Britain 1760 -1913
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Timeline Britain 1760 -1913 |
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1845 Irish Potato Famine The
potato was the most important food crop in Ireland. In the summer of
1845 the Irish potato crop was destroyed by a fungal blight that rotted
the potatoes in the ground. The failure of the crop was a disaster.
It is estimated that in the Irish Famine of 1845-1846 at least a million
people died of starvation and disease. During the next twenty years,
another two million people left Ireland sailing to Liverpool. Many of
these people moved on to America, but hundreds of thousands stayed in
Lancashire towns. By 1900 in towns such as Blackburn and Preston there
were large numbers of people who had been born in Ireland or had Irish
parents. Census records show clear evidence of this.
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