The Blight Bites

Relief Aid

The British government initially refused to provide aid.  As the situation worsened, the British compromised:  they did not halt collecting taxes or evicting tenants, but they did agree to provide relief programs.  However, the few programs established were of little help.

Englishman Sir Robert Peel purchased Indian corn for the Irish.  However, the corn arrived too late to help many of the famine victims.  It was also difficult to prepare.  “In an 1854 issue of the Dublin University Magazine, William Wilde, a physician, noted that ‘The poor were totally unacquainted with the mode of preparation of Indian meal for food; indeed, in many instances they ate the meal raw.  Some had no fuel, others were too hungry to carry it home, and all were ignorant of… preparing it either as stirabout or bread’ (stirabout is a porridge made of cornmeal)” (Dolan, 25).  When poorly prepared, Indian corn wreaked havoc with digestive systems.  The grain, hard and sharp-edged, could easily pierce intestinal walls.

In 1847 the British established the Soup Kitchen Act, providing free meals.  Meals consisted of a quart of soup thickened with meal and 4 ounces of bread or biscuit.  Starving people fought for places in line.  Weak from hunger, some died along the road,  and some fainted or died as they waited in line.  Others died after eating because the sudden intake of food often caused malnourished bodies to go into shock.

“The scene represented above is an attack upon a potato store in the town of Galway, on the 13th of the present month, when the distress had become too great for the poor squalid and unpitied inhabitants to endure their misery any longer”
(Illustrated London News, June 25, 1842).

The Great Famine...An Gorta Mor (The Great Hunger)...The Great Starvation...God's Visitation... The Great Calamity... Irish Holocaust