DURING her first visit to Ireland, an Australian woman stumbled upon a possible explanation for a forgotten family mystery. The source of her revelation was a Dublin history tour guide who was recalling the soup kitchens of the Great Famine of 1845-47.
After the blight had reduced Ireland's potato fields to a putrescent wasteland, thousands had taken to the roads in search of food.
In desperation, the British Government established soup kitchens to feed the destitute. These hot cauldrons of life-saving broth literally fed millions until, less than a year later, the newly elected Whig government stopped the programme.
Britain's sickly colony was becoming an economic drain and so the Anglo-Irish landlords were vested with the responsibility of feeding the starving through workhouses.
In the three months it took for the new relief programme to be established, there was no food for the hungry and so 19th century Europe's greatest social disaster gathered sickening pace.
The Australian later approached the guide to thank him and share her discovery. Her great-grandmother, she told him, had left Ireland in the 1850s as a child, living in Sydney until well into her 90s.
But as senility set in, she had taken up a peculiar habit. On cold days she would wander the local suburban streets, a saucepan of soup in one hand, a ladle in the other, imploring puzzled passers-by to take a cupful.
