Irish Immagration

The Irish potato famine started in the summer of 1845. A disease spread to the potatoes and made them not edible. The disease was a fungus. It made the potatoes slimy, decayed, blackish, and rotten.

The Irish diet mostly consisted of potatoes. They ate about 8-14 pounds of potatoes a day. Without the potatoes they had nothing else to eat.




This disease killed off 750,000 people and another 2 million people moved to Britain, Canada and America. One-fourth of the Irish population moved or died.



The British government tried to come up with a substitute for potatoes. They came up with corn from another county and that didn't work out so well. It didn't fill them up or didn't give them the nutrition they needed. From just eating corn they got Cholera, Dysentery, Scurvy, and Typhus.



When the Irish moved to America they landed in New York. They were discriminated against and not wanted. They lived in bad conditions and the places they lived were called "Irish Town" or "Shanty Town." About 80% of Irish infants born in New York died.








They mainly worked as police officers, coal miners, and constuction workers. The women became servants or domestic workers.