page_title: Chronology of the Great Famine
hierarchical_section_title: Chronology of the Great Famine
caption_attribution_description: English: Depiction of the Irish potato famine: The Sketch of a Woman and Children represents Bridget O'Donnel. Her story is briefly this:-- '. . .we were put out last November; we owed some rent. I was at this time lying in fever. . . they commenced knocking down the house, and had half of it knocked down when two neighbours, women, Nell Spellesley and Kate How, carried me out. . . I was carried into a cabin, and lay there for eight days, when I had the creature (the child) born dead. I lay for three weeks after that. The whole of my family got the fever, and one boy thirteen years old died with want and with hunger while we were lying sick.
context_page_description: The chronology of the Great Famine documents a period of Irish history between November 29 1845 and 1852 during which time the population of Ireland was reduced by 20 to 25 percent. The proximate cause was famine resulting from a potato disease commonly known as late blight. Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland – where a third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food but which also produced an abundance of other food – was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.
context_section_description: The chronology of the Great Famine (Irish: An Gorta Mór or An Drochshaol, litt: The Bad Life) documents a period  of Irish history between November 29 1845 and 1852 during which time the population of Ireland was reduced by 20 to 25 percent. The proximate cause was famine resulting from a potato disease commonly known as late blight. Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland – where a third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food but which also produced an abundance of other food – was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.
caption: An 1849 depiction of Bridget O'Donnell and her two children during the famine.
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