Relief during the Famine came from the government, from charities in Ireland and abroad, and from strangers who had never seen Ireland. How far it fell short is the heart of the argument about the Famine, and this page does not settle that. It sets out what was done, when, and with what money, as the sources record it, and it checks the donation stories that are told and retold.
What the government did
November 1845: Peel's Indian corn Faced with the first crop failure, Prime Minister Robert Peel secretly bought £100,000 worth of maize (Indian corn) and cornmeal from America, with Baring Brothers acting at first as his agents. The first shipment did not arrive until early February 1846. It came as unground kernels, which the few working Irish mills were not equipped to grind. The historian F. S. L. Lyons called this early response ‘prompt and relatively successful’. Source ↗
March 1846: Public works Peel set up a programme of public works: road improvement and the building of piers and fishing harbours. Source ↗
Summer–December 1846: Russell's works Peel fell in June 1846. Lord John Russell's Whig government, holding that the market would supply food, halted the previous food and relief works, then started a new programme of public works that by December 1846 employed, in Wikipedia's words, ‘a third or half a million people’ but ‘proved impossible to administer effectively’. Crowds at the works helped spread ‘famine fever’ over the winter. Source ↗
January–February 1847: The Soup Kitchen Act In January 1847 the government gave up non-interference and turned to direct relief: in the workhouses, and outside them through soup kitchens. The Temporary Relief Act (10 & 11 Vict. c. 7), passed in February and known as the Soup Kitchen Act, allowed soup kitchens to be set up to relieve the overstretched Poor Law. The scheme took its model from Skibbereen, one of the worst-hit places that winter. Source ↗
Summer 1847: Three million a day By summer 1847 the network of soup kitchens across Ireland was feeding 3 million people a day, according to the British Relief Association article. The scheme was temporary. Source ↗
1846–1847: The Royal Navy The Royal Navy squadron at Cork under Rear-Admiral Hugh Pigot carried government relief to Irish ports, and from January 1847 carried British Relief Association supplies too. In February 1847 naval surgeons were sent to give medical care. Source ↗
Charities and donors
The Society of Friends (Quakers) Through their Central Relief Committee the Quakers began relief at the end of 1846, raising and handing out around £200,000 in less than a year, mostly in the south and west. By the end of 1847 they were moving away from direct aid towards, in the words of the Quakers in Ireland article, ‘aiding the development of Ireland into a modern economy’. Wikipedia's Famine article says the Quakers ‘attempted to fill the gap’ left when government relief ended. Source ↗
The British Relief Association Founded on 1 January 1847 at the London house of Baron Lionel de Rothschild, by bankers and aristocrats who each gave at least £1,000. It was the largest private relief body. Its agent Paweł Strzelecki distributed food and clothing in 65 places by March 1847; in Westport about 8,000 people a week were fed on its grants. It raised approximately £500,000 according to its own article, or about £390,000 according to the main Famine article. The two figures are not reconciled in the sources. Source ↗
Queen Victoria The first donation to the British Relief Association from outside its founders: £2,000, more than any other individual donor. The Association's article says she first sent £1,000, and its secretary Stephen Spring Rice refused the cheque as ‘not enough’; she doubled it. Her ‘Queen's Letters’ of 1847 asked Church of England congregations to give, and raised about £170,000 and £30,000. Source ↗
Sultan Abdülmecid I The Ottoman Sultan gave £1,000. This is documented: the British Relief Association recorded it, and a letter of thanks from Irish notables survives in the Ottoman archives. The stories that grew around it are dealt with below. Source ↗
The Choctaw Nation In 1847 a group of Choctaw people collected $170 and sent it for Irish famine relief, sixteen years after their own suffering on the Trail of Tears. Kindred Spirits, Alex Pentek's sculpture of nine 20-foot steel eagle feathers forming an empty bowl, stands in Bailick Park, Midleton, Co. Cork. It was installed in 2015 and unveiled in June 2017 by Chief Gary Batton of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. In 2018 the Irish government set up a Choctaw-Ireland scholarship. Source ↗
Pope Pius IX Gave 1,000 scudi (about £213) of his own and authorised collections in Rome. On 25 March 1847 he issued the encyclical Praedecessores nostros, calling on the whole Catholic world to give money and prayers for Ireland. Source ↗
Calcutta, America and the world Calcutta is credited with the first larger donations, in 1846: about £14,000, part of it from Irish soldiers and Irish employees of the East India Company. From the United States 118 vessels sailed with relief goods worth $545,145. The Tsar sent money; President Polk gave $50; in 1847 Congressman Abraham Lincoln gave $10 (recorded in Britain as £5). Gifts came from as far as Venezuela, Mexico, South Africa and Australia. Source ↗
In all: Total charitable donations might have been about £1.5 million, of which £856,500 came from outside Ireland. About £380,000 was officially registered from within Ireland; allowing for informal giving, the Irish total probably exceeds the £525,000 given in Britain. English Protestants gave more than any other source outside Ireland. Source ↗
Stories told about the relief, checked
“Queen Victoria gave only £5 (and the same to Battersea Dogs Home)”Myth She gave £2,000. Wikipedia's Queen Victoria article calls the £5 story ‘a myth generated towards the end of the 19th century’. The label ‘the Famine Queen’, by which she was known in Ireland in later decades, is also the title of an article Maud Gonne wrote on her visit to Ireland in 1900. Source ↗
“The Sultan wanted to give £10,000 but was made to cut it to £1,000 so as not to outdo the Queen”Unproven The claim first appears, without a source, in Taylor and Mackay's Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel (1851). The next source, from 1894, is William J. O'Neill Daunt's account of what the son of the Sultan's physician told him, and it says the Queen had given £1,000, when she had given £2,000. The £1,000 gift is certain; the £10,000 offer is not documented. Source ↗
“Ottoman ships ran a British blockade to land food at Drogheda”Disputed Repeated by President Mary McAleese in a speech in Turkey in 2010. Wikipedia's Drogheda United article says the legend is not supported by evidence and that there was no British blockade. Local newspapers do record two vessels from Ottoman territories arriving at Drogheda between 10 and 14 May 1847, but with trade goods, not charity. Source ↗
“Drogheda added the star and crescent to its arms to thank the Sultan”Doubtful The Drogheda article notes that the star and crescent is mentioned as part of the mayor's seal by D'Alton in 1844, before the Famine began. Source ↗
“The Choctaw gave $710”Usually given as $170 The Kindred Spirits article says records of the exact amount vary but the figure usually given is $170, and the Choctaw Nation article notes that articles after Angie Debo's history of the Choctaw corrected the amount to $170. We found no source for $710 and do not use it. Source ↗
Quick answersWhat were the Famine soup kitchens?
Under the Temporary Relief Act of February 1847, the ‘Soup Kitchen Act’, the government set up soup kitchens to feed the hungry directly outside the workhouses. By summer 1847 they were feeding 3 million people a day.
How much did the Choctaw give to Ireland?
$170, collected in 1847. It is remembered in Ireland by the Kindred Spirits sculpture in Midleton, Co. Cork, unveiled in June 2017.
Did Queen Victoria give £5 to the Famine?
No. She gave £2,000 to the British Relief Association in January 1847. The £5 story is a myth from the late 19th century.
Did the Ottoman Sultan send ships to Drogheda?
The Sultan's £1,000 gift is documented. The story of ships running a blockade to Drogheda is not supported by evidence: there was no blockade, and the two Ottoman ships recorded at Drogheda in May 1847 carried trade goods.
Differences between sources are shown where they arise: the British Relief Association total (£500,000 or £390,000), and the year of the Kindred Spirits sculpture (installed 2015, unveiled 2017). We have not used the soup-kitchen figures by county or month, which the articles do not give.