The famine was at its height in 1849 when Margaret Vaughan was 19 years of age and Laurence Sullivan 16. Anglo-Irish landlords, often absentee, occupying hereditary land which had in earlier centuries belonged to the Irish clans, evicted tenants and razed their turf or stone cottages when they were unable to pay rentals for their small holdings and sub-holdings. Over 80% of the land in Ireland was owned by Anglo-Irish gentry at the time of the famine. Landless labourers working on the big estates, allowed to build a meagre dwelling for themselves often paid their rental in potatoes. A vicious circle resulted. Landlords could not pay the rates on their properties if tenants could not pay rentals. Evictions were brutal. Soup kitchens flourished. Desperate families entered Workhouses where they were segregated by age and gender. Homeless and hungry, the people starved - this famine likened to that in Rwanda within recent decades. Corn was available and other foodstuffs but the poor had no money. Some tried to survive on seaweed or raw shellfish. Dysentery and typhus were rife.
For those who managed to find the boat fare to escape elsewhere, there were high death rates on the worst ships. Western Ireland which includes Limerick and County Clare were badly affected, partly due to the wet climate and boggy soil. The famine changed the entire social structure of Ireland. It was also the cause of late marriages so it is no surprise that both Laurence Sullivan and Margaret Vaughan were single and in their thirties when they departed their homeland. We will never know their particular circumstances in Ireland at the time of the famine, and why they survived when so many didn’t or whether other family members were lost. It is recorded that there were seven girls and one son in the Vaughan family in Ireland. Their father, Patrick, was described as a labourer as was Laurence Sullivan’s father, also named Patrick.
Life on the Victorian goldfields for Laurence was probably tough but not as tough as he would have witnessed in Ireland. He must have raised sufficient cash to pay for further boat travel when news reached miners in Australia of the gold bonanza in Otago’s
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