1849 in Ireland

Events

• 21 April – Great Famine: 96 inmates of the overcrowded Ballinrobe Union Workhouse have died over the course of the preceding week from illness and other famine-related conditions, a record high. This year's potato crop again fails and there are renewed outbreaks of cholera.
• 12 July – Dolly's Brae conflict: Up to 1,400 armed Orangemen march from Rathfriland to Tollymore Park near Castlewellan, County Down. When 1000 armed Ribbonmen gather, shots are fired, Catholic homes are burnt and about eighty Catholics killed.
• 16 July – Donaghadee to Portpatrick packet service withdrawn.
• 2-12 August – visit of Queen Victoria to Cork, Dublin and Belfast, landing on 3 August at Cove, which is renamed Queenstown in her honour, and departing from Kingstown. She officially opens Queen's Bridge in Belfast.
• 18 October – Great Southern and Western Railway opens to Cork.
• Construction begins on the 18-arch Craigmore Viaduct near Newry, on the Dublin-Belfast railway line.
• George Boole appointed as first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork.
• William Thompson begins publication of The Natural History of Ireland with the first volume on birds.

  Arts and literature

Sport

Births

• 31 January – Robert James McMordie, solicitor, politician and Lord Mayor of Belfast.
• 12 February – John Edward Robinson, Missionary Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
• 18 May – John Clark, boxer.
• 9 July – Robert McCall, lawyer.
• 1 August – William Larminie, poet and folklorist.
• 16 August – James Buchanan, 1st Baron Woolavington, businessman and philanthropist.
• 24 October – Nugent Everard, soldier, Seanad member.
• 19 November – James Mason, chess player and writer.
• 12 December – Peter F. Collier, publisher
• Charles James O'Donnell, colonial administrator and MP.

  Deaths

• 21 January – Anthony Manahan, businessman and politician in Upper Canada.
• 26 January – Thomas Arbuthnot, British military officer.
• 7 March – Maurice FitzGerald, 18th Knight of Kerry, Whig politician.
• 27 March – Archibald Acheson, 2nd Earl of Gosford, MP, Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada and Governor General of British North America.
• 22 May – Maria Edgeworth, novelist.
• 28 May – Joseph Blake, 3rd Baron Wallscourt, socialist.
• 20 June – James Clarence Mangan, poet .
• September – Daniel Robertson, architect and garden designer.
• 27 December – James Fintan Lalor, revolutionary, journalist and writer.