Cannibalism was likely practiced in Irish famine says leading expert

Read Thomas Gallagher's "Paddy's Lament". He speaks about at least one documented case of canabalism in it. A mother ate the flesh off her dead baby's legs.

I'm also sure that people dying of thurst drink their own urine. People facing death are desperate. What else is new?

I gave the talk in Fordham. I am rather appalled at how Niall has taken one aspect of what I said out of context. I talked about cannibalism just to show how unimaginably horrific to most of us famines are--famines in Ireland and elsewhere. The aim was not sensationalize, like the headline in Irish Central does--and, almost predictably, The Irish Sun (a Murdoch tabloid). Anyway, the proceedings of the Fordham conference will be published in due course and those interested can read more for themselves.

To Bythebay: If you are capable of reading critically, 1) Nowhere in my response does it in any way, -- or by implication, refer to the Conference. It is specifically directed to this article in particular, which if you re-read in order to comprehend it, even uses "Famine" in the large font title which should hit you right in the face. More importantly, my response is directed to much of the literature and self-serving, or ignorant "scholarship" whose propagandists, for obvious reasons, want to cast An Gorta Mor as a natural disaster, not an unnatural one, perpetrated by Victorian ideologues, anti-Irish Catholic Social Darwinist bigots, and Anglo-Irish landed gentry. This unholy conglomerate, as today's Capitalists do with the poor today, literally bred the Irish people as their personal livestock, because by definition, as Irish Catholics, they lacked the where-withal of full human dignity. 2)I regularly contribute financially to local food banks, and organized charities,as well as support organized fundraisers thru organizations to which I belong. I have over 3 decades of direct work experience with the US Food Stamp Program, AND the poor. I use all of this experience to write my Federal and State legislatures on behalf of food security matters. Oh, and I occasionally voluntary at a local food bank. However, my time is limited because most of my volunteer activity is with a Hospice I work with because I suspect it is probably easier to attract dedicated volunteers at a Food Bank than to Hospice care because death and dying is uncomfortable for a lot of folks, including me. Finally, if there is something I missed, or another activity you think I can undertake to "do something more meaningful to stop that [hunger]" I will be only too happy to act on your suggestions.

redhand32, the conference title was "The Fight Against Hunger: The History and Future of the Irish Role in Humanitarian Assistance". As you can see from the conference title and Tom Arnold's comments (Tom is from Concern Worldwide in Dublin) the word hunger is used not famine.One fifth of our overseas budget in Ireland is for hunger relief. The US has 8.5 million people go hungry every day. Do something to stop that.

I resent the inaccuracy of an Irish publication using the word "Famine" to describe An Gorta Mor [The Great Hunger]. A Famine is starvation because of some natural disaster, crop failures, etc, --conditions in which their is insufficient food to feed the people. Some erroneously refer to the "Potato Famine." Although the Potato crop failed because of blight, it begs the question why millions of Irish subsisted as livestock dependent on a diet exclusively of potatoes, a little milk, and rarely some other food. During the "Famine" the Great Hunger, ample food was regularly exported to English tables, often under armed guard, as Irish peasants starved, and in this case lost all human dignity thru surviving as cannibals. The same current Capitalist system ensures that the 21st century Lord John Russells of the world allocate scarce food sources, not to the starving, but to the rich and middle classes, as Brazillian kids and others lose their dignity, --perhaps not as cannibals, but, scavengers, like crows, picking city dumps, and robbing other poor as street urchins, only to survive. As the English did beginning in 1845, Capitalism, their Agribusiness and politician coat holders breed the poor as animals. Beware of a Risen People !

@uppinko.In defense of the Ugandan people and all decent Africans.President Idi Amin did not practice cannibalism.Amin became the subject of rumours and myths, including a widespread belief that he was a cannibal.All unsubstantiated and therefore not fact.These myths by western propaganda are quite common.Example:The Germans were eating Belgian babies during WW1.Iraqi soldiers throwing babies from incubators in Kuwait ect.Dehumanizing a nation or person with black propaganda is necessary in order to make killing and bombing them easier.

ClareDaughter/IníonClár! My sentiments percisely. You bet me to it. Eating English landlords would have constituted a construcitve cannibalism, and been far more nutritious as well, being over fed themselves I imagine. Trouble is, eating someone who is habitually absent takes some doing, though their agents and balieff's could have deputised culinarily. Jonathan Swift, the Dean of the Protestantised Saint Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, wrote a deliberately controversial article about the merits of eating one's young in cases of extreme starvation, seving dual purposes of satiating appetite and controlling population. I believe he imagined them to be mouth watering if delicious saúted in pommengranate and vinegar. Thing about fishing would have been that the British Royal Navy would have shown up and arrested fishermen for the heinous crime of necessity. But let us not forget the political economy of laizzes faire/free-for-all capitalism, economic cannibalism at its best. Don't just cure the symptoms of starvation! Cure the disease that cause it across generations.

@connemaragirl.Let's say you had 10 days of bad weather and you couldn't launch your little boat to go fishing.How would you feel then?How long do you think you could live on limpets and shell fish and edible seaweed?How long does sea food last without refrigeration? How many calories would people expend in collecting shell fish if he had to walk 5 miles and back again.Shell fish will poison you if you eat to many anyway.One week of sickness and very little food and you will understand why people died.Men and Women fed the kids first too.It's not easy living off wild food when 20,000 of your neighbors are going after the same wild food.Ask your Connemara ancestors.

This is the first I've heard of this ,and also Ireland is surrounded by the ocean ,I'm sure there was fish to be had along with shell fish,all sorts of it ,sea weed etc. ,a bunch of BS if you ask me .

lol@Claredaughter

Desperate, starving people with no resources very likely did a lot of desperate things in order to survive...they should have eaten the thieving English landlords who were stealing all the livestock and crops........

From cut marks and breakage patterns on bones found at pueblos in America's south western desert, the native americans there were forced to resort to cannibalism as the climate became dryer. Unable to sustain themselves as their crops failed year after year, they waged war on nearby tribes and began to practice cannibalism in a last attempt to survive. We do not know if they moved on, died out or are still represented in the remaining tribes. It sounds like, IF this happened during the famine, it was very limited in scope. It is horrifying to think of the pressures on people that would bring them to break such an ingrained taboo. If my children were starving, I think I would do anything to save them.

Eating the dead is not unusual when it comes to starvation.The instinct to survive is very strong.The cases in Ireland were very isolated though.There is no evidence of it been wide spread.Cannibalism that is on-going is something that gets noticed very quickly in tight knit communities in Ireland.I never read of any on-going cases of cannibalism in Ireland during the Irish holocaust.During the Siege of Leningrad everyone knew who was eating human flesh.The poor who ate the dead looked much to healthy.But it would be silly to think it didn't happen at all.

Niall, you pick and choose your articles. How many major papers have you not published? Choosing not to publish this article is not really censorship. It's more consideration of the the starving Irish and the memories, wouldn't you think? If it was fact, undeniable, that might change things. I would still not want to place a such fact over my ancestors heads, setting them up for ridicule, when genocide was the real issue.