Brutality of Cork's Famine years: ‘I saw hovels crowded with the sick and the dying in every doorway’

In just one week in February 1847, 49 residents of Cork Workhouse died of hunger and dysentery. Visitors to the city recorded their shock at the sight of the dead and dying in doorways and ‘ragged spectres’ of people begging in the streets.

The Great Famine, which occurred between 1845 and 1852, was neither the first nor the last of Ireland’s famine experiences, but it was the most profound, and probably the most catastrophic event in our modern history.

The population had more than trebled in the century prior to the Famine’s commencement, from approximately 2.5m people in 1750 to about 8.5m in 1845.