Some?. You said it was ‘few’. Make up your mind....
A few?. If you actually learn some Irish history, you will see that its is estimated that at least 100000 Protestants and possibly as many as 300000 died. Unless you think 100000 or 200000 or 300000 just ‘some’...
The Famine: A shared tragedy
‘One of the common myths that have been around for a long time is that the Great Hunger had little effect on the people of the nine counties of Ulster.
The people making such claims employ a number of arguments none of which stands up to any degree of historical scrutiny but has silenced any meaningful debate on the great hunger, within the Protestant community Another myth is the almost racist claim that the hard working Protestants of Ulster were spared the hunger and disease which was more or less confined to the Catholic community, who didn’t work.
Such myths, compounded by the fact that the real history of Ireland is rarely taught in schools, has had an undoubted impact upon peoples ability to put the Great Hunger today, in its proper historical context.’
‘Tens of thousands perished in Ulster and in her book, ‘when Hunger stalked the North’ Doreen Mc Bride quotes from A. Shafto Adair who claimed in 1947 that thousands around Ballymena died without being counted. Ballymena at that time would have been regarded as a prosperous district and today is the political heartland of Ian Paisley.
Paisley, like many Unionist is fixated by the history of the Battle of the Boyne, crossing ancient swords and muskets with Bertie Ahern during the recent opening of the Boyne Museum, yet the thousands of the ancestors of Ballymena’s present day inhabitants who perished during the Great Hunger, are not remembered by any of the cultural traditions to which Paisley lends his support.
Most of Ulster’s dead from the Protestant tradition lie united in death in pauper’s graves or in other sites long forgotten, their wretched lives and deaths cloaked under a veil of silence and political dishonesty.
Many who died from cholera are buried in a mound in Friars Bush Cemetery on the Stranmillis Road in Belfast, ignored by the majority of the Protestant community.’
http://www.sundayjournal.ie/mary-nelis/The-Famine-A-shared-tragedy.4118080.jp
‘The figure for the overall number of deaths
(Catholic AND Protestants) is still a matter of academic research and debate. So too is the figure for the number who emigrated. Those who hold a higher figure for emigration, hold a lower one for death, and vice versa.
Areas with large numbers of Protestants, like north-east Ulster, Dublin and East Leinster had a lower death rate than Connaught and Munster.
But Tyrone and Armagh, which also had big Protestant populations had a death rate equal to Tipperary. It is likely that the demographic pattern of those who emigrated and those who died were quite different. Most of those who
emigrated were the very poor who had previously survived on land of less than ten acres. Those who died covered a wider social spectrum. The main cause of death during the famine was not starvation but typhus, relapsing
fever and dysentery. (The 1851 census returns for those dying in the previous ten years recorded only 20,402 dying from starvation, and a further 22,384, from “dropsy” which was starvation related.) Typhus and relapsing
fever are not directly related to lack of food and spread across the social classes.’
(”The Famine in Ireland” by Mary E. Daly, Associate Professor of History, University College, Dublin, published by the Historical Association of Ireland 1986 again in 1994.)
‘AVERAGE ANNUAL EXCESS MORTALITY 1845-1851 BY COUNTY
Yearly deaths (per thousand)
‘There is no exact count of how many actually died or emigrated, the statistics you read here and in every historical source are an approximation, the figures are thought to be higher, but no one knows for sure how much higher.’
YEARLY DEATHS PER THOUSAND
50-60
Mayo
Sligo
Leitrim (western section of county)
40-50
Cavan
Leitrim
Roscommon
Galway
30-40
Clare
Cork
20-30
Fermanagh
Monaghan
Longford
Westmeath
Laois/Queens
Tipperary
Waterford
Kerry
10-20
Antrim
Donegal
Tyrone
Meath
Offaly/Kings
Limerick
Kilkenny
Wicklow
Armagh
0-10
Derry
Down
Louth
Dublin
Kildare
Carlow
Wexford
(This information taken from THE IRISH FAMINE by Peter Gray, THE FAMINE in ULSTER Edited by Christine Kinealy
and Trevor Parkill)
If you consider the map showing the distribution
of cholera between 1848-1850 at
http://www.wisc.edu/history/famine/cholera.html
you will learn that the occurences are as follows in towns of 2,000 inhabitants and upwards:
Londonderry 3 (Large Protestant majority)
Antrim 4 (Large Protestant majority)
Down 5 (Large Protestant majority)
Armagh 4 (Large Protestant majority)
Fermanagh 0 (Small Catholic majority)
Tyrone 0 (Small Catholic majority)
Donegal 0 (Large Catholic majority)
Monaghan 1 (Large Catholic majority)
Cavan 0 (Large Catholic majority)
Since we can assume that the cholera followed the blight, it is clear that Ulster was indeed not stricken by blight to the extent that the other Provinces were BUT the counties within Ulster that were stricken were predominantly the Protestant dominated dominated counties.
http://www.ulsterheritage.com/maps/famine_1847.gif
“A few?. If you actually learn some Irish history, you will see that its is estimated that at least 100000 Protestants and possibly as many as 300000 died. Unless you think 100000 or 200000 or 300000 just ‘some’...”
When you compare it to the number of Catholics who died it is only “some”.
