Articles like this reporting on demands for work and food were common in local Mayo newspapers throughout the famine. As you can see, editors were not hesitant to point fingers of blame.

On Monday last upwards of 500 poor, wretched, emaciated human beings assembled, with loys, shovels, etc., at Greenhills, the residence of Dominick J. Burke, Esq., J. P., demanding work to keep them from dying of starvation. Their appearance and their declarations before the God of Heaven - to two respectable gentlemen, our informants - that unless speedily relieved, they and their families would be all dead from starvation, elicited much commiseration from all who beheld them. One of those gentlemen declared to us he cried from pity for their sufferings. The poor wretches crowded round the car on which the gentlemen were seated, as if craving their aid, but offering no violence.

 

The Landlords are now actually calling for their rents! The drivers are gone forth! - the potatoes are gone before them - The Treasury minute has followed the potatoes – the grain is unripe in the fields – death is now loose! – the green church yards open their graves to receive the victims of persecution and starvation! We tell the Landlords in the present contingency it is foolishness to talk of law, or to threaten their pauper and starving tenantry with military force. Come what may the people must be fed.

from The Telegraph, August 19, 1846, as found at The Famine in Mayo 1845-1850, A Mayo County Library Exhibition.

At approximately 80,000 acres in the southwest corner of the county, the Cootillon Estate of the English Lord Fitzwilliam was the largest single land owner in Wicklow at the time of the famine - occupying almost 1/5 of the entire county. The estate was managed by land agent Robert Challoner and home by virtue of leases and subleases to over 20,000 people in 1841. ¹

Fitzwilliams and Challoner had begun to clear excess population as early as 1830 by the more or less traditional method of eviction, turning out approximately 800 persons before being challenged and embarrassed in the House of Commons. Henceforth, the practice of the estate was to clear tenants by offering to assist with emigration to Canada - a practice that began in earnest with repeated failure of the potato crops beginning in 1846 and eventually saw approximately 6,000 of the estate's tenants emigrate. The amount of assistance tenants received varied with the nature of their tenancy and the size of their families. The table below shows the manifest of Cootillon tenants who shipped aboard the merchant ship Star in April of 1848.

The ships manifest is under the copyright of and made available courtesy of Jim Rees, "Fitzwilliam Estate Emigration Books 1847-1856" and is found online at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick: The New Brunswick Irish Portal. The full story behind the manifest can be found in Jim Rees, Surplus People – from Wicklow to Canada available from Collins Press.

¹ Jim Rees, Surplus People: The Fitzwilliam Clearances 1847-1856, (Cork, Ireland: The Collins Press, 2000).

Food riots were not an uncommon occurrence during the famine as this image from a relief center in Galway, County Mayo suggests.

from Illustrated London News, June 25, 1842 — Attack on a Potato Store — THE GALWAY STARVATION RIOTS found in The Great Famine - 1845-1849

Letters from home during the famine were rarely uplifting. More often than not the news was about the dead and dying, the miseries of life, and the hope to join friends and family abroad.

February 17, 1848

Sir I received your letter of the 12th of December which gives us a great comfort to hear that you and your wife and children are all in Good Health. Thank God we are all in the same. Tho this country is so much afflicted with Disorders, thank God we all got free yet if God was pleased to visit the Old Man and Michael Armstrong with sickness we had the pleasure of our neighbors about us. Michael Armstrong died by alcoholic in 2 days illness. A sore leg with age was the Old Man’s complaint. You may let Rosey know that her sister Catron husband is dead. That is Patt [Conoley]. Indeed she will not be very sorry for that. Nor neather are we for her and her 4 children is far better wanting him but you may guess my situation with the Old Woman and Margaret and her 3 children, Catron and her 4 children all depending on me for to give them [seporte] you may guess yourself how I am ins there is no one I feel for so much as the Olde Woman for at the Old Man’s death the(y) prompt him up to leave but very little in her power. She is the one iye think of moste and will do all I can for her.

My dear friends, you are causious in giving me any encouragement to go out to america but I see I must go now for if I work as hard in America as I have to do hear I could give the old woman better living than I can now in this country for them that was to give her the seporte she was to get forgets their duty to her. Tho she holds the half of the place and I have to worke all the place for it was never divided as I was to get it all at his death tho he dun otherways. Now my dear sir, I think it better to go out when I am able than wish I had and then what I give to the olde woman will be her own. Sera would wish to go see you and Rosey and the little children but it would be two much out of our way to go that way as I intend going to [Illinois] but if I go I will write to you before I set out and when I settle be it where it may I will write to you that we may have the happiness to meet sometime for Sera thinks that if she woulde get one sight of Rosey and the children that all would be well. I would go to that country but it is not as good as the United States. As for my parte if I like the country I will settle there for life if I can get about 40 acres of land and can get as much of it in crop as will seporte me and Salley. Its all I want but if the country does not agree with me we will live otherways.

My dear Mr. Hughes, when I write to you I will let you know all about the country that we may meet at some future pered of life if I can get the journey accomplished. For if Sera could but see a sight of Rosey she would dye content. This country is very much opressed by taxation and deaths every other day there is an inquest on the body of some poor creature dying of starvation and colde. There has been 4 dyes this last week in this visincty by hunger. Rosey wants to know if Michael Armstrong dyed in the true faith. Yes. He was crisened in the rites of the Catholick Church and had but 2 minutes to spare til he expired.

My dear Mr Hughes if I could but write all the [th]reats of this Country 4 sheets of paper would Not contain every seen of misery ocurs every day. When I was writing I asked sally if she would go to see her sister. She leapt with joy and then s[h]e exclaimed My Mother what is she to do. I tolde her that we would be of more use to Her in america than at Home. In saying this the tears stole down her cheeks which made me stop the subject and say no more. My dear sir, the farm is so small that it will not seporte all the people that is left on it for when the old man was dying, he had no thought of Michael Armstrong death and when he dyed all fell on me. If he had to live some of the burden would fall on him. Rosey wants to know who has her Uncle Jame’s farm. Her Uncle John’s boys has it all and if the(y) could would [would] have more for Michael Armstrong purchased the [fiel] before John went to America and when they got him away the(y) went to the landlord and got it from him as he was no tenant. I was wanting him to go live in your Uncle James’ house but Margaret would not let him for fear of losing the half of her farm land, so she lost the sheep for the half penny worth of tar. For if they had took my advice and been living in the house the landlord would not have put them out and if we had that field now we would be better off. My dear friends, we all join in sending our love to you and to Rosey and children.

I remain, my dear sir, yours truley,

John Jackson

"Letter from John Jackson (brother-in-law), Monaghan, Ireland, to Lawrence Hughes, Saint John, New Brunswick, 17 February 1848" found online at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick: The New Brunswick Irish Portal.

The horror of the experience that often accompanied death by starvation is made all too vivid in this article from The Telegraph in County Mayo.

We are daily witnessing horrid sights in this town (Castlebar) from starvation. A few days ago a poor young man died in Stabball, from want of food. After much time had been consumed in procuring a coffin, which was effected in three days after his death, we were horrified to behold the poor mother of the deceased carrying on her back the dead body by means of straw ropes at either end of the coffin: her only living companion being an old helpless woman. In this manner did the wretched parent convey the inanimate remains of her son to the burying place at Turlough, a distance of nearly four miles. – Horrible

from The Telegraph, October 2, 1847, as found at The Famine in Mayo 1845-1850, A Mayo County Library Exhibition >

This portrait of an eviction in the Wicklow Mountains by the English artist Elizabeth Thompson, Lady Butler, was done several decades after the famine. However, it accurately portrays the destruction of property that accompanied evictions to assure that tenants could not return and, more importantly, the great sense of loss.

image from Lady Butler, "Evicted," Department of Irish Folklore, University College, Dublin.

Public relief officers in each county were required to submit weekly reports of the numbers involved in relief projects. Road work was one of the major types of relief projects undertaken and this table records information about County Mayo relief workers for the last week of January, 1847.

from Accounts & Papers: Correspondence From January to March 1847 Relating to Measures Adopted for the Relief of the Distress in Ireland - Board of Works Series [Second Part], (Oxford University, 1847), p 56.

Public relief officers in each county were required to submit weekly reports of the numbers involved in relief projects. Road work was one of the major types of relief projects undertaken and this table records information about County Wicklow relief workers for the last week of January, 1847.

from Accounts & Papers: Correspondence From January to March 1847 Relating to Measures Adopted for the Relief of the Distress in Ireland - Board of Works Series [Second Part], (Oxford University, 1847), p 52.

The poor were required to prove the need for relief and to appear before relief officers in order not to be removed from the relief rolls. The account below from the Mayo Constitution reports on the death of several individuals required to walk as far as 28 miles to reach the relief offices. An annual Famine Walk across the Doolough Pass is held today to commemorating the tragedy

Sir - I have this day the melancholy duty of informing you that two more miserable creatures were found on the mountain passes dead - in all 7, and I am confidently informed that 9 or 10 more have never reached their homes, and several of those that did, were so fatigued with cold and hunger that they in a short time ceased to live.

I tell Colonel Hogrove, and Captain Primrose that the relieving officer ordered the poor creatures to follow them to Delphi, in order that they might be inspected at 7 o’clock on the morning of the 31st, at that lodge, and I challenge them to contradict what I state; further that the cause of their not stopping at Louisburgh was, that the relieving officer had not his books ready and it was at the court-house the following order was given - all persons not attending at 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning, at Delphi, would be struck off the relief; the people did attend, but the relieving officer did not until 12 o’clock.

I now think it right to inform you that a strictly private inquest was held by Mr. Coroner Burke, aided and assisted by a member of his family. Doctor Burke, who is the poorhouse doctor, and the jury returned the following verdict, after a post mortem examination on the bodies of two of them:- “Died from starvation and cold,” when instead of providing coffins for those creatures, the bodies were again thrown into a mountain slough, with a few sods thrown over them immediately after.

The Coroner and his staff proceeded to Delphi Lodge, and on the following day returned and held another inquest; like verdict was returned, when the Coroner and doctor returned to their mansions, leaving three more unfortunate creatures at the road side, with scarce a covering of sods upon them. Thank God all are not so hardened as the above, for that excellent and humane clergyman. I mean the Rev. Thomas O’Dowd, the Catholic Curate, gave five coffins to Mr. Walshe, who, to his credit be it said, both himself and his men had all the bodies taken out of the sloughs on the 12th instant, and placed in coffins, and had them respectably interred in a burial place.

In my last, I stated that the poor had not to travel more than 10 or 15 miles, I now tell you that the residence of some of those found dead was at least 28 miles from Delphi - the same distance back.

I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant, A RATEPAYER.

from Mayo Constitution, April 17, 1849, as found at The Famine in Mayo 1845-1850, A Mayo County Library Exhibition

Reports from county relief officers included day-to-day narrative of their experiences with famine victims.

Extracts from Journal of Lieut Anderson, Inspecting Officer County Wicklow, Barony of North Ballinacor

9th January 1847 - The prices of provisions are I regret to say increasing One poor object came to me on the works yesterday and said I got 5s last week but all I could get for it at Dunlavin was a stone and a half of meal and how Sir will that support a small but helpless family of four beside myself On Monday the 4th I attended a meeting of the Anamon Relief Committee and ordered 31 more men to be employed and ordered 10 to be struck off the lists as I had received information that they were not destitute On Tuesday the 5th I attended a meeting of the

16th January 1847 - Sheep stealing is daily becoming more frequent Several outrages of a more serious nature have occurred in this neighbourhood About 20 barrels of corn the property of the Rev W West of Arramoe were burnt I would suggest that a supply of Circular No 47 be sent down to me that I may have them posted in different parts of the county Persons to whom I have hitherto refused employment I have found it necessary at last to admit a panic has seized the small farmer and one and all have ceased to cultivate their lands

23rd January 1847 - This morning I received the following communication from one of my check clerks in South Ballinacor I have also to inform you that the men employed on the Killadoren part of the same road were on the eve of turning out this day at dinner time partly on account of not having been paid and partly for an increase of wages as they all told me they were starving I was also informed by the stewards along the entire line that about one third of the men under their charge had not eaten anything for the last 36 hours I should mention that I met the pay clerk as I left Tinnahely in the evening and that he reported all were paid I met many on my journey here and all were thankful as they had got their pay I have selected considerably upwards of 8000 men for employment on the Public Works and I am sure they only require food to remain peaceable

20th February 1847 - At Moyne on Thursday and at Sheanna yesterday I saw many men and women who one and all assured me that for days they had lived on gruel Their appearance certainly verified their statements For some districts I am happy to be able to report that the farmers are beginning to attend to their land I have been told that many farmers are afraid to apply for men to be taken off the Public Works Where I know men can get employment I dismiss them off the works then they seek the farmer

27th February 1847 - I have urged upon the different Committees the necessity of revising again and again their lists and have further impressed upon them the propriety of inducing the labourers to seek the farmers instead of the farmers having to seek labourers as now the farmers must employ men During the past week the large farmers have been busy ploughing and sowing oate while the so called farms having from 3 to 10 acres of laud are doing nothing the generality of them having nothing to sow I feel convinced there is plenty of seed in this county if the large proprietors will give it to their tenants I am sure Circular No 55 will be the means of doing much good

from Accounts & Papers: Correspondence From January to March 1847 Relating to Measures Adopted for the Relief of the Distress in Ireland - Board of Works Series [Second Part], (Oxford University, 1847), pp 116, 254.

Not only were those too poor to pay their rents commonly evicted, their landlords made it a practice to destroy houses to prevent return - a job for the "crowbar invincibles".

The crowbar invincibles, pulled down several houses, and drove forth the fortunate inmates to sleep in the adjoining fields. On Thursday we witnessed the wretched creatures endeavouring to root out the timber of the houses, with the intention of constructing some sort of sheds to screen their children from the heavy rain falling at the time. On Wednesday night there was a deluge of rain, the severity of which those poor creatures were exposed to in the open fields. Unfortunately for them, the pitiless pelting storm has continued ever since, and if they have survived its severity they must be more than human beings.

from The Telegraph, July 5, 1848 as found at The Famine in Mayo 1845-1850, A Mayo County Library Exhibition

Elizabeth Smith was the Scottish wife of the English landowner, Colonel Henry Smith, of Baltiboys estate in County Wicklow. Her extensive journals reflect a rich mix of personal perspectives on the management of their estate, the care of those the estate supported, the famine, the Irish people, and the various relief measures considered and enacted by Parliament.

March 7, 1847 - ...The relief works are to cease as soon as the roads now in process of amendment are completed. What is to be done with that immense army of disbanded workmen is not known. The Government measures are not as yet fully developed. Some new Irish poor law bill has passed the Commons but we don't yet know its details, nor is the Loan to proprietors for Improvements yet ready to be acted on. The terms however we understand; principal and interest will be paid up in twenty-two years at the rate of £6. 10. 0 per annum for every hundred pounds borrowed; estates to be liable for debt as a first claim on them. Whether part of the improvement will be allowed to be buying out of the small holders we do not know; if it won’t we must borrow privately for this purpose as they can’t stay and we can’t wish they should. Cairns has found this out; he yesterday gave up possession to the Colonel of his house and farm; his house is restored to him for the present till he can arrange his plans; he wishes to emigrate to America and the Colonel is to assist him——with twenty pounds but perhaps a little more. The poor man has gone up to Dublin to make his enquiries carrying up a letter to John Robinson who will direct him and gather for our benefit all the information possible upon the subject as probably others will follow this wise example ….

 

April 8, 1847 - Very stormy weather, not doing any harm however; nothing was forward enough to be injured by cold or wet. In this Poor Relief Bill which as yet we have not seen there have been two clauses inserted by the Member for Dublin, Mr Gregory, one of which precludes the holder of more than a rond [quarter acre] of land from being in any way assisted. This has set my mind at ease about the Ratcliffe mountains; the hordes of beggars there are all small farmers so we need not dread their numbers. In fact the name of relief to the extent proposed is all that there is to fear; the paupers of Ireland are not the labourers; they struggle on in their own miserable way as well as their low state of habits and feeling admit of, there are hardly more of them than are required even now, under this idle system of husbandry; there would not be enough were the land properly cultivated. The beggars are the small holders, entitled to no relief, and so we shall gradually get them; they must give up their patches and take to labour. I am anxious to see the Bill for I feel pretty sure its provisions are in main good and that the Colonel’s anxiety is causeless. Townland division would have been more just than Electoral but there are clauses, I understand, to protect the conscientious. It will very hard upon us who do our duty but we must make the best
it. Some will be ruined; we shall rise again, it is to be hoped, in a year or two.

 

May 3, 1847 - Truth to say at present they know nothing of agriculture, very little about stock either except just to choose the best description of cattle for summer grazing on their fine pastures. Lord Stanley‘ makes a speech equal to his former one on the same subject; he undoubtedly knows more of Irish affairs than any one of the publick men who meddle with them; his own property is admirably managed; his opinions of the country generally are accurate as far as I can judge. I admire him standing up for his class——the Irish Landlord is in no essential difference from the Irish peasant of his superiour position has raised him in many points above his labouring countryman but the character of their race is common to both. The same carelessness or recklessness, call it which you will, the same indolence, the same love of pleasure, the same undue appreciation of self. . . . It is the greatest mistake possible to argue upon a presumed difference of disposition, the difference is in condition. And to array the one class against the other, to insist that the Landlords are always crushing the peasantry, and the peasantry always rising against the landlords is mere prejudice: there is no opposition at all between them, they agree remarkably well. The upper ranks pursue their amusements without reference to any other human being, merely giving a volley of curses to anyone that comes inconveniently into their way, the lowest ranks admire the style of these diversions, imitate them as far as they have the means without the slightest idea of being oppressed or even neglected. The Landlords that are not popular are what we should call the good ones, who look after their affairs, insist upon value received for value given, who will neither be cheated of time nor property, and look well after the habits of their unruly dependants!

 

May 13, 1846 - The Lords are altering our Poor Relief Bill amending it hitherto by several saving clauses; it is indeed difficult to manage Ireland. Such an extraordinary slippery people—high and low—all such unblushing jobbers in their different lines—depending too on anyone but themselves; the higher seeking for place and getting it by pure patronage, the lower doing their business by fawning and cheating. Jem Doyle whom we employ out of charity, disinclining to work one rainy day went to the relief stores much astonished to find that being in service he could get nothing when he preferred idling. Jem Quin whose manure we bought and unluckily did not bring entirely away filling up his heap with mud, grass, rushes, anything he could gather to encrease the bulk, etc. etc. etc.

 

June 8, 1847 - … A fine cool wind too has been blowing all round these healthy hills and it in intended to change the food—give half rice and half Indian meal, cooked—1 lb of each furnishing when properly made, 10 lbs of nutritious stirabout, exceedingly good and sufficient for a meal for four working men. We made some yesterday and today I have copied the printed recipe to distribute, and mean to have it further spread by the school children each of whom shall write a copy to carry home. We made in like manner copies of the whitewashing order and pasted them up in several conspicuous places. They are all allowed, with their families, to keep their rations in the bog, cutting their own turf; this ensures comfort next winter, and by the time this work is over the hay and the turnip weeding will be on. Matters look brighter for the lower orders~—the upper are well nigh ruined; the best of us cannot recover this overwhelming calamity under many years; the improvident, a large class, are utterly bankrupt; swept from their places, they must be, with families unprovided for, habits unfitted for business. What an amount of misery; all their own doing and so the more wretched.

 

December 17, 1846 - The weather is lamentable for the country. The men can not work. I heard from Mary Gillies yesterday. She kindly asked Dr Southwood Smith to send the Colonel the first report of the Commissioners of Sanitary Reform which large as it is I have read through. The facts are indeed startling. Oh how selfish we are. How totally unchristian. Can such things be in a country called civilised, free, Christian. ‘They overcome us like‘ a pestilence ever brooding in of l air. How little the happy think about the miserable, the luxuriously lodged about the wretched, the men of wealth about the paupers. It must end; things cannot thus go on so unequally portioned out to those alike created in God’s own image. Individual assistance is of little worth; it must not be neglected but there must be a change in the mass. Comfort must be produced universally. How low, how infinitely low is the mind of millions; they do not feel their low condition which is in some respects a blessing.

 

February 8, 1848 - A report that the income tax is to be raised to 5 % …. I don’t see how we in Ireland can meet it. We in Baltiboys must descend a few more pegs. Governess, carriage, hunters, are gone already. Butler and housekeeper must follow. And as John Robinson says, people can just be as happy with little as much. The luxuries can be done without, and after a while we shall hardly miss them only it frets one to feel that we give up our comforts for political folly.

 

April 7, 1850 - ...There are very few boys left on our side of the country; there will be few men soon for they are pouring out in shoals to America. Crowds upon crowds swarm along the roads, the bye roads, following carts with their trunks and other properly.

Oct. 2, 1850 - Two very bad murders in the papers, both the victims gentlemen. As for crop lifting it is quite the rule. Galway is like to do though, so with work for the few left, and the steady stream of emigration continuing, we may look for better times. . . . we have had good news from Mary and Lachlan Ryan, these two batches are both in service, and have been ever since their arrival. Lachlan his board and a pound a week—-Mary, her board and lodging and a pound a month. . . . Nancy Fox’s two sons have sent her home money from Cincinnati where they are both doing well. The numbers gone are countless, and the countless numbers going are beyond all calculation, yet the wretchedness left is dreadful.

 

from Smith, E. and Thomson, D. (1980) The Irish Journals of Elizabeth Smith, 1840-1850, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Stories and letters like this portraying the famine in Ireland in the most graphic terms were common in London newspapers and were often entered into the record of Parliamentary debates.

The Protestant rector of Ballinrobe, in a third letter addressed to the Premier, narrates the following horrifying tale of human misery:

In a neighboring union a shipwrecked human body was cast on shore; a starving man extracted the heart and liver, and that was the maddening feast on which he regaled himself and his perishing family! and nearer still a poor forlorn girl, hearing that her mother was seized with cholera, hastened to the rescue, alas! too late, but with a deep religious and filial devotion, desiring at least a decent interment for her dear departed parent, was driven to the shocking necessity of carrying the corpse upon her own back for three long miles to this very union, so that she might make her wants known, and simply obtain a coffin from the relieving officer. Need I tell you, my Lord, the dismal sequel? She herself died of cholera the next day. Those awful facts may have been reported, but if they were they have been cushioned and suppressed, for who has heard of them?

With such fearful occurrences passing before his eyes, it is no wonder that the rev. writer should speak in such impassioned language as this:

I will not, my Lord, dwell at present upon the painful subject of the workhouse, as the evil has gone far to correct itself, the inmates having died in awful numbers, and more liberal supplies being now remitted for the current weekly expenses -- alas! that those supplies should have been withheld so long! I would, however, fix your Lordship's deepest attention upon the appalling fact, that we have, even at best, to encounter three months more of sore, sore famine; and bear it in mind, my Lord, the three worst months of the year, in point of home supply -- and this, with 27,000 of our population in the Ballinrobe union on outdoor relief, while the remaining 68,000, minus the thousands already lost, are all, with very few exceptions indeed, barely trying to hold on through the dread crisis? The all engrossing questions with every case, gentle and simple, are these -- "What, in the name of Heaven, is to become of us? What are we to do? The country is gone!" We must thus again and again strive to arouse you, my Lord, for it is not possible that your or the English people can be fully conscious or alive to the true state of things in the west of Ireland. I grant that there may be, nay, that there is, much of imposition, but surely there cannot be any n this, that here are the people dropping dead of utter want all around in every direction, night and day; and can we suppose for a moment that the astounding fact is believed when we see no really vigorous and united movement, except through private benevolence, to stay the progress of death? 'Tis poor consolation to an already more than half-starved wretch to say to him -- "Go and break stones, no matter how unprofitable, for that is the sole test of your destitution, and if the contractor don't disappoint, you shall get for your eight or ten hours labour 1 lb. of Indian meal, which costs 1d. but we can't give you fuel or clothing.' Still you 'must deliver the tale of bricks;' however, if youd die, and die you soon must, for your emaciated, famine-stricken countenance and swollen frame, betoken as much, you will, as on the outdoor list, be entitled to a coffin from the relieving officer, though, perhaps, he may not hear of your decease till you have become putrid in the grave! I tell it to you, my Lord, whether believed or not, and I tell to the world at large, and I tell it to our Father in Heaven (for I beseech redress of Him), that these are the sufferings of this people despite of every entreaty, but not of half the people; for who can imagine the thousandth part of the misery of those who, in large numbers, are preferring death itself to such degradation? It is a burning shame and stain upon the legislature in any so-called Christian country.

from “Famine in the West,” The Times, London: May 23, 1849.

Disease was the companion of starvation. Death from each became a daily occurrence.

In some of the remote parts of this Union, particularly in the barony of Erris, disease is committing serious havoc. On Monday, the 17th of this month, in the townland of Inver, in the barony referred to, there were no less than thirty-two human beings dead - dead of famine – dead of pestilence produced and propagated by want. The deaths in this district, arising from destitution and its consequences, are awfully numerous, and of daily occurrence. Even sudden deaths are now of almost momentary frequency, so worn and exhausted are the physical energies of the poor people. On Tuesday last a wretched man dropped dead at Crosspatrick, near Killala, from mere destitution. This is a fearful state of things and what renders it doubly so is its pervading generality.

from Tyrawly Herald, April 27, 1847 as found at The Famine in Mayo 1845-1850, A Mayo County Library Exhibition