These figures are in dispute, but they are the best anybody can produce at his late date. Note ratio of disease to starvation is quite high and that ratio is not in as much dispute as the total number of deaths. If you like one million total deaths, fine.


"In 1851, the census commissioners collected information on the number who died in each family since 1841, the cause, season and year of death. Its disputed findings were as follows: 21,770 total deaths from starvation in the previous decade, and 400,720 deaths from disease. Listed diseases were fever, dysentery, cholera, smallpox and influenza; the first two being the main killers (222,021 and 93,232). The commissioners acknowledged that their figures were incomplete and that the true number of deaths was probably higher: "The greater the amount of destitution of mortality...the less will be the amount of recorded deaths derived through any household form; – for not only were whole families swept away by disease...but whole villages were effaced from off the land." A later historian has this to say: "In 1851, the Census Commissioners attempted to produce a table of mortality for each year since 1841... The statistics provided were flawed and probably under-estimated the level of mortality..."