The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-01-26 00:00:00

FURTHER ACCOUNTS OF IRISH MISERY

The medical officer of the Kanturk (Cork) Union, in his
last report, dated the 15th instant, says 1790 persons
find refuge in the workhouse built for 850 ; 502 in hospital
(in fever alone of this number 210). On one of the last
board days, the number of applicants for admission was
800. In this emergency the guardians, in addition to
having taken a store in this town, are at this moment
erecting sheds to contain from 400 to 500 persons.
The sanatory condition of the house was progressing
favourably ' tsiatl t
after
reeachs
convalescence
of
en a; mo
uatl malignant ati 400 t character e
teverpatients,
attacked
c6d ik7ef fdu diedts
he de;
iitmsemlfedamiateaalgy
survivors, which was of a decidedly contagious character.
d remortalityn nt
recently admitted,
principallywho s confinede constconstitutions
uttoi then w e young
Thechil
rbtr
athhenei r
anodsnt only garments.
ptsh;, th e
de-
bilitated by innutritive food and insufficient clothing,
filthyprevious Thea tte r t
oabdetu
hntegsi
rwn
re-
ception, rags
m, ivt
ed on
nog
werecepti oand,
nearly exhausted, the peel formed their chief sustenance ;
that dietary, coupled with extreme cold, induced dysen-
try, which terminated in low fever, and three of the assist-
, ant nurses have caught the infection ; the dissolution of
one is fast approaching.
Dr. Sweetnam, the dispensing physician at Skull and
Ballidehob, in a letter, dated 14th January, to the Cork
Constitution, says, " within the last few days, eight per-
sons here died of ctual starvation, and are as follows :
Two children at Denlera, near Skull, three days without
food ; Patrick Linehan, of Rosslum, near Skull, found
dead in a field, two days without food ; John Driscoll, of
Keelbronogue, near Skull, found dead on the road, two
days without food ; John Coughlan, found dead on the
road at Knuckroo, near Ballidehob, two days without
food. Three persons named Cassidy, at Cove, near Skull,
father, mother, and son, all in fever ; had no drink or
food but salt and water, or any person to administer it.
The old couple three days uninterred, and the son lay on
the bare floor from Tuesday till Sunday, and so decom-
posed, when persons could be got to enter his house, that
he was tarred and rolled up in a rag, and buried in the
next field. In my opinion, if I can judge from the num-
berless persons dead, dying, and staggering, half the
population must die before the Ist of May. I verily
believe there is more real destitution in the parish of
Skull than any other in Ireland, and regret to add that
the dispensary patients—nosy five times their usual num-
ber—are so exhausted from disease and starvation, that
medicine is almost useless.
A gentleman, whose statements are entitled to the
highest respect, gives a most deplorable picture of the
condition of the county of Roscommon—a condition
which represents it to be infinitely worse than Skibbe-
reen, or the most destitute parts of Mayo. He says that
whole Tillages are depopulated, either by death or by the

Jan. 26, 1847.

flight of such as have the means of transport to England,
Scotland, or America. He counted in one village ten
' houses together abandoned by their owners, the doors
torn off their hinges, the window-sills taken out, the
rafters burned for firing, and the very flagstone at the en,
trance taken up and sold for a mouthful of food. An
elderly man was sentenced to seven years' transportation
for sheep stealing at the quarter sessions last week ; his
appearance in the dock was that of a man reduced to the
last agonies of hunger. He died in an hour after he re-
ceived his sentence. Numbers of young men, mere boys!
with wan cheeks, relieved by a hectic flush, were indicted
for similar offences, and equally pleaded guilty, in the
hope of transportation or iipprisonment, or any punish.'
ment rather than the lingering death they were daily un-
dergoing. The fortitude of the people, he says, almost
surpasses belief; they endure their sufferings without
murmur or complaint, and it is not until famine well
nigh destroys reason itself, that they are driven to the
commission of that species of crime which is just now so
prevalent all over the country.
The Sligo Champion records fifteen cases of death from
hunger in a week in that small county. Accounts from
Mayo are to the effect that deaths from starvation are
becoming more numerous. The Castlebar Constitution
enumerates no fewer than thirty cases of poor creatures
thus perishing—including eleven who had died in the
Tyrawly district. The details are too painful for perusal,
and are but scantily given b the reortrs. "On Thurs-
day an inquest was held aty Ballycapstle.e on the bodies of
John and Thomas Jordan, father and son. In this case
our correspondent says No pen can picture this scene
of wretchedness and misery ; an aged woman gazing at
the emaciated skeletons of her dead husband and son,
and another son who looked as badly as the cold corpses
of his father and brother. The last words the dying boy
said were, Mother, wet my lips with warm water—l am
cold with hunger.' Both expired at the same moment.' "
In another case the deceased and his family had been
living for three weeks on half a meal a day. In another,
a family, ten in number, had been living for three-weeks
on boiled water-tresses and salt. Two of the children
died while the inquest was holding. Another person was
found dead in a mud cabin, another on the roadside,
and so on.

The Cork Reporter says—" The people are perishing
now, not in twos and threes, but in twenties in each pa-
rish, in hundreds in each barony. The pestilence is mow-
ing down the people faster than grass fell before the once
strong and cheerful labourer."

THE MENDICANT PATRIOT'S SYMPATHY
WITH THE POOR.

At the last meeting of the Repeal Association
"The Rev. Mr. O'Carney said he had omitted to give the
true reason why it was that subscriptions were not coining into
the Association. The fact was he, and others he knew, who
were Old Irelanders, would be ashamed to hand in money at
such a crisis, when the people were starving around them;
they felt it would be a mockery to come up to Dublin on depu-
tations to ask relief, and then to hand in their subscriptions."
—(hear and cheers.)
At the preceding meeting of the same body, the Roman
Catholic priest of Achill made a similar revelation. -
Is it possible that, in the face of such statements, Mr.
O'Connell can have the effrontery—not to talk of the bar-
barous inhumanity—to continue his exactions on the
poorest peasantry on the face of the earth, now suffering
the aggravated miseries of famine and pestilence ?
The only answer we (Dublin Mail) can give, is the dis-
gusting fact, that on that day the sum of £l2B 6s. 7d. was
acknowledged, and lodged in the Tralee Bank, to the cre-
dit of Daniel O'Connell, Esq., M.P., sole Treasurer of
the Repeal fund.

1847.

to England,

village teas
the doors
m out, the
ke at the en,
f food. , An
ansportation
t week ; his
laced to the
after he re-
, mere boys.,
~ere indicted
in the
my punish.'
re daily un-.
ays, almost
lgs without
famine well
iven to the
just now so

death from
counts from
irvation are
Svonditution
or creatures
lied in the
for perusal,
' On Thurs-
ie bodies of
In this case
.e this scene

n gazing at
,c 1 and son,
✓old corpses
e dying boy
.rater—l am
moment.' "

v had been
In another,
three weeks
he children
person was
Le roadside,

e perishing
n each pa-
ice is mow-
v the once