The Famine Memorial on the banks of the River Liffey in Dublin features larger-than-life bronze figures of emaciated men and women dressed in rags. Expressing profound sadness, despair, and determination, the figures pay tribute to the million peasants—primarily Catholics—who died of hunger in rural Ireland, from 1846 to 1849.
It is one of the most photographed public art pieces in all of Ireland.
Gillespie, who was influenced by the sculptor Henry Moore and the painter Edvard Munch, uses the lost wax casting process to portray profound sadness, despair, and determination .
In addition to meager belongings, one man carries a dead child. Among the emigrants were an estimated 980 children. A pair of children’s shoes pay tribute to them. An emaciated dog follows the walkers.
At the docks, the evicted tenants joined a million emigrants who embarked for the Americas and elsewhere
The memorial is built on the departure site of the Perseverance, one of the first famine ships to leave the area in 1846. The ship’s captain was a 74-year-old man who quit his office job to transport the starving people from Dublin to America. All the passengers on this ship arrived safely.
Most were not as fortunate. They made their voyages on thousands of “coffin ships,” so named because the brutal passage often resulted in death. Many survived only to succumb to fever shortly after arrival.
Adjacent to the memorial is a replica of the Jeanie Johnston, a tall ship that now serves as a famine museum.
Although the prevailing event is usually referred to as the Potato Famine, it wasn’t the potato, a remarkably nutritious food, that killed all these people. Nor was it the potato blight, phytophthora infestans. It was British law.
There was enough food grown in Ireland during this time to feed not only the landowners, aristocracy, and royalty, but also to export to England to support the far-flung United Kingdom. Yet there was none to feed the Catholics, who were forced from their homes for non-payment of taxes and for practicing their religion.
The cruelty, antipathy, and lack of humanitarian aid from the British during this time has led the Irish to call this period An Gorta Mór, The Great Hunger.
The memorial is the terminus of the National Famine Way, a 165-km walking trail that connects the National Famine Museum at Stokestown Park with Rowan Gillespie’s Famine Statues.
At St. Stephen’s Green,
The Famine Memorial in St. Stephen’s Green by Edward Delaney also commemorates the victims of the Great Hunger.
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