Great Famine (Ireland) - Death Toll

Death Toll

It is not known exactly how many people died during the period of the Famine, although it is believed more died from diseases than from starvation. State registration of births, marriages or deaths had not yet begun, and records kept by the Roman Catholic Church are incomplete. Eyewitness accounts have helped medical historians identify both the ailments and effects of famine, and have been used to evaluate and explain in greater detail features of the famine. In Mayo, English Quaker William Bennett wrote of

three children huddled together, lying there because they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly, their little limbs ... perfectly emaciated, eyes sunk, voice gone, and evidently in the last stages of actual starvation.

Revd Dr. Traill Hall, a Church of Ireland rector in Schull, described

the aged, who, with the young — are almost without exception swollen and ripening for the grave.

Marasmic children also left a permanent image on Quaker Joseph Crosfield who in 1846 witnessed a

heart-rending scene poor wretches in the last stages of famine imploring to be received into the house...Some of the children were worn to skeletons, their features sharpened with hunger, and their limbs wasted almost to the bone...

William Forster wrote in Carrick-on-Shannon that

the children exhibit the effects of famine in a remarkable degree, their faces looking wan and haggard with hunger, and seeming like old men and women.

One possible estimate has been reached by comparing the expected population with the eventual numbers in the 1850s -see Irish population analysis. Earlier predictions expected that by 1851 Ireland would have a population of 8–9 million. A census taken in 1841 revealed a population of slightly over 8 million. A census immediately after the famine in 1851 counted 6,552,385, a drop of almost 1.5 million in 10 years. Modern historian R.J. Foster estimates that 'at least 775,000 died, mostly through disease, including cholera in the latter stages of the holocaust'. He further notes that 'a recent sophisticated computation estimates excess deaths from 1846 to 1851 as between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000...; after a careful critique of this, other statisticians arrive at a figure of 1,000,000.' In addition, in excess of 1 million Irish emigrated to Great Britain, U.S., Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, while millions emigrated over following decades.

Perhaps the best-known estimates of deaths at a county level are those by Joel Mokyr. The range of Mokyr's mortality figures goes from 1.1 million to 1.5 million Famine deaths in Ireland between 1846 and 1851. Mokyr produced two sets of data which contained an upper-bound and lower-bound estimate, which showed not much difference in regional patterns. Because of such anomalies, Cormac Ó Gráda revisited the work of S. H. Cousens. Cousens' estimates of mortality relied heavily on retrospective information contained in the 1851 census. The death tables, contained in the 1851 census have been rightly criticised, as underestimating the true extent of mortality, Cousens' mortality of 800,000 is now regarded as much too low. There were a number of reasons for this, because the information was gathered from the surviving householders and others and having to look back over the previous 10 years, it underestimates the true extent of disease and mortality. Death and emigration had also cleared away entire families, leaving few or no survivors to answer the questions on the census.

Another area of uncertainty lies in the descriptions of disease given by tenants as to the cause of their relatives' deaths. Though Wilde's work has been rightly criticised as underestimating the true extent of mortality, it does provide a framework for the medical history of the Great Famine. The diseases that badly affected the population fell into two categories, famine-induced diseases and diseases of nutritional deficiency. Of the nutritional deficiency diseases the most commonly experienced were starvation and marasmus, as well as condition called at the time dropsy. Dropsy (Edema) was a popular name given for the symptoms of several diseases, one of which, kwashiorkor, is associated with starvation. The greatest mortality, however, was not from nutritional deficiency diseases, but from famine-induced ailments. The malnourished are very vulnerable to infections; therefore, they were more severe when they occurred. Measles, diarrhoeal diseases, tuberculosis, most respiratory infections, whooping cough, many intestinal parasites and cholera were all strongly conditioned by nutritional status. Potentially lethal diseases, such as smallpox and influenza, were so virulent that their spread was independent of nutrition.

A significant cause spreading disease during the Famine was "social dislocation." The best example of this phenomenon was fever, which exacted the greatest toll of death. In the popular mind, as well as among much medical opinion, fever and famine are closely related. This view was not wholly mistaken, but the most critical connection was the congregating of the hungry at soup kitchens, food depots, overcrowded work houses where conditions were ideal for spreading infectious diseases such as typhus, typhoid and relapsing fever. As to the diarrhoeal diseases, their presence was the result of poor hygiene, bad sanitation and dietary changes. The concluding attack on a population incapacitated by famine was delivered by Asiatic cholera. Cholera had visited Ireland, briefly in the 1830s. But in the following decade it spread uncontrollably across Asia, through Europe, and into Britain and finally reached Ireland in 1849.

On the 1851 census, both Cormac Ó Gráda & Joel Mokyr would also describe it as a famous but flawed source. They would contend that the combination of institutional and individuals figures gives "an incomplete and biased count" of fatalities during the famine. Ó Gráda referencing the work of W. A. MacArthur, writes, specialists have long known the Irish death tables left a lot to be desired in terms of accuracy. As a result, Ó Gráda says to take the Tables of Death at face value would be a grave mistake, as they seriously undercount the number of deaths both before and during the famine.

In 1851, the census commissioners collected information on the number who died in each family since 1841, the cause, season and year of death. Its disputed findings were as follows: 21,770 total deaths from starvation in the previous decade, and 400,720 deaths from disease. Listed diseases were fever, dysentery, cholera, smallpox and influenza; the first two being the main killers (222,021 and 93,232). The commissioners acknowledged that their figures were incomplete and that the true number of deaths was probably higher: "The greater the amount of destitution of mortality...the less will be the amount of recorded deaths derived through any household form; – for not only were whole families swept away by disease...but whole villages were effaced from off the land." A later historian has this to say: "In 1851, the Census Commissioners attempted to produce a table of mortality for each year since 1841... The statistics provided were flawed and probably under-estimated the level of mortality..."

Other, perhaps less reliable and likely underestimates are that the event led to the deaths of approximately 1 million people through starvation and disease; a further million are thought to have emigrated as a result of the famine. Some scholars estimate that the population of Ireland was reduced by 20–25%. All of this occurred while taxes, rents, and food exports were being collected and sent to British landlords, in an amount surpassing £6 million.