Deaths from 1840 to 1851.

The census data for this period is wrong. When the Parliamentary papers were being written
in 1856 the authors knew the data was wrong and said so. The data and my best estimate are
in a table below.

But why did the figures given to the census takers in 1851 not accurately record deaths between
1841 and 1845? I simply cannot account for this! It may be that those who had the information
died or emigrated, that is my best guess. The important thing is that the data is wrong, and without
reliable figures the data is open to all sorts of interpretation.

The published figures from the census of 1851 say that before the famine less than 80,000
people died in Ireland each year. That figure is not credible. This data shows only about
16,000 deaths for the last seven months of 1841. Data for the first five months of 1841
is available in that census and shows almost 70,000 deaths. The previous year 1840
had over 140,000 deaths. Clearly the data for deaths in the early part of the 1851 census is
unreliable.

I needed a more accurate estimate of how many people died. The estimate I finally came
up with is below (blue), together with the census results for 1841 (red), and the totals of the
census 1841+1851 (green). This is shown in the form of a graph below.

The estimated figures show that, in general, more people died than were actually recorded. A table of figures is below,
with the recorded totals (green, above) followed by estimated totals (blue, above).
 
 

1840	141536	141536
1841	85646	152753
1842	68732	129732
1843	70449	133807
1844	75055	154489
1845	86900	147842
1846	122889	167527
1847	249335	245897
1848	208252	170979
1849	240797	260335
1850	164093	164093

 
 

I had to amend the recorded mortality rates in order to calculate the above figures. It turns out that
mortality 1840-1845 is different from mortality 1846-1851. What these figures actually say is that
very many more children died during the famine years.

The term "excess deaths" is used to describe the effects of the famine and is calculated as the
difference in the number of deaths during the first five years of 1841-1851, when there was no
famine, and the last five years of famine and disease. Most of these deaths are due to "famine
related diseases" and some to starvation.

My estimate of "excess deaths" in Ireland attributable to the famine is 290,000 of which over 20,000
are recorded as having starved to death. Most of the "excess" dead are children.This figure of
290,000 is substantially less than the figure of 1,000,000 famine related deaths often
quoted.

[ 27.05.99 but see ongoing testing of the data, the figure of 290,000 is probably too low]

My estimate of the deaths June 1841 - March 1851 is 1,727,437. The figure for the previous ten
years is 1,400,239. The recorded total for 1841-1851 is 1,329,720
These figures do not include those who died en route from Ireland for other places, or deaths in other
countries which might be directly linked to the famine. I have included some information on this on
my page showing emigration data.
 

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