MAKING HISTORY SKILLS BOOK
Source Analysis: The Great Famine Read the sources below about the Great Famine and complete the table that follows.
LSource 1: Major Parker, Relief Inspector of the Board of Works, December 1846 A woman with a dead child in her arms was begging in the street yesterday and the Guard of the Mail told me he saw a man and three dead children lying by the roadside …On Saturday … there was a market plentifully supplied with meat, bread, fish, in short everything.
LSource 3: The Freeman’s Journal, April 1848 In Galway, a man having been sentenced for sheep-stealing in that city [stated] his family were starving; one of his children died and he was, he said credibly informed that the mother ate part of its legs and feet. After its death he had the body exhumed and found that nothing but the bones remained of the legs and feet.
LSource 5: Bailiff’s reply to tenants, quoted in The Freeman’s Journal, April 1846
What the devil do we care about you or your black potatoes? It was not us that made them black. You will get two days to pay the rent, and if you don’t you know the consequences.
LSource 7: The Duke of Cambridge, January 1846 [Describing the public works schemes] Roads were laid out which led from nowhere to nowhere; canals were dug into which no drop of water has ever flowed; piers were constructed which the Atlantic storms at once began to wash away.
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LSource 2: The Telegraph, Castlebar, County Mayo, February 1847 A few days ago I entered a miserable cabin, dug out of the bog; a poor woman sat, propped against the wall inside; the stench was intolerable, and on my complaining of it the Mother pointed to a sort of square bed in one corner; it contained the putrid – the absolutely melted away remains of her eldest son.On inquiry why she did not bury it, she assigned two reasons; first, she had not the strength to go out and acquaint the neighbours; next, she waited till her other child would die, and they might bury both together.
LSource 4: Mrs.
J.Crowley, whose mother witnessed this event, Inchafune This death took place at the grinding mill at
Ballinacarriga.This victim was shot while trying to produce some flour for his
family.The owner or perhaps the watchman saw him escaping and shot him
dead.The corpse was removed that night and put lying on the wall of the bridge beneath the castle. It was Saturday night, and the congregation saw the corpse on Sunday morning when going to Mass. It remained there all day.
LSource 6: The Duke of Cambridge, January 1846 Rotten potatoes and sea-weed, or even grass, properly mixed, afforded a very wholesome and nutritious food. All knew that Irishmen could live upon anything and there was plenty grass in the field though the potato crop should fail.
LSource 8: Priest’s report, Grosse Isle, Canada, 1847 Two to three hundred sick might be found in one ship, attacked by typhoid fever and dysentery, most lying on the refuse that had accumulated under them during the voyage; beside the sick and the dying were spread out the corpses that had not yet been buried at sea.
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