Visitors to rural Ireland in the early 19th century often remarked on the poverty.

Poverty was a normal condition of life for many rural Irish in the early 19th century. While some members of rural communities had occupations which ensured a comfortable, if modest, existence, many tenant farmers lived in precarious conditions.

When widespread failures of the potato crop struck in the 1840s many families were faced with starvation.

This illustration, from an English illustrated newspaper published in 1843, actually depicts an impoverished family before the horrors of the Great Famine.