The Famine

14 Pages 3504 Words

ruck in 1845, more potatoes than ever were planted that spring because people did not expect the blight to strike again. There was a worse failure in 1846 and even worse in 1847, when suffering reached its peak (MacManus, 1944). This year is occasionally referred to as Black '47. The Famine affected Scotland and Belgium as well, but with nothing like the Irish results.
The ensuing filth and squalor revolted travelers to Ireland. The streets were teeming with unsavory beggars, pleading and persuading in expectation of a penny, offensive and grumbling if refused. The villages were half-ruined and the Irish peasants were half-naked or clad in dirty stinking rags, and yet England did little to nothing to aid the situation. The most miserable of English paupers was better fed and clothed than the most prosperous of Irish laborers. Ireland was two nations, one of poor and one of rich. According to Costigan (1969), "There was nothing between master and slave, nothing between all the luxuries of existence and the last degree of human wretchedness" (p. 171).
Families who depended on the potato to keep them alive were left with nothing. Families who grew grain or barley were faced with the choice of either selling the food to pay the rent or eating the food and getting evicted. Before the famine, the average Irish man ate between seven and fifteen pounds of potatoes a day. Children even took potatoes to school for lunch. People would allow one thumbnail to grow long, because without knives, that was the best way to peel the potato. When the potatoes were boiled, the pot was emptied into a basket outside the door and the water drained off. They would place the basket in the middle of the floor and all sit around and eat. On a three-legged stool nearby they would leave a bowl of salted water or just salt. They dipped the potatoes in the bowl before they ate. This was termed "dip at the stool." Drinks of buttermilk or skim milk would complete th...