Ireland’s Great Hunger: An Exploration Of What Happened To Irish Survivors, Left Behind Residents

Ireland’s Great Hunger: An Exploration Of What Happened To Irish Survivors, Left Behind Residents

Many of our readers who saw our previous article on the two Famine books will remember why the Famine became so dreadful. To start with, native born Irish had fewer rights to start with (they couldn’t own land or a business of any kind – so they were doomed to tenancy, working for someone else, and poverty). Most of the land in Ireland was occupied by tenant farmers who paid their rent with seeds of potatoes or of money received in exchange at the market for the same.

When the potato blight struck, not only was there nothing in place to prevent a deepening famine, but on top of that the landlord and tenant laws were not only ridiculous already, but they were made worse with new laws. It became unjustifiable from an economic perspective for the landlords to allow the tenants to continue to live on the land. When they decided to convert their farms into other types of operations (such as for cattle), the tenants had to go.

Unfortunately for the native Irish, the laws relating to tenants’ rights were nonexistent. Similar to a few states in the US, once the landlord decided he wanted the residents evicted, in came the government cavalry. Everyone – men, women, children – dragged out onto the grass in front of their house, and the house was literally torn down until only one wall remained. So on top of the potato blight and skyrocketing famine prices, there were former tenant farmers wandering the fields with no place to live during some of the harshest winters they’d thus far endured.

Much of the discussion in this film related to the ones that got away. Over a million people emigrated out of Ireland during this time period. Up to three million died of the famine or emigrated. Ireland’s population has yet to recover, and only recently surpassed the numbers that existed just before the Famine.

Several descendants of people who lived through the famine and stayed are featured, along with some who left. The latter part of the film focuses on the “Earl Gray girls.”

To give this some context, Australia started out as a penal colony. As such places tend to go, the population of this colony was mainly male, with a serious shortage of females. Without girls, the colony would not be sustainable, and many of those who had earned their freedom there (after serving a certain number of years as prisoners and slaves) wanted to marry and have children. But there were no girls. So Earl Gray, a member of the ruling class in England, came up with a scheme. Ireland was quite heavy in orphan girls of marriageable age who had lost their parents and sometimes siblings to the ravages of the famine.

Living in workhouses and orphanages, they had no opportunity. With no family or dowry, they’d be doomed to a life of lonely spinsterhood and possibly starvation due to their extreme poverty and the continuing famine. So Earl Gray offered them an opportunity: paid travel and lodging to Australia to become servants in the colonists’ homes, with the hope that they’d find someone who wanted to settle down with them. The program was quite successful, with some of the girls having a dozen children. Consequently, they have many, many descendants in Australia.

This was a very well done and beautifully filmed documentary that covers an aspect of the Famine not often discussed: a positive side in the midst of that great darkness which swallowed many lives. But these women went on to survive and even thrive in their new home, bringing a ray of hope with them to a new place. There are so many sides to the story, and it was good to see this infrequently discussed part of it. Ireland has many descendants in Australia because of the scheme by which some were able to escape a dire fate.

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I highly recommend this film and give it five stars.