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Famine - Peel's Response (1845 - July 1946) - Coggle Diagram
Famine - Peel's Response (1845 - July 1946)
Scientific Commission October 1945
Recommended using 1845 healthy potatoes as seen
Wanted to preserve good potatoes by submerging them in bog water
Recommendations met with incredulity in Ireland
Many thought the commissioners knew nothing
Inquiries into scale and health
Led by Dr Lyon Playfair
Believed it was due to cold, cloudy, wet weather
Purchase of Indian corn from America
Cheapest food alternative
Known as Peel's birth stone
Had no existing domestic market
Imports were bending rules of the political economy
Often led to abdominal pain
Meant still kept costs of other foods down
November 1945 approved purchase of £100,000 maize from NYC to come January 1946
Local relief committees
Encouraged to raise donations
Government donated nearly £68,000
Made up of government officials poor law guardians and clergy
Committees sold food at cost price
Often gave out free food
Long bureaucratic delay meant often short on funds
Public works
Funded by government grants and loans
Introduced in Match 1846
Traditional response
Wages had to be less then local wages so workers wouldn't be drained from workers
Works often led to 'roads to nowhere'
Created employment by developing infrastructure
Employed 140,000 people
Repeal of the Corn Laws
Forced repeal bill through the House of Commons by Peel in May 1846
Were protectionist laws enacted in 1815
Little use in Ireland as peasants had inadequate means to pay for grain
Led to importation of cheaper US grain
Initial aim was to keep price of British grain up by imposing healthy tariffs
Overall assessment
No notable increase in mortality
Argued to have handled it quite well for his era, he was conscientious
Escualated when the potato blight failed a second time following Peel leaving
Peasants who produced abundance couldn't eat it, food was plentiful just not available to the hungry
Peel was a pragmatic economic liberal who showed initiative in a lassiez faire ere
Argued to be inadequate as he failed to ban the export of food from Ireland in 1946 which included wheat, barely and oats (300 oxen bulls and cows, over 3000 sheep and over 100,000 pigs)