Tag Archives: Famine

What’s the skinny?

The Great Hunger tweetz:

There is a little over a week left before The Great Hunger movie crowdfunder starts – make sure you join the mailing list (at link below) help us make the movie the establishment doesn’t want made – we can’t do it without you!

The Great Hunger movie

Thanks John Gallen

Meanwhile…

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Yesterday

Kildare Street, Dublin 2.

Ciara Blanch (above) outside the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Skills campaigning for a specific day to mark the irish Famine..

Ciara’s father Michael Blanch *top second right( is chairman of the Irish Famine Community, which is lobbying to have a National Famine Memorial Day  “to remember the victims and emigrants of An Gorta Mór”.

Irish Famine Community (Facebook)

Rollingnews

famine

The Famine memorial in the north eastern corner of Stephen’s Green [behind  the Wolfe Tone statue]

Philip Slattery writes:

What’s up with the Famine statue [by Edward Delaney] in Stephens Green? For the past six months it was closed off by barriers and fancy brick work was being put down around it. Noticed today that the barriers and bricks are gone. Wonder how much Dublin City Council wasted on this non-starter….

Anyone?

Update:

…I can confirm that as St Stephens Green has been designated a National Monument, an application is currently with DAHG seeking ministerial consent to re-pave the area around the Famine Sculpture. The works that you currently see there are samples chosen and the consent is awaited before any works commence and have been cordoned off for health and safety purposes…..

From the Office of Public Works via an email sent in May to Eamon Delaney, son of the Famine memorial sculptor

[Professor Cormac] O Grada, a leading expert on famine, said there were many rumors about it in Ireland, but one documented report involved a John Connolly in the West of Ireland who came before the court on theft charges.
In the course of the prosecution it emerged that the family were in such desperate straits that his wife had eaten some of the flesh off the leg of the dead body of her son.

 

Cannibalism Was Likely Practiced In Irish Famine Says Leading Expert-N(Niall O’Dowd, Irish Central)

A ledger, discovered in Co Waterford, has come to light which contains the “Relief List” of the local destitute in 1847. The poignant document contains the names, addresses, ages and other personal details of people applying for daily food rations during the Famine. Claimants were categorised as being either “Helpless Poor” or “Able-Bodied Poor”.

Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton could have written the instructions designed “to deter dishonest persons who are in employment or earning a livelihood from registering themselves as destitute and from applying for relief”.

The Victorian pen pushers   insisted that starving claimants – who were dying in droves – “must apply in person daily” or else “send a medical certificate of illness”.

 

 

Welfare Claimants: Deserving And Undeserving Poor (Michael Parsons, Irish Times – scroll down)