Markets are glutted with cheap provisions but the people have no money to buy them. Rich areas of land are deserted by their owners because they are encumbered by debt, poor-rates are unpayable because rents are uncollectable. Anyone who can go is making plans to do so. The paupers are the mass of those remaining. The cholera pandemic sweeping Europe arrives in Ireland and carries away the most vulnerable.
Evictions are extremely common in the west.
Sir William Butler describes this winter as 'one long night of sorrow'. The people seeking food cannot be fed. Starving people, even on formerly well-run estates, are becoming desperate and threaten to riot. The gentry are crippled by taxes and no rents. The Lord Lieutenant, Lord Clarendon, pleads with the Government to advance money to the distressed unions.