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The 1st Potato Crop Fails
The arival of blight caused the potato crop to fail for the 1st time. The potato was the only food avalible to the majority of the irish people so much of the country was left hungry. -
Help From the Government
Robert Peel is the prime minister of Britian, he is in charge of of helping the Irish through the famine. He shipped some Indian corn to Ireland and arranged for it to be sold in different parts of the country for a cheap price. This helped some families, however the poorest people had no money to buy it. The corn was also difficult to get to some of the most remote places where the famine was worst and where the roads were bad. -
Second failure of crops
The potato crop failed for the second year. -
The Workhouses
The government stopped supplying cheap food to the poor and decided to provide employment instead. Public works began again in October 1846. The government thought that this employment would help the poor to buy food. However, poor people were often too weak from lack of food to be able to work very hard and wages were often not paid on time. -
Help arrives
In the summer of 1847, the government set up some soup kitchens to give the starving people hot soup. A group called the Society of Friend, or the Quakers, did a lot of work to feed the poor. They bought huge boilers in which to cook the soup. By August 1847, about 3 million people were being fed each day in total. -
Diseases
Diseases spread very quickly between the poor, especially those in the overcrowded workhouses. Deadly diseases were spread through lice. -
Evictions
When tenants could not pay their rent, they were usually evicted. Some landlords tried their best to help their tenants and did not charge them rent. A number of these landlords went broke because of this. However, huge numbers of people were also evicted from their homes by their landlords during the famine. -
Emigration Explosion
Large numbers of Irish people emigrated to countries such as England, America, Canada and Australia because of the famine. From 1845 to 1850, about one and a half million people left Ireland. -
The End
The Famine ended around 1850 - 1851. It left a great scar on the country with one million dead and another one and a hakf million lost to enigration. A lot of people were very angry at the British Government for the way the handled the famine chrisis.