The Famine

[Tess]

I am researching my family history, and looking at the census, I find my great-grand-father was born in the middle of the famine. It made me think how did he survive? what did people eat? Is there any books available on the day-to-day lives of people? I would be grateful for any information.

Tess

[Dasayev]

I am researching my family history, and looking at the census, I find my great-grand-father was born in the middle of the famine. It made me think how did he survive? what did people eat? Is there any books available on the day-to-day lives of people? I would be grateful for any information.

Tess

Well, if you had money you could buy food. However if you were poor and totally dependent on the potato, then you'd have to rely on charity or government aid to prevent you from starving.

Although this book is not about day-to-day living it is an excellent resource on the Famine.
The economic history of Ireland from the union to the famine

[owedtojoy]

I am researching my family history, and looking at the census, I find my great-grand-father was born in the middle of the famine. It made me think how did he survive? what did people eat? Is there any books available on the day-to-day lives of people? I would be grateful for any information.

Tess

Cecil Woodham-Smith The Great Hunger, or Christine Kinealy This Great Calamity.

[Warrior of Destiny]

Unfortunately, your best chance of finding out more about your family and it's particular famine hardships would be to use the National Archives in Dublin, seeing as the website is an unmitigated disaster but you could try it all the same.

[Fantasia]

I am researching my family history, and looking at the census, I find my great-grand-father was born in the middle of the famine. It made me think how did he survive? what did people eat? Is there any books available on the day-to-day lives of people? I would be grateful for any information.

Tess

The didn't eat as their food was forcibly removed overseas. And any discussion is taboo. Millions died..where are their graves?

[ocoonassa]

I am researching my family history, and looking at the census, I find my great-grand-father was born in the middle of the famine. It made me think how did he survive?

Lots of people survived the famine, many weren't effected by it in the slightest, many did very nicely out of it. If you know exactly where in the country your ggf was situated you might be able to find his family on the Griffiths Valuation that was taken just after the famine. That way you might know what they did for a living in these times.

As you can see from this map below the situation wasn't the same throughout the country, really it was worst in the midlands and the west, if your ggf lived in the north or the east then it's easy see that his survival was not unusual.

[Cael]

I am researching my family history, and looking at the census, I find my great-grand-father was born in the middle of the famine. It made me think how did he survive? what did people eat? Is there any books available on the day-to-day lives of people? I would be grateful for any information.

Tess

A chara, your title is misleading, given that there were nine major famines in Ireland between 1720 and 1860. This was Genocide by a series of famines.

[ocoonassa]

The didn't eat as their food was forcibly removed overseas. And any discussion is taboo. Millions died..where are their graves?

Mostly the people who died didn't have food except perhaps but for the blight they would have had spuds in lazy beds on small areas of poor land.

So when you say "their food" was "forcibly" removed whose food do you mean exactly?

Do you think the rightful owners of that food, the people who had grown and harvested it, wanted to give it away to the poor and that the right to do so was taken from them by perfidious Albion?

[Cael]

Mostly the people who died didn't have food except perhaps but for the blight they would have had spuds in lazy beds on small areas of poor land.

So when you say "their food" was "forcibly" removed whose food do you mean exactly?

Do you think the rightful owners of that food, the people who had grown and harvested it, wanted to give it away to the poor and that the right to do so was taken from them by perfidious Albion?

This is a psychotically neo-liberal spin on Genocide. The rightful owners of the food of Ireland are the people of Ireland. Only a genocidal maniac would suggest otherwise.

[Schomberg]

Did my own family tree not long back and around the famine time most of them were city dwellers and seemed to be doing fine. Teachers, policemen, soldiers and other civil servents. One lot owned their own wood business. They were papists by the way. Some small farmers down around west cork seemed to have packed in the farm and moved into Cork city. after that the information gets weak but they seemed to survive it well enough. Two young children died from disease it appears.

Anyway, a great book on the subject I'm reading at the minute is
This Great Calamity: Amazon.co.uk: Christine Kinealy: Books