Irish Potato Famine Part Two- Ground Shrouds at the Ground Round

This week we continue our series on the Irish Potato Famine of 1845. We start to dive into the committee relief programs that Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel instated. He wanted the Irish to work for wages to buy subsidized food, instead of bartering or getting food donated to them.  London also expected the middle class of Ireland to donate to the cause, but they were very hesitant because they feared for their own prosperity. 

Most of the country survives the 1845 harvest, although the prosperous Irish have started to leave the country in hopes of finding greener pastures. And while the public works programs paid several hundred thousand men, they mostly built roads to nowhere. And at the beginning of the harvest of 1846, the potato blight returns. 

Sources: The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by John Kelly

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

But don't be ashamed if you get confused when you talk to your friends or you watch the news. They try to tell you where it all went wrong. Now you don't need to all you just sing this song. It was rich people stacking the dick. Rich people with big pet chicks. Rich people to have in a bar. Rich people and hello everybody and welcome to Eat the Rich.

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I am Emily Walsh and I am here with my co-host and husband, Danny Moss. What up? What just so much.

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Just a quick cue. What up? What up?

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Um the sky. The SP, maybe. I don't know. Yeah. It's a financial term.

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Spain is doing well.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

What is?

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Spain.

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Spain. Good for them. They probably feel happy. Because of the the World Cup.

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Correct. The Cup of the World. Cup of the World.

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I watched Zero Minutes.

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Yeah, I also it was a thing that I wanted to care more about.

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I think we'll catch it next time. Yeah. I understand that's four years away, but I think we'll catch it next time.

SPEAKER_05 1:20

This is not a like, you know, uh savage American not liking uh, you know, the world sport.

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No, we just have a child.

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We just have a child and we don't like her to look at screens and a podcast and jobs and stuff. But next in next in four years from now, watch it. She'll watch. Maybe she'll be a f a footballer. Yeah, maybe she'll be goal and she'll run around.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

The beer garden.

SPEAKER_05 1:43

That'd be fun.

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That'd be fun. That'd be fun. Where are you at uh beverage wise, my friend?

SPEAKER_05 1:48

Bev-wise. Uh I could I could use more bev for that. Baby bev watch? Yeah, I I only had one coffee today. Oh. Uh it was weak. That is weak. And uh I took a nap at lunch.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Honestly, congratulations. Thank you. I would have loved a nap at lunch.

SPEAKER_05 2:04

Yeah, yeah. But how was uh how was your day? How's your bev sites?

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Good, good day. Um, good baby bev, but baby up at 5 30, like she loves to do these days. Coffee in the morning. She's not up early girly. She's an up early girly. Went to the beach, Frankie's first beach day.

SPEAKER_05 2:21

Ooh, beach day.

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And that was amazing. Um, but yeah, I I forgot. You know that like really good feeling you get when you've had a big fun beach day. Sure. You're kind of tired, you're like, ugh, uh, and you take a really great shower and then you take a nap. Yeah. Uh you can't do that if you have a baby.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

Oh.

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Yeah. You have to give them a shower and you stay sandy and gross, and then they nap in the car, so you there's no napping. Yeah.

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And they don't want to take an extra nap because different.

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Different. Um, but I had an afternoon coffee that I got at the beach. I'm pretty sure it was some old water that they made brown.

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Old brown water, yeah.

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Did very little for me. Um, cost seven dollars, so I feel great about all of that. Sure. And then Frankie just didn't want to just didn't want to be chill today. So she's sleeping now, finish rest. Nice. It is Monday night. We're back to being bad at this.

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But you know, we're on a, you know, it's gonna be great. There's an upswing coming.

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I feel like I have a weird like radio calmness. I don't know what's happening. I'm tired. Yeah, it's fine.

SPEAKER_05 3:40

Um I did hear um some of Fox Sports' uh coverage of the World Cup. Oh, yeah. While I was at the barbershop. And apparently this is the best World Cup that has ever happened. Why? In the greatest country in the world.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Oh.

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Because this is America. That's what I'm uh surprised.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Fox News even talks about soccer. We were exactly that's the start sport of liberals and socialists.

SPEAKER_05 4:05

They they literally there was a good segment where they were like, you know, I'm just so excited about all of the new people that uh learned about soccer for the first time, and then all of the people that learned to love America, because clearly they all did.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

They love ranch dressing, is what they love. Yeah, yeah. People are flying home, and also like Europe, you can't make fun of us anymore. You flew ranch dressing home.

SPEAKER_05 4:27

Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

You can't make fun of you can't. I'm sorry.

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But that we're all the same now.

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Flying with your own ranch made you the same as us. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_05 4:35

Yeah, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Yeah, get over it.

SPEAKER_05 4:37

You're affected.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

You're affected.

SPEAKER_05 4:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

All right, so we're talking, we're talking famine.

SPEAKER_05 4:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Feast or famine, still famine, if you're wondering. Still famine. Still famine.

SPEAKER_05 4:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

Uh yeah, this is part two of the Irish Potato Famine. And as always, our source for this series is The Graves Are Walking. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not trying to do a big recap because honestly, we just kind of covered potatoes and how they're important. But do you have any specific important thoughts?

SPEAKER_05 5:15

Well, I remembered how the potatoes turned to goo and goo. Uh then if if they're not stored properly, then they the ones in storage can also goofy. Yes. And uh there was some people that came up with a big plan for turning them into like basically rice cakes.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

The potato triumvirant.

SPEAKER_05 5:34

The potato triumvirant. But that was one, ineffective, two, inefficient, and three, kind of a waste of time.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

The biggest problem was they came up with a new way to store the potatoes, spent a lot of money and time handing out pamphlets about the way to store potatoes.

SPEAKER_05 5:47

The pamphlet guy did well.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

That people could not read and it did not work.

SPEAKER_05 5:51

Right. And then that was also on the like last, you know, what, 20% of potatoes that were left, anyways. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

So the famine starts in 1845. We are still in 1845 in this moment. Our prime minister is last name.

SPEAKER_05 6:06

I would not. No.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Even if it had been good, I wouldn't have said it. Um the prime minister is a guy with the last name of Peel. Oh, yeah. And all of the Brits, because Ireland is part of the UK at this moment, um, are like, hey, we're gonna try to help you, but we're not gonna help you too much. Right. Because people who need a lot of help are weak of character, and it's not the circumstances that surround them, it's that they are bad on deserving people. Yeah. So obviously, I agree with the Brit no, I but uh so they're kind of they've come up with this Irish relief committee. A guy named Ralph Rolf is in charge of that. They are trying to get American corn, aka maize, right to the people.

SPEAKER_05 6:50

They don't know how they don't have any way to process the corn.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

They don't know how to eat it, they don't know how to process it.

SPEAKER_05 6:55

The potato triumvirant is holding on to the corn anyways because they're trying to like do weird market nonsense.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Well, they don't want so the Brits don't want to give them corn to feed them, they want to give them corn to control the market price of other food. So basically, they're the Brits are trying to use this entire situation as a way to convert them to a money system, not a barter system. Right. And to convert their landowning system into something that looks more like the Brits. Meanwhile, the Irish are poorer than they've ever been, and now the one food that was keeping them alive is gone.

SPEAKER_05 7:25

Right. Yeah. All right. I'm trying to come up with a way of saying that at this point we don't think the Irish and the British are the best at the buds, doing.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Send me send me strength. Potato triumph. Send me strength.

SPEAKER_05 7:47

Yeah. They weren't good at it. They could send you a pamphlet about strength, probably.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Probably.

SPEAKER_05 7:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Yeah. So uh Queen Victoria is still in charge, and her uncle, the Duke of Cambridge, was like, the famine is silly, they can eat grass. Like it's that's that's kind of where we left off uh last week, and the Brits are still not paying much attention to the crisis.

SPEAKER_05 8:11

Is I wonder how potato consumption around the world is, uh, in terms of like, were the British eating a lot of potatoes as well?

SPEAKER_02 8:20

No one relied on it the way Ireland did.

SPEAKER_05 8:22

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

Their biggest export is beef. So I don't I don't think many people were I think most people were like, huh, no potatoes.

SPEAKER_05 8:33

Yeah, well, it's part of why I'm wondering whether they were just like, huh, no potatoes. That's I only eat potatoes once every like three weeks. Who cares?

SPEAKER_02 8:40

No, that's not why they're shitty.

SPEAKER_05 8:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

So meanwhile, where the Brits think that not much is happening, in the town of Tullycreen, Tullicrine, Tullycreen? Telecrine? Telecrine?

SPEAKER_05 8:52

I'll take your word for it.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Telecrine. You shouldn't. Um a group of Irish constabulary officers and a work crew started going up and down the streets of this town with a pack of dogs, stopping at cabins like Thomas Walters, who had a wife, ten children, and a couple of acres, but their stuff was tossed into the streets, their pigs were confiscated, and their walls were smashed. Why? Why another a widow with seven children? A priest wrote to the Dublin paper that they were ready for Christmas and their rent was paid and they had not committed a crime. And a few days later, a bailiff whose jobs whose job included collecting rent was beaten by a group of masked men and told his wife to not post any notices or collect any rent. What are these these So basically the constabulary officers are throwing people out for kind of no reason? Kind of evictions, but kind of no reason. And uh then this group of masked men are the people being thrown out, and they beat the crap out of the guy who comes to collect the rent and told his wife, hey, got it. It's a real like, I won't tell you where we're going, who we're fighting, and why kind of thing. Just get get there and then he's like, Who's copy taking? Sure. You get it. From the town. The town. Yeah. Uh so a week later.

SPEAKER_05 10:10

Do you think these constabularies, they weren't horse uh like mounted, were they? Just say the pun.

SPEAKER_02 10:18

I'm gonna kill you. It's too much too early. We got a lot together. You gotta come up with something else.

SPEAKER_05 10:23

Okay, okay. Uh mashed mashed. I'm gonna kill you with a weapon.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

A week later in Limerick, there were a mixed group of constabularies who were met by a large crowd with pitchforks, shovels, rocks, and whiskey.

SPEAKER_05 10:44

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Not a great or a really fun combination, depending on who you are. Uh and they were worried about mass evictions and said that they would die before they allowed that. But when the police advanced on them, they dispersed after three demands. Basically, they were like, hey, get out of here. And they were like, No, please.

SPEAKER_05 11:01

Or we'll throw whiskey at you.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Okay, fine, we'll go. They would have just opened their mouths. But um, but the police did come towards them, and peasants were clubbed to the ground. So things are getting this is some rough stuff very quickly. In mid-January, so this is like a few months, so it's now 1946, but we're just a few months in from harvest. Like in mid-January, the hunger really began. Some people had a week's food, some maybe up to four weeks, but some towns were quote, eating food from which so putrid and offensive that in consuming it they were obliged to leave the doors of their cabins open. Because the fat no, because the food is trash. They're eating trash. Yeah.

unknown 11:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Food prices were also on the rise. The year before, a stone, which is 14 pounds of potatoes, cost three pence in Belfast, Belfast, and now it is six and a half. So in a year, it's already more than doubled. And the pig cost was the only thing going down because people were dumping their assets. So the market was flooded with pigs, which is I learned from Gould how the market works. Uh, so a pig went from 44 shillings to 35. The problem with that is the pig is often the last asset of a lot of these peasant farmers. Uh uh.

SPEAKER_05 12:16

So now they're getting even less for and the pig was staying inside because it's the one that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

It's the one that makes pays rent, yeah, which I still don't fully understand, but that's okay. Um so one newspaper printed that a woman reported uh that you could feed your family for nine shillings a week, but a laborer at best could earn six.

SPEAKER_03 12:38

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

And that's not even counting clothing, shelter. That's just food.

SPEAKER_05 12:42

It's like bare bare minimum.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

Bare bare minimum. And people with lots of daughters were in trouble. Because while women are doing a lot of work, they're not necessarily getting a wage. Meanwhile, oat, wheat, butter, and beef are all still giant, giant, giantly exporting. That's not a phrase. They're leaving. They're going, they're leaving Ireland. The British war steamer Stromboli. Oh. It's a boat. Okay. Uh came into Galway Bay, and when the townspeople woke, their guns were trained on the harbor. So the the warship is like pointed at the harbor. And a few weeks later, Daniel O'Connell The Stromboli was threatening them.

SPEAKER_05 13:21

Yeah. Jeez.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

Yeah. Tough times. I was waiting for the pun, but you didn't connect it.

SPEAKER_05 13:27

I didn't have a pun. I was just the name did not, the seriousness of what was happening. Did not does not connect to the name.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

Does not evoke is not evoked by Stromboli. So a few weeks later, Daniel O'Connell, I don't know if you remember him, I'm pretty sure they called him the Great Liberator. He's the labor movement guy. He went to Parliament and read a list of what had been exported to Britain in 1845. 200,000 heads of livestock, two million quarters of grain, several hundred million pounds of flour. There were five million people on the verge of starvation at that point. 8 million in the country, 8.2. 5 million are on the verge of starvation. And that, quote, neglect in the present instance will be death to an or an enormous amount. So he is going to parliament. He's like, hey, not messing around.

SPEAKER_05 14:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

We're gonna die.

SPEAKER_05 14:17

Yeah, we need to sort this immediately.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

So fear was growing, but a new constabulary report said that it wasn't as dire as Irish papers were suggesting, that it had claimed between a quarter and a third of the potatoes and not five eighths of the potatoes, like the commission said.

SPEAKER_05 14:32

But it's all of them were still it was the only thing propping up this entire Also.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Why have a commission if you don't trust it? It's their commission. And they're like, the commission is wrong.

SPEAKER_05 14:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

There was also, according to the this report, a substantial amount of beef and grain. So if famine happened in the spring, it was because of high food prices and bad distribution of the food.

SPEAKER_05 14:53

So the plan to Yeah, bad distribution because they keep sending it all away from the country. Correct.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

So the plan to help them was a two-tiered system to distribute this government corn that they're getting. It is because of crying. Yes, it's more than two. Yeah. For sure.

SPEAKER_05 15:10

You get it.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

It's tiers of tears. Tears of tears. Tears of tears. They're all in a tower crying. It's just very sad. Uh so commissariat depots would supply the populated areas, and the Coast Guard would make sub-depots for the less populated areas. The corn would cost a penny a pound, and London would match grants of up to a pound for every pound money-wise. That's confusing. But uh they would match grants up to a pound for every pound raised in contributions from the gentry. So we talked about this a little bit last time, but the English have this system that's like not a law, but it's how they operate, where the poor is helped by the middle and upper class.

SPEAKER_05 15:54

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:54

They're expected to give donations. So the UK is like, we're gonna give you all of this Irish corn, but the wealthy of Ireland need to pay for it and help get it here. Um, so London's like, we're gonna match your gentry contributions, and it's like, great, zero plus zero is zero. So in January, the proprietors didn't want to give their money because they were worried about the upcoming spring, which makes sense. And Peel, the prime minister, knew this might happen. So he said he would publish their name in the paper to shame them. Oh and say that the food was contingent on their donations, but that did nothing.

SPEAKER_05 16:30

Because they're very pamphlet forward.

SPEAKER_02 16:31

And what is a newspaper if not a big pamphlet? One big pamphlet. So at the end of January, the chairman of the relief commission said that they would need a big change and that the city would need to give them five hundred thousand instead of fifty thousand, like they had promised. Like he is like, this is a problem. So Home Secretary Graham dismissed him and even cut down the commission to three people Dr. Kane, Mr. Twistleton.

SPEAKER_05 16:56

Oh, the Twistleton.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

He's the guy who doesn't want to help nobody.

SPEAKER_05 17:00

We hate him too, but his name is also silly. His name is about as silly as the strumbully. Yes. For how bad he is uh in this story.

SPEAKER_02 17:07

And uh Ruth. So Ralph. Ralph.

SPEAKER_05 17:10

Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

So he may, he could have maybe made that money with a temporary tax on the gentry, but he did not want to lose the votes. So Peel could have maybe brought in some of that money by taxing them instead of being like, could we just please have it?

SPEAKER_05 17:23

What if we just please But he didn't want to lose the votes? I'll put your name in the newspaper.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

No news is bad news. They're like, hey, I'm in the newspaper. Uh so by December, Mr. William Hewitson, an obscure part-time commiserate officer, was going to superintend the distribution of the American corn. Why is he in charge? Nobody really knows.

SPEAKER_05 17:48

Nobody knows.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

But it was going to be milled and sacked in Cork City and then delivered to the depots that would sell it at Cork. And he was going to be in charge of the milling operations because he had sent a letter bragging to Peel about being an authority on American corn. He was like, guys, I've eaten it. I know it. I love it.

SPEAKER_05 18:07

And no one is uh doing any follow-up research.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Nobody really checked in on that claim.

SPEAKER_05 18:11

And so I'm I'm I take it that he's not uh an expert on it.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

I believe he's seen a drawing of it.

SPEAKER_05 18:16

Okay. He's seen a picture of corn.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

Yeah. Not a picture. There's no photography.

SPEAKER_05 18:22

Right. Mental picture. Mental drawing.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

I said drawing because I meant drawing. He's seen a drawing.

SPEAKER_05 18:27

I know. I'm just trying to backpedal my. I'm trying to save face here. Sure. Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

So cork.

SPEAKER_05 18:33

Cork. The town. The town. Not the substance. No. Wood.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 18:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

I think it's its own thing. I don't know. But they're they're currently having a last season of normalcy. Cork is not as desperate as some of the other places, and it had been known for creating an unbeatable barrel. The best cask.

SPEAKER_05 18:53

So he uh is it the is it their Coopers that they're proud of or their brewers?

SPEAKER_02 18:59

Coopers.

SPEAKER_05 19:00

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Yes, the barrel making people. So Hewitson was there to see where they could mill this corn, but he was keeping it a secret for some reason. And there was a place called Lee Mills that had a storage capacity of 18,000 barrels. They had grinding stones and they had kilns and they could grind and dress 800 barrels of grain a week. He's also doing a terrible job because he already has gotten the numbers wrong on what the mill expects to be paid and the output of what they're going to be able to provide. Okay. He's like, yeah, they said they can do 600, but he told them 500 a week. So it's like they're already, he's not doing a great job. And he was not in any way prepared because he did not know that American maize was processed in steel mills, not with steel, not stone. So grinding stones would not be able to do it.

SPEAKER_05 19:54

Got it. So, like a normal like wheat grinding mill is a stone mill. It's not gonna work. Yeah. They use steel grinders to do orchid corn.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

Yeah. So he is like, okay, well, it's a stone mill, so we got to figure out a different stone that can work. So he called in some experts and he also chose a milling procedure that was very complex. So this is a quote from the book. It began with eight hours of kiln drying to prevent the corn from spoiling, followed by 48 hours of cooling, grinding. The next step was followed by a second cooling period of 48 hours, then sacking, and a third cooling period of a day or two, and then the corn could be safely shipped. So I think they didn't really have a great explanation on like how long the expert they were like, he's an idiot, it's gonna take six days. I think it would could have taken two to three, but it didn't really say like this is definitively what it would be. They were just like, This guy, am I right? Um, and it was going to have to take even longer because the stones had to be kept wider apart than they normally were and not driven too quickly or else it wouldn't work. I'm not really sure why. I don't know. Yeah. Um, and also even this guy is incompetent to the point that even the sacks that he picked out to be the packing sacks uh were hard to choose. And he choose chose four different options, but then the seller of the sacks didn't tag the ones he picked, so then they didn't even have the bags like ready to go. And then there were strikes of the millers, the people doing it struck. So by February, it was only producing around 600 barrels compared to the 800 to a thousand predicted. And while 230,000 bushels of American corn were due to arrive in the next few weeks, they would only be able to process 30,000 by May when the worst of the hunger was supposed to begin. So that is about like a fifteenth, yeah, maybe of what they have they're gonna be able to process to make it edible. Then Twist. Twistleton said no, the workhouses are still not going to help with outdoor relief. Because if you remember Twistleton, he's basically in charge of the workhouses where the poor can agree to essentially be prisoners. Their families are shamed. They work by the day, and they are they do get uh three hots and a cot, but nobody wants to go there. They're not even full, and they keep being like, Hey, can we at least use these workhouses to distribute this American corn? And he is like, No. This American corn on NPR.

SPEAKER_05 22:29

This American corn.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

On this week on this American Corn, we discuss the Millers and why they're striking.

SPEAKER_05 22:37

Some people will be cornering the market. Boo.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

Okay. Um, so the Treasury also didn't want to purchase any food because they were worrying, worried it would raise prices in Irish markets. So finally there was a compromise, and Ralph turned to military depots. Got it. But the military depots only had biscuits and they wouldn't compromise. They were like, we can't, we only have biscuits, but we can't spare the biscuits because they're costly and they maybe needed for the fit. You can't turn your corn into biscuits. We don't want them. We don't want them. And private food importers were doing very little because the corn law issue was still not resolved, and so they were reluctant to act. Those are a bunch of tariffs on other foods, so they just don't want to get in there. Unfortunately, the weather was also terrible that February, and the commercial shippers required more money to deliver the government provisions. One more thing. We needed one more thing. The weather's been terrible this whole time, so the boats can't even make it in. And they're like, if we're gonna get the boats in, you've got to pay us more. And they're like, Oh boy. So the Admiralty and the Navy offered a few very slow ships, and Ralph was worried about the lack of good ports and the jagged shoreline saying, quote, Providence had never intended Ireland to be a great nation. Oh, come on. Which is messed up. Super messed up. What does Rhode Island have against this country? No, you get it. But yeah, they're just they there's nowhere to park these boats on the west side of the country, basically. And so they're like, we can't even help you. You there's no place to put this boat. And everything's full of rain.

SPEAKER_05 24:09

Here it's really beautiful there.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

I would love to go. I think we should, but apparently it's tough, tough recording.

SPEAKER_05 24:16

Really rude to these people who are just suffering because of, you know, uh bag agri bad agricultural planning, uh, you know, and a macro scale that they didn't really have any control over.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

Literally, they have no control it's insane to blame them. They're just people trying to stay alive. So on a Friday in February, a man named Brian Serry was hung in front of soldiers from the Light Dragons, which is an Irish unit of soldiers, the Eighth Hussars, and the Sixth Foot, because he was being tried for attempting to kill a prominent man, Sir Francis Hopkins. He swore that he was innocent, and Father Savage, who was a popular politically calculated cleric, tried to turn him into a martyr. Sir Guy Campbell, the guy in charge, had held off the hanging for as long as he could, waiting for a possible pardon that did not come. And crimes against persons and property. I'll kill you. And because everything is terrible, crimes against persons and property had gone up a hundred percent during the year of 1845. Yeah, going from roughly 3,000 offenses to over 5,000. The crimes were also becoming more people at all.

SPEAKER_05 25:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

The crimes are also becoming more gruesome. People being beaten senseless, a woman was stripped naked and thrown on burning coals. Oh, God. This is one is rough. A 15-year-old girl lost her brother and her father, and then when her mother heard about it, dropped dead in the street. Oh, jeez. So she just is alone all of a sudden. All of a sudden. Uh, and to watch a family member die of grief because you've lost your other it's just horrific. Haunting. Haunting.

SPEAKER_05 26:09

Haunting.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Uh some folks in the House of Lords in England said that Ireland was in a state of terror and was no longer a habitable habitable habitable?

SPEAKER_05 26:21

Habitable.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Habitable habitable country. What is wrong? We are doing this the past two episodes. I've been so tired.

SPEAKER_05 26:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

And I know that that's all we say on this podcast at this point. It's like we're tired, but you guys get it. One day we're tired. When she's like in the third grade, if we're still making this podcast, yeah. We maybe look forward to that.

SPEAKER_05 26:42

Really stick her out.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

Stick her out 10 more years, because oof, boy. No, sorry. I just feel like I sound dumber than I want to be. No, you sound super smart and I love you. We're doing it. Yeah. In the 1930s, there had been a lot, or 1830s, excuse me. The 1930s haven't happened yet.

SPEAKER_05 27:04

That would have been crazy.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

The 1830s, there had been a lot of unrest and violence when Catholics had resisted tithing to their Protestant government, and the government was concerned. And of course, disease is now rising.

SPEAKER_05 27:16

I bet the government was not chill about it.

unknown 27:18

No.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

No, they like money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So by February, disease is also on the rise because people were trying to live off of the diseased potatoes. So they're having painful bowel disorders, disorders, nausea, diarrhea.

SPEAKER_05 27:35

So they're, I mean, like their whole diet before this was very potato forward, and potatoes have not a lot of nutrients. No. So like now that it's even worse nutrient-wise, like Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Also, like, I don't want to talk about diarrhea too much, but there's a lot of diarrhea in this story. Oh, I bet. And it is often in stories where people are at their worst and most desperate. And it is I I keep thinking about it because like normally, if an American adult these days gets diarrhea and they're not like super sick from something else, it's because you maybe ate something weird, you're dehydrated, you did something yourself. Yeah. It's an isolated incident. You're like, oh, okay. I'm gonna lie down, I'm gonna have ginger ale. These people are starving to death. Yeah. And the last bits of their body are leaving through their buttons. And they're experiencing that while being starving.

SPEAKER_05 28:32

And the one thing that they have to eat is also the cause. It's causing the problem.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

Yeah. It's just next level to be like, like we we also everybody beware Taco Bell lettuce. Yeah, don't go to Taco Bell. I mean, you were gonna get diarrhea anyway, but don't do it. It's just like I don't the point of this podcast is not to get on a soapbox and be like, there's starving people other places, but there are. And it's like the idea that like when one of us somebody has diarrhea now, you're like, this is the worst day of my life. But it's like it's really not. It's not. You could still go to Taco Bell. This diarrhea could get way worse. Yeah. Uh so families are quote sitting down to a meal of potatoes that an Englishman would be sorry to offer his hogs. So that's where we're at.

SPEAKER_05 29:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

Eating trash.

SPEAKER_05 29:20

I, you know, it's fun, and by fun I mean not fun at all, is that like every like 10 minutes I'm like, oh man, it's really rough. And then I'm like, it's gonna get way worse.

SPEAKER_02 29:31

Literally about to get way worse.

SPEAKER_05 29:32

Literally, the next line is like way worse.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

So uh that's not gonna kill them, unfortunately, not unfortunately. Um that's not what I meant. Yeah, no, but what is going to kill them is something called famine fever.

SPEAKER_05 29:48

Oh. Which I didn't know was a thing. Little iteration sounds scary.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

It is. So in 1816, there had been a famine, and a hundred one point five million people had been affected by famine fever, and out of that one point five million, sixty-five thousand had died.

SPEAKER_03 30:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

And at this current moment, there are only 101 fever hospitals in the country. I have to assume that's a place that can handle treating a fever.

SPEAKER_05 30:13

Yeah. But in my mind, quarantine related.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

I guess. In my mind, a fever hospital is just like a kid in the 80s with like a metal mercury thermometer, and they've like lit it on a light bulb, they're trying to warm it up, and they got it in there, and they're like, oh no, I gotta stay home and watch the prices right. Fever hospital.

SPEAKER_05 30:33

Christopher Walken is there with a bunch of cowbells.

SPEAKER_03 30:35

Why would he be there?

SPEAKER_05 30:37

Because I've got a fever.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

I'm gonna kill him with weapons.

SPEAKER_05 30:42

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I'm not gonna say it was worth it, but It wasn't because you're gonna die. Somebody's gonna enjoy that reference. Good for that.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

If you enjoyed that reference and you think you enjoyed it more, then it made me upset. Like if your joy was higher than my raid.

SPEAKER_05 31:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Let us know. You need the rich pot of Gmail. So workhouses were authorized to provide fever care if they helped. But if but they were okay. Workhouses, the places that were not allowed to give away food, do food. Were authorized to provide fever care, but if they were to help, they would need to increase the poor rate, which is the tax on the gentry, to help them, and that's not going to make anybody happy.

SPEAKER_05 31:40

And if the military helped, they could only help with fever if it was biscuit related.

SPEAKER_02 31:43

If they had biscuits. That's right. Are the biscuits too hot? Because we'll cool those down.

SPEAKER_05 31:49

We don't know anything about people fevers. We do know about biscuits.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

We know tons about biscuits, fevers. You just turn the oven off. It clears up in a matter of minutes. So in 1845, there were only 42 workhouses that made an agreement to treat fever. So already we're not doing that great. And in late February, there was a serious outbreak in County Cork from eight to ten people a day, up to 50 or 60. And by February, like end of February, nearly a hundred localities were experiencing the quote final extremity of famine. Like people are officially dying from hunger.

SPEAKER_03 32:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

And London is still kind of being calm. And the new party line in London to kind of excuse them not helping more.

SPEAKER_06 32:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

Is that surely the Irish had hid some food away. What? Because they've had to deal with so many hardships in the past. Surely they're smart enough to hide more potatoes that are also gonna turn to mush. Like it doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_05 32:46

There's no way that someone would be like, I'm gonna just starve for six months, but don't worry, I got a lot of money. Because I'll just get to starve for six more after that.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

It doesn't make any sense. So by March, things are devastating. Sure. Men are embarrassed about their need, but they're literally like in the night sucking blood from living cows to survive. That's where we're at. Cow vampires. Yeah. And in the night. Night cow vampires.

SPEAKER_05 33:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:21

That's where we're at. Instead of instead of what?

SPEAKER_05 33:28

Instead of cow tipping, they were doing a little cow sipping.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

See the thing is, if you had not rather stuff, yeah, that would have been. But you threw a bunch of garbage over here, and my cows are not gonna eat it. Yeah, sorry about that. So they're literally they're literally sipping. Uh people are boiling seaweed, they're eating grass, and women with babies are anxiously checking on them while they sleep to make sure they're still breathing. That's how hungry everybody is.

SPEAKER_05 34:03

Yeah, and uh spoiler alert, we can't digest grass people.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

Yeah, no, it's not doing nothing.

SPEAKER_05 34:09

Cows have like four stomachs to digest grass.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

But you feel full maybe for a minute if you eat like a lot of gross. Buckley it's grass in order to poop. So maybe not the best. And a vom. So they're still a barter economy, but without money and without potatoes, or yeah, kind of anything. Peasants have started selling their clothing and their food, or their clothing and their shoes to buy food, and by mid-February, so we're still months in, no committees had been formed. So even if food had showed up, there was no system to distribute it.

SPEAKER_05 34:44

So a few weeks later That is a recipe for disaster.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

Because if anything does show up, we're talking riots. We're talking riots, we're talking violence, we're talking yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:56

Not good.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

Not great. So a few weeks later, hundreds of magistrates, officers, and clergymen spread out in Ireland to distribute another pamphlet. We love a pamphlet. Um is the pamphlet edible? You know what?

SPEAKER_05 35:10

I should have thought about it. Should have thought about it.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

I've also seen paper that has seeds in it. I don't know if you've seen that.

SPEAKER_05 35:16

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

Plant that paper, you'll get a tomato plant. Maybe they should have done that. Yeah. So it's called the Instructions to Committees of Relief Districts, and it's supposed to teach them how to do this. So in Limerick, which was a major city, they only got 500 shill or 500 pounds in donations. The Aaron Islands only 71. So people are not donating. That's not enough. The Relief Commission was issuing warnings to either form a committee or take steps to preserve the good order. So basically, being like, figure out how you're gonna distribute this food or figure out how you're gonna stop rioting. Yeah. Like it's it's gotten rough. In Clamel, there were already cannons at either end of town, and the streets were full of army and police. A mob broke into every baker's shop and stores and took flour and 50 tons of oatmeal. Okay. And somebody said, Here is what the armies of the dead would look like risen from their shrouds. So picture that. Yeah. And then they just have bags of flour. I don't know what they're I guess gonna make bread with it.

SPEAKER_05 36:21

Yeah. Something, some sort of food.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

But that's where we're at. There's so many. I gotta say, if they had figured out how to monetize haunting phrasing, like if they had figured out how to like write the saddest poems of all time and make a lot of money from them, they would have been just fine. Yeah. Because this is upsetting.

SPEAKER_05 36:42

It's pretty, pretty rough.

SPEAKER_02 36:44

So as far as the Irish fighting back, there was now a rift deepening between the 71-year-old Daniel O'Connell, who we've talked about, and the 40-year 43-year-old William Smith O'Brien, who led a group within the repeal movement of Young Ireland, or called Young Ireland, and it was a group of highly my high-minded, mostly well-born gentlemen. And he himself was a limerick landowner descended from the medieval Irish king Brian Baru. So the biggest difference bet was between the two, other than the fact that O'Brien was coming from a different type of family, is that O'Connell was nonviolent to a like not to a fault, but to a T or to like just very, very strictly nonviolent. Strictly von violent. And Smith believed that force could be justified. O'Connell was also willing to work with British politicians, but Smith saw it as essentially collaboration. Any kind of working with them was collaborating with the enemy. They did join together to fight Peel's protection of life bill, which is not an abortion bill. It is a crime bill which would punish curfew violators with 15 years in Australia.

SPEAKER_03 37:52

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

Which at this point sounds amazing. Yeah. Could be Send me to Kangaroo Country.

SPEAKER_05 37:59

Do they have potatoes down there?

SPEAKER_02 38:00

Do they have potatoes andor anything else? Can I eat the snakes and spiders? Like I this is a curfew violation. Yeah. 15 years to an island. To Crime Island.

SPEAKER_05 38:13

Not Crime Island.

SPEAKER_02 38:15

Yeah. And at this point, the parliament is more preoccupied with that than the famine. They're like, the crime bill is the top of mind. And with the politicians busy, predatory landlords went against the small tenant farmers who they thought were slowing down modernization. In March, one landowner, Mrs. Gerard, thought about converting her land to pasture land because Irish beef was making so much more money than Irish grain. So soldiers from several regiments and a party of bailiffs stormed into Ballinglass, which was a village of 270 people and 61 residences that were on her land. So suddenly a wall of soldiers just burst through the mist. They're having their morning. They're like sitting on the porch, they're thinking their Irish thoughts. These soldiers burst through. There's chaos, screaming. They're knocking down their houses because nothing is constructed. It seems as if all the houses here are scenery. Like they're literally like, oh we knock the house down. I'm like, houses should not knock down.

SPEAKER_05 39:10

No, that's not how that should work.

SPEAKER_02 39:12

That's not how that should work. Dogs are freaking out. And one woman, again, a haunting phrase. Uh, a woman with a child on her breast was being hunted from three places by the bailiffs. Oh. So I don't know if she's clutching her. Yeah. The child are literally breastfeeding them, but they're she's being pursued. Yeah. And she's literally like, I don't even have there's just a puff of smoke coming out of here anyway. Like there's nothing. There's just dust and cobwebs. Why won't you leave me alone? So the people there are driven into the distance and they're trying to make new shelters of sticks and hiding behind whatever is still standing. They were driven again from this shanty town, and the bailiffs went into the ditches they were hiding in with clubs and cleared them out. And over the next people already had really rough lives.

SPEAKER_04 40:00

Why are we clubbing them?

SPEAKER_02 40:01

And I honestly cannot understand what they've done other than live on the land. And maybe that's all they've done. But they're like, you gotta get out. So for the next few weeks, this group moved from town to town, and this woman's bailiffs, the landowner's bailiffs, are pursuing them. And they started telling people that if anyone sheltered these people, they would be evicted in the same way. So this is happening in the countryside.

SPEAKER_03 40:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:27

But you know, it's now it's March 17th, it's St. Patrick's Day. Kind of celebrate that. So at Dublin Castle, there was a 900-person ball. Oh. So we're doing a full let them eat brass situation. Yeah. It's this is wild. Yeah. And they're able to just tell themselves it's not happening because they're not seeing it. Yeah. Because again, no photography. They could paint them a mental picture, I guess. But the haunting phrasing. Well, haunting to me, apparently not that effective.

SPEAKER_05 40:58

Not haunting enough. They're not worried about grave shrouds.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

Ground shrouds. Ground, ground round to the ground round? Ground shrouds. Ground? Shrouds for the ground. Girl, are you okay? No, I'm not. I just keep emphasizing how tired I am, and you keep saying we gotta make the bike. Shrouds from the ground. Go to ground round.

SPEAKER_05 41:25

No idea what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Do you know what the ground round is? No. Oh, that's a big part of the problem. The ground round was a DJIF style restaurant, DJ Friday style restaurant, where you could always get free popcorn. Okay. Kids ate free on Tuesdays. And uh they had those little ice cream Sundays in the baseball cups.

SPEAKER_04 41:49

Got it.

SPEAKER_02 41:50

We went there pretty much every Tuesday. Yeah. Uh and it was for poor people. So the ground shrouds go to ground round.

SPEAKER_05 42:00

Yeah. That makes sense. No, it doesn't. It sounds delightful.

SPEAKER_02 42:04

I would go back in a heartbeat. Yeah. Who doesn't want a little ice cream Sunday and a baseball hat? We can make that happen for you. You say that, but maybe you will. We'll find out.

SPEAKER_05 42:17

Uh okay. Wow. That was a romp of sadness.

SPEAKER_02 42:23

Is that the title of the episode? Romp of Sadness. So in March, um, the reports come out, and some places are still faring okay as far as like in the grand scheme of things. Yeah. But uh most of the reports show were showing that hunger was happening much quicker than expected and that thousands were suffering, but also things had been so bad for so long, kind of hard to tell. Being like, is this because of the potatoes? Or is this just general state of life? Okay. Um I have to tell you about a person who has possibly the most insane name of anyone we've ever had on this talk to. I mean, if you want, but what can I tell you who he is first? So he's a senior commiserate officer in his 60s, and he is getting involved in the distribution of the corn, and he felt like they needed to put the American Maze on sale before May because people are suffering and may die.

SPEAKER_03 43:28

Right.

SPEAKER_02 43:29

This man's name is Edward Pinecoffin. Oh, Edward Pinecoffin. Yeah, you know the place where you put poor dead people? What was it?

SPEAKER_04 43:39

If they're lucky, what was it? Trade. It's it's family trade.

SPEAKER_02 43:42

Edward Pinecoffin. Mr. Pinecoffin, and he keeps coming up. Mr. Pine Coffee. We're gonna keep talking about Pinecoffin. Sounds like Pinecone, but what if he was buried in like a nicer box? Like what if he didn't get buried in a pine coffin?

SPEAKER_05 43:56

It would be the rest of the family would be rolling in their graves.

unknown 44:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:02

They're pine coffin graves.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

Yeah. I couldn't come up. Ground shroud is the ground round was my verbal check for the week. Uh but so he's like, we can't wait till May to sell this corn. Things are getting bad. And my name isn't Mr. Pinecoffin. Let me tell you, as Mr. Pinecoffin, the laborers and the poor were starting to march outside of workhouses chanting and asking for help. They're like, just help us, please.

SPEAKER_03 44:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:34

And at the moment there were only 47,403 inmates taking up beds out of a hundred thousand. So less than half are being used. And Mr. Sullivan, the local justice of the peace, offered the people outside chanting to be admitted to the poor house, and no one accepted.

SPEAKER_05 44:51

Yeah, it kind of is a testament as to how terrible it must have been in that place. Yeah. If these people who were literally starving to death were like, that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 44:59

Still good on that. On March 23rd, the first death from scarcity and starvation was reported, and he was a father of five. And meanwhile, a stone of potatoes, which again, 17 pounds, went from three pence to 4.5 pence. So people are in trouble. And the relief committee is still not established. And somehow hundreds of the pamphlets went missing. No, no, no. Now people don't even know how to form the committee if the pamphlet was even to be trusted.

SPEAKER_05 45:32

No.

SPEAKER_02 45:33

The government also wanted, quote, men of standing to serve on the committees, but that was not an option everywhere. It was hard work. There were tensions between the religions because, again, the Irish Catholic versus the English Protestant. Also, whoever ran the committee in each area had to be able to record all the payments, all the distribution, everyone who got the corn. And also, they um are going to start talking about public improvement projects. So we're going to get there shortly. And some of the wealthy still were not ready to admit the need, even though people are falling down dead. The weather kept getting terrible. One of the ships that was carrying the corn, the Harriet Rockwell, not the stromboli, got caught in a gale and blown north, and some of the transportation on land was dangerous because of the people. In Cork, a supply convoy was attacked and the sacks of corn were slashed and people were dumping it into their hats, their pockets, and this is non-milled. This isn't even like they don't even know what to do with it. And someone was shot and killed before that ended. In Cork City, a stone is now selling for 11 pence, more than twice the national average. And so they opened their food depots for one day early. Not one day early before, but like one day like a month early. But a lot of people couldn't even afford the one penny for the one pound. Meanwhile, in London, they're just saying you guys are going too slow. They're finally like, maybe we should help, but not that much, but you're going too slow.

SPEAKER_05 47:08

We don't like how you're doing it. We're not going to do it. But we're not going to do it better. We should probably do it.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

But what if we did it better? So now enters Charles Edward Trevalian.

SPEAKER_05 47:19

Ooh, Trevalian.

SPEAKER_02 47:21

Yeah, he's a fancyman. He was the assistant secretary of the British Treasury. He came from a prominent family, and he would eventually be an angry old man, but people considered him one of the greatest British civil servants that existed. And he never doubted his own moral decision. Like he was like a man of his word. Got it. At 17, he had gone to the training college for the East India Company. And as an adult, he had joined the Treasury Department. And he first caught attention in the country because he was giving out free prayer books in the House of Commons. So basically walking into like the House of Representatives and being like, Do you have you heard the good word?

SPEAKER_05 48:02

These people in their pamphlets.

SPEAKER_02 48:03

But it was free. They love they love wasting paper, these people. He was also known to have a very intense. He was also known to have a very intense personality, uh, but to be very smart and organized. But he did have his complex religious, political, and economic beliefs that will shape this policy. So he was a Whig, and most Whigs were more hospital, hostile to the Irish than the Tories. So he's also part of a party that typically is not nice to the Irish. But he was a moralist, which meant that he was against public assistance because he believed it took away the incentive for change to become self-reliant. So again, a policy that helps no one. Like if if you teach a man a fish, then he'll eat and we'll be mad about it.

SPEAKER_05 48:52

It doesn't make we'll be so mad about it.

SPEAKER_02 48:54

Like there is like if you teach a man a fish, she'll eat. Like if you feed a man a fish, but like you guys aren't feeding or teaching and why aren't there any fish in your river? Get some fish. Eat the fish, idiot. And since he was part of the treasury and the treasury controlled the commiserate and the relief funding, everything was going through him. So by mid-March of 1846, he had oversight on the relief committees, the food depots, and the public work programs. Pretty big deal.

SPEAKER_03 49:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:25

The public works program was started by the Parliament on March 5th of 19 I keep writing 19, of 1886. I do the same thing. You do the same thing, but then I have to correct you and be like, I don't digest to what it is. And you're like, you're right, and then we keep going. Do you like my impression of me? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 49:42

You'd you you sound way cooler than your impression of yourself.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

So you're saying I did a bad no, I'm just kidding. So the goal was to give money for food to the people that needed it. The public works program was to give to give them wages so they could buy food. So districts would borrow government funds to do the projects, and then the local poor would earn money to buy food from the local relief committee or from a nearby merchant. So either is helpful.

SPEAKER_03 50:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 50:12

And Peel, when he planned the program, hoped that the Irish relief committees would do more than build roads. Because so far in the past, any public works program built roads. And they did kind of a bad job. And they would just be this complicated like web of roads that didn't really connect.

SPEAKER_05 50:31

And then wore out after the first big storm or something.

SPEAKER_02 50:34

And then once the fields, like once the potato situation improved, they'd be like, okay, good. See you later. Like we're clocking out now.

SPEAKER_05 50:41

Enjoy the roads.

SPEAKER_02 50:42

Yeah, basically. Basically.

SPEAKER_05 50:44

And so he was like, can we please like just do anything about the public roads?

SPEAKER_02 50:49

Yeah. What he was really hoping for was harbors, fisheries, and canals, things that could help create, you know, distribution and businesses and whatever. The problem is, um, if you wanted a loan from the government for a public works project to build a harbor, you had to pay that loan back right away. If you wanted to build the road, you didn't.

SPEAKER_05 51:09

Got it.

SPEAKER_02 51:10

Also, roads would get a 10,000. Like if you requested for help to build a road, you'd get 10,000 pounds and you'd only need to pay five back, five being a grant from the government.

SPEAKER_05 51:20

Which is why so many roads came out.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

So many roads. So more roads. So many districts requested up to a hundred half grant loans. Like there people are like, we want so many roads. We want a road to every house. We want roads on roads on roads. The budget had originally been 50,000 and it went up to, but they got up to a million applications for loans. And so that's not great. They have to up that budget. And worst of all, all of the applications, many, many of them, were for things that would only benefit the people requesting them and not the poor. Like their landowners being like, What if you built a barn on my property and I would use that barn for my business?

SPEAKER_04 52:04

I would like a railroad going from my house to Twistleton's house.

SPEAKER_05 52:10

Like it's just not it's not uh that's where I will be pouring my drinks. That type of pork? Yeah. Different pork.

SPEAKER_02 52:18

I'm gonna just start punching you in the leg because then people won't see it. That sounds fair. Um Trevalian wanted Trevalian wanted to show that public money wouldn't be so easy to get anymore. He's frustrated by the roads to nowhere. So he canceled several previously approved public works projects to be like, hey, we're not doing this.

SPEAKER_05 52:40

We don't need these roads.

SPEAKER_02 52:42

And he instated a four-step criteria for getting a loan. So was the district in distress or just close to distress? I guess you check a box. We're close. Getting closer. Uh, would it employ the poor or would it employ also artisans? So if it's employing artisans, it's more likely a project that is for not the poor. Right. Um, and also they're paying artisans who maybe could make money anyway. Would a special group of landowners benefit? And if so, would they help pay? So these are the things that every project will be asked, and a lot of them will not pest muster. Sure. So home secretary Graham was worried that this was all gonna slow things down because now only 70,000 got approved up from 50, but we're still gonna go up, but now we're a little bit more.

SPEAKER_03 53:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:33

But uh we're still not building enough, and heavy rains are continuing. Got it. The rains they persist. So relief help also was only paid in wages. They're paying money, they're not paying food, and they could not just give food away, but a moral plague in London already existed because they had done that. So London's like, we don't give food because they have a self-described moral plague from feeding people again. It goes back to Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 54:03

So in London, which I'm sure there's uh there's a couple of threads to pull up about that particular thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:09

Yeah. In London, there were hundreds who were milling about, and there were consabulary officers holding carbines, so guns in the doors, and these people are milling about like town squares and stuff, shouting, work, work, work. And at first I was like, Work. And then I was like, I thought they were telling them to work. Then I realized they're asking jobs.

SPEAKER_05 54:29

Oh, they're looking for jobs.

SPEAKER_02 54:30

Looking for work. Got it. You gotta say what you're looking for, what you're gonna need in return. That's right. We're going, we don't need any more roads. Any more roads. That's true. Where we're going, we don't need any more roads. We don't need any more roads. Uh so a few days later, laborers in court in Dublin came in and started shouting, employment, wages. It's very fancy compared to work.

SPEAKER_05 54:52

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 54:53

But it I know exactly what they want.

SPEAKER_05 54:55

Yeah, true. They won employment and they won wages. They probably also won food.

SPEAKER_02 54:59

Probably. They should have shouted that too.

SPEAKER_05 55:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:02

So the unemployed at this point were sacking food shops, stealing livestock, attacking convoys, and there was a road of 13 miles between two towns that they were passing grain on, and at this point it was now being escorted by two warships, 50 cavalry, and 80 infantry. Wow. Infantry to just get the corn 13 miles down the road.

SPEAKER_03 55:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:27

Dublin Castle blamed the papers for exciting the people. So Dublin Castle, if I hadn't explained, is basically um the hub of the London government or the UK government in Dublin. So Dublin Castle is like saying like the mayor's office or whatever, but not the mayor. You get it. Yeah. Keel. I'm an expert on Peel, Prime Minister Peel. Yeah. The Freeman's Journal, which is an Irish paper, responded with there is but one way of curbing the wayward violence. Feed the people.

SPEAKER_05 55:55

Yeah. Actually, yes. That's the one. I thought they were gonna say something stupid, but that's it. If you're full, if you're too full, you're not getting in a fight. No. You're taking it out.

SPEAKER_02 56:04

The reason they're angry, it's because they're hungry. Full people are the most peaceful. Get them a Snickers. Literally. There's no fangry. No. Full, full angry. It's just angry. We don't have a word for it. Because it's not a thing. That's right. You get it. This guy. Am I right? Yeah, so in April 1856, less than a year from when this started, basically. Yeah. Uh, the first group of people started moving away. So that is the other thing that happens. By the end of the famine, a million die, but two million move. This is going to be a big problem for the government. It's obviously less tragic, but it doesn't help things. Um, and the numbers concerned the country much less than the people who were actually leaving because they weren't the hungry people. They were the young, energetic, and relatively prosperous because they kind of saw the way things were going and they were like, I can afford family.

SPEAKER_05 57:02

The resources to leave.

SPEAKER_02 57:03

Yes, exactly. You can't just leave to another country with no money.

SPEAKER_05 57:07

Um which I'm sure eventually some people did. But yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_02 57:11

Yeah, they were described as well-dressed and comfortable-looking farmers and the better class of peasantry who are carrying away with them no inconsiderable share of the wealth of the country. And they were considered people who still had faith in their own futures but had lost faith in Ireland. So that's tough.

SPEAKER_05 57:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:31

So in late March, a guy named Henry Pelham Clinton, which when I saw Henry Clinton and Pelham, because Hillary Rodham Clinton, Henry Pelham, I was like, they're cousins. That doesn't make any sense. But uh in late March, Henry Pelham Clinton, who is the fifth Duke of Newcastle and the twelfth Earl of Lincoln, and the former British Commissioner of Woods and Forests, which feels like a job you give a six-year-old. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 57:58

Woods and forests? Yeah. When they say like twelfth Duke, do you think it's are there twelve Dukes alive, or is this?

SPEAKER_02 58:06

I believe it's the twelfth in the lineage. But I don't act, I don't know the answer to that. Um But Clinton was Pelham Clinton was sent over to become the Irish chief secretary. There were plenty of rumors about why this happened, but it kind of seems like the real reason was that every other more qualified person turned down the job.

SPEAKER_05 58:31

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 58:32

So the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary wanted the relief system moving faster because they and they thought that dealing with some fraud and abuse was better than dealing with starvation and violence. So they're like, even if this guy isn't the best at his job, even if there's some nepotism, feed the people. And by feed the people I mean give them jobs. Because we can't just feed them.

SPEAKER_05 58:52

Yeah, but you could though. But you could you could feed them is all.

SPEAKER_02 58:57

So Graham told him to quote, be bold. But it was gonna take a little more than that.

SPEAKER_05 59:03

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 59:03

So he gets there.

SPEAKER_05 59:05

Any other advice? Boldness. Bold. Just bold, very bold, be undeniable.

SPEAKER_02 59:10

Basically. Yeah. So the good news for him, uh for Clinton, is that his boss, uh, his immediate supervisor was the Chancellor and Under Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Goldburn, who dispensed all the money for relief funding, including the public works, and he had very loyal subordinates working for him who looked to him for promotions and for pay raises. So they're going to be like, we agree with your decisions. So he gets in there, he starts fighting Trevalian right away. But the Irish Board of Works was still slowing them down and because they were moving at a glacial pace. So the Irish Board of Works already existed. That was for the public works program. And the board was put right in the center of the public works program, handling the applications for loans for employment projects. Each project had to be personally inspected in person by a board member, and then they would be determined if the distress of that district was due to the crop failure. So are they just sad or are they sad because of potatoes? They would need hundreds of trained men to supervise this, and they only had a small group of engineers and surveyors, so now they're already starting to hire a lot of less qualified people to get out there and look at the project.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:21

Got it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:21

They created another pamphlet.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:24

Which doesn't make sense, called Enclosure C. And it's literally like, how do you lay out a road? Go from point A to point B. Like it's it's not a helpful pamphlet. And complaints about the bad board roads and the bad planning have already started, and lots of times the counties wouldn't even talk, and so the roads wouldn't meet up. They'd be like, We built a north road, and they're like, We built a south road, and then they're like 20 feet away from each other. It's like waving. Yeah, you take that's why they say you take the high road and I'll take the low road and we'll meet in the morning because it's two different roads. That could be true.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:00

You don't know it's not. I definitely don't know it's not.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:03

You don't know it's not.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:04

Uh they just put a set of steps between the two roads and be like, This is fine.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:09

We tried. So the uh higher-ups in this distribution of public works were complaining that their workers didn't know what they were doing, but that they had to hire them or they wouldn't be fed. So they're like, I have to hire an idiot, and then the idiot does a bad job, but I have to pay him or the idiot dies. So nobody's happy.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:33

And Prime Minister Peel really wanted the public works program to be the center of the relief, but the board was moving far too slowly. So they sent uh 50 officers from their ordinance survey and six royal engineers over, but it did not help very much. And by late April, there was still too much rain. So that was preventing the sowing season when they start to get whatever they got from last year's crop.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:58

Cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:59

So men would go at this point and hope they could replace replace a man who fell sick at a work site for the day. And sometimes a hundred men would be waiting for one spot, and literally there was not even a spot unless somebody hurts themselves or gets sick. And one day of work would not even earn a man enough money for a stone of potatoes. So it's like if you can't even eat from like what's yeah, you can't survive off of what you're making, then what are you what are we doing? In May, finally, men were hired to sow the land. So some people stopped asking for relief for a hot second. And Mr. Trevalian might still have a plan and sent the director of the Limerick Food Depot, Mr. Pinecoffin. Oh, Mr. Pinecoffin, he's back. Yeah, Trevelyan sent him a book called Thoughts and Details on Scarcity.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:49

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:49

And the first, yeah, not a long pamphlet. Yeah, not uh not good vibes in this pamphlet. The first sentence was of all things, an indiscreet tampering with the provisions is the most dangerous. Oh, what's he planning? What is he building in there? Sneaky stuff. I don't even know what that reference is, but you like to say it.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:11

I do. It's Tom Wade's.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:12

See how I'm nice to you and you're not nice to me.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:15

Ouch! Okay, ouch. I try to be nice to you. I'm sorry, I just delivering you some delicious buns.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:21

Hot, hot buns. Take the fever down. Get him out of the oven.

unknown 1:03:27

I'm so dying.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:29

I love you guys so much. You're so close.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:31

You're falling asleep while we do this. Who is so the food depots were supposed to open on May 15th, but on the 13th, only one had been fully provisioned. Pinecoffin wanted to postpone, and there were four different ships, hopefully, on en route to Ireland with their food, but they're a little slow. And the people were excited because they had kept hearing free corn, free corn, free corn. Not free.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:58

Not free.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:59

But they were getting excited. But Mr. Pinecoffin keeps telling visiting committees that the purpose of the government corn was actually not to feed the people, but to maintain an equilibrium of prices. So he's like, first of all, we don't have it yet. Second of all, I think we should postpone. Third of all, it's not gonna do much for you.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:14

I'm Mr. Pinecoffin. I'm Mr. Pinecoffin. So because Peel had been even blunter.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:23

That guy.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:24

That guy.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:26

Back to you, Emily.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:27

Last pail of corn. So Peel had actually been even blunter in in uh the House of Commons the month before and said, it is quite impossible for the government to feed our four million people. It is utterly impossible for us to adopt the means of preventing cases of individual misery in the wilds of Galway, Donegal, Ermayo. So basically, like sorry, sorry. They don't give up, but they have the lowest expectations possible for themselves, which is a shitty place to start. They're like, we can't do that.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:00

Oh, just set the bar low, you know. It'll be fine.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:03

It's on it's under the ground with the disease tubers.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:06

Not the tubers.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:08

So no one in these wilds had ever heard of peel, but they had heard about government corn. And local relief committees could buy, so each committee could buy five to twenty tons if they could afford it, and people could buy one to seven pounds for a penny a pound. When people got there, they were shocked that they had to pay for it, but it was still a good deal. Some people walked up to 10 miles to buy this corn, and some people actually walked to the adjoining county to avoid the shame of needing to buy the government corn. Some also were interrogated by the committee of like, why do you need this? Um, one of them being a woman Look around, guy. Yeah, well, somebody was like, You're married, where's your husband? And she said he's not here because he's literally on death's door. Like, can we please have this fucking court? So after the first day, a large number of the people who had purchased the corn were either pretty well fed or they were landlords. Poppers, neither of which were supposed to buy this corn. But the committees were scared and they were also pitying the people there, and so they did not inquire. They're like, I can't. I can't do this. They don't pay me enough. In the first days, the British became popular in Ireland, and many committee members were happy for some of the contributions that were finally coming in from the gentry. But Pinecoffin, Mr. Optimist, was like, the reason they're giving us money is because of the riots. He said the motive of self-preservation is strong among all of those who have anything to lose by the effect of popular tumult. Yeah. So basically, like they're doing it for themselves. Don't be fooled by this small uh donation. So the first corn, the problem here is that a lot of people were having intestinal issues, including diarrhea, which is not what you want.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:53

Yeah, on top of the other diarrhea that they were having.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:55

That you already have. But Roth uh figured out that you need to grind it twice instead of once to make it more digestible. And when he told Trevelyan that, he said, we must not aim at making the corn anything more than comfortable. It would do permanent harm to make dependence on charity an agreeable mode of life. So the people Yeah, they're like, they're starving to death. And they're like, And if they live through this, they're gonna depend on it.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:23

They're gonna depend on us. And they're like, here's this corn to save your life. We know how to prepare it properly. We didn't. We're not going to.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:32

We didn't. We didn't. But eventually he did win out and they started grinding it twice. The second grinding helped a lot, and they also issued a new formation of what they were selling to the people, which was three parts uh corn to one part oatmeal. So more a cone cornmeal kind of thing. And they created a booklet of recipes with corn, including a corn biscuit.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:58

So excited.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:59

It was named by a baker. Uh it was baked by it was created by a baker named O'Brien, and it would be called the O'Brien Biscuit. And the baker who created it won a medal for his services to the crown. The English were like, this is such a good biscuit made of sad poor people's food that you get a treat. Um, importers were incredibly mad though. Merchants that sold goods other than government corn.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:23

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:24

And one guy had built up reserves of like seven like million pounds of corn and he had to sell it off at government pricing because it brought the pricing down. So like they're suffering in a different way. So on June 3rd, Trevelyan ordered Ralph to raise the price of the cornmeal to suppress the demand for government food. He's like, too many people want the stuff we're selling to keep them alive. So they raised the price.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:49

Umbrellas seem to be really working with the rain. Let's get our umbrellas back.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:54

Let's get our umbrellas back, people. He also said that no steps should be taken to replace the cornmeal except in extreme distress. So once the depot's out, he's like, they're out of corn, so they're out. And they're not replenishing unless it's really, really, really bad.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:10

It's it's really bad everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:12

Yes. Many parts of the country now were considered in final extremity. There were people crying out in the streets, they're pawning their clothing and their livestock. There wasn't really anything to be bought anyway. The pigs are long gone. People are starving, districts are without food, and some people are dying. They're so close to death, they're almost unable to give food if it is given it to them. And yet Trevelyan demanded increasing the cost again.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:39

What is happening?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:40

Yeah. By the end of June, he told Roth to start closing down the service. So they're gonna shut down corn, but they don't even know They haven't even planted the potatoes for next year yet. Well, they've planted them, they haven't sewed them.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:54

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:55

Or no, they haven't planted them. You're right, they haven't planted them.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:57

So they wouldn't even know about the next year's crop until August.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:01

And I'm assuming they haven't done it. Seems like they haven't done any work to find a potato strain that is not affected by whatever this blight is.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:08

Not much work, no.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:10

Not really. They're more trying to I don't think they've gotten into strains. They're more just like different ways to spray with stuff. They don't know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:18

Um, and if the blight was to reappear, things would be so much worse. And because they had closed down a system that was kind of terrible, they were going to have to restructure the entire relief system to meet the new level of crisis that would be happening. Also, Trevelyan had warned of making the public works jobs too appealing. But turns out they were pretty appealing.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:41

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:41

So the public workers were earning about twice as much as they normally did, and they made the same amount of money no matter how hard they worked. If their job is breaking rocks, they can break one rock, they can break 50. Yeah. They're making the same amount of money. And some of the supervisors were pretty tolerable. Some people with lazy overseers could get away with smoking and chatting. And uh it may some someone said it may be anticipated that the government will be expected to provide work for every laboring man in the country. And that warning was not very far from the mark because for one brief period in August, the public works labor force, which had averaged between 70 to 100,000 for most of the summer, rose to 560,000 workers.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:26

They built a lot of roads though.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:27

Yeah. Years after the famine, a guy named William Wilde recalled the summer of 1846, saying, quote, ghosts of men would travel several miles through an untread landscape of untended fields and decapitated hills to quote, break up comparatively good old road or commence an unnecessary new one leading from nowhere to anywhere. So basically, like walking over projects that really would have helped the country to make another road for no reason.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:57

First the agricultural laborers came for the jobs, then the small tenant farmers, then workers from the Shannon River project because that project was harder, and then the people who had jobs but were paid piecemeals, so paid for what they actually did. Then 60,000 migrant workers all came for these jobs, and they just uh situation is bad. Yeah, it's bad. So on June 25th, 1846, there were crowds of people inside both houses of parliament because in the upper house they were going to possibly pass corn law reform, and in the lower house, people were hoping for a coup, a possible plot to take down the Peel government. The corn law did pass, and the Irish crime bill was debated, with Peel losing on that bill by 73 votes when he thought it would only be 21. And that night when the people walked out, one of them was a guy who would become the next prime minister. We'll talk about that next week. Okay. Lord John Russell. So in early July, Ireland felt like they had been helped, that misery had been alleviated, and they had praise for the Queen and for Peel. The landed classers felt out of the pressure zone and they had donated 98,000. They're like, we did it.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:15

There were 700,000 that had been given in loans. The roads projects were a tangled mess that didn't really help anyone. But everybody is kind of walking around high-fiving each other.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:25

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:26

But on July 3rd, the newspaper announced that a quote, few cases of the potato disease had reappeared. So we're gonna pick it up there next week. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:43

They're still goop goopaters. Don't like them goopaters.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:46

Don't like them goop potaters. I just don't like them.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:49

I don't like it when my taters make their own gravy.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:53

Yeah, it's making me sad.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:54

Yeah, because it's deaf gravy.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:56

Death gravy.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:58

Alright. Uh well on that note.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:01

That is this week's episode. Probably two more on potato sadness. Sure. I'm interested to see what the title ends up being from this conversation.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:12

Potato Sadness.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:13

Yeah. Yeah. Pun uh Punt.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:20

Pontatoes.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:21

Ground Shroud for the ground round. Ground round for the ground shrouds. That makes more sense. Get them food. Ground round for all. Ground round for all.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:31

If you've been to the ground round. Let us know. Let us know. And also that uh, you know, impromptu poll about whether or not it was my pun uh was worth it. You just let us know.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:41

Yes, please do let us know about that. Um yeah. Thank you. Uh, we do have some new listeners. We have uh a large new contingent out of Germany, so thank you for joining us. Um but yeah, we're we're always excited to make this podcast. If you guys have any topics that you would like us to try, let us know. I don't know what Danny's doing next. Maybe he's already got it figured out.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:03

Mysteries.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:04

Maybe he doesn't. Um I think I do.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:07

I just have to watch a documentary.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:08

Sure. Yeah. But uh, like I say every week, we have had a few new little groups of listeners. And if all of you left us a review, it would literally change our lives. So think about doing that. Um, and if not, then keep keep vibing, bro. Yeah, keep on vibing. Next week we'll tell you more about goopy, goopy droops.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:28

Old goopy droops. That's my college nickname is. Not a good one. Not a good one. No, not something to brag about. Well, uh, see y'all later.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:40

Thanks for listening, and a big thanks to Carsi Blanton for the theme music. You can follow the podcast everywhere at Eathe Rich Pod. You can email us your suggestions for future episodes at eatherichpod at gmail. You can follow me at thefunnywalsh, and you can follow Danny at DMoss315. See you next week.