Ireland before the Great Famine: how the 1841 census gives us a detailed picture of what Irish life was like before an Gorta Mór

This article featured as part of the Great Irish Famine digital project, produced by Helene O’Keeffe and John Crowley, UCC and RTÉ Digital, and funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries programme. The project - organised into three indexes on on RTÉ History - includes contributions from a range of scholars on themes ranging from the failure of British policy in Ireland to the generosity of the Choctaw Nation, from the roles played by women during the Famine to the effects of Irish emigration all over the world, from evictions to food riots. These stories are illustrated with paintings, portraits, newspaper illustrations, cartoons, artefacts and photographs of the surviving traces of the world before the Famine and the devastation that followed.