"It has been frequently declared the the parsimony of the British Government during the famine was the main cause of the sufferings of the people, and the parsimony was certainly carried to remarkable lengths but obtuseness, short-sightedness, and ignorance probably contributed more."Īs Sydney Smith, the celebrated writer and wit, wrote: “The moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots". It explains much in modern Ireland - and in modern America' - D.W. It combines great literary power with great learning. THE GREAT HUNGER is a heartbreaking story of suffering, insensitivity, and blundering stupidity, but it is also a story of courage, dignity and, against all odds, a hardly supportable optimism. Irish immigrants came to be regarded as a danger to the health of the community and a burden on society.Ĭecil Woodham-Smith, in this balanced and dispassionate look at a terrible tragedy, attempts to apportion the blame among the then known disease which destroyed the potato on which the vast majority of the Irish depended almost exclusively for existence, greedy landlords, and the total lack of comprehension of the British government. Epidemics, riots and chaos followed in the wake of this hopeless flood.
They crowded into cellars without light or sanitation, begged in the streets, and accepted whatever employment they could get at wages which no American would accept. The Irish who managed to reach this country alive had little or no money and were often too weak to work. Some ships never arrived, those that did carried passengers already infected with and often dying of typhus.
The majority of the emigrant ships were small, ill-equipped, dangerously unsanitary, and often unseaworthy. In only five years one million people died of starvation, and emigrants by the hundreds of thousands sailed for America and Canada. THE GREAT HUNGER is the story of one of the worst disasters in world history the Irish potato famine of the 1840s.
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