will not fly. The worst year of the famine was 1847. 
>       I base this assertion on 3 bits of evidence.

The Famine Museaum, Strokestown, Country Roscommon, Ireland.

      The Great Irish Famine - > 1845 to 1850


The manifests I listed were from 1848, and one for 1847 (Black 47).


> 1848 in comparison was a relatively good year.

There seems to be something perverse in referring to a year in the middle
of the Irish Hunger, as "relatively good", and then to back it up with
a 15% mortality rate.


> Makes the above manifest look puny 

 Not if you consider just one ship on one day out of Cork. 
  "The same journal reported a short time later that "twenty vessels sailed
   out of the Shannon this week with grain and provisions for London,
   Liverpool, Bristol, Gloucester, and Glasgow".  Counting all Irish ports,
   about twenty such vessels sailed every day from Ireland with the
   same general cargo: the country's prime produce and, on the same
   vessels, the unwanted produce -- the surplus humans on their way
   to Liverpool to board ships for America."

> Should the food being have been siezed to feed the starving. I
> contend that what would have happened is it would have
> aggrivated the situation by making more people destitute.

 How can you even ask that question.  Of course the food should have been
 used to feed the starving.  To suggest that feeding people who later
 starved to death for lack of food, would aggrivate a situation, is
 the sickest thing I've ever heard.  How can you even suggest it?

                             Mark

P.S.

  I included references for every quote I used in .21, please do me the
  curtesy of providing yours.  

	>If the food had been put on sale in Ireland the destitute people 
	>had nothing to buy it or even cook it. They were not even able to 
    	>mill the meal which was given out free. Many died tyring to eat 
    	>unmilled grain.  
    
    Many died eating grass too. I watched a documentary on TV that retold
    the diaries of contemporaries of "An Gorta". Many of the people who
    starved to death (and found dead alongside the roads) had that chilling
    ring of green around their mouths, stained by the grass which they
    tried to eat.
    
    Geo

    .-1  I guess grass *is* an unmilled grain.

	>>The amount of food mentioned in the above manifests  would not have 
	>>fed even the Skibereen Union Poorhouse.
    
    Alas, my great-great grandparents would still have died of starvation, 
    anyway, I suppose.
    
    I, my parents and my brothers will be visiting and paying our respects
    at the mass grave-site in Skibbereen this Spring.  Although one can
    never be 100% certain of the actual burial site, Skibbereen is the town 
    where our relatives lived so it is most likely that they are buried there.
    
    
    Pat

	Mark,                   

        Sorry it took so long to get back to this. Unfortunately I spend
        a lot of time out of the office and so cannot always answer
        things in a timely fashion. Please bear with me.

>There seems to be something perverse in referring to a year in the middle
>of the Irish Hunger, as "relatively good", and then to back it up with
>a 15% mortality rate.

        There is so many distorted views and comments going around on
        the famine - often propogated by political organizations with
        axes to grind- that one must carefully examine every quotation
        and opinion with a jaundiced eye. The 20th century has seen
        little if any progress toward the elimination of famine from the
        earth. We can not allow politics to obscure the facts and
        prevent change and the learning of the lessons of this tragedy. 
                                          

        When a quotation is used, which is easily shown to be incorrect,
        it causes me to question every statement that the author makes.
        That means I have to cross check all his statements and so makes
        to book relatively useless to me as a source.

        In the middle of a famine everything is relative. Mortality rose,
        reached a peak, and then started to drop. It showed that that - at
        last - some control was being gained on things. 



>   Not if you consider just one ship on one day out of Cork. 
>  "The same journal reported a short time later that "twenty vessels sailed
>   out of the Shannon this week with grain and provisions for London,
>   Liverpool, Bristol, Gloucester, and Glasgow".  Counting all Irish ports,
>   about twenty such vessels sailed every day from Ireland with the
>   same general cargo: the country's prime produce and, on the same
>   vessels, the unwanted produce -- the surplus humans on their way
>   to Liverpool to board ships for America."

        I passed over this statement in a previous note so you have
        waved it under my nose again. This reminds me of Cromwell on his way
        to attack Clonmel. He passed Jerpoint Abbey leaving it
        untouched. The monks in thanksgiving started to ring the bells.
        So Cromwell turned around and demolished the abbey -).

        Now I am more charitable than Cromwell. However the above
        statement has the bald statement "every day" in the middle of
        it. Now my perverse mind says all I have to do to make a
        nonsense of that statement is find ONE day on which no ships
        sailed from Ireland. This could be for example Xmas day or
        during one of the many storms which occur each year during Sept _
        March. Shall I head for the Met office. -)   

        On a more serious note, the main problems I have with the above
        quotation is that Irish  agricultural  production was then - and
        is now - by its very  nature seasonal. In the famine period
        there was no on-farm storage for grain etc. Potatoes were
        normally stored in pits dug in the ground and covered with clay
        and thatch. The product was sold on immediately.  Most produce
        would be sold in the autumn. There was no hedging etc. So when
        the author uses phrases like "every day" he shows  very little
        understanding of Irish Agriculture.  Thus I do not consider
        quotations like the above to be particularily accurate. I
        would consider that much food would go out in the autumn but not
        much during the Spring/Summer. As mentioned before May/July were
        known as the "meal months" when grain was actually imported. I
        am open to being proved otherwise.  However be warned that I
        have seen some of the CSO agricultural statistics (No I do not
        have them here) and they do not support the authors claims.
        
        As a point of interest according to statistics from the Irish
        Millers only 15% of the wheat in 1995 was millable. And 1995 was
        a particularily good year in Ireland.

> How can you even ask that question.  Of course the food should have been
> used to feed the starving.  To suggest that feeding people who later
> starved to death for lack of food, would aggrivate a situation, is
> the sickest thing I've ever heard.  How can you even suggest it?


        The reason I asked the question is that siezing food,  in the
        manner outlined, was tried in  the Ukraine in the 1930's.. It was
        found to have a disastrous effect. According to the reports, I
        understand that 6-8 million people died there because of this.

        Also according to a friend who has worked in every major famine
        from Biafra to Rwands there are two things to considered during
        famine relief. (as an aside he was one of the founders of the Irish
        famine relief agency CONCERN) 

-	Feed the people as far as possible

-	Ensure that the local economy does not collapse as this will put
        more people on vulnerable list. This only prolongs the agony.

        Now balancing the above two conditions is not easy. Giving out
        money may not help as all it does is cause food prices to rise,
        especially if food is scarce. Giving away food can cause the
        collapse of the market system or the movement of said food back
        out of the area for sale. Sieezing and distributing the food
        ensures that no food is planted the next year. Rationing only
        works if there is a sophisticated network of transport,
        management  etc. So what should be done?

        Daniel O'Connell writing in the "Freemans Journal" on 29th Oct
        1845 was not against the prohibition of food exports to England.
        "I don't mean to suggest any prohibition of the exportation of
        provisions between England and Ireland, and in fact it is
        possible that we may get far more from England than we send
        there".           



>  I included references for every quote I used in .21, please do me the
>  curtesy of providing yours.  
	
        No problem, Mark. Many of the original statistics came from the
        Agricultural Census 1846 in the Irish Central Statistics Office.
        They make fascinating reading.

                                     
        Finally have you ever wondered why the famine agencies generally
        use cerials and pulses for famine relief - Not meat produce.


      MBr  

  MBr,
   Since you insist on ringing the bell :-)

> There is so many distorted views and comments going around on
> the famine - often propogated by political organizations with
> axes to grind

  What organizations?  for what purpose?  You're saying that the 
  articles I quoted were created by these "political organizations"
  with an axe to grind?  You've not mentioned any organizations, nor
  have you given any proof that the statements I quoted from the
  Nation, October 16, 1847 were false.

> Potatoes were
> normally stored in pits dug in the ground and covered with clay
> and thatch. The product was sold on immediately.

  I guess you lost me here.  Why are you talking about potatoes, and
  the need to sell immediately, when here I was thinking that the
  potatoe crop was irrelevant, because it had been wiped out?

> As a point of interest according to statistics from the Irish
> Millers only 15% of the wheat in 1995 was millable. And 1995 was
> a particularily good year in Ireland.

  An interesting point, if we were talking about 1995 and not 1847.
  Not to mention that the export food list I showed listed flour
  (sounds like a grain that's gone through the mill to me, doesn't
  it to you?), barrels of pork, oats (never heard of unmillable oats),
  eggs, butter, sheap etc etc.

> -	Feed the people as far as possible

> -	Ensure that the local economy does not collapse as this will put
>        more people on vulnerable list. This only prolongs the agony.

  The two don't sound like they have to be mutually exclusive, do they
  to you?  

> Giving away food can cause the
> collapse of the market system or the movement of said food back
> out of the area for sale. Sieezing and distributing the food
> ensures that no food is planted the next year. 

  I don't consider it "giving away food", when instead of exporting it, 
  you let those who grow it, keep it.

                              Mark

  

>  What organizations?  for what purpose?  You're saying that the 
>  articles I quoted were created by these "political organizations"
>  with an axe to grind?  You've not mentioned any organizations, nor
>  have you given any proof that the statements I quoted from the
>  Nation, October 16, 1847 were false.


Well we can start with "The Nation which was a paper with a political axe to 
grind. -)

Basically the above organisations fall into 3 groups. 
	Those who blamed England for the famine
	Those who blamed the Irish (landlord and tenant) for the famine
	Those who blamed capatalism.
	Those who blamed GOD (sorry thats 4)

> Potatoes were
> normally stored in pits dug in the ground and covered with clay
> and thatch. The product was sold on immediately.

<  I guess you lost me here.  Why are you talking about potatoes, and
<  the need to sell immediately, when here I was thinking that the
<  potatoe crop was irrelevant, because it had been wiped out?

Wrong!!. Approximate production of potatoes in 1846-47 was about 4,423 
thousand tons. By comparison Potato production in 1841 was c15,000 thousand 
tonnes. (CSO Irish agri stats). Now in 1841 about 5,000 tons of potatoes were 
fed to anomals. The above statistics go some way to showing why animals were 
sold first. Basically there was no potatoes to feed them.   


> As a point of interest according to statistics from the Irish
> Millers only 15% of the wheat in 1995 was millable. And 1995 was
> a particularily good year in Ireland.

<  An interesting point, if we were talking about 1995 and not 1847.
<  Not to mention that the export food list I showed listed flour
<  (sounds like a grain that's gone through the mill to me, doesn't
<  it to you?), barrels of pork, oats (never heard of unmillable oats),
<  eggs, butter, sheap etc etc.

The point I was making is that even today with advanced food technology, 
Ireland is still deficient in millable wheat. How much more so in the bad
summers of 1846-47.

> -	Feed the people as far as possible

> -	Ensure that the local economy does not collapse as this will put
>        more people on vulnerable list. This only prolongs the agony.

<  The two don't sound like they have to be mutually exclusive, do they
<  to you?  

In a free market economy unfortunately the are. See the economic laws of 
"supply demand and and price".

As an example workers on the public works were paid 1/- per day and that by 
the end of 1846 potatoes were selling at 1/- per stone in Enniskillen. Thus 
when the money became available the price rose. This is standard capitalism at
work. 

<  I don't consider it "giving away food", when instead of exporting it, 
<  you let those who grow it, keep it.

Sorry Mark, but the people who were growing the grain mainly survived the 
famine. These were the small to medium sized tenant farmers. It was mainly the
landless labourers, cottiers etc. who were at most risk. The number of people 
(male) who held land in 1845 was 935,448.