Irish Famine (1740–1741)
The Irish Famine of 1740–1741 in the Kingdom of Ireland, is estimated to have killed between 13% and 20% of the 1740 population of 2.4 million people, which was a proportionately greater loss than during the Great Famine of 1845–1852.
The famine of 1740–1741 was due to extremely cold and then dry weather in successive years, resulting in food losses in three categories: a series of poor grain harvests, a shortage of milk, and frost damage to potatoes. At this time, grains, particularly oats, were more important than potatoes as staples in the diet of most workers.
Deaths from mass starvation in 1740–1741 were compounded by an outbreak of fatal diseases. The cold and its effects extended across Europe, but mortality was higher in Ireland because both grain and potatoes failed. This is now considered by scholars to be the last serious cold period at the end of the Little Ice Age of about 1400–1800.
The famine of 1740–1741 is different from the Great Famine of the 19th century. By the mid-19th century, potatoes made up a greater portion of Irish diets, with adverse consequences when the crop failed, causing famine from 1845 to 1852. The Great Famine differed by "cause, scale and timing" from the Irish Famine of 1740–1741. The Great Famine was instead caused by an oomycete infection which destroyed much of the potato crop for several years running, a crisis exacerbated by the laissez-faire policies of the ruling British government, continued exportation of food, insufficient relief, rigid government regulations and state sponsored evictions.
Background
In 1740, Ireland had a population of 2.4 million people, most of whom depended on grains and potatoes as their staple foods. Half their expenses for food went for grain, 35% for animal products and the remainder for potatoes. Some survived only on oatmeal, buttermilk and potatoes. Over a year, in the period 1776-1778, daily consumption of potatoes was estimated at per person. Diets varied according to village locations and individual income, with many people supplementing these staples with river, lake or sea fish, especially herring, and small game such as wild duck. At the time social welfare was an entirely private initiative undertaken on a local level by the village or parish, with the government not being oriented to large-scale relief efforts.Cause
An extraordinary climatic shock struck Ireland and the rest of Europe between December 1739 and September 1741 following a decade of relatively mild winters. Its cause remains unknown. Charting its course sharply illuminates how climate events can result in famine and epidemic disease, and affect economies, energy sources, and politics.In the winter of 1739–1740, Ireland suffered seven weeks of very cold weather known as the "Great Frost".
Although no barometric or temperature readings for Ireland survive from the Great Frost, a scattered few records survive from Englishmen who made personal readings. The mercury thermometer was invented 25 years earlier by German pioneer Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. Indoor values during January 1740 were as low as. The one outdoor reading that has survived was stated as "thirty-two degrees of frost," equivalent to. This did not include the effects of the wind chill factor, which would have been severe. This kind of weather was "quite outside the Irish experience," notes David Dickson, author of Arctic Ireland: The Extraordinary Story of the Great Frost and Forgotten Famine of 1740–41.
In the period before the crisis in January 1740, the winds and terrible cold intensified, yet barely any snow fell. Ireland was locked into a stable and vast high-pressure system which affected most of Europe in a broadly similar way, from Scandinavia and Russia to northern Italy. Rivers, lakes, and waterfalls froze and fish died in these first weeks of the Great Frost. People tried to avoid hypothermia without using up winter fuel reserves in a matter of days. People living in the country were probably better off than city-dwellers because in Ireland country people had cabins sheltered by turf stacks, while the latter, especially the poor, dwelt in freezing basements and garrets.
Coal dealers and shippers during normal times ferried coal from Cumbria and South Wales to east and south-coast ports in Ireland, but the ice-bound quays and frozen coal yards temporarily stopped such trade. When in late January 1740 the traffic across the Irish Sea resumed, retail prices for coal soared. Desperate people stripped bare hedges, ornamental trees, and nurseries around Dublin to obtain substitute fuel. Also affected by the Frost were the pre-industrial town mill-wheels, which froze. The machinery was stilled that customarily ground wheat for the bakers, tucked cloth for the weavers, and pulped rags for the printers. The abrupt weather change disrupted craft employment and food processing.
Protestants and alms-giving
The municipal leaders paid closer attention to the state of urban and rural artisans and tradespeople because of their contributions to the commercial economy on which the landowners depended. These leaders knew from experience that "an unemployed or hungry town often became a sickly town and such sickness might be no respecter of class or wealth". This is what happened as the Frost continued.The propertied classes began to respond to fuel and food shortages when the Frost was about two weeks old. The Church of Ireland parish clergy solicited donations, which they converted into free rations in the city parishes, distributing nearly 80 tons of coal and ten tons of meal four weeks into the Frost. The Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Devonshire, in an unprecedented move on 19 January 1740, prohibited the export of grain out of Ireland to any destination except Britain. This action was in response to Cork Corporation, which remembered vividly the city events of eleven years earlier when serious food riots erupted and four people died.
In Celbridge, County Kildare, Katherine, the widow of William Conolly, commissioned the construction of the Conolly Folly in 1740 to give employment to local workers. In 1743, she had The Wonderful Barn built nearby as a food store in case of further famines.
Potatoes deteriorate
The Great Frost affected the potato, which was one of the two main staples in rural Ireland. Potatoes typically were left in storage in gardens and in special storage in fields. The crops from the autumn of 1739 were frozen, destroyed and inedible. They could not serve as seeds for the next growing season. "Richard Purcell, one of the best rural witnesses of the unfolding crisis, reported in late February that had the Frost not occurred, there would have been enough potatoes in his district to have kept the country fed until August , indicating a rare local abundance of the crop. 'But both root and branch…is destroyed every where', except for 'a few which happen'd to be housed', and 'in a very few deep…and turfy moulded gardens where some, perhaps enough for seed for the same ground, are sound.'"At that time, potatoes were typically stored in the fields where they were grown, in earthen banks known as potato clamps. They were put among layers of soil and straw that normally prevented frost from penetrating deeply enough to destroy the contents of the clamp. This disruption of the agricultural cycle created problems in Ireland in the winter of 1740–1741.
Spring drought, 1740
In spring 1740, the expected rains did not arrive. Although the Frost dissipated, the temperatures remained low and the northerly winds fierce. The drought killed off animals in the field, particularly sheep in Connacht and black cattle in the south.By the end of April, it destroyed much of the tillage crops sown the previous autumn, and grains were more important in the diet than were potatoes. The important corn crop also failed, which resulted in greater mortality in Ireland than in Britain or the Continent.
Grains were so scarce that the Irish hierarchy of the Catholic Church allowed Catholics to eat meat four days each week during Lent, but not everyone could afford meat. The potato crisis caused an increase in grain prices, resulting in smaller and smaller loaves of bread for the old price. Dickson explains that the "wholesale rise in the price of wheat, oats and barley reflected not just the current supply position, but the dealers' assessment as to the state of things later in the year."
By summer 1740, the Frost had decimated the potatoes, and the drought had decimated the grain harvest and herds of cattle and sheep. Starving rural dwellers started a "mass vagrancy" towards the better-supplied towns, such as Cork in southern Ireland. By mid-June 1740, beggars lined the streets.
Food riots
With the soaring cost of food, hungry townspeople "vented their frustration on grain dealers, meal-mongers and bakers, and when they turned to direct action the most likely flashpoints were markets or warehouses" where food owners stored bulk food. The first "flareup" occurred at Drogheda, north of Dublin on the east coast of Ireland, in mid-April. A band of citizens boarded a vessel laden with oatmeal, which was preparing to depart for Scotland. They removed the rudder and sails. The officials made sure that Scotland would receive no more food from their port. They, like the Cork Corporation officials, wanted no trouble from the Irish citizens.A riot broke out in Dublin on Saturday and Sunday near the end of May 1740 when the populace believed that bakers were holding off baking bread. They broke into the bakers' shops and sold some of the loaves, giving the money to the bakers. Other people simply took the bread and left. On Monday, rioters raided to take the meal from mills near the city and resold it at discounted prices. Trying to restore order, troops from the Royal Barracks killed several rioters. City officials tried to "smoke out hoarders of grain and to police food markets, but prices remained stubbornly high throughout the summer".
Similar skirmishes over food continued in different Irish cities throughout the summer of 1740. The War of the Austrian Succession began, interrupting trade as Spanish privateers captured ships bound for Ireland, including those carrying grain. Linen, salted beef and pickled butter were Ireland's chief export earners, and the war endangered this trade as well.