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Souperism was a phenomenon of the Irish Great Famine. Protestant Bible society set up schools in which starving children were fed, on the condition of receiving Protestant religious instruction at the same time. Its practitioners were reviled by the Catholic families who had to choose between Protestantism and starvation. People who converted for food were known as "soupers", "jumpers" and " cat breacs". In the words of their peers, they "took the soup". Although souperism did not occur frequently, the perception of it had a lasting effect on the popular memory of the Famine. It blemished the relief work by Protestants who gave aid without proselytising, and the rumour of souperism may have discouraged starving Catholics from attending for fear of betraying their faith.
Souperist practices, reported at the time, included serving meat soups on Fridays – which Catholics were forbidden by their faith from consuming.
Soupers were frequently ostracism by their own community, and were strongly denounced from the pulpit by the Catholic priesthood. On occasion, soupers had to be protected by British soldiers from other Catholics.
One of the effects of the perceptions surrounding Souperism was that, to avoid its stigma and avoid becoming embroiled in the war of words between Protestants and Catholics, many charities decided to only serve those whose religious persuasions matched their own. For examples: In Dublin, Mercer's Endowed Boarding School for Girls provided education for "girls of respectable Protestant parents", and the Magdalene Asylum on Lower Leeson St aided "Protestant women after a first fall" and "those who were to become mothers"; whereas the St Joseph's Reformatory School for Catholic Girls provided education for Catholic girls and the Catholic Rotunda Girls Aid Society aided unmarried Catholic mothers. Barret, whose Guide to Dublin Charities listed many overlapping charities, decried the "wasteful overlapping of work" and begged such charities to work together, to improve the overall amount of aid that could be given. (Williams, publisher of Dublin Charities: A Handbook, expressed similar sentiments about the state of disorganisation.) However, she herself ran a charity, Cottage Home for Little Children, aimed at providing shelter for "the very young children of the industrious Protestant poor". The reasons for the disorganised and duplicated efforts were not solely sectarian, and can also be attributed to a general unwillingness amongst charities to co-operate with one another.Margaret Helen Preston and Maria (FRW) Luddy (2025). 9780275979300, Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780275979300
By 1913 "souper" had become a general term of abuse used against overly religious Catholics as well. A priest near Macroom was opposed to informal dances, and a crowd of dancers taunted his informants with shouts of "soupers".Hart P. "The IRA and its enemies"; OUP 1999 p.296 .
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