A huge number of the Irish were shipped to Australia because of doing anything against the Crown. Most were not seriously violent criminals. I was almost 50 years old before I learned that there was actually food in Ireland during what I now term the Irish starvation, not the Irish famine
The Irish worked on the British absentee landlord’s farms raising grain and beef. It was exported to England. The Irish were only allowed to eat what they could grow on their own tiny and ever growing smaller plots of land. When the potato blight came, the Irish starved. A famine is when there is no food. A starvation is when the absentee landlords and others with all the power deny food.
Like the holodour starvation?