Join Michelle O’Mahony for an in-depth look at the children who lived in workhouses during Ireland’s Great Hunger.
During the Great Hunger, families were forced to enter workhouses due to starvation and displacement. Workhouses enforced a strict segregation policy, with men, women and children separated and forbidden from interacting with each other. This policy was especially restrictive for children, who after the age of two were separated from their mothers. Inevitably, these arrangements had negative psychological effects on the children that they impacted.
This lecture is part of our series which examines different aspects of the Great Hunger in Ireland and America, and complements the new exhibition of select pieces from the Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield Collection.
Michelle O’Mahony is an author and historian who currently works as a bespoke history consultant. She has written various case studies on workhouses, including Famine in Cork City and contributed to the seminal work, The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine.