Mortality among institutionalised children during the Great Famine in Ireland: bioarchaeological contextualisation of non-adult mortality rates in the Kilkenny Union Workhouse, 1846–1851

Abstract

Over half of all victims of the Great Irish Famine (1845–1852) were children. Many of these deaths took place in the union workhouses: institutions of government poor relief which for many were the last resort in a desperate struggle to survive famine-induced conditions such as starvation and infectious disease. Archaeological excavations of a mass burial ground dating to 1847–1851 at the former workhouse in Kilkenny City have provided the opportunity to undertake a detailed interdisciplinary exploration of non-adult mortality in an Irish workhouse during the height of the Famine.

Ossification of the Ligamentum Flavum in a Nineteenth-Century Skeletal Population Sample from Ireland: Using Bioarchaeology to Reveal a Neglected Spine Pathology

“…The primary cause of the Famine was a potato blight 41 and, as a consequence, hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland resorted to the workhouses for relief as a mean to avoid death by starvation 42 . Of the over 4,100 people who died in the Kilkenny Union Workhouse during the Famine 43 , at least 970 individuals were buried in an unmarked intramural mass burial ground. This burial ground was subject to a development-driven archaeological excavation in 2006, from which the human remains were subsequently analysed and studied before to their final re-interment in 2010 (see below).…”

Scarring and Selection in the Great Irish Famine

“…Evidence from archaeological studies provide indications as to the selective nature of famine mortality conditions in Ireland. The main archaeological evidence comes from the excavation of the Kilkenny Workhouse burial ground, 33 km from Clonmel (Geber 2016). 6 A high proportion of skeletal remains exhibited evidence of scurvy rather than any infectious disease, and this disproportionately affected the young 7 .…”

“… 7 970 skeletal remains were exhumed and examined, representing just under half of the known deaths from the incomplete workhouse records (estimated 2,234 deaths) (Geber 2016). …”

Comparisons of Age-at-Death Distributions among Extinct Hominins and Extant Nonhuman Primates Indicate Normal Mortality

“…In contrast, when deviations from the expected age-at-death distribution are observed in Homo sapiens populations, particularly those belonging to the Holocene, we often have sufficient contextual information to determine whether they are caused by unusual population dynamics (such as mass mortality events) or are the result of introduced bias (such as poor preservation). This is frequently achieved through cross-referencing mortality distributions with other sources, such as historical accounts of plague and famine (e.g., Geber, 2016;DeWitte, 2014), inferences of differential mortuary practices for certain demographics (e.g., literature review by Betsinger & DeWitte, 2021), paleopathological and trauma evidence indicative of disease or warfare (e.g., Ham et al, 2021;Steadman, 2008), or analysis of taphonomic conditions.…”