The Great Famine in Kinsale

Catherine Flanagan

This book examines the effects of the Great Famine on the people of Kinsale and surrounding countryside. It shows how famine, death and disease took their toll on one class in particular – the poor. The Kinsale workhouse was hopelessly overcrowded and, in early 1847, the parish priest of Kinsale described members of his flock as starving creatures – worn, emaciated and feeble – in whose skeletal faces he could scarcely recognize a single feature. These conditions precipitated a chain of social dislocation, emigration, disease and death.

Catherine Flanagan holds a Higher Diploma in Arts – History and an MA in local history from the School of History, University College Cork. She is an active member of Kinsale and District History Society.