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60 free Irish Potato Famine trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Irish Potato Famine trivia quiz covers the Great Hunger of 1845 to 1852, the catastrophe that halved Ireland's population and reshaped Irish America. The easy questions are ones anyone who paid attention in history class can attempt: what destroyed the crop, roughly how many died and how many left, which year was Black '47, and what the coffin ships were. From there it moves into how Ireland got so dependent on one vegetable, the Lumper, the middlemen and absentee landlords, and how the governments of Peel and Russell responded and failed to respond. The harder end is for history buffs and readers of Woodham-Smith and Ó Gráda: Peel's brimstone, the Corn Laws, Charles Trevelyan and laissez-faire, the Poor Law and the quarter-acre Gregory clause, the Encumbered Estates Act, souperism, Skibbereen, the Doolough walk, Grosse Isle, Liverpool as Ireland's second capital, the Choctaw donation and the sultan's £1,000, John Mitchel's famous sentence, the Blair message of 1997, the genocide debate and the memorials at Murrisk and Midleton. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the famine, its causes and its aftermath before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Irish history, Victorian Britain and 19th-century history quizzes next.
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Q 01In which years did the Great Famine take place?
1845 to 1852
In Irish it was known as an Drochshaol, the bad life or the hard times.
Q 02What is the Irish-language name for the famine, meaning the Great Hunger?
An Gorta Mór
Contemporaries more often called the period an Drochshaol, the bad life.
Q 03How is the worst year of the famine popularly remembered?
Black '47
Seed potatoes were so scarce that year that hunger continued despite average yields.
Q 04Roughly how many people died during the famine, by the most widely accepted estimate?
1,000,000
At least as many again emigrated, and the population fell by 20 to 25 percent between 1841 and 1871.
Q 05What was Ireland's population on the eve of the famine, and what was it by 1901?
About 8.5m, then 4.4m
At least 2.1 million people left the island between 1845 and 1855, one of history's greatest exoduses from a single island.
Q 06What organism caused the potato blight?
An oomycete, or water mould
Phytophthora infestans is often called a fungus but is actually more closely related to brown algae.
Q 07The blight pathogen has been traced to a valley in which country?
Mexico
From the Toluca Valley it spread through North America and then to Europe.
Q 08Which strain of blight caused the 1845-46 outbreak, according to modern analysis?
HERB-1
Experts think it reached Europe probably in 1844, possibly on potatoes carried to feed passengers on clipper ships.
Q 09Which single potato variety made up a disproportionate share of Ireland's crop, leaving it genetically vulnerable?
The Irish Lumper
By 1800 the potato was a winter staple for one in three Irish people.
Q 10Who is often credited with introducing the potato to Ireland after 1586?
Walter Raleigh
He is said to have planted it at Myrtle Grove in Youghal, County Cork.
Q 11What fraction of the potato harvest was lost to blight in 1846?
Three quarters
The 1845 loss had been between a third and a half; the first starvation deaths came in autumn 1846.
Q 12Which newspaper announced on 13 September 1845 that the potato Murrain had unequivocally declared itself in Ireland?
The Gardeners' Chronicle
It stopped the press to run the report.
Q 13Who was British prime minister when the blight first struck in 1845?
Robert Peel
He wrote that there was always a tendency to exaggeration in Irish news, but acted within weeks.
Q 21What principle, popular in Britain, was embodied in the Poor Relief (Ireland) Act of June 1847?
Irish property must support Irish poverty
The cost of relief was transferred to local rates in Ireland in April 1847.
Q 22What did the Incumbered Estates Act of 1849 allow?
Indebted landlords' properties to be auctioned
British speculators bought cheaply, raised rents and cleared tenants for cattle grazing.
Q 23What was Souperism?
Q 14What did Peel secretly buy from America for £100,000 in November 1845?
Maize and cornmeal
Baring Brothers acted as his agents; the first shipment did not arrive until February 1846.
Q 15What nickname did the unpopular yellow cornmeal acquire?
Peel's brimstone
Irish mills could not grind it, and it had to be very much cooked or it caused severe bowel complaints.
Q 16Which tariffs did Peel move to repeal in October 1845, splitting his party and eventually bringing down his government?
The Corn Laws
Repeal in 1846 did little to help the starving Irish.
Q 17Which Whig leader succeeded Peel as prime minister in June 1846?
Lord John Russell
His administration assumed the market would provide food.
Q 18What economic doctrine guided the Russell government's response, leading it to halt Peel's relief works?
Laissez-faire
They refused to interfere with the movement of food to England.
Q 19Which civil servant in charge of government relief wrote that if small farmers went, Ireland would reach a satisfactory settlement?
Charles Trevelyan
His name became a byword in Ireland for official callousness.
Q 20What did the 1847 Gregory clause of the Poor Law bar from relief?
Anyone holding at least a quarter acre
Farmers had to give up all their land to qualify, and it drove some 90,000 people off the land in 1849 alone.
Feeding children only if they took Protestant lessons
Those who converted for food were called soupers or jumpers and said to have taken the soup.
Q 24Which nationalist wrote that the Almighty sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine?
John Mitchel
He was convicted under the Treason Felony Act and transported to Bermuda for 14 years.
Q 25Which group staged an unsuccessful armed rebellion in County Tipperary in 1848?
Young Ireland
William Smith O'Brien had helped found the Irish Confederation the year before.
Q 26What did the Choctaw people of Oklahoma send for Irish relief in 1847?
$170
It was just 16 years after the Choctaw had walked the Trail of Tears.
Q 27What is the name of the 2017 stainless-steel sculpture of nine eagle feathers in Midleton, County Cork, thanking the Choctaw?
Kindred Spirits
Choctaw representatives have led the annual Doolough famine walk in Mayo.
Q 28According to legend, why did Sultan Abdulmecid I reduce his donation from £10,000 to £1,000?
To avoid giving more than Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria herself gave £2,000, and Tsar Alexander II also sent funds.
Q 29How much did Congressman Abraham Lincoln donate to famine relief in 1847?
$10
President James K. Polk gave $50.
Q 30Which city is credited with the first large overseas donations in 1846, around £14,000?
Calcutta
Irish soldiers and East India Company employees there contributed.