An Gorta Mór: Emergency Cabinet Meeting

31 Oct 1845: British Prime Minister Robert Peel's emergency cabinet meeting gets underway to discuss an alarming potato blight first noted in Ireland in mid-September. While reports were concerning, in recent weeks Peel had been cautioned by the Home Secretary Sir James Graham that the Irish and particularly Irish press tended to "exaggerate".

Nonetheless Peel was concerned enough that he favoured repeal of the "Corn Laws" which artificially gave British grown grain a cost advantage over foreign imports. Believing relief efforts could not be organised with those laws remaining in place he proposed repeal. 

His cabinet disagreed and the meeting would be adjourned with not much accomplished but the formation of a scientific commission to visit Ireland and assess the situation. The cabinet would reconvene on 6 November.