The Sun.
London, England, 1847-02-19 00:00:00

DESTITUTION IN IRELAND.

The following is a copy of a letter from Commander
Caffin, R.N., commanding her Majesty's steam-sloop
Scourge, dated Feb. 15, 1847:
(PRIVATE.)

" My dear Sir,—Having, in the course of my late
duty (of discharging a cargo of meal, &c.) at Schull,
been brought into direct contact with the distress that
prevails there and in its neighbourhood, I venture to
lay before you (feeling assured it would interest you
in their behalf) that which I had occular demonstra-
tion of.
" In the village of Schull three-fourths of the inhabi-
tants 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.
" In landing the meal, &c., they used all the cunning
they possessed to avoid detection in cutting open the
mouths of the bags, and purloining the contents, and it
required great watchfulness to prevent it.
" Having a great desire to see with mine own eyes
some of the misery which was said to exist, Dr. Traill,
the rector of Schull, 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
diarrhcea, from the want of nourishment are everywhere
to be found. Dr. Traill's parish is twenty-one miles in
extent, containing about 18,000 souls, with not more
than half a dozen gentlemen in the whole of it. He
drove me about five or six miles; but we commenced our
visits before leaving the village, and in no house that I
entered was there not to be found the dead or dying; in
particularising 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.
" The first which I shall mention was a cabin rather
above the ordinary ones in appearance and comfort ; in
it were three young women, and one young man and
three children, all crouched over a fire, and the pictures
of misery. Dr. Traill asked after the father, upon which
one of the girls opened a door leading into another cabin,
and there were the father and mother in bed, the father
the most wretched picture of starvation possible to con-
ceive, a skeleton with life, his power of speech gone
the mother but a little better, her cries for mercy and
food were heartrending ; it was sheer destitution which
had brought them to this. They had been well to do in
the world, with their cow and a few sheep, and potato
ground ; their crops failed, and their cattle were stolen,
although, anticipating this, they had taken their cow
and sheep into the cabin with them every night, but
they were stolen in the day time. The son had worked
on the roads and earned his eil,htpence per day, but this
could not keep the family, and he, from work and insuf-
ficiency of food, is laid up, and will soon be as bad as his
father. They had nothing to eat in the house, and I
could see no hope for any one of them.
"In another cabin we went into, a mother and her
daughter were there; the daughter emaciated, and lying
against the wall; the mother naked, upon some straw on
the ground, with a rug over her, a most distressing ob-
ject of misery; she writhed about and bared her limbs
in order to show us her state of exhaustion. She had
wasted away until nothing but the skin covered the
bones; she cannot have survived to this time.
" Another that I entered had, indeed, the appearance
of wretchedness without, but its inside was misery. Dr.
Traill, on putting his head inside the hole which an-
swered for a door, said, Well, Phillis, how is your
mother to-day?' He having been with her the day be-
fore, was replied—' Oh, sir, is it you? mother is dead!'
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.
"In the next cabin were three young children belong-
ing to the daughter, whose husband had run away from
her, all pictures of death. The poor creature said she
did not know what to do with the corpse, she had no
means of getting it removed, and she was too exhausted
to remove it herself. This cabin was about three miles
from the rectory.
"In another cabin, the door of which was stopped with
dung, was a poor woman whom we had taken by sur-
prise, as she roused up evidently much astonished. She
burst into tears upon seeing the doctor, and said she had
not been able to sleep since the corpse of the woman
had lain in her bed. This was a poor creature who was
passing this miserable cabin, and asked the old woman
to allow her to rest herself for a few moments. She
had lain down, but never rose again. She died
in an hour or so, from sheer exhaustion. The body had
remained in this hovel of six feet square, with the poor
old woman, for four days ; she could not get anybody to
remove it. She said she trusted her sins were par-
doned. She had prayed earnestly for forgiveness.
She had been a wicked sinner, but God was
merciful, and her Saviour was all-sufficient. She
thought she could die, and longed to depart and be at
peace, and she had blocked up the door that she might
not be disturbed. She had some money—a trifle—by
her ; but living four or five miles from the village, she
could not get any food. She had asked her neighbours'
children to buy her some, but they were too much taken
up with themselves. She could not rise up, and could
just manage to kneel. She had nothing to eat in her
miserable hole, and I should tear must be dead ere this.

.....
"I could in this manner take you through the thirty
or more cottages that we visited, but they, without ex-
ception, were alike— the dead and the (13 ing in each ;
and I could tell you more of the truth of the heart-
rending scene were I to mention the lamentations and
bitter cries of each of these poor creatures on the
threshold of death. Never in my life have I seen such
wholesale misery, nor could I have thought it so com-
plete. lam convinced in that district it is not in
human power to stay the evil : it may be to alleviate it ;
but this must be by a good organized system, and the
supply chiefly gratuitous. I am of opinion a number
of naval surgeons should be employed, having under
their orders a number of men—who might be selected
from the lists of pensioners (if they could be highly re-
commended)—to have charge of certain districts, not
only dispensing medicine where it may be required,
but also food, on an order of the relief committee, to
any person in their district. The pensioner or two who
might be under each surgeon would not only assist in
visiting, but in conveying the food and medicines, &c.,
for the poor; and by being strangers to the localities,
having no friends, would do this duty without par-
tiality. The surgeons should act with the relief commit-
tees, but independent of them. A board of health is also
now wanted, as it cannot be expected but a pestilence
will rage when the mass of these bodies decompose.
They have ceased to put them into coffins, or to have
the funeral service performed, and they merely lay them
a few inches under the soil.
" All that I have stated above I have seen with mine
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 Wednes-
day 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.
" I trust you will pardon my having troubled you
with this, and taken up so much of your time. I have
given the counterpart of it to Sir Hugh Bigot ; but
thinking you might like to have it, has induced me to
send it to you. 1 enclose one of Dr. Traill's letters :
every word I can answer for the truth of.
" Pardon this hasty scrawl.
" Believe me, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours,
" J. CRAUFORD CAFFIN.
" P.S. There have been two or three post-mortem
examinations of these who have died, and they find that
the inner membrane of the stomach turns into a white
mucous, as if nature had supported herself upon herself,
until exhaustion of all the humours of the system had
taken place.