Migration and the Famine

Census figures from 18 forty one and 18 51 give a sense of the areas that suffered most. Most people who left during the famine chose to go to north america, sometimes on what were calle coffin ships. People preferred to undertake that long journey rather than go to britain. We know between six and seven thousand famine emigrants are buried at grocil. If they survived that, they went onwards to montreal. So even if people escaped from ireland, it didn't mean they escaped from a famined death. It just meant they may have died overseas.