60% of irish people lived in the worst grade of hausing at the time. This would be the group though wiud be most harshly hitched by the famine. The scale and intensity of this famine makes it out to be quite a different one. There are a number of different reasons why it hit ireland as badly as it did.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why the potato crop failures in the 1840s had such a catastrophic impact in Ireland. It is estimated that one million people died from disease or starvation after the blight and another two million left the country within the decade. There had been famines before, but not on this scale. What was it about the laws, attitudes and responses that made this one so devastating?
The image above is from The Illustrated London News, Dec. 29, 1849, showing a scalp or shelter, "a hole, surrounded by pools, and three sides of the scalp were dripping with water, which ran in small streams over the floor and out by the entrance. The poor inhabitants said they would be thankful if the landlord would leave them there, and the Almighty would spare their lives. Its principal tenant is Margaret Vaughan."
With
Cormac O'Grada
Professor Emeritus in the School of Economics at University College Dublin
Niamh Gallagher
University Lecturer in Modern British and Irish History at the University of Cambridge
And
Enda Delaney
Professor of Modern History and School Director of Research at the University of Edinburgh
Producer: Simon Tillotson