This book, the first full-length study of metropolitan Chartism, provides extensive new material for the 1840s and establishes the regional and national importance of the London movement throughout this decade. After an opening section which considers the economic and social structure of early-Victorian London, and provides an occupational breakdown of Chartists, Dr Goodway turns to the three main components of the metropolitan movement: its organized form; the crowd; and the trades. The development of London Chartism is correlated to economic fluctuations, and, after the nationally significant failure of London to respond in 1838-9, 1842 is seen as a peak in terms of conventional organization, and 1848 as the high point of turbulence and revolutionary potential. The section concludes with an exposition of the insurrectionary plans of 1848.

Over one million people died in the Great Famine, and more than one million more emigrated on the coffin ships to America and beyond. Drawing on contemporary eyewitness accounts and diaries, the book charts the arrival of the potato blight in 1845 and the total destruction of the harvests in 1846 which brought a sense of numbing shock to the populace. Far from meeting the relief needs of the poor, the Liberal public works programme was a first example of how relief policies would themselves lead to mortality. Workhouses were swamped with thousands who had subsisted on public works and soup kitchens earlier, and who now gathered in ragged crowds. Unable to cope, workhouse staff were forced to witness hundreds die where they lay, outside the walls. The next phase of degradation was the clearances, or exterminations in popular parlance which took place on a colossal scale. From late 1847 an exodus had begun. The Famine slowly came to an end from late 1849 but the longer term consequences were to reverberate through future decades.

The Irish potato famine of the 1840s, perhaps the most appalling event of the Victorian era, killed over a million people and drove as many more to emigrate to America. It may not have been the result of deliberate government policy, yet British ‘obtuseness, short-sightedness and ignorance’ – and stubborn commitment to laissez-faire ‘solutions’ – largely caused the disaster and prevented any serious efforts to relieve suffering. The continuing impact on Anglo-Irish relations was incalculable, the immediate human cost almost inconceivable. In this vivid and disturbing book Cecil Woodham-Smith provides the definitive account. ‘A moving and terrible book. It combines great literary power with great learning. It explains much in modern Ireland – and in modern America’ D.W. Brogan.

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