Six or seven hundred persons were here evicted; young and old, mother and babe were alike cast forth, without shelter and without the means of subsistence! A favoured few were allowed to remain, on condition that in six months they would voluntarily depart. ‘A fountain of ink (as one of them has said) would not write half our misfortunes’; and I feel that it is utterly beyond my power to describe the full misery of this and similar scenes. At a dinner party that evening, the landlord, as I was told by one of the party, boasted that this was the first time he had seen the estate or visited the tenants. Truly, their first impression of landlordism was not likely to be a very favourable one! Source: A visit to Connaught in the Autumn of 1847 by James Hack Tuke
(a) How many people were evicted? (b) On what condition were some of the people allowed to stay? (c) Do you think that the author was sorry for the people being evicted? Give reasons for your answer. (d) Which statement shows how the tenants felt about the situation? (e) What do you think the author’s opinion of the landlord was? Give reasons for your answer.
2. The maps below show the percentage of people who spoke Irish as their first language. (a) Why was there such a drop in Irish speakers in Ireland during the Famine and between 1851 and 1961?
(b) How did the rise in population in Ireland contribute to the Famine?
(c) Give three reasons for the drop in population in the late nineteenth century.
(d) Give three results of the Irish Famine. (e) Write a paragraph on two of the following: (i) Life of a landlord in Ireland during the Famine
(ii) Life in a workhouse during the Famine (iii) Public works schemes in Ireland during the Famine
EVALUATE
3. Write about the differences in lifestyle between a rural person living in Ireland and someone living in industrial Britain during the nineteenth century. Use the following headings: l Housing l Food
l Health and medicine l Migration and emigration l Pastimes 323