The lost Famine census written by 99 priests who watched Ireland starve

When the Great Hunger reached its darkest point in 1847, 99 clergymen across Ireland sat down to record what was happening in the townlands around them, counting the dead parish by parish and describing scenes that most official reports never captured. That extraordinary body of testimony, long overlooked by historians, is the subject of “The Death Census of Black ‘47” by Liam Kennedy, Donald M. MacRaild, Lewis Darwen and Brian Gurrin.

"The Death Census of Black ’47: Eyewitness Accounts of Ireland’s Great Famine" by Liam Kennedy, Donald M. MacRaild, Lewis Darwen, and Brian Gurrin is based on a large volume of reports on social conditions in the Irish localities, emanating from within those localities, that have never been used systematically by historians. It bears the compelling title of the ‘Death Census’.

Most historians are simply unaware of its existence. The outstanding feature of the Death Census is that it was authored by local clergymen who lived among the people they served and were intimately involved with their lives. This book brings the Death Census together in composite form for the first time and provides a detailed examination of its contents. The result is a new understanding of the Great Famine as it was experienced on the ground. 

Ninety-nine clergymen from across Ireland, with marked concentrations in the worst-affected parts of the country, contributed to the census. Some of these documents are colored by politics, which in itself is revealing, but most aspire to more dispassionate representations of the horror facing a famishing people within the little society of the parish, accompanied by appeals, explicit or implicit, to the humanitarian instincts of the wider society.

In terms of wider significance, this is one of the great unstudied texts of modern Irish history. This book brings the Death Census together in composite form for the first time and provides a detailed examination of its contents. The result is a new understanding of the Great Famine as it was experienced on the ground.

" The Death Census of Black ’47: Eyewitness Accounts of Ireland’s Great Famine" is now available in paperback. For more, visit www.anthempress.com.