The Famine of 1845 - 1848 is a seminal event in Irish history. In the first instance, it was a major humanitarian disaster with an estimated one million people dying and a further million emigrating. The population of Ireland had doubled to over 8 millon between 1800 and 1840, one of the major reasons being the dominance of the potato as a subsistence crop. The suitability of the Irish climate for growing potatoes combined with their high nutrition value meant that very small farms could support large families. However, when the potato crop failed in 1845 and subsequent summers these people were left with no alternative food source.
Patrick Bourke and his family, as we have seen in Griffith's Valuation, were tenant farmers with 64 acres. This was a large farm and as well as potatoes they would have raised cattle. One of Patrick's daughters, Margaret, who was a child of nine at the time gave an account of the family's experiences to her grand-daughter Patricia Fitzgerald when she was in her eighties. My aunt, Sr Maura Burke, managed to get me a copy many years ago. Margaret tells us that her father (Patrick) was "a well-to-do farmer and his family did not suffer as much as less fortunate people as they were well provisioned when the famine began". In addition, the family were successful in saving a crop of turnips and were even able to distribute them to people less fortunate than themselves. The account in full is reproduced below:
"Historians tells us that 1847 and 1848 were terrible years but the printed page can never bring home to us the horrors of that dreadful time as clearly as the words of one who has experienced them. My informant (my grandmother – Margaret) an old lady ‘well on in the eighties’ was nigh in nine years of age at the time and so remembers it clearly. Her father was a well-to-do farmer and his family did not suffer as much as less fortunate people as they were well provisioned when the famine began. But how the people suffered!
The potatoes, their staple food, were destroyed by the blight. The grain crops failed. Even the turnips blackened. As the famine continued the sufferings of the people increased. To quote the old lady, “If they had the weeds itself they wouldn’t be too bad but even the weeds failed that year”. Her father, a thoughtful man, had done his best to save the turnips when the blight was first noticed. He was successful and was able to distribute them to the poor. At last it became a struggle to survive to get to Mass on Sundays. One woman rather than miss the Holy Sacrifice crawled on her hands and knees to the chapel, eating the grass by the roadside as she went, only to fall dead at the door. Along the road staggered men once fine looking fellows but now the merest skeletons, carrying or trying to carry their mothers or others of their womenfolk on their backs. To add to that awful misery cholera broke out.
Weakened by hunger, the unfortunate people dropped dead by the roadside, too weak to even eat the grass that was often found in their mouths. Everywhere were dead bodies and such was the nature of the disease that the bodies turned black after death. Great holes were dug and into them the bodies were flung, shroud-less, coffin-less, without even the last benediction of the Church. Everywhere death, everywhere desolation, everywhere misery. Pestilence, famine and death reigned supreme.
The loads of flour carried from a neighbouring mill were guarded by a military escort but such was the desperation of the women that they would pinch the bags so that a little flour fell on the ground. This they would eventually scrape up and put in the mouths of the children they were scarcely able to carry in their arms. Yet at this time the grain stored at Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford and other sea ports was being exported daily while the people starved.
At last America sent help in the form of quantities of ground maize. But the sailing ships of the period took six to seven weeks to make the journey and the meal had a sour bitter taste. This was served out for the support of the people, a pound a day for each person. Some of the men took ship to America hoping to send their relatives some help from there. During the journey the ship was lost. But death by drowning is at least quicker than the lingering agonies of death by starvation so they were lucky enough.
Such were the sufferings of the famine years. God grant that they may never again be endured in Ireland."
