Potato blight in these islands in the 1840s was first noticed in the Isle of Wight. It also occurred in Continental Europe. It didn’t wipe out significant proportions of the populations of either, for Northwestern Europe is pretty well favoured by nature.
Ireland is no desert. Indeed it is nauseatingly called the Emerald Isle by those of an over-sentimental disposition. Those who died from the Great Hunger and the diseases that accompanied it, do not seem to have left diaries, had their names noted in newspapers or the walls of churches and chapels, unlike landlords, magistrates,even Second Lieutenants in Her Majesty’s Forces. Indeed in huge swathes of the country no efforts were made to count the population in the 1841 Census and in other parts people were not anxious to be counted.Those doing the counting were constabulary, not particularly trusted.(In London, following the introduction of Mrs Thatcher’s Poll Tax, I’m told there were some streets teeming with people who didn’t appear on the official Census report.)
As landlords, magistrates, military, constabulary, bailiffs and bishops don’t feature prominently as victims of An Gorta Mor, one wonders what they ate. There were great numbers of military and armed police in Ireland at the time, and it seems they had much work to do.
I think much work is yet to be done on the real story of the Great Hunger, because, to hear some reports, the good God created Ireland merely for the cultivation of potatoes and brown-nosed historians.
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