Latest / The History of Ireland: Rebellion, Empire, and Independence — Fexingo History / The Great Famine's First Blow: The 1740 Ice Famine
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the Great Famine of the 1840s, and even touched on the 1740 frost in passing. But I think today we should really dig into that earlier catastrophe, because it's so often overshadowed. I mean, 1740 was arguably worse, proportionally, than the potato blight. Luna: Worse? Really? I thought the 1840s was the worst one. Lucas: It's a bit of a contest nobody wants to win, but yes. The famine of 1740, they called it Bliain an Áir — the Year of the Slaughter. Some historians estimate that between thirteen and twenty percent of the population died, which is a higher percentage than the Great Famine's roughly twelve percent. And it wasn't caused by the potato blight at all. Lucas: It started with the weather. In late December 1739, an Arctic air mass settled over the entire British Isles. Rivers froze. Lough Derg, which is a huge lake in the Shannon, froze over solid enough for people to build bonfires on it. Dublin's Liffey was frozen for weeks. And that was just the beginning. Luna: So it was a cold snap, but how does that turn into a famine? Lucas: It's not just the cold, it's the duration. The frost lasted nearly eight weeks, and then it thawed, and then it refroze. That destroyed the winter wheat and the potatoes in the ground. But the real kicker is that it happened during a wartime trade embargo with France and Spain, so grain imports were blocked. Ireland was already living on the edge, heavily dependent on potatoes as a cheap food for the poor. Lucas: When the harvest failed in 1740, the price of oats and butter doubled and then tripled. People were desperate. And then, the following spring, typhus swept through the weakened population. It was a perfect storm, and it's barely remembered today. Luna: Why is it so forgotten? I studied Irish history in school and I never heard of the 1740 famine. Lucas: That's a great question. Part of it is that the Great Famine of the 1840s was so massive in scale and had such political consequences — it reshaped Ireland and the diaspora. Also, the 1740 famine didn't have a single iconic image or a Charles Trevelyan to blame. It was a silent, grinding disaster that killed people slowly in their cabins, and then the memory just... faded. Lucas: But there are records. A Dublin physician named John Rutty kept a detailed diary of the weather, and he wrote about the 'epidemic fever' that followed. There are also letters from landlords and clergy. One of the most haunting accounts is from a woman named Margaret Corbett in County Mayo, who wrote to her son in America about losing her husband and two children to 'the fever'. Luna: That's heartbreaking. Did the government do anything to help? Lucas: Not much. The Dublin Parliament passed a few relief acts, but they were designed more to keep the peace than to save lives. There were some local initiatives — one landlord in County Cork imported corn on his own dime, but he was the exception. The Penal Laws, which we've covered, meant that most Catholics were landless laborers, so they had no savings and no political voice. They were just left to die. Lucas: And this is where the famine reveals a deeper structural problem. For decades, landlords had been subdividing land to squeeze more rent out of a growing population. That meant a lot of families were surviving on tiny plots, sometimes less than an acre, growing potatoes to feed themselves. So when the frost hit, there was no buffer. The potato was a cheap, reliable crop, but it was also a trap. Luna: So it's like a perfect fragility. They built their whole existence on one crop. Lucas: Exactly. And that's a theme that echoes right up to the 1840s. But in 1740, it was the frost that snapped the thread. By the summer of 1741, the roads were littered with the bodies of people who had left their homes to search for food and never made it. The total death toll is estimated at anywhere from 250,000 to 400,000, out of a population of about 2.4 million. Lucas: What's even more tragic is that the famine didn't end with the frost. The typhus epidemic, they called it 'the fever', raged until 1741. It was a secondary disaster that killed nearly as many as the starvation itself. And because the sick were crowded into tiny cabins, the disease spread like wildfire. Luna: So why does the 1740 famine get so little attention? Is it just overshadowed by the 1840s? Lucas: Partly, but there's also a kind of silence that comes with shame. The survivors didn't want to talk about it, and their children carried that silence. It's only in the last few decades that historians like David Dickson have brought it back to light. He wrote a book called 'Arctic Ireland' that really revived interest. It's a powerful reminder that history is not just what we remember, but what we choose to forget. Lucas: But there's also something remarkable about the human ability to recover. By the mid-1740s, the population was growing again, and the Irish economy, such as it was, bounced back. But that resilience was built on the same fragile foundation, which is why the 1840s happened again, a century later. Luna: It's like they didn't learn the lesson. Lucas: Well, they didn't. The landlords didn't want to change the system, and the British government was more concerned with trade and revenue than with the welfare of the Irish poor. So the same conditions persisted. It's a sobering thought that, if we look at the 1740 famine, we see all the warning signs of the Great Famine — and nobody acted. Lucas: And that's what makes this story so relevant today, I think. It's not just about the past. It's about how societies ignore the structural causes of disaster until it's too late. Luna: Yeah, that hits close to home. We're seeing that with climate change and food shortages now. Lucas: Exactly. And the 1740 famine is a stark example of how a natural disaster can be amplified by human systems — trade embargoes, land inequality, a lack of political will. It's a lesson we keep having to relearn. Lucas: But there's also, I think, a quiet dignity in how the Irish people endured. There are stories of neighbor helping neighbor, of families sharing what little they had. And when the worst was over, they rebuilt their lives, even though they knew it could happen again. Luna: That's the Irish spirit, I guess. But it's heartbreaking that they had to be so resilient. Lucas: It is. And I think that's part of why this story matters — it reminds us that behind the statistics are real people, like Margaret Corbett, who lost everything, and yet wrote that letter to her son with such love and hope. Lucas: And, I mean, telling these stories is really the whole point of this show. And if you've been finding value in these conversations, you know, if today was worth a coffee to you, there's a little link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's the smallest ask, but it genuinely helps keep this ad-free. Luna: Yeah, and it's like, we want to keep uncovering these forgotten chapters, so if you can spare a couple of euro, it makes a real difference. Lucas: Anyway, back to Margaret. She survived, but she never saw her son again. He stayed in America, and her letters eventually ended up in an archive in Boston. It's through those small, personal records that we can really grasp the enormity of what happened. Luna: So, in the end, the 1740 famine is not just a statistic, it's a story of loss, but also of endurance. Lucas: And of silence. The fact that it was forgotten for so long tells us something about how societies deal with trauma. Sometimes we bury it, but it's still there, shaping who we are. Lucas: So, next time you hear about the Great Famine, remember that it had a predecessor, a darker, colder one that set a pattern. And maybe we should honor those forgotten victims by remembering their names, even if we only have a few. Luna: For sure. It's like we're giving them a voice at last. Lucas: And that's the best we can do, I think. Just listen.