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Great Irish Famine Activity: Adopt a Viewpoint
Contentious issues on The Great Famine (2).pdfChallenges faced by people ranking ladder
Instructions
Instructions
As a group, read your character profile and the decisions open to them.
Rank the decisions in order of how you believe your character would choose them. Justify your reasons.
As a group, discuss the following:
What prior knowledge would students require before engaging in this activity?
How might you extend this activity further to suit your students?
What other learning outcomes or topics might this activity be applied to?
Landlord - Group 1/5
You are a landlord of a small estate in the west of Ireland, one of the worst-hit regions during the Great Irish Famine. There are 80 families on your estate. What actions do you take?
Evict your tenants and destroy their houses as a lesson to others because you cannot afford to help your tenants if they don’t pay rent.
Subsidise your tenants' emigration to foreign lands.
Use the famine as an opportunity to consolidate small pieces of land into bigger farms which will mean more food for those who get to stay.
Enforce harsh punishments for tenants who steal from you.
Station soldiers on your estate to protect the food that is being exported.
Tenant Farmer - Group 2/6
You are a tenant in the west of Ireland, one of the worst hit areas of the Famine. You have 5 children aged 1, 4, 7, 11, 14. Your crops have been hit by potato blight and you have no way to pay rent or feed your family. What do you do?
Move your family to a workhouse knowing that you will be split up.
Scrape money together to board a ship and emigrate with your whole family.
Plead with your landlord to help you and your family.
Send your eldest child on a ship to emigrate.
Sign up for a public works scheme.
Government Official - Group 3
You are a government official tasked with deciding what to do about the Great Irish Famine. What do you decide?
Create more public works schemes through a Public Works Bill.
Import food from abroad to sell to the poor e.g. Indian meal (corn/maize meal).
Establish a Relief Commission to coordinate the work of local relief committees.
Leave the aid to charities e.g. the Quakers.
Offer a plan to send young girls living in Irish workhouses to Australia.
Irish Famine Migrant - Group 4
Your siblings or friends have emigrated to either Britain, the USA or Canada. What do you decide?
Change your ways of living from rural and agricultural to urban and industrial.
Live in a building with inadequate sewage and running water.
Move from a place where your religion was a majority to a place where it is treated with suspicion by many.
Work in a domestic service or textile factories as a woman and work on railroads, canals, and coalmines as a man.
Face resentment by emigrants from other countries who see you as a threat to their job.
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