The advances at one time exceeded £60,000 a-day, distributed over nearly two thousand accounts.
The sum given to Sir R. Routh for the food in the depôts shows there were about twelve thousand tons of provisions in them.
The sum set down to the fever hospitals includes the erection and furnishing of the fever sheds. In addition to this amount, £4,479 was expended in providing proper medical inspection and superintendance in localities in which great sickness prevailed, and £60,000 was advanced for the enlargement of the Workhouses, principally by the erection of fever wards.[268]
In the appendix to this, their last report, the Commissioners bear honourable testimony to the manner in which the people behaved. They say: "The order and good conduct of the peasantry, and of the people generally, notwithstanding the great influx of paupers into the towns, is highly to be commended. All admit, that the resignation and forbearance of the labouring classes was astonishing, when it is remembered with what rapidity the real famine encompassed them."
FOOTNOTES:
[246] The following were the Commissioners appointed under the Act: Sir John F. Burgoyne, Thomas N. Redington, Esq., Under Secretary; Edward T.B. Twistleton, Esq., Colonel Duncan M'Gregor, Commissary-General Sir Randolph J. Routh, and Colonel Harry D. Jones.
[247] The number of electoral divisions is, at present, 3,438, embraced within 163 Unions.
[248] Sunday Observer; which journal should, for the information of posterity, have placed upon record what, if any, were the other courses in the carte at the Reform Club, the day on which M. Soyer's Irish Soup No. 1 was so highly approved of.
[249] The comparative nutritive and pecuniary value of various kinds of cooked food, by John Aldridge, M.D., M.R.I.A., read at a meeting of the Royal Dublin Society on the 6th of April, 1847.
[250] Freeman's Journal, April 6th.