A. METHODS FOR ESTIMATING MISSING DATA

Evictions were not recorded before 1849. Consequently, estimates of the number of evictions between 1846 and 1848 must be derived from judicial records that only record the number of ejectment decrees issued. These figures do not reveal how many of the decrees were actually carried out or how many of the evicted tenants were reinstated, either as tenants or as caretakers. I have dismissed the first deficiency in the data as insignificant for calculating evictions during the Famine. Clark has argued that following the Famine landlords often used ejectment decrees as a means of compelling recalcitrant tenants to pay their rents or abide by estate rules. This argument is effective for conditions after the Famine, but would seem to have little relevance during the Famine since most landlords realized that such tactics would not work on a destitute population. Consequently, I have assumed that all of the ejectment decrees were carried out, although no doubt such an assumptions results in overestimating the number of legal ejectments. This is probably compensated for by those incidents where tenants were thrown off their holdings without the niceties of legal decrees and by those tenants who fled the country rather than stay to be evicted.