Destitution and starvation is still increasing. People commit crimes in order to be fed in the perniciously overcrowded prisons. The spring is cold. Snow falls in February. Household furniture and clothes are sold to buy seed potatoes.
People stake everything they have on the hope of a good potato crop.
Almost no other vegetables are sown. April There is optimism about this year's harvest. Even land that has previously been waste is planted with crops. Potatoes are cultivated to a degree unknown for many years. A Poor Law inspector says that small occupiers 'already reduced to a state of all but pauperism, are straining every nerve to plant potatoes as largely as possible as a last desperate venture'.