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The Famine hit Cork as hard as anywhere in Ireland. This book stays inside the county to tell what happened: the blight in the fields, the workhouse pushed past breaking, the grain and cattle that kept leaving the ports while people starved. You will stand in Skibbereen with the relief doctors, follow Frederick Douglass through Cork in 1845, and visit the mass graves at Carr's Hill. Twelve chapters carry the story to its long aftermath and the city today. A hard history, told with care. Illustrated, with a guide to the Famine sites. Digital download (PDF).
What's inside:
Prologue: The Quay at Dawn
1. The City Before
2. The Visitor of 1845
3. The Blight
4. The Workhouse in Extremis
5. The Quakers
6. Father Mathew and the City's Own
7. The Food That Left
8. Skibbereen
9. The Walk to the City
10. The Dead
11. The Departure
12. The Long Shadow
Epilogue: The City Today
49 pages, illustrated, with a guide to the Famine sites.
From the opening pages:
A ship is loading at the Custom House Quay in Cork in the spring of 1847. The quay is busy at first light, dockworkers shifting barrels, a factor checking his manifest, two constables watching from the dock gates. The ship is taking on grain, and it will sail on the morning tide.
Fifty metres from the loading point, against the quayside wall, a man is sitting. He came in during the night, walking from somewhere to the west, and his accent, if you stopped to ask, would place him in west Cork, or Kerry, or Tipperary. He has been walking for days. He has not eaten today and is not sure when he last ate. He has heard there is a soup kitchen somewhere in the city, and relief of some kind, and he went first to the workhouse and was turned away because it was full. He is sitting on the quay because the quay is where his walking stopped. The ship loading grain fifty metres away will be gone before he finds the soup kitchen.
The Famine hit Cork as hard as anywhere in Ireland. This book stays inside the county to tell what happened: the blight in the fields, the workhouse pushed past breaking, the grain and cattle that kept leaving the ports while people starved. You will stand in Skibbereen with the relief doctors, follow Frederick Douglass through Cork in 1845, and visit the mass graves at Carr's Hill. Twelve chapters carry the story to its long aftermath and the city today. A hard history, told with care. Illustrated, with a guide to the Famine sites. Digital download (PDF).
What's inside:
Prologue: The Quay at Dawn
1. The City Before
2. The Visitor of 1845
3. The Blight
4. The Workhouse in Extremis
5. The Quakers
6. Father Mathew and the City's Own
7. The Food That Left
8. Skibbereen
9. The Walk to the City
10. The Dead
11. The Departure
12. The Long Shadow
Epilogue: The City Today
49 pages, illustrated, with a guide to the Famine sites.
From the opening pages:
A ship is loading at the Custom House Quay in Cork in the spring of 1847. The quay is busy at first light, dockworkers shifting barrels, a factor checking his manifest, two constables watching from the dock gates. The ship is taking on grain, and it will sail on the morning tide.
Fifty metres from the loading point, against the quayside wall, a man is sitting. He came in during the night, walking from somewhere to the west, and his accent, if you stopped to ask, would place him in west Cork, or Kerry, or Tipperary. He has been walking for days. He has not eaten today and is not sure when he last ate. He has heard there is a soup kitchen somewhere in the city, and relief of some kind, and he went first to the workhouse and was turned away because it was full. He is sitting on the quay because the quay is where his walking stopped. The ship loading grain fifty metres away will be gone before he finds the soup kitchen.
