5C. The Famine

Question 1

What were the causes of the Famine?

Answer 1

• Blight - September 1845
• Absentee landlordism
• Cottier class
• Monoculture potato farming

Question 2

How did absenteeism become commonplace in Ireland before the Famine?

Answer 2

Most land in Ireland owned by absentee landlords as a result of plantation and Penal Laws

• Middlemen managed the land by purchasing it on long leases, often for over 21 years on 1000 acres or more, in return for a regular rent sent to the absentee landlord in the cities / Britain
• The middleman then subdivided the land and rented it out to other people, who then became tenant farmers to the middleman

This was convenient for the landlord, as they received a regular income for no work at all.

Question 3

Why was absenteeism problematic for Ireland’s land system?

Answer 3

To maximise profits, the middleman would continually subdivide land into even smaller plots. This extended when tenant farmers would rent out sections of their plots to cottiers in return for a portion of their crop / labour.

• Continual subdivision increased rent prices, therefore resulting in even smaller plots being rented due to price
• Extending holdings became very expensive due to the need to acquire further leases, preventing consolidation of land
• No landlord investment given to plots - stagnating productivity

This left a stagnant and vulnerable agricultural system

Question 4

How dependent was Ireland on agriculture for its livelihoods before the Famine?

Answer 4

• By 1841, over 2/3 of the population were dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods

Question 5

How many cottiers were there in Ireland by the 1840s?

Answer 5

more than 300,000

Question 6

According to an 1841 survey, what percentage of holdings in Ireland were over 30 acres?

Answer 6

7%

Question 7

According to an 1841 survey, what percentage of holdings in Ireland were under 5 acres?

Answer 7

45%

Question 8

According to an 1841 survey, what percentage of holdings in Connacht were under 5 acres?

Answer 8

64%

Question 9

Why was the existence of a cottier class a cause for the Famine?

Answer 9

Cottiers were tenant farmers who owned less than 5 acres of land (usually between 1 and 3)

• Small holdings meant that every inch of available land would be farmed, leading to soil exhaustion.
• The increased demand for land as a result of a rapidly expanding population pushed plots to become even smaller and previously considered unusable land to be farmed.
• Poor efficiency led to a lack of surplus to help weather shortages - living from harvest to harvest / hand-to-mouth existence.

Question 10

How important was the potato to Irish agriculture before the Famine?

Answer 10

Before the Famine, potatoes accounted for more than 1/5 of Ireland’s total agricultural output

Question 11

Why did monoculture farming develop in Ireland before the Famine?

Answer 11

• Premium on land prevented diversification of crop types, resulting in monoculture farming

Question 12

What are the positive qualities of the potato that made it suitable for monoculture farming?

Answer 12

• Significantly higher yields compared to grain crops - ‘Lumper’ potato produced 6-8 tonnes per acre
• Families consumed 10-15 lb per day
• High nutritional value - combined with milk to meet most nutritional requirements

Question 13

What major drawback did potatoes have which increased risk of Famine?

Answer 13

Highly perishable - could not be stored
This increased dependence on each harvest to meet increasing demand

Question 14

When did blight arrive in Ireland?

Answer 14

July 1845 - spread through air and rain through July rainy spells

Question 15

How much of the potato harvest was lost in 1845?

Answer 15

1/3

Question 16

How much of the potato harvest was lost in 1846?

Answer 16

3/4

Question 17

How much of the potato harvest was lost in 1847?

Answer 17

average harvest levels

Question 18

How much of the potato harvest was lost in 1848?

Answer 18

1/3

Question 19

What were the impacts of the Famine on the populace?

Answer 19

1 million people died from starvation and associated diseases such as typhus and relapsing fever.

1 million emigrated Ireland to Britain and North America

Decline of cottier class:

• 1845 = 300,000
• 1851 = 62,000

Population declined by 20% and still has yet to reach pre-famine levels

Question 20

What were the effects of the Famine on numbers of Irish speakers?

Answer 20

Number of Gaelic speakers declined significantly, as the majority of speakers were cottiers in rural communities on the west coast of Ireland.

• Before 1845 = 3-4 million speakers
• 1851 Survey = 1.8 million speakers

Question 21

What were the effects of the Famine on land distribution?

Answer 21

Number of large farms over 35 acres:

• 1845 = 277,000
• 1851 = 314,000

This increased due to the Gregory clause of the Irish Poor Law Extension Act 1947 and the Encumbered Estates Act 1849

This resulted in increased consolidation of land, which increased the age of marriage in order to maintain land size.

Erosion of the cottier class promoted greater obedience to the Church, and allowed the reforms of the ‘devotional revolution’ to develop, also helped by the increased affluence of the larger landholders.

Question 22

What were the effects of the Famine on agricultural production?

Answer 22

Tillage farming replaced with open pasture and cattle grazing, because:

• Landowners wanted to evict poor tenants once they became responsible for relief after 1947
• Grazing cattle was a profitable alternative to labour-dependent tillage

Within 25 years of the Famine, farmers saw their incomes increase by 2/3

This exposed the weaknesses of the previous agricultural system and allowed change towards a much stronger one with greater financial benefit.

Question 23

Which landlord was particularly generous in assisting their tenants to escape the Famine?

Answer 23

In 1847, the agents of Lord Palmerston chartered nine ships to carry 2,000 of his tenants from Sligo to Canada, and another from Liverpool that carried another 480.

Question 24

What was the effect of the Encumbered Estates Act 1849?

Answer 24

• Granted greater legal justification for eviction
• Encouraged the sale of bankrupt estates to more successful landowners

Established the Encumbered Estates Court whose three commissioners were empowered to enforce a sale of any land burdened with debts exceeding its annual rental income

• The new legal owner then had legal justification to do what they liked with the purchase

Question 25

How many acres had been sold through the Encumbered Estates Courts by 1859?

Answer 25

By 1859, five million acres worth £21 million had been sold through the court

Question 26

How did Peel’s government respond to the Famine?

Answer 26

• Scientific commission established
• Relief Programme
• Relief Commission
• Repeal of Corn Laws

Question 27

What were the features of the Scientific Commission established under Peel in 1845?

Answer 27

• Under the direction of Dr Lyon Playfair
• Aimed to ascertain the nature of the blight and means of preventing its spread → published its report on 15th November
• Failed to discover that the blight was a fungal disease, making all proposed solutions useless
• Recommended solutions - sprinkling seed with hydrochloric acid, treating diseased crops with chloric acid, manganese and salt - may have done more harm than good, if implemented → ingredients not available

Question 28

What did Peel’s Relief Programme initiate?

Answer 28

£100,000 of Indian corn bought in November 1845

• Hoped to prevent soaring food prices and allow the Irish to purchase food at affordable cost

Question 29

What were the limitations of Peel’s Relief Programme?

Answer 29

• Indian corn unfamiliar to Irish → often undercooked, causing diarrhoea
• Corn lacked vitamins of potato diet (vitamin C) leading to increased rates of scurvy
• £100,000 of corn not adequate to replace the lost £3.5 million worth of potatoes

Question 30

What did the Relief Commission initate?

Answer 30

• Set up a programme of public works, funded up to 2/3 by government grants and supplemented by private donations
• Provided food and work for 140,000 people at a time

Question 31

How much money did Peel’s government spend on treating the Famine in 1845-6?

Answer 31

Over £365,000

It also offered a similar sum in loans

Question 32

Why did Peel repeal the Corn Laws?

Answer 32

1815 Corn Laws implemented after the Napoleonic wars to maintain high prices on English corn as European countries opened their markets

Repealing the Corn Laws would hopefully create a wider market in Britain for Irish corn, to help support the relief of the country and restructuring of Irish agriculture.

Question 33

Why was the repeal of the Corn Laws unsuccessful in alleviating the Famine?

Answer 33

• Ireland had enough reserves of other products (meat, maize, dairy) to theoretically feed the population, but the poorest members of society had no money with which to buy food, regardless of its affordability.
• Political impact of repeal caused his government to fall from power to a new administration under Lord John Russel in 1846

Question 34

What were the key features of Russel’s response to the Famine?

Answer 34

• Lasseiz-faire policy
• January 1847 Temporary Relief of Destitute Persons Act (soup kitchens)
• 1847 Irish Poor Law Extension Act and Irish Poor Law Amendment Act
• End to Indian Corn and soup kitchens by October 1847

Question 35

Which particular thinkers influenced the attitudes of Russel and Trevelyan?

Answer 35

Russel, Charles Trevelyan (Permanent Secretary at the Treasury) and Charles Wood (Chancellor of the Exchequer) were influenced by :

• Adam Smith - suggested economic ideas of free trade and a lasseiz-faire economic strategy
• Thomas Malthus - a population theorist who had written extensively about Ireland, believing that it was vastly overpopulated and due for tragedy to thin out population size.

Question 36

To what value had the costs of public works increased to at the start of 1847?

Answer 36

Over £30,000 a day

Question 37

What did the January 1847 Temporary Relief of Destitute Persons Act allowed for?

Answer 37

The Act allowed the creation of government-sponsored soup kitchens in Ireland.

Though the Act did increase the number of soup kitchens in Ireland, such kitchens had already been established by the private endeavours of the Society of Friends.

Question 38

How successful was the Society of Friends in Ireland?

Answer 38

• Opened their first soup kitchen in 1846 and were well established in providing aid in Ireland
• Within days of opening in Waterford on 21 November 1846, their kitchen provided free soup and bread to over 180 people
• This quickly rose to more than 600 within a fortnight, and cost the society £6.75 a week.

Question 39

What were the changes made by the 1847 Irish Poor Law Extension Act and Irish Poor Law Amendment Act?

Answer 39

• Irish men and women had a legal right to relief - (previously this had been at the discretion of the Poor Law Guardians)
• Relief could be administered outside of the workhouse if the workhouse was full / infected - (previously, only “indoor relief” was allowed)
• Gregory clause
• Separate Irish Poor Law Commission established, distinct from the English Poor Law Commission

Question 40

What was the ‘Gregory Clause’ included in the 1847 Irish Poor Law Extension Act and Irish Poor Law Amendment Act?

Answer 40

Anyone occupying more than a quarter of an acre of land who refused to give up their possession was not deemed destitute, and thus would not be eligible for relief paid by the Poor Rate.

This clause was named after the prominent MP for Dublin, Sir William Gregory, who demanded such a provision.

Question 41

What were the effects of the 1847 Irish Poor Law Extension Act and Irish Poor Law Amendment Act?

Answer 41

• By declaring relief to be a statutory right rather than a one-off need, obligation was transferred to existing Poor Law officials rather than the British Government.
• Establishing a separate Irish Poor Law Commission absolved the British Government of the burden and cost of famine relief.

Question 42

How many people were being maintained in Ireland’s workhouses by 1849?

Answer 42

932,000

Question 43

How much money was spent in poor relief in 1847 alone?

Answer 43

£1.7 million

Question 44

How did the establishment of a separate Irish Poor Law Commission affect taxes in Ireland?

Answer 44

After the 1847 Irish Poor Law Extension Act and Irish Poor Law Amendment Act, money for poor relief had to be found from Irish taxpayers alone.

In many counties in Ireland, the Poor Rate increased to 10-12 shillings

Question 45

What was the effect of the Gregory Clause?

Answer 45

As fewer landholding tenants were eligible for relief, landowners undertook greater evictions of tenants.

This was incentivised by a transition towards pasture grazing instead of labour-intensive tillage.

Question 46

How many food vessels left Ireland with cargoes of foodstuffs to ports in Britain in 1847?

Answer 46

4,000

Question 47

How many livestock were transported from Ireland to Britain between 1846 and 1850?

Answer 47

3 million

Question 48

Why was food allowed to be transported from Ireland during the Famine?

Answer 48

• Ireland saw a net import of food during the Famine, but continued to export for higher profits abroad (much of Europe also had food shortage)
• Economic concept of free trade dominant within British politicians at the time
• Closing ports, the usual practice in times of food scarcity, was considered too interventionist and would affect wider food markets leading to possible economic downturn in England.

Question 49

What are the major criticisms of Trevelyan’s management of the Famine?

Answer 49

• Made relief efforts as minimal as possible so as to encourage the Irish to look after themselves
• Made rules concerning receival of relief punitive, and added stipulations that made the system difficult for those seeking assistance
• Some of these rules, such as paying half-starved labourers by piecemeal, were highly callous
• Ended government soup kitchen provision and sale of government bought cornmeal (Peel’s Indian corn) by October 1847

Question 50

Why was Trevelyan so callous in his management of relief in Ireland?

Answer 50

• Designed strict rulings to deter all but the most destitute - feared that Irish would become dependent on relief (dominant trend in 19th-Century British politics)
• Believed in the inherent ‘idleness’ of the Irish

Question 51

What criticisms exist to the nationalist interpretation that the British government was negligent in their response to the Famine?

Answer 51

• British spent more than £10 million to tackle the emergency - significant sum of money!
• Weak transport system undermined relief provision

Question 52

What role did Mitchell play in the Famine?

Answer 52

John Mitchel was a staff journalist who wrote for the Irish nationalist newspaper The Nation after 1845.

He took an increasingly hostile to British rule throughout the Famine → shaped the traditional nationalist rhetoric against Trevelyan

Transported to Bermuda as a sentence for instigating the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848