ABSTRACT
In 1848 the Illustrated London News acquired a new editor when Charles Mackay replaced Frederick Bayley. Mackay appears to have been less sympathetic, or at least less sentimental, regarding Ireland. A Scotsman, Mackay had been a writer for the Whig Morning Chronicle and in the early forties returned to Glasgow to edit the Glasgow Argus (Griffiths, 1992, 391). In taking up the editorship of the ILN, he brought a more Whiggish bias to its editorial policy. Eventually, Mackay was to publish some critical accounts o f the Government’s handling of the Famine, as well as some memorable illustrations of the conditions o f the peasantry. At the outset, however, his empathy for the Irish was not particularly evident.
