That diabolical system : evictions in Famine Ireland
Up to half a million people lost their homes during the Great Famine. Who carried out and documented those evictions, and what happened to the evicted?
• 25 Feb 2021 Gaunt and miserable [.] being hunted there, as wolves, by the blood hounds of the unchristian, that diabolical system which had turned many.into desert wastes and howling wilderness .
The eviction of tenants during the 1840s is one of the enduring themes of the Great Famine. The above description of the clearance of over ninety people from the Concannon estate in county Galway in September 1849 aptly captures both the horrors of eviction and the rapacity with which it was carried out.