The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 Part 21

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 pa.s.sage 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 const.i.tutions 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 surpa.s.sed, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 fort.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sed this day, as well as the adjoining one, is, with one exception, the poorest and most dest.i.tute 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 a.s.sured, upon a little seaweed." A highly respectable merchant of the town called upon this gentleman and a.s.sured him that the small farmers and cottiers had parted with all their pigs and their fowl; and even their bed clothes and fis.h.i.+ng 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 2-1/2 lbs. of oatmeal per day, made into thin water gruel--about 6 oz. of meal for each! Dunfanaghy is a little fis.h.i.+ng town situated on a bay remarkably adapted for a fis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.ses, 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 n.o.bleman, 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 a.s.sistance. 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 a.s.siduously working in all ways in their power. They have imported large quant.i.ties 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 famis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sage 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, ill.u.s.trating 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 sh.o.r.e 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:--

"The summer sun is falling soft on Carbery's hundred isles, The summer sun is gleaming still through Gabriel's rough defiles."[237]

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 dest.i.tution 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 pa.s.sers-by.

About the middle of February, Commander Caffin, of Her Majesty's s.h.i.+p "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 circ.u.mstance 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, s.h.i.+rken, and Cape Clear (three); Creagh, Castlehaven (two); Union Hall, Aghadown (two); Kilcoe (three); Skull (two); Dunma.n.u.s, 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 b.u.t.ter.

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 doc.u.ment 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, diminis.h.i.+ng 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 circ.u.mstances 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 inc.u.mbent 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 dest.i.tution 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 depot 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 depot. 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 sh.o.r.e, and on pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s, 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 a.s.sistance 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 hea.r.s.e piled with coffins--or rather rough, undressed boards slightly nailed together--each containing a corpse, pa.s.sed 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 Peac.o.c.k 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 impa.s.sable 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 depot, 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 a.s.sistance. 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 st.u.r.dy 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 paris.h.i.+oners 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 mult.i.tude 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 cla.s.s 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, a.s.sisted 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.