When the Great Famine struck Ireland in the 1840s countless people perished.

When the potato crop failed and the Great Famine struck Ireland in the mid-1840s, the entire society was devastated. It is impossible to tell how many people died, though is has been estimated that one million people died of starvation and disease.

This illustration, from the London Illustrated News, depicts a funeral in Skibbereen, in County Cork, in 1847.

Many of the dead during the Great Famine were buried in unmarked mass graves, without coffins.