[446] (Dublin, 1741).
[447] Cited by O’Rourke. Short, a contemporary, also says that the fever in Galway was like a plague.
[448] Dutton, Statistical Survey of the County of Galway. Dublin, 1824, p. 313: “1741. A fever raged this year that occasioned the judges to hold the assizes in Tuam. Numbers of the merchants of Galway died this year, and multitudes of poor people, caused partly by fever and by the scarcity, as wheat was 28s. per cwt.”
[449] The author of The Groans of Ireland (Dublin, 1741) says: “On my return to this country I found it the most miserable scene of distress that I ever read of in history: want and misery in every face; the rich unable to relieve the poor; the road spread with dead and dying bodies; mankind of the colour of the docks and nettles which they fed on; two or three, sometimes more, on a car going to the grave for want of bearers to carry them, and many buried only in the fields and ditches where they perished.” Skelton, a Protestant clergyman, says: “Whole parishes in some places were almost desolate; the dead have been eaten in the fields by dogs, for want of people to bury them.” Skelton’s Works, Vol. V. Cited by Lecky.
[450] Report by Dr Phipps to Baron Wainwright, 10 March, 1741. Cited by F. C. Webb, Trans. Epidem. Soc. 1857, p. 67.
[451] Smith’s Kerry, p. 77. He adds that many were excused the hearth-tax on account of their poverty, by certificate of the magistrates; so that the decrease in 1744 may mean a greater proportion excused the tax, as well as a depopulation.
[452] How near the verge of want the people were is brought out by an experience in Galway county in 1745: a great fall of snow smothered vast numbers of cattle and sheep, which caused a great many farmers to surrender their lands. Wheat rose from six to eighteen shillings the hundredweight, while, after the distress, the best land in Connaught could be rented for five shillings an acre. Dutton’s Galway, p. 313.
[453] For Kinsale, Cork and Bandon, see Marjoribanks, Med. Press and Circ. 1867, II., 8.
[454] James Sims, M.D. Observations on Epidemic Disorders, with Remarks on Nervous and Malignant Fevers. London, 1773, p. 10. The preface is dated from London, whither Sims had removed from Tyrone. He rose to eminence in the London profession.
[455] A Letter to a Member of the Irish Parliament relative to the present State of Ireland. By Philo-Irene. London, 20 May, 1755. The turning of hundreds of acres into one dairy-farm had caused the depopulation which Goldsmith described in the Deserted Village: “By this unhappy policy several villages have been deserted at different times by the inhabitants, and numbers of them set a-begging,” p. 6.