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The Irish Famine

The Irish Famine. A Joint Presentation from Our Lady’s Grammar School, Newry and St. Tiernan’s Community College, Dublin. The Irish Famine. Causes of the Famine Relief Measures Consequences of the Famine. The Causes of the Famine. By Claire Cranny, Patrick Kavanagh,

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The Irish Famine

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  1. The Irish Famine A Joint Presentation from Our Lady’s Grammar School, Newry and St. Tiernan’s Community College, Dublin

  2. The Irish Famine • Causes of the Famine • Relief Measures • Consequences of the Famine

  3. The Causes of the Famine By Claire Cranny, Patrick Kavanagh, Aran Fetherson and Ian Doyle St. Tiernan’s Community College, Dublin

  4. The Causes of the Famine • Population Growth • Dependency on the Potato • The Blight • Poverty

  5. Population Growth • In 1800 population was 5 million. By 1840 Ireland had a population of 8 million,a growth of 3 million. • This led to a lack of food. • This meant they needed more food but they only had potatoes,and that was bad because they didn’t last that long. • This growth in population was in the countryside because Ireland had few towns and very few industries.

  6. Dependency on Potatoes • Back in the 1840’s, the poor people of Ireland depended on 1 crop - the potato. • The Spanish brought potatoes back from South America but we do not know how they reached Ireland. • The potato was all the poor people of Ireland could afford. • Potatoes grow in greater quantities than other crops: An acre of potatoes fed a family of five for a year, An acre of wheat would only feed one or two people. • In August 1845, a strange disease hit the potato crop. It was a Blight. • Within a few days of the Blight, whole fields of potatoes were dead - their only food was gone!!

  7. The Potato Blight • When the Potato Blight broke out in Ireland, people noticed a strange smell from the fields of potatoes and the stalks withered. • When people dug them up, they found that the potatoes were rotten and about a third of the crop was destroyed. • The potatoes had spot on outside and once it was cut it was black and rotten in the inside. • This was a hard blow for the farmers and laborers • They sold their animals and pawned their furniture. • This was a disease on potatoes that would spread around the world • The proper name for this disease is Phytophthora Infestans.

  8. RELIEF MEASURES By Emma McGeown & Oonagh McParland Our Lady’s Girls Grammar School and

  9. The Famine Relief Measures • Soup Kitchens • Workhouses • Public Work • Private Charity

  10. Soup Kitchens Soup Kitchens were set up in 1847 by rich farmers and landlords. They were places where people with less than a quarter of an acre got 1 pound of stirabout a day. Stirabout was a kind of porridge and looked as unattractive as possible to put people off it as local ratepayers had to pay for it. It fed over 3,000,000 starving people a day.

  11. Workhouses Workhouses were introduced in 1838 to provide work for the poor. By 1847 the British realised it wasn’t working because people were too weak to work on road building schemes. They were a last resort for the people of Ireland who avoided them for as long as possible, although many ended up in them. They were immensely over crowded and disease spread rapidly with the result that many more died of disease than hunger.

  12. Public Work Public Work were schemes to let people earn their own money, instead of getting handouts. There were limited jobs and people waited outside for a worker to get sacked to try and get a job. These too were funded by tax payers.

  13. Private Charity Private Charity were contributions which came from various sources including a private committee in Dublin, Irish soldiers in India, the Queen and the Quakers. Many in America also donated money especially those of Irish origin.

  14. Consequences By Sarah-Jayne Macken & Paula Matthews Our Lady’s Girls Grammar School

  15. Mass Eviction More than half a million people during the famine were evicted from their homes during and in the immediate time after. After the famine prices for agricultural products rose. The landlords then raised the rents even higher. People were able to pay during the rise in product prices, but when the prices went down, many were evicted as they couldn’t pay the rent.

  16. Food Shortage As crops failed throughout the course of the famine, food became more and more scarce, so of course any food that was available soared in price! During the famine, very few crops were grown as all seed potatoes had been eaten. There was a shortage during the famine of meat, dairy produce and wheat.

  17. Land Changed Hands

  18. Other Long Term Effects • Change in marriage patterns • Population decline • Conflict between England and Ireland • Political effects • Consolidation of land

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