Instead of providing employment for the tenants on their estates, which the Premier, and his commentator, the Times, looked upon as a mere ordinary duty, many Irish landlords began to evict for non-payment of rent. The parish priest of Swinford concludes a letter, detailing the sufferings of his people, thus: "One word as to the landlords. There are several owners of land in this parish (Kilconduff), but not one of them resident. We made an effort to create by subscription a fund for the purpose of keeping a supply of provisions in Swinford, to be sold to the poor in small quantities. The non-resident landlords were applied to, but not one of them responded to the call. They are not, however, idle. Their bailiffs are on the alert, distraining for rent, and the pounds are full."[186] In the County Sligo, thirty families were evicted together by one landlord; they must have been one hundred and fifty individuals in all. They were somewhat in arrear. But in other cases the corn was distrained in the beginning of October for rent falling due the previous May. This, in the second year of the Famine, meant eviction, purely for the sake of clearing the soil of its human incumbrances.
A portion of the English press, but a very small one, sympathised with those miserable beings who were cast out of their dwellings to perish by the roadside. The Morning Chronicle, in one of its leaders, thus dealt with the subject: "We shall here state at once our opinion, in plain terms, respecting this clearing system, by which a population, which has for generations lived and multiplied on the land, is, on the plea of legal rights, suddenly turned adrift, without a provision, to find a living where there is no living to be found. It is a thing which no pretence of private right or public utility ought to induce society to tolerate for a moment. No legitimate construction of any right of ownership in land, which it is for the interest of society to permit, will warrant it. We hold, at the same time, that to prevent the growth of a redundant population on an estate is not only not blameable, but it is one of the chief duties of a landowner, having the power over his tenants which the Irish system gives. As it is his duty, so it is, on any extended computation, his pecuniary interest. He is to be commended for preventing over population, but to be detested for tolerating first, and then exterminating it."
As the year 1846 wore on to its close, the Famine deepened in intensity, and every day extended itself more and more. The cold, which was very severe in December, became its powerful auxiliary. Wherever the blame is to rest—at head-quarters in Dublin, or with the clerks at the works—the irregularity with which wages were paid by the representatives of the Government, caused terrible suffering and innumerable deaths. Many of those recorded at this period occurred from the taking of food by persons who had been without it for a long time. "Carthy swallowed a little warm milk and died," is the simple announcement of one man's death from starvation; but, with slight variations, it might be given as the record of thousands of deaths as well as Carthy's.
The means of providing coffins for the victims of famine was becoming a serious question, as the survivors in many a poor family could not now attempt to purchase them, as the outlay of a small sum for a coffin might be the cause of further deaths from starvation in the same family. At a meeting in Skibbereen, in the beginning of December, Dr. Donovan said that, since his return from Glandore that morning, he had been followed by a crowd of applicants, seeking coffins for their deceased friends; and he had, he said, just visited a house in the Windmill,[187] where he saw two dead bodies lying, awaiting some means of burial. His opinion was, that they were on the eve of a pestilence that would reach every class. "And," said a gentleman, interrupting, "when I asked a presentment for coffins at the sessions, I was laughed at." Dr. Donovan continued: The case of a man named Sullivan was a most melancholy one. His children began to drop off without any apparent disease, after they had entered the Workhouse. From scarcity of beds, the father and son—the latter being sick and weakly—had to sleep together; and one morning the son was found dead alongside of his father, while another child died in the mother's arms next day. He (Dr. Donovan) had asked Sullivan why he did not tell him his children were sick. His answer was, "They had no complaint." Mr. D. M'Carthy said it would be for the meeting to consider whether they should not pronounce their strong condemnation upon the conduct of an official in the town, who, with starvation staring them in the face, would not give out a pound of food except at famine price, though he had stores crammed with it. "He'd give you," said Mr. Downing, "for £17 a-ton what cost our paternal Government £7 10s."
Dr. Donovan, writing to one of the provincial journals at this time, says: "Want and misery are in every face; and the labourers returning from the relief works look like men walking in a funeral procession, so slow is their step and so dejected their appearance."
The South and West were the portions of the country in which the Famine committed its earliest ravages; but before the close of 1846 considerable parts of Leinster and Ulster were invaded by it, and deaths from starvation began to be recorded in those comparatively wealthy provinces. In Maryborough, a man named William Fitzpatrick died of starvation in the beginning of December. He and his family were for a considerable time in a state of destitution. He tried to earn or obtain food for them, but without success. At the inquest, his wife said that, when she pressed him to eat such scanty food as they could occasionally procure, he often said to her, "Eat it yourself and the children." A kind neighbour, having heard how badly off this poor family was, gave an order for some bread; but, as occurred in so many cases, this act of Christian charity came too late. Fitzpatrick was unable to eat, and so he died. At Enniskillen, a poor girl, who had been sent for Indian meal, fell down near her dwelling and expired. She had not gone out more than eight or nine minutes, when she was discovered lifeless, and clutching a small parcel of Indian meal tied up in a piece of cloth. In parts of Ulster, the applications for employment on the Government works were very numerous; in one parish alone (Ballynascreen) there were sixteen hundred such applications. In West Innishowen, within twelve miles of Londonderry, twelve persons died of starvation in one week.
Thus had the great Famine seized upon the four Provinces before the end of 1846; Munster and Connaught, however, enduring sufferings which, in their amount and terrible effects, were unknown to Leinster or Ulster. In the West, Mayo, up to this time, had suffered most, which, from its previously known state of destitution, was to be expected; in the South, Cork seems to have been the county most extensively and most fatally smitten. This, however, may not have been actually the case. Clare and Kerry suffered greatly from the very beginning, but their sufferings were not brought so prominently before the public as those of Cork. This county had many and faithful chroniclers of her wants and afflictions—a fact especially true of Skibbereen. That devoted town and its neighbourhood were amongst the earliest, if not the very earliest, of the famine-scourged districts; and their story was well and feelingly told by special correspondents, and, above all, by Dr. Donovan, the principal local physician, whose duties placed him in the midst of the sufferers. There can be no doubt that even at this comparatively early period of the famine, parts of Connaught, especially Mayo, suffered as much as Skibbereen, but the results were commonly told in briefer terms than in parts of the South. "More deaths from starvation in Mayo;" "Dreadful destitution in Mayo;" "Coroners' inquests in Mayo." Such are the headings of brief but suggestive paragraphs, during the latter part of November, and all through December. Many of the Mayo inquests may have been the occasion of more dreadful revelations than even those of Skibbereen, but they did not receive the same extensive and detailed publicity. Here are two or three starvation cases from that county. Patrick M'Loughlin, in the parish of Islandeady, was ordered by the Relief Committee a labour-ticket, in consequence of earnest representations as to his starving condition. He did not get the ticket for five days, he, his wife and five children not having a morsel of food in the interval. Having at length obtained the ticket, he produced it, and went to labour on the Public Works. He got no pay for the first three days, and in the meantime his wife died from actual starvation. Being unable to purchase the timber for a coffin in which to bury her, poor M'Loughlin held over the remains for upwards of forty-eight hours; but yet anxious to earn what would give her decent sepulture, and at the same time procure food for his children, he went each of the two days her remains were in his cabin to labour, and spent the night in sorrowing over his departed wife. At length the story came to the ears of the parochial clergy, one of whom immediately furnished the means of interment, and she was consigned to the grave at night, in order that the survivors might not lose the benefit of M'Loughlin's toil on the following day.[188] Bridget Joyce, a widow with four children, was found dead in a little temporary building, which had been erected in a field to shelter sheep. One of the children was grown enough to give some attention to her dying mother, but had nothing to moisten her parched lips but a drop of water or a piece of snow. The woman died, and so poor were the people of the locality, that for want of a few boards to make a coffin, she remained uninterred for eight days. There is a melancholy peculiarity in the case of a young lad named Edmond M'Hale. When he had been a considerable time without food, he became, or seemed to become, delirious. As his death approached, he said from time to time to his mother—"Mother, give me three grains of corn." The afflicted woman regarded this partly as the mental wandering of her raving child, and partly as a sign of the starvation of which he was dying. She tried to soothe him with such loving words as mothers only know how to use. "Astore," she would say, "I have no corn yet awhile—wait till by-and-by;" "Sure if I had all the corn in the world I'd give it to you, avour-neen;" "You'll soon have plenty with the help of God." A neighbouring woman who was present at the touching scene searched the poor boy's pockets after he had died, and found in one of them three grains of corn, no doubt the very three grains for which, in his delirium, he was calling. Many of the deaths which happened are too revolting and too horrible to relate; no one could travel any considerable distance in Mayo at this period without meeting the famine-stricken dead by the roadside.
Still it would be hard to surpass Skibbereen in the intensity and variety of its famine horrors. Dr. Donovan, writing on the 2nd of December, says: Take one day's experience of a dispensary doctor. It is that of a day no further off than last Saturday—four days ago. He then proceeds with the diary of that day: his first case was that of Mrs. Hegarty, who applied to him for a subscription towards burying her husband and child; the doctor had not prescribed for them, and he asked why he had not been applied to; the answer was as in other cases—they had no disease, and he could be of no use to them. His second case was that of a boy named Sullivan, who came to him for some ointment for his father. This application was somewhat out of the usual course, ointment being a peculiarly useless thing as a remedy against famine. There was, however, need of it. The boy's grandmother had died of fever some days before, and his father and mother, with whom she had resided, took it from her. The neighbours were afraid to go into the fever-house, but some of them, kindly and charitably, left food outside the door, and candles to wake the corpse. The mother struggled out of bed to get the candles in order to light them. She succeeded in doing so, but from weakness she was unable to stand steadily, so she reeled and staggered towards where the corpse was laid out, and with the lighted candles set the winding sheet on fire: the thatch caught the flame; the cabin was burned down, and the parents of this miserable boy were rescued with the utmost difficulty. They got more or less burned, of course, and the ointment was therefore required for them. Having escaped death from fire, they almost suffered death from cold, as they were left four hours without the shelter of a roof on a bitter December day, all being afraid to admit them lest they should catch the contagion. The doctor's third case happened at midnight, being called on duty to the workhouse at that hour. It was about a mile from the town—something less perhaps. Halfway on his journey he found a man trying to raise a poor woman out of the dyke. He went to his assistance, and found the woman paralyzed with cold, and speechless. Locked in her arms, which were as rigid as bars of iron, was a dead child, whilst another with its tiny icy fingers was holding a death-grip of its mother's tattered garment. Her story was short and simple, which she was able to tell next day: she had made an effort to reach the workhouse, but sank exhausted where she was discovered.
After a while the effects of famine began to manifest themselves in the sufferers by a swelling of the extremities. Perhaps the severe cold caused this or increased it. However that may be, experience soon taught the people that this puffy unnatural swelling was a sure sign of approaching dissolution.
When the cold weather had fairly set in, it frequently happened that the straw which composed the bed, or the excuse for a bed, occupied by members of a family dying of fever or hunger, or both combined, was, piecemeal, drawn from under them and burned on the hearth to keep up a scanty fire. It was felt, we may presume, that the dying could not require it long, and those who had still some hopes of life were famishing as much from cold as from hunger. An eye-witness, describing such a family in Windmill-lane, Skibbereen, one of whom had already died, thus writes: "The only article that covered the nakedness of the family, that screened them from the cold, was a piece of coarse packing stuff, which lay extended alike over the bodies of the living and the corpse of the dead; which seemed as the only defence of the dying, and the winding sheet of the dead!" The same writer says: "In this town have I witnessed to-day, men—fathers, carrying perhaps their only child to its last home, its remains enclosed in a few deal boards patched together; I have seen them, on this day, in three or four instances, carrying those coffins under their arms or upon their shoulders, without a single individual in attendance upon them; without mourner or ceremony—without wailing or lamentation. The people in the street, the labourers congregated in town, regarded the spectacle without surprise; they looked on with indifference, because it was of hourly occurrence.[189]