Read an original report from The Times, Wednesday, August 13, 1845

HUNGER HURTS. TO THE 24,000 children and adults throughout the world who starve to death or die of diseases associated with hunger every day, this might be regarded as a banal statement. In his history of hunger, however, James Vernon is anything but trite. He wants us to meditate on the cultural and historical specificities of the “hurt” of hunger in the United Kingdom and the Empire between the 19th century and the 1940s.

Starvation is fundamental to our past. During the Great Irish Hunger of 1843-46, close to a million people died. Furious as well as frightened, Irish commentators attempted to allocate blame. Was the blight an indictment of British rule? As the Ulster-born Protestant nationalist John Mitchel declaimed, the Irish were “carefully, prudently, and peacefully slain by the English government”. More commonly, dire poverty was blamed on the poor themselves. Starving paupers were accused of being lazy or profligate. Famine was a punishment from God, a wrathful providence bent on striking down the ungodly.

Hunger was not simply an Irish problem. Throughout the UK, citizens suffered starvation. In 1845 and 1846 The Times launched a campaign to expose the extent of the crisis even in flourishing English towns. Its initial target was Andover, in Hampshire. Journalists vied for the most lurid stories. According to one, paupers in Andover were so hungry that they fought over the bones they were employed to crush. Some of these bones, journalists alleged, came from cemeteries. The Times implored readers to try to imagine how English paupers could be so hungry that they could sink into “such a state of brutal degradation” that they were forced to “satisfy the cravings of hunger from such a disgusting source”.

Instead of castigating the poor for their moral laxity, the newspaper blamed incompetent local officials and expressed loathing for the Government's inadequate Poor Law policies. Rather than being shunned as objects of opprobrium, the poor were embraced as innocent victims. Almost single-handedly, The Times succeeded in converting the hungry into objects of humanitarian concern.

The so-called “hunger marches” carried out by unemployed men throughout the country in the 1930s were another occasion when the consciences of middle-class Britons were pricked. These marchers sought not only to redeem the moral worth of destitute men, but also to publicise that governmental policies were responsible for the economic crisis. No jobs existed; the unemployed were victims of forces beyond their control. Even worse, unemployment insurance was inadequate and applicants were demeaned.

Vernon acknowledges that the hunger marches failed to reform economic policies immediately. In the long term, though, poignant images of the marchers gradually permeated political consciousness, solidifying the view that welfare was a social right. Vernon is not exaggerating when he claims that the marches prepared politicians and public for the postwar welfare state.

Vernon is clearly strongest as a cultural historian of politics, but some of the most original parts of the book delve into the technologies of hunger and their impact on housewives. Nutritionists were particularly important from the early 20th century. Their popularisation of dietary regimens, which included the scientific assessment of calories and the discovery of vitamins, meant that, for the first time, it was possible to be middle class and yet suffer from malnutrition. As the key consumers of food products, housewives bore the brunt of their proselytising. Transformed into “domestic scientists”, women ended up spending more, not less, time slaving in the kitchen.

Although this is not a global history, Vernon rightly emphasises the transnational dimension. Horrifying photographs of starving women and children in Calcutta in 1943 shocked even the most pro-colonial officials. It was no longer enough to simply unleash another “tidal wave of tears”, sneered the communist Freda Bedi. Indian self-government was now a matter of life or death. Before that happened, however, British nutritionists stepped in, exploiting the famine in Bengal to experiment with the intravenous use of artificial proteins and minerals.

By creating a better “world of plenty”, wealthy nations could both demonstrate their humanitarian sensitivities and at the same time stave off political turbulence.

In the words of the angry young journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, reflecting on hunger in Britain: “Nutrition allayed no hunger, except for self-importance and self-righteousness.”

Vernon has put together a persuasive and wide-ranging history of hunger. His central tenet that hunger is not a natural catastrophe — it emerges into public view within historical contexts and for precise political reasons — is compelling.

For the poor, the reality of hunger was more visceral. When food was available, “we gorged”, recalled one man who had grown up in a deprived family in Blackburn in the 1930s. He remembered how his whole family “champed and chewed with relish. The smacking of lips, belching and sucking of fingers were all ignored ... To eat and drink one's fill was to be blessed”.

Whether one starves or gorges is a political question.

Hunger: A Modern History by James Vernon
Belknap/Harvard, £19.95

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