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This woman uses a láí (pronounced “loy”), or long-handled spade, to dig for potatoes in a stubble field. In the background, a mother cries over her child. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, DECEMBER 22, 1849
May there always be work for your hands to do
May your purse always hold a coin or two
May the sun always shine on your windowpane
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain
May the hand of a friend always be near you
And may God will your heart with gladness to cheer you
—TRADITIONAL IRISH BLESSING
THE POTATO CROP FAILURE of 1845 hit the six million farm laborers hardest of all. Work was scarce in Ireland, especially after the harvest season ended. They depended on the potato harvest to carry them through the winter and spring. For them, the hungry months of summer stretched into fall.
Men, women, and children scoured the fields, roadsides, and ditches, foraging for weeds, nettles, and cabbage leaves. They dug for turnips missed by the harvesters. They picked over discarded turnip tops and bottoms, looking for edible pieces to take home. The pieces didn’t boil into much, but they staved off the hunger pains for a little while.
Many people foraged at night. For some, it was to hide their shame at not having enough food for their family. For others, it was because they were stealing. When one farmer investigated a suspicious sound in his garden, he discovered his neighbor digging up turnips. Dismayed, the farmer asked, “Why do you come by night to take what I gladly would have given by day?” The neighbor replied, “I was too ashamed to let anyone know I was in such want.”
As people grew hungrier, they became more daring. “The men used to steal the tails of the bullocks [the young bulls or castrated steers],” said one woman from County Westmeath. “They would wait until the landlord was gone to bed, then steal out and cut off the tails. They would skin them and roast them.”
Men banded together and walked miles, looking for cattle. Once they found a herd, they cornered a cow. While a few men held the cow, another cut a vein in its neck, drained off a few pints of blood into a vessel or leather pouch, then pinned the incision closed. The cows weren’t hurt from the bleeding: as much as one quart could be taken without serious injury. The men carried the blood home to their wives, who fried it with mushrooms and cabbages or cooked it in black pudding. The blood, rich in iron and protein, served as a meat substitute.
As winter approached, the cost of flour, oatmeal, and other foods skyrocketed. Merchants and shopkeepers bought up flour and oatmeal, then sold it in small quantities at double the cost.
To buy food, Irish laborers sold their furniture, bedding, and extra clothing. They sold their pigs, chickens, and cows, and even pawned their tools and fishing nets—anything at all to get money to buy food. When they had nothing left to sell, they borrowed money from moneylenders, called “gombeen men,” who charged outrageous interest. The rates ranged from 20 to 50 percent.
Parents grew terrified that they wouldn’t have enough food for their children over the winter. Priests offered up Masses, asking God to save the Irish people from disaster. Few laborers knew how to read and write, but those who did sent pleading letters to their church officials, asking for help. Priests often wrote the letters for their parishioners.
Many parents felt ashamed that they could not feed their families. John Mansfield sold his wife’s extra clothing and his coat. When that money ran out, he wrote a letter to his clergy, asking for a small loan. “Reverand [sic] Sir Pardon me for letting you know my great distress,” wrote John Mansfield. “I did not earn one Shilling This 3 weeks I had not one Bite for my family since yesterday Morning to eat And I am applying to you As a good Charitable gentle man to lend me a little Reliefe. . . . I will pay you the first Money I will earn.”
Others begged government officials. “I am ashamed to tell you my wife, seven children and myself only ate one meal of potatoes yesterday,” wrote another man. “Another this day. We had two eggs in the house last night which my wife was obliged to get up and give the children to prevent them crying. And our last meal of potatoes is now in the house.”
The letters and reports about the crop failure poured into the British government, but the British leaders remained cautious and skeptical. Many didn’t believe the extent of the crop damage and called the reports exaggerated. The Irish, they said, had always had a tendency to exaggerate.
Some British people criticized the Irish, saying that the people had brought the situation on themselves. They said that the Irish didn’t work hard enough to improve their lives. They blamed the Irish for marrying too young, having too many children, depending too much on potatoes, and listening to the poor advice of their priests. One Kerry landlord even called the potato destruction “a blessing to Ireland,” while others claimed that the crop failure was an act of God, designed to reduce the Irish population to realistic levels.
These attitudes reveal the ethnic and religious prejudices that divided the English and Irish people. Unfortunately, many British leaders and landlords allowed these attitudes to affect the way they dealt with the Irish people and the food crisis during the Famine years.
THE SCIENTIFIC COMMISSION
The British prime minister Sir Robert Peel was no stranger to the Irish or Irish hunger. In 1816 he served as secretary to Ireland, and he witnessed Irish hunger firsthand when a blight destroyed a portion of the potato crop. Peel established government soup kitchens and public works that gave the destitute the opportunity to earn wages by breaking stones, building roads, and digging ditches.
From his experience during the 1816 food crisis, Peel knew that life for the Irish laborers would get worse before it got better. He feared that desperate, starving people might resort to crime. He also knew that periods of famine were always followed by deadly, highly contagious diseases such as typhoid fever, cholera, and dysentery. There was no doubt about it: the Irish needed relief.
Sir Robert Peel had always been a cautious man, slow and careful to act. Before he sent relief to Ireland, he wanted facts. In late October 1845, he established a Scientific Commission and sent three scientists to Ireland to gather accurate information about the extent of the crop damage and to examine the potatoes. He hoped that they would discover a way to save the crop.
Today, we know that a fungus called Phythophthora infestans was to blame for the crop failure, a fungus so powerful that it destroyed entire potato fields within hours. We also know that the fungus came from an American continent, possibly in cargoes of guano fertilizer from South America. Some Irish farmers bought the fertilizer to spread on the potato fields.
Once the fungus reached Ireland, the wet climate helped the blight to spread. Wind and water transported its spores across the island, at a rate of fifty miles a day. When the spores fell, they germinated on the leaves and stems of the The rain washed the spores into the soil, and as the potatoes were dug, the spores spread.
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Peel’s scientists did not know about the fungus in 1845, and they misdiagnosed the cause as “wet rot.” Insisting that the potatoes could be salvaged, the scientists wrote complicated instructions that explained how to care for the potatoes and circulated them throughout Ireland.
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Landlords, farmers, and parish priests explained the instructions to the laborers. Dutifully, the laborers did as they were told: they dried the potatoes in the sun, dug new storage pits, and used special packing materials made from mixtures of lime, sand, turf, and sawdust. They inserted rods to ventilate the pits. But the potatoes still rotted.
The scientists also claimed that the partially rotted potatoes were edible, if certain cooking instructions were followed. Again, the laborers dutifully listened: they separated the rotten potatoes into piles of bad and not-so-bad. Saving the latter, they cut out the black spots, grated the potatoes into a tub, and washed and strained the gratings twice. They squeezed the gratings through cloth, pressed out the moisture, then dried the pulp on a griddle over a fire. They mixed the pulp with the starch from the potato wash water and made bread.
No matter how the potatoes were washed or cooked, the people suffered from stomach cramps and bloody diarrhea. The potatoes were especially harmful to the elderly and infants, some of whom became so sick that they died.
THE CORN LAWS
Sir Robert Peel knew that the Irish laborers needed food—cheap food. From his previous experience with food crises, Peel knew that Indian corn is one of the cheapest foods that can keep people alive. Native to North America, the yellow cobs are also known as sweet corn or maize. Two pounds of Indian corn can make one stirabout supper for six people, once the hard yellow kernels are properly milled and cooked.
While the Scientific Commission studied the potato problem, Sir Robert Peel made a momentous decision: he decided secretly to import a huge quantity of Indian corn from the United States. He commissioned London bankers to purchase enough Indian corn to feed five hundred thousand people for three months.
Why the secrecy? When Peel imported the Indian corn, he was tampering with the economic philosophy of the British government. The philosophy is called laissez-faire (le-SAY fare), a French phrase that means “to let do” or “to let people do as they please.” However, this term did not mean that Peel should have been allowed to do as he wished: general individual freedom is not what the British government intended when it practiced this philosophy.
By laissez-faire, the British believed that government should not interfere or exert economic controls in the free market of goods or trades. In other words, it was not the government’s job to tell people how to run their businesses. The British attributed the strength and prosperity of their nation—as well as their own personal wealth—to their economic policy of “to let do.”
The British government allowed one exception to the doctrine of laissez-faire: a set of laws known as the Corn Laws. In the United States, corn is understood as maize or sweet corn, but in Great Britain and other countries, corn refers to grain such as oats, wheat, barley, and rye. Because Britain wanted to protect the price of its homegrown grain, the government imposed high taxes on foreign grain crops—crops grown outside the United Kingdom. The taxes guaranteed profit for farmers and merchants.
Earlier in his political career, Sir Robert Peel favored the Corn Laws. Over time he changed his mind as he realized that the Corn Laws hurt the economy of the United Kingdom more than they helped. If the high taxes on imported grain were removed, then grain would be more affordable for people like the laborers, who formed the bulk of the population. The more grain they could afford to buy, the stronger the economy would grow. A strong economy meant that fewer poor people would rely on government charity such as workhouses.
When the Scientific Commission reported the extent of the crop failure, it estimated that half the potato crop was destroyed, though the damage was closer to one-third. Nonetheless, many laborers had lost their total crop. Peel knew that thousands of Irish people faced certain starvation unless something was done. The six million people who had lived on potatoes needed something else to eat. He wanted to feed them grain, but in order to do this, the Corn Laws had to be repealed.
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Peel explained the dire circumstances to Queen Victoria and urged her to support the repeal of the Corn Laws. He told her that other countries—Belgium, Holland, Sweden, and Denmark—had suffered the same potato blight and that they had imported grain to sell at an affordable cost. He asked Queen Victoria to do the same for Ireland. It was the best way to stabilize food prices for the Irish people.
Twenty-six-year-old Queen Victoria was an agreeable and popular monarch. She reigned over the United Kingdom, but she did not make laws. Parliament made the laws. Although Victoria often spoke with government leaders such as Sir Robert Peel and helped to settle disputes, she felt it was her duty not to take sides. When Parliament members refused to repeal the Corn Laws, Victoria accepted their decision.
Parliament’s decision angered Peel. “Good God,” he said. “Are you to sit in cabinet and consider and calculate how much diarrhoea and bloody flux and dysentary [sic] a people must bear before it becomes necessary to provide them with food . . . ?”
Determined to provide relief for the Irish, Peel looked for a loophole, a way to get around the Corn Laws. He found one: since Britain had no existing trade in Indian corn, he decided that Indian corn was not affected by the Corn Laws. When Peel purchased the Indian corn, he took advantage of this loophole, even though he knew it would infuriate many members of Parliament, once they found out. It was a great political risk.
When the American cargo arrived, authorities stored it in two main depots at Cork and Limerick. The corn would be sold in the spring, when the food crisis would be the greatest. Even today, some people criticize Peel for this decision: they say he should have distributed the corn immediately, to relieve the suffering of the hungry Irish. They say he waited because he was more concerned about his own political agenda—the repeal of the Corn Laws.
In the meantime, Peel created a Relief Commission and appointed relief commissioners. The commissioners established local relief committees in each union and set up food depots. The commissioners sold the corn at cost to the local relief committees. Once the food depots opened, the committees would resell the corn to the people. The cost would be one pence, about two cents, for one pound of corn.
PEEL’S BRIMSTONE
Throughout the winter, the corn sat in the depots while Ireland’s hungry scavenged for food and sold their belongings. As soon as the depots opened in March, people who had money rushed the doors and bought up all the corn. The penniless people were unable to purchase the corn. In Cork, the hungry crowd turned angry and threatening. Fearful of a riot, the relief commissioners called for the police to disperse the people.
The Irish laborers soon discovered that Indian corn is not a good substitute for potatoes. The hard maize kernels required special processing: the kernels needed to be chopped in steel mills, which Ireland did not have. To compensate, millers had to grind the kernels twice with regular millstones. Some British leaders complained about the special milling, since they felt that the Irish people should be grateful for any kind of relief.
Even after the Indian corn kernels were ground twice, the cornmeal was coarse and required presoaking and long boiling to make it digestible. “At first the meal was distributed in coarse lumps,” said one man. “When it was boiled, it spat steam and boiling water all over the kitchen. The children had to be out of the room while it was being boiled.”
Stirabout made from the coarse kernels harmed people who hadn’t had a substantial meal for months. People suffered terrible stomach pains, and some bled to death when the hard kernels punctured their intestines. “It swells and takes the life out of us,” said another man. Some people began to think that the British were trying to kill them.
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The Indian cornmeal became known as “Peel’s brimstone” because of its yellow color and its hellish effects on the digestive system. “Most folks said they’d rather starve than eat it,” said one woman. “We didn’t know how to cook it.”
Laborers avoided the yellow meal as long as they could, but demand for it rose as hunger grew. The milling problem was resolved when already-ground cornmeal was imported instead of unground kernels. People also found that a mixture of cornmeal and oats was easier to digest.
Peel knew that the Irish laborers needed more than Indian corn: they needed the opportunity to earn money to buy food. He thought about all the improvements that Ireland could use—from new roads to new bridges to improved harbors and fisheries. He realized that the laborers could earn wages as they made possible these improvements. Peel began to make plans for a system of public works.
WORK AT ANY COST
It was nearly spring 1846 when Parliament approved Peel’s proposal to provide public work for the Irish. Under the plan, the British treasury would fund some of the works, mostly in the form of half-grants to be repaid at a later date. Peel expected landlords to contribute most of the money for the public works, but they gave very little. Some preferred to organize their own works. They provided their tenants with opportunities to earn wages by building walls and digging ditches to drain fields and bogs.
Other public works were run by the Irish Board of Works, which looked after roads, bridges, harbors, and fisheries in Ireland. The officials from the understaffed Board of Works found it difficult to organize projects on such a large scale. They could not handle the thousands of applications that poured into their offices.
As whole families signed up, eager to earn money, the applications piled up unanswered. When the projects did not begin right away, angry laborers protested, demanding work so that they could buy food. Their demonstrations frightened officials, who worried that the laborers would turn violent. “Work at any cost,” wrote an official, “was prayed for as the only means of saving the people from famine and property from pillage.”
By the summer, the administration improved and over one hundred thousand people had work. Road construction provided the most common form of public work, since it was the easiest to organize. To reach the roadwork, laborers walked several miles a day, often on an empty stomach. Six days a week, ten to twelve hours each day, they leveled hills, broke stones, and hauled the stones away. They also built bridges and dug drainage ditches.
“The work was very hard,” said Mick Kelly, whose father labored on one of the works. “But the work was a godsend to the people. The men had to be at their work from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M. in all weathers. . . . Sometimes all the ground that they’d clear in a day would be flooded with water the next morning, and the men worked in water up to their waists.”
Many men worked all day without eating. “When dinnertime came, each worker washed his shovel, put some raw meal on it, and wet it from the water that fell into the drain and ate it,” said John Hanrahan. “This was all they had for dinner.”
An overseer, or “ganger,” supervised the laborers. “He walked around, cracking his whip,” said Brigid Keane. “If a man showed any slackness or weakness, he was knocked off [fired] at once. There might be one hundred men sitting on the boundary to see if any man would drop out.” Workers were fined for faults such as arriving late or slacking off on the job. For each fault, the worker was “quartered,” meaning he lost a quarter, or one-fourth, of his day’s pay.
When men fell sick or died, their wives and children took their places. Like the men, the women dug drainage ditches and roads, broke stones and hauled them away. They carried away clay in baskets on their backs and wheeled barrows filled with dirt. Their young children crouched by the side of the road around small turf fires while they worked.
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At first, relief workers were paid a daily wage, ranging from eight to ten pence a day, roughly the equivalent of sixteen to twenty cents. The wages were intentionally low to discourage laborers from applying for public works. Later the wages would be raised to one shilling, or about twenty-two cents. But even a shilling could not support a family as food prices soared. The wages also created a coin shortage: relief committees could not obtain enough coins to pay the workers. Long delays in payment resulted.
Some laborers worked for weeks without pay. When Denis McKennedy died, his wife testified that he had not been paid for two weeks. During that time, the McKennedys and their three children had only a few small potatoes, a head of cabbage, and some flour to eat. Another man, Thomas Malone, walked six miles each way to the public works in County Galway. He ate only one scanty meal a day. He died just before reaching his cabin one night, leaving bereft a wife and six children.
Throughout the spring, Peel lobbied hard for the repeal of the Corn Laws so that food prices would stabilize. By June, he won, but his success made him unpopular. When he addressed the house of Commons, members shouted and hooted at him. Realizing that he had lost the support of the Conservative party, Peel resigned as prime minister.
Peel never returned to office, though he continued to give support to the new government. Four years after his resignation, he suffered severe injuries after falling off a horse, and died. Though Peel has been criticized for acting too cautiously in relief efforts for the Irish, many people credit him with saving the Irish people from the worst effects of the potato crop failure of 1845.