Larry, no-one's denying what happened, or that it was terrible. Many landlords wouldn't help, and of those that did, the problem was just too severe for them to do more than stave off the problem for the first year or so. Without government intervention, there just weren't the resources to deal with it, and the government generally wasn't releasing money to help the lower classes. Remember, it also affected mainland Britain and most of Europe, just not as seriously as in Ireland.

As Les says, generally the ruling class then were a right bunch of bastards. The general principle was that non-aristos were inherently less valuable, pretty much subhuman, and it wasn't a big deal if they lived or died. You'd maybe do something to keep them alive (workhouses, etc) but quality of life wasn't an issue. And if there was a war, they died in their thousands. It wasn't until the massive waste of life in WWI that there was a shift in public opinion which made this unsustainable.

Interestingly, America almost did the same thing in the 20s and 30s. There was no shortage of food, it was rotting in place, it just wasn't being distributed to the ppl who needed it. In this case it took tough government intervention (the New Deal) to sort things out.

Graham.