The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 (35 page)

The agricultural writer Arthur Young, touring through Ireland in 1779,
had written glowingly of the potato and its ability to feed people. But as
the population soared and yields dropped, the potato's disadvantages be came apparent. Lumpers did not keep from one year to the next, so one
could not rely on the previous year's crop as a cushion against a poor harvest. Ireland's poor, already living on an inferior potato with dubious nutritional value, thus had no food reserves. They were also running out of
land. Ireland's population had risen rapidly until it was over one-half the
combined population of England and Wales. The rapid rise put severe
pressure on farming land even as larger farmers increasingly converted
their land to grain or stock raising for export. The conversions forced poor
potato growers higher into the hills and on to ever less fertile land. Inevitably, crop yields fell. During the often hungry summer months, people
were tempted to consume their seed potatoes, even to dig up their new
crops as soon as the tubers formed. Year after year, as the distress intensified, thousands of Irish migrated to North America to escape increasingly
difficult circumstances at home. Many commentators on both sides of the
Irish Channel became voices of doom. "The condition of Ireland becomes
worse and worse," wrote John Wiggins in The Monster Misery of Ireland,
published in 1844. Ireland was "a house built upon sand ... and must inevitably fall the moment that the winds blow and the waves rage, or even
with the first and slightest gale."13 He urged immediate action.

But it was too late. A tiny fungus bred on the other side of the Atlantic
was already on its way to Europe. Another observer, Dr. Martin Doyle,
wrote in his letters on the state of Ireland that "should a dearth of provision occur, famine and pestilence will set in together, and rid us probably
of a million."14 The disaster, waiting to happen, was compounded by indifference and inertia. A series of Parliamentary Commissions examined
the state of Ireland but did nothing. In the memorable words of Austin
Bourke: "Each in turn lifted the lid of the cauldron, looked helplessly
into the mess of injustice, prejudice, starvation, and despair, and quietly
put the lid on again."'s

Potatoes, like all crops, are susceptible to disease. Outbreaks of a viral disease called curl came in 1832-4 and were followed by a dry rot epidemic.
Neither did lasting damage. Then, in 1843, an outbreak of potato blight, phytophthora infestans, sometimes called "late blight," attacked growing
crops in the hinterland of major eastern United States ports. Extremely
fast moving, its spores germinated on the leaves and stems of the potato
plant or in the surrounding soil. The disease first appeared as black spots,
then as a furry growth. The plant soon decayed and the growing tubers
became discolored, pulpy messes. A distinctive smell was often the first
sign that blight had struck. Over the next two years the disease spread
rapidly from the New York-Philadelphia area both into the southeastern
United States and westward into the Great Lakes region and Canada. Inevitably, the spores crossed the Atlantic. No one knows how, from where,
or when the blight spread to Europe. Some authorities believe it arrived
in potatoes imported from Peru, on ships carrying guano fertilizer (fertilizer from bird droppings) as early as 1844. Others point to Mexico or
North America as sources. Once established, the blight spread rapidly,
helped by the prevailing weather conditions.

The summer of 1845 was cold, sunless and wetter than normal, but by
no means unusual for the mid-nineteenth century. Shallow, thundery depressions with highly variable winds penetrated into the Continent. The
damp, chill weather and shifting winds favored the transport of blight
spores in all directions. At the time, potato crops throughout Europe
were extremely susceptible to blight, and the Lumper was even more so
than most. The disease worked through plots of growing Lumpers with
terrifying rapidity, sometimes rotting the tubers almost overnight.

Blight was first reported in Belgium in July 1845. By August, infected
foliage appeared in fields around Paris and in the Rhineland; southern
England and the Channel Islands were affected at about the same time.
There was no effective antidote. Botanists and learned societies scrambled
for an explanation of the unknown infection, attributing it to the unusually cool and gray summer, to progressive degeneration of the potato, or
even to "some aerial taint originating in outer space." Meanwhile, the
blight spread inexorably. At the end of August, the first reports of infection were reported from the Botanic Gardens in Dublin.

At first, the Irish newspapers played down the significance of the infestation, appearing as it did at harvest time. Public panic set in during October, when millions of ripe tubers turned rotten in the fields. "Where
will Ireland be in the event of a universal potato rot?" asked Dr. John Lindley, the editor of the widely read Gardener's Chronicle.'6 The crop
losses were heaviest in areas where the summer had been wettest. The
mean loss from tuber rot in Ireland in 1845 was about 40 percent and the
threat of famine immediate.

At first, potatoes were in plentiful supply. People hastened to sell their
sound tubers or to eat them at once. The famine did not truly begin until
five or six months later, when every fragment of potato had been consumed. Relief measures were complicated by the lack of good roads and
by the chronic insolvency of many Irish landlords, who were virtually
powerless to help their tenants. In London, Prime Minister Sir Robert
Peel responded to the reports of crop failure by appointing a Scientific
Commission to diagnose the problem, report on the extent of the damage, and recommend an antidote. The Commission estimated that as
much as half of the crop was destroyed or rotting in storage, failed to diagnose the cause, and raised such an alarm that Peel ordered the immediate importation of £100,000-worth of maize from the United States. Peel
intended this measure not as a way of feeding the starving potato farmer
but as a way of controlling grain prices cheaply, without any danger of the
government being accused of interfering in the cereal marketplace.

By April 1846, the House of Commons learned that people were eating their seed potatoes. About a third less hectarage of potatoes was
planted as a result, making scarcity inevitable. The spring was cold and
wet, but May and June turned warm and dry. Hopes ran high. The growing potatoes looked luxuriant in the fields. Then in early August, the
blight appeared a full two months earlier than the previous year, progressing east and northeastward on the wings of the prevailing winds at a rate
of about eighty kilometers a week. Almost every potato was lost. Father
Mathew, a celebrated temperance advocate of the day, wrote how he had
traveled from Cork to Dublin on July 27: "This doomed plant bloomed
in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest. Returning on the third instant I beheld with sorrow one wild waste of putrefying vegetation. In
many places the wretched people were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitterly the destruction
that had left them foodless."17 For hundreds of miles, the fields were
black as if ravaged by fire. The stench of rotting potatoes filled the air.

In 1845, the distress had been severe but not overwhelming, thanks to
an above average harvest and at least partially effective relief efforts. This
time, the failure was complete. There were not even any freshly harvested
potatoes to tide over the hungry. Every scrap of clothing and other possessions, even bedding, had already been pawned or sold for food. Not a
green potato field could be seen from Limerick to Dublin. Torrential rain
fell, violent thunderstorms ravaged the blackened fields, and dense fog
hovered over the blighted land. On September 2, the London Times
called the potato crop a "total annihilation."

Poor cereal crops made 1846 a year of widespread food shortages in
Europe, forcing countries to bid against one another for cargoes of food
imports from the Mediterranean and North America. France and Belgium paid high prices, England was outbid, and Irish relief suffered. Private merchants bought up stocks avidly for Ireland, but they were the
worst kind of traders, who sold grain in tiny lots at enormous prices to relief organizations and those few individuals who could afford it. Official
indifference compounded the problem. High British government officials
knew less of Ireland and its economics than they knew about China. Irish
peasants were told to eat grain instead of potatoes, but at the same time
the government did nothing to curb the export of grain from the starving
country. Free-trade doctrines prevailed, whereby the exporting of grain
would provide money for Irish merchants to purchase and import lowpriced food to replace the potato. No one in the impoverished west of Ireland knew anything about importing food, nor did the infrastructure exist to get it there.

By late September, the situation was desperate. People were living off
blackberries and cabbage leaves. Shops were empty. Troops were sent to
protect wagons carrying oats for export. Even if the exported food had
been kept in the country, the people would not have been much better
off, for they had no money to buy it. Proposals for public works to employ the hungry were stalled in Whitehall, then delayed by protests over
task work and low wages. Even the government's payments to the destitute workers were irregular because of a shortage of silver coin. The fields,
combed by emaciated families, contained not even a tiny potato. Children began to die. The weather turned cold at the end of October, and fifteen centimeters of snow fell in County Tyrone in November. Adding
to Ireland's troubles, the North Atlantic Oscillation flipped into low
mode, bringing the most severe winter in living memory.

Ireland's winters are normally mild and the poor normally spent them
indoors, where peat fires burned. This time they had to work out of doors
to survive. By November, over 285,000 poor were laboring on public relief works for a pittance. Many died of exposure. Thousands more poured
into towns, abandoning their hovels in ditches and near seashores. Inevitably, farm work was neglected, with few tilling the soil, partly because
the peasants feared, with reason, that landlords would seize their harvests
for rent. A Captain Wynne visited Clare Abbey in the west and confessed
himself unmani,:d by the extent of the suffering: "witnessed more especially among the women and little children, crowds of which were to be
seen scattered over the turnip fields like a flock of famished crows, devouring the raw turnips, mothers half naked, shivering in the snow and
sleet, uttering exclamations of despair, while their children were screaming with hunger."18 Even the dogs had been eaten.

Magistrate Nicholas Cummins of Cork visited Skibbereen in the western part of the country, entered a hovel that appeared deserted, and found
"six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearances dead ... huddled
in a corner on some filthy straw, their sole covering what seemed to be a
ragged horsecloth, their wretched legs hanging about, naked above the
knees. I approached with horror, and found by a low moaning they were
alive-they were in fever, four children, a women and what had once
been a man." 19 Within minutes, Cummins was surrounded by more than
two hundred starving men and women. Rats were devouring corpses lying in the streets. The government in London argued that relief was the
responsibility of "local relief committees." None existed, and food was
plentiful in Skibbereen market. But the poor had no money to buy it.

Disease followed inevitably in the wake of hunger. Rural hospitals and
clinics were few, the medical infrastructure grossly inadequate, the workhouses overwhelmed with dying victims. Patients lay on the ground. The
government provided tented hospitals and other relief measures, but too
little too late. Ten times more people died of fevers than of starvation itself, just as they had in Europe in 1741.

Despite a glorious summer and healthy crops, the famine continued
into 1847. A shortage of seed potatoes meant that only about a fifth of
the normal hectarage was planted, so the harvest, although superb, was
inadequate to feed the people. Nor could the poor buy food, now a third
cheaper than the year before: there was no employment to be had, nor
wages to be earned. The British government, believing firmly in the sanctity of the free market, pursued the ideology of minimal intervention that
dominated many European governments of the day. Ministers believed
that poverty was a self-imposed condition, so the poor should fend for
themselves. They were motivated mainly by fear of social unrest and a
concern not to offend politically powerful interests such as corn merchants and industrialists. A financial crisis in England caused by sharply
falling grain prices and wild speculation in railway shares gave the government an excuse to provide no more relief funding for Ireland, where
corpses lay by roadsides because no one was strong enough to bury them.
People died at the gates of workhouses, landlords were assassinated by
their desperate tenants. As violence broke out, the authorities called in
the military. By the end of 1847, 15,000 troops were billeted in a country
pauperized by starvation and fever, where employment was nonexistent.