Return
to Archives ListThe Great
Famine:
Contemporary Voices
The Great Famine of 1845 - 1847 forever
changed Ireland, England and the United States. The population of Ireland
declined by two and a half million people, and the population of America cities
like New York exploded with Irish immigrants, and the already hostile relations
between England and Ireland worsened. Collected here are quotations from various
sources in Ulster contemporaneous with the famine years.
"We had a field of potatoes that year in the back lane, and in one
night they were struck with the blight and both tops and roots were
blackened." James Brown, Tyrone.
"I have not words to describe the state of destitution of this quarter of
the country from want of a supply of food for sales .... The Relief Committee
most earnestly desire me to call your humane and immediate attention to the
situation and utter destitution of the people." Rev. James Ovens, Donegal.
"It strikes the people as being very unfeeling on our part to keep corn in
the store without issuing it ... I hope I may soon get authority to issue."
Deputy-Assistant-Commissary-General Gem, Donegal.
"It would be impossible to exaggerate the awful destitution that exists in
the town of Clones and neighborhood ... The number of deaths in the Clones
workhouse, during the last week, has been twenty-five, at the lowest." The Fermanagh
Report, 1846
"Landlords of Antrim! will you - can you, in the face of all these facts,
compel us to sell our cows, or part with the only portion of bread which remains
for the support of our families, in order to satisfy your claims? ... Landlords,
ye are men, and thiak, and feel, and pity, and love as men." Antrim.
"The very small farmers, I am sorry to say, are now compelled to
commence consuming the small stack of corn they had intended for seed for this
year's crop, and in most instances, their stack-yards will be completely empty
in the month hence." Captain Brereton, Down.
"I do not exaggerate when I tell you that from the moment I open my hall
door in the morning until dark, I have a crowd of women and children crying out
for something to save them from starving." George Dawson, Derry.
"The people thrown out of work have no resource whatsoever, hundreds spend
days without food, and in the absence of proper subsistence have recourse to
most unwholesome diet. Their deserted and wretched cabins, their forlorn and
distressing look, with pain and sickness so dreadfully depicted in every
countenance, is horribly painful to look at; and with all this human misery,
there is no person putting his shoulder to the burthen - no proper efforts are
being made to relieve the people. How it will end, God only knows." 1847, Monaghan.
"It now a thing of daily occurrence to see haggard, sallow and emaciated
beings, stricken down by fever or debility from actual want, stretched prostrate
upon the footways of our streets and villages." Belfast News Letter,
1847.
"I have frequently heard of the horrors of Skibbereen quoted, but they can
handly have exceeded these." Temporary Inspector D'Arcy, Fermanagh.
"That million and a half men, women and children, were carefully,
prudently, and peacefully slain by the English government." Rev. John
Mitchell.
From A History of Ulster by Jonathan
Bardon, The Blackstaff Press, 1992.
(Originally printed in the Hedgemaster in November 1994)
© Irish Cultural Society of the Garden City Area