The Irish potato Famine was the single biggest social catastrophe of the nineteenth century. As a result of it, 1.5 million Irish men, women, and children emigrated and a staggering 1 million and more died - this out of a population of some 8.25 million people. In the years following the Famine, emigration continued unabated until the island's population was roughly half of what it had been in the pre-Famine period.