May 10th, 1847: A starvation gap caused by the "cumbrous machinery" of the Temporary Relief Act is confirmed.
Priests describe conditions in "begging letters" to the Tablet, whose founder editor Frederick Lucas has launched a fundraising campaign among English Catholics.
Father Jeremiah Molony writes from Rosscarbery, Co Cork: "My good pious people are every day dying of hunger and its consequences - fever, diarrhoea and dropsy, and their sufferings must frightfully increase during the next month because the labourers heretofore employed at the public works are almost all now disemployed, and the projected outdoor relief cannot come into full operation in this parish for some weeks."
The parish priest of Goresbridge explains why: "The names of the poor applicants for relief are taken down; the lists are then sent to Kilkenny, from thence to Dublin and then home again; in all which places they are to undergo a revision, and if any error be discovered full time must be taken to correct it before the poor starving creatures will get one pint of porridge."
Relief committees have been maintaining nearly 4,000 people in Loughbrickland, Co Down, but the funds raised by voluntary contributions and government donations are exhausted.
Owen Madden, PP Lisacull, Ballaghaderreen, says that out of 700 families in his parish, 400 are in want and have scarcely half a meal a day to sustain them. Within the last three weeks 18 people died of starvation.
Father Tighe, of nearby Kilcolman Abbey, acknowledges the generosity of British people: "It is their charities and not our wavering, fail bless government that have stayed in some measure the hand of death from numbers of the poor.
The Relief Act is coming slowly into operation, he adds, "and a more degrading, humiliating system was never offered a nation. Only think of bringing poor people six or eight miles every morning for one pound of Indian meal. The consequence is our town is crowded every day, habits of idleness are acquired, all industrious pursuits are totally neglected, and to crown our misedes fever is spreading rapidly among us." Disease spreads wherever crowds assemble especially as the warm weather approaches.
A man would have a better chance of escaping with his life in a battle than in Sligo, where every street is full of infection: each night 10 to 15 people "far gone in fever" are left outside the hospital.
Father Maurice Power, PP Killeagh, Co Cork, informs his bishop that 4,500 parishioners are suffering from Famine. "Numbers of them are lying sick of fever in their wretched cabins. We have no hospitals, nor is there any means of procuring persons to attend on the sick. And, to increase our misfortunes, we are not yet receiving any aid from what is wrongly called the Relief Act."