Days of Hunger

A film following a family through the great Irish famine of 1845.  The population of Ireland in a 1841 census was given as 8.1 million people. Some believe that it could have been as high as 9 or even 10 million. The vast majority of the poor depended on one resource - the potato. One acre of land could grow enough potatoes to support a family. When a mans sons got married they would have erected a mud cabin, take a share of their father's land and start a family, that family would have subdivided again when their offspring were ready to marry so by the middle of the 19th century with the population at an alarming high rate the competition for land increased and rents rose dramatically. In the Autumn of 1845 a deadly disease struck the potatoes and the following year the crop was totally destroyed.