Focus on Question 5
Industrial England and rural Ireland
This question was asked on the Junior Cert about Industrial England and rural Ireland.
Source D
The following are two accounts of conditions for the poor in Ireland around 1840.
Account 1
“There are no means of finding out exactly the number of persons who were dependent on potatoes for their support, but it must have formed a large portion of the population of all the western counties, and was not inconsiderable even in the eastern counties of Leinster and Ulster. Perhaps it may be estimated at 2,000,000.”
Account 2
“The hovels which the poor people were building as I passed, solely by their own efforts, were of the most miserable description; their walls were formed, in several instances, by the backs of fences; the floors sunk in ditches; the height scarcely enough for a man to stand upright; a few pieces of grass sods the only covering; and these extending only partially over the thing called a roof; the elderly people miserably clothed; the children all but naked.”
Source E
This is a map showing the decline in population in Ireland between 1841 and 1851.
