A LONE piper played a lament as the US ambassador to Ireland, Mrs Jean Kennedy Smith, unveiled a memorial to the Famine victims - some 30,000 of whom were bunked in a field at Carr's Hill in Cork. It was opened as a cemetery when other graveyards in the city could take no more burials.
The history of the Carr's Hill site makes grim reading. In 1846, the Guardians of the Cork Workhouse advertised for a burial ground. The pressure was mounting to find a new graveyard as the Famine death toll mounted. In the first nine months of 1847, 10,000 people were buried in St Joseph's Cemetery.
George Carr tendered for a workhouse graveyard and was successful. The guardians agreed to pay an entrance fee of £150, and £2.10s, a year for each of the three acres on the site. Carr also won the contract for burying the bodies from the workhouse. He was paid 2s.6d. for each burial.
According to Cork Corporation's history of the graveyard, the guardians were relieved to have solved the problem of disposing of paupers' bodies. In the Cork Examiner of February 1st, 1847, it was reported that 102 people had died in the previous six days; 70 bodies remained unburied. The guardians attempted to use St John's Graveyard in Douglas Street, but locals stood guard for three nights to prevent any further burials.
In April 1847, a leading article in the Cork Constitution deplored the state of the Carr's Hill cemetery. Dogs were rooting bodies from the shallow graves. The editorial said that a dog carried human remains from the graveyard to the house of a man named Riordan, who had it put down.
Letter writers to the Constitution complained that starving dogs had been "disinterring and devouring bodies". On July 8th, an application was made at the petty sessions in Douglas to prevent further burials at Carr's Hill. Carr, and the paupers he employed as gravediggers, were accused of creating a public nuisance and a health hazard.
The history continues: "Several witnesses appeared for the prosecution and described the effluvia from the graveyard which polluted the nearby road. They also described scenes of half buried bodies in deep pits which were left open overnight. In his defence, Carr produced witnesses who claimed that the burials were up to standard. They denied the existence of unburied bodies or any resultant effluvia, stating that all bodies were buried at least five to six feet under ground. Some gravediggers even testified that they ate their lunch in the graveyard each day."
Carr was subsequently fined £300, but the fine would not be imposed if he put the graveyard in order - which, apparently, he did.
The Carr's Hill site continued to be used for the next 100 years to bury paupers. In 1920, it came under the control of the Cork District Board - later the Southern Health Board - and was still in use in the 1940s. In 1950, a Cork taxi driver, Mr Sorenson, erected an illuminated cross - partly at his own expense to remember the Famine victims and the paupers buried there. However, the lights were turned off in 1979 due to its proximity to Cork Airport.
Another memorial has been erected now in the restored graveyard. Some people wanted a public park there, but that will not happen. It has been restored just to what it was when Carr and his men turned over the final shovels of soil to bury the Famine victims.