This page was created by John Huebner.  The last update was by Ashley Hacker.

Star of the Sea : A Postcolonial/Postmodern Voyage into the Irish Famine

The Aftermath of the Evictions

After tenants were evicted, several things happened to them. “The families would have to live in the woods or in scalpeens of turf-sobs on the side of the road” (O’Connor 54). Even “for some who tried to secure a place in the workhouse, hundreds died there during the famine from diseases that spread rapidly in the crowded, unsanitary institution” (Anbinder 352). Living in the woods and on the side of the road as well as dying from diseases was not the only thing evicted tenants faced. “[Deaths, due] to exposure to the cold and hunger, also killed enormous numbers of the evicted tenants” (Murchadha 246). Furthermore, all these tragedies that resulted from evictions did not disappear even after some landlords decided to relocate some of their tenants to other parts of the world like the United States and Canada. Anbinder argues that even as tenants made their way across the Atlantic, they continued to suffer due to the fact that their basic needs, such as food, were not covered by their landlords (352). O’Connor depicts this notion of tenants’ suffering especially through the accounts of deaths that were happening in the steerage voyages that were sailing to other countries like the United States. For instance, in the chapter called "The Angels," O'Connor writes that during the day when eighteen days still remained before the voyage gets to New York, "fourteen steerage passengers died, making a total of thirty-six since commenced this voyage" (77). Given the total number of steerage passengers dead at the moment, there is a high chance that with these many rest of the days remaining at sea, the number would increase rapidly.  

Works Cited
Anbinder, Tyler. “From Famine to Five Points: Lord Lansdowne's Irish Tenants Encounter North America's Most Notorious Slum”. The American Historical Review 107.2 (2002): 351–387. Web.

Murchadha, Ciarán Ó. "Famine Clearances." Encyclopedia of Irish History and Culture. Ed. James S. Donnelly, Jr. Vol. 1. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. 245-247. World History in Context. Web. 11 Feb. 2016.

O'Connor, Joseph. Star of the Sea. Orlando: Harcourt, 2002. Print.

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Researcher/Writer: Kalai Laizer
Technical Designers: John Huebner and Ashley Hacker

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