The Irish Famine, a Perfect Storm: Bridget O'Donnel's story:  . . .we were put out last November; we owed some rent. I was at this time lying in fever. . they commenced knocking down the house, and had half of it knocked down when two neighbours, women, Nell Spellesley and Kate How, carried me out. . . I was carried into a cabin, and lay there for eight days, when I had the creature, (the child) born dead I lay for three weeks after that. The whole of my family got the fever, and one boy thirteen years old died with want and with hunger while we were lying sick.  Illustrated London News, December 22, 18 The potato famine was Ireland's perfect storm, so it was for Bridget O'Donnell as well. In the decades that followed the famine the population of Ireland fell from 8 Million in 1841 to 4 million in 1901. No one factor could account for an event of this magnitude. It would be the confluence of a series of seemingly unrelated events.