Membership is completely free, giving members unlimited access to all available resources, services, features, and benefits without any restrictions or fees.
Welcome back. Sign in to continue enjoying unlimited access to all available resources, services, features, and member benefits at no cost.
The famine that framed the beginning of the decade had resulted from more than one bad harvest. The fierce winter of 1739–40, followed by drought and continuing adverse weather, ruined or damaged potatoes and grain, disrupted milling and transport, and exposed a population already vulnerable to scarcity. Disease magnified hunger’s effects. It is therefore misleading to describe 1742 as a year of plenty merely because the worst famine phase lay behind it. Families who had lost relatives, livestock, savings or a tenancy entered the year with diminished reserves; a better harvest could not immediately undo debt, bereavement or physical debility.
The immediate origins of the disaster belonged chiefly to the preceding year. The exceptional frost beginning in late 1739 and continuing into 1740 damaged stored potatoes, interrupted labour and transport, and was followed by drought and failures in tillage and livestock. Ireland’s poorer households did eat potatoes, but they also depended heavily on oats and other grains, dairy produce and seasonal work. The crisis was therefore broader than a potato failure. It was a compound collapse in food, fuel, fodder, employment and purchasing power.
The immediate issue was a patent granted in 1722 to the English manufacturer William Wood to mint copper halfpence and farthings for Ireland. Ireland genuinely needed small change: modest daily transactions in towns, markets, workshops and fairs depended upon coin of low value, while gold and silver were scarce in ordinary exchange. The difficulty was not therefore that copper currency was inherently unwelcome. It was the scale, control and trustworthiness of Wood’s proposed supply, and the fact that it had been authorised in London without consultation that satisfied Irish political opinion.
