|
The Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW : 1843-1893) (about)
|
Cite: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article691411
No comments yet.
1 correction by perplexed - Show corrections
English News.
FROM OUR FILES PER "GLENBERVIE."
IRELAND.-PROGRESS OF THE
FAMINE.
From Bell's Messenger, March 1.
There is yet no symptoms of alleviation in the reports of destitution from the provinces. In the city of Cork workhouse, the number of deaths within four weeks has been 452. Many of the wretched people are on the verge of death when they obtain admission. The committee of the Cork Fever Hospital have held a meeting to make arrangements for opening a temporary hospital, in conse- quence of " the frightful spread of typhus fever in the city."
The Cork Examiner contains the following extract of a letter from the Rev. Mr. Mul- cahy, of Castlehaven :
"To give you some idea, and it is a very faint one, of the sacrifice of human life that has taken place in the district of Castlehaven and Myross, I state with confidence and sorrow that in one fishing hamlet, called Carrigillihi, out of a population of 472 indi- viduals who were alive on the 1st January, 1847, not less than 87 have been since carried off by starvation. This is a fact I am ready to attest on the solemnity of my oath, before any tribunal in the realm."
The following extract is from the Southern Reporter :
'From a small hill in the parish of Kil- murry, one could see four hundred acres of tillage in which wheat or corn of some kind should be growing at this moment, remaining precisely in the same condition in which the whole tract was at the end of the last harvest. There is yet time enough to sow the land ! One fact will be enough in reply to that rejoinder. Within a short period, a resident gentleman has purchased seventeen horses alive, at five shillings each, to feed his hounds. Had the farmers grain or food to give them, the lowest value of those seventeen horses would be ten pounds each; had the owners grain or food for their own use, they would not sell them living at such a price. The farmers have consumed their seed corn ; they are reduced themselves to the utmost extremity, and it is idle to assert they can re- employ the labourers. The difference be- tween both classes will soon be undiscernible. Of the state in which the latter are, at this instant, we will give one example. In one house where duty called the visitor, he found a family of six in this condition : two children lay dead under a ragged coverlet ; the father and mother were dying ; one child only of about twelve years of age possessed any strength. In his arms was a sister or brother, in fever also ; and as contagious disease was known to have seized the inmates, the child of twelve years old was the only living being to give his dying parents personal attendance. Such is the state to which the labourers are reduced."
From the Britannia, Feb. 27.
We cannot find room for a tithe of the details that reach us. The correspondent of the Morning Chronicle gives the following general statement:
"The police throughout the country have received instructions to furnish returns of the deaths from starvation and disease. I have
learned that the number reported, up to the close of the last week, at the Constabulary office in Dublin, was 50,000. But there are, of course, many deaths from want and disease of which the police in the country could have had no knowledge. The actual number of deaths from starvation is probably much larger than the amount reported by the police."
The south and west suffer most, but there is no part of Ireland exempt from destitution, and consequent disease. The workhouses are so crowded that they have become lite- rally pest-houses. In some cases, more than half the inmates are under sick treatment.
The following report is published on the authority of the Rev. Mr. Webb, rector of Caheragh, in the county of Cork :
" The following is a statement of what I saw yesterday evening on the lands of Tou reen. In a cabbage-garden I saw (as I was informed) the bodies of Kate Barry and her two children very lightly covered with earth, the head and legs of the large body entirely exposed, the flesh completely eaten off by the dogs, the skin and hair of the head lying' within a couple of yards of the skull, which, when I first threw my eyes upon it, I thought to be part of a horse's tail. Within about thirty yards of the above-mentioned garden, at the opposite side of the road, are two most wretched-looking old houses, with two dead in each, Norry Regan, Tom Barry, Nelly Barry (a little girl), and Charles M'Carthy (a little boy), all dead about a fortnight, and not interred yet. Tim Donovan, Darrig, on the same farm, died on Saturday ; his wife and sister, the only people I saw about the cabin, said they had no means to bury him. You will think this very horrifying; but, were you to witness the state and con- dition of the dead and dying here at Tou- reen, it would he too much for flesh and blood to behold."
The papers received this morning from Ireland contain further accounts of the pro- gress of the famine. In the Galway Vindi- cator there are communications from several clergymen. One states that in the district of Moycullen there were, within a week, fifteen deaths by starvation-a sixteenth corpse was found exposed upon a mountain in the same district. In a suburban parish of Galway four deaths had occurred in the same period, and one additional death from want had occurred in a second suburb. The destitution of those midland counties bordering upon Munster seems characterized by great severity. Deaths by hunger, the journal published in Birr, the centre of this district, assures us are of daily occurrence, both in the King's and Queen's counties, as well as the adjacent parts of Tipperary and Kilkenny, and fever and dysentery carry off a large number, while many of the poor remain several days unburied, because their friends are unable to provide coffins for their decent sepulture. In the city of Cork fever now excites more apprehension than famine, for no class is safe from the infection. The mistress of the workschool at Clonakilty, county of Cork, in which orphan children have been educated in lacework of a superior description, and which has been encouraged by her Majesty, appeals to the public for her little ones, who, she says, " are dying in awful numbers." The
central relief committee in Dublin has ex-
hausted its funds, after having accomplished much good.