*Ø* Blogmanac | June 25, 1842 | An Gorta Mor – The Great Irish Famine

A great calamity befell the Emerald Isle in the 1840s, leading not only to immense suffering, but also to a mass emigration that greatly affected many countries including my own. A very high proportion of Australians, including your almanackist, have Irish blood. Though my great-grandparents left the Old Country in the 1880s, many were the Irish settlers in Australia and their culture still exerts a very strong influence. Many of the immigrants joined the Australian Gold Rush of 1851, just as many Irish went to California two years erlier to become 'Forty-niners'.

On this day in 1842, The Illustrated London News reported on the famine in Ireland (An Gorta Mor).

“The foregoing illustration is intended to convey an idea of the state of desperation to which the poor of Galway have been reduced by the present calamitous season of starvation; and although, according to present appearances, there is every reason to rely on the goodness of Providence for an abundant and early relief, yet it is calculated that more than another month of suffering and privation must elapse before succour arrives. The scene represented above is an attack upon a potato store in the town of Galway, on the 13th of the present month, when the distress had become too great for the poor squalid and unpitied inhabitants to endure their misery any longer ...

"“The discontent of the sufferers had been aggravated by the unfeeling, and, there was some reason to suspect, the dishonest artifices of those who had food to sell. Farmers, known to have abundant supplies of potatoes, had not only refused to part with any portion of them at the present high prices, but had actually sent into the markets and made purchases, in order to augment the scarcity.” Source

It seems there will always be speculators. As I write, I am observing a daddy-longlegs spider working to entrap a struggling moth on my desk. He reminds me of the people who profit from the misery of others, the only difference being that a spider doesn't know any better.

More reports on An Gorta Mor, from The Illustrated London News
More reports on An Gorta Mor, from The Times of London