CHAPTER XII.

State of the Country during the Winter of 1847--State of Clare--Capt. Wynne's Letter--Patience of the suffering people--Ennis without food. The North--Belfast: great distress in it--Letter to the Northern Whig. Cork: rush of country people to it--Soup--Society of Friends--The sliding coffin--Deaths in the streets--One hundred bodies buried together!--More than one death every hour in the Workhouse. Limerick: Experience of a Priest of St. John's. Dublin: Dysentery more fatal than cholera--Meetings--"General Central Relief Committee for all Ireland"--Committee of the Society of Friends--The British Association for the Relief of Extreme Distress in Ireland and Scotland. The Government--Famine not a money question--so the Government pretended--Activity of other countries in procuring food--Attack on Divine Providence--Wm. Bennett's opinion. Money wages not to be had from farmers. Was it a money or food question?--The navigation laws--Freights doubled--The Prime Minister's exposition--Free Trade in theory--protection in practice--The Treasury says it cannot find meal. President Folk's message to Congress--America burthened with surplus corn--could supply the world--Was it a money question or a food question? Living on field roots--Churchyards enlarged--Three coffins on a donkey cart. Roscommon--no coffins--600 people in typhus fever in one Workhouse!--Heroic virtue--The Rosary. Sligo--Forty bodies waiting for inquests!--Owen Mulrooney--eating asses' flesh. Mayo--Meeting of the County--Mr. Garvey's statement. Mr. Tuke's experiences--Inquests given up--W.G.'s letters on Mayo--Effect of Famine on the relations of landlord and tenant--Extermination of the smaller tenantry--Evictions--Opinion of an eyewitness--A mother takes leave of her children--Ass and horse flesh--something more dreadful! (Note). The weather--its effects. Count Strezelecki. Mr. Egan's account of Westport--Anointing the people in the streets! The Society of Friends--Accounts given by their agents. Patience of tho people--Newspaper accounts not exaggerated. Donegal--Dunfanaghy--Glenties--Resident proprietors good and charitable. Skull--From Cape Clear to Skull--The Capers--Graveyard of Skull--Ballydehob--The hinged coffin--Famine hardens the heart. Rev. Traill Hall--Captain Caffin's narrative--Soup-kitchens--Officials concealing the state of the people--Provision for burying the dead--The boat's crew at a funeral. State of Dingle. Father Mathew's evidence. Bantry--Inquests--Catherine Sheehan--Richard Finn--Labours of the Priests--Giving a dinner away--Fearful number of deaths--Verdict of "Wilful murder" against Lord John Russell--The Workhouse at Bantry--Estimated deaths--The hinged coffin--Shafto Adair's idea of the Famine.

The year 1846 closed in gloom. It left the Irish people sinking in thousands into their graves, under the influence of a famine as general as it was intense, and which trampled down every barrier set up to stay its desolating progress. But the worst had not yet come. It was in 1847 that the highest point of misery and death had been reached. Skibbereen, to be sure, ceased to attract so much attention as it had been previously doing, but the people of that devoted town had received much relief; besides, there were now fewer mouths to fill there, so many were closed in death, at the Windmill-hill, in the Workhouse grounds, and in the churchyard of Abbeystrowry. Instead of one, Ireland had now many Skibbereens. In short, the greater part of it might be regarded as one vast Skibbereen. In the Autumn of 1846, the famine, which all saw advancing, seized upon certain districts of the South and West; but as ulcers, which first appear in isolated spots upon the body, enlarge until, touching each other, they become confluent, so had the famine, limited in its earlier stages to certain localities, now spread itself over the entire country. Hence, it is not in any new forms of suffering amongst the famine-stricken people that its increasing horrors are to be looked for: it is in its universality, and in the deadly effects of a new scourge—fever—which was not only manifesting itself throughout the land at this time, but had already risen to an alarming height—a thing not to be wondered at, because it is the certain offspring, as well as the powerful auxiliary, of famine.

In the fall of 1846, several parts of Clare were in a very wretched condition; but, at the opening of the new year, the most prosperous localities in that county had been sucked into the great famine vortex. Writing at this period from Ennis, the chief town, Captain Wynne says: "The number of those who, from age or exhaustion and infirmity, are unable to labour, is becoming most alarming; to those the public works are of no use; they are, no doubt, fit subjects for private charity and the exertions of relief committees, but it is vain to look to these sources for relief at all commensurate with the magnitude of the demand. Deaths are occurring from Famine, and there can be no doubt that the Famine advances upon us with giant strides." Several of the officials who had written to Sir Randolph Routh and others, from different parts of the country, blamed the people for their listlessness, their idleness, and the little interest they seemed to take in cropping their land, in order to secure a future supply of food. Addressing himself to this point, Captain Wynne says: "It is in vain to direct their [the people's] attention to the prosecution of those agricultural operations which can alone place any limit to their present deplorable condition. Agricultural labour holds out a distant prospect of reward—their present necessities require immediate relief. Such is their state of alarm and despair at the prospect before them, that they cannot be induced to look beyond to-morrow; thousands never expect to see the harvest. I must say the majority exhibit a great deal of patience, meekness, and submission." Again, in the same letter: "The effects of the Famine are discernible everywhere: not a domestic animal to be seen—pigs and poultry have quite disappeared. The dogs have also vanished, except here and there the ghost of one, buried in the skeleton of one of those victims of cruelty and barbarity, which have been so numerous here within the last two months—I allude to the horses and donkeys that were shot. It is an alarming fact that, this day, in the town of Ennis, there was not a stone of breadstuff of any description to be had on any terms, nor a loaf of bread."[213]

In the chief cities, the pressure of the Famine, day by day, became greater. In Belfast, the flourishing seat of the linen trade, one of the gentlemen appointed to visit the different districts, with the view of ascertaining the real amount of distress amongst the poor, writes in the following terms to the Northern Whig: "There is not any necessity that I should point out individual cases of abject want, though in my visitations I have seen many of whose extreme destitution I could not possibly have formed a true estimate had I not seen them. Let it suffice, however, to state, that in many of our back lanes and courts there are families in the veriest wretchedness, with scarcely enough of rags to cover their shivering emaciated bodies; they may be found huddled together around a handful of dying cinders, or endeavouring to fan into flame a small heap of damp smoking sawdust Perhaps when they have not been happy enough to procure even that scanty fuel, they will be found, to the number of five or six—some well, some ill, and all bearing the aspect of pinching hunger—endeavouring to procure warmth by crouching together upon a scanty heap of filthy straw, or mouldering wood shavings, their only covering an old worn-out rag of a blanket or a coverlet, that has been so patched and re-patched that its original texture or colour it would be impossible to discern. On looking around this miserable dwelling, nothing meets the eye save the damp floor and the bare walls, down which the rain, or condensed vapour, is plentifully streaming. Not a stool, chair, or seat of any description, in many instances, is to be seen, nor commonest utensil; and as for food, not so much as would satisfy the cravings of even a hungry infant. Let not this picture be deemed overdrawn. If any one suppose it exaggerated, had that individual been with me, on Sunday last, I could have shown him some instances of suffering, that would have removed all doubt regarding the reality of distress in Belfast. I will merely mention one of them:—"I entered a house to which my attention had been directed; in the kitchen there was not a single article of furniture—not even a live cinder on the cold deserted-looking hearth. In the inner room I found a woman, lately confined, lying upon a heap of chopped-up rotten straw, with scarcely a rag to cover her; beside her nestled two children, pictures of want, and in her bosom lay her undressed babe, that, four days before, had first seen the light. She had no food in the house, nor had she, nor her children, had anything since her confinement, save a little soup procured from the public kitchen. Such was her statement; and the evidence of her wretched dwelling bore but too ample testimony to her melancholy tale."

Large numbers were in a state of utter destitution in the city of Cork. As happened in other cities and important towns, the country people flocked in to swell the misery; and roaming in groups through the streets, exhibiting their wretchedness, and imploring relief, they gave them a most sad and deplorable appearance. Even the houses of once respectable tradesmen, denuded of every article of furniture, and without fuel or bedding, presented a most affecting spectacle of want and misery. And so impressed were the committee of the Society of Friends in Cork with the sufferings of this class, that a separate subscription was raised for supplying them with straw beds and some fuel. The apparatus which this committee had erected for the making of soup was, they thought at first, on too extensive a scale, but it was soon found to be insufficient to meet the calls which were daily made upon it. Their Report of the 1st of February says: "Our distribution of soup is rapidly increasing; during the past week it averaged one thousand and sixteen quarts a-day, and on seventh day it reached the extent of twelve hundred and sixty-eight quarts." It went on increasing until it had, a fortnight later, reached fourteen hundred quarts a-day. Besides the distribution of soup by the Society of Friends, there were four district soup houses, supplying over six-thousand quarts of soup daily; so that, at this time, forty-eight thousand quarts of soup were made and distributed weekly in the city of Cork. There was a nominal charge of a penny or so a quart for some of this soup, but much of it was given away gratuitously. Speaking of the accounts from different parts of the county Cork, the Report says:—"Where the potato crop was most completely annihilated—in the far west—the Famine first appeared, but other quarters were also invaded, as the remnant of the crop became blighted or consumed. Hence, in localities, which until recently but slightly participated in this afflictive visitation, distress and destitution are now spreading, and the accounts from some of these are presenting the same features of appalling misery as those which originally burst upon an affrighted nation from the neighbourhood of Skibbereen." In the postscript of a letter to the Cork Examiner, Rev. James O'Driscoll, P.P., writing from Kilmichael, says: "Since writing the above a young man named Manley, in fever at Cooldorahey, had to be visited. He was found in a dying state, without one to tend him. His sister and brother lay dead quite close to him in the same room. The sister was dead for five days, and the brother for three days. He also died, being the last of a large family. The three were interred by means of a sliding coffin."

The Cork Workhouse was crowded to excess, and the number of deaths in it, at this time, was simply frightful: they were one hundred and seventy-four in a single week—more than one death in every hour.[214] In one day, in the beginning of February, there were forty-four corpses in the house; and on the 10th of that month one hundred bodies were conveyed for interment to a small suburban burial place near Cork. Several persons were found dead in the streets; numbers of bodies were left unburied for want of coffins. Under a shed at the Shandon guard-house lay some thirty-eight human beings; old and young, men, women, and infants of tenderest age, huddled together like so many pigs or dogs, on the ground, without any covering but the rags on their persons.[215]

The Limerick Examiner, in giving an account of the state of the poor in that city, publishes a day's experience of one of the Catholic priests in the Parish of St. John. In one day he was called to officiate at the death-beds of seven persons who were dying of starvation, the families of which they were members comprising, in all, twenty-three souls. The wretched abodes in which he found them were much of the same character—no beds, scarcely any clothing, no food, the children quite naked. In one of those miserable dwellings he could not procure a light, to be used whilst administering the Sacraments to a dying woman; and such was the general poverty around, that the loan of a candle could not be obtained in the neighbourhood. His last visit was to a girl in fever, who had had three relapses. He found her father and mother tottering on their limbs from want. The father said he had a dimness in his eyes, and he thought he would become mad from hunger before night.

Dublin, notwithstanding its many advantages, did not escape the all-pervading scourge. In the month of December, 1846, there were seven hundred persons under treatment for dysentery in the South Union Workhouse, besides convalescents. The disease proved more fatal than cholera. Parochial meetings were held, and committees appointed to collect funds for the relief of the starving people; besides which a meeting of the citizens was convened at the Music Hall, on the 23rd of December, to form a general committee for the whole city. In the unavoidable absence of the Lord Mayor, it was presided over by Alderman Staunton, Lord Mayor elect. The meeting was very numerously attended by leading citizens and clergymen of various denominations. Amongst the latter were the Most Rev. Dr. Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, and the Provost of Trinity College. A committee was formed, whose duties were to raise funds, and, "by a due disbursement thereof," for the relief of the necessitous, to endeavour to mitigate "the alarming and unparalleled distress of the poor of the city," and so arrest the progress of "a train of evils that must otherwise follow in the track of famine."

Four days later "The General Central Relief Committee for all Ireland" sprang into existence, under the chairmanship of the Marquis of Kildare, the present Duke of Leinster. This became a very important and useful body, having disbursed, during the year of its existence, over seventy thousand pounds. Greater still were the results achieved by a committee formed on the 13th of November, 1846, by the Society of Friends. That admirably managed body sent members of the Society to the most distressed parts of the country, in order to investigate on the spot the real state of things, and report upon them. This committee received from various parts of the world, the very large sum of £198,326 15s. 5d., two thousand seven hundred of which remained unappropriated when they closed their glorious labours in the cause of benevolence. But of all the charitable organizations produced by the Famine, the most remarkable was "The British Association for the Relief of Extreme Distress in Ireland and Scotland."[216] This association received in subscriptions, at home and abroad, over £600,000. The balance in hands, when they drew up their report, was the very trifling one of fourteen hundred pounds; whilst so many of those more immediately connected with this gigantic work laboured gratuitously, that the whole expense of management was only £12,000, barely two per cent. Further on, I shall have an opportunity of speaking more in detail of charitable committees.

There is one curious fact regarding the Government in connection with those committees. It is this: The Government seemed anxious to have it understood, that it was not the money outlay which concerned or alarmed them, but the difficulty of procuring food, and the probability of not being able to procure it in sufficient quantity, by any amount of exertion within their power. "Last year," writes Mr. Trevelyan, "it was a money question, and we were able to buy food enough to supply the local deficiency; but this year it is a food question. The stock of food for the whole United Kingdom is much less than is required; and if we were to purchase for Irish use faster than we are now doing, we should commit a crying injustice to the rest of the country." And again, in the same letter: "I repeat that it is not a money question. If twice the value of all the meal which has been, or will be, bought, would save the people, it would be paid for at once."[217] In face of this assertion, our Government, as we have already seen, allowed the French, Belgians, and Dutch, who were in far less need than we, to be in the food markets before them, and to buy as much as they required—even in Liverpool, which they cleared of Indian corn in a single day. If food were the difficulty, and not money, it is not easy to see what great advantage there was in those charitable associations, formed to receive money subscriptions for the purchase of food. Of what use was money, if food were not procurable with it? The aid of such bodies, in investigating cases of destitution and distributing food, would, no doubt, be very valuable; but this service they could render the Government as well without subscriptions as with them. Writing to Sir R. Routh, in December, 1846, Mr. Trevelyan says: "I have continued to forward the plan of a private subscription, as far as it lay in my power, both in Ireland and in England; and Sir George Grey (Home Secretary) has rendered his more powerful assistance. I think it will be brought to bear."[218] It was brought to bear; and in a later communication, he speaks of the British Association with evident satisfaction. "The subscription is going on very well," he says; "six names down for a thousand pounds each, and a good working committee organized."[219]

The Government, it may be fairly said, should not refuse any aid proffered to them. Certainly not; but they did more. They showed a decided anxiety to receive aid in money, not only from landlords, who were bound to give it, but from any and every quarter—even from the Great Turk himself, who subscribed a thousand pounds out of his bankrupt treasury, to feed the starving subjects of the richest nation in the world. And the noblemen and gentlemen who signed the Address of Thanks to the Sultan Abdul Medjid Khan, for his subscription, amongst other things, say to his majesty, that "It had pleased Providence, in its wisdom, to deprive this country suddenly of its staple article of food, and to visit the poor inhabitants with privations, such as have seldom fallen to the lot of any civilized nation to endure. In this emergency, the people of Ireland had no other alternative but to appeal to the kindness and munificence of other countries less afflicted than themselves, to save them and their families from famine and death."[220] Besides making the Famine a money question, this address contains the blasphemous attack upon Divine Providence, so current at the time among politicians. William Bennett, one of those praiseworthy gentlemen whom the Society of Friends sent to distribute relief in the Far West, was, however, of opinion that the responsibility of the Irish Famine should not be laid at the door of Divine Providence, at least without some little investigation. In his letters to his committee, he endeavoured, he says, to give a bird's-eye view, as it were, of the distressed portions of Ireland, drawn upon the spot, with the vivid delineation of truth, but without exaggeration or colouring. And what is the picture, he asks? "Take the line of the main course of the Shannon continued north to Lough Swilly, and south to Cork. It divides the island into two great portions, east and west. In the eastern there are distress and poverty enough, as part of the same body suffering from the same cause; but there is much to redeem. In the west it exhibits a people, not in the centre of Africa, the steppes of Asia, the backwoods of America—not some newly-discovered tribes of South Australia, or among the Polynesian Islands—not Hottentots, Bushmen, or Esquimaux—neither Mahommedans nor Pagans—but some millions of our own Christian nation at home, living in a state and condition low and degraded to a degree unheard of before in any civilized community; driven periodically to the borders of starvation; and now reduced by a national calamity to an exigency which all the efforts of benevolence can only mitigate, not control; and under which thousands are not merely pining away in misery and wretchedness, but are dying like cattle off the face of the earth, from want and its kindred horrors! Is this to be regarded in the light of a Divine dispensation and punishment? Before we can safely arrive at such a conclusion, we must be satisfied that human agency and legislation, individual oppressions, and social relationships have had no hand in it."[221] Was it not a money question, when a labourer at task work could only earn 8d. or 8-1/4d. a-day?—not enough to buy one meal of food for a moderate sized family. No, no, answered the Government people; this low rate of wages is fixed, in order not to attract labour from the cultivation of the soil. Now, in the famine time, the labourer, as a rule, could not obtain money wages for the cultivation of the soil—a fact well known to the Government; so that money wages of almost any amount must withdraw him from agriculture, from the absolute necessity he was under of warding off immediate starvation. If, therefore, Government wished the labour of the country to be employed in cultivating and improving the soil, why did they not, instead of spoiling the roads, so employ that labour at fair money wages, and subject to just and proper conditions? They were often urged to do it, but in vain. They yielded at last, but at an absurdly late period for such a concession.

Further: if it were solely a food question, the Government should have used all the means in their power to bring food into the country, which they did not do; because they refused to suspend the navigation laws—this free-trade government did, and thus deliberately excluded supplies from our ports. By the navigation laws, merchandize could be brought to these countries only in British ships, or in ships belonging to the nation which produced the merchandize. The importation of corn fell under this protective regulation. If those laws were suspended in time, food could be carried to British ports in the ships of any nation; and in fact, whilst a great outcry was raised by our Government about the scarcity of food, and the want of ships to carry it, Odessa and other food centres were crowded with vessels, looking for freights to England, but could not obtain them, in consequence of the operation of the navigation laws. The immediate effect was, a great difficulty in sending food to those parts of Ireland where the people were dying of sheer starvation. But a second effect was, the enrichment, to an enormous extent, of the owners of the mercantile marine of England; freights having nearly doubled in almost every instance, and in a most important one, that of America, nearly trebled. The freights from London to Irish ports had fully trebled.

The Prime Minister came down to Parliament at the end of January, 1847, and proposed the suspension of the Navigation Laws until the first of September following; in order, he said, that freights might be lowered and food come in more abundantly; but, as one of the members said in the debate that followed, the proposal, good in itself, came too late, being made at a time when the surplus of the harvest of 1846 was to a great extent, disposed of. In his speech proposing the suspension of the Navigation Laws, Lord John Russell used, of course, in its favour the arguments which everybody was tired pressing upon himself for months before; but he especially dwelt upon the great increase of freights. The ordinary freight from the Danube, said his lordship, used to be 10s. the quarter; it is now 16s. 6d. to 17s.; from Odessa, 8s.; it is 13s. to 13s. 6d. at present: from the United States, 5s.; it is now 12s. 6d. to 13s.; and what concerns Ireland still more, he said, the usual freight from London to Cork was 1s. to 1s. 3d. the quarter, and often considerably less; it is now 3s. to 3s. 6d. the quarter, with much difficulty in finding vessels even at those freights.

Lord John and his representatives in Ireland were exceedingly fond of propounding free trade principles to those who complained that the Irish harvest—the natural food of the Irish people—was being taken out of the country. O'Connell, early in the Famine, said: close your ports against the exportation of your corn—open them to the corn markets of the world. This and the like advice was ridiculed as "Protection," and "Ignorance," by those ostentatious apostles of free trade, who kept the Navigation Laws in full force, in order to protect the monopoly of English shipowners; and who, rather than share with other nations the profits arising from carrying the food which would have saved the Irish people, protected that monopoly, and left their fellow subjects to die of famine, rather than withdraw the protection. Talk of Lord John and his free trade government after that.

In the letter already quoted from the Commissariat Series (p. 409), and bearing date the 24th of December, Mr. Trevelyan, on the part of the Government, says to Sir R. Routh: "You write as if it were in our power to purchase grain and meal at our discretion, but I can assure you that this is far from being the case. The London and Liverpool markets are in a more exhausted state than you appear to be aware of, and the supplies which are to be expected till April, are so totally inadequate to filling the immense void which has been created by the failure of the potato crop, the deficiency of the Spring crops, and the foreign demand, that they give us no confidence.... You must therefore bear in mind, and impress upon all those with whom you are acting, that even the stock of food at your disposal has a certain fixed limit, and that it must be economized, and made to last the requisite time, like any private stock. The Chancellor of the Exchequer will, on no account, permit you to undertake to provide food for any portion of the Eastern district of Ireland. What we have is insufficient even for the Western district, for which we have undertaken.... No exigency, however pressing, is to induce you to undertake to furnish supplies of food for any districts, except those for which we have already undertaken."

This letter, written, as all Mr. Trevelyan's were, by the authority of the Treasury, assumes that the Government had a full knowledge of the state of the food markets. And, no doubt, it was their bounden duty to collect such knowledge, by trusty agents, despatched at the earliest moment, to investigate and report upon the harvest-yield in Europe and America. Yet, at the very time it was written, President Polk's message to Congress, delivered in Washington on the 8th of December, arrived in England, containing the following passage: "The home market alone is inadequate to enable them [the farmers] to dispose of the immense supplies of food which they are capable of producing, even at the most reduced prices, for the manifest reason that they cannot be consumed in the country. The United States can, from their immense surplus, supply not only the home demand, but the deficiency of food required by the whole world."

Was it a money question or a food question?

There was, naturally enough, a mournful sameness in the news from every part of the country: starvation, famine, fever, death; such are the commonest headings in the newspapers of the time. Seven deaths from starvation near Cootehill was the announcement from a locality supposed not to be at all severely visited. In Clifden, County Galway, the distress was fearful; 5000 persons there were said to be trying to live on field roots and seaweed. A Catholic priest who was a curate in the County Galway during the Famine, but who now occupies, as he well deserves to do, a high position in the Irish Church, has kindly supplied the author with some of his famine experiences. There are five churchyards in the parish where he then ministered. Four of these had to be enlarged by one half during the famine, and the fifth, an entirely new one, became also necessary, that there might be ground enough wherein to inter the famine-slain people. This enlargement of burial accommodation took place, as a rule throughout the South, West, and North-west. One day as this priest was going to attend his sick calls—and there was no end of sick calls in those times—he met a man with a donkey and cart. On the cart there were three coffins, containing the mortal remains of his wife and his two children. He was alone—no funeral, no human creature near him. When he arrived at the place of interment, he was so weakened by starvation himself, that he was unable to put a little covering of clay upon the coffins to protect them. When passing the same road next day, the priest found ravenous, starved dogs making a horrid meal on the carcasses of this uninterred family. He hired a man, who dug a grave, in which what may be literally called their remains were placed. On one occasion, returning through the gray morning from a night call, he observed a dark mass on the side of the road. Approaching, he found it to be the dead body of a man. Near his head lay a raw turnip, with one mouthful bitten from it. In several of the reports from the Board of Works' inspectors, and other communications, it was said that as the Famine progressed, the people lost all their natural vivacity. They looked upon themselves as doomed; and this feeling was expressed by their whole bearing. The extent to which it prevailed amongst all classes is well illustrated by a circumstance related by the same clergyman. When the Famine had somewhat abated in intensity, he was one day in a field which was separated from the public road by a wall. He heard a voice on the road; it was that of a peasant girl humming a song. The tears rushed to his eyes. He walked quickly towards her, searching meantime for some coin to give her. He placed a shilling in her hand, with a feeling somewhat akin to enthusiasm. "It was," said he to the author, "the first joyous sound I had heard for six months."

From Roscommon the brief, but terrible, tidings came that whole families, who had retired to rest at night, were corpses in the morning; and were frequently left unburied for many days, for want of coffins in which to inter them. And the report adds: The state of our poorhouse is awful; the average daily deaths in it, from fever alone, is eighteen; there are upwards of eleven hundred inmates in it, and of these six hundred are in typhus fever.[222] In a circumference of eight miles from where I write, says a correspondent of the Roscommon Journal, not less than sixty bodies have been interred without a coffin. In answer to queries sent to a part of Roscommon, I received the following replies from a reliable source: Query. "What other relief was given during the Government works by private charity, committees, etc.?" Answer. "There was considerable relief given by charitable committees." Query. "What did the wealthy resident landlords give?" Answer. "Considerable." Query. "What did the wealthy non-resident landlords give?" Again the answer was, "Considerable." But I am sorry to add that the two latter queries were almost uniformly answered from various parts of the country by the expressive words, "Nothing whatever." The same correspondent said, in reply to another query, that the aged and infirm did not live more than a day or two after being sent to hospital. They died of dysentery. The two following anecdotes are given on the best authority: a family, consisting of father, mother, and daughter, were starving; they were devotedly attached to each other; the daughter was young and comely. Offers of relief were made by a wealthy person, but they were accompanied by a dishonourable condition, and they were therefore indignantly spurned. Fond as I am of my life, said the starving girl, and much as I love my father and mother, for whose relief I would endure any earthly toil, I will suffer them as well as myself to die, rather than get them relief at the price of my virtue. A Roscommon man thus writes in the query sheet sent to him: "Years after the Famine, and when in another part of the country, I was obliged, on my way to my house, to pass the house of a poor blacksmith; and often at night, as I passed, I heard him and his family reciting the Rosary. I told him one day how much edified I was at this. The poor fellow replied with great earnestness: 'Sir, as long as I have life in me I'll say the Rosary, and I'll tell you why. In the Famine times, my family and myself were starving. One night the children were crying with the hunger, and there was no food to give them. By way of stopping their cries they were put to bed, but, after a short sleep, they awoke with louder cries for food. At length, I recommended that all of us, young and old, should join in saying the Rosary. We did; and before it was ended a woman came in, whose occupation was to deal in bread, and she had a basketful with her. I explained our condition to her, and asked her to give me some bread on credit. She did so, and from that day to this we never felt hunger or starvation; and from that day to this I continue to say the Rosary, and will, please God, to the end of my life.'"

The news came from Sligo, through the public journals, that the Famine was carrying off hundreds and thousands there, and that the work left undone by the Famine would be finished by pestilence. The Workhouse was described as a pesthouse, and the guardians in terror had abandoned it. The following short note will give a better idea of the state of this part of the country than any lengthened description:—

"Riverston, 8th Feb.

"SIR,—Half-a-dozen starvation deaths have been reported to Mr. Grant this evening, and he directs me to write to you to request you will attend here early to-morrow morning to hold inquests.

"JAMES HAY, Head Constable.

"Alexander Burrows, Esq."

But things were much worse than was revealed by this note. Mr. Burrows was quite unequal to the work he had to do. In one day, although he tired three horses, he succeeded in holding only five inquests. Poor progress indeed, inasmuch as there were FORTY dead bodies in the district of Managharrow alone, awaiting him! One of the cases, that of Owen Mulrooney, was a moving one. He was a young, muscular man, in the prime of life. He had a wife and five young children. Here is the substance of his wife's depositions at the inquest held upon his remains. She sold all her little furniture for ten shillings, and with this sum she and her five children left home to make her way to England, as she thought her husband would be able to support himself, if unencumbered by her and the family. The weather became cold and rainy; and when she had got as far as Enniskillen, the children took cramps, and she had to retrace her steps by slow degrees, and seek again her desolate home. Meantime, the public works, upon which her husband had been employed, were stopped, and he was at once reduced to starvation. A neighbour gave him one meal of food and a night's lodging. He was revived by the food, and had strength enough to make up two loads of turf, which he sold, and bought an ass, which he killed, and tried to cook and eat. He partook of some portion of the ass's flesh twice or thrice, but his stomach refused the food, as it always brought on great retching. When his wife and children returned he was dying, and she was only in time to see him, and give the above sorrowful evidence. We select this case, said the local journal, out of dozens; because it has some remarkable features in it. Many, it further adds, who were sent to purchase food, died of starvation on the journey. The family of Mary Costello were in a state of starvation for three weeks, and she herself had not had food for two days. Previous to her death, one of her brothers procured the price of half-a-stone of meal, for which she was sent to town; and on the following morning she was found dead by the roadside, with the little bag of meal grasped tightly in her hand.

Although it is notorious that some districts in the South, especially Skibbereen, were the first to attract a large share of public attention, the county Mayo, so populous, so large, so poor, was from the beginning marked out for suffering; but it lacked an organ so faithful and eloquent as the Southern Reporter, through whose columns Skibbereen and Bantry and Skull became as well known to the Empire as Dublin, Paris, or London. Poor Mayo suffered intensely from end to end, although it suffered in comparative silence. In the beginning of January, what may be termed a monster meeting of the county was held in Westport. Forty thousand persons were said to have assembled on the occasion. The Very Rev. Dean Burke, who presided, complained that, as far back as September, a presentment of £80,000 was passed for the county, £12,000 of which was allotted to their barony, Murrisk; but from that time to the period of the meeting only £7,000 had been expended. Resolutions were passed, calling for a liberal grant of money to save the people from death; expressive of deep regret at the uncultured state of the corn lands of the county; calling for the establishment of food depôts in the remote districts; and recommending the completion of the roads then in progress. More than one speaker hinted that there existed an under current for preventing the employment of the people, and that this under current emanated from the landlords, who were opposed to the taxing of their properties for such a purpose. At the close of the meeting, one of the gentlemen present, Mr. John C. Garvey, made the following observations:—"It has been said that an under current exists to prevent the employment of the people. In my opinion the landlords would be working against their own interest in preventing the employment of the poor. (Cries of No, no.) Well, I, as one of the landlords, do declare most solemnly, before my God, that I have not only in public, but in private, done everything that I could do to extend the employment of the people (loud cheers); and I now brand every landlord that does not come forward and clear himself of the imputation."

A great number of coroners' inquests were reported from Mayo, but those inquests were no real indication of the number of deaths which occurred there from starvation; there were not coroners enough to hold inquests, and four-fifths of those that were held were not reported. Besides, inquests were not, and could not be held unless in cases where the death was somewhat sudden, or had some specialty about it. The effects of the Famine were not usually very sudden. People dragged on life for weeks, partly through that tenacity of life which is one of the characteristics of human nature; partly through chance scraps of food obtained from time to time, and in various ways. Families have gone on for many weeks on boiled turnips, with a little oatmeal sprinkled over them; often on green rape, and even the wild herbs of the fields and seaweed; such things kept prolonging life whilst they were destroying it. After a while they brought on dysentery: dysentery—death. But no one thought of a coroner in such cases, which were by far the most numerous class of cases until fever became prevalent, and even then dysentery commonly came in to close the scene.

"During that period," writes Mr. James H. Tuke, "the roads in many places became as charnel-houses, and several car and coach drivers have assured me that they rarely drove anywhere without seeing dead bodies strewn along the road side, and that, in the dark, they had even gone over them. A gentleman told me that in the neighbourhood of Clifden one Inspector of roads had caused no less than 140 bodies to be buried, which he found scattered along the highway. In some cases it is well known that where all other members of a family have perished, the last survivor has earthed up the door of his miserable cabin to prevent the ingress of pigs and dogs, and then laid himself down to die in this fearful family vault."[223]

In January, 1847, a Protestant gentleman, now a colonial judge, well known for his ability and integrity, gave, through the columns of a Dublin newspaper, an account of the state of Mayo as he saw it. He found great dissatisfaction—in fact indignation, existing with regard to the unaccountable delay of the public works, which had been presented for in that county; and this not merely amongst the starving people, but amongst the most respectable and intelligent persons with whom he conversed. He—a man not likely to take a narrow or prejudiced view of any subject—was of opinion that those complaints were not groundless. The officials, he says, instead of extending the works in Mayo, and feeding the people, "are employed in diverting public attention by prating of subscriptions, paltering about Queen's letters and English poor-boxes, and frittering away the strength of public opinion and the efficiency of all public action, by engaging private charity in a task that can be met only by the Herculean efforts of a whole nation, knit into a single power, and bound into concentrated exertion by all the constraining forces that the constitution of political society affords."[224] And then the starving people are blamed for finding fault, and for being suspicious. What else, he asks, can they be? How can a man dying of starvation have patience?

The chief places he visited were Balla, Claremorris, Ballyhaunis, and Hollymount. The scenes he witnessed were, he says, scarcely if at all less harrowing than those which had been reported from the locality of Skibbereen. This writer, a Protestant, conversed, amongst others, with the priests of the districts which he visited, and of them he says: "The Catholic clergy are the only persons who can form a tolerably correct estimate of the numbers of persons who are now dying of starvation. The Catholic clergy know all the people of their respective parishes—no one else does; the Catholic priest knows them as the shepherd does his sheep; he knows them individually; he knows not only every lineament of every individual face, but he knows, too, every ailment of body—every care of mind—every necessity of circumstance from which he is suffering. The Catholic clergy of the West attend every death-bed: the poor there are all Catholics. The Catholic clergy know, then, to what it is that the extraordinary mortality now prevalent is owing—and they set it down as the immediate consequence of want and starvation."[225]

One of the priests of whom W.G. asked information told him his whole time, and that of his assistant, was unceasingly occupied in administering the last comforts of religion to the victims of starvation. It would, he said, be an endless task, and he feared a useless one, to record his sad experiences.

People died in Connaught whilst in full employment on the public works, just as they did in Munster. Of such cases, the following is one of which W.G. collected some particulars:—James Byrne, of Barnabriggan, Brize, parish of Balla, was employed up to his death on the public works. The last food of which he had partaken was obtained by his wife pledging her cloak. There was an inquest upon this poor man's remains, at which his wife deposed that up to the time of his death he was employed on the public works, and as they had no food she was obliged to pledge her cloak for one stone of meal. Deceased often said he would do well if he had food or nourishment. Deponent states to the best of her belief that her husband died for the want of food. She and her four children are now living on rape, which she is allowed to gather in a farmer's field. James Browne, Esq., M.D., being sworn, said he found, on examination, all the internal organs of the deceased sound. There was no food whatever in his stomach, or in any part of the alimentary canal. There was a small quantity of thin faeces in the lower portion of the large intestine. Is of opinion that deceased came by his death from inanition, or want of food. Verdict: "James Byrne came by his death in consequence of having no food for some days; and died of starvation."

"With every disposition," writes W.G., "to make allowances for the difficulties of their position, let me ask, Sir, how have the gentry acted? They have seemed to think that the whole relief question just split itself into two sides, one of which belonged exclusively to the Government, the other exclusively to them. One side comprised the duty of providing for the lives of the people, and this was left to the Government; the other, the duty of providing for the safety of the estates, and this the gentry took upon themselves." "They [the landlords] have complained much of the character of the works; they have strongly urged the Government to undertake something else; at all events to give up what they were doing at the moment; but when did their indignation take the shape of complaining that what the Government was doing was inadequate for coping with the starvation that was abroad?"

The penetrating mind of W.G. led him to forecast tremendous results from the potato failure, exclusive of its immediate effect—death by starvation. Having expressed his opinion that the extent of the destitution was fearful, he makes the following observations, which time has completely verified. "As regards the effect," says he, "of the present calamity upon the relations of landlord and tenant, believe me, that terrible as are the immediate and direct effects of the calamity, you will find a set of collateral results springing out of it, tending to the EXTERMINATION of the smaller tenantry by the landlords, that may lead you, ere many months, to regard the secondary stage of this scourge as scarcely less terrible to our unhappy peasantry than the first." And again: "Symptoms of a WIDE-SPREAD SYSTEMATIC EXTERMINATION are just beginning to exhibit themselves. I am not speaking under the influence of any prejudice against the landlord class. Let none of your readers set down to the account of such a feeling my present warning as to the wholesale system of ejectment that is now in preparation." "The potato cultivation being extinguished, at least for a time, the peasant cultivators can pay no rents; sheep and horned cattle can pay rents, and smart rents too; therefore the sheep and cattle shall have the lands, and the peasants shall be ousted from them; a very simple and most inevitable conclusion, as you see." "I repeat it, a universal system of ousting the peasantry is about to set in. Whether this results from the fault or from the necessities of the landlords it matters not." The following extract from the Roscommon Journal is emphatically cited by W.G. in support of his views. "The number of civil bills served by landlords for the approaching sessions of this town WILL TREBLE THOSE EVER SENT OUT FOR THE LAST TEN YEARS."[226]

More than twenty years after W.G. wrote those letters, I had a conversation relative to the Famine with a gentleman who knew the Midland Counties and portions of the West well. I asked him what was the effect of the Famine in his district. "My district," he answered, "was by no means regarded as a poor one, but the Famine swept away more than half its population. The census of '41 gave the families residing in it as 2,200; the census of '51 gave them at 1,000." Did the landlords, I enquired, come forward liberally to save the lives of the people? "Only one landlord," he replied, "in the whole locality with which I am connected did anything to save the people, F—— O'B——. He asked no rent for two years, and he never afterwards insisted on the rent of those two years; although I must say he was paid it by many of his tenants, of their own free will; but, for the rest, he cancelled those two years' rent and opened a new account with them, as with men owing him nothing." And what, I further asked, were the feelings of the landlords with regard to their tenants dying of starvation? He answered with solemn emphasis—"DELIGHTED TO BE RID OF THEM."

The present leader of the Conservative party seems to entertain feelings akin to this; for, some years ago, addressing his constituents, and speaking of some results of the Irish Famine, he said significantly—"there are worse things than a famine."

"I shall never forget," said Rev. Mr. F—— to W.G., "the impression made on my mind a few days ago by a most heartrending case of starvation. It was this: The poor mother of five children, putting them to bed one night, almost lifeless from hunger, and despairing of ever again seeing them alive, took her last look at them, and bade them her last farewell. She rose early in the morning, and her first act was to steal on tiptoe to where they lay. She would not awake them, but she must know the truth—are they alive or dead? and she softly touched the lips of each, to try and discover if there was any warmth in them, and she eagerly watched to see if the breath of life still came from their nostrils. Her apprehensions were but too well founded, she had lost some of her dear ones during the night."

The mournful poetry of this simple narrative must touch every heart.

Ass and horse flesh were anxiously sought for, even when the animals died of disease or starvation. In the middle of January it was recorded that a horse belonging to a man near Claremorris, having died, was flayed, and the carcass left for dogs and birds to feed upon; but, says the narrative, before much of it was consumed, it was discovered by a poor family (whose name and residence are given), and by them used as food. Father, mother and six children prolonged life for a week upon this disgusting carrion, and even regretted the loss of it, when the supply failed; and the poor mother said to the person who made the fact public, "the Lord only knows what I will now do for my starving children, since it is gone!" A fortnight earlier a most circumstantial account of the eating of ass flesh is given by a commercial gentleman in a letter addressed to the Premier, Lord John Russell, and dated "Ballina, Christmas-eve." (!) In this case the poor man killed his ass for food, the skin being sold to a skin dealer for 8d. The writer of the letter visited the skin dealer's house, in order to make sure of the fact. It was quite true, and the skin dealer's wife told him this could not be a solitary case, "as she never remembered so many asses' skins coming for sale as within the month just past."[227]

Mr. Forster, in his report to the Society of Friends, says of the condition of Westport in January, 1847, that it was a strange and fearful sight, like what we read of beleaguered cities; its streets crowded with gaunt wanderers, sauntering to and fro, with hopeless air and hunger-struck look; a mob of starved, almost naked women were around the poorhouse, clamouring for soup-tickets; our inn, the head-quarters of the road engineer and pay clerks, was beset by a crowd of beggars for work.[228] The agent of the British Association, Count Strezelecki, writing from Westport at this time, says, no pen could describe the distress by which he was surrounded; it had reached such an extreme degree of intensity that it was above the power of exaggeration. You may, he adds, believe anything which you hear and read, because what I actually see surpasses what I ever read of past and present calamities.[229]

The weather in March became mild, and even warm and sunny; some little comfort, one would suppose, to those without food or fuel. But no; they were so starved and weakened and broken down, that it had an injurious effect upon them, and hurried them rapidly to their end. A week after the passage quoted above was written, Count Strezelecki again writes, and says he is sorry to report that the distress had increased; a thing which could be hardly believed as possible. Melancholy cases of death on the public roads and in the streets had become more frequent. The sudden warmth of the weather, and the rays of a bright sun, accelerate prodigiously the forthcoming end of those whose constitutions are undermined by famine or sickness. "Yesterday," he writes, "a countrywoman, between this and the harbour (one mile distance), walking with four children, squatted against a wall, on which the heat and light reflected powerfully; some hours after two of her children were corpses, and she and the two remaining ones taken lifeless to the barracks. To-day, in Westport, similar melancholy occurrences took place."[230]

Some years ago, during a visit to Westport, I received sad corroboration of the truth of these statements. I met several persons who had witnessed the Famine in that town and its neighbourhood, and their relation of the scenes which fell under their notice not only sustained, but surpassed, if possible, the facts given in the above communications. A priest who was stationed at Westport during the Famine, was still there at the period of my visit. During that dreadful time, the people, he told me, who wandered about the country in search of food, frequently took possession of empty houses, which they easily found; the inmates having died, or having gone to the Workhouse, where such existed. A brother and sister, not quite grown up, took possession of a house in this way, in the Parish of Westport. One of them became ill; the other continued to go for the relief where it was given out, but this one soon fell ill also. No person heeded them. Everyone had too much to do for himself. They died. Their dead bodies were only discovered by the offensive odour which issued from the house in which they died, and in which they had become putrefied. It was found necessary to make an aperture for ventilation on the roof before anyone would venture in. The neighbours dug a hole in the hard floor of the cabin with a crowbar to receive their remains. And this was their coffinless grave!

This same priest administered in one day the last Sacrament to thirty-three young persons in the Workhouse of Westport; and of these there were not more than two or three alive next morning.

Mr. Egan, who at the date of my visit was Clerk of the Union, held the same office during the Famine. The Workhouse was built to accommodate one thousand persons. There were two days a-week for admissions. With the house crowded far beyond its capacity, he had repeatedly seen as many as three thousand persons seeking admission on a single day. Knowing, as we do, the utter dislike the Irish peasantry had in those times to enter the Workhouse, this is a terrible revelation of the Famine; for it is a recorded fact that many of the people died of want in their cabins, and suffered their children to die, rather than go there. Those who were not admitted—and they were, of course, the great majority—having no homes to return to, lay down and died in Westport and its suburbs. Mr. Egan, pointing to the wall opposite the Workhouse gate, said: "There is where they sat down, never to rise again. I have seen there of a morning as many as eight corpses of those miserable beings, who had died during the night. Father G—— (then in Westport) used to be anointing them as they lay exhausted along the walls and streets, dying of hunger and fever."[231]

The principal aim of the Society of Friends was to establish soup-kitchens, and give employment to the women in knitting. As soon as their committee was in working order, they sent members of their body to various parts of the country—more especially to the West—to make inquiries, and to see things with their own eyes. Their reports, made in a quiet, unexaggerated form, are amongst the most valuable testimonies extant, as to the effects and extent of the Famine. The delegate who was the first to explore portions of the West writes that, at Boyle (a prosperous and important town), the persons who sought admission to the Workhouse were in a most emaciated state, many of them declaring that they had not tasted food of any kind for forty-eight hours; and he learned that numbers of them had been living upon turnips and cabbage-leaves for weeks. The truth of these statements was but too well supported by the dreadfully reduced state in which they presented themselves, the children especially being emaciated with starvation, and ravenous with hunger. At Carrick-on-Shannon he witnessed what he calls a most painful and heartrending scene—poor wretches in the last stage of famine begging to be received into the house; women, who had six or seven children, imploring that even two or three of them might be taken in, as their husbands were earning but 8d. a-day, which, at the existing high price of provisions, was totally inadequate to feed them. Some of those children were worn to skeletons; their features sharpened with hunger, and their limbs wasted almost to the bone. Of course, he says, among so many applicants (one hundred and ten), a great number were necessarily refused admittance, as there were but thirty vacancies in the house. Although the guardians exercised the best discrimination they could, it was believed that some of those rejected were so far spent, that it was doubtful if they could reach their homes alive—those homes, such as they were, being in many cases five or six Irish miles away. This kind-hearted gentleman, having expressed a wish to distribute bread to those poor creatures, that they might not, as he said, "go quite empty-handed," forty pounds of bread were procured, all that could be purchased in the town of Carrick-on-Shannon. They devoured it with a voracity which nothing but famine could produce. One woman, he says, was observed to eat but a very small portion of her bread; and being asked the reason, said she had four children at home, to whom she was taking it, as without it there would not be a morsel of food in her cabin that night. What struck him and his fellow-traveller in a special manner was the effects of famine on the children; their faces were so wan and haggard that they looked like old men and women; their sprightliness was all gone; they sat in groups at their cabin doors, making no attempt to play. Another indication of the Famine noticed by them was, that the pigs and poultry had entirely disappeared. To numberless testimonies, as to the spirit in which the poor people bore their unexampled privations, this good man adds his: "To do the poor justice," he writes, "they are bearing their privations with a remarkable degree of patience and fortitude, and very little clamorous begging is to be met with upon the roads—at least, not more than has been the case in Ireland for many years. William Forster," (his fellow-traveller), he adds, "has completely formed the opinion that the statements in the public newspapers are by no means exaggerated."[232]

Although Donegal is in the Ulster division of the kingdom, in the famine time it partook more of the character of a Connaught than an Ulster county. A gentleman was deputed by the Society of Friends to explore it, who has given his views upon the Irish Famine with a spirit and feeling which do him honour as a man and a Christian. Writing from Stranorlar he says: "This county, like most others in Ireland, belongs to a few large proprietors, some of them, unhappily, absentees, whose large domains sometimes extend over whole parishes and baronies, and contain a population of 8,000 to 12,000. Such, for instance, is the parish of Templecrone, with a population of 10,000 inhabitants; in which the only residents above small farmers are, the agent, the protestant clergyman, the parish priest, a medical man, and perhaps a resident magistrate, with the superintendent of police and a few small dealers.[233] Writing from Dunfanaghy in the midst of snow, he says: "A portion of the district through which we passed this day, as well as the adjoining one, is, with one exception, the poorest and most destitute in Donegal. Nothing, indeed, can describe too strongly the dreadful condition of the people. Many families were living on a single meal of cabbage, and some even, as we were assured, upon a little seaweed." A highly respectable merchant of the town called upon this gentleman and assured him that the small farmers and cottiers had parted with all their pigs and their fowl; and even their bed clothes and fishing nets had gone for the same object, the supply of food. He stated that he knew many families of five to eight persons, who subsisted on 2½ lbs. of oatmeal per day, made into thin water gruel—about 6 oz. of meal for each! Dunfanaghy is a little fishing town situated on a bay remarkably adapted for a fishing population; the sea is teeming with fish of the finest description, waiting, we might say, to be caught. Many of the inhabitants gain a portion of their living by this means, but so rude is their tackle, and so fragile and liable to be upset are their primitive boats or coracles, made of wicker-work, over which sailcloth is stretched, that they can only venture to sea in fine weather; and thus with food almost in sight, the people starve, because they have no one to teach them to build boats more adapted to this rocky coast than those used by their ancestors many centuries ago.[234] This is but one among many instances of the wasted industrial resources of this country which, whether in connection with the water or the land, strike the eye of the stranger at every step."[235]

To Glenties Mr. Tuke and his companions made their journey through a succession of wild mountain passes, rendered still wilder by the deep snow which covered everything. They put up at Lord George Hill's Gweedore hotel, and endorse all they had previously heard about the admirable zeal and enlightened benevolence of that nobleman, who had effected great improvements both in the land and in the condition of the inhabitants of one of the wildest portions of Donegal. "We started at daybreak," he writes, "for Glenties, thirty miles distant, over the mountains; and after leaving the improved cottages and farms on the Gweedore estate, soon came upon the domain of an absentee proprietor, the extent of which may be judged by the fact, that our road lay for more than twenty miles through it. This is the poorest parish in Donegal, and no statement can be too strong with respect to the wretched condition, the positive misery and starvation in which the cottiers and small farmers on this immense domain are found. We baited at Dungloe. A more miserable and dilapidated village or town I never saw. What a contrast did its dirty little inn present to the hotel at Gweedore." There was not a single pound of meal, Indian or oat, to be purchased in this miserable place, whilst thousands were depending on it for their supplies. It was crowded with poor people from the surrounding country and from the island of Arranmore, who were crying with hunger and cold; the next market town was thirty miles from them, and the nearest place where food could be obtained was Lord George Hill's store at Bunbeg, some twenty miles distant. Surely this extreme wretchedness and neglect must be, to a great extent, attributed to the want of a resident proprietor.

"Leaving Dungloe," says Mr. Tuke, "we proceeded to Glenties, still on the same property; and throughout our journey met with the most squalid scenes of misery which the imagination can well conceive. Whilst thousands of acres of reclaimable land lies entirely neglected and uncultivated, there are thousands of men both willing and anxious to obtain work, but unable to procure it. On the following morning, William Forster had an interview with the resident magistrate, as well as with the rector of the parish and some other gentlemen, who gave distressing accounts of the poverty existing around them. Their attention was directed to the necessity for the immediate establishment of soup-kitchens, the employment of women in knitting, and the formation of local committees for their relief, extending over several parishes. We visited the poorhouse at Glenties, which is in a dreadful state; the people were in fact half starved and only half clothed. The day before, they had but one meal of oatmeal and water; and at the time of our visit had not sufficient food in the house for the day's supply. The people complained bitterly, as well they might, and begged us to give them tickets for work, to enable them to leave the place and work on the roads. Some were leaving the house, preferring to die in their own hovels rather than in the Poorhouse. Their bedding consisted of dirty straw, in which they were laid in rows on the floor; even as many as six persons being crowded under one rug; and we did not see a blanket at all. The rooms were hardly bearable for filth. The living and the dying were stretched side by side beneath the same miserable covering! No wonder that disease and pestilence were filling the infirmary, and that the pale haggard countenances of the poor boys and girls told of sufferings which it was impossible to contemplate without the deepest commiseration and pity."

The carelessness and neglect of their duty by Irish landlords have so often come before us during the progress of the Famine, that it is a pleasure to meet with something worth quoting on the other side. "Throughout Donegal we found," says Mr. Tuke, "the resident proprietors doing much for their suffering tenantry; in many cases, all that landlords could do for their relief and assistance. Several of them had obtained loans under the late Drainage Act, and with this or private resources are employing large numbers of labourers for the improvement of their estates. We met with several who had one hundred men employed in this manner. Many of these landlords, as well as the clergy, are most assiduously working in all ways in their power. They have imported large quantities of meal and rice, which they sell at prime cost, there being in many districts no dealers to supply those articles; and are making soup at their own houses, and dispensing daily to their famishing neighbours."[236]

In the South, after Skibbereen, Skull, its neighbour, seems to have suffered most. To cross from Cape Clear to Skull—partly rowing, partly sailing—in a stiff breeze is very exciting, and might well cause apprehension, but for the crew of athletic Cape men, or Capers, as the people of the mainland call them, in whose hands you have placed your safety. With them you are perfectly secure. Those hardy, simple-minded people are as used to the sea as a herdsman is to green fields. Even when they are not actually upon its stormy bosom, they are usually to be seen in groups about the little harbour, leaning against the rocks, quietly smoking their pipes, watching the tide and the weather, and discussing the proper moment for "going out." It is some five miles from Cape Clear to the town of Skull. The distance is not long, but without skill and local knowledge the passage is dangerous, for what seems only a light gale elsewhere makes the sea almost tempestuous among the bluffs and rocky islands of this wild coast, where many a foundering barque has been rescued from destruction by the brave and trusty oarsmen of Cape Clear. Leaving Roaring-water bay to the north-east, and getting in shelter of the land, a church tower, humble in design and proportions, rises in the midst of a graveyard, crowded in one part with tombstones, and almost entirely devoid of them in the other. There rest the mortal remains of many generations of the people of Skull; but it is especially worthy of notice as the burial-ground which had to be doubled in size in order to receive upwards of half the population within its bosom in a single year; and yet all were not interred there: many found a grave in the fields nearest to which they died; many others, among the ruins of their dismantled cabins. This graveyard, looking out upon the restless waters from its quiet elevation, must remain for ages the most historic spot in the locality, although Skull is not without a history and historic remains. Many a castle and stronghold have the O'Mahonys and O'Donovans built among the crags of the rocky islands, which are grouped in such variety to seaward, the ruins of which are to-day full of interest and beauty for the tourist. But surely the day will come when those crumbling ruins shall be once again a portion of the common soil, nameless and forgotten; but distant though that day may be, Skull and Skibbereen, those two famine-slain sisters of the South, must still be found on the page of Irish history, illustrating the Great Famine of 1847.

The parish of Skull is situated in the barony of West Carberry, county of Cork, and is very large, containing no less than 84,000 acres. The town, a small one, is on the shore in the portion of the parish called East Skull; West Skull runs inland towards Skibbereen, and in this division is the village of Ballydehob. The town of Skull is built upon a piece of low level ground, a short distance from which, in the direction of Ballydehob, there is a chain of hills, the highest of which, Mount Gabriel, rises 1,300 feet above the sea level. Nothing can be happier or more accurate than the poet's description of this scenery, when he writes:—

A correspondent of the Southern Reporter, writing from Ballydehob during the first days of January, gives the most piteous account of that village; every house he entered exhibited the same characteristics,—no clothing, no food, starvation in the looks of young and old. In a tumble-down cabin resembling a deserted forge, he found a miserable man seated at a few embers, with a starved-looking dog beside him, that was not able to crawl. The visitor asked him if he were sick; he answered that he was not, but having got swelled legs working on the roads, he had to give up; he had not tasted food for two days; his family had gone begging about the country, and he had no hope of ever seeing them again. Efforts were still being made at this place to get coffins for the dead, but with indifferent success. There were not coffins for half the people; many were tied up in straw, and so interred. This writer mentions what he seems to have regarded as an ingenious contrivance of the Galeen relief committee, namely, the use of the coffin with the slide or hinged bottom, but such coffins had been, previously used in other places. He relates a touching incident which occurred at Ballydehob, at the time of his visit. Two children, the elder only six years, went into a neighbour's house in search of food. They were asked where their father was, and they replied that he was asleep for the last two days. The people became alarmed, and went to his cabin, where they found him quite dead, and the merest skeleton. The mother of those children had died some weeks before, and their poor devoted father sacrificed his life for them, as the neighbours found some Indian meal in the place, which he was evidently reserving for his infant children, whilst he suffered himself to die of starvation.

But a common effect of the Famine was to harden the hearts of the people, and blunt their natural feelings. Hundreds, remarks this correspondent, are daily expiring in their cabins in the three parishes of this neighbourhood, and the people are becoming so accustomed to death that they have lost all those kindly sympathies for the relatives of the departed, which formerly characterized their natures. Want and destitution have so changed them, that a sordid avarice, and a greediness of disposition to grasp at everything in the shape of food, has seized hold of the souls of those who were considered the most generous and hospitable race on the face of the earth. As happened in other places, no persons attended the funerals; those who were still alive were so exhausted that they were unable to inter the dead, and the duty of doing so was frequently left to casual passers-by.

About the middle of February, Commander Caffin, of Her Majesty's ship "Scourge," visited Skull, in company with the rector, the Rev. Robert Traill Hall. After having entered a few houses, the Commander said to the Revd. gentleman, "My pre-conceived ideas of your misery seem as a dream to me compared with the reality." And yet Captain Caffin had only time to see the cabins on the roadside, in which the famine was not so terrible as it was up among the hills and fastnesses, where, in one wretched hovel, whose two windows were stuffed with straw, the Rev. Mr. Hall found huddled together sixteen human beings. They did not, however, belong to one family—three wretched households were congregated into this miserable abode. Out of the sixteen, two only could be said to be able to work; and on the exertions of those "two poor pallid objects" had the rest to depend. Eight of the others were crowded into one pallet,—it could not be called a bed, being formed of a little straw, which scarcely kept them from the cold mud floor. A poor father was still able to sit up, but his legs were dreadfully swollen, and he was dead in two or three days after the Rev. Mr. Hall's visit. Beside him lay his sister, and at his feet two children—all hastening to eternity.

Captain Caffin wrote to a friend an account of his visit to Skull, and his letter was published in many of the public journals. "In the village of Skull," he says, "three-fourths of the inhabitants you meet carry the tale of woe in their features and persons, as they are reduced to mere skeletons, the men in particular, all their physical power wasted away; they have all become beggars. Having a great desire to see with my own eyes some of the misery which was said to exist, Dr. Traill, the rector of Skull, offered to drive me to a portion of his parish. I found there was no need to take me beyond the village, to show me the horrors of famine in its worst features. I had read in the papers letters and accounts of this state of things, but I thought they must be highly coloured to attract sympathy; but I there saw the reality of the whole—no exaggeration, for it does not admit of it—famine exists to a fearful degree, with all its horrors. Fever has sprung up consequent upon the wretchedness; and swellings of limbs and body, and diarrhoea, from the want of nourishment, are everywhere to be found." Again: "In no house that I entered was there not to be found the dead or dying; in particularizing two or three they may be taken as the picture of the whole—there was no picking or choosing, but we took them just as they came." A cabin which he entered had, he says, the appearance of wretchedness without, but its interior was misery. The Rev. Mr. Hall, on putting his head inside the hole which answered for a door, said: "Well, Phillis, how is your mother to-day?" Phillis answered, "O Sir, is it you? Mother is dead." Captain Caffin adds—"And there—fearful reality—was the daughter, a skeleton herself, crouched and crying over the lifeless body of her mother, which was on the floor, cramped up as she had died, with her rags and her cloak about her, by the side of a few embers of peat." They came to the cabin of a poor old woman, the door of which was stopped up with dung. She roused up, evidently astonished. They had taken her by surprise. She burst into tears, and said she had not been able to sleep since the corpse of the woman had lain in her bed. The circumstance which destroyed her rest happened in this way:—Some short time before, a poor miserable woman entered the cabin, and asked leave to rest herself for a few moments. She got permission to do so. She lay down, but never rose again. She died in an hour, and in this miserable hovel of six feet square, the body remained four days before the wretched occupant could get any person to remove it. It is not much to be wondered at that she had lost her rest.

"I could," says Captain Caffin, "in this manner take you through thirty or more cottages that we visited, but they, without exception, were all alike—the dead and the dying in each; and I could tell you more of the truth of the heartrending scene, were I to mention the lamentations and bitter cries of each of those poor creatures, on the threshold of death. Never in my life have I seen such wholesale misery, nor could I have thought it so complete. All that I have stated above," he concludes, "I have seen with my own eyes, and can vouch for the truth of. And I feel I cannot convey by words the impression left on my mind of this awful state of things. I could tell you also of that which I could vouch for the truth of, but which I did not see myself, such as bodies half eaten by the rats; of two dogs last Wednesday being shot by Mr. O'Callaghan whilst tearing a body to pieces; of his mother-in-law stopping a poor woman and asking her what she had on her back, and being replied it was her son, telling her she would smother it; but the poor emaciated woman said it was dead already, and she was going to dig a hole in the churchyard for it. These are things which are of every-day occurrence."[238]

Taking Ballydehob as a centre, there were, at this time, in a radius of ten or twelve miles around it, twenty-six soup kitchens—namely, at Skibbereen, Baltimore, Shirken, and Cape Clear (three); Creagh, Castlehaven (two); Union Hall, Aghadown (two); Kilcoe (three); Skull (two); Dunmanus, Crookhaven (two); Cahiragh (two); Durrus, Drimoleague, Drenagh, Bantry, Glengariff, Adrigoole, Castletown, Berehaven, and Ballydehob. They were making and distributing daily about seventeen thousand pints of good meat soup. They did great good, but it was of a very partial nature. Mr. Commissary Bishop tells us "they were but a drop in the ocean." Hundreds, he says, are relieved, but thousands still want. And he adds, that soup kitchens have their attendant evils: an important one in this instance was, that the poor small farmers were selling all their cows to the soup kitchens, leaving themselves and their children without milk or butter.

There seems to have been an understanding among the employes, that the true state of things, in its naked reality, was not to be given in their communications to Government. It was to be toned down and modified. Hence the studied avoidance of the word Famine in almost every official document of the time. Captain Caffin's letter was written to a friend and marked "private;" but having got into the newspapers, it must, of course, be taken notice of by the Government. Mr. Trevelyan lost no time, but at once wrote, enclosing it to Sir John Burgoyne. To use his own words on the occasion, the receipt, from the Commander of the Scourge, of "the awful letter, describing the result of his personal observations in the immediate neighbourhood of Skull," led him (Mr. Trevelyan) to make two proposals on the part of the Treasury. And indeed, it must be said, well meant and practical they were. The first was, to send two half-pay medical officers to Skull, to try and do something for the sick, many of whom were dying for want of the commonest care; and also to combine with that arrangement, the means of securing the decent interment of the dead. The second proposal was to provide carts, for the conveyance of soup to the sick in their houses in and around Skull; a most necessary provision, inasmuch as the starving people were, in numerous cases, unable to walk from their dwellings to the soup kitchen; besides which, in many houses the whole family were struck down by a combination of fever, starvation and dysentery. Sir John Burgoyne, as might be expected, picked holes in both proposals. In the carriage of soup to the sick Sir John sees difficulty on account of the scarcity of horses, which are, he says, diminishing fast. And he adds, that several, if not all of the judges, who were then proceeding on circuit, were obliged to take the same horses from Dublin throughout, as they would have no chance of changing them as usual. Then with regard to the decent burial of the dead, Sir John thought there were legal difficulties in the way, and that legislation was necessary before it could be done. He failed to produce any objection against the appointment of the medical officers. In a fortnight after, a Treasury Minute was issued to the effect that Relief Committees should be required to employ proper persons to bury, with as much attention to the feelings of the survivors as circumstances would admit, the dead bodies which could not be buried by any other means. How urgently such an order was called for appears from the fact, that at that time in the neighbourhood of Skull, none but strangers, hired by the clergy, could be found to take any part in a burial.[239]

The incumbent of Skull, the Key. Robert Traill Hall,[240] a month after Captain Caffin's letter was published, says, "the distress was nothing in Captain Caffin's time compared with what it is now." On reading Captain Caffin's letter, one would suppose, that destitution could not reach a higher point than the one at which he saw it. That letter fixed the attention of the Government upon Skull, and yet, strange result, after a month of such attention, the Famine is intensified there, instead of being alleviated.

Mr. Commissary Bishop had charge of the most famine-visited portion of the Co. Cork (Skibbereen always excepted), including West Carbery, Bantry and Bere. He seems to have been an active, intelligent officer, and a kind-hearted man; yet his communications, somehow, must have misled the Government, for Mr. Trevelyan starts at Captain Caffin's letter, as if suddenly awakened from a dream. Its contents appeared to be quite new, and almost incredible to him. No wonder, perhaps. On the 29th of January, a fortnight before the publication of Captain Caffin's letter, Mr. Bishop writes to Mr. Trevelyan: "The floating depôt for Skull arrived yesterday, and has commenced issues; this removes all anxiety for that quarter." On the day before Captain Caffin's letter was written, Mr. Bishop says: "At Skull, in both east and west division, I found the distress, or rather the mortality had pretty well increased." And this, notwithstanding the floating depôt. Yet in the midst of the famine-slaughter described by Captain Caffin, Mr. Bishop is still hopeful, for he says: "The Relief Committees at Skull and Crookhaven exert themselves greatly to benefit the poor. There is an ample supply of provisions at each place."[241] How did they manage to die of starvation at Skull?—one is tempted to ask. Yet they did, and at Ballydehob too, the other town of the parish; for, three weeks after the announcement of the "ample supply of provisions," the following news reaches us from the latter place, on the most reliable authority. A naval officer, Mr. Scarlet, who was with the "Mercury" and "Gipsey" delivering provisions in the neighbourhood of Skull, on his return to Cork, writes, on the 8th of March, to his admiral, Sir Hugh Pigot, in these terms: "After discharging our cargoes in the boats to Ballydehob, we went on shore, and on passing through the town we went into the ruins of a house, and there were two women lying dead, and two, all but dead, lying along with them. When we enquired how it was that they did not bury them, a woman told us that they did not know, and that one of them had been dead for five days. As we were coming down to the boat, we told the boat's crew if they wanted to see a sight, to go up the street. When they went, there were four men with hand-barrows there, and the men belonging to the boats helped to carry the corpses to the burial ground, where they dug holes, and put them in without coffins."

At this period of the Famine, things had come to such a pass, that individual cases of death from starvation were seldom reported, and when they were they failed to attract much attention, deaths by wholesale had become so common. To be sure, when Dr. Crowley wrote from Skibbereen that himself and Dr. Donovan had interred, in a kitchen garden, the corpse of a person eleven days dead, the case, being somewhat peculiar, had interest enough to be made public; but an ordinary death from hunger would be deemed a very ordinary affair indeed. I will here give a specimen or two, of the way in which the progress of the Famine was chronicled at the close of 1846, and through the winter and spring of 1847. The correspondent of the Kerry Examiner, writing from Dingle under date of February the 8th says: "The state of the people of this locality is horrifying. Fever, famine and dysentery are daily increasing, deaths from hunger daily occurring, averaging weekly twenty—men, women and children thrown into the graves without a coffin—dead bodies in all parts of the country, being several days dead before discovered—no inquests to inquire how they came by their death, as hunger has hardened the hearts of the people. Those who survive cannot long remain so—the naked wife and children of the deceased, staring them in the face—their bones penetrating through the skin—not a morsel of flesh to be seen on their bodies—and not a morsel of food can they procure to eat. From all parts of the country they crowd into the town for relief, and not a pound of meal is to be had in the wretched town for any price."

"This parish (Keantra, Dingle) contained, six months since, three thousand souls; over five hundred of these have perished, and three-fourths of them interred coffinless. They were carried to the churchyard, some on lids and ladders, more in baskets—aye, and scores of them thrown beside the nearest ditch, and there left to the mercy of the dogs, which have nothing else to feed on. On the 12th instant I went through the parish, to give a little assistance to some poor orphans and widows. I entered a hut, and there were the poor father and his three children dead beside him, and in such a state of decomposition that I had to get baskets, and have their remains carried in them."[242]

A hearse piled with coffins—or rather rough, undressed boards slightly nailed together—each containing a corpse, passed through the streets of Cork, unaccompanied by a single human being, save the driver of the vehicle. Three families from the country, consisting of fourteen persons, took up their residence in a place called Peacock Lane, in the same city. After one week the household stood thus: Seven dead, six in fever, one still able to be up.

The apostle of temperance, the Rev. Theobald Mathew, gave the following evidence before a Committee of the House of Lords on "Colonization from Ireland":—

Question 2,359. "You have spoken of the state of things [the Famine] as leading to a very great influx of wretchedness and pauperism into the City of Cork. Will you yourself describe what you have seen and known?"

"No tongue," he answers, "can describe—no understanding can conceive—the misery and wretchedness that flowed into Cork from the western parts of the county; the streets were impassable with crowds of country persons. At the commencement they obtained lodgings, and the sympathies of the citizens were awakened; but when fever began to spread in Cork they became alarmed for themselves, and they were anxious at any risk to get rid of those wretched creatures. The lodging-house keepers always turned them out when they got sick. We had no additional fever hospitals; the Workhouse was over full, and those poor creatures perished miserably in the streets and alleys. Every morning a number were found dead in the streets; they were thrown out by the poor creatures in whose houses they lodged. Many of them perished in rooms and cellars, without its being known, and without their receiving any aid from those outside. It may appear as if the citizens of Cork and the clergy of Cork had neglected their duty; but they did not. The calamity was so great and so overwhelming, that it was impossible to prevent those calamities. As one instance, I may mention that one Sunday morning I brought Captain Forbes, who came over with the 'Jamestown,' United States' frigate, and Mr. William Rathbone, and several other persons, to show the state of the neighbourhood in which I resided, and to show them the thousands whom we were feeding at the depôt, While we were going round a person told me, 'There is a house that has been locked up two or three days.' It was a cabin in a narrow alley. We went in, and we saw seventeen persons lying on the floor, all with fever, and no one to give them assistance. Captain Forbes was struck with horror; he never thought there could be in any part of the world such misery. That was in the south suburbs. A poor, wretched widow woman resided there; she let it out for lodgings, and received those people as lodgers, who all got the fever. We three gave what relief we could, and got them conveyed to the hospitals; but they all died."

Question 2,365. "Can you form any judgment what proportion of the population, which is thus added at present, bears to the ordinary population of the City of Cork?"

Answer. "Those poor creatures, the country poor, are now houseless and without lodgings; no one will take them in; they sleep out at night. The citizens of Cork have adopted what I consider a very unchristian and inhuman line of conduct. They have determined to get rid of them. Under the authority of an Act of Parliament, they take them up as sturdy beggars and vagrants, and confine them at night in a market-place, and the next morning send them out in a cart five miles from the town; and there they are left, and a great part of them perish, for they have no home to go to. When they fled from the country, their houses were thrown down or consumed for fuel by the neighbours who remained, and those poor creatures have no place to lay their heads."[243]

It would be a useless and a harrowing task to continue such terrible details, I therefore close this chapter with some account of Bantry, that town having had the misfortune to be the rival of Skull, Skibbereen, and Mayo during the Famine-slaughter.

The deaths at Bantry had become fearfully numerous before it attracted any great share of public sympathy, or even, it would seem, of Government attention. The Southern Reporter of January the 5th publishes this curt announcement from that town: "Five inquests to-day. Verdict—Death by starvation." The jury having given in its verdict, the foreman, on their part, proceeded to say that they felt it to be their duty to state, under the correction of the court, that it was their opinion that if the Government of the country should persevere in its determination of refusing to use the means available to it, for the purpose of lowering the price of food, so as to place it within the reach of the labouring poor, the result would be a sacrifice of human life from starvation to a fearful extent, and endangerment of property and the public peace. This remonstrance was committed to writing, and signed E. O'Sullivan, foreman; Samuel Hutchins, J.P.; Richard White, J.P.

One of the five cases was that of Catherine Sheehan, a child two years old. She had been a strong healthy child, never having complained of any sickness till she began to pine away for want of food. Her father was employed on the public works, and earned ninepence a day, which was barely enough to purchase food for himself, to enable him to continue at work. This child had had no food for four days before her death, except a small morsel of bread and seaweed. She died on the evening of Christmas day.

The case of Richard Finn was another of the five. He went into a house where they were making oatmeal gruel. He begged so hard for a little, that the woman of the house took up some of it for him, when it was about half boiled. The food disagreed with him, and he was able to take only a small portion of it. He soon got into a fainting state, and was lifted into a car by four men, in order to be carried to the Workhouse. One of the priests, Rev. Mr. Barry, P.P., was sent for. He was at the Relief Committee, but left immediately to attend Finn. In his examination before the coroner, he said he found him in a dying state, but quite in his senses. He would not delay hearing his confession till he reached the Workhouse, but heard it in the car. Finn was then removed to the House, and laid on a bed in his clothes, where he received the sacrament of Extreme Unction. "I feared," said the Rev. Mr. Barry, "the delay of stripping him." And the rev. gentleman was right, for he had scarcely concluded his ministrations when Finn expired.

Every Catholic will understand how severely the physical and mental energies of priests are taxed during times of fever, cholera, small pox, and the like; but all such epidemics combined could scarcely cause them such ceaseless work and sleepless anxiety as the Famine did, more especially in its chief centres. To those who are not Catholics, I may say that every priest feels bound, under the most solemn obligations, to administer the last sacraments to every individual committed to his care, who has come to the use of reason. What, then, must their lives have been during the Famine? Not only had they to attend the dying, but they were expected, and they felt it to be their duty, to be present at Relief Committees, to wait on officials, write letters, and do everything they thought could in any manner aid them in saving the lives of the people. Their starving flocks looked to them for temporal as well as spiritual help, and, in the Famine, they were continually in crowds about their dwellings, looking for food and consolation. The priest was often without food for himself, and had not the heart to meet his people when he had nothing to give them. An instance of this occurred in a severely visited parish of the West. The priest one day saw before his door a crowd—hundreds, he thought—of his parishioners seeking relief. He had become so prostrate and hopeless at their present sufferings and future prospects, that, taking his Breviary, he left the house by a private way, and bent his steps to a neighbouring wood. On reaching it, he knelt down and began to recite his office aloud, to implore Almighty God to have mercy on his people and himself. He did not expect to leave that wood alive. After a time he heard a voice not far off; he became alarmed, fearing his retreat had been discovered. Strange as the coincidence seems, it is perfectly true; the voice he heard was that of a neighbouring priest, a friend of his, who had taken the very same course, and for the same reason. Gaining strength and consolation from having met, and giving each other courage, they returned to their homes, resolving to face the worst.

A physician, an excellent, kind-hearted man, who had been sent on duty to Bantry in the later stages of the Famine, said one day to a priest there—"Well, Father——, how are you getting on these times?" "Badly," was the reply, "for I often remain late in bed in the morning, not knowing where to look for my breakfast when I get up."[244]

At this same time, there was a charitable lady in or near Bantry, who had discovered that another of the priests was not unfrequently dinnerless; so she insisted on being permitted to send him that important meal, ready-cooked, at a certain hour every day, begging of him to be at home, if possible, at the hour fixed. This arrangement went on for a while to her great satisfaction, but news reached her one day that Father —— seldom partook of her dinner. Such dreadful cases of starvation came to his door, that he frequently gave the good lady's dinner away. She determined that he must not sink and die; and to carry out her view she hit upon an ingenious plan. She gave the servant, who took the dinner to Father——, strict orders not to leave the house until he had dined; the reason to be given to him for this was, that her mistress wished her to bring back the things in which the dinner had been carried to him. That priest, I am glad to say, is still among us, and should these lines meet his eye, he will remember the circumstance, and the honest and true authority on which it is related.

A short time after the five inquests above referred to were held, the Cork Examiner published the following extract from a private letter: "Each day brings with it its own horrors. The mind recoils from the contemplation of the scenes we are compelled to witness every hour. Ten inquests in Bantry—there should have been at least two hundred inquests. Every day, every hour produces its own victims—holocausts offered at the shrine of political economy. Famine and pestilence are sweeping away hundreds, but they have now no terrors for the people. Their only regret seems to be, that they are not relieved from their sufferings by some process more speedy and less painful. Since the inquests were held here on Monday, there have been twenty-four deaths from starvation; and, if we can judge from appearances, before the termination of another week the number will be incredible. As to holding any more inquests, it is mere nonsense; the number of deaths is beyond counting. Nineteen out of every twenty deaths that have occurred in this parish, for the last two months, were caused by starvation. I have known children in the remote districts of the parish, and in the neighbourhood of the town, too, live, some of them for two, some three, and some of them for four days on water! On the sea shore, or convenient to it, the people are more fortunate, as they can get seaweed, which, when boiled and mixed with a little Indian corn, or wheaten meal, they eat, and thank Providence for providing them with even that, to allay the cravings of hunger."

Although the writer of the above letter says, and with reason it would seem, that the holding of any more inquests at Bantry was useless; the very week after it was written, a batch of inquests were held there, one of which bids fair to be, for a long time, famous, on account of the verdict returned. There were forty deaths, but from some cause, perhaps for want of time, there were only fifteen inquests. A respectable jury having been sworn, the first of these was upon a man named John Sullivan. One of the witnesses in the case said a messenger came and announced to him that a man was lying on the old road in a bad state. Witness proceeded to the place, but, in the first instance, alone; finding the man still alive, he returned for help to remove him. He got a servant boy and a cart; but on going again to where Sullivan was lying, he found life was extinct. The jury having consulted, the foreman announced their verdict in these terms: "From the multitude of deaths which have taken place in the locality, and the number of inquests which have already been held, without any good resulting, he thought, with his fellow-jurors, that they ought to bring in a general verdict, inculpating Lord John Russell, as the head of the Government. That Minister had the power of keeping the people alive, and he would not do so. Notwithstanding the fatal consequences which had attended his policy, he had expressed his determination to persevere in the same course, and therefore he (the foreman) thought that he was guilty of this death and of the rest. He would bring in no other verdict but one of wilful murder against Lord John Russell." The Rev. Mr. Barry suggested that the verdict should simply record the immediate cause of death—starvation; and the jury might append their opinion as to how far it was attributable to the neglect of Lord John Russell in yielding to the interests of a class of greedy monopolists. The foreman said he wished it should be remembered that the opinion which he had expressed with reference to the conduct of the Government was that of men upon their oaths. A verdict was ultimately given of death from starvation, with the addition mentioned.

The inquest was held in the Court-house, in presence of three magistrates, assisted by the Catholic clergy of the town, and the officers of the Constabulary.

Other verdicts of the same tendency, although not so decided in tone as this one, were recorded in different parts of the country. At Lismore an inquest was held on a man, also named Sullivan, and the jury found that his death was caused by the neglect of the Government in not sending food into the country in due time. In this town fourteen horses died of starvation in one week.

Whilst Bantry was in the condition described above, Dr. Stephens was sent by the Board of Health to examine the Workhouse there. He found it simply dreadful. Here is an extract from his report, which duty compels me, however unwillingly, to quote: "Language," he says, "would fail to give an adequate idea of the state of the fever hospital. Such an appalling, awful, and heart-sickening condition as it presented I never witnessed, or could think possible to exist in a civilized or Christian community. As I entered the house, the stench that proceeded from it was most dreadful and noisome; but, oh! what scenes presented themselves to my view as I proceeded through the wards and passages: patients lying on straw, naked, and in their excrements, a light covering over them—in two beds living beings beside the dead, in the same bed with them, and dead since the night before." There was no medicine—no drink—no fire. The wretched creatures, dying from thirst, were constantly crying "Water, water," but there was no Christian hand to give them even a cup of cold water for the love of God.

Towards the end of April, the Rev. Mr. Barry estimated the deaths from famine, in Bantry alone, at four thousand.

Some time ago, speaking with a gentleman, a distinguished public man, about the hinged coffin, he said: "At the time of the Famine I was a boy, residing not far from Bantry. I have seen one of those hinged coffins, which had borne more than three hundred corpses to the grave. I have seen men go along the roads with it, to collect dead bodies as they met them."

Good God! picking up human forms, made to Thy image and likeness, and lately the tenements of immortal souls, as fishermen may sometimes be seen on the seashore, gathering the debris of a wreck after a storm!

With such specimens of the Irish Famine before us, we cannot but feel the justice, as well as the eloquence, of the following passage: "I do not think it possible," writes Mr. A. Shafto Adair, "for an English reader, however powerful his imagination, to conceive the state of Ireland during the past winter, or its present condition. Famines and plagues will suggest themselves, with their ghastly and repulsive incidents—the dead mother—the dying infant—the feast of cannibals—Athens—Jerusalem—Marseilles. But these awful facts stand forth as dark spots in the illuminated chronicles of time; episodes, it may be, of some magnificent epoch in a nation's history—tragedies acted in remote times, or in distant regions—the actors, the inhabitants of beleaguered cities, or the citizens of a narrow territory. But here the tragedy is enacted with no narrower limits than the boundaries of a kingdom, the victims—an entire people,—within our own days, at our own thresholds."[245]

FOOTNOTES:

[213] Letter from Captain Wynne, Government District Inspector to Lieutenant-Colonel Jones.—Commissariat Series, part 1, p. 438.—The italics are Captain Wynne's.

[214] Report of Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends, pp. 180-2.

[215] Census of Ireland for the Year 1851. Report on tables of deaths.

[216] The circumlocutions had recourse to by relief committees and Government officials to avoid using the word Famine were so many and so remarkable, that at one time I was inclined to attempt making a complete list of them. Here are a few: "Distress," "Destitution," "Dearth of provisions," "Severe destitution," "Severe suffering," "Extreme distress," as above; "Extreme misery," "Extreme destitution," etc., etc. The Society of Friends, with honest plainspeaking, almost invariably used the word "Famine;" and they named their report, "Transactions during the Famine in Ireland."

[217] Commissariat Series, part I, p. 409.

[218] Commissariat Series, part I, p. 382.

[219] Ib. p. 442.

[220] Appendix to Report of British Association, p. 181.

[221] Report of Central Relief Committee of Society of Friends, p. 168.

[222] This Workhouse was built to accommodate 900 persons. The Fever Hospital and sheds had room for only 250.

[223] A Visit to Connaught in the Autumn of 1847: by James H. Tuke, in a letter to the Central Committee of the Society of Friends, Dublin, p. 8.

At the end of February there was a meeting of coroners in Cork, at which they came to the determination of holding no more starvation inquests.

[224] Letters from Mayo to the Dublin Freeman's Journal, signed W.G.

[225] The italics in the above quotation are W.G.'s.

[226] It is not to be inferred from this, that evictions were rare in Ireland immediately preceding the Famine. A writer has taken the trouble of recording in a pamphlet Irish evictions, from 1840 to the 3rd of March, 1846; a period of about five years. Up to March, 1846, evictions arising from the Famine had not really begun, although preparations were being made for them; so that those recorded in the pamphlet were carried out under no special pressure of circumstances whatever. The writer premises that he regards his list as far from complete, inasmuch as it was compiled chiefly from the public journals, and every evicting landlord uses all his power and precaution to keep his evictions as secret as possible; still, it was found on record, that there were over 8,000 individuals evicted in Ireland during those five years, many of the evictions being attended with much hardship and suffering, such as the removal of sick and dying persons in order to take possession. In one case a dead body was actually carried out. In two instances, comprising the dispossession of 385 individuals, the evictions took place avowedly for the purpose of bringing in Protestant tenants; in a third, 1175 persons were evicted by a noble lord, and although he did not give his reason, his name and his whole career abundantly justify the conclusion that this vast clearance was effected to make way for a Protestant colony.

[227] Letter of Mr. Joseph M. M'Kenna to Lord John Russell. Mr. M'Kenna gives the names of all the parties. Yet still more dreadful is the case we read of as having occurred in Galway. A man having been sentenced for sheep-stealing in that city, it was stated to the bench by the resident magistrate "that the prisoner and his family were starving; one of his children died, and he was, he said, credibly informed that the mother ate part of its legs and feet. After its death he had the body exhumed, and found that nothing but the bones remained of the legs and feet."—Freeman's Journal, April, 1848.

[228] Letter dated from Killybegs, 18th of 12th month, 1846. Report, p. 151.

[229] Count Strezelecki's Report to the British Association, p. 97. "In addition to the Government aid, large sums were distributed by the British Association, through the agency of the generous and never-to-be-forgotten Count Strezelecki."—MS. letter from a Mayo gentleman, in author's possession.

[230] Report, p. 97.

[231] MS. notes taken down from Mr. Egan.

[232] Joseph Crosfield's Report to the Society of Friends, p. 145.

[233] James H. Tuke's report to the same Committee, p. 147.

[234] In Irish corrac, pr. corrach or currach. This primitive boat was made of a slight frame work of timber and covered with skins, whence its name. In early times corrachs were used in all the British islands. They are mentioned by many Latin authors, especially by Cæsar, who had several of them made after the British model.

[235] Mr. Tuke's report, p. 148.

[236] Letter dated from Killybegs, 18th of 12th month, 1846. Report, p. 151.

[237] The Sack of Baltimore, by Thomas Davis. A ballad, one of whose many beauties is the striking correctness of its topography.

[238] Letter of Commander J. Cruford Caffin, R.N., of Her Majesty's steam sloop "Scourge," dated 15th February, 1847, written to Captain Hamilton.

[239] Assistant-Commissary Bishop's letter of 14th Feb., 1847.

[240] So he always signed himself, although Captain Caffin calls him Dr. Traill.

[241] Letter to Mr. Trevelyan of 14th Feb., 1847.

[242] Correspondent of Dublin Freeman's Journal.

[243] "Report: Colonization from Ireland." Brought from House of Lords 23rd July, 1847; ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 23rd July, 1847; pp. 243 and 244.

[244] This physician had three large crosses made from the timber of a sliding or hinged coffin. One of these he kindly presented to the author, which is now in his possession. It is two feet three inches long, by one foot one inch across the arms. It bears the following inscription:—

"During the frightful famine-plague, which devastated a large proportion of Ireland in the years 1846-47, that monstrous and unchristian machine, a "sliding coffin," was, from necessity, used in Bantry Union for the conveyance of the victims to one common grave. The material of this cross, the symbol of our Redemption, is a portion of one of the machines, which enclosed the remains of several hundreds of our countrymen, during their passage from the wretched huts or waysides, where they died, to the pit into which their remains were thrown.—T.W."

[245] The Winter of 1846-7 in Antrim, with Remarks on Out-door Relief and Colonization. By A. Shafto Adair, F.R.S. London: Ridgway, 1847. Haliday Pamphlets, Royal Irish Academy, vol. 1,992. Mr. Adair is a landlord of large possessions in the County Antrim, who exerted himself very much to alleviate the sufferings of the people during the Famine.—He was raised to the Peerage in 1873 as Baron Waveney.

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