Book Review Of Paddy's Lament By Thomas Gallagher

I. Description of Book

Paddy’s Lament was written by Thomas Gallagher. The date of publication is May 28, 1987 and the book was published by Houghton Milton Harcourt, and the place of publication is New York, New York. There are 372 pages in the book.

Paddy’s Lament is about the terrible sufferings of the Irish people during the potato famine and of the cruel treatment that the Irish went through at the hands of the British people. The British did nothing to help the Irish survive when if they just shared their food they could have saved millions of people from a horrible death. They wrote in their newspapers that the Irish were lazy and didn’t want to work. At the time before the famine, the Irish loved their homeland and few wanted to immigrate to other countries. They had little money to buy a passage to America. They would send one member of the family to America and he would get a job to help those back home. As the famine got worse, the English were looking bad to the rest of the world and decided on a plan to ship all the Irish they could to America and Canada. This way they would rid themselves of the Irish problem. The British paid passage to families who would immigrate. The Irish were happy to leave, but the conditions on the British ships were deplorable. They had to stay on deck through the whole voyage, and about one in three people died. So many Irish people died that they became known as coffin ships. When they arrived in New York, the Irish were examined by a health examiner. Some families were separated from others, and children were separated from their mothers. The Irish were taken to tenements to live in. The conditions of the tenements were horrible. There were so many people living in them that the places we...

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...for my family in Ireland and how they came to America. I could relate to the story so well. For example, in the prologue, Thomas Gallagher says that his father was told to change his name from Patrick to Joe. When my great-grandmother came to America, she was pregnant with my grandfather. She was told not to name her son Patrick after his father for the same reasons, and instead named him James Patrick. Gallagher also describe the horrible condition of their home. My grandmother also told me that the condition her father’s house was so bad that people passing back thought that it was abandoned. I was able to learn so much about my family from one book.

I don’t think anything is missing from this book. This book is very well-written. Thomas Gallagher told the history of not only his family but every Irish family. I feel that every Irish person should read this book.