During the Irish Famine, British Prime Minister Lord Russell asked French Victorian celebrity chef Alexis Soyer to implement his idea of a soup kitchen in Dublin. He did and fed over 5,000 famine victims daily, but he charged the rich ex-pats four shillings to watch the victims eat his celebrated soup. In the adjacent zoo in Phoenix Park, it cost five shillings to watch the monkeys eat.

This fact so intrigued and appalled me that I wrote a play about it. Did Soyer ever realize how demeaning that must have been to the victims? Theoretically, the money raised funded a nearby workhouse, but Soyer also sold his cookbooks and famous Sultana’s Sauce to his customers at a wide profit.