A period of famine and unrest in Ireland. In 1845 blight affected the potato in Ireland and the crop failed, thus depriving the Irish people of their staple food. Absentee landlords failed to prevent exploitation of tenants by their agents; farmers could not pay their rents; often they were evicted and their cottages destroyed. This exacerbated the blight by further reducing harvests. Committees to organize relief works for such unemployed persons, together with soup kitchens, were set up, and, especially in the western counties, large numbers sought refuge in workhouses. Deaths from starvation were aggravated by an epidemic of typhus, from which some 350,000 died in the year 1846–47. The corn harvest in 1847 was good and, although the blight recurred, the worst of the famine was over. It is estimated that one million people died in Ireland of starvation in the five years 1846–51 and another million emigrated to the USA or elsewhere.