Happy St. Patrick's Day 2025 ~ Irish History and America

 Wishing everyone a Happy St. Patrick's Day

Today is a good day to review Irish history.  Its history has often been painful. 

The Irish Famine

A potato blight struck across Europe, arriving in Ireland in 1845.  The culprit was a pathogen “P. infestans” which infects the plant through its leaves, leaving behind shriveled, inedible tubers.  A dreadful famine soon fell upon the green island of Ireland.

The Irish were dependent on tubers for survival.  Ireland was mired in extreme poverty as a result of centuries of British rule and oppression. Packed with nutrition and easy to grow, potatoes were the only practical crop that could flourish on the minuscule plots doled out by wealthy British Protestant landowners. So the larger issue, often overlooked, was the direct political situation in Ireland, the cause of its economic and social impacts.

The Irish ate potatoes for dinner. They ate them for lunch. They even ate them for breakfast.  The average adult consumed 13 pounds per day.

Through seven terrible years of famine, Ireland’s landscape authored tales of the macabre. Barefoot mothers with clothes dripping from their bodies clutched dead infants in their arms as they begged for food. Wild dogs searching for food fed on human corpses. The country’s legendary 40 shades of green stained the lips of the starving who fed on tufts of grass in a futile attempt for survival. Desperate farmers sprinkled their crops with holy water, and hollow figures with eyes as empty as their stomach scraped Ireland’s stubbled fields with calloused hands searching for one, just one, healthy potato. Typhus, dysentery, tuberculosis and cholera tore through the countryside as horses maintained a constant march carting spent bodies to mass graves.

More than just the pestilence was responsible for the Great Hunger. A political system ruled by London and an economic system dominated by British absentee landlords were co-conspirators. For centuries British laws had deprived Ireland’s Catholics of their rights to worship, vote, speak their language and own land, horses and guns. Now, with a famine raging, the Irish were denied food. Under armed guard, food convoys continued to export wheat, oats and barley to England while Ireland starved.

Ireland’s population was nearly halved by the time the potato blight abated in 1852. While approximately 1 million perished, another 2 million abandoned the land. Most of the exiles—nearly a quarter of the Irish nation—washed up on the shores of the United States. They knew little about America except one thing: It had to be better than the hell that was searing Ireland.

Herded like livestock in dark, cramped quarters, the Irish passengers lacked sufficient food and clean water.   Each adult was apportioned just 18 inches of bed space—children half that. Disease and death clung to the rancid vessels like barnacles, and nearly a quarter of the 85,000 passengers who sailed to North America aboard the aptly nicknamed “coffin ships” in 1847 never reached their destinations. 

Source:  https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis

The Irish often had no money when they came to America. So, they settled in the first cities in which they arrived. They crowded into homes, living in tiny, cramped spaces. A lack of sewage and running water made diseases spread. When the Irish families moved into neighborhoods, sometimes other families moved out. They feared that the Irish would bring disease and crime. These people were prejudiced against the Irish.

Irish immigrants often entered the workforce by taking low-status and dangerous jobs that were avoided by other workers. Many Irish women became household workers. Many Irish men labored in coal mines and built railroads and canals. The Irish often suffered job discrimination. 

The plenty of the “new world” of America amazed some Irish immigrants, however.  An interesting story is told of an Irish immigrant who travelled to Colorado to work.  “He wrote a letter “home” bragging that he was doing so well in America that he could now afford to eat meat twice a week, far more often than he had in Ireland. When his employer saw the letter, he asked the immigrant why he did not tell the truth which was that he ate meat every day, three times a day.”  The immigrant related they would absolutely disbelieve him.  Eating meat on a daily basis seemed like a farfetched tale to hungry Irish at home in Ireland.

Click below ~ Irish immigrants in America:

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Sources:  

Moving beyond “Rags to Riches”: New York's Irish Famine Immigrants and Their Surprising Savings Accounts Tyler Anbinder, The Journal of American History  Published By: Oxford University Press, Original source: Counsel for Immigrants, 1834

History.com