“In the letter of an “Out-Door Pauper” from Macroom, will be found the recital of the death at Sleaven, from famine, of a poor woman, returning from the Workhouse, where she and her children had received their daily meal. The Tallow Relief Committee, in a resolution just forwarded to the Lord LIEUTENANT and which we give elsewhere, announce the death of another man, named KEEFFE, of Kilbeg, who also perished for want of food.” –Cork Examiner, 3 November 1846

Image | Ireland’s population of almost 8.4 million in 1844 had fallen to 6.6 million by 1851. About one million people died from starvation or from typhus and other starvation related diseases. The number of Irish who emigrated during The Great Hunger may have reached two million. Ireland’s population continued to decline in the following decades because of overseas emigration and lower birth rates. By the time the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in 1921, its population was barely half of what it had been in the early 1840s. This map illustrates the deployment of British troops to protect the forcible export of food away from people starving, and the devastating effect it had on the country. The Irish people were worked to death building walls, slaving in disease-ridden workhouses, while England ate our food, and stripped Ireland of its resources to enrich itself, as it had done for hundreds of years before.